“Payne, take my car again—” Wohl began and then stopped.
“Yes, sir?”
“How long did it take you to get a car out of the motor pool?”
“Just a couple of minutes,” Payne said. “They have a form; you have to inspect the car for damage and then sign for it.”
“Okay, let’s go get another one,” Wohl said, making up his mind.
As they walked to the car, Payne asked, “Would you like me to drive, sir?”
Wohl considered the question.
I liked my first ride downtown; it gave me a chance to look around. All I usually see is the stoplight of the car ahead of me.
“Please,” he said, and handed Payne the keys.
Three blocks away, Payne looked over at Wohl and said, “I don’t know the ground rules, sir. Am I expected to keep the speed limit?”
“Christ,” Wohl replied, annoyed, and then looked at Payne. It was an honest question, he decided, and deserves an honest answer.
“If you mean, can you drive like the hammers of hell, no. But on the other hand…use your judgment, Payne.” And then he added, “That’s all police work really is, Payne, the exercise of good judgment.”
“Yes, sir,” Payne said.
Well, didn’t you sound like Socrates, Jr., Peter Wohl?
But then he plunged on: “It’s not like you might think it is. Brilliant detective work and flashing lights. Right now every cop in Philadelphia, and in the area, is looking for a woman that some lunatic with sexual problems forced into the back of his van at the point of a knife. Since we don’t have a good description of the van, or the tag number—and, even if we had the manpower, and we don’t—we can’t stop every van and look inside. That’s unlawful search. So we’re just waiting for something to happen. I don’t like to consider what I think will happen.”
“My sister says rapists are more interested in dominating their victims, rather than in sexual gratification,” Payne said.
“Your sister, no doubt,” Wohl said, sarcastically, “is an expert on rape and rapists?”
“She’s a psychiatrist,” Payne said. “I don’t know how much of an expert she is. As opposed to how much of an expert she thinks she is.”
Wohl chuckled. “Well, maybe I should talk to her. I need all the help I can get.”
“She’d love that,” Payne said. “She would thereafter be insufferably smug, having been consulted by the cops, but if you mean it, I could easily set it up.”
“Let’s put it on the back burner,” Wohl said. “What we’re going to do now…Chief Coughlin gave me the authority to pick anybody I want for Special Operations. I just stole two of the best detectives from Homicide, which has grievously annoyed the head of Homicide, Chief Lowenstein, and at least one of the two detectives. I haven’t talked to the other one yet. Anyway, after we pick up the car, we’re going to go to the Roundhouse and pick up a detective named Jason Washington, Jr. I think he’s the best detective in Homicide. The car we’re going to pick up is for him. I want him to interview all the previous victims. He’s damned good at that. Maybe he can get something out of them the other guys missed. Maybe we can find the rapist that way. And maybe Jason Washington would like to talk to your sister.”
Payne didn’t reply.
Thirty-five minutes later, Matt Payne, at the wheel of a light green Ford LTD, followed Peter Wohl’s light tan LTD into the parking area behind the Roundhouse. Wohl pulled to the curb by the rear entrance and got out.
“Stay in the car,” he said. “I’ll be right out.”
He went inside the building, waited in line behind the civilian who was talking to the Corporal behind the shatterproof glass, and then showed his identification.
“Oh, hell, Inspector,” the Corporal said, “I know you.”
“Thank you,” Peter said.
That makes it fourteen-seven, Peter thought.
When the solenoid buzzed, he pushed the door open and entered the lobby.
Two men sitting on chairs stood up. One of them was very large, heavy, and dressed very well, looking more like a successful businessman than a cop.
Or a colored undertaker, Peter thought, wondering if that made him racist; and then decided it didn’t. Jason Washington was more than colored, he was jet black; and in his expensive, well-tailored suit, he looked like an undertaker.
The other man was white, slight, and looked tired and worn. His clothes were mussed and looked as if they had come, a long time ago, from the bargain basement at Sears. His name was Anthony C. “Tony” Harris, and he was, in Wohl’s judgment, the second sharpest detective in Homicide.
Neither smiled when Wohl walked over to them.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Wohl said. “I stopped by to get you a car.”
“Inspector,” Tony Harris said, “before this goes too far, can we talk about it?”
“Have either of you had lunch?” Peter asked.
Both shook their heads no.
“Neither have I,” Peter said. “So, yes, Tony, we can talk about it, over lunch. I’ll even buy.”
“I’d appreciate that, Inspector,” Tony Harris said.
“Where would you like to eat? The Melrose Diner okay?”
There was no response from either of them.
“Jason, I’m not sure the kid driving your car knows where the Melrose is,” Wohl said. “You want to ride with him and show him? I’ll take Tony with me.”
“Where’s the car?” Jason Washington asked. It was the first time he had opened his mouth.
“Behind mine,” Wohl said, “at the curb.”
Washington marched out of the lobby.
He’s really pissed, Peter thought, and wondered again if he was doing the right thing. And then he felt a wave of anger. Fuck him! He’s a cop. Cops do what they’re told. Nobody asked me if I wanted this goddamned job, either!
