The Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I think that particular camera outfit cost us $412.50,” Leibowitz said.

  “How do I get on your gift list?” Wohl asked.

  “Anytime you’re willing to place a premises such as the Reynolds summer home under at least part-time surveillance and save the FBI the man-hours of keeping it under surveillance ourselves.”

  “Clever,” Wohl said appreciatively.

  “And it has a certain public-relations aspect, too, Peter,” Davis said. “Getting a camera from the FBI makes the local authorities look on us as their friends. As hard as you may find this to believe, not all police officers look on us fondly.”

  “But on the other hand, Walter,” Wohl said, “some of my officers like FBI agents so much that they take them on sight-seeing tours, absolutely free of charge.”

  “Actually, now that my temper has had time to cool down,” Leibowitz said, “I have to admit that was sort of funny. But let me show you what our $412.50 bought.”

  A somewhat grainy photograph of a Ford sedan came on the screen.

  “We ran the plate. The plate was stolen. There were no recent reports of a Ford like that having been stolen in a four-state area.”

  “They switched plates,” Denny Coughlin thought out loud.

  “We think that’s probable. And there are just too many two-year-old Fords like that to make it cost-efficient to run every one of them down.”

  “Yeah,” Wohl agreed.

  “This is, in case anyone can’t guess, the Reynolds summer house,” Leibowitz said. “And this gentleman is Mr. Bryan C. Chenowith,” he said, as a picture of a young man in sports clothing and wearing horn-rimmed glasses getting out of the Ford appeared on the screen.

  “Bingo!” Chief Coughlin said.

  “On this occasion,” Leibowitz said, “Mr. Chenowith was accompanied by Miss Ollwood.”

  The screen now showed Jennifer Ollwood, wearing a tweed skirt and a sweater, standing on the porch of the Reynolds cabin. She was being embraced by Susan Reynolds.

  Jesus Christ! Matt thought. There’s no question about it now. Susan is in with these lunatics up to her cute little ass.

  “Obviously,” Chief Coughlin said, “you didn’t get this in time to do anything about it, and the sheriff’s deputy?”

  “We asked the local authorities to locate and identify, not apprehend,” Leibowitz said. “We want the Chenowith Group alive, taken into custody without the firing of a shot. The last thing we want to do is kill one of them and make a martyr out of him,” Leibowitz said, “or, especially, one of the females.”

  “But aren’t these photographs enough to pick up the Reynolds girl?” Denny Coughlin asked. “Charge her with aiding and abetting? Accessory after the fact? Lean on her hard?”

  “After we get the Chenowith Group, Chief,” Leibowitz said, “I’m sure the U.S. Attorney will go after her. But the priority is the apprehension of the Chenowith Group.”

  “I understand,” Coughlin said.

  “Once we had these pictures, and identified Chenowith and Ollwood, we put the premises under surveillance, of course,” Leibowitz said. “And the to-be-expected result of that, of course, was that they never went back to the Poconos.”

  “They spotted the surveillance?” Peter Wohl asked,

  “That’s possible, of course,” Leibowitz replied. “But we think it’s equally possible that they simply suspected they had been using that rendezvous point too often. Whatever the reason, they never went back to the Reynolds summer house.”

  “What’s the purpose of the rendezvous?” Matt asked.

  “I was about to get to that,” Leibowitz said. “First of all, we think it has to do with money. We believe that since we have been looking for them, the Chenowith Group has been involved in as many as four bank robberies. We have surveillance-camera proof that Chenowith and Ollwood have been involved in two bank robberies. A total of $140,000, in round figures, has been taken. One of them was a very recent case.”

  The lights went out and several surveillance-camera images of a female with a kerchief on her head wearing a raincoat and large dangling earrings appeared on the screen.

  “That’s Ollwood?” Detective Wee Willy Malone asked doubtfully.

  Leibowitz chuckled. “That’s Mr. Chenowith,” he said.

