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

by The Witness(lit)

  "I needed that," she said. "Denny has been trying to convince me, with not much success, that we don't have anything to worry about. Has Inspector Wohl been more successful than he has?"

  "I hope so," Peter Wohl said. "Good evening, Mrs. Payne. Chief."

  "Peter," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said. "Brew-ster. "

  Brewster C. Payne raised his hand, index finger extended, above his shoulders. The gesture was unnecessary, for a white-jacketed waiter, who provided service based on his own as-sessment of who really mattered around the place, now that they were letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry in, was already headed for the table.

  "Mrs. Payne, what can I get for you?"

  "You can get Mr. Payne whatever he was drinking, thank you, Homer," she said. "I just stole his."

  "Yes, ma'am," the waiter said with a broad smile. "And you, sir?"

  "The same please," Coughlin said.

  "To answer your question, Pat," Brewster C. Payne said, "Yes. Peter has been very reassuring."

  "Did he reassure you before or after you heard about the Molotov cocktail?" Patricia Payne asked.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I was in the bar of the Bellevue-Stratford, being reassured by Denny," she said, "when Tom Lenihan came running in and said, if I quote him accurately, 'Jesus Christ, Chief, you're not going to believe this. They just threw a Molotov cocktail at the cars guarding Monahan.'"

  "My God!" Payne said.

  "At that point, I thought I had better get myself reassured by you, darling, so I called the office and they said you had come here. So Denny brought me. So how was your day?"

  Both Wohl and Payne looked at Chief Coughlin, and both shared the same thought, that they had never seen Coughlin looking quite so unhappy.

  "Oh, Denny, I'm sorry," Patricia Payne said, laying her hand on his. "That sounded as if I don't trust you, or am blaming you. I didn't mean that!"

  "From what I know now," Coughlin said, "what happened was that when Washington picked up Monahan at Goldblatt's to take him to the Roundhouse, somebody tossed a bottle full of gasoline down from a roof, or out of a window. It bounced off the Highway car, broke when it hit the street, and then caught fire."

  "Anyone hurt?" Wohl asked.

  "No. The burning gas flowed under a car on South Street and set it on fire."

  "Monahan?"

  "I got Washington on the radio. He said Monahan was rid-ing with him. They were behind the Highway car, and one of your unmarked cars was behind them. Monahan is all right. He's at the Roundhouse right now. The lineups at the Detention Center will go on as scheduled, as soon as they finish at the Roundhouse."

  "What are they doing over there?" Wohl asked.

  "I suppose Washington thought that was the best place to go; Central Detectives will want to get some statements, put it all together. And the lab probably wants a look at the Highway car they hit with the bottle. Maybe pick up another car or two to escort them to the Detention Center."

  If you were thinking clearly, Peter Wohl, you would not have had to ask that dumb question.

  "I think I'd better get over there," Wohl said.

  Coughlin nodded.

  "Peter, I called Mike Sabara and told him I thought it would be a good idea if he sent a Highway car over to Frankford Hospital. I hope that's all right with you."

  "Thank you. That saves me making a phone call," Wohl said. He got to his feet. "Mrs. Payne," he began, and then couldn't think of what to say next.

  She looked up at him and smiled.

  "Peter-you don't mind if I call you Peter?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Peter, as I walked over here with Denny, I thought that I couldn't ask for anyone better than you and Denny to look out for Matt."

  "Absolutely," Brewster C. Payne agreed.

  "Patty, we'll take care of Matt, don't you worry about that," Denny Coughlin said emotionally.

  "Sit down, Peter," Brewster C. Payne said, "and finish your drink. I'm sure that everything that should be done has been done."

  "He's right. Sit down, Peter," Chief Coughlin chimed in.

  "Right now, both of us would be in the way at the Round-house."

  Wohl looked at both of the men, and then at Patricia Payne, and then sat down.

  ***

  The Police Department records concerning Captain David R. Pekach stated that he was a bachelor, who lived in a Park Drive Manor apartment. Captain Pekach had last spent the night in his apartment approximately five months before, that is to say four days after he had made the acquaintance of Miss Martha Peebles, who resided in a turn-of-the-century mansion set on five acres at 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.

  Miss Peebles, who had a certain influence in Philadelphia (according to Business Week magazine, her father had owned outright 11.7 percent of the anthracite coal reserves of the United States, among other holdings, all of which he had left to his sole and beloved daughter), had been burglarized several times.

  When the police had not only been unable to apprehend the burglar, but also to prevent additional burglaries, she had com-plained to her legal adviser (and lifelong friend of her father) Brewster Cortland Payne, of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester.

  Mr. Payne had had a word with the other founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, who handled the criminal side of their prac-tice. Colonel Mawson had had a word with Police Commis-sioner Taddeus Czernick about Miss Peebles's problem, and Commissioner Czernick, fully aware that unless Mawson got satisfaction from him, the next call the sonofabitch would make would be to Mayor Carlucci, told him to put the problem from his mind, he personally would take care of it.

