The Victim

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’d appreciate that, Peter,” Davis said. “We try to be as cooperative as we can, and you know we do. But we need a little help.”

  “I’m sorry to have wasted your time with this,” Peter said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Davis said, getting up and putting his hand out. “I know the pressures you’re under. Don’t be a stranger, Peter. Let’s have lunch sometime.”

  “Love to,” Wohl said. “One thing, Walter. You said those pictures have already been passed around. Do you think you’ll get a make?”

  “Who knows? If we do, I’ll give Jack Duffy a call straight off.”

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Peter said. “I know you’re a very busy man.”

  “Goes with the territory,” Special Agent in Charge Davis said.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the rent-a-cop sitting in front of Penelope Detweiler’s room in Hahneman Hospital said as he rose to his feet and stood in Matt Payne’s way. “You can’t go in there.”

  “Why not?” Matt asked.

  “Because I say so,” the rent-a-cop said.

  “I’m a cop,” Matt said.

  He felt a little uneasy making that announcement. The rent-a-cop was almost surely a retired policeman. He remembered hearing Washington say that one of the rent-a-cops the Detweilers had hired was a retired Northwest Detectives sergeant. He suspected he was talking to him.

  “And I’ve been hired by the Detweiler family to keep people away from Miss Detweiler without Mr. or Mrs. Detweiler’s say so.”

  “You’ve got two options,” Matt said, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt. “You either get out of the way, or I’ll get on the phone and four guys from Highway will carry you out of the way.”

  “There’s a very sick girl in there,” the rent-a-cop said.

  “I know that,” Matt said. “What’s it going to be?”

  “I could lose my job letting you in.”

  “You don’t have any choice,” Matt said. “If I have to call for help, I’ll charge you with interfering with a police officer. That will cost you your job.”

  The rent-a-cop moved to the side and out of the way, watched Matt enter the room, and then walked quickly down the corridor to the nurses’ station, where, without asking, he picked up a telephone and dialed a number.

  “Ready for water polo?” Matt said to Penelope Detweiler.

  Christ, she looks even worse than the last time I saw her.

  “Hello, Matt,” Penelope said, managing a smile.

  “You feel as awful as you look?” he asked. “One might suppose that you have been out consuming intoxicants and cavorting with the natives in the Tenderloin.”

  “I really feel shitty,” she said. “Matt, if I asked you for a real favor, would you do it?”

  “Probably not,” he said.

  “That was pretty quick,” she said, hurt. “I’m serious, Matt. I really need a favor.”

  “I really wouldn’t know where to get any, Penny. Your supplier’s dead, you know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.

  He handed her one of the manila envelopes of photographs.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it. Have a look. The jig, as they say, is up.”

  “I thought you were my friend, that I could at least count on you.”

  “You can, Penny.”

  “Then do me the favor. I’ll give you a phone number, Matt. And all you would have to do is meet the guy someplace.”

  “You’re not listening,” he said. “Bullshit time is over, Penny. Look at the photographs.”

  “You’re a son of a bitch, you always have been. A son of a bitch and a shit. I hate you.”

  “I like you too,” Matt said. “Look at the goddamn pictures.”

  “I don’t want to look at any goddamn pictures. What are they of, anyway?”

  She slid the stack of photographs out of the envelope.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said, her voice quavering.

  “Got your attention now, have I?”

  “Have you got him in jail?”

  “In jail”? What the hell does that mean? Why should we have the FBI guys in jail?

  “Looks familiar, does he?”

  “He’s the man who shot me, who killed Tony,” Penelope Detweiler said. “I’ll never forget him—that face—as long as I live.”

  Jesus H. Christ! What the hell is she talking about? What am I into?

  “We know all about you and Tony, Penny,” Matt said. “As I said, you can stop the bullshit.”

  “Who is this man? Why did he kill Tony?”

  “Who knows?” Matt blurted.

  “He won’t tell you?”

  “He’s being difficult,” Matt said. “I don’t think he believes that you’re alive. If he had killed you, there would be no witnesses.”

  I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m just saying the first thing that pops into my mind. Jesus Christ, why did I do this? I’m going to fuck the whole thing up!

  “I’ll testify, I saw him. I saw him shoot Tony, and then he shot me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

  “I couldn’t hurt my father that way,” Penelope said, making it clear she considered her reply to be self-evident. “My God, Matt, he thinks I’m still his little girl.”

  “And all the while you’ve been fucking Tony DeZego, right?”

  “That’s a shitty thing to say. We were in love. That was just like you, Matt. Always thinking the nastiest thing and then saying it in the nastiest possible way.”

  “Tony the Zee had a wife and two kids,” Matt said. “Little boys.”

  He couldn’t tell from the look in her eyes if this was news to her or not.

  “I don’t believe that,” she said.

  “I told you, precious Penny, bullshit time is over. You were running around with a third-rate guinea gangster, a married guinea gangster with two kids. Who was supplying you with cocaine.”

  “He really was married?” she asked.

  Matt nodded.

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. “But it wouldn’t have mattered. We were in love.”

