The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “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-a-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 little 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 L
udlow Street, so that he could block the rear entrance.

  Two civilians, a very large black man and a tall young white man, both very well dressed, were walking down Nineteenth Street, toward Market. They could have, Officer Daniels reasoned, just come out of the alley behind the Inferno.

  Officer Daniels, sounding his horn, drove the van into the alley, blocking it, and jumped out of the van.

  “Hold it right there, please!” he called out.

  His order proved to be unnecessary. The two civilians had stopped, turned, and were looking at him with curiosity.

  While a Pedestrian Stop was of course necessary, Officer Daniels made the snap judgment that it was unlikely that these two had anything to do with whatever-if anything-had happened at the Inferno. They hadn’t run, for one thing, and they didn’t look uncomfortable.

  Officer Daniels had an unkind thought: This area was an unusual place to take a stroll after midnight, unless, of course, the two were cruising for women. Or men. Maybe they had just found each other.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Daniels said. “May I please see some identification?”

  The younger man laughed. Daniels glowered at him.

  “We’re police officers,” the black man said. “What have you got?”

  The younger one exhibited a detective’s badge.

  “What’s going on here, Officer?” the black man asked.

  Officer Daniels hesitated just perceptibly before replying: “Shooting and hospital case inside the Inferno.”

  “Was the front door open?” the black man asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ll go block the front,” the black man said. “The rear door to this place is halfway down the alley. There’s usually a garbage can full of beer bottles, and so on.” He turned to the young white man. “You go with him, Matt.”

  The young man sort of stooped, and when he stood erect again, there was a snub-nose revolver in his hand.

  Officer Daniels looked dubiously at the black man.

  “I told you to go with him,” the black man said to Officer Daniels, a tone of command in his voice. Then he started to trot toward Market Street.

  Officer Daniels ran after the young white man and caught up with him.

  “Who is that guy?” he asked.

  “That is Sergeant Jason Washington. He just told me he used to walk this beat.”

  “He doesn’t have any authority here.”

  “You tell him that,” Matt said, chuckling as he continued down the alley.

  The sound of dying sirens and the squeal of tires announced the arrival of other police vehicles.

  The alley between the buildings was pitch dark, and twice Matt stumbled over something he hadn’t seen. There was more light when he reached the end of the alley, coming down what had been in Colonial times a cobblestone street but was now not much more than a garbage-littered alley.

  He found the Inferno Lounge’s garbage cans. As Jason had said they would be, they were filled to overflowing with kitchen scraps and beer bottles.

  He went to a metal door and tried it. It opened.

  If there was somebody in here, they’re probably gone. The door would ordinarily be locked.

  He stepped to one side, hiding, so to speak, behind the bricks of the building, and then pulled the door fully open.

  “Police officers!” he called.

  There was no response.

  He looked very carefully around the bricks. There was no one in sight, but he could see a corridor dimly illuminated by the lights burning in the kitchen, and beyond that, in the public areas of the bar, or restaurant, or whatever the hell this place was.

  “Stay here,” he ordered Officer Daniels, and then entered the building and started down the corridor. Halfway down it, he saw a flight of stairs leading to the basement, and saw lights down there. It was possible that someone was down in the basement; he was pleased with himself for having told the wagon uniform to stay at the back door.

  He went carefully through the kitchen, and then into the public area of the restaurant. There was banging on the closed front door of the place, and someone-not Jason, but to judge by the depth of his voice, not the young guy in the wagon, either-was calling, not quite shouting, “Police, open up.”

  The door was closed with a keyed dead bolt. There were keys in it. It was hard to unlock. Matt had shoved his pistol in his hip pocket and used both hands to get it open.

  There was a uniformed sergeant standing there, and two Highway Patrolmen. Behind them Matt could see Jason Washington looking for all the world like a curious civilian.

  “What have you got, Payne?” one of the Highway Patrolmen said. Matt recalled having met him somewhere. He couldn’t recall his name.

  “Nothing yet. I figured I’d better let you guys in.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “Back door was unlocked. The wagon guy’s covering it.”

  “Who are you?” the uniformed sergeant asked.

  “He’s Detective Payne of Special Operations,” Jason answered for him. “And I am Sergeant Washington. Nothing, Matt?”

  “Nothing on the floor. There’s a basement, I didn’t get down there.”

