The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  Everybody from Narcotics was at Jack’s viewing, of course, and that’s when he met Helene and her husband. Captain Talley, the Narcotics Commander, introduced them. Her husband, Officer Kellog, had on a suit and a tie, but he still looked like a bum. Anybody who worked Plainclothes Narcotics had to dress like he was part of the drug business, so it was understandable—when Lieutenant Pekach, who was now a Captain in Special Operations, was running Undercover Narcotics, he actually had a pigtail—but he still looked like a bum.

  He met Helene first at the viewing, and then the next day at the reception at Sackerman’s house after the funeral, and a third time at Emmett’s Place bar, where a bunch of the mourners went after they left Sackerman’s house. Jack had had a lot of friends.

  Her husband wasn’t with her at Emmett’s Place, but they seemed to wind up together and started talking. Wally was attracted to her, but didn’t come on to her. Only a stupid bird dirties his own nest, and she was married to a cop.

  After that, they kept bumping into each other. She worked for the City in the Municipal Services Building in Center City, and he was always around the City Hall courtrooms or the DA’s Office, in the same area, so that was understandable. Wally ran into Helene one time on his way to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch and asked her if she wanted a cheese steak or something, and she said yes and went with him.

  After that, they started meeting once or twice a week for lunch, or sometimes dinner, and she let him understand that things weren’t perfect with her husband, but she never told him—and he didn’t ask—what specifically was wrong between them. He told her about Adelaide, what had happened. And absolutely nothing happened between them, he didn’t so much as try to hold her hand, until the night she called him, three days after he’d moved into the new apartment, and sounded as if she was crying.

  Wally asked her what the matter was, and she said she was calling from the Roosevelt Motor Inn, on Roosevelt Boulevard, that what had happened was that she had finally left the sonofabitch—he remembered that she had used that word, because it was the first time she had ever said anything nasty about him—and needed to talk to somebody.

  He said sure, and did she want him to come out there and pick her up and they could go somewhere for a drink, and she said it wouldn’t look right, in case somebody saw them, for him to pick her up at a motel. And as far as that went, it wouldn’t look right if somebody saw them having a drink someplace the very night she moved out on her husband.

  So Wally had asked her, did she maybe want to come to his apartment, and Helene said she didn’t know, what did he think, and she didn’t want to impose or anything.

  So he told her to get in a taxi and come down. And she did. And before she got there, he went to a Chinese restaurant and got some takeout to go with the bottle of wine he knew he had somewhere at home. He didn’t want to offer her a drink of whiskey, to keep her from getting the wrong idea. All he wanted to be was a friend, offering her something to eat and wine, and a sympathetic ear.

  She didn’t even take the wine when he offered it to her, but she wolfed down the Chinese, and he was glad he thought of that, and while he watched her eat, he decided that if she wanted to talk about her husband, fine, and if she didn’t, fine, too.

  When she finished, she smiled at him and asked him if he thought she would be terrible if she asked for a drink. She really needed a drink.

  So he made her one and handed it to her, and she started to take a sip and then started crying and he put his arm around her, and one thing led to another, and that was the way they started.

  Whatever was wrong between her and her husband wasn’t that she was frigid, or anything like that.

  And she told him, afterward, that the truth of the matter was that she had been thinking about him and her like that from the very first time she saw him, at Lieutenant Sackerman’s viewing; that he was really an attractive man.

  So at five o’clock in the morning, he took her back to the Roosevelt Motor Inn on Roosevelt Boulevard, and met her in City Hall at noon, after she’d talked to a lawyer, and they went to his apartment so they could talk without worrying about people at the next table in a restaurant listening in. They didn’t do much talking about what the lawyer said, except that it was going to be harder getting a divorce than she thought it would be.

  She took a tiny apartment so that her family wouldn’t ask questions, but from the first they lived together, and they got along just fine, and without coming right out and talking about it, they understood that as soon as she got him to agree to the divorce, they would get married. With what they made between them, they could live pretty well. They talked about getting a larger apartment, maybe even a house, so there would be room for his kids when he had them on weekends or whenever.

  They never talked much about what bad had happened between her and Kellog, but he got the feeling it had something to do with Kellog being dirty on the job. She knew something, and Wally knew if he pressed her, he could get it out of her.

  But then what? For one thing, she might not know what she was talking about, and for another, dirty cops are Internal Affairs’ business, not his. If he learned something he felt he had to tell somebody about, it would come out that he and Helene were living together, and it would look as if he was trying to frame the sonofabitch.

  And then the sonofabitch gets himself shot. And guess who they think had something to with it?

  Kellog was in Narcotics. If they ever found out who the doer, or doers, were, it was ten-to-one it would have something to do with Narcotics. But they might not ever find the doers, and until they did, Helene was going to be a suspect, and so was he.

  The interview in Homicide was the most humiliating thing that Wally could remember ever having to go through. Except maybe being driven to his apartment by Ken Summers to pick up his guns, and having Ken look around “professionally” to see what he could see that might connect him with the Kellog shooting.

