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

by The Witness(lit)

  "I hope Harry gets something from hospital security," Wash-ington said. "How long is Matt going to be in here, anyway?"

  "Not long," Wohl said. "They'll probably let him go to-morrow."

  "That soon?" Washington asked, surprised.

  "The new theory is that the more he moves around, the quicker he'll heal," Lowenstein said.

  The door to Matt's room opened.

  "Matt's awake," Martha Washington announced.

  "Jason," Lowenstein said quickly, softly, "when somebody asks, as somebody surely will, how you're coming with the ones we have locked up, could I say that I don't know, the last I heard you were off to see Arthur X?"

  "You're reading my mind again, Chief," Washington said.

  "And there's one more thing you could do that would help, Jason," Wohl said.

  "What's that?"

  "Find Tony Harris and sober him up. I'd like him in on this,"

  Washington's face registered momentary surprise, then he met Wohl's eyes.

  "I've found him. I'm working on sobering him up."

  "Are you going to come in here or not?" Martha asked.

  The three men filed into Matt's room. He was sitting up in bed.

  "I'll be running along now," the Reverend Coyle said. "The hospital doesn't like to have a patient have too many visitors at once."

  "Thank you for coming to see me," Matt said politely.

  "Don't be silly," the Reverend Coyle said. "You feel free to call me, Matt, whenever you want to talk this over."

  "I will, thank you very much," Matt said.

  Jason Washington caught Martha's eye and made a barely perceptible gesture.

  "I'll be outside," she said.

  Matt looked from one to the other.

  Lowenstein finally broke the silence. "How much dope are you on?"

  "One tiny little pill of Demerol whenever they feel I should have one."

  "Could you do without it?"

  "Why?"

  "Your judgment is impaired when you're on Demerol."

  "Am I going to need my judgment in here?"

  Lowenstein handed him the press release.

  Matt read it, and looked at Lowenstein.

  "Jesus, are they serious?" he asked.

  Lowenstein shrugged.

  "I think we should err on the side of caution," Wohl said. "In this case meaning having a pistol in your bedside table might be a good idea."

  Matt felt a cramp in his stomach.

  Jesus, is that fear?

  "The sergeant from the Mobile Crime Lab took my pistol," Matt said, desperately hoping his voice did not betray him, that he sounded like a matter-of-fact cop explaining something.

  Simultaneously, Chief Inspector Lowenstein and Staff In-spector Wohl reached into the pockets of their topcoats and came out with identical Smith & Wesson Chief's Special snub-nosed.38 Special caliber revolvers.

  Matt took the one Wohl had extended to him, butt first. He laid it on the sheet and covered it with his hand.

  "One should be enough, don't you think?" he said. "You just happened to have spares with you, right?"

  He's frightened, Wohl thought. He's cracking wise, but he's frightened. Then he grew angry. Those dirty sonsofbitches!

  "Harry McElroy is arranging with hospital security to make sure nobody even knows where you are in here, much less gets close to you," Lowenstein said. "I think that threat is pure bullshit. But better safe than sorry."

  "Yes, of course," Matt said.

  "Just make sure no one knows you have a weapon," Wohl said. "The hospital would throw a fit."

  "You'll be out of here tomorrow, or the day after," Wash-ington said. "Even if this is not fantasy on the part of these people, they won't look for you in Wallingford. You are going to Wallingford, right?"

  "I was, but not now," Matt said. "Christ, I don't want my family to hear about this!"

  "It'll be in the papers," Wohl said. "They'll hear about it."

  "I'll go to my apartment," Matt said, "not Wallingford."

  "You in the phone book?" Lowenstein asked.

  "No, sir."

  "What I think this is intended to do, Payne," Lowenstein went on, "is frighten Mr. Monahan. I think they're trying to get him to think that if they can threaten a cop-You take my meaning?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I can't believe they'd come after you. If they were serious about revenge, they wouldn't have given a warning."

  "Yes, sir."

  On the other hand, Matt thought, if they did kill me, that would really send Mr. Monahan a message.

  The pain in his stomach had gone as quickly as it had come.

  Jesus, that Demerol must be working. I'm not even afraid anymore. This is more like watching a cops-and-robbers show on TV. You know it's not real.

  And then he had a sudden, very clear image of the orange muzzle blasts in the alley, and heard again the crack of Abu Ben Mo-hammed's pistol, and felt again getting slammed in the calf and forehead, and the fear, and the cramp in his stomach, came back.

  "I'll have a talk with your father, Matt," Wohl said. "And put this in perspective. If you'd like me to."

  "Please," Matt said.

  "I'm sure McElroy has arranged with the switchboard to put through only calls from your family and friends," Lowenstein said. "But some calls may get through-"

  "Calls from whom?" Matt interrupted.