  Commissioner Czernick had then called Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the Special Operations Division, and told him he didn't care how he did it, he didn't want to hear of one more incident of any kind at the residence of Miss Martha Peebles, 606 Glengarry Lane, Chestnut Hill.

  Staff Inspector Wohl, in turn, turned the problem over to Captain Pekach, using essentially the same phraseology Commissioner Czernick had used when he had called.

  Working with Inspector Wohl's deputy, Captain Mike Sabara, Captain Pekach had arranged for Miss Peebles's residence to be placed under surveillance. An unmarked Special Operations car would be parked on Glengarry Lane until the burglar was nabbed, and Highway RPCs would drive past no less than once an hour.

  Captain Pekach had then presented himself personally at the Peebles residence, to assure the lady that the Philadelphia Po-lice Department generally and Captain David Pekach person-ally were doing all that was humanly possible to shield her home from future violations of any kind.

  In the course of their conversation, Miss Peebles had said that it wasn't the loss of what already had been stolen, essen-tially bric-a-brac, that concerned her, but rather the potential theft of her late father's collection of Early American firearms.

  Captain Pekach, whose hobby happened to be Early Amer-ican firearms, asked if he might see the collection. Miss Peebles obliged him.

  As she passed him a rather interesting piece, a mint condi-tion U.S. Rifle, model of 1819 with a J.H. Hall action, stamped with the initials of the proving inspector, Zachary Ellsworth Hampden, Captain, Ordnance Corps, later Deputy Chief of Ordnance, their hands touched.

  Shortly afterward, Miss Peebles, who was thirty-six, will-ingly offered her heretofore zealously guarded pearl of great price to Captain Pekach, who was also thirty-six, who took it with what Miss Peebles regarded as exquisite tenderness, and convincing her that she had at last found what had so far eluded her, a true gentleman to share life's joys and sorrows.

  And so it was that when Captain David Pekach, after first having personally checked to see that there was a Highway RPC parked outside Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Ap-pliances, Inc., on South Street, under orders to obey whatever orders Sergeant Jason Washington might issue, left his office at Bustleton and Bowler for the day, he did not head for his offi
cial home of record, but rather for 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.

  When he approached the house, he reached up to the sun visor and pushed the button that caused the left of the double steel gates to the estate to swing open. Three hundred yards up the cobblestone drive, he stopped his official, unmarked car under the two-car-wide portico to the left of the house and got out. There was a year-old Mercedes roadster, now wearing its steel winter top, in the other lane, pointing down the driveway.

  Evans, the elderly, white-haired black butler (who, with his wife had been in the house when Miss Martha had been born, and when both of her parents had died), came out of the house.

  "Good evening, Captain," he said. "I believe Miss Mar-tha's upstairs."

  "Thank you," Pekach said.

  As Pekach went into the house, Evans got behind the wheel of the unmarked car and drove it to the four-car garage, once a stable, a hundred yards from the house.

  There was a downstairs sitting room in the house, and an upstairs sitting room. Martha had gotten into the habit of greet-ing him upstairs with a drink, and some hors d'oeuvres in the upstairs sitting room.

  He would have a drink, or sometimes two, and then he would take a shower. Sometimes he would dress after his shower, and they would have another drink and watch the news on televi-sion, and then go for dinner, either out or here in the house. And sometimes he would have his shower and he would not get dressed, because Martha had somehow let him know that she would really rather fool around than watch the news on television.

  Tonight, obviously, there would be no fooling around. At least not now, if probably later. Martha, when she greeted him with a glass dark with Old Bushmill's and a kiss that was at once decorous and exciting, was dressed to go out. She had on a simple black dress, a double string of pearls, each the size of a pencil eraser, and a diamond and ruby pin in the shape of a pheasant.

  "Precious," she said, "I asked Evans to lay out your blazer and gray slacks. I thought you would want to look more or less official, but we're going out for dinner, and I know you don't like to do that in uniform, and the blazer-with-the-police-buttons seemed to be a nice compromise. All right?"

  He had called Martha early in the morning, to tell her that Matt Payne, thank God, was not seriously injured. He knew that she would have heard of the shooting, and would be con-cerned on two levels, first that it was a cop with whom he worked, and second, perhaps more important, that Matt was the son of her lawyer. He told her that he would be a little late getting home; he wanted to put in an appearance at Frankford Hospital.

  "I'd like to go too, if that would be all right," she said.

  He had hesitated. He could think of no good reason why she should not go to see Payne. After all, Payne's father was her lawyer, and they probably more or less knew each other, but he suspected that Martha was at least as interested in appearing as Dave Pekach's very good lady friend as she was in offering her sympathy to Matt Payne.

  He had tried from the beginning, and so far successfully, to keep Martha away from his brother officers. Every sonofabitch and his brother in the Police Department seemed to think his relationship with the rich old maid from Chestnut Hill was as funny as a rubber crutch.