  And when he finally got to see Helene, he could see that she had been crying, and she told him that D’Amata and Staff Inspector Weisbach had been to see her, and that she thought it would be better for everybody concerned if they didn’t see each other until things settled down, at least until after the funeral, and that she was going to the apartment right then to pick up her things and take them to her apartment. And that she thought it would be better if he didn’t try to see her, or even telephone, until she thought it would be all right, and when she thought it would be she would telephone him.

  She didn’t even kiss him before she walked away.

  Wally did the only thing he could think of doing. He worked on the Grover job. And nothing. Not from interviewing neighbors or friends, or what he learned from New Haven. She did not have an insurance policy on her husband, except for the ones she told him about. And neither did anyone else.

  But she did him. Wally was sure about that. Somehow, he was going to get her.

  He went to the apartment about six and had a beer and made himself a hamburger, and it was pretty goddamned lonely. Then he tried to sleep, setting the alarm for eleven. With nothing else to do, he might as well go to work.

  He woke up at nine-thirty, alone in their bed, and couldn’t get back to sleep, and got up and drank a beer, and then he thought about going to a bar and having a couple of drinks, and fuck going to work. Captain Quaire had told him to take off what time he needed.

  But he knew that would be dumb, so he just had the one beer, and took a shower and a shave and left the apartment at half past eleven for the Roundhouse.

  A new Plymouth sedan slowed to a near stop in front of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building on Rittenhouse Square, and then slowly and carefully put the right-side wheels on the curb, finally stopping equidistant between two signs announcing that this was a No Parking At Any Time Tow Away Zone.The door opened and a very large, black, impeccably dressed gentleman got out. He was Sergeant Jason Washington of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police D
epartment, known—behind his back, of course—to his peers as “the Black Buddha.”

  He believed himself to be the best investigator in the Philadelphia Police Department. This opinion was shared by a number of others, including the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, by Inspector Peter Wohl, Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Division, for whom Washington worked, and by Detective Matthew M. Payne, who worked for Sergeant Washington.

  Sergeant Washington was wearing a light gray pin-striped suit. His Countess Mara necktie was fixed precisely in place at the collar of a custom-made crisply starched white Egyptian cotton shirt, and gold cuff links bearing his initials gleamed at the shirt’s cuffs.

  For most of their married life, Jason Washington and his wife had lived frugally, although their combined income had been above average. He had spent most of his career in Homicide, where overtime routinely meant a paycheck at least as large as an inspector’s, and Martha had a very decent salary as an artist for a Center City advertising agency.

  They had put money away faithfully for the education of their only child, a daughter, and they had invested what they could carefully, and, it turned out, wisely.

  In the last three or four years, they had become affluent. Their daughter had married (much too young, they agreed) an electrical engineer, at whom (they also agreed) RCA in Cherry Hill seemed to throw money. Her marriage had, of course, relieved them of the expense of her college education, and at about the same time, what had begun as Martha’s dabbling in the art market had suddenly blossomed into the amazingly profitable Washington Galleries on Chestnut Street.

  They could afford to live well, and did.

  Sergeant Washington walked to the plate-glass door of the Cancer Society Building and waited until it was opened to him by the rent-a-cop on duty.

  “Is Supercop at home?” Sergeant Washington greeted him. The rent-a-cop was a retired police officer whom Washington had known for years.

  “Came in about ten minutes ago. What’s he done now?”

  “Since he works for me, I’m embarrassed to tell you,” Washington said, and then had a sudden thought: “Did he come home alone?”

  “For once,” the rent-a-cop said.

  “Good. I would not like to redden the ears of his girlfriend with what I have to say to him,” Washington said, smiling, as he got into the elevator.

  He rode to the third floor, then pushed a doorbell beside a closed door.

  “Yes?” A voice came over an intercom.

  “Would you please let me in, Matthew?”

  “Hey, Jason, sure.”

  The door’s solenoid buzzed and Washington opened the door. He climbed a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Matt Payne waited for him, smiling.

  “Don’t smile,” Washington said. “I just had a call from Tony Harris vis-à-vis your human-fly stunt, you goddamned fool! What the hell is the matter with you?”

  “The Lieutenant’s lady friend opened the window and knocked the mike suction cup loose. We weren’t getting anything at all.”

  “These people are not plotting the overthrow of Christian society as we know it, you damned fool! We have some dirty cops, that’s all. Not one of them, not this whole investigation, is worth risking your life over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good God, Matt! What were you thinking?”

  Matt didn’t reply.

  “I would hate to think that you were trying to prove your all-around manhood,” Washington said.

  It was a reference to one of the reasons offered for a nice young man from the Main Line electing to follow a police career instead of a legal one. He had failed, at the last minute before entering upon active duty, the Marine Corps’ Pre-Commissioning Physical Exam. He had then, the theory went, joined the Police Department as a means to prove his masculinity.

  “I was thinking I could put the mike back without getting hurt,” Matt said coldly. “And I did.”

  Washington saw in his eyes that he had gotten through to him. He fixed him with an icy glance for another thirty seconds, which seemed much longer.

  Then he smiled, just a little.

  “It would seem to me, considering the sacrifice it has meant for me to come here at this late hour to offer you my wise counsel, that the least you could do would be to offer me a small libation. Perhaps some of the Famous Grouse scotch?”

