Special Operations boh-2

by W. E. B Griffin

  No servant came out now. Pekach saw a gray-haired black man, wearing a black rubber apron and black rubber boots, washing a Buick station wagon. There was a Mercedes coupe, a new one, and a Cadillac Coupe de Ville in the garage, and a two-year-old Ford sedan parked beside the garage, almost certainly the property of the black guy washing the car.

  Pekach went up the stairs and rang the doorbell. He heard a dull bonging inside, and a moment or two later, a gray-haired black female face appeared where a lace curtain over the engraved glass window had been pulled aside. And then the door opened.

  "May I help you?" the black woman asked. She was wearing a black uniform dress, and Pekach decided the odds were ten to one she was married to the guy washing the Buick.

  "I'm Captain Pekach of the Highway Patrol," David said. "I'd like to see Miss Peebles, please."

  "One moment, please," the black woman said. "I'll see if Miss Peebles is at home." She shut the door. Pekach glanced around.

  The way this place is built and laid out, it's an open invitation to a burglar to come in and help himself.The door opened again a full minute later. "Miss Peebles will see you," the maid said. "Will you follow me, please?"

  Pekach took off his uniform cap, and put his hand to his pigtail, which of course was no longer there.

  Inside the door was a large foyer, with an octagonal tile fountain in the center. Closed double doors were on both sides of the foyer, and a wide staircase was directly ahead. There was a stained-glass leaded window portraying, Pekach thought, Saint Whoever-It-Was who slayed the dragon on the stairway landing.

  This place looks like a goddamned museum. Or maybe a funeral home.

  The maid slid open one of the double doors.

  "Here's the policeman, Miss Martha," the maid said, and gestured for him to go through the door.

  He found himself in a high-ceilinged room, the walls of which were lined with bookshelves.

  "How do you do?" Martha Peebles said.

  A fifty-year-old spinster,Pekach instantly decided, looking at Martha Peebles. She was wearing a white, frilly, high-collared, long-sleeved blouse and a dark skirt.

  "Miss Peebles, I'm Captain Pekach, commanding officer of the Highway Patrol," David said. "Inspector Wohl asked me to come see you, to tell you how sorry we are about the trouble you've had, and to tell you we' re going to do everything humanly possible to keep it from happening again."

  Martha Peebles extended her hand.

  The cop, as opposed to the man, in Pekach took over. The cop, the trained observer, saw that Martha Peebles was not fifty. She did not have fifty-year-old hands, or fifty-year-old eyes, or fifty-year-old teeth. These wereher teeth, not caps, and they sat in healthy gums. There were no liver spots on her hands, and there was a fullness of flesh in the hands that fifty-year-olds have lost with passing time. And her neck had not begun to hang. It was even possible that the firm appearance of her breasts was Miss Peebles herself, rather than a well-fitting brassiere.

  "How do you do, Captain…Pekach, you said?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Her hand was warm and soft, confirming his revised opinion of her age. She was, he now deduced, maybe thirty-five, no more. She just dressed like an old woman; that had thrown him off. He wondered why the hell she did that.

  "You'll forgive me for saying I've heard that before, Captain," Martha Peebles said, taking her hand back and lacing it with the other one on her abdomen. "As recently as yesterday. "

  "Yes, ma'am, I know," David Pekach said, uncomfortably.

  "I am really not a neurotic old maid, imagining all this," she said.

  "No one suggested anything like that, Miss Peebles," Pekach said.Oh, shit! McFadden and Martinez! "Miss Peebles, did the two officers who were here yesterday say anything at all out of line? Did they insinuate anything like that?

  "No," she said. "I don't recall that they did. But, if I may be frank?"

  "Please."

  "They did seem a little young to be detectives," she said, "and I got the impression-how should I put this-that they were rather overwhelmed by the house."

  "I'm rather overwhelmed with it," David said. "It's magnificent."

  "My father loved this house," she said. "You haven't answered my question."

  "What question was that, Miss Peebles?" Pekach asked, confused.

