The Victim boh-3

by W. E. B Griffin

  "About the same thing," Matt said.

  "Through?" Amanda asked, and slidthe Bulletin away from Matt's side of the table.

  He saw her eyes widen when she got to the place in the story about him. She glanced at him, then finished the story.

  "You never told me about that," she said.

  "Yes I did," Matt said. "You said if you had a car like mine and somebody dinged it, you'd kill him. And I said somebody did and I had."

  The waitress appeared with a stainless-steel coffee pot. Amanda waited until she had poured the coffee and left.

  "I thought you were just being a wiseass," she said.

  "You should have seen what he did to my car," Matt said. "He was lucky I didn't get really mad."

  "Matt,stop!."

  "Sorry," he said after a moment.

  And a moment after that Amanda reached out and caught his hand. They sat that way, holding hands and looking into each other's eyes, until the waitress delivered breakfast.

  NINE

  There was a fence around the Browne place in Merion, field-stone posts every twenty-five feet or so with wrought-iron bars between them. The bars were topped with spear points, and as a boy of six or seven Matt had spent all of one afternoon trying to hammer one loose so that he would have a spear to take home.

  There was also a gate and a gate house, but the gate had never in Matt's memory been closed, and the gate house had always been locked and off-limits.

  When he turned off the road, the gate was closed, and he had to jump on the brakes to avoid hitting it. And the door to the gate house was open. A burly man in a dark suit came out of it and walked to the gate.

  A rent-a-cop, Matt decided. Had he been hired because the Princess of the Castle was getting married? Or did it have something to do with what had happened at the parking garage?

  The rent-a-cop opened the left portion of the gate wide enough to get through and came out to the Porsche.

  "May I help you, sir?"

  "Would you open the gate, please? Miss Spencer is a guest here."

  The rent-a-cop looked carefully at both of them, then smiled, said, "Certainly, sir," and went to the gate and swung both sides open.

  Matt saw that a red-and-white-striped tent, large enough for a two-ring circus, had been set up on the lawn in front of the house. There were three large caterer's trucks parked in the driveway. A human chain had been formed to unload folding chairs from one of them and set them up in the tent, and he saw cardboard boxes being unloaded in the same way from a second.

  Soames T. Browne, in his shirt sleeves, and the bride-to-be, in shorts and a tattered gray University of Pennsylvania sweatshirt that belonged, Matt decided, to Chad Nesbitt, were standing outside the castle portal when Matt drove up. The rent-a-cop had almost certainly telephoned the house. Matt saw another large man in a business suit standing just inside the open oak door.

  "I'll see you later," Matt said, waving at the Brownes with his left hand and touching Amanda's wrist with his right.

  Amanda kissed his cheek and opened her door.

  Soames T. Browne came around to Matt's side. Matt rolled the window down.

  "Morning."

  "Daffy said Amanda was probably with you," Browne said. "You should have called, Matt."

  "Matt had to work-" Amanda said.

  "Surehe did," Daffy snorted.

  "-and I waited for him."

  "Come in and have some coffee, Matt," Soames T. Browne ordered. "I want a word with you."

  "I can't stay long, Mr. Browne."

  "It won't take long," Browne said.

  Matt turned the ignition off and got out of the car. There was a breakfast room in the house, on the ground floor of one of the turrets, with French windows opening onto the formal garden behind the house. Soames Browne led Matt to it, and then through it to the kitchen, where Mrs. Soames T. Browne, in a flowing negligee, was perched on a stool under a rack of pots and pans with a china mug in her hand.

  "Good morning," Matt said.

  She looked over him to Amanda.

  "We were worried about you, honey," she said.

  "I was with Matt," Amanda said.

  "That's what we thought; that's why she was worried," Daffy said.

  "We should have called. I'm sorry," Matt said.

  "We were just going to do something about breakfast," Mrs. Browne said. "Have you eaten?"

  "We just had breakfast, thank you," Amanda said.

