W E B Griffin - Badge of Honor 04 - The Witness

by The Witness(lit)

  "Where's the sergeant?" Pekach asked.

  "I don't know," Charley said. "I came in here looking for Payne."

  "The inspector's got him running down some paperwork. I don't think he'll be back today. Something I can do for you?"

  "No, sir, it was- I wanted to see if he wanted to have a beer or something."

  "You might try him at home in a couple of hours," Pekach said. "I really don't think he'll be coming back. Do me a favor, Charley?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Stick around for a couple of minutes and answer the phone until the sergeant comes back. He's probably in the can. But somebody should be on that phone."

  "Yes, sir."

  "The inspector's gone for the day. Captain Sabara and I are minding the store."

  "Yes, sir," McFadden said, smiling. He liked Captain Pek-ach. Pekach had been his lieutenant when he had worked un-dercover in Narcotics.

  The door opened and a sergeant whom McFadden didn't know came in.

  "You looking for me, sir?"

  "Not anymore," Pekach said, tempering the sarcasm with a little smile.

  "I had to go to the can, Captain."

  "See if you can find Detective Harris," Pekach said. "Keep looking. Tell him to call either me or Captain Sabara, no matter what the hour."

  "Yes, sir."

  Pekach turned and went back into the office he shared with Captain Mike Sabara. Then he turned again, remembering two things: first, that he had not said "So long" or something to McFadden; and second that McFadden and his partner had an-swered the call on the shooting at Goldblatt's furniture.

  He reentered the outer office just in time to hear the sergeant snarl, "What do you want?" at McFadden.

  "Officer McFadden, Sergeant," Pekach said, "for the good of the Department, you understand, was kind enough to be standing by to answer the telephone. Since, you see, there was no one else out here."

  The sergeant flushed.

  "Come on in a minute, Charley," Pekach said. "You got a minute?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Pekach held the door open for Charley and then followed him into the office.

  Captain Michael J. Sabara, a short, muscular, swarthy-skinned man whose acne-scarred face, dark eyes, and mus-tache made him appear far more menacing than was the case, looked up curiously at McFadden.

  "You know Charley, don't you, Mike?" Pekach asked.

  "Yeah, sure," Sabara said, offering his hand. "How are you, McFadden?"

  At least this one, he thought, looks like a Highway Patrol-man.

  The other one, in Captain Sabara's mind, was Officer Jesus Martinez; the other of the first two probationary Highway Pa-trolmen. Jesus Martinez was just barely over Departmental height and weight minimums. It wasn't his fault, but he just didn't look like a Highway Patrolman. He looked, in Captain Sabara's opinion, like a small-sized spic dressed up in a cut-down Highway Patrol uniform.

  "Charley, you went in on that shots fired, hospital case at Goldblatt's, didn't you?" Pekach asked.

  "Yes, sir. Quinn and I were at City Hall when we heard it."

  "What did you find?"

  "Nothing. They were long gone-they had stashed a van out in back-when we got there."

  "You hear anything on the scene about the doers?"

  "Spades in bathrobes," McFadden said, "Is what we heard. Dumb spades. They-Goldblatt's-don't keep any real money in the store."

  "What do you think about this?" Captain Sabara said, and handed him a photocopy of the press release that had been sent to Mickey O'Hara at the Bulletin.

  "What the hell is it?" McFadden asked.

  "What do you think it is, Charley?" Pekach asked.

  "I think it's bullshit. If this thing is real, and they're going to have a war with the Jews, how come the guy they shot was an Irishman?"

  "Good question," Pekach said. "If you had to guess, Char-ley, what would you say?"

  "Jesus, Captain, I don't know. I don't think this Liberation Army is for real-is it?"

  "That seems to be the question of the day, Charley," Pekach said, and then changed the subject. "I don't seem to see you much anymore. How do you like Highway?"

  "It's all right, I guess," Charley replied. "But sometimes, Captain, I sort of miss Narcotics."

  "Narcotics or undercover?" Pekach pursued.

  "Both, I guess."

  "If you don't catch up with Payne tonight, I'll tell him you were looking for him," Pekach said.

  McFadden understood he was being dismissed.

  "Yes, sir. Good night, Captain." He faced Sabara and re-peated, "Captain."

  Sabara nodded and smiled.

  When McFadden had closed the door behind him, Sabara said, "There are three hundred young cops out there with five, six years on the job who would give their left nut to be in Highway, and that one says, 'It's all right, I guess.'"

  "But your three hundred young cops never had the oppor-tunity to work for me in Narcotics," Pekach said.

  "Oh, go to hell," Sabara chuckled. "You're no better than he is."

  "He wasn't much help, was he?"

  "No, he wasn't. Did you think he would be?"