  “My God, the very ugly white woman with hairy legs,” Wohl said, laughing. “The Girard Bank job in—where was it?”

  “Bucks County. Riegelsville,” Leibowitz furnished.

  “I’m missing the point of the humor here,” Chief Coughlin said.

  “Mickey O’Hara wrote a hilarious story about it,” Matt said. “The guy in the bank described the bandit as a very ugly white woman with hairy legs.”

  “That woman is Chenowith?” Coughlin asked.

  “The lab did some interesting stuff, comparing the nose, hands, ears, and so on, of the ‘woman’ with Chenowith’s features. That’s him, Chief.”

  The news did not seem to please Coughlin.

  “So they’re wanted on bank-robbery charges, too?” he asked.

  “In a sense, Chief,” Leibowitz said. “We have not charged any of them with bank robbery. We don’t want them to know we know they’re involved. Our thinking here—the thinking of the attorney general—is that once we apprehend them, we can quickly bring them to trial in Federal Court and get a conviction, using the surveillance-camera footage as proof. There is very little sympathy for bank robbers, and the evidence for the two bank jobs where we have surveillance-camera footage is not circumstantial. Their defense cannot bring up the morality of using animals in medical research, et cetera. And once they are convicted, then we can try them on the University of Pittsburgh bombing charges.”

  “Public relations, huh?” Coughlin said in disgust.

  “Unfortunately, that has to be considered,” Davis said.

  “Now, our thinking is that they are thinking that since we are not searching for them on the bank-robbery charges we may not know about the bank robberies. Consequently, if we should get lucky and get them into custody, they don’t want to be found in possession of a large sum of money that even the none-too-bright FBI might decide came from unsolved bank robberies.”

  “You mean you think Reynolds is holding the bank loot for them?” Matt asked.

  “Yeah,” Leibowitz said. “And dispensing it as needed to pay their expenses. Being a fugitive is expensive.”

  “I thought she might be getting money to them,” Matt said. “Not the other way around.”

  “In a sense, she is, Payne,” Davis said. “But I see what you mean.”

  “And even if you could get a search warrant,” Wohl said, “the question would be where would you search?”

  “Precisely, Inspector,” Leibowitz said. “If we’d tumbled onto the Reynolds woman’s connection to the Chenowith Group earlier, maybe we could have done something. And, of course, the minute we would serve a search warrant on her, that would be the end of any meetings with any of them.”

  “Yeah,” Wohl said thoughtfully.

  “So what we have to do is find out where the Reynolds woman is going to meet with the Chenowith Group, or Chenowith individually, in sufficient time to set up an arrest that can’t possibly go sour. We don’t, to repeat, want to have to shoot any of these individuals and turn them into martyrs.”

  “If we winged one of them in the arm,” Jernigan said. “Their defense counsel would wheel them into the courtroom in a wheelchair, in a body cast, with intravenous tubes feeding him blood, an innocent college student showing his—even worse, her—grievous injuries suffered at the hands of the American Gestapo.”

  “That bad?” Coughlin asked.

  “We think that’s exactly what would happen. We want to take these people without giving them a bruise,” Davis said. “So that, Payne, is where you come in. Get close to the Reynolds woman; make that happen.”

  “When I call ‘the Reynolds woman,’ ” Matt said, “she’s liable to tell me the same thing she told me when I t
ried to get her out of the Nesbitt party. ‘I told you once, fuck off!’ ”

  “Did she really say that?” Davis asked.

  “What she said was, ‘I’m sure you’re a very nice fellow, but I’m just not interested.’ ”

  “I still think it’s worth a try,” Davis said. “Two or three tries. She’s our best shot at the Chenowith Group.”

  “Okay,” Matt said. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “We don’t expect her to lead you to the rendezvous, Payne,” Leibowitz said. “We don’t even expect you to find out where she’s meeting these people. All we want from you is to call us—which means Special Agent Matthews—when you have reason to believe she is going to meet them. Just tell us where she is at that moment. We’ll take it from there.”

  Matt’s mouth ran away with him.

  “Tail her, you mean? The way you tailed me? If she spots you as quickly as I did—and I suspect she’d be looking for a tail, and I wasn’t—this is all going to be an exercise in futility.”

  Davis glowered at him. Wohl looked amused.

  “We will have assets in place, Detective Payne,” Leibowitz said, “that will permit us—providing you give us enough time to deploy those assets—to keep the Reynolds woman under surveillance without being detected.”

  “I hope so,” Matt said.

  “Matty,” Chief Coughlin said. “I hope you heard what Mr. Davis and Leibowitz said about how they want to arrest these people?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They don’t want to run any risk of these people being injured, or their resisting arrest,” Coughlin went on. “You understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Consider that an order from me,” Coughlin said. “If you should run into this Chenowith fellow and the other man and the two women skipping down North Broad Street at high noon, all you are to do about it is tell the FBI. You take my meaning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  If I see any of these scumbags, Detective Payne thought, his mind full of the faces of the eleven innocent people who had been killed, and I think I can put the arm on one of them—or all of them—without getting myself hurt, I will, and no one will ever remember that I got that order.

  ELEVEN

  When Matt rang the bell at Number 9 Stockton Place, it was opened by a muscular man in his late thirties. Matt was startled, not so much by the man opening the door instead of Daffy herself, or one of the ever-changing parade of maids, but because the man smelled of cop. That instant reaction was immediately confirmed when Matt saw the unmistakable bulge of a pistol in a shoulder holster.

  “Who are you?” Matt blurted.

  “Who are you, sir?” the man said with exaggerated courtesy that rubbed Matt the wrong way.

  “Are you on the job?” Matt demanded.

  “Who was that at the door?” Chad Nesbitt called down from the second floor.

  “The gentleman was just about to give me his name, sir,” the man said, offering Matt a patently insincere smile. That was enough to tell Matt that he was facing a rent-a-cop.

  “Household Finance, Mr. Nesbitt,” Matt called, raising his voice. “We want our money or the television.”

  “Shit.” Chad chuckled. “Let him in.”

  “Yes, sir,” the rent-a-cop said, and stood back to let Matt pass.

  “Let him in anytime,” Chad added. “He’s safe. As a matter of fact, he’s a cop. Forgive me, a detective. Which probably means, come to think of it, that we’ll have to count the silver after he leaves.”

  “You can go up, sir.”

  “Wachenhut?” Matt asked the man.

  The Wachenhut Security Corporation provided the rent-a-cops for the Stockton Place complex.

  “Nesfoods Security, sir,” the man said.

  “You’ve got a permit to carry, concealed?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Matt started up the stairs.

  “Your name, sir?” the security man asked, and before Matt could reply, explained, “For your next visit, sir.”

  “Payne,” Matt said. “Matt Payne.”

  “Did I understand Mr. Nesbitt to say you are a police officer, sir?”

  “Yes, he did, and yes, I am,” Matt said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Matt went up the stairs.

  Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, in a sweat suit, was holding Penelope Alice Nesbitt in his arms.

  “I have trouble believing you are responsible for that,” Matt said.

  “For what?”

  “That beautiful child,” Matt said. He leaned close to the baby and touched her cheek with his finger. “Fear not, sweet child, your godfather will protect you from these terrible people.”

  “Fuck you,” Chad said. “To what do we owe the honor?”

  “I thought I would take you out and buy you dinner,” Matt said. “I had La Bochabella in mind.”

  La Bochabella was an upscale Italian restaurant in the 1100 block of South Front Street, not far from Stockton Place.

  “What did you do, get into it with Daffy again?” Chad asked suspiciously.

  “Her, too, if she wants to go,” Matt said.

  Chad laughed.

  “If she wants to go where?” Daffy said, walking into the room. She was also wearing a gray sweat suit.

  “He wants to take us to La Bochabella,” Chad said.

  “By way of making up for what?” Daffy said, taking the baby from her husband.

