“Watch your mouth, Charley!” his mother called from the kitchen.
Charley hoisted himself out of the couch and went up the stairs, two at a time, to his bedroom. He took his pistol from its holster, put it in the sock drawer of his dresser, and took his snub-nosed Colt .38 Special and its holster out of the drawer. Then he took off his uniform. He rubbed the Sam Browne belt and its accoutrements with a polishing cloth, took a brush to his boots, and then arranged everything neatly in his closet, where, with the addition of a clean shirt, it would be ready for tomorrow.
Then he dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt that had WILDWOOD BY THE SEA and a representation of a fish jumping out of the water painted on it. He slipped his feet into loafers and completed dressing by unpinning his badge from his leather jacket and pinning it to a leather badge and ID case and putting that in his left hip pocket, and by slipping the spring clip of the Colt holster inside his trousers just in front of his right hip.
He went down the stairs three at a time, grabbed a quilted nylon zipper jacket from a hook by the front door, and, quickly, so there would be no opportunity for challenge, called out, “I’m going down to Flo & Danny’s for a beer, Ma. And then out for supper.”
Flo & Danny’s Bar & Grill was on the corner. He slid onto a bar stool and Danny, without a word, drew a beer and set it before him.
“How they hanging, kid?”
“One lower than the other.”
Charley looked at his watch. It was quarter to six. He had to meet Margaret at the FOP at seven. It would take fifteen minutes to drive there. There was plenty of time.
Maybe too much. She doesn’t like it when I smell like a beer tap.
“Danny, give me an egg and a sausage,” he said.
Harry fished a purple pickled egg and a piece of pickled sausage from two glass jars beside the cash register and delivered them on a paper napkin. Charley took a bite of the egg, and walked to the telephone and put the rest of his egg in his mouth as he dropped a dime in the slot and dialed a number.
“Hello.”
“You and your goddamn wiseass answer machine messages. Where have you been?”
“Running errands.”
“You want to have a beer or something?”
“Just one. I got a date.”
“Me too. At seven.”
“You want to come here? Where are you?”
“Home. FOP?”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“Good.”
Matt Payne hung up.
Charley paid for the beer, the egg, and the sausage, and got in his car and drove to the FOP. Matt Payne’s Porsche was already in the parking lot, and he found him at the bar.
There was just time to order a beer and have it served when he heard Margaret’s soft voice in his ear.
“Hi!”
“Well, as I live and breathe, Florence Nightingale,” Matt said, smiling.
“Hello, Matt.”
“You’re early,” Charley said.
“You make it sound like an accusation,” Matt said.
“Get off early?” Charley asked.
“Not exactly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean, I went in, and they said they really needed me from midnight till six.”
“They told you to come in,” Charley said indignantly.
“And I get an hour, at time-and-a-half, just for coming in,” Margaret said. “Plus double-time for midnight to six.”
“You’re not really going to go in at midnight?” Charley asked incredulously.
“Yes, of course, I am,” Margaret said. “I told you, it’s double-time.”
“If I were you, I’d tell them where to stick their double-time.”
“Charley!”
“May I make a suggestion?” Matt asked.
“Huh?” Charley asked.
“What, Matt?” Margaret asked, a touch of impatience in her voice.
“If you’re going to fight like married people, why don’t you go get married?”
“I’m with him,” Charley said.
“We just can’t, Matt,” Margaret said. “Not right now.”
“It is better to marry than to burn,” Matt quoted sonorously. “Saint Peter.”
“No, it’s not,” Margaret said. “Saint Peter, I mean.”
“It was one of those guys,” Matt said. “Saint Timothy?”
“So what do we do now?” Charley asked.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going home to get some sleep. You can stay with Matt.”
“I’ll take you home,” Charley said flatly. “He’s got a date.”
“You don’t have to take me home.”
“I’ll take you home, and to work.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You’re not going walking around North Broad Street alone at midnight.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Listen to him, Margaret,” Matt said.
“Oh, God!” she said in resignation.
Charley got off the bar stool.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“We’ll have to get together real soon, Margaret, and do this again,” Matt said.
“You can go to hell too,” Margaret said, but she touched his arm before she left.
Matt watched as the two of them walked across the room, and then signaled for another drink.
He did not have a date. But when Charley had called, he had realized that he did not want to sit in a bar somewhere and watch television with Charley.
What he wanted to do was get laid. He had been doing very poorly in that department lately. If he was with Charley, getting laid was, now that Charley had found Margaret, out of the question. Charley was a very moral person.
The trouble, he thought, as he watched the bartender take a bill and make change, is that men want to get laid and women want a relationship. Since I don’t want a relationship, consequently, I’m not getting laid very much.
As he took his first sip of the fresh drink, he considered the possibility of hanging around the FOP and seeing what developed. There were sometimes unattached women around the bar. Some of them had a connection with either the police or the court establishment, clerks, secretaries, girls like that. And some were police groupies, who liked to hang around with cops.