  "Wohl said he thought we should find out what we could about Goldblatt's. I was trying."

  "You really think Special Operations is going to wind up with that job?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised. Carlucci probably sees a story in the newspapers, 'Mayor Carlucci announced this afternoon that the Special Operations Division arrested the Islamic Liberation Army-' "

  "All eight of them," Sabara interrupted. "That's if there is an Islamic Liberation Army. And anyway, Highway could han-dle it without the bullshit."

  "That's my line, Mike. Write this on your forehead: 'Pekach is Highway, I'm Special Operations.' "

  Sabara chuckled again. "What the hell is Wohl up to?"

  "I guess he's just trying to cover his ass," Pekach replied. "In case he does-in other words, we do-get that job."

  ***

  Charley McFadden drove home, took a bottle of Schlitz from the refrigerator, carried it into the living room, sat on the couch, and dialed Matt Payne's apartment. It rang twice.

  "Matthew Payne profoundly regrets, knowing what devas-tating disappointment it will cause you, that he is not available for conversation at this time. If you would be so kind as to leave your number at the beep, he will know that you have called."

  "Shit!" Charley said, laughing, and hung up.

  "Watch your mouth, Charley!" his mother called from the kitchen.

  Charley hoisted himself out of the couch and went up the stairs, two at a time, to his bedroom. He took his pistol from its holster, put it in the sock drawer of his dresser, and took his snub-nosed Colt.38 Special and its holster out of the drawer. Then he took off his uniform. He rubbed the Sam Browne belt and its accoutrements with a polishing cloth, took a brush to his boots, and then arranged everything neatly in his closet, where, with the addition of a clean shirt, it would be ready for tomorrow.

  Then he dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt that had WILDWOOD BY THE SEA and a representation of a fish jumping out of the water painted on it. He slipped his feet into loafers and completed dressing by unpinning his badge from his leather jacket and pinning it to a leather badge and ID case and putting that in his left hip pocket, and by slipping the spring clip of the Colt holster inside his trousers just in front of his right hip.

  He went down the stairs three at a time, grabbed a quilted nylon zipper jacket from a hook by the front door, and, quickly, so there would be no opportunity for challenge, called out, "I'm going down to Flo & Danny's for a beer, Ma. And then out for supper."

  Flo & Danny's Bar & Grill was on the corner. He slid onto a bar stool and Danny, without a word, drew a beer and set it before him.

  "How they hanging, kid?"

  "One lower than the other."

  Charley looked at his watch. It was quarter to six. He had to meet Margaret at the FOP at seven. It would take fifteen minutes to drive there. There was plent
y of time.

  Maybe too much. She doesn't like it when I smell like a beer tap.

  "Danny, give me an egg and a sausage," he said.

  Harry fished a purple pickled egg and a piece of pickled sausage from two glass jars beside the cash register and deliv-ered them on a paper napkin. Charley took a bite of the egg, and walked to the telephone and put the rest of his egg in his mouth as he dropped a dime in the slot and dialed a number.

  "Hello."

  "You and your goddamn wiseass answer machine messages. Where have you been?"

  "Running errands."

  "You want to have a beer or something?"

  "Just one. I got a date."

  "Me too. At seven."

  "You want to come here? Where are you?"

  "Home. FOP?"

  "Fifteen minutes?"

  "Good."

  Matt Payne hung up.

  Charley paid for the beer, the egg, and the sausage, and got in his car and drove to the FOP. Matt Payne's Porsche was already in the parking lot, and he found him at the bar.

  There was just time to order a beer and have it served when he heard Margaret's soft voice in his ear.

  "Hi!"

  "Well, as I live and breathe, Florence Nightingale," Matt said, smiling.

  "Hello, Matt."

  "You're early," Charley said.

  "You make it sound like an accusation," Matt said.

  "Get off early?" Charley asked.

  "Not exactly."

  "What's that mean?"

  "I mean, I went in, and they said they really needed me from midnight till six."

  "They told you to come in," Charley said indignantly.

  "And I get an hour, at time-and-a-half, just for coming in," Margaret said. "Plus double-time for midnight to six."

  "You're not really going to go in at midnight?" Charley asked incredulously.

  "Yes, of course, I am," Margaret said. "I told you, it's double-time."

  "If I were you, I'd tell them where to stick their double-time."

  "Charley!"

  "May I make a suggestion?" Matt asked.

  "Huh?" Charley asked.

  "What, Matt?" Margaret asked, a touch of impatience in her voice.

  "If you're going to fight like married people, why don't you go get married?"

  "I'm with him," Charley said.

  "We just can't, Matt," Margaret said. "Not right now."

  "It is better to marry than to burn," Matt quoted sono-rously. "Saint Peter."

  "No, it's not," Margaret said. "Saint Peter, I mean."

