“We’d like to see Mr. Wardell.”
“Concerning what, please?”
“Concerning the matter we discussed with him yesterday,” Friedman said.
“Which was?”
“Which was police business.”
Sighing, the young man lifted his telephone, touched a button on an illuminated console and waited. Finally: “I’m afraid Mr. Wardell isn’t in.” Obviously relieved, he replaced the telephone and turned his attention to a magazine.
“When is Mr. Wardell expected back?” I asked.
Sighing again, he slid out a small drawer, opened a morocco-bound notebook and riffled a few pages. “Mr. Wardell didn’t leave word,” he said stiffly. “Sorry.”
Leaning forward, Friedman placed both of his hands flat on the tooled-leather desk top. On the small desk his hands looked very large. Startled, the young man looked up, frowning peevishly.
“It is important that we talk to Mr. Wardell,” Friedman said softly. “It is very, very important. Therefore, we’re perfectly prepared to go as high up in your organization as is necessary to locate Mr. Wardell, or to find out when he’s coming back.”
As Friedman was speaking, the young man’s attention was drawn irresistibly in the direction of the lobby door. I saw him blink, then saw his face fall. Friedman and I turned in unison to face Baxter Wardell striding briskly toward us. Today he wore a cashmere sports jacket and contrasting brown slacks. His white shirt was open at the throat. He was flanked on either side by conservatively dressed men with graying hair and serious eyes. Both of the men carried attaché cases. Each man walked a discreet step behind Wardell.
Friedman stepped forward, offering his hand—which Wardell ignored. “Sorry to trouble you again, Mr. Wardell,” Friedman said amiably. “But I wonder if we could have another few minutes of your time?” As he spoke, I moved to stand beside him. Together, we blocked passage down the corridor that led to the elevators and the club’s interior. Friedman glanced pointedly toward the door of the visitors’ room, off the central hallway to the left. Wardell came to a stop a bare two feet from Friedman’s sizable chest.
“Not now, Lieutenant,” he said coldly. “I’ve got a conference scheduled upstairs. I’m leaving immediately afterward for Los Angeles.”
“This won’t take long,” Friedman said quietly. “And it’s important. Very important.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“It concerns the FBI,” I said. “We’ve just come from a meeting with them. We thought we should talk to you as soon as possible.”
“The—” Momentarily, Wardell hesitated. “The FBI?” Covertly, he glanced aside, toward one of the two men beside him. Finally he turned sharply to the door of the visitors’ room, throwing an order over his shoulder: “I’ll be upstairs in ten minutes. Start without me. Put the environmental-impact projections first on the agenda.”
With identical expressions, the two men studied us for a long, inscrutable moment before they walked silently down the hallway to the elevators. Wardell, meanwhile, had already disappeared inside the visitors’ room.
Friedman nudged me in the ribs, winked, followed Wardell through the tall oak door. Wardell had gone to the long refectory table, where he turned and confronted us with arms folded, leaning gracefully against the table. Impeccably dressed in the cashmere jacket, utterly at ease in the elegantly paneled room, Wardell could have been posing for a Town & Country photographer. Like all consummate actors, Wardell’s persona changed with the role he played. Yesterday, dressed in his bush jacket and Wellington boots, he’d personified the wealthy sportsman: dashing, charming, a little reckless. Today, he was the casual man of the world: urbane, haughty, completely in control.
“Well,” he asked quietly, “what is it?”
Closing the door behind him, Friedman faced Wardell for a moment, setting the tone with a long, somber stare. Then, politely, he asked whether Wardell had enjoyed flying the newly acquired B-25.
“The aileron boosters malfunctioned,” Wardell said shortly. “So I didn’t fly.”
“Well,” Friedman said easily, “you’ve still got the P-51.”
“In which I’m leaving for Los Angeles Burbank very shortly,” Wardell snapped. “So let’s get on with it, please. What’s this about the FBI?”