  "Aren't those two a little young to be detectives? Do they have the requisite experience?"

  "Well, actually, Miss Peebles, they aren't detectives," Pekach said.

  "They were in civilian clothing," she challenged. "I thought, among policemen, only detectives were permitted to wear civilian clothing."

  "No, ma'am," Pekach said. "Some officers work in civilian clothing."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said. "When it seems appropriate, that's authorized."

  "It seems to me that the more police in uniform the better," she said. "That that would tend to deter crime."

  "You have a point," Pekach said. "I can't argue with that. But may I explain the officers who were here yesterday?"

  "We're talking about the small Mexican or whatever, and the large, simple Irish boy?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Miss Peebles, do you happen to recall hearing about the police officer, Captain Moffitt, who was shot to death recently."

  "Oh, yes, of course. On the television, it said that he was, unless I'm confused somehow, the commanding officer of the Highway Patrol."

  "Yes, ma'am, he was," Pekach said.

  "Oh, I see. And you're his replacement, so to speak?"

  "Yes, ma'am, but that's not what I was driving at."

  "Oh?"

  "We knew who had shot Captain Moffitt within minutes," Pekach said. " Which meant that eight thousand police officers-the entire Philadelphia Police Department-were looking for him."

  "I can certainly understand that," she said.

  "Two undercover Narcotics Division officers found him-"

  "They threw him under a subway train," she said. "I read that in theLedger. Good for them!"

  "That story wasn't true, Miss Peebles," Pekach said, surprised at her reaction. "Actually, the officer involved went much further than he had to to capture him alive. He didn't even fire his weapon, for fear that a bullet might hit an innocent bystander."

  "He should have shot him dead on the spot," Miss Peebles said, firmly.

  David looked at her with surprise showing on his face.

  "I read inTime," Martha Peebles said, "that for what it costs to keep one criminal in prison, we could send four people to Harvard."

  "Yes, ma'am," Pekach said. "I'm sure that's about right."

  "Now,that's criminal," she said. "Throwing good money after bad. Money that could be used to benefit society being thrown away keeping criminals in country clubs with bars."

  "Yes, ma'am, I have to agree with you."

  "I'm sure that people like yourself must find that sort of thing very frustrating," Martha Peebles said.

  "Yes, ma'am, sometimes," Pekach agreed.

  "I'm going to draw the blind," Martha Peebles announced. "The sun bleaches the carpets."

  She went to the window and did so, and the sun silhouetted her body, for all practical purposes making her blouse transparent. David Pekach averted his eyes.

  Just a bra, huh? I would have thought she'd have worn a slip. Oh, what the hell, it's hot. But really nice boobs!

  She walked back over to him.

  "You were saying?" she said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "There was a point to your talking about the man who shot your predecessor?"

  "Oh, yes, ma'am. Miss Peebles, the officer who found Gerald Vincent Gallagher was Officer Charles McFadden."

  "Who?"

  "Officer McFadden, Miss Peebles. The officer Inspector Wohl sent to see you yesterday. And Officer Martinez is his partner."

  "Really?" she replied, genuinely surprised. "Then I certainly have misjudged them, haven't I?"

  "I brought that up, Miss Peebles, in
the hope you might be convinced that we sent you the best men available."

  "Hummm," she snorted. "That may be so, but they don't seem to be any more effective, do they, than anyone else that's been here?"

  "They were working until long after midnight last night, Miss Peebles, looking for Walton Williams-"

  "They were looking in the wrong place, then," Martha Peebles said. " They should have been looking here.He was here."

  Shit, she's right about that!

  "Well, actually, we don't know that," David said. "We don't know if whoever was here last night was Mr. Williams.

  For that matter, we don't even know that Mr. Williams is even connected-"

  "Don't be silly," Martha Peebles snapped. "Who else could it be?"

  "Literally, anyone."

  "Captain, I don't like to think of a total figure for all the things that have been stolen from this house by one of Stephen's 'friends.' I don't know whether he actually pays them to do what-whatever they dobut I do know that almost without exception, they tip themselves with whatever they can stick in their pockets before they go back wherever Stephen finds them."