  "It was one of those guys," Matt said. "Saint Timothy?"

  "So what do we do now?" Charley asked.

  "I don't know about you, but I'm going home to get some sleep. You can stay with Matt."

  "I'll take you home," Charley said flatly. "He's got a date."

  "You don't have to take me home."

  "I'll take you home, and to work."

  "You don't have to do that."

  "You're not going walking around North Broad Street alone at midnight."

  "Don't be silly."

  "Listen to him, Margaret," Matt said.

  "Oh, God!" she said in resignation.

  Charley got off the bar stool.

  "Let's go," he said.

  "We'll have to get together real soon, Margaret, and do this again," Matt said.

  "You can go to hell too," Margaret said, but she touched his arm before she left.

  Matt watched as the two of them walked across the room, and then signaled for another drink.

  He did not have a date. But when Charley had called, he had realized that he did not want to sit in a bar somewhere and watch television with Charley.

  What he wanted to do was get laid. He had been doing very poorly in that department lately. If he was with Charley, getting laid was, now that Charley had found Margaret, out of the question. Charley was a very moral person.

  The trouble, he thought, as he watched the bartender take a bill and make change, is that men want to get laid and women want a relationship. Since I don't want a relationship, conse-quently, I'm not getting laid very much.

  As he took his first sip of the fresh drink, he considered the possibility of hanging around the FOP and seeing what devel-oped. There were sometimes unattached women around the bar. Some of them had a connection with either the police or the court establishment, clerks, secretaries, girls like that. And some were police groupies, who liked to hang around with cops.

  Rumor had it that the latter group screwed like minks. The trouble there was the groupies, so to speak, had their groupies, cops who liked to hang around with girls who screwed like minks.

  The demand for their services, Matt decided, overwhelmed the supply. If I try to move in on what looks to be someone else's sure thing for the night, I'm liable to get knocked on my ass.

  And the others, the secretaries and the clerks, the nice girls, some of whom seemed to have been looking at me with what could be interest, were, like the vast majority of their sisters, not looking to get laid, but rather for a relationship.

  Back to square one.

  And if I have another of these, I am very likely to forget this calm, logical, most importantly sober analysis of the situation and wind up either in a relationship, or engaged in an alter-cation with a brother officer in the parking lot, or, more likely, right here on the dance floor, which altercation, no matter who the victor, would be difficult to explain when, inevitably, Staff Inspector P. Wohl heard about it.

  He finished his drink, picked up his change, and walked across the room to the stairs leading up to the street.

  Was that really invitation in that well-stacked redhead's eyes or has my imagination been inflamed by this near-terminal case of lakanookie ?

  He got in the Porsche and drove home. There were, he no-ticed when he drove in the underground beneath the building that housed both the Delaware Valley Cancer Society and Chez Payne, far more cars in it than there normally were at this hour of the night. Ordinarily, it was just about deserted.

  Parking spaces twenty-nine and thirty, which happened to be closest to the elevator, had been reserved by the manage-ment for the occupant of the top-floor apartment. The management had been instructed to do so by the owner, less as a courtesy to his son, who occupied the top-floor apartment, than, the son had come to understand, because a second parking spot was convenient when the owner's wife or other members of the family had some need to park around Rittenhouse Square.

  Tonight, a Cadillac Fleetwood sedan was parked in parking space twenty-nine, its right side overflowing into what looked like half of parking space thirty. The Payne family owned a Cadillac Fleetwood, but this wasn't it.

  Matt managed to squeeze the Porsche 911 into what was left of parking space thirty. But when he had done so, there was not room enough between him and the Cadillac to open the Porsche's driver's side door. It was necessary for him to exit by the passenger side door, which, in a Porsche 911, is a squirming feat worthy of Houdini.

  He got on the elevator and rode it to the third floor and got off. The narrow corridor between the elevator and the stairs to his apartment was crowded with people.

  A woman he could never remember having seen before in his life rushed over to him, stuck something to his lapel, cried, "Oh, I'm so glad you could come!" and handed him a glass of champagne.

  "Thank you," Matt said. The champagne glass, he noticed, was plastic.

  "We're circulating downward tonight," the woman said.

  "Are we?"

  "Yes, isn't that clever?"

  "Mind-boggling," Matt replied.

  The woman walked away.

  Nice ass for an old woman; I wonder if there's anybody here under, say, thirty?

  "Hello, Mr. Payne."

  It was one of the Holmes Security rent-a-cops. Matt knew he was a retired police sergeant, and it made him a little un-comfortable to be called "Mr." by a sergeant.

  "I bet you know what's going on here," Matt sa
id, smiling at him.

  The retired cop chuckled. "I saw the look on your face. This is a party for the people who worked on the Cancer So-ciety Ball."