“Yesterday,” Friedman said, “we questioned you about a surplus-arms scandal that Eliot Murdock was investigating. Last night, a deputy director of the FBI arrived from Washington. It turns out that the FBI has been investigating the same scandal for months. We don’t know all the details of the story, but it apparently concerns an undersecretary of defense and Swiss bank accounts and kickbacks—and a man named Simpson, who blew the whistle.”
During Friedman’s brief monologue, I watched Wardell’s face, searching for some telltale reaction. I was disappointed. As Friedman talked, Wardell simply stared—first at Friedman, then at me. His face revealed absolutely nothing. His gray eyes were cold, utterly emotionless. When Friedman had finished, Wardell allowed a long, deliberate moment of silence to pass before he said softly, “And where, exactly, do I fit into all this?”
“The firm that’s under investigation is I.P.I.,” I said.
“We understand that you’re connected with I.P.I.” Friedman spoke softly, gently.
“And,” I continued, “since both Murdock and the FBI were investigating I.P.I.—and since Murdock could have been killed for his trouble—we’ve got some questions we’d like to ask you.”
“We’ve already covered that yesterday,” Wardell said icily. “I never met the man. Except by reputation, I never knew him.”
“What about a man named Joey Annunzio?” Friedman asked. “Did you ever meet him?”
“Joey Annunzio?” He was frowning, puzzled. “Who’s Joey Annunzio?”
“What about a bartender named Ricco?” I pressed. “Have you ever heard of him?”
“No.”
“How about Walter Frazer?” Friedman asked, picking up the harsh tempo. “Is he known to you?”
Still leaning against the long refectory table, still with his arms folded, apparently relaxed, Wardell looked at each of us in turn. Then, slowly and incredulously, he began to shake his head. “This is unbelievable. Here you are, two underpaid, overworked, not very grammatical city detectives—questioning me like I’m some hoodlum who’s under suspicion for purse snatching. You’re—Christ—you’re even using all the tired old squad-room clichés, trying to whipsaw me, rattle me with your clever, rapid-fire questions. It’s—” Still shaking his head, he began to smile: a mirthless twisting of his wide, handsomely sculpted mouth. “It’s ludicrous,” he said. “Bizarre. Totally bizarre.”
Looking him steadily in the eye, Friedman said quietly, “You didn’t answer the last question, Mr. Wardell.”
Drawing a long, deep breath, Wardell pushed himself deliberately away from the table. “No,” he answered, “I haven’t. And I don’t intend to answer it, either—not that question, or any other question. You’ve worn out your welcome, Lieutenant. Yesterday, I tried to be patient with you. I tried to help. Then I read the stories that Barbara Murdock gave out about how I was responsible for her father’s death because of some illegal Pentagon deal he’d uncovered. And now, for the second day in a row, you’re harassing me. Well—” He stepped purposefully toward the door. “Well, it’s gone far enough. Whatever ridiculous game you’re playing at, it’s over. Finished.”
I moved between Wardell and the door, at the same time slipping my Miranda card from my shirt pocket. “I think,” I said, “that it’s time for me to read you your rights, Mr. Wardell. You have the right to—”
“Take that card and shove it, Lieutenant,” he blazed, pushing roughly around me. “As for the questions, save them for my lawyers. Because in an hour’s time you’ll be hearing from my lawyers. You, and Barbara Murdock, and the FBI, too.” Leaving the door open, he stalked out of the room.
Standing beside me, Friedman murmured, “He did it again.”<
br />
“Did what again?”
“Talked too much.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean,” Friedman said, “that Barbara’s barbs, if you’ll excuse the expression, seem to have hit the mark. He thinks those stories are all about him. No one else thinks so, as far as I can see. Just him. Just him and us, too.” To himself, he nodded, smugly satisfied. “Guilt,” he said softly, “it’s wonderful. It brings them all down, eventually. The big boys and the little boys, they’re all the same. If they’re guilty, and you get them talking, they eventually say too much. Every time.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“Now,” he said, “maybe we should go back to the Hall and see whether we can fit the pieces together.”
Eighteen
AT THE HALL, I found a single sheet of stationery on my desk. See me immediately was written across the paper in bold, strong script. The message was signed “J.D.” The letterhead was inscribed James Dwyer, Chief of Police, Hall of Justice, San Francisco, California.
