Special Operations

by W. E. B Griffin

  “For what, Peter?” Washington said, and walked out of his office.

  Wohl felt a pang of resentment that Washington was going home. So long as Elizabeth J. Woodham, white female, aged thirty-three, of 300 East Mermaid Lane in Roxborough, was missing and presumed to have been abducted by a known sexual offender, it seemed logical that they should be doing something to find her, to get her back alive.

  And then he realized that was unfair. If Jason Washington could think of anything else that could be done, he would be doing it.

  There was nothing to be done, except wait to see what happened.

  And then Wohl thought of something, and reached for the telephone book.

  FOURTEEN

  The apartment under the eaves of what was now the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building was an afterthought, conceived after most of the building had been renovated.

  C. Kenneth Warble, A.I.A, the architect, had met with Brewster C. Payne II of Rittenhouse Properties over luncheon at the Union League on South Broad Street to bring him up to date on the project’s progress, and also to explain why a few little things—in particular the installation of an elevator—were going a little over budget.

  Almost incidentally, C. Kenneth Warble had mentioned that he felt a little bad, vis-à-vis space utilization, about the “garret space,” which on his plans, he had appropriated to “storage.”

  “I was there just before I came here, Brewster,” he said. “It’s a shame.”

  “Why a shame?”

  “You’ve heard the story about the man with thinning hair who said he had too much hair to shave, and too little to comb? It’s something like that. The garret space is really unsuitable for an apartment, a decent apartment—by which I mean expensive—and too nice for storage.”

  “Why unsuitable?”

  “Well, the ceilings are very low, with no way to raise them, for one thing; by the time I put a kitchen in there, and a bath, which it would obviously have to have, there wouldn’t be much room left. A small bedroom, and, I’ve been thinking, a rather nice, if long and narrow living room, with those nice dormer windows overlooking Rittenhouse Square, would be possible.”

  “But you think it could be rented?”

  “If you could find a short bachelor,” Warble said.

  “That bad?” Brewster Payne chuckled.

  “Not really. The ceilings are seven foot nine; three inches shorter than the Code now calls for. But we could get around that because it’s a historical renovation.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Then, there’s the question of access,” Warble said, having just decided that if he was going to turn the garret into an apartment, it would be Brewster C. Payne’s wish, rather than his own recommendation. “I’d have to provide some means for the short bachelor to get from the third-floor landing, which is as high as the elevator goes, to the apartment, and I’d have to put in some more soundproofing around the elevator motors—which are in the garret, you see, taking up space.”

  “How much are we talking about?” Payne repeated.

  “The flooring up there is original,” Warble went on. “Heart pine, fifteen-eighteen-inch random planks. That would refinish nicely, and could be done with this new urethane varnish, which is really incredibly tough.”

  “How much, Kenneth?” Payne had asked, mildly annoyed.

  “For twelve, fifteen thousand, I could turn it into something really rather nice,” Warble said. “You think that would be the way to go?”

  “How much could we rent it for?”

  “You could probably get three-fifty, four hundred a month for it,” Warble said. “There are a lot of people who would be willing to pay for the privilege of being able to drop casually into conversation that they live on Rittenhouse Square.”

  “I see a number of well-dressed short men walking around town,” Brewster C. Payne II said, after a moment. “Statistically, a number of them are bound to be bachelors. Go ahead, Kenneth.”

  Rental of the apartