The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Northwest Detectives? That McFadden? The one who took down Dutch Moffitt’s murderer?”

  “That McFadden.”

  “OK. He’s yours. I’ll call Northwest Detectives.”

  “Thank you. And then I’m going to give this to Weisbach and Washington. What I would like to know is who told Narcotics Five Squad that she’d talked to Washington.”

  “You don’t know for sure that they know that,” Lowenstein said.

  “No. But it strikes me as highly probable.”

  Lowenstein grunted, and then said: “Peter, if you need anything else, let me know. Keep me posted. And thank you for the call.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  He hung up the telephone, then leaned against the wall.

  “It’s time, I think,” he said thoughtfully, “that we practice a little psychology. That woman is frightened. I think she knows more about what’s going on dirty with that Five Squad than she’s told anybody, including Milham, and right now, he’s the only cop she really trusts. She trusts Matt a little, because Milham likes him, and because he offered the apartment. And she thinks that Washington is straight, otherwise she would never have gone to him. So we’ll try to build a little trust by association.”

  He turned back to the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Jason, is Weisbach there?” he asked, and when the reply was that he wasn’t, added: “Put out the arm for him, please, and ask him to meet me at Payne’s apartment right away. I want you here, too, Jason. Right away.”

  They could not hear what Washington replied.

  “The Widow Kellog got a death threat telephone call this morning, telling her to keep her mouth shut or get the same thing that happened to her husband. Matt offered his apartment as a place for her to stay. Milham just took her to pick up some clothes. When they come back here, I want her to feel she’s surrounded by cops she can trust.”

  And again, Washington made a reply they couldn’t hear.

  “Oh, sure, we’re going to sit on her. I’m taking that threat very seriously. Be prepared, when you get here, to assign, in her hearing, everybody but Tiny a duty schedule to sit on her. I borrowed McFadden from Lowenstein. If you can find Martinez and Tiny, I’d like them here, too. Once she sees that she’s surrounded by cops, I want to leave her alone with you and Weisbach. Maybe you can get her to talk now.”

  Washington made another inaudible reply, to which Wohl responded, “Yeah.”

  Then: “Jason, switch me to Captain Pekach, will you?”

  “David? Are you in uniform?”

  Now Matt and Charley McFadden could hear Pekach’s reply: “Yes, I am.”

  “OK. Good. I want you, in a Highway car, to be parked on the sidewalk in front of Matt Payne’s apartment in twenty minutes. You come up. And I think it would be a good idea to have another Highway car parked with you. Tell them to get out of the car and be standing conspicuously on the sidewalk. I’ll explain it all to you when you get here.”

  He hung up and turned to face Matt and McFadden again.

  “In her presence, I will order the Commanding Officer of Highway to have a Highway car pass her parents’ home not less than once each half hour,” he said. “and to check on any car, or person, who looks halfway suspicious.”

  “You’re really taking that threat seriously, aren’t you’?” Matt asked.

  “Somebody shot her husband,” Wohl said. “If they’re willing to do that once…”

  “If somebody is watching her parents’ house, they’ll probably make the Highway drive-bys.”

  “Good, let’s make them nervous,” Wohl said. He paused, almost visibly having another thought. “If I was wondering what Mrs. Kellog told Washington, I think I’d also be worrying what she told Milham. So I think you’d better stick with him, Matt, instead of sitting on her.”

  “OK.”

  “I think it would also make her feel better to know he’s not walking around alone. Question: Should Milham be here when she talks to Washington or not?”

  “She seems to listen to him,” McFadden said.

  “Yeah,” Matt said.

  “OK. So you pack your bag, Matt, and be ready to get out when I tell you. Take McFadden with you. Go to Homicide and let him read the 75–49s on Kellog. I’ll call Quaire and fix it with him. If anything has come up that looks like it has a connection with this, call me.”

  “Right.”

  When Matt returned to the kitchen after getting dressed, and carrying a small suitcase into which he had put his toilet kit and a spare pair of shoes, Charley McFadden was at the kitchen table, reading the 75–49s on the Inferno job. Wohl was in the living room, studiously writing in his notebook.

