The Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Boss . . .”

  “Okay. Sorry I jumped on you.”

  “Your father called out here,” Matt said.

  “My father called out there? What did he want?”

  “I don’t know. He called Chief Mueller—”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in!” Matt called.

  There was a rattling of the doorknob, but the door remained closed.

  “Hold it a minute,” Matt said. “There’s somebody at the door.”

  “Room service, no doubt,” Wohl said. “Go ahead.”

  Matt put the phone down and walked to the door, standing behind it when he opened it, so that only his face would show to whoever was in the corridor.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Matt said in genuine surprise when he had opened the door. “Sorry, I gave at the office.”

  The wit sailed two feet over the head of Miss Susan Reynolds.

  “May I come in?” she asked icily.

  “There are several problems with that, as delighted as I am to see you,” Matt said. “One of them being I’m wearing only a towel.”

  “Put your pants on,” Susan said. “I’ll wait.”

  “Don’t go away,” Matt said, and rushed into the bedroom, pulled on a pair of slacks, and trotted quickly back to the half-open door.

  “Come in, please,” he said, opening it wide.

  Susan stepped inside the room, and closed the door.

  “Problem two is that I’m on the phone,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Susan said, and went to the couch and sat down.

  Matt picked up the telephone.

  “I don’t suppose I could call you back?” he said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “It will have to wait,” Wohl said. “This won’t take long.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What Denny Coughlin wanted me to say to you—and incidentally, I agree with all of this—is that he thinks what he ordered you—the operative word here is ‘ordered’—to do about Chenowith went in one ear and out the other. Do you remember that order?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Prove it. What did he say?”

  “This is a very bad time for that, Inspector,” Matt said.

  “What did he say, Matt? What did he order you to do?”

  “I’d really rather call you back when I have a chance to refresh my memory,” Matt said.

  “You’re telling me you’ve forgotten?” Wohl asked incredulously.

  “No, sir.”

  Wohl suddenly caught on.

  “She’s there?” he asked, even more incredulously.

  “That’s the long and the short of it, Inspector.”

  “In that case, call me back when you have a free minute. In the meantime, Matt, for Christ’s sake, remember those people are dangerous.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” Matt said.

  The phone went dead.

  Matt looked at Susan. The way she was sitting with her legs crossed on the couch gave him a good view of a shapely calf, moving in what looked like annoyance or impatience, and a view of her upper leg halfway up her dress.

  Whatever she looks like, she doesn’t look dangerous.

  “Sorry,” he said. “That was my boss.”

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  “You mean with him and me, or you and me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Working,” he said.

  “Working?” she repeated.

  “I’ve been sent up to look into some bank records,” Matt said. “Lieutenant Deitrich of White Collar Crimes is going to get me into the banks.”

  “What kind of bank records?”

  “What are we doing, playing Twenty Questions?”

  “I’m curious, all right?”

  “There were some not very nice people in Philadelphia who had what we call ill-gotten gains, which we suspect they have hidden out here in the provinces. I have been sent to see if I can find said ill-gotten gains.”

  “Not very nice white-collar people?”

  “Actually, this is not at all a nice character. What this character is is what you could call a White Shirt with a dirty collar.”

  “Why do I have the feeling we are talking two different languages?”

  “There was a call girl ring in Philadelphia, who had a Vice lieutenant on the payroll. In the quaint cant of the police trade, lieutenants and up are called ‘White Shirts,’ possibly because their uniform shirts are white.”

  “You do a lot of this sort of thing?” she asked.

  “Jobs like this are handed out to junior detectives,” Matt said. “I am a very junior detective. Before I was promoted to do things like search bank records, I spent a lot of time investigating recovered stolen motor vehicles. That is the bottom rung of my profession, like Chad going into grocery stores and begging them to buy two more cases of Nesbitt’s World Famous Tomato Soup.”

  That earned him another smile.

  “I have trouble really believing you’re a cop.”

  “So do a lot of people,” Matt said. He decided it was time to change the subject. “I am of course delighted to see you. If I had known you were coming, I would have had champagne on ice. But I am just a little curious.”

  “I have to talk to you,” Susan said.

  “I may be a junior detective, but I am a brilliant junior detective, so let me demonstrate my Sherlock Holmes-like deductive skills: There has been a change in plans, and your mother’s kind invitation to break bread has to be withdrawn.”

  “I wish it was that simple,” she said. “I need a big favor from you.”

  “I suppose I could let you have a couple of bucks until payday. Presuming you have some sort of collateral.”

  “Aren’t you ever serious?”

  “Only when there is no possible alternative. How may I assist you, fair lady?”

  “You can let my parents think we were out until very late listening to Dixieland jazz.”

  “But we weren’t, were we? Your words, which broke my heart, are burned in my memory: ‘I’m sure you’re a very nice fellow, but I’m just not interested. Okay?’ I cried myself to sleep that night.”