  "I didn't know Matt could cook," Daffy said sweetly.

  "Coffee, then?" Mrs. Browne asked.

  "Please," Amanda said.

  "Do you know how Penny is, Matt?" Soames T. Browne asked.

  "As of midnight she was reported to be 'critical but stable,'" Matt said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "My boss told us," Matt said.

  "That was seven hours ago," Soames T. Browne said.

  "Would you like me to call and see if there's been any change?"

  "Could you?"

  "I can try," Matt said. He looked up the number of Hahneman Hospital in the telephone book and then called.

  "I'm sorry, sir, we're not permitted to give out that information at this time."

  "This is Officer Payne, of the police."

  "One moment, please, sir."

  The next voice, very deep, precise, that came on-line surprised Matt: "Detective Washington."

  "This is Matt Payne, Mr. Washington."

  "What can I do for you, Matt?"

  "I'm trying to find out how Penelope Detweiler is. They put me through to you."

  "For Wohl?"

  "For me. She's a friend of mine."

  "I heard that. I'll want to talk to you about that later. At six o'clock they changed her from 'critical' to 'serious.' "

  "That's better?"

  Washington chuckled.

  "One step up," he said.

  "Thank you," Matt said.

  "You at Bustleton and Bowler?"

  "No. But I'm headed there."

  "When you get there, don't leave until we talk."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Don't call me sir, Matt. I've told you that."

  The phone went dead. Matt hung it up and turned to face the people waiting for him to report.

  "As of six this morning they upgraded her condition from ' critical' to 'serious,' " he said.

  "Thank God," Soames T. Browne said.

  "Mother, I'm sure Penny would want us to go through with the wedding," Daphne Browne said.

  "Why did this have to happennow?"Mrs. Soames T. Browne said.

  Matt started to say,Damned inconsiderate of old Precious Penny, what? but stopped himself in time to convert what came out of his mouth to "Damned shame."

  Even that got him a dirty look from Amanda.

  "What do you think, Matt?" Soames T. Browne said.

  "It's none of my business," Matt said.

  "Yes it is, you're Chad's best man."

  "Chad's on his way to Okinawa," Matt said. "It's not as if you could postpone it for a month or so."

  "Right," Daffy Browne said. "I hadn't thought about that. Wecan't postpone it."

  "I think Matt is absolutely right, Soames," Mrs. Browne said.

  "That's a first," Matt quipped.

  "What did you say, Matthew?" Mrs. Browne asked icily.

  "I said, you're going to have to excuse me, please. I have to go to work."

  "You will be there tonight?" Daffy asked.

  "As far as I know."

  "I wanted to ask you, Matt, what happened last night," Soames T. Browne said.

  "I don't really know, Mr. Browne," Matt said.

  And then he walked out of the kitchen. Amanda's eyes found his and for a moment held them.

  ****

  Peter Wohl leaned forward, pushed the flashing button on one of the two telephones on his office coffee table, picked it up, said " Inspector Wohl" into it and leaned back into a sprawling position on the couch, tucking the phone under his ear.

/>   "Tony Harris, Inspector," his caller said. "You wanted to talk to me?"

  "First things first," Wohl said. "You got anything?"

  "Not a goddamn thing."

  "You need anything?"

  "How are you fixed for crystal balls?"

  "How many do you want?"

  Harris chuckled. "I really can't think of anything special right now, Inspector. This one is going to take a lot of doorbell ringing."

  "Well, I can get you the ringers. I had Dave Pekach offer overtime to anybody who wants it."

  "I don't have lead fucking one," Harris said.

  "You'll find something," Wohl said. "The other reason I asked you to call is that I have sort of a problem."

  "How's that?"

  "You know a lieutenant named Lewis? Just made it? Used to be a sergeant in the 9^th?"

  "Black guy? Stiff-backed?"

  "That's him."

  "Yeah, I know him."

  "He has a son. Just got out of the Police Academy."

  "Is that so?" Harris said, suspicion evident in his voice.