“Tony,” Wohl said, “aside from telling you that you can make as much overtime in Special Operations as you’ve been making in Homicide, what we’re going to talk about at lunch is how I want you to do this job, not whether or not you like it.”
Tony Harris met his eyes, looked as if he was going to reply, but didn’t; then he walked toward the door from the lobby.
TWELVE
Officer Matt Payne had more than a little difficulty complying with Staff Inspector Peter Wohl’s order to “Call the office, Payne; tell them where we are. And you better ask if anything’s new about the abduction.”
It was, he thought, as he fished the thick Philadelphia telephone book from under the pay phone in the foyer of the Melrose Diner, the first time he had ever called the Police Department.
And the phone book was not much help.
The major listing under POLICE was the POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE. A dozen addresses and numbers were furnished, none of which had anything to do with what he wanted.
Under POLICE DEPARTMENT were listings to
neither of which were what he was looking for.
A little farther down the listing was
Matt tried the OTHER POLICE HELP number first.
“Police Emergency,” a male voice responded on the fifth ring. “May I help you?”
“Sorry,” Matt said, “wrong number,” and hung up. He chuckled and said, “Shit,” and put his finger back on the listing. By ADMIN OFCS 7&RACE they obviously meant the Roundhouse. But the number listed was the same as the one listed for the POLICE ACADEMY, which was to hell and gone the other side of town.
He put another dime in the slot and dialed 686–1776.
“City of Philadelphia,” a bored female replied on the ninth ring.
“May I speak to the Special Operations Division of the Police Department, please.”
“What?”
“Special Operations, please, in the Police Department.”
“One moment, please,” the woman replied, and Matt exhaled in relief.
But there was no ringing sound, and after a long pause, the woman came back on the line. �
��I have no such listing, sir,” she said, and the line went dead.
He fumbled through his change for another dime and couldn’t find one. But he had a quarter and dropped it in the slot and dialed 686–1776 again.
“City of Philadelphia,” another bored female answered on the eleventh ring.
“Highway Patrol Headquarters, please,” Matt said.
“Is this an emergency, sir?”
“No, it’s not.”
“One moment, please.”
Now the phone returned a busy signal.
“That number is busy,” the operator said. “Would you care to hold?”
“Please.”
“What?”
“I’ll hold.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, and the line went dead.
He dropped his last quarter in the slot, dialed 686–1776 again, and asked a third woman with a bored voice for Highway Patrol.
“Special Operations, Sergeant Frizell.”
“This is Officer Payne, Sergeant,” Matt said. That was, he thought, the first time he had ever referred to himself as “Officer Payne.” It had, he thought, a rather nice ring to it.
“You a volunteer, Payne?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, are you a volunteer?”
“No, I’m not,” Matt said.
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“Inspector Wohl told me to check in,” Matt said. “We’re at the Melrose Diner.”
“Oh, you’re his driver. Sorry, I didn’t catch the name.”
“The number here is 670–5656,” Matt said.
“Got it. He say when he’s coming in?”
“No. But he said to ask if anything has happened with the abducted woman.”
“Not a peep.”
“Thank you,” Matt said. “Good-bye.”
“What?”
“I said good-bye.”
“Yeah,” Sergeant Frizell said, and the line went dead.
When he went into the dining room of the Melrose Diner, he looked around until he spotted them. They were in a corner banquette, and a waitress was delivering drinks.
“Anything?” Inspector Wohl asked him.
“No, sir.”
“Damn,” Wohl said. “What are you drinking?”
Drinking on duty, Matt saw, was not the absolute no-no he had been led to believe, from watching Dragnet and the other cop shows on television. Both Wohl and Washington had small glasses dark with whiskey in front of them, obviously something-on-the-rocks, and Harris had a taller glass of clear liquid with a slice of lime on the rim, probably a vodka tonic.
“Have you any ale?” Matt asked the waitress.
She recited a litany of the available beers and ales and Matt picked one.
“You going to eat, too?” the waitress asked. “I already got their orders.”
Matt took a menu, glanced at it quickly, and ordered a shrimp salad.
From the look—mixed curiosity and mild contempt—he got from Detective Washington, Matt surmised that both the ale and the shrimp salad had been the wrong things to order.
When the waitress left, Peter Wohl picked up his glass, and with mock solemnity said, “I would like to take this happy occasion to welcome you aboard, men.”
“Shit,” Jason Washington said, unsmiling.
“Jason, I need you,” Wohl said, seriously.
“Oh, I know why you did it,” Washington said. “But that doesn’t mean I agree that it was necessary, or that I have to like it.”
Wohl looked as if he had started to say something and then changed his mind.
“I told Tony in the Roundhouse lobby, Jason, that if it’s overtime you’re worried about, you can have as much as you want.”
“I should have drowned you when you were a sergeant in Homicide,” Washington said, matter-of-factly. “Inspector, you know what Homicide is.”
“Yeah, and I know you two guys are the best detectives in Homicide. Were the best two.”
“When he’s through shoveling the horseshit, Tony,” Washington said, “hand the shovel to me. It’s already up to my waist, and I don’t want to suffocate.”
