“Miss Peebles, before we go any further, how would you feel about my turning on a recording machine? It’s sometimes very helpful….”
“A recording machine?” she asked.
“A recording is often very helpful,” Payne said.
She looked at him strangely, then said, “If you think it would be helpful, of course.”
Payne tapped the switch of the tape recorder, under the coffee table, with the toe of his shoe.
“You say you were robbed?”
“I thought you said you were going to record this,” Martha Peebles said, almost a challenge.
“I am,” he said. “I just turned it on. The switch is under the table. The microphone is in that little box on the table.”
“Oh, really?” she said, looking first at the box and then under the coffee table. “How clever!”
“You were saying you were robbed?”
“You could have turned it on without asking, couldn’t you?” Martha Peebles said. “I would never have known.”
“That would have been unethical,” he said. “I would never do something like that.”
“But you could have, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I could have,” he said, realizing she had made him uncomfortable. “But you were telling me you were robbed. What happened?”
There was a brief tap at the door, and Edward F. Joiner, a slight, soft-spoken man in his middle twenties who was Irene Craig’s secretary, came in, carrying a silver coffee set. He smiled at Martha Peebles, and she returned it shyly, as he set the service on the table.
“I’ll pour, Ed,” Payne said. “Thank you.”
Martha Peebles took her coffee black, and did not care for a doughnut or other pastry.
“You were saying you were robbed?” Payne said.
“At home,” she said. “In Chestnut Hill.”
“How exactly did it happen? A burglar?”
“No, I’m quite sure it’s not a burglar,” she said. “I even think I know who did it.”
“Why don’t you start at the very beginning?” Payne said.
Martha Peebles told Brewster Payne that two weeks before, two weeks plus a day, her brother Stephen had brought home a young man he had met.
“A tall, rather good-looking young man,” she said. “His name was Walton Williams. Stephen said that he was studying theater at the University of Pennsylvania.”
“And is your brother interested in the theater?” Payne asked, carefully.
“I think rather more in young actors than in the theater, per se,” Martha Peebles said, matter-of-factly, with neither disapproval nor embarrassment in her voice.
“I see,” Payne said.
“Well, they stayed downstairs, in the recreation room, and I went to my room. And then, a little after midnight, I heard them saying good night on the portico, which is directly under my windows.”
“And you think there’s a chance this Williams chap is involved in the robbery?”
“There’s no question about it,” she said.
“How can you be sure?”
“I saw him,” she said.
“I’m afraid I’ve become lost somewhere along the way,” Payne said.
“Well, the next night, about half-past eight, I was having a bath when the doorbell rang. I ignored it—”
“Was there anyone else in the house? Your brother? Help?”
“We keep a couple,” she said. “But they leave about seven. And Stephen wasn’t there. He had gone to Paris that morning.”
“So you were alone in the house?”
“Yes, and since I wasn’t expecting anyone, I just ignored the bell.”
“I see. And then what happened?”
“I heard noises in my bedroom. The door opening, then the sound of drawers opening. So I got out of the tub, put a robe on, and opened the door a crack. And there was Walton Williams, at my dresser, going through my things.”
“What did you do then?” Payne asked. This is a very stupid young woman, he thought. She could have gotten herself in serious difficulty, killed, even, just walking in on a situation like that.
And then he changed “stupid” in his mind to “naive” and “inexperienced and overprotected.”
“I asked him just what he thought he was doing,” Martha Peebles said, “and he just looked at me for a moment, obviously surprised to find someone home, and then he ran out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house.”
“And you believe he stole something?” Payne asked.
“I know he stole things,” she said. “I know exactly what he stole from me. All my valuable pins and pendants, and all of Mother’s jewelry that was in the house.”
“And where was your mother when this was going on?” Payne asked.
This earned him a cold and dirty, almost outraged, look.
“Mother passed on in February,” she said. “I would have thought you would know that.”
“I beg your pardon,” Payne said. “I did not.”
“Most of her good things were in the bank, of course, but there were some very nice pieces at home. There was a jade necklace, jade set in gold, that she bought in Dakarta, and this Williams person got that. I know she paid ten thousand dollars for that; I had to cable her the money.”
“You called the police, of course?” Payne asked.
“Yes, and they came right away, and I gave them a description of Stephen’s friend, and an incomplete list, later completed, of everything that was missing. Mr. Foster took care of that for me.”
“Well, I’m glad the firm was able to be of some help,” Payne said. “Would you take offense if I offered a bit of advice?”
“I came here seeking advice,” Martha Peebles said.
“I don’t think anything like this will ever happen to you again in your lifetime,” Payne said. “But if it should, I really think you would be much better off not to challenge an intruder. Just hide yourself as well as you can, let him take what he wants, and leave. And then you call the police.”
“It’s already happened again,” she said, impatiently.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Last Sunday, Sunday a week ago, not yesterday. I had gone out to the Rose Tree Hunt for the buffet—”
“I was there,” Payne interrupted, “my wife and I. And my oldest son.”