  She shook her head in amazed disbelief.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Susan, since I am a Boy Scout and we are sworn not to lie to girls’ mothers. You call your mother, and tell her we’re going to have dinner in town. That way, I don’t have to lie to your mommy, or eat alone.”

  “I meant it when I said I’m just not interested,” Susan said. “There’s somebody else.”

  And would his name, perchance, be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List?

  “Really?”

  “You’re not making this easy for me, are you?”

  “Well, my father’s lawyer didn’t call your father, demanding to know what you had done with the family virgin.”

  “I’m sorry about that, I really am.”

  “You can’t imagine how humiliating that was, to walk into my home and have my mommy and daddy waiting for me, wringing their hands, looking at me with sad eyes, to ask what terrible things I had done with your daddy’s precious baby. That pissed me off, just a smidgen.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Tell me about ‘someone else.’ ”

  “You don’t know him.”

  I hope to rectify that situation in the very near future.

  “That’s what this whole thing was all about,” Susan went on. “My parents don’t like him, can’t stand him.”

  I can’t imagine why not. What is this bullshit, anyway?

  “And he didn’t want me to go to Daffy’s party,” Susan said, and met Matt’s eyes. “And we fought about that. So he came to Philadelphia, and when I left the party he was waiting for me in the lobby of the Bellvue. And we went to my room. And had a fight. And made up. And I didn’t call my mother, the way she expected me to, and when s
he called the hotel—I knew it had to be her, who else would call me at half past two?—she was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to—how could I, with him there?—so I didn’t answer the phone. And that started everything else that happened. Mother called Daffy—”

  “You were in your room the whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Whatsisname?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s Whatsisname’s name?”

  “None of your business, is it, really?”

  Christ, Wohl was right. These people are dangerous. She looked me right in the eye and lied through her teeth. Or is that indicative of anything more significant—that, as a general rule, females are good liars?

  “Just curious, is all. I thought maybe if we became pals, I could learn something from him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Man stuff,” Matt said. “I mean, what the hell, I struck out with you in about twenty seconds flat, and this guy, well, he really captured the fair maiden’s heart, didn’t he? Right up to the room, spend the night. You didn’t even want to talk to Mommy.”

  “Daffy said you could be a prick,” Susan said.

  “Guilty. But just to prove Daffy wrong one more time, I’ll call your mother and tell her something’s come up, and I won’t be able to come to dinner after all.”

  She looked at him a long moment.

  “You don’t know my mother. She’s determined to meet you. If you don’t come tonight, she’ll ask about tomorrow night, and the night after that. And if that doesn’t work, she’ll come to Philadelphia after you.”

  “Well, that’s understandable. I am a very eligible bachelor. There is a long list of mothers with family virgins they’re trying to get rid of after me. She’d have to take a number and wait in line.”

  “You son of a bitch, you’re unbelievable,” Susan said, and laughed. “Will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Be a good guy. Go along with we were out late listening to Dixieland. I’d really appreciate it.”

  “How much? What’s in it for me?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well,” Matt said, and he heard Jason Washington’s melodious voice in his mind, “if I do this for you, it would seem only fair that you take pity on a lonely boy banished to the provinces far from home and loved ones and have dinner with me. A couple of times. Several times. I really hate to eat alone.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I’m always serious.”

  “But I don’t like you.”

  “Then why did you stay out until the wee hours with me? Or didn’t you?”

  “I don’t want to get involved with you. You understand that?”

  “Women have been known, I’m told, to change their minds.”

  “This one won’t.”

  “Time will tell. Your choice, Susan.”

  “You like having something to hold over me, don’t you?”

  “Truth to tell, I find it interesting.”

  “Okay,” Susan said. “If you get your kicks from something like this, okay. So long as it’s clearly understood we’re talking about dinner. Period.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I’m not going to bed with you.”

  “I don’t recall making the offer. And how could I hope to compare with good ol’ Whatsisname who made you forget to call Mommy? And what about ol’ Whatsisname? What are you going to tell him about us going out?”

  “He’s not here. He’s out of town. That won’t be a problem.”

  Casing his next bank robbery, no doubt.

  “Good.”

  “Don’t slip tonight, and let on that I came here,” she said, and pushed herself off the couch.

  “Rest assured, my dear Susan, your deepest, darkest secrets are safe with Matt Payne. At least for the moment.”

  “Inspector,” Officer Paul O’Mara announced, sticking his head in Wohl’s office door, “Detective Payne is on Three.”

  “Tell him to hold on,” Wohl said.

  He looked at the people in his office with him—Captains Mike Sabara and David Pekach and Lieutenant Jack Malone, with whom he had been discussing the plans for the retirement party of a Highway Patrol sergeant—shrugged his shoulders, said, “Sorry. I’ll be as short as I can,” and motioned them out of his office.

  He waited until the door was closed, then picked up his telephone.