  “Then I feel sorry for you,” Matt said. “I really do.”

  “Does Daddy know about Tony?”

  “Not yet. He knows about the coke. But he’ll have to find out about DeZego.”

  “Yes, I suppose he will,” she said calmly. “If I’m going to testify against this man, and I will, it will just have to come out, and Daddy and Mommy will just have to adjust to it.”

  She looked at him and smiled.

  Jesus Christ, he thought, she’s stoned.

  He saw that her pupils were dilated.

  Has she been getting that shit in here? In a hospital?

  She’s on cloud nine. I think the technical term is “euphoric.” She didn’t even react when I called DeZego a guineagangster, or when I told her he’s married and has two kids. The first should have enraged her, and the second should have…caused a much greater reaction than it did. She didn’t deny it when I said DeZego was supplying her with cocaine, and she didn’t seem at all upset when I told her I know her father knows about the cocaine and will inevitably learn about her and DeZego.

  Ergo sum, Sherlock Holmes, she doesn’t give a damn about things that are important, and is therefore, almost by definition, stoned.

  It could be, come to think of it, that she is stoned on something legitimate, something they gave her for the pain. Or possibly that Dr. Dotson gave her a maintenance dose, having decided that this is not the time or place to detoxify her, either because of her condition or because he’d rather do that someplace where a lot of questions would not be asked.

  So where are you now, hotshot? What do you do now?

  “Penny, are you absolutely sure that the man in those photographs is the one who shot you?”

  “I told you I was,” she said.

  “And you are prepared to testify in court about that?”

&nbs
p; “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Well, what happens now, Penny,” Matt explained—I don’t know what the hell happens now—“is that I will ask you to make a statement on the back of one of the photographs.”

  “What?”

  “Quote, ‘Having been sworn, I declare that the individual pictured in this photograph is the individual who, on the roof of the Penn Services Parking Garage, shot Mr. Anthony J. DeZego and me with a shotgun,’ unquote. And then you sign it and I sign it. And then soon, Detective Washington will come back here and take a full statement.”

  “‘Killed,’” Penelope Detweiler said. “Not just ‘shot,’ ‘killed.’”

  “Right.”

  “You write it down and I’ll sign it,” Penny said agreeably.

  “It has to be in your handwriting,” Matt said. He rolled the bedside tray in place over Penny, selected one of the photographs, and showed it to her. “This him?”

  “Yes, that’s the man.”

  He spotted a Gideon Bible on the lower shelf of her bedside table and held it out to her. She put her hand on it.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

  “I do,” Penny said solemnly.

  He handed her a ballpoint pen.

  “Write,” he said.

  “Say that again,” Penny said.

  He dictated essentially what he had said before, and she wrote it on the back of the photograph.

  “Sign it,” he ordered. She did, and looked at him, he thought, like a little girl who expected her teacher to give her a Gold Star to Take Home to Mommy.

  He pulled the bedside tray away from the bed, read what she had written, and then wrote, “Witnessed by Officer Matthew Payne, Badge 3676, Special Operations Division,” and the time and date.

  And now what?

  “Penny, as I said before, someone will be back, probably Detective Washington and a stenographer, and they will take a full statement.”

  “All right,” she said obligingly.

  “And I have to go now, to get things rolling.”

  “All right. Come and see me again, Matt.”

  He smiled at her and left the room.

  Dr. Dotson, the rent-a-cop, and two hospital private security men in policelike uniforms were coming down the corridor.

  “I don’t know who you think you are, Matt,” Dotson said furiously, “or what you think you’re doing, but you have absolutely no right to go in Penny’s room without my permission and that of the Detweilers.”

  “I’m finished, Dr. Dotson,” Matt said.

  “See that he leaves the hospital. He is not to be let back in,” Dotson said. “And don’t you think, Matt, that this is the end of this.”

  NINETEEN

  “Inspector Wohl’s office, Captain Sabara,” Sabara said, answering one of the telephones on Wohl’s desk.

  “This is Commissioner Czernich, Sabara. Let me talk to Wohl.”

  “Commissioner, I’m sorry, the inspector’s not here at the moment. May I take a message? Or have him get back to you?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid I don’t know. We expect him to check in momentarily.”

  “Yeah, well, he doesn’t answer his radio, and you don’t know where he is, right?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t know where he is at this moment.”

  “Have him call me the moment you see him,” Commissioner Czernich said, and hung up.

  “I wonder what that’s all about,” Sabara said to Captain David Pekach as he put the phone in its cradle. “That was Czernich, and he’s obviously pissed about something. You don’t know where the boss is?”

  “The last I heard, he was on his way to the mayor’s office.”

  “I felt like a fool, having to tell Czernich I don’t know where he is.”

  “What’s Czernich pissed about?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s pissed. Really pissed.”

  Pekach got up from his upholstered chair and went to the Operations sergeant.

  “Have you got any idea where Inspector Wohl might be?”

  “Right at this moment he’s on his way to see the commissioner,” the sergeant said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “It was on the radio. There was a call for W-William One, and the inspector answered and they told him to report to the commissioner right away, and he acknowledged.”