  “Sure, sorry,” Matt said, smiling. He went into his kitchen. As he opened first one, and then another over-the-sink cabinet, he called, “What are you doing out this late?”

  “Our beloved Mayor has been gracious enough to find time to offer me his wise counsel.”

  “Really?”

  “Specifically, he is of the opinion that we should go to Officers Crater and Palmerston and offer them immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony against Captain Cazerra and Lieutenant Meyer.”

  “Jason,” Matt said, “I can’t find a bottle of any kind of scotch. Not even Irish.”

  “I am not surprised,” Washington said. “It’s been one of those days. Get your coat. We will pub crawl for a brief period.”

  “There’s some rum and gin. And vermouth. I could make you a martini.”

  “Get your coat, Matthew,” Washington said. “I accept your kind offer of a drink at the Rittenhouse Club bar.”

  “Oh, thank you, kind sir,” Matt said, mockingly, and started shrugging into Chad Nesbitt’s tweed jacket. “I think the Mayor’s idea stinks.”

  “Why?”

  “Because any lawyer six weeks out of law school could tear them up on the stand, and we know Cazerra and Meyer’s lawyers will be good.”

  “Armando C. Giacomo, Esquire,” Washington agreed, citing the name of Philadelphia’s most competent criminal lawyer. “Or someone of his ilk. Perhaps even the legendary Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, Esquire.”

  Matt laughed. “No way. My father would go ballistic. I’m ready.”

  “I made that point to His Honor,” Washington said as he pushed himself out of one of Matt’s small armchairs.

  “And?”

  “And as usual got nowhere. Or almost nowhere. We have two weeks to get something on Cazerra and Meyer that will stand up in court. He wants those two in jail.”

  “Or what?”

  “We work Crater and Palmerston over, figuratively speaking of course, with a rubber hose.”

  “What does Wohl say?” Matt asked as he waved Washington ahead of him down the stairs.

  “I haven’t told him yet. I figured I would ruin tomorrow for him by doing that first thing in the morning.”

  The Rittenhouse Club was closed when they got there.“What do we do now?” Matt asked.

  “Why don’t we take a stroll down Market Street?” Washington replied. “It will both give us a chance to see how the other half lives, and trigger memories of those happy days when Officer Washington was walking his first beat.”

  “You walked a beat on Market Street?” Matt asked. It was difficult for him to imagine Washington in a police officer’s uniform, patrolling Market Street.

  Officer Friendly Black Buddha, he thought, impeccably tailored and shined, smiling somewhat menacingly as he slapped his palm with his nightstick.

  “Indeed I did. Under the able leadership of Lieutenant Dennis V. Coughlin. And on our watch,” Washington announced sonorously, “the thieves and mountebanks plied their trade in someone else’s district.”

  “Police Emergency,” David Meach said into his headset.“This is the Inferno Lounge,” his caller announced. “1908 Market. There’s been a shooting, and somebody may be dead.”

  “Your name, sir, please?”

  “Shit!” the caller responded and hung up.

  David Meach had been on the job six years, long enough to be able to unconsciously make judgments regarding the validity of a call, based on not only what was said, but how it was said. Whether, for example, the caller sounded mature (as opposed to an excited kid wanting to give the cops a lit
tle exercise) and whether or not there was excitement or tension or a certain numbness in his voice. This call sounded legitimate; he didn’t think he’d be sending police cars racing through downtown Philadelphia for no purpose.

  He checked to see what was available.

  RPC Nine Ten seemed closest to the scene. Meach pressed a key to send two short attention beeps across the airways, then activated his microphone:

  “All cars stand by. 1908 Market Street, the Inferno Lounge, report of a shooting and a hospital case. Nine Ten, you have the assignment.”

  The response was immediate.

  “Nine Ten, got it,” Officer Edward Schirmer called into the microphone of Radio Patrol Car Number Ten of the Ninth District, as Officer Lewis Roberts, who was driving the car down Walnut Street, reached down to the dashboard and activated the siren and flashing lights.

  “Nine Seven in on that,” another voice reported, that of Officer Frederick E. Rogers, in RPC Nine Seven.

  “Highway Thirteen, in on the 1908 Market,” responded Officer David Fowler.

  “Nine Oh One, got it,” responded Officer Adolphus Hart, who was riding in one of the two vans assigned to the Ninth District.

  Nine Oh One had five minutes before left the Police Administration Building at Eighth and Race streets, after having transferred two prisoners from the holding cells at the Ninth District to Central Lockup.

  Officer Thomas Daniels, who was driving Nine Oh One, had for no good reason at all elected to drive up Market Street and was by happenstance able to be the first police vehicle responding to the “Shooting and Hospital Case” call to reach the scene.

  There was nothing at all unusual about the location when they pulled to the curb. The Inferno Lounge’s neon-flames sign was not illuminated, and the establishment seemed to be closed for the night.

  He stopped just long enough to permit Officer Hart to jump out of the van and walk quickly to the door of the Inferno, and to see if Hart could open the door. He couldn’t. Then he turned left on Ludlow Street, so that he could block the rear entrance.