  "I was thinking of the press, those bastards are not above saying they're somebody's brother, but now that I think of it, these people may try to call you too."

  "In either case, hang up," Wohl said. "No matter what you would say, it would be the wrong thing."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And above all," Wohl said, "as the hangman said as he led the condemned man up the scaffold steps, try not to worry about this."

  "Oh, God!" Washington groaned, and then they all laughed.

  A little too heartily, Matt thought. That wasn't that funny.

  SIXTEEN

  The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadel-phia, sat in the commissioner's chair at the head of the com-missioner's conference table in the commissioner's conference room on the third floor of the Roundhouse rolling one of Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein's big black cigars in his fingers. His Honor was visibly not in a good mood.

  One indication of this was the manner in which he had come by the cigar.

  "Matt, I don't suppose you have a spare cigar you could let me have, do you?" the mayor had politely asked.

  Lowenstein knew from long experience that when The Dago was carefully watching his manners, it was a sure sign that he was no more than a millimeter or two away from throwing a fit.

  "Thank you very much, Matt," the mayor said very po-litely.

  Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick, a large, florid-faced man sitting to the mayor's immediate left, next to Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, produced a gas-flame cigarette lighter, turned it on, and offered it to the mayor.

  "No, thank you, Commissioner," the mayor said, very po-litely, "I'm sure Matt will offer me a match."

  He turned to Lowenstein, sitting beside Peter Wohl on the other side of the table. Lowenstein handed him a large kitchen match and the mayor then took a good thirty seconds to get the cigar going. Finally, exhaling cigar smoke as he approv-ingly examined the coal on the cigar, he said, very politely, "Well, since we are all here, do you think we should get go-ing? Why don't you just rough me in on this, Commissioner, and then I can ask specific questions of the others, if there's something I don't quite understand."

  "Yes, sir," Commissioner Czernick said. "Should I start, sir, with the Goldblatt robbery and murder?"

  "No, start with what happened at five o'clock this morning. I know what happened at Goldblatt's."

  "Chief Lowenstein asked the assistance of Inspector Wohl, that is, Special Operations, in arresting eight men identified by a witness as the doers of the Goldblatt job. They obtained warrants through the district attorney. The idea was to make the ar
rests simultaneously, and at a time when there would be the least risk to the public and the officers involved, that is at five o'clock in the morning."

  "And the operation presumably had your blessing, Com-missioner? "

  "I didn't know about it until it was over, Mr. Mayor."

  "You and Lowenstein had a falling out?" Carlucci de-manded, looking from one to the other. "You're not talking to each other? What?"

  "It was a routine arrest, arrests, Jerry," Lowenstein said. "There was no reason to bring the commissioner in on it."

  "Just for the record, Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time we've arrested the Islamic Liberation Army, right? Or any other kind of army, right? So how is that routine?"

  "Just because eight schwartzers call themselves an army doesn't make them an army," Lowenstein said. "So far as I'm concerned, these guys are thieves and murderers, period."

  "Yeah, well, tell that to the newspapers," Carlucci said. "The newspapers think they're an army."

  "Then the newspapers are wrong," Lowenstein said.

  "And it never entered your mind, Peter," Carlucci asked, turning to Wohl, "to run this past the commissioner and get his approval?"

  "Mr. Mayor, I thought of it like Chief Lowenstein did. It was a routine arrest."

  "If it was a routine arrest-don't hand me any of your bull-shit, Peter, I was commanding Highway when you were in high school-Homicide detectives backed up by district cops would have picked these people up, one at a time. Did you see what the Daily News said?"

  "No, sir."

  The mayor jammed his cigar in his mouth, opened his brief-case, took out a sheet of Xerox paper, and read, "They said, 'A small army of heavily armed police had their first battle with the Islamic Liberation Army early this morning. When it was over, Abu Ben Mohammed was fatally wounded and Po-lice Officer Matthew M. Payne, who two months ago shot to death the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist, was in Frankford Hospital suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The po-lice took seven members of the ILA prisoner.'"

  He looked at Wohl.

  "I didn't see that," Wohl said.

  "Maybe you should start reading the newspapers, Peter."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Just don't give me any more bullshit about a routine arrest. If this thing had been handled like a routine arrest none of this would have happened."

  "You're right," Lowenstein said angrily. "Absolutely right. If I had tried to pick up these scumbags one at a time, using district cops, we'd have three, four, a half dozen cops in Frankford Hospital, or maybe the morgue. And probably that many civilians."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. We took a goddamn arsenal full of guns away from these people. The only reason they didn't get to use them was because we hit them all at once. If we had taken them one at a time, by the time we got to the second or third one, they would either have been long gone, in Kansas City or some-place, if we were lucky. Or, if we were unlucky, they would have done what this scumbag Stevens did, come out shooting."