I’d never before seen the letterhead. Staring at it, I wondered why it didn’t include either a street address or a zip code. Speculating, I remembered that the presidential stationery is headed simply, The White House, Washington, D.C.
As I was dropping the note in the “in” basket, my phone rang.
“Did you get one, too?” Friedman asked.
“Yes.”
“The last time Dwyer was in his office on a Saturday afternoon, there was a mass murderer loose.”
I didn’t answer.
“Between the two of you,” Dwyer said, “you’ve managed to make a mess of this thing. A total mess. You—Christ—you’ve antagonized everyone. Everyone.”
Seated side by side on Chief Dwyer’s long leather sofa, neither Friedman nor I replied. Stealing a glance at Friedman I saw him staring straight ahead. His dark eyes were solemn, his broad, swarthy face revealed nothing. If Friedman ever went to church—or synagogue—I was thinking, this is how he must look.
“What’s happened,” Dwyer said, “is that we’ve lost control of this thing. I mean, we have totally lost control. And it’s getting worse, not better. It’s getting worse by the minute.” Dwyer was pacing back and forth behind his massive walnut desk, gesticulating as he walked. At age sixty, with a full head of dramatic white hair and the square-jawed, broad-browed, florid-faced good looks of a tub-thumping evangelist, Dwyer personified the handsome, successful Irish politician. His complexion glowed with vitality and good health. He was a trim, athletic-looking hundred seventy-five pounds. Accenting his white hair and clear blue eyes, Dwyer always wore gray suits—expensively cut gray suits. His shirts were always a gleaming white; his ties were always a conservative gray silk-on-silk. His cuffs always seemed to protrude exactly an inch from his sleeves, revealing large golden cuff links presented to him by the governor. During his thirty-five years as a San Francisco policeman, Dwyer had never come down on the wrong side of a captain’s shuffle or a bloodletting at City Hall. To the media, Dwyer often described himself as a “cop’s cop.” But the careers of his enemies inside the department were often short—and always unhappy.
“Among other things,” Dwyer was saying, “it turns out that we’re ass-deep in high-priced lawyers, not to mention prominent people—pissed-off, prominent people. We—” His phone rang. As Dwyer snatched up the receiver and barked that he wasn’t to be disturbed, Friedman murmured, “I think they call that alliteration. Pissed-off prominent people. All P’s.”
Dwyer banged down the phone, braced his hands wide on the desk and leaned toward us. “That,” he said heavily, “was the city attorney calling. Twenty minutes ago CBS news called. And NBC called—and ABC, too. And, frankly, I don’t know what to tell them. I mean, I’m hoping—I’m praying—that the two of you, between you, have got some answers that I can give these people. Because I’m telling you—I’m admitting to you—that I’m running out of answers. I mean, I am really running out of answers.” Still leaning on his wide-braced palms, breathing heavily now, he looked at us each in turn before he said, “Over the years, the two of you have done a good job. We’ve had our ups and our downs, but I’ve never denied that you’re both good cops. You run a good squad. You’ve made me look good. That, I appreciate. I’ve told you about it, too. When everything’s going right, I tell you. Which gives me the right to tell you when things aren’t going right—when you’re making me look bad.” He drew a long, labored breath. “So I’m telling you,” he said solemnly, “that I’ve never looked worse in my whole thirty-five years on the force than I look right now. And I don’t appreciate it. I mean, I really don’t appreciate the way you’re making me look right this minute.” Delivered in a voice that trembled with righteous fervor, the speech could have come from a pulpit. Boring into us, Dwyer’s blue eyes seemed simultaneously to plead for relief and to warn us of some terrible, unspecified danger.
“You’re making me look silly,” he said softly, sinking regretfully into his tall leather swivel chair. “Very, very silly.”
I heard Friedman clear his throat. Thank God, he was going to start.
“Were, ah, Baxter Wardell’s lawyers in touch with you? Is that, ah, the problem?”