Harris grunted.
“What you’re doing, Inspector, is covering your ass, and using Tony and me to do it.”
“Guilty, okay?” Wohl said. “Now can we get at it?”
“Now that the air, so to speak, is clear between us,” Washington said, “why not?”
“Special Operations has the Northwest Philadelphia rapist job,” Wohl said. “That came from the Commissioner, and I think he was following orders.”
Jason Washington’s eyebrows rose.
“This is the file,” Wohl said. “I borrowed it from Northwest Detectives.”
They were interrupted by the waitress, who set a bottle of ale and a glass in front of Matt, and then a shrimp cocktail in front of each of the others.
“I want it handled like a homicide,” Wohl said.
“It’s not a homicide,” Washington said. “Yet. Or is it?”
“Not yet,” Wohl said.
Tony Harris, who had been sitting slumped back in his chair, now leaned forward and pulled the manila folder from under Wohl’s hand. He laid it beside his plate, then picked up his seafood fork. He stabbed a shrimp, dipped it in the cocktail sauce, put it in his mouth, and started to read the file.
“Who had the job at Northwest Detectives?” Jason Washington asked.
“As they came up on the wheel,” Wohl said. “But, starting with the Flannery job—”
“That’s the one that’s missing?” Washington interrupted.
“The one before that. The one he turned loose naked with her hands tied behind her in Fairmount Park.”
Washington nodded his understanding, put a shrimp in his mouth, and waited for Wohl to continue.
“Dick Hemmings got the Flannery job on the wheel,” Wohl said. “Then Teddy Spanner gave him the whole job. When it became pretty certain what it was, one doer.”
“Dick Hemmings is a good cop,” Washington said. “What do you think we can do he hasn’t already done?”
Then he raised his whiskey glass, which Matt saw was now empty, over his head. When he had caught the waitress’s eye, he raised his other hand and made a circular motion, ordering another round.
Matt took another sip of his ale. He was doing his best to follow the conversation, which he found fascinating. He wondered what “the wheel” they were talking about was, but decided it would not to be wise to ask. Washington had already made it plain he held him in contempt; a further proof of ignorance would only make things worse.
“The one thing we need is a—two things. We need first a good description of the doer. Since we don’t have a description, we need a profile. I’ve been thinking of talking to a psychiatrist—”
“Save your time,” Tony Harris said. “I can tell you what a shrink will tell you. We’re dealing with a sicko here. He gets his rocks off humiliating women. He hates his mother. Maybe he was screwing his mother, or she kept bringing guys home and taking them to bed. Something. Anyway, he hates her, and is getting back at her by hitting on these women. No hookers, you notice. Nice little middle-class women. That’s what you’d get from a shrink.”
He closed the file and handed it across the table to Washington.
“Jason’s very good with people,” Wohl said. “I thought it would be a good idea if he reinterviewed all the victims.”
If Jason Washington heard Wohl, there was no sign. He was very carefully reading the file.
“I’ll lay you ten to one that when we finally catch this scumbag,” Tony Harris said, “it will come out that he’s been going to one of your shrinks, Inspector, and that one of those scumbags has been reading the papers and knows fucking well his seventy-five-dollar-an-hour patient is the guy who’s been doing this. But he won’t call us. Physician-patient confidentiality is fucking sacred. Particularly when the patient is coughing up seventy-five bucks an hour two, three times a week.
”
“I don’t know how far Hemmings, or anybody, has checked out sexual offenders,” Wohl said.
“I’ll start there,” Harris said. “These fuckers don’t just start out big. Somewhere there’s a record on him. Even if it’s for something like soliciting for prostitution.”
He said this as the waitress delivered the fresh round of drinks. She gave him a very strange look.
“I’m going to be in court most of this week and next,” Washington said, without looking up from the file any longer than it took to locate the fresh drink.
“I figured that would probably be the case,” Wohl said. “So why don’t you work the four-to-midnight shift? It is my professional judgment that the people you will be interviewing will be more readily available in the evening hours.”
Washington snorted, but there was a hint of a smile at his eyes and on his lips. He knew the reason Wohl had assigned him to the four-to-twelve shift had nothing to do with more readily available witnesses. It would make all the time he spent in court during the day overtime.
“I’m going to be in court a lot, too,” Tony Harris said. “That apply to me, too?”
“Since it is also my professional judgment that you can do whatever you plan to do during the evening hours better than during the day, sure,” Wohl said.
Peter Wohl had been in Homicide and knew that, because of the overtime pay, Homicide detectives were the best paid officers in the Police Department. There was no question in his mind that Washington and Harris were taking home as much money as a Chief Inspector. That was the major, but not the only, reason they were unhappy with their transfer to Special Operations; they thought it was going to cut their pay.
It posed, he realized, what Sergeant Frizell would term a “personnel motivation problem” for him: if they didn’t want to work for him, they didn’t have to. About the only weapon he had as a supervisor short of official disciplinary action—and both Washington and Harris were too smart to make themselves vulnerable to something like that—was to send his men back where they had come from. Which would not make either Washington or Harris at all unhappy.
Special Operations Page 19