  “Go ahead, Matt.”

  “She just left, boss.”

  “Then that was our lady friend—in your room?”

  “Yes, indeed. Your timing was perfect.”

  “What did she want?”

  “After I talked to Jason, I called her house. She wasn’t there, but her mother invited me to dinner. And then she apparently called Susan and told her I was coming, and obviously that I’m at the Penn-Harris. So she came here to ask me to go along with the story that we were out all night in Philadelphia.”

  “She gave you a reason?”

  “Looked me right in the eye, with those beautiful, innocent blue eyes, and told me there is a boyfriend, no name given, of whom her parents disapprove—”

  “You think she’s talking about Chenowith, or the other one? What’s his name?”

  “Edgar L. Cole. No, for one thing that acne-faced scumbag is hardly her type. I think this boyfriend was invented—along with the rest of the story—after her mother called and told her to guess who’s coming to dinner.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “It was quite a story. She told me that she and the boyfriend had a fight about her going to Chad Nesbitt’s party. When she went anyway, so goes her tale, he followed her to Philadelphia. When she returned to the Bellvue, the boyfriend was waiting for her in the lobby. They went to her room, fought some more, and then made up. She implied—without any detectable embarrassment—that they sealed the peace in a carnal fashion, and were having at it with such enthusiasm that she forgot to call her mother, and then, when Mommy called, she didn’t want to play coitus interruptus by answering the phone.”

  “No chance that might be true?”

  “Peter, her bed was not slept in.”

  The reason he knows that not only germane, but important-to-this-investigation, information, Wohl thought, resignedly, is that he went into her room. This is obviously not the time to jump on his ass for a technical illegality.

  “Was she suspicious about you suddenly appearing in Harrisburg? In a cop sense, I mean?”

  “At first, yeah. But I explained it.”

  “You gave her the story you’re looking for hidden money? And she bought it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Now what happens?”

  “I made a deal with her,” Matt said. “I go along with the she-was-with-me story for her parents, and she goes to dinner with me, keeps me company while I’m all alone in Harrisburg, so to speak.”

  “You blackmailed her, in other words?”

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “You don’t think pushing yourself on her will make her suspicious?”

  “Only that I’m trying to get into her pants.”

  “Are you?”

  “I am prepared to make any sacrifice in the line of duty,” Matt said.

  “That would really be stupid, Matt,” Wohl said.

  “Hey, that was a joke. You really think I’m that stupid?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’m not,” Matt said firmly.

  “Okay. Matt, if it should ever come up, I just now gave you a long, firm lecture on the price you would have to pay for disobeying Denny Coughlin’s clear order to you that you’re not to do anything but locate Chenowith and friends for the FBI.”

  “Okay.” Matt said. “Lecture received and duly noted.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m just trying to save time. You disobey that order and I’ll have your ass, Matt. Coughlin’s serious about this, and so am I.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

&
nbsp; “I’ll bring you up on charges, Matt. Understand that.”

  The trouble with that dramatic threat is that Matt knows that it’s empty. If he gets lucky and grabs these people, or any one of them, it’ll be in all the papers, and we’re not going to discipline a policeman for doing something the public expects policemen to do; that gets in the papers, too.

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “Keep in touch,” Wohl said. “Have a nice dinner.”

  He hung up.

  Matt found the Reynolds house, following Mrs. Reynolds’s instructions, with little trouble. She had neglected to tell him it wasn’t visible from the street, and it took him two trips down Schuler Avenue before his headlights picked up a sign by a driveway reading “Reynolds.”

  The house, when he’d driven several hundred yards up a macadam drive through a wooded area to it, was a large brick colonial with a house-wide verandah. It looked, however, Matt thought, more like the house of an assistant vice president of Nesfoods International than a house one would expect the chairman of the board, president, and chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company to own.

  As he stopped the Plymouth, two large brass fixtures on either side of the double front door went on, and just as he got close to the door, it was opened.

  “Good evening, sir,” the butler—a middle-aged man wearing a gray cotton jacket—greeted him.

  “Good evening,” Matt replied. “My name is Payne.”

  “Yes, sir, you’re expected,” the butler said. “This way, please, sir.”

  The house was larger inside than it had appeared from the outside. The entrance foyer was large, and stairways on either side of it rose to a second-floor balcony.

  The butler led him to a set of double doors under the balcony and opened one of them.

  “Mr. Payne, sir,” he announced, and waved Matt inside.

  Inside looked like a combination living room and library. Three of the walls held ceiling-high bookcases. The fourth was a wall of sliding glass doors opening onto a patio. Beyond the patio was a lawn stretching down to what Matt supposed was the Susquehanna River.

  A stocky, blond-haired man in his fifties, in a well-tailored double-breasted nearly black suit, rose from what looked like his chair and advanced on Matt with his hand extended.

  “Matt Payne, I presume?”