“—and when I returned home,” Martha Peebles went on, oblivious to the interruption, “and stepped inside the door from the driveway, I heard sounds, footsteps, in the library. And then he must have heard me…. I’m convinced it was Stephen’s young man, but I didn’t actually see him, for he ran out the front door.”
“You didn’t confront him again?”
“No, I called the police from the telephone in the butler’s pantry.”
“And they came?”
“Right away,” she said. “And they searched the house, and they found where he had broken a pane of glass in the greenhouse to gain entrance, and I found out what was stolen this time. A Leica camera, Stephen’s—I don’t know why he didn’t take it to France, but he didn’t, I had seen it that very morning—and some accessory lenses for it, and Daddy’s binoculars…and some other things.”
“Miss Peebles,” Payne said. “The unpleasant fact is that you will probably never be able to recover the things that were stolen. But if Mr. Foster has been looking after your interests, I’m confident that your insurance will cover your loss.”
“I’m not concerned about a camera, Mr. Payne,” she said. “I’m concerned for my safety.”
“I really don’t think whoever has done this will return a third time, Miss Peebles,” Payne said. “But a few precautions—”
“He was back again last night,” she interrupted him. “That’s why I’m here now.”
“I didn’t know,” Payne said.
“This time he broke in the side door,” she said. “And cut himself when he was reaching through the pane he broke out; there was blood on the floor. This time he stole a bro
nze, a rather good Egyptian bronze Daddy had bought in Cairo as a young man. Small piece, about eight inches tall. And some other, personal items.”
“Such as?”
Her face flushed.
“He went through my dresser,” she said, softly, embarrassed, “and stole a half dozen items of underclothing.”
“I see,” Payne said.
“Specifically,” she said, apparently having overcome her discomfiture, “he made off with all my black undies, brassieres, and panties.”
“Just the black?” Payne asked, furious with himself for wanting to smile. What this young woman was telling him was not only of great importance to her, but very likely was symptomatic of a very dangerous situation. While a perverse corner of his brain was amused by the notion of an “actor,” almost certainly a young gentleman of exquisite grace, making off with this proper young woman’s black underwear, it wasn’t funny at all.
“Just the black,” she said.
“Well, the first thing I think you might consider is the installation of a security system—”
“We’ve had Acme Security since Daddy built the house,” she said. “Until now, I thought it provided a measure of security. Their damned alarm system doesn’t seem to work at all.”
“May I suggest that you ask them to come and check it out?” Payne said.
“I’ve already done that,” she said. “They say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. What I think is that people like Stephen’s young man know about things like that, and know how to turn them off, render them useless, and Acme just doesn’t want to admit that’s possible.”
She’s probably right.
“Another possibility, for the immediate future,” Payne said, “until the police can run this Williams chap to ground, is to move, temporarily, into a hotel.”
“I have no intention of having someone like that drive me from my home,” Martha Peebles said, firmly. “What I had hoped to hear from Mr. Foster, Mr. Payne, is that he has some influence with the police, and could prevail upon them to provide me with more protection than they so far have.”
“I frankly don’t know what influence Mr. Foster has with the police. Miss Peebles—”
“Well, that’s certainly a disappointment,” she interrupted him.
“But as I was about to say, Colonel Mawson, a senior partner of the firm, is a close personal friend of Police Commissioner Czernick.”
“Well, then, may I see him please?”
“That won’t be necessary, Miss Peebles. As soon as he walks through the door, I’ll bring this to his attention.”
“Where is he now?”
“Actually,” Payne said, “he’s at the Bellevue-Stratford. With a chap called Bull Bolinski.”
“The Packers’ Bull Bolinski?” Miss Peebles asked, brightening visibly.
“Yes, the Packers’ Bull Bolinski.”
“Oh, I almost cried when he announced his retirement,” Martha Peebles said.
“He’s now an attorney, you know.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” she said. “And I’d forgotten this has all been recorded, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, it has. And I’ll have it transcribed immediately.”
Martha Peebles stood up and offered Brewster C. Payne II her hand.
“I can’t tell you how much better I feel, Mr. Payne, after having spoken to you. And thank you for seeing me without an appointment.”
“That was my pleasure,” Payne said. “Anytime you want to see me, Miss Peebles, my door is always open. But I wish you would consider checking into a hotel for a few days….”
“I told you, I will not be run off by people like that,” she said, firmly. “Good morning, Mr. Payne.”
He walked with her to the door, then to the elevator, and saw her on it.
When he walked back into his office, Irene Craig followed him.
“What the devil is wrong with the cops?” she asked. “She gave them a description of this creep, even if that was a phony name.”
“Why do I suspect that you were, as a figure of speech, out there all the time with your ear to my keyhole?” he asked.
“You knew I would be monitoring that,” she said. “I also had Ed take it down on the stenotype machine. I should have a transcript before the colonel gets back.”
“Good girl!” he said.
“There are some women in my position who would take high umbrage at a sexist remark like that,” she said. “But I’ll swap compliments. You handled her beautifully.”
“Now may I go back to work, boss?” Payne said.