  "I didn't see any record of that, prior to this last sequence of events," Pekach said.

  "For the good reason that I never reported it. I find it very painful to have to publicly acknowledge that my brother, the last of the line, is, so to speak, going tobe the last of the line; and that he's not even very good at that, and has to go out and hire prostitutes."

  "Yes, ma'am," David said, genuinely sympathetic.

  "Is that the correct word? Or is there another term for males?"

  "Same word, ma'am."

  "I suppose I would have gone on and on, closing my eyes to what was going on, pretending that I didn't really care about the things that turned up missing… but this Williams man shows no sign of stopping this harassment-and that's what it is, more than the value of the items he's stolen-and that proves, it seems to me, that it is he and not any other burglar, who would take as much as he could haul off-"

  "You may have a point, Miss Peebles," Pekach said.

  "But I am also afraid that he will either steal, or perhaps simply vandalize, for his own perverse reasons, Daddy's gun collection. That would break my heart, if any of that was stolen or vandalized."

  Pekach's eyes actually brightened at the wordgun.

  What the hell is going on here? There was not one damned word about guns in any of the reports I read.

  "A gun collection?" Pekach asked. "I wonder if you'd be kind enough to show it to me?"

  "If you like," she said. "With the understanding that you may look, but not touch."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Well, then, come along." She led him out of the library and up the stairs, past Saint Whatsisname Slaying the Dragon.

  "There were some edged pieces," she said.

  "Excuse me?"

  Pekach had been distracted by the sight of Miss Martha Peebles's rear end as she went up the stairs ahead of him. The thin material of her skirt was drawn tight over her rump. She was apparently not wearing a half slip, for the outline of her underpants was clearly visible. And the kind of underpants she was wearing were…

  Pekach searched his limited vocabulary in the area and as much in triumph as surprise came up with "bikinis."

  Or the lower half of bikinis, whatever the hell they were called. Little tiny goddamned things, which, what there was of them, rode damned low.

  Nice ass, too.

  "Swords, halberds, some Arabian daggers, that sort of thing," Martha Peebles said, "but they were difficult and time consuming to care for, and Colonel Mawson-do you know Colonel Mawson, Captain?"

  "I know who he is, Miss Peebles," Pekach said as she stopped at the head of the stairs and waited for him to catch up with her.

  "Colonel Mawson worked out some sort of tax arrangement with the government for me, and I gave them to the Smithsonian Institution," she concluded.

  "I see."

  She led him down a carpeted corridor, and then stopped so suddenly David Pekach bumped into her.

  "Sorry," he said.

  She gave him a wan smile, and nodded upward, toward the wall behind him.

  "That's Daddy," she said.

  It was an oil painting of a tall, mean-looking stout man with a large mustache. He was in hunting clothes, one hand resting on the rack of an elk.

  It was a lousy picture, Pekach decided. It looked more like a snapshot.

  "I had that done after Daddy passed away," Martha Peebles said. "The artist had to work from a photograph."

  "I see," Pekach said. "Very nice."

  "The photo had Stephen in it, but I told the artist to leave him out. Stephen hated hunting, and Daddy knew it. I think he probably made him go along to… you know, expose him to masculine pursuits. Anyway, I didn't think Stephen belonged in Daddy's picture, so I had the artist leave him out."

  "I understand."

  Martha Peebles then put her arm deep into a vase sitting on the floor and came out with two keys on a ring. She put one and then the other into locks on a door beside the portrait of her father, and then opened the door, and reached inside to snap a switch. Fluorescent lights flickered to life.

  The room, about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, was lined with glass-fronted gun racks, except for the bar end, which was a bookcase above a felt-covered table. There were two large, wide, glass-enclosed display cases in the center of the room, plus a leather armchair and matching footstool, and a table on which an old Zenith Trans-Oceanic portable radio sat.