  "He worked his way through college in the radio room," Wohl said.

  "You don't say?"

  "The commissioner assigned him to Special Operations," Wohl said.

  "You want to drop the other shoe, Inspector?"

  "I thought he might be useful to you," Wohl said.

  "How?"

  "Running errands, maybe. He knows his way around the Department."

  "Is that it? Or don't you know what else to do with him?"

  "Frankly, Tony, a little of both. But I won't force him on you if you don't want him."

  Harris hesitated, then said, "If he's going to run errands for me, he'd need wheels."

  "Wheels or a car?" Wohl asked innocently.

  Harris chuckled. "Wheels" was how Highway referred to their motorcycles.

  "I forgot you're now the head wheelman," he said. "Acar. "

  "That can be arranged."

  "How does he feel about overtime?"

  "I think he'd like all you want to give him."

  "Plainclothes too," Harris said. "Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "When do I get him?"

  "He's supposed to report here right about now. You get him as soon as I can get him a car and into plainclothes."

  "Okay."

  "Thanks, Tony."

  "Yeah," Harris said, and hung up.

  ****

  Detective Jason Washington was one of the very few detectives in the Philadelphia Police Department who was not indignant or outraged that the murders of both Officer Joseph Magnella and Tony the Zee DeZego had been taken away from Homicide and given to Special Operations.

  While he was not a vain man, neither was Jason Washington plagued with modesty. He knew that it was said that he was the best Homicide detective in the department (and this really meant something, since Homicide detectives were the creme de la creme, so to speak, of the profession, the best detectives, period) and he could not honestly fault this assessment of his ability.

  Tony Harris was good, too, he recognized-nearly, but not quite as good as he was. There were also some people in Intelligence, Organized Crime, Internal Affairs, and even out in the detective districts and among the staff inspectors whom Washington acknowledged to be good detectives; that is to say, detectives at his level. For example, before he had been given Special Operations, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl had earned Washington's approval for his work by putting a series of especially slippery politicians and bureaucrats behind bars.

  Jason Washington had, however, been something less than enthusiastic when Wohl had arranged for him (and Tony Harris) to be transferred from Homicide to Special Operations. He had not only let Wohl know that he didn't want the transfer, but also had actually come as close as he ever had to pleading not to be transferred.

  There had been several reasons for his reluctance to leave Homicide. For one thing, he liked Homicide. There was also the matter of prestige and money. In Special Operations he would be a Special Operations detective. Since Special Operations hadn't been around long enough to acquire a reputation, that meant it had no reputation at all, and that meant, as opposed to his being a Homicide detective, he would be an ordinary detective. And ordinary detectives, like corporals, were only one step up from the bottom in the police hierarchy.

  As far as pay was concerned, Washington's take-home pay in Homicide, because of overtime, was as much as a chief inspector took to the bank every two weeks.

  Washington and his wife of twenty-two years had only one child, a girl, who had married young and, to Washington's genuine surprise, well. As a Temple freshman Ellen had caught the eye of a graduate student in mathematics and eloped with him, under the correct assumption that her father would have a really spectacular fit if she announced that she wanted to get married at eighteen. Ellen's husband was now working for Bell Labs, across the river in Jersey, and making more money than Washington would have believed possible for a twentysix-year-old. Recently they had made him and Martha grandparents.

  Mrs. Martha Washington (she often observed that she had nearly not married Jason because of what her name would be once he put the ring on her finger) had worked, from the time Ellen entered first grade, as a commercial artist for an advertising agency. With their two paychecks and Ellen gone, they lived well, with an apartment in a high rise overlooking the Schuylkill River, and another near Atlantic City, overlooking the ocean. Martha drove a Lincoln, and one of his perks as a Homicide detective was an unmarked car of his own, and nothing said about his driving it home every night.