“Oh, I think the colonel can handle this from here,” she said, and walked out of his office.
Brewster Cortland Payne II returned to his brief.
FIVE
The eight men gathered in the conference room of the suite of third-floor offices in the Roundhouse assigned to the Police Commissioner of the City of Philadelphia chatted softly among themselves, talking about anything but business, waiting for the Commissioner to more or less formally open the meeting.
He did not do so until Deputy Commissioner for Administration Harold J. Wilson, a tall, thin, dignified man, entered the room, mumbled something about having been hung up in traffic, and sat down.
Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick then matter-of-factly thumped the table with his knuckles, and waited for the murmur of conversation to peter out.
“The mayor,” Commissioner Czernick said, evenly, even dryly, “does not want Mike Sabara to get Highway Patrol.”
Taddeus Czernick was fifty-seven years old, a tall, heavyset man with a thick head of silver hair. His smoothly shaven cheeks had a ruddy glow. He was just starting to jowl. He was wearing a stiffly starched shirt and a regimentally striped necktie with a dark blue, pin-striped, vested suit. He was a handsome, healthy, imposing man.
“He say why?” Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein asked.
“He said, ‘In uniform, Mike Sabara looks like a guard in a concentration camp,’” Czernick quoted.
Chief Inspector Lowenstein, a stocky, barrel-chested man of fifty-five, examined the half inch ash on his six-inch-long light green Villa de Cuba “Monarch” for a moment, then chuckled.
“He does,” Lowenstein said, “if you think about it, he does.”
“That’s hardly justification for not giving Sabara the Highway Patrol,” Deputy Commissioner Wilson said, somewhat prissily.
“You tell the dago that, Harry,” Lowenstein replied.
Deputy Commissioner Wilson glowered at Lowenstein, but didn’t reply. He had long ago learned that the best thing for him to say when he was angry was nothing.
And he realized that he was annoyed, on the edge of anger, now. He was annoyed that he had gotten hung up in traffic and had arrived at the meeting late. He prided himself on being punctual, and when, as he expected to do, he became Police Commissioner himself, he intended to instill in the entire department a more acute awareness of the importance of time, which he believed was essential to efficiency and discipline, than it had now.
He was annoyed that when he had walked into the meeting, the only seat remaining at the long conference table in the Commissioner’s Conference Room was beside Chief Inspector Lowenstein, which meant that he would have to inhale the noxious fumes from Lowenstein’s cigar for however long the meeting lasted.
He was annoyed at Chief Inspector Lowenstein’s reference to the mayor of the City of Philadelphia, the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, as “the dago,” and even more annoyed with Commissioner Czernick for not correcting him for doing so, and sharply, on the spot.
So far as Deputy Commissioner Wilson was concerned, it was totally irrelevant that Mayor Carlucci and Chief Lowenstein were lifelong friends, going back to their service as young patrolmen in the Highway Patrol; or that the mayor very often greeted Chief Lowenstein in similarly distasteful terms. (“How’s it going, Jew boy?”) The mayor was the mayor, and senior officials subordinate to him were obliged to pay him the respect approp
riate to his position.
Deputy Commissioner Wilson was also annoyed with the mayor. There was a chain-of-command structure in place, a standing operating procedure. When it became necessary to appoint a senior police officer to fill a specific position, the Deputy Commissioner for Administration, after considering the recommendations made to him by appropriate personnel, and after personally reviewing the records of the individuals involved, was charged with furnishing the Commissioner the names, numerically ranked, of the three best qualified officers for the position in question. Then, in consultation with the Deputy Commissioner for Administration, the Commissioner would make his choice.
Deputy Commissioner for Administration Wilson had not yet completed his review of the records of those eligible, and recommended for, appointment as Commanding Officer, Highway Patrol. Even granting that the mayor, as chief executive officer of the City of Philadelphia, might have the right to enter the process, voicing his opinion, doing so interfered with both the smooth administration of Police Department personnel policy, and was certain to affect morale adversely.
It had to do with Mayor Carlucci’s mind-set, Deputy Commissioner Wilson believed. It was not that the mayor thought of himself as a retired policeman. Mayor Carlucci thought of himself as a cop who happened to be mayor. And even worse than that, Mayor Carlucci, who had once been Captain Carlucci, Commanding Officer, Highway Patrol, thought of himself as a Highway Patrolman who also happened to be mayor.
The mayoral Cadillac limousine, in previous administrations chauffeured by a plainclothes police officer, was now driven by a uniformed Highway Patrol sergeant. It was equipped with shortwave radios tuned to the Highway Patrol and Detective bands, and the mayoral limousine was famous, or perhaps infamous, for rolling on calls the mayor found interesting.
Police Radio would, in Deputy Commissioner Wilson’s judgment, far too often announce that there was a robbery in progress, or officer needs assistance, or man with a gun, shots fired, only to have the second or third reply—sometimes the first—be “M-Mary One in on the shots fired,” from the mayoral Cadillac limousine, by then already racing down Lancaster Avenue or South Broad Street or the Schuylkill Expressway with the siren whooping and red lights flashing.
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