  "This is pretty much as it was the day Daddy passed away," Martha Peebles said. "Except that I took out his whiskey."

  "How long has your father been dead, Miss Peebles?" Pekach asked, as he walked toward the first display case.

  "Daddy passed over three years, two months, and nine days ago," she said, without faltering.

  Pekach bent over the display case.

  Jesus H. Christ! That's an 1819 J. H. Hall breech action! Mint!

  "Do you know anything about these guns, Miss Peebles?" Pekach asked.

  She came to him.

  "Which one?" she asked and he pointed and she leaned over to look at it, which action caused her blouse to strain over her bosom, giving David Pekach a quick and unintentional glimpse of her undergarments.

  Even though Captain Pekach was genuinely interested in having his identification of the weapon he had pointed out as a U.S. Rifle, Model 1819, with a J. H. Hall pivoted chamber breech action confirmed, a certain portion of his attention was diverted to that which he had inadvertently and in absolute innocence glimpsed.

  Jesus! Black lace! Who would have ever thought! I wonder if her underpants are black, too? Black lace bikinis! Jesus H. Christ!

  "That's an Army rifle," Martha Peebles said. "Model of 1819. That particular piece was made in 1821. It's interesting because-"

  "It has a J. H. Hall action," Pekach chimed in.

  "Yes," she said.

  "I've never seen one in such good shape before," David Pekach said. " That looks unfired."

  "It's been test fired," Martha said. "It has Z.E.H. stamped on the receiver just beside the flintlock pivot. That's almost certainly Captain Zachary Ellsworth Hampden's stamp. But I don't think it ever left Harper's Ferry Armory for service."

  "It's a beautiful piece," Pekach said.

  "Are you interested-I was about to ask 'in breech loaders,' but I suppose the first question should be, are you interested in firearms?"

  "My mother says that's the reason I never got married," Pekach blurted. "I spend all my money on weapons."

  "What kind?"

  "Actually, Remington rolling blocks," Pekach said.

  "Daddy loved rolling blocks!" Martha Peebles said. "The whole wall case on the left is rolling blocks."

  "Really?"

  He walked to the cabinet. She caught up with him.

  "I don't have anything as good as these," Pekach said. "I've got a sporting rifle something l
ike that piece, but it's worn and pitted. That's mint. They all look mint."

  "Daddy said that he regarded himself as their caretaker," Martha Peebles said. "He said it wasn't in him to be a do-gooder, but preserving these symbols of our heritage for later generations gave him great pleasure."

  "What a nice way to put it," Pekach said, absolutely sincerely.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry Daddy passed over and can't be here now," Martha said. "He so loved showing his guns to people with the knowledge and sensitivity to appreciate them."

  Their eyes met. Martha Peeble's face colored and she looked away.

  "That was his favorite piece," she said after a moment, pointing.

  "What is it? It looks German."

  They were looking at a heavily engraved, double-triggered rifle with an elaborately shaped, carved, and engraved wild cherry stock.

  "German-American," she said. "It was made in Milwaukee in 1883 by Ludwig Hamner, who immigrated from Bavaria in 1849. He took a Remington rolling block action, barreled it himself, in 32-20, one turn in eighteen inches, and then did all the engraving and carving himself. That's wild cherry."

  "I know," Pekach said. "It's beautiful!"

  She turned and walked away from him. He saw her bending down to lift the edge of the carpet by the door. She returned with a key and used it to unlock the case. Almost reverently, she took the rifle from its padded pegs and handed it to Pekach.

  "I don't think I should touch it," he said. "There's liable to be acid on my fingertips from perspiration."

  "I'll wipe it before I put it back, silly," Martha Peebles said. When he still looked doubtful, she said, "I know Daddy would want you to."

  He reached to take the gun, and as he did so, his fingers touched hers and she recoiled as if she was being burned, and he almost dropped the rifle.

  But he didn't, and when, after an appropriately detailed and appreciative examination of the piece, he handed it back to her, their fingers touched again, and this time she didn't seem to recoil from his touch; quite the contrary.