  Wohl, who had once been a young detective in Homicide, understood Washington's (and Tony Harris's) concern that a transfer to Special Operations would mean the loss of their Homicide Division perks, perhaps especially the overtime pay. He had assured them that they could have all the overtime they wanted, and their own cars, and would answer only to him and Captain Mike Sabara, his deputy. He had been as good as his word. Better. The cars they had been given were brand-new, instead of the year-old hand-me-downs from inspectors they had had at Homicide.

  They had been transferred to Special Operations after the mayor had "suggested" that Special Operations be given responsibility to catch the Northwest Philly serial rapist. After the kid, Matt Payne, had stumbled on that scumbag and put him down, Washington had gone to Wohl and asked about getting transferred back to Homicide.

  Wohl had said, "Not yet. Maybe later," Explaining that he didn't have any idea what the mayor, or for that matter, Commissioner Thad Czernick, had in mind for Special Operations.

  "If the mayor has another of his inspirations for Special Operations, or if Czernick has one, I want you and Tony already here," Wohl had said. "I don't want to have to go through another hassle with Chief Lowenstein over transferring you back again."

  Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein headed the Detective Bureau, which included all the detective divisions, as well as Homicide, Intelligence, Major Crimes, and Juvenile Aid. He was an influential man with a reputation for jealously guarding his preserve.

  "What are we going to do, Inspector," Washington had argued, " recover stolen vehicles?"

  Wohl had laughed. Department policy required that a detective be assigned to examine any vehicle that had been stolen and then recovered. There were generally two types of recovered stolen vehicles: They were recovered intact, after having been taken for a joyride; or they were recovered as an empty shell, from which all resalable parts had been removed. In either case there was almost never anything that would connect the recovered vehicle with the thief. Investigating recovered vehicles was an exercise in futility and thus ordinarily assigned to the newest, or dumbest, detective in a squad.

  "For the time being, I'll talk with Quaire, and see if he'd like you to work on some of the jobs you left behind at Homicide. But I have a gut feeling, Jason, that there will be enough jobs for you here to keep you from getting bored."

  And Wohl had been right about that too. Po
lice Commissioner Czernick (Washington had heard even before leaving Atlantic City for Philadelphia where the decision had come from) had decided to give Special Operations the two murder jobs.

  And there was no wheel in Special Operations. In Homicide, as in the seven detective divisions, detectives were assigned jobs on a rotational basis as they came in. It was actually a sheet of paper, on which the names of the detectives were listed, but it was called the wheel.

  If the mayor hadn't given Wohl the two murders and they had gone instead to Homicide, it was possible, even likely, that the wheel would have seen the jobs given to somebody else. He and Harris, because of the kind of jobs they were, would probably have been called in to "assist," but the jobs probably would have gone to other Homicide detectives. In Special Operations it was a foregone conclusion that these two murder jobs would be assigned to Detectives Washington and Harris.

  And they were good jobs. Solving the murder of an on-the-job police officer gave the detective, or detectives, who did so greater satisfaction than any other. And right behind that was being able to get a murder-one indictment against one mafioso for blowing away another.

  Jason Washington was beginning to think that his transfer to Special Operations might turn out to be less of a disaster than it had first appeared to be.

  He was not surprised when he pulled into the parking lot at Bustleton and Bowler Streets to see Peter Wohl's nearly identical Ford in the COMMANDING OFFICER'S reserved parking space, although it was only a quarter to eight.

  When he walked into the building, the administrative corporal called to him, "The inspector said he wanted to see you the minute you came in."

  He smiled and waved and went to Wohl's office.

  "Good morning, Inspector," Washington said.

  "Morning, Jason," Wohl replied. "Sorry to have to call you back here."

  "How am I going to get a tan if you keep me from laying on the beach?" Washington said dryly.

  "Get one of those reflector things," Wohl replied, straight-faced, "and sit in the parking lot during your lunch hour. Now that you mention it, you do look a little pale."

  Jason Washington's skin was jet black.

  They smiled at each other for a moment, and then Wohl said, " Harris was at Colombia Street-"