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

by The Witness(lit)

  "I don't want to sound like I didn't know what I was doing, but I didn't actually seduce her," Matt said.

  "No man has ever seduced a mature woman," Wohl said. "And probably very few virgins have ever been seduced. The way it works is that they decide who they want to have take them to bed, and then they arrange to be seduced."

  Matt looked up at him.

  "You really believe that?"

  I don't know if I do or not. It sounds plausible. But what I was really trying to do was cheer him up. More than that, to point him onto Ye Olde Straight and Narrow.

  Why the hell am I doing that? What the hell am I doing here, anyway? I could have told him about the FBI investigation on the phone.

  The answer, obviously, is that I am very fond of this kid. He is, I suppose, the little brother that I never had. So what's wrong with that?

  "It sounds plausible," Wohl said with a grin.

  "So I'm not on your shit list?"

  "You're not on mine, but I'm apparently on everybody else's."

  "They're not blaming you for what happened?"

  "It's a question of who had the responsibility. That's spelled W O H L."

  "You couldn't be expected to sit outside his house your-self," Payne argued. "If it's anybody's fault, it's Jack Ma-lone's."

  "Malone works for me," Wohl said. "Whatever he does, or doesn't do, is my responsibility."

  "Loyalty down and loyalty up, huh?"

  "Is something wrong with that?"

  Matt shrugged and looked uncomfortable.

  "Come on, Matt, out with it."

  Payne met his eyes.

  "Did you tell Malone to lay off trying to catch Bob Holland?"

  "Not specifically," Wohl replied. "I'm sure he got the message, though." And then he understood the meaning of Payne's question. "What do you know that I don't, Matt?"

  "I promised him if I decided to tell you, I would tell him first."

  "This isn't the Boy Scouts. You can't have it both ways."

  "Charley caught him surveilling Holland's body shop, the one up by Temple."

  "What do you mean, caught him?"

  "McFadden-off duty, he had just dropped Margaret off at work at Temple-"

  "Margaret being his girlfriend?"

  "Right. So he saw this old car with somebody in it parked near Holland's body shop. And he checked it out. It was Malone. He, Malone, told Charley not to tell anybody about it."

  "Which proves what?"

  "The night you had me measuring the school building, Malone showed up there. Charley was with me. He offered to buy us a cheese-steak, and I brought him here. Both of them. And he ad-mitted that what he was trying to do was catch Holland."

  "And you decided not to tell me, right?"

  Matt nodded.

  "I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't gone to play Dick Tracy and gotten myself shot, but that night, I told Malone I was going to sleep on it, that I would probably decide I had to tell you, but if I did, I would tell him first."

  "You must have had a reason," Wohl said, more than a little annoyed. "You work for me, getting back to that loyalty business.

  "He convinced the both us that Holland is a thief," Matt said.

  "You and McFadden, of course, being experts in the area of car theft."

  "Open the goddamn door!" the intercom speaker erupted. "Michael J. O'Hara is gracing these crummy premises with his presence."

  "Oh, shit!" Wohl said, even though he had to smile. "The last guy in Philadelphia I want to see is Mickey."

  "You want to hide in the bedroom while I get rid of him?"

  "No," Wohl said, after a moment's hesitation. "I've always thought, said, Mickey can be trusted. Let's put it to the test."

  He walked quickly to the stairwell, and down it, to let O'Hara in.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  "I must be getting old," Michael J. O'Hara said to Inspector Peter Wohl as Wohl handed him a bottle of Tuborg. "I should have guessed you would be here."

  "I'm not here, Mickey. You didn't see me."

  O'Hara looked at him intently for a moment, and then shrugged and nodded his agreement.

  "Okay. Neither of us are here. But if we were here, and I asked you, on or off the record, 'How do you think you're going to like Harrisburg?' what would be your off-the-record, just-between-us-boys reply?"

  "On the record, I'm not going to Harrisburg."

  "That's not what it said-what he said, he being Farnsworth Stillwell-on the radio."

  "As I was just saying to Casanova here, you should never believe everything you hear on the radio, or read in the news-papers, especially the Ledger."

  "Give me a for example."

  "I just gave you one. I never told Stillwell that I would take that job."

  "If I were to write that- 'Staff Inspector Peter Wohl today emphatically denied that he ever intended to resign from the Police Department to become chief investigator for Farnsworth Stillwell, newly appointed deputy attorney general for corpo-rate crime'-it would make Stillwell look pretty silly."

  "How about leaving out the phrase 'to resign from the Police Department'?"

  "How about the making him look silly part?"

  "I don't think that would reduce me to tears," Wohl said.

  "Is it that bad, Peter? You're really thinking of resigning?"

  "We were talking about not always believing what you read in the newspapers. You want another for example?"