  “I think we should have a look,” Washington said, and moving with a quick grace, suddenly appeared in front of the two Highway Patrolmen and the uniformed sergeant. “Lead on, Matthew!”

  Matt turned and walked quickly back through the bar, the restaurant, and the kitchen to the corridor, then started down the stairs. Washington stopped him with a massive hand on his shoulder.

  “Announce your arrival,” he said softly. “You don’t know what you’re going to find down there, and if the proprietor, for example, is down there, you want to be sure he knows the man coming down the stairs is a police officer.”

  “Police!” Matt called.

  “Down here!” a male voice called.

  The stairs led to a narrow corridor, and the corridor to a small office.

  The first thing Matt saw was a somewhat stocky man in his forties sitting behind a battered desk, in the act of taking a pull from the neck of a bottle of Seagram’s VO. There was a Colt Cobra revolver lying on the desk.

  The next thing Matt saw, as he entered the office, was a young female, white, sitting in a chair. Her head was hanging limply back. Her eyes were open and her head, neck, and chest were covered with blood. She was obviously dead. On the floor, lying on his side in a thick pool of blood, was the body of a heavy man. His arm was stretched out, nearly touching the desk.

  Matt looked at the man behind the desk.

  “What happened here?”

  “I was held up,” the man said.

  “By who?”

  Matt looked at the office door and saw that Jason Washington and one of the Highway Patrolmen had stepped inside the office.

  “Two white guys.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I was shot in the leg,” the man said.

  Matt crossed to him and saw that he had his right leg extended, and that the trouser leg between the knee and the groin was soaked in blood.

  “Can you describe the men?” Matt asked.

  “There was two of them,” the man said. “One was a short, stocky sonofabitch, and the other was about as big as I am.”

  “How were they dressed?”

  “The little fucker was in a suit; the other one was wearing a zipper jacket.”

  “Mustaches, beards, anything like that?”

  The man shook his head.

  Jason Washington turned to the Highway Patrolman standing beside him.

  “Get out a flash on that,” he said softly. “And tell Police Radio that Sergeant Washington and Detective Payne of Special Operations are at the scene of what appears to be an armed robbery and double homicide.”

  SIX

  “That was interesting,” Sergeant Edward McCarthy of the Homicide Unit said to Detective Wallace J. Milham as he walked up to a desk where Milham was trying to catch up with his paperwork. Mi
lham looked at McCarthy with mingled curiosity and annoyance at having been disturbed.

  “Radio just told me we have a double homicide at the Inferno Lounge,” McCarthy said. “No names on the victims yet, but the report came from Police by radio. A Ninth District van, relaying a message from none other than Sergeant Jason Washington of Special Operations, who is apparently on the scene.”

  “I wonder what that’s all about.” Milham chuckled. “That neighborhood, and especially that joint, is not the Black Buddha’s style. Who’s got the job?”

  “You’re the assigned detective, Detective Milham,” McCarthy said.

  “Give me thirty seconds,” Milham said. “Let me finish this page.”

  “Take your time. The victims aren’t going anywhere,” McCarthy said, and added, “I’m going to see if I can find the Captain.”

  Captain Henry C. Quaire, Commanding Officer of the Homicide Unit, was located attending a social function-the annual dinner of the vestry of St. John’s Lutheran Church-in the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel with his wife when Sergeant McCarthy reached him.

  “Where are you, Mac?”

  “In the Roundhouse.”

  “Pick me up outside. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Preoccupied with his concern about what his wife would say when he told her she would have to drive herself home-a dire prediction of tight lips and a back turned coldly toward him in their bed when he finally got home, a prediction that was to come true-Captain Quaire neglected to inquire of Sergeant McCarthy whether or not he had gotten in touch with Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein. The Chief liked to be notified of all interesting jobs, no matter what the hour, and a double willful killing would qualify by itself. With Washington somehow involved, he would be even more interested.

  He would, he decided, try to get on a phone while waiting for McCarthy to pick him up. That idea went out the window when he stepped off the elevator and saw Mac’s car waiting for him outside on South Broad Street.

  “I don’t suppose you got in touch with the Chief?” he asked as he got in the car.

  McCarthy turned on the flashing lights and the siren and made a U-turn on Broad Street.

  “I didn’t have to,” McCarthy replied. “I got a call from Radio, saying the Chief was going in on this, and would somebody call his wife and tell her he was delayed.”