  There were very few people in the Police Department, for that matter in city government, who would have dared to tell the mayor in scornful sarcasm that he was right, absolutely right, and then explain in detail to him why he was wrong. Matt Lowenstein was one of them. But there was doubt in the minds of everyone else in the conference room that he was going to get away with it this time.

  He and the mayor glared at each other for a full fifteen sec-onds.

  "Is that his name? Stevens? The dead one?" the mayor fi-nally asked, almost conversationally.

  "Charles David Stevens," Lowenstein furnished. The mayor turned his attention to Staff Inspector Wohl again: "Presumably you were aware of this 'arsenal of weapons'? That being the case, how come you didn't use Highway?"

  "I didn't want the Ledger complaining about excessive force by 'Carlucci's Jackbooted Gestapo,'" Wohl replied evenly. "Highway was alerted, in case they would be needed, and there were also stakeout units available. Neither was needed, which was fine with me; I didn't want an early morning gun battle."

  Carlucci thought that over for a long moment before reply-ing: "I'm not sure I would have taken that kind of a chance, Peter."

  "We also have to submit quarterly reports to the Justice Department on how we're spending the ACT Grant funds. I thought that reporting that ACT-funded cops had assisted Ho-micide in the arrest of eight individuals charged with murder and armed robbery would look good."

  "I still think I would have used Highway," the mayor said. "You did have a gun battle."

  "I haven't had a chance to figure that out yet," Wohl said. "I don't think Stevens spotted the Homicide detective. Possi-bilities are that he got up to take a leak, and looked out his window, just as the units were moving into place."

  "You said possibilities."

  "Or somebody saw all the activity at the school playground, or as they were moving from the playground, and called Ste-vens."

  "Somebody who?"

  "Maybe the same somebody who issued the second press release."

  "So you don't have all of them?"

  "No. What Jason Washington is doing, right now, is trying to find out how many there are. He hopes Arthur X will tell him."

  "What does Intelligence have to say about these people? Or Organized Crime?" Carlucci asked.

  "Intelligence has nothing on the Islamic Liberation Army, period," Lowenstein answered. "And until they pulled this job, none of these people did anything that would make them of interest to Organized Crime. They had their names, or some of them, but with no ties to anyone serious. They're-or they were-small-time thieves."

  "Czernick," the mayor said, "maybe you'd better have a talk with Intelligence. I find it hard to believe that one day last week, out of the clear blue sky, these bastards said, 'Okay, we're now the Islamic Liberation Army.' Intelligence should have something on them."

  "Yes, sir," Commissioner Czernick said.

  "But you are," the mayor said, looking at Lowenstein, "taking this second so-called press release seriously?"

  "I don't think we should ignore it," Lowenstein replied.

  "The newspapers aren't going to ignore it, you can bet your ass on that," Carlucci said.

  "There's almost certainly at least one more of them," Wohl said. "Somebody was driving the van. Washington maybe can get a lead on him after he runs the seven of them through lineups."

  "He hasn't done that yet?" Carlucci asked incredulously.

  "He wanted them to have all day to consider their predica-ment. He'll start the lineups at half past six."

  "There was an implied threat against Matt Payne in that second press release," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said. It was the first time he had spoken. "How are you going to handle that?"

  "Not specifically," the mayor said. "What it said was-" he went into his briefcase again for another photocopy and then read, "'Death to the murderers of our Brother.' Murderers, plural, not Payne by name."

  "Maybe that was before he knew Matt shot him," Coughlin said.

  "Denny, I know how you feel about that boy-" Carlucci said gently.

  "Chief, he's a cop," Wohl interrupted, "and I don't want to give these people the satisfaction of thinking that they have scared us to the point where we are protecting a cop-"

  "He's in a goddamn hospital bed!" Coughlin flared. "I don't give a good goddamn what these scumbags think."

  "We had a talk with hospital security," Lowenstein said. "We changed his room. They're screening his phone calls. And Peter loaned him a gun."

  "-And, " Wohl went on, "and, purely as a routine admin-istrative matter, while he is recovering, I'm going to ask Cap-tain Pekach of Highway to rearrange the duty schedules of Officers McFadden and Martinez so that they can spend some time, off duty, in civilian clothes, with Matt."

  Coughlin looked at him, with gratitude in his eyes.

  "And I wouldn't be surprised if other friends of his looked in on him from time to time," Wohl said.

  "You, for exa
mple?" Carlucci asked, chuckling, "and maybe Denny?"

  "Yes, sir. And maybe Sergeant Washington."

  "Satisfied, Denny?" the mayor asked.

  "I never thought I'd see the day in Philadelphia, Jerry," Coughlin said, "when scumbags would not only threaten a cop's life, but send out a press release announcing it."