  "Yeah."

  "The records of the medical examiner, so far as I under-stand it, are public records. If you were to go down there, and pay the small fee-I think it's two dollars-they would give you a copy of Mr. Albert J. Monahan's death certificate. I think you might find that very interesting."

  "Why?"

  "Why don't you go spend the two dollars?"

  "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to get rid of me," O'Hara said.

  "Perish the thought. But trust me, Mickey, I think you'd find the death certificate interesting."

  "He's dead, right?" O'Hara asked.

  "He's dead."

  "So what would I find interesting? What did they do, shoot him with a cannon? He wasn't shot? Some jungle bunny threw a spear at him? What?

  "For two dollars, you could find out," Wohl said.

  "I can find out cheaper than that," O'Hara said.

  He leaned over and picked up the telephone on the table beside Matt's chair. He draped the handset over his shoulder, and then dialed a number.

  "Dr. Phane, please. Mickey O'Hara...

  "Oh, bullshit. Tell him he owes me one."

  He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "Interesting," he observed, "the bastard doesn't want to talk to me....

  "Charley, how the hell are you?...

  "Well, just put her on hold, all I have is a couple of ques-tions....

  "Tell me about Albert J. Monahan....

  "Yeah, I know he's dead. What did they shoot him with?...

  "What are you telling me, Charley?...

  "And that's what's going on the death certificate?...

  "Charley, if I print this and it turns out it's not true, I would be very unhappy. It is for that reason I have been recording this call. Just so you can't deny having told me what you just told me."

  O'Hara shrugged, hung the handset on his shoulder again, and dialed another number.

  "Would you believe that the Most Exalted Poo-Bah of the Knights of Columbus just told me to go fuck myself?" he asked, in hurt innocence, and then his party answered.

  "O'Hara," he said. "Are you ready to copy?...

  "Slug: ILA Witness Dead of Natural Causes, Says Medical Examiner. By Michael J. O'Hara. In an exclusive interview with this reporter, Philadelphia County Medical Examiner Dr. Charles F. Phane refuted reports in another newspaper-break. I'd like to say the Philadelphia Ledger, but you'd better run it past legal before you do."

  "-in another newspaper that Mr. Albert J. Monahan was shot to death, allegedly by persons connected with the so-
called Islamic Liberation Army. Dr. Phane said that a thorough au-topsy of Mr. Monahan's body has convinced him, and other medical personnel of his staff, that Mr. Monahan had died of a cardiac arrest, commonly called a heart attack.

  "Dr. Phane, who personally conducted the autopsy, also said that tests had been run that ruled out the possibility of poisons.

  "Quote Mr. Monahan's heart just stopped beating, Unquote Dr. Phane said. Quote. He had a medical history of heart trou-ble and it finally took his life. Unquote.

  "Got that?...

  "Yeah, I'm sure. If I wasn't sure, I wouldn't have called it in."

  Mickey put the handset back in the cradle, and then set the telephone back on the table.

  "Okay, Peter. So you tell me why Mrs. Monahan told me she saw her husband getting shot."

  "This has to be off the record, Mickey."

  "Off the record."

  "I think she did see someone-"

  "A cop? She said, 'a white cop.'"

  "-someone, probably a Caucasian, in a police uniform, shoot her husband. But what he was using was a stun gun, not a real one."

  "One of those things that shocks people?" Mickey asked. "No shit?"

  "There were bruise marks, plus slight indications of electric burns, on his chest."

  "Phane didn't say anything about that."

  "Phane is a very careful man, Mickey."

  "You don't have the stun gun, do you?" O'Hara challenged. "This is a theory?"

  "It's a pretty good theory," Wohl said.

  "You tell me why it's a good theory."

  "We don't think they were trying to kill Monahan, just scare him."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," O'Hara said.

  "I'll tell you what we think this whole thing is about, and where we are, but if you print it, you can really screw things up. Not only for me, but for a lot of other people."

  "You prick!" O'Hara said. "You know that after you told me that, I couldn't use it."

  "Fuck it," Matt Payne said. "The risk is too great, don't tell him."

  Mickey turned to look at him in what looked like hurt sur-prise. "For the rest of your life, I will misspell your name," he said.

  He turned at Wohl. "Does he know what's going on?"

  "No. He's just worried about me."

  "Okay, Peter," O'Hara said after a moment. "Boy Scout's Honor." He held up three fingers as Boy Scouts do when giv-ing their word of honor. "I won't use any of this until you tell me I can."

  It took Wohl ten minutes, during which Mickey O'Hara asked a very few questions, all of which struck Matt as being penetrating.

  "Okay," Mickey said, finally. "So what are you doing here drinking beer with Wyatt Earp? Why aren't you out catching-better still, shooting by accident, or at least running over-this rogue cop of yours?"