Dwyer studied Friedman intently before he said, “The problem isn’t that they got in touch with me—which they did, about five minutes after CBS got in touch with me. The problem is that I didn’t know they were going to get in touch with me. I didn’t even know that Baxter Wardell was in the picture. That’s the problem.” Now Dwyer’s voice was ominously low. His mouth was rigid, his eyes fixed. His breathing had deepened, his color had heightened.
“We should have called you,” I said—and meant it. “We just now came from interrogating him. We were going to fill you in as soon as we got to the Hall. It never occurred to us that Wardell would get to you so fast.”
“Especially on Saturday,” Friedman said.
“When did the two of you first talk to Wardell?” Dwyer asked.
“That—ah—” Friedman cleared his throat. “That was yesterday, I think. Friday.”
“Before or after you and I discussed Jeffrey Sheppard and Avery Rich?”
“That was—ah—before we talked,” Friedman admitted.
Dwyer studied Friedman for a long, glowering moment before he said, “What were you trying to do, for Christ’s sake? What kind of game were you playing?”
“It wasn’t a game,” I said. “Until this morning, when we talked to the FBI, we didn’t have any real grounds for suspecting Wardell might be involved. So we—”
Dwyer’s laser stare turned on me. “Did you say the FBI?” he asked ominously.
As concisely as I could, I outlined the details of Forbes’s investigation. As I talked, Dwyer’s eyes never left my face. Finally, speaking very quietly, he said, “What’s Forbes’s title?”
“Deputy director,” I admitted. “The—ah—reason he contacted me, he wanted to keep the whole thing at a low level. For, ah, security reasons.”
“Because of Wardell,” Friedman put in, “and his clout. They don’t want to go public until they’ve really got the goods.”
“So you turned over evidence to a deputy director of the FBI without letting me know.” Dwyer rose deliberately from his chair and strode gravely to the far corner of his office, where an American flag rested in its gilded standard. For a moment he stood with his back to us, head bowed, hands clasped behind him. When he finally turned, his expression was solemn.
“I’d like to repeat what I told you before,” he said. “You men are good cops. And I like to think that I’m a good cop, too.” He paused, waited for us to murmur assent, then began the slow, somber walk to his desk. “And,” he said, “whether or not I’m the greatest chief of police in history, I can tell you—both of you—that I plan to be here, in this office, five years from now, when it’s retirement time. I already know what I’m going to say at my retirement banquet.” He sat down in his leather chair, and absentl
y caressed the gleaming top of his walnut desk. As he did, his golden cuff links caught the light from an antique brass desk lamp.
“I’m telling you all this,” he said, “so that you’ll believe me when I say that this Murdock thing has made me look worse than I’ve ever looked in my whole thirty-five years on the force. And I’m also telling you that I can’t afford it. Which is another way of saying that I can’t afford what you’re doing to me. I can’t afford to have two key witnesses killed within a couple of hours of each other. I can’t afford to have the media discover that we were looking for Ricco—and couldn’t find him before Annunzio found him. And, furthermore, I can’t afford to have them find out that we already had Blake in custody, for God’s sake, and then released him. And, especially, I can’t afford to have you two rousting one of the most important men in the country as if he were a—a Tenderloin pimp.” He looked at us both carefully in turn before he asked, “Do you understand what I mean? Do you understand what I’m telling you—what I’m really telling you?”
In unison, we nodded. The message was clear. Our jobs were on the line.
“All right,” Dwyer said, a note of grim finality in his voice. “We understand each other.” Again, he looked at both of us, hard. “Don’t we?”
This time, we were required to affirm that, yes, we understood each other.
“All right,” he repeated, forcing himself to sit back in his chair. “All right. Now. The first thing I want to know is, are there any more surprises? Anything else I don’t know that I should know?”
“No, sir,” Friedman answered. As he spoke I glanced at him. I couldn’t remember him ever calling Dwyer “sir.”
“As I understand it,” Dwyer said, “all we’ve really got left—the only possibility—is that we’ll turn up Annunzio. Is that about it?”
Power Plays (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 15