  “Actually, I hoped that by the time they came around with the check, your husband would figure, after what you did to me, Daffy, with the virgin’s mother, that the least he could do was buy me dinner.”

  “For all you know, wiseass, Susan may be a virgin,” Daffy said. “Why not? I’ll need to shower first, of course.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Matt said. “What’s with the sweat suits?”

  “She’s trying to get her figure back,” Chad said.

  “Where did it go?” Matt asked, innocently.

  “. . . so we put in a little exercise room,” Daffy said.

  “You know, to keep in shape,” Chad said. “You want to see it?”

  “No. Not really. But while you’re sharing all the sordid secrets of your married life with me, what’s with the rent-a-cop?”

  “He’s not a rent-a-cop. He’s from the company.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “The Old Broads got together,” Chad said. “The grandmothers. They went to the Old Man.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They’re worried about Penny’s safety,” Daffy said. “And mine, too.”

  “Did something happen?” Matt asked, now concerned.

  “You ever hear, ‘an ounce of prevention,’ et cetera?” Chad said.

  “You’re really worried?” Matt asked. “In here?”

  “Daffy’s alone a lot,” Chad said, a bit defensively. “With the baby.”

  “And a nanny, and at least one maid,” Matt said. “Not to mention the rent-a-cop at the gate keeping the riffraff out.”

  “And now a security guy from the company,” Chad said. “All right? It makes the Old Broads feel better and it makes me feel better, too, okay?”

  “That guy’s going to be here around the clock?” Matt asked.

  “Not that guy,” Chad said. “He’s a supervisor. He’s a retired Jersey state trooper. He used to bodyguard the governor. What he’s doing is seeing what has to be done. But yeah, there will be security people here around the clock.”

  “You should know better than most people, Matt,” Daffy said, “what goes on in the city. And that the police can’t stop things from happening.”

  “There’s only so many cops, Daffy,” Matt said, now defensively. “They can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “My point exactly,” Chad said.

  “I like the idea of La Bochabella,” Daffy said. “Ex ercise makes me hungry.”

  She handed the baby back to her husband.

  “I’ll shower fir
st,” she said.

  “Give me the urchin,” Matt said mischievously, “and you can shower together.”

  Chad took him seriously.

  “Yeah,” Chad said, and handed him the baby. “Good thinking. One of the perks of married life. You should try it, buddy.”

  “Don’t drop her, Matt!” Daffy said.

  “She will be a good deal safer with me, madam, than she would be in her mother’s arms,” Matt said solemnly.

  “You’re up to something, Matt,” Daffy said. “I don’t trust you.”

  “I have no idea, madam, of what you’re accusing me.”

  “Fix yourself a drink,” Chad said. “You know where it is.”

  “Yeah.”

  Fixing himself a drink proved more difficult than he thought it would be. When he went to the bar, holding the baby, it became immediately apparent that he could not easily, one-handed, either open a scotch bottle or get ice from the refrigerator.

  He walked to the couch and, with infinite tenderness, laid his goddaughter down on it, far enough away from the edge so there was no chance of her falling off.

  He was halfway back to the bar when Penelope Alice Nesbitt expressed her displeasure at being laid down by howling with surprising volume for someone her size.

  She stopped howling the moment she was picked up again, and he carried her back to the bar, where, with great difficulty, he made himself a drink. Then he carried the baby back to the couch and sat down.

  After a moment, he propped the baby up at the junction of the back and arm of the chair, and watched to see if she would start to howl again. She didn’t. She liked that. She smiled and made a gurgling noise.

  “Would Penny and I have made something like you, sweetheart?” Matt asked softly as he extended his finger to the baby. She took his finger in her hand.

  Matt became aware that his eyes were tearing and his throat was very tight.

  “Shit!” he said, and took a deep swallow of his scotch on the rocks. The emotional moment passed.

  Surprising him, Daffy returned first, dressed to go out.

  “You should have gotten yourself a date,” she said. “It would be like old times.”