  "Two reasons," Wohl said. "For one thing, I think I would probably get caught if I did. More importantly, Jason Washington asked me to make myself scarce until five o'clock. That's what I'm doing."

  "Can I stick around?"

  "I wish you wouldn't."

  "Well, and all this time, I thought we were buddies," O'Hara said. "How would you feel about me interviewing Ar-thur X? Getting his Islamic slant on this?"

  "Will he talk to you?"

  "Yeah, I think so. He likes being in the newspapers." He saw the look on Wohl's face. "Relax, I won't give anything away.

  "If I thought you would, I wouldn't have told you what I did."

  "I just had a better idea," O'Hara said. "Fuck Arthur X. I know what he's going to say. I'm going to see Sam Goldblatt and maybe Katz too."

  "Who?" Matt asked.

  "Sam Goldblatt, of Goldblatt's furniture," O'Hara replied. "Ol' Mr. I-have-to-think-about-my-wife-and-children. The one who covered his ass about these scumbags by having his eye-sight conveniently fail. Phil Katz is Goldblatt's nephew."

  "Oh," Matt said, and then asked, "why?"

  "'Mr. Goldblatt, would you tell me how you feel about the people who killed both poor Mr. Cohn and now poor Mr. Monahan escaping punishment because you have bad eyesight? My one point three million readers would like to know. In case they wanted to buy a washing machine, or something, and wanted to make sure they were buying it from somebody who was always thinking about his wife and children.'"

  Wohl chuckled. "I really think you would do that."

  "You'd better believe it."

  "I'll tell you what I did do," Wohl said. "When Goldblatt and Katz walked out of their houses this morning, they found a Highway RPC waiting for them. Highway's going to sit on both of them for the next couple of days, at least."

  "To protect them? Or to remind them they need protec-tion?"

  "Both."

  "Mr. Goldblatt, considering what happened to poor Mr. Monahan, do you think the police are going to be able to pro-tect you from these people you weren't able to see well enough to identify?"

  "If you added, 'and your family,' " Wohl said, "that might not be a bad question to ask."

  "Consider it asked," O'Hara said.

  He stood up, shrugged into his fur-collared overcoat, fin-ished off his bottle of beer, and went down the stairs.

  ***

  At five minutes past four, just after Officer Charles McFadden had relieved Officer Frank Hartzog on the protection detail of Officer Matthew M. Payne, the doorbell rang.

  "Who's there?" McFadden asked, through the intercom.

  "Sergeant D'Angelo."

  "You know a Sergeant D'Angelo, Inspector?" McFadden asked Wohl.

  "Yeah. Let him in."

  "Be right down," McFadden said, and went down the stairs.

  The face that first appeared at the head of the stairwell a moment later was that of the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Brotherly Love. He was followed by a burly, curly-haired man in his late twenties.

  "I didn't know anybody lived up here," the mayor thought aloud, and nodded at the occupant, Officer Payne, as he looked around.

  "What the hell is this all about, Peter?" he asked.

  "Chief Lowenstein said he would be here at four," Wohl said. "He must have been delayed."

  "That's not what I asked," the mayor said, but he did not pursue the question. He looked at Matt.

  "How's your leg, son?"

  "Pretty good, sir. Thank you."

  "I don't suppose there's any coffee?"

  "I can make some in just a minute," Matt said, and started to get out of his leather armchair.

  "Al, make coffee," the mayor ordered.

  Sergeant D'Angelo went into the kitchen.

  "Coffee's in the cabinet right over the machine," Matt called.

  "Got it," D'Angelo called back.

  The telephone rang.

  "Hello?" Matt answered it.

  "Chief Lowenstein. Is Carlucci there?"

  "Mr. Mayor," Matt said. "Chief Lowenstein for you, sir."

  Carlucci snatched the phone from Payne's hand.

  "Lowenstein, what the hell's going on?...

  "How did that happen?...

  "I'll be damned," he said; and hung up.

  He looked at Wohl.

  "That was Lowenstein. He's at the district attorney's. That's why he's late."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Mr. Samuel Goldblatt just identified from photographs all of the doers of the Goldblatt job, and is prepared to go before the Grand Jury on Monday. And, and, get this: Tom Callis just called Giacomo, as a professional courtesy, and informed him he will personally prosecute."

  "That's good news, sir," Wohl said.

  "Did you know about this, Peter?"

  "I'd heard that another attempt to get Mr. Goldblatt to tes-tify would be made, sir."

  "Stop the bullshit, Peter, what do you know about this sud-den change of heart?

  "Chief Lowenstein told me that he was going to have a talk with Mr. Goldblatt, sir. And I believe that Mickey O'Hara saw him, Goldblatt, today too."