  “Thank you,” Pekach said. He went back in the office and told Sabara what he had learned.

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl arrived at Special Operations an hour and five minutes later. He found Officer Matthew W. Payne waiting for him in the corridor outside the Operations office.

  “I’d like to see you right away, sir,” Matt said.

  “Have you called Captain Duffy?”

  “No, sir. Something came up,” Matt said, and picked up the manila envelope containing the photographs.

  “So I understand,” Wohl said. “Come in the office.”

  Sabara and Pekach got to their feet as Wohl entered his office.

  “We’ve been trying to reach you, Inspec—” Sabara said.

  “I had my radio turned off,” Wohl interrupted.

  “The commissioner wants you to call him right away.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About an hour ago, sir,” Pekach said. He looked at his watch. “An hour and five minutes ago.”

  “I’ve seen him since then,” Wohl said. “I just came from the Roundhouse.” He turned to look at Payne. “We were discussing you, Officer Payne, the commissioner and I. Or rather the commissioner was discussing you, and I just sat there looking like a goddamn fool.”

  Pekach and Sabara started for the door.

  “Stay. You might as well hear this,” Wohl said. “I understand you have been at Hahneman Hospital. Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “I seem to recall having told you to come here and call Captain Duffy for me.”

  “Yes, sir, you did.”

  “Did anyone else tell you to go to Hahneman Hospital?”

  “Inspector,” Matt said, handing him the photograph on which Penelope Detweiler had written her statement. “Would you please look at this?”

  “Did anyone tell you to go to Hahneman Hospital?” Wohl repeated icily.

  “Those two guys weren’t from the FBI,” Matt said.

  “Answer me,” Wohl said.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why the hell did you go to Hahneman Hospital?”

  “Sir, would you please look at the back of the picture?”

  Wohl turned it over and read it.

  “You’re a regular little Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?” Wohl said. He handed the photograph to Sabara, who examined it with Pekach leaning over his shoulder.

  “She positively identifies that man as the guy who shot her and DeZego.”

  “And now all we have to do is find this guy, bring him in front of a jury, convict his ass, send him off to the electric chair, and Special Operations generally and Officer Matthew Payne specifically will come across as supercops, and to the cheers of the crowd we will skip happily off into the sunset, is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Sir,” Matt said doggedly, “she positively identified that man as the man who shot her.”

  “You did have a chance to buy uniforms before you came out here to Special Operations, I hope?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got my uniforms.”

  “Good. You’re going to need them. By verbal direction of the police commissioner, written confirmation to follow, Officer Payne, you are reassigned to the 12th District, effective immediately. I doubt very much if you will be assigned plainclothes duties. You are also officially advised that a complaint, making several allegations against you involving your visit to Miss Detweiler at Hahneman Hospital today, has been made by a Dr. Dotson and officials of Hahneman Hospital. It has been referred to Internal Affairs for investigation. No d
oubt shortly you will be hearing from them.”

  “Peter, for chrissake, you’re not listening to me!” Matt said. “She positively identified the shooter!”

  “It’s Inspector Wohl to you, Officer Payne,” Wohl said.

  “Sorry,” Matt said.

  “Matt, for chrissake!” Wohl said exasperatedly. “Let me explain all this to you. One, the chances of us catching these two, or either one of them, range from slim to none. On the way out here I stopped at Organized Crime and Intelligence. Neither of them are known by sight to anyone in Organized Crime or Intelligence—”

  “You knew they weren’t FBI guys?” Matt blurted, surprised.

  “I have the word of the Special Agent in Charge about that,” Wohl said. “They are not FBI agents. I have a gut feeling they are Mob hit men. Good ones. Imported, God only knows why, to blow DeZego away. Professionals, so to speak. We don’t know where they came from. We can’t charge them with murder or anything—unlawful flight or anything else, on the basis of some photographs that show them standing on a street.”

  “Penelope Detweiler swore that one of them is the guy who shot her and DeZego.”

  “Let’s talk about Miss Detweiler,” Wohl said. “She is a known user of narcotics, for one thing, and for another, she is Miss Penelope Detweiler, whose father’s lawyers—your father, for example—will counsel her. They will advise her—and they probably should, I’m a little fuzzy about the ethics here—on the problems inherent in bringing these two scumbags before a grand jury for an indictment, much less before a jury. If I were her lawyer, I would advise her to tell the grand jury that she’s really a little confused about what actually happened that day.”

  “Why would a lawyer tell her that?” Matt asked softly.

  “Because, again presuming we can find these two, which I doubt, and presuming we could get an indictment—it isn’t really true that any district attorney who can spell his own name can get an indictment anytime he wants to—and get him before a jury, then your friend Miss Detweiler would be subject to cross-examination. It would come out that she is addicted to certain narcotics, which would discredit her testimony, and it would come out that she was, tactfully phrased, romantically involved with Mr. DeZego. The press would have a certain interest in this trial. If I were her lawyer, I would suggest to her that testifying would be quite a strain on her and on her family.”