  “Interesting,” Charley said. “I’ve never seen Homicide 75–49s before.”

  “That’s because God doesn’t love you,” Matt said piously.

  McFadden looked at him curiously.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Matt said, cheerfully and immediately, and then, chagrined, remembered he was supposed to be grief-stricken.

  “Yeah?” Charley asked suspiciously. “Are you on something? Wohl…” He quickly corrected himself, remembering that Inspector Wohl was ten feet away: “…Inspector Wohl said your sister gave you a pill.”

  Matt didn’t want to get into the subject of the pill, and he didn’t want to lie to McFadden. He avoided a direct reply.

  “I’m OK, Charley.” he said, and leaned over McFadden’s shoulder hoping he could find something in the 75–49s that would allow him to change the subject.

  He found something, on the page Charley was just about to turn facedown.

  “Bingo!”

  McFadden looked up at him.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Look here,” Matt said, and pointed toward the bottom of the page. “We had a tip that the doer was somebody named Frankie. Milham and I, starting from zilch, were out looking for him early this morning. We think we found him, on 2320 South Eighteenth Street. And here’s a Frankie who was in the Inferno, and there’s a description.”

  “I know that neighborhood,” McFadden said, and then was interrupted when the door buzzer sounded.

  “This is Captain Pekach,” a metallic voice announced.

  “Push the button, Charley,” Matt said. “I’ll stack this stuff together.”

  He read again the page Charley had been reading:

  “Well, what do we do now? Go back to your place?” Detective McFadden inquired of Detective Payne as they came out of the Detective Bureau in the Roundhouse and waited for the elevator.There had been nothing in the 75–49s on the Kellog job that Matt thought Wohl would be interested in, and nothing much new on the Inferno job that Matt found in Milham’s box.

  “I don’t think so,” Matt said. “I think he’ll get on the radio when whatever is going to happen at the apartment has happened.”

  “So where shall we go in that spanking-new unmarked car? You all have cars like that’?”

  “God loves us.”

  “Knock that shit off, will you, Matt? It’s blasphemous.”

  “Sorry,” Matt said, meaning it. He had trouble remembering that Charley was almost, if not quite, as devoutly Roman Catholic as Mother Moffitt, his grandmother, and took sincere offense at what he had not thought of as anything approaching blasphemy.

  “What are you going to do about that name you picked up on in the 75–49?”

  “Frankie, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait for Milham, I guess.”

  “That’s my neighborhood, Matt. And I think I know a guy who could probably give us a good line on him. Or are you afraid of spooking him?”

  Matt remembered what Milham had said when they had come out of the bar after Milham had told the bartender he was Frankie’s cousin from Conshohocken, that he hoped the bartender would tell Frankie a cop had been looking for him, that it would make Frankie nervous.

  “No. I get the feeling
that Milham would like it if Frankie got a little nervous.”

  “OK. Let’s do that.”

  “Who are we going to see?”

  “Sonny Boyle, we went to St. Monica’s at Sixteenth and Porter.”

  Timothy Francis “Sonny” Boyle, who was twenty-seven years of age, weighed 195 pounds, and stood six feet one inch tall, had not known for the past year or so what to think about Charles Thomas McFadden.Sonny had decided early on that the world was populated by two kinds of people: those that had to work hard for a living because they weren’t too smart, and a small group of the other kind, who didn’t have to work hard because they used their heads.

  He had been in maybe the second year at Bishop Neuman High School when he had decided he was a member of the small group of the other kind, the kind who lived well by their wits, figuring out the system, and putting it to work for them.

  He had known Charley since the second grade at St. Monica’s, and liked him, really liked him. But that hadn’t stopped him from concluding that Charley was just one more none-too-bright Irish Catholic guy from South Philly who would spend his life doing what other people told him to do, and doing it for peanuts.

  He had not been surprised when Charley had gone on the cops. For people like Charley, it was either going into the service, or going on the cops, or becoming a fireman, or maybe in Charley’s case, since his father worked in the sewers, getting on with U.G.I., the gas company.