Rumor had it that the latter group screwed like minks. The trouble there was the groupies, so to speak, had their groupies, cops who liked to hang around with girls who screwed like minks.
The demand for their services, Matt decided, overwhelmed the supply. If I try to move in on what looks to be someone else’s sure thing for the night, I’m liable to get knocked on my ass.
And the others, the secretaries and the clerks, the nice girls, some of whom seemed to have been looking at me with what could be interest, were, like the vast majority of their sisters, not looking to get laid, but rather for a relationship.
Back to square one.
And if I have another of these, I am very likely to forget this calm, logical, most importantly sober analysis of the situation and wind up either in a relationship, or engaged in an altercation with a brother officer in the parking lot, or, more likely, right here on the dance floor, which altercation, no matter who the victor, would be difficult to explain when, inevitably, Staff Inspector P. Wohl heard about it.
He finished his drink, picked up his change, and walked across the room to the stairs leading up to the street.
Was that really invitation in that well-stacked redhead’s eyes or has my imagination been inflamed by this near-terminal case of lakanookie?
He got in the Porsche and drove home. There were, he noticed when he drove in the underground beneath the building that housed both the Delaware Valley Cancer Society and Chez Payne, far more cars in it than there normally were at this hour of the night. Ordinarily, it was just about deserted.
Parking spaces twenty-nine and thirty, which happened to be closest to the elevator, had been reserved by the mana
gement for the occupant of the top-floor apartment. The management had been instructed to do so by the owner, less as a courtesy to his son, who occupied the top-floor apartment, than, the son had come to understand, because a second parking spot was convenient when the owner’s wife or other members of the family had some need to park around Rittenhouse Square.
Tonight, a Cadillac Fleetwood sedan was parked in parking space twenty-nine, its right side overflowing into what looked like half of parking space thirty. The Payne family owned a Cadillac Fleetwood, but this wasn’t it.
Matt managed to squeeze the Porsche 911 into what was left of parking space thirty. But when he had done so, there was not room enough between him and the Cadillac to open the Porsche’s driver’s side door. It was necessary for him to exit by the passenger side door, which, in a Porsche 911, is a squirming feat worthy of Houdini.
He got on the elevator and rode it to the third floor and got off. The narrow corridor between the elevator and the stairs to his apartment was crowded with people.
A woman he could never remember having seen before in his life rushed over to him, stuck something to his lapel, cried, “Oh, I’m so glad you could come!” and handed him a glass of champagne.
“Thank you,” Matt said. The champagne glass, he noticed, was plastic.
“We’re circulating downward tonight,” the woman said.
“Are we?”
“Yes, isn’t that clever?”
“Mind-boggling,” Matt replied.
The woman walked away.
Nice ass for an old woman; I wonder if there’s anybody here under, say, thirty?
“Hello, Mr. Payne.”
It was one of the Holmes Security rent-a-cops. Matt knew he was a retired police sergeant, and it made him a little uncomfortable to be called “Mr.” by a sergeant.
“I bet you know what’s going on here,” Matt said, smiling at him.
The retired cop chuckled. “I saw the look on your face. This is a party for the people who worked on the Cancer Society Ball.”
“I have no idea what that means, but thanks anyway.”
“You know, the ones who sold tickets, did all the work. And, of course, gave money.”
“Oh,” Matt said.
He saw a very pretty face, surrounded by blond hair in a pageboy. She was looking at him with unabashed curiosity. All he could see was the head and shoulders. The lady was on her way down the narrow stairway to the second floor.
Oh, that’s what she meant by “circulating downward.”
“I just came from the FOP,” Matt said. “I wondered where everybody had come from.”
“This is better than the FOP,” the Holmes man said. “Here the booze is free. There’s a bar in the lobby.”
“But I don’t belong.”
“They don’t know that. That lady gave you a badge, and you got by me. I keep the riffraff out.”
The pretty face in the blond pageboy was no longer in sight.
“Well, maybe I should do my part for the noble cause,” Matt said.
You’re wasting your time. But on the other hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The blonde was not on the second floor. He went down to the lobby and saw the bar.
What I will do is get a drink, and then go upstairs.
There was a small wait in line, and then he found himself facing the bartender.
“Scotch, please. Water.”
“Any preference?”
Matt looked and saw that whatever else it did, the Opera Ball Club or whatever the hell it was really served fine booze.
“Famous Grouse, please. Easy on the water.”
He became aware, in less time than it takes to tell, first of an exotic perfume, then of an expanse of white flesh that swelled with exquisite grace before disappearing beneath a delicate brassiere, and then of warm breath on his ear.
“I hope you won’t be offended by my saying so, but your gun is showing,” the voice behind the warm breath on his ear said in almost a whisper.
It was the blonde in the pageboy.