  Martha, he knew, had sensed that he was keeping their per-sonal life very much separate from his professional life. One of the astonishing things about their relationship was that he knew what she was thinking. The flip side of that was that she knew what he was thinking too.

  He had hesitated, and lost.

  "Precious, if that would in any way be embarrassing to you, just forget it."

  "Don't be silly. How could it be embarrassing? I'll come by the house right from work and pick you up."

  "All right, if you think it would be all right," Martha had said, her pleased tone of voice telling him he had really had no choice. "And then we'll go out for dinner afterward? Seafood?"

  "Seafood sounds fine," he had said.

  He had spent a good deal of time during the day considering his relationship with Martha, finally concluding mat while the way things were was fine, things could not go along much longer unchanged.

  Sometimes, he felt like a gigolo, the way she was always giving him things. It wasn't, he managed to convince himself, that he had fallen for her because she was rich, but that didn't make her just another woman. There was no getting away from the fact that she was a rich woman.

  How could he feel like a man when she probably spent more money on fuel oil and having the grass cut at her house than he made?

  But when he was with her, like now, he could not imagine life without her.

  Jesus, just being around her makes me feel good!

  "Was that all right, precious, having Evans lay out your blazer?"

  "Fine," Captain David Pekach said, putting his arm around Miss Martha Peebles and kissing her again.

  "Precious, behave," she said, when he dropped his hand to her buttock. "We don't have time."

  The blazer to which she referred was originally the property of her father.

  When Evans and his wife (after an initial three- or four-week period during which their behavior had been more like that of concerned parents rather than servants) had finally decided that Dave Pekach was going to be good for Miss Martha, they had turned to being what they genuinely believed to be helpful and constructive.

  Dave Pekach now had an extensive wardrobe, formerly the property of the late Alexander Peebles. No one had asked him if he wanted it, or would even be willing to wear what he had at first thought of as a dead man's clothes. It had been pre-sented as a fait accompli. Evans had taken four suits, half a dozen sports coats, a dozen pairs of trousers, and the mea-surements Martha had made of the new uniform Dave had given himself as a present for making captain to an Italian custom tailor on Chestnut Street.

  Only minor adjustments had been necessary, Evans had hap-pily told him. Mr. Alex had been, fortunately, just slightly larger than Captain Pekach, rather than the other way.

  The buttons on the blazer, which bore the label of a London tailor, and which to Dave Pekach's eyes looked unworn, had been replaced with Philadelphia Police Department buttons.

  "You have no idea what trouble Evans had to go to for those buttons!" Martha had exclaimed. "But it was, wasn't it, Evans, worth it. Doesn't the captain look nice?"

  "The captain looks just fine, Miss Martha," Evans had agreed, beaming with pleasure.

  It had not been the time to bring up the subjects of being able to buy his own damned clothing, thank you just the same, or being unable to comfortably wear a dead man's hand-me-downs.

  And the trouble, Dave Pekach thought, as he walked into the bedroom carrying his drink in one hand and a bacon-wrapped oyster in the other, and saw the blazer hanging on the mahogany clothes horse, is that I now think of all these clothes as mine.

  He unbuckled his Sam Browne belt and hung it over the clothes horse, and then stripped out of his uniform, tossing it onto a green leather chaise lounge, secure in the knowledge that in the morning, freshly pressed, it (or another, fresh from the cleaners) would be on the clothes horse.

  And that I'm getting pretty used to living like this: When he came out of the glass-walled shower, Martha was in the bathroom. He was a little confused. Sometimes, when she felt like fooling around, she joined him, but not all dressed up as she was now.

  "Captain Sabara called," Martha announced. "He wants you to call. I wrote down the number."

  She extended a small piece of paper, but snatched it back when he reached for it.

  "Put your robe on, precious," she said. "You'll catch your death!"

  He took a heavy terry-cloth robe (also ex-Alexander Pee-bles, Esq.) from the chrome towel warmer, shrugged into it, took the phone number from Martha, and went into the bed-room, where he sat on the bed and picked up the telephone on the bedside table.

  Martha sat on the bed next to him.

  "Dave Pekach, Mike," he said. "What's up?"

  Martha could hear only Dav
e's side of the conversation.

  "They did what?...

  "Monahan okay?...

  "Anyone else hurt?...

  "Where's Wohl?...

  "Okay. If you do get in touch with him, tell him I'm on my way to the Roundhouse. It should take me twenty minutes, depending on the traffic. Thanks for calling me, Mike."

  He put the telephone back in its cradle and stood up.

  He saw Martha's eyes, curiosity in them, on him.

  She never pries, he thought. She's pleased when I tell her things, but she never asks.

  "When they started to take Monahan, the witness to the Goldblatt job, from Goldblatt's to the Roundhouse, they were firebombed."