  Charley, Sonny had decided when he had heard that Charley had gone on the cops, would spend his life riding around in a prowl car, or standing in the middle of the street up to his ass in snow and carbon monoxide, directing traffic. With a little bit of luck, and the proper connections, he might make sergeant by the time he retired. And in the meantime, he would do what other people told him to do, and for peanuts.

  Charley, Sonny had decided, wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to make a little extra money as a cop, and if he tried to be smart, he wouldn’t be smart enough and would get caught at it.

  He had really been surprised to hear that Charley had become a detective. It took him a lot of thought to realize that what it probably was was dumb luck. As asshole named Gerry Gallagher had got himself hooked on drugs, desperately needed money, and had tried to stick up the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philly.

  Tough luck for the both of them, the Commanding Officer of the Highway Patrol, a big mean sonofabitch named Captain “Dutch” Moffitt, had been having his dinner in the Waikiki. He tried to be a hero, and Gallagher was dumb enough to shoot him for trying. Killed him. With a little fucking .22-caliber pistol.

  Now the one thing you don’t want to do, ever, is shoot a cop, any cop. And Moffitt was a captain, and the Commanding Officer of Highway Patrol. There were eight-thousand-plus cops in Philadelphia, and every last fucking one of them had a hard-on for Gallagher.

  If you were white and between sixteen and forty and looked anything like the description the cops put out on the radio, you could count on being stopped by a cop and asked could you prove you weren’t at the Waikiki Diner when the Highway Captain got himself shot.

  Every cop in Philly was looking for Gallagher. Charley McFadden and his partner, a little Spic named Gonzales or Martinez or one of them Spic names like that, had caught him. They chased him down the subway tracks, near the Frankford-Pratt Station in Northeast Philly where the train is elevated. The dumb sonofabitch slipped and got himself cut in little pieces by a train that had come along at the wrong time.

  Now the cops certainly knew, Sonny had reasoned at the time, that McFadden wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, and if he had found Gallagher it had to be dumb luck. That didn’t matter. Charley was a fucking hero. He was the cop who got the guy who shot Captain Dutch Moffitt. Got his picture in the newspapers with Mayor Carlucci and everything.

  The next thing Sonny heard was that Charley was now a Highway Patrolman. Highway Patrolmen, everybody knew, were the sharp cops. They could find their asses with only one hand. What the hell, Sonny had reasoned, it was a payback. Even if Charley wasn’t too smart, he had done what he did, and Highway would make an exception for the guy who had caught the guy who shot the Highway commander.

  The next thing Sonny heard about Charley after that was that he was now a detective. That was surprising. Sonny knew that you had to take a test to be a detective, and unless Charley had changed a whole hell of a lot since Bishop Neuman High School, taking tests was not his strong point.

  Then Sonny figured that out, too. Charley hadn’t been able to cut it as a Highway Patrolman. You couldn’t be a dummy and be a Highway Patrolman, and Highway had probably found out about Charley in two or three days.

  So what to do with him? Make him a detective. It sounded good, and despite what you saw on the TV and in the movies, all detectives weren’t out solving murders and catching big-money drug dealers. A lot of them did things that didn’t take too much brains, like looking for stolen cars, and checking pawnshops with a list of what had been heisted lately, things like that.

  And then Sonny had heard that there were some Police Department big shots, chief inspectors and the like, who got to have a chauffeur for their cars and to answer their phones, and that sometimes these gofers were detectives.

  That’s what Charley McFadden was probably doing, Sonny Boyle reasoned. It fit. The Police Department figured they owed him for catching Gallagher, and there was nothing wrong with being a detective, and he could be useful doing something, like driving some big shot around, that other cops would rather not do themselves.

  All of this ran through Timothy Francis Boyle’s mind when he saw Charles Thomas McFadden walk into Lou’s Crab House at Eleventh and Moyaminsing.