For the first time he noticed that she was wearing a hat.
If half an ounce of black silk and silk netting can be called a hat, he thought.
What the hell did she say about a gun? God, I bet she has nice teats!
“I beg your pardon?”
She smiled, and laughed softly, and tugged on his arm, pulling his head down.
“Your gun,” she said. “It’s showing.”
This time when he smelled her breath, he picked up the smell of alcohol. Gin, he thought. He looked down at his leg and saw that his trouser leg was hiked up, caught by the butt of the pistol in his ankle holster.
Shit!
When I had to climb out of the goddamn car because of that asshole in the Cadillac in both my parking places, that’s when it happened.
He squatted and rearranged his trouser leg.
“Thank you.”
“I don’t think anybody else noticed,” she said. “It was only because I was going downstairs that I saw it. You know what I mean?”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Could I ask you a question? Out of pure idle—there being not much else to think about around here—curiosity?”
“Sure?”
“How many of you are there here tonight?”
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
“How many do you see?”
“That’s why I’m asking,” she said, laughing. “I’m curious.”
Matt held up three fingers.
“Let’s start with the easy things. How many fingers?”
“Three, wise guy,” she said. “And I only see one of you. That’s why I’m asking how many others there are of you. Just out of idle curiosity.”
“As far as I know, I am the only one like me here tonight.”
“The only one in regular clothes, you mean.”
“What?”
“I mean not counting him,” she said, pointing to a Holmes Security man taking invitations by the door, “and the one I saw you talking to upstairs.”
“Oh. I’m not a rent-a-cop. I had no idea what you were talking about.”
“Then what are you doing walking around with a gun strapped to your leg? Your ankle?”
“I’m a cop.”
“Are you really?”
He nodded.
“A detective, you mean? There are police here, too, in addition to—what did you say, the rent-a-cops?”
“No. Not a detective. A cop. Off duty.”
“You’re pulling my leg. Aren’t you?”
“Boy Scout’s honor,” Matt said, holding up three fingers.
“And you’re active in, a sponsor, of the Cancer Society Ball?”
“Regretfully, no.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“You mean, here?” Matt said, and nodded his head to take in the lobby.
“Yes.”
“I got off the elevator and a lady told me she was so glad I could come, pinned this thing on me, and handed me a glass of champagne.”
She laughed and took his arm, which caused contact between his elbow and her bosom.
“All right, wise guy,” she said. “What were you doing getting off the elevator?”
“I live here,” Matt said.
“You live here?”
He nodded. “In what Charles Dickens would call the ‘garret.’”
She let go of his arm and stepped in front of him and looked at him intently.
“And your name is Matt—Matthew—Payne, right?”
“Guilty,” Matt said. “You have the advantage, mademoiselle, on me.”
“Don’t go away,” she said, and then asked. “What is that?”
“Famous Grouse.”
He watched as she went to the bar and returned with another drink for him, and what, to judge by the gin on her breath, was a martini on the rocks.
She handed him the Scotch and took a swallow of her martini.<
br />
“I needed that,” she said. “The way they were talking about you—‘Poor Patricia’s Boy’—I thought you’d have acne and wear short pants.”
“Who was talking about me?”
“It was the only interesting conversation I heard here tonight. You’ll never guess who lives upstairs: Poor Patricia Payne’s Boy, they sent him to UP and he paid them back by joining the cops right after he graduated. He’s the one who shot the serial rapist in the head.”
“Oh.”
“And it’s madam, not mademoiselle, by the way. I’m sort of married.”
“What does ‘sort of married’ mean?”
“Among other things, that he’s not here tonight,” she said. “Can we let it go at that?”
“Sure.”
“Did you really?”
“Did I really what?”
“Shoot that man in the head?”
“Jesus!”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, and took another sip of her martini. “Is that the gun you did it with?”
“Does it matter?”
“Answer the question.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Can we change the subject to something more pleasant, like cancer, for example?”
“So you live upstairs, do you? In what Charles Dickens would call the ‘garret’?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you going to ask me if I want to go to your apartment and look at your etchings, Matthew Payne?”
“I don’t have any etchings,” he said.
“I’ll settle for a look at your gun,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me,” she said. “You show me what I want to see, and I will show you what you—judging by the way you’ve been looking down my front—want to see.”
“Jesus!”
“Actually, it’s Helene,” she said, and took his hand. “Deal?”
“If you’re serious,” he said. “The elevator is over there.”
“With a little bit of luck, there will be no one on it but you and me,” Helene said. “Do you have some gin, or should I bring this with me?”
“I have gin,” he said.
She put her glass down, put her hand under his arm, and steered him to the elevator.
When it stopped at the lobby floor, the tiny elevator already held four people, but they squeezed on anyway. Matt was aware of the pressure of her breasts on his back, and was quite sure that it was intentional.
The Witness Page 15