  What surprised him now was how Charley was dressed. He looked nice. Not as classy as the young guy with him—the other guy was not a cop; you don’t buy threads like he’s wearing on what they pay cops but nice. Nice jacket, nice white shirt, nice slacks, even a nice necktie.

  And he was also surprised when McFadden headed for the booth where Sonny was waiting for his runners to bring the cash and numbers to him.

  Did he just spot me? Or was he looking for me?

  “Well, aren’t we in luck?” Charley McFadden said as he slid into the booth beside Sonny. “Timothy Francis Boyle himself, in the flesh!”

  “How are you, Charley?” Sonny asked, and smilingly offered his hand. “Nice threads.”

  “Thanks,” Charley said. “Sonny, say hello to my friend Matt Payne.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Sonny said. He gave the other guy his hand, and was surprised that he wasn’t able to give it a real squeeze the way he wanted to. This Payne guy was stronger than he looked like.

  “How do you do, Mr. Boyle?” Matt said.

  Main Line, Sonny decided. If he talks like that—like he keeps his teeth together when he talks—and dresses like that, he’s from some place like Merion or Bala Cynwyd. I wonder what the fuck he’s doing with McFadden.

  “Long time no see,” Sonny said. “What brings you down this way?”

  Charley put two fingers in his mouth, causing a shrill whistle which attracted the waitress’s attention. “Two coffees, darling,” he called out. “Put them on Sonny’s bill.”

  “On my bill, my ass,” Sonny said.

  “For old times’ sake, Sonny, right? Besides, I’ve told Matt you’re a successful businessman.”

  “You did?”

  “I told him you are one of the neighborhood’s most successful numbers runners and part-time bookies.”

  “Jesus Christ, Charley, that’s not funny.”

  “Don’t be bashful,” McFadden said. “He’s always been a little bashful, Matt.”

  “Has he really?” Matt said.

  “Yeah. What do you expect, with a name like Francis? That’s a girl’s name.”

  “When its a girl, they spell it with an e,” Sonny said. “Damn it, you know that.” He looked at Matt Payne. “Charley and me go back a long ways. He’s always
pulling my leg.”

  Who the fuck is this guy? What the hell is this all about?

  One of Sonny’s runners—Pat O’Hallihan, a bright, red-headed eighteen-year-old who worked hard, was honest, and for whom Sonny saw a bright future came into Lou’s Crab House, carrying a small canvas zipper bag with his morning’s receipts. He stopped when he saw that Sonny was not alone in the booth. Sonny made what he hoped was a discreet gesture telling him to cool it.

  It was not discreet enough.

  “Turn around, Matthew,” McFadden said. “The kid in the red hair? Three to five he’s one of Sonny’s runners.”

  Matt turned and looked.

  “Is he really?” he asked.

  “Charley, you are not funny,” Sonny said.

  “Who’s trying to be funny?” McFadden said. “I was just filling Detective Payne in on the local scumbags.”

  “Detective” Payne? Is he telling me this Main Line asshole in the three-hundred-fifty-dollar jacket and the fifty-dollar tie is a cop?

  “You’re a cop?” Sonny’s mouth ran away with him.

  “Show him your badge, Matthew,” McFadden said. “Sonny—I suppose in his line of work, it’s natural—don’t trust anybody.”

  The Main Line asshole reached into the inside breast pocket of his three-hundred-fifty-dollar Harris tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and came out with a small folder. He opened it and extended it to Sonny, which afforded Sonny the opportunity to see a Philadelphia Police Department detective’s badge and accompanying photo identification.

  “You don’t look like a cop,” Sonny said.

  “Don’t I really?” Matt asked.

  “Detective Payne is with Special Operations,” Charley said. “You familiar with Special Operations, Sonny?”

  “Sure.”

  What the fuck is Special Operations? Oh, yeah. That new hotshot outfit. They’re over Highway Patrol.

  “You know what Detective Payne said when I told him what line of work you’re in, Sonny?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Detective Payne said, Bookmaking and numbers running is a violation of the law. I think we should find your friend and throw his ass in jail.’ Isn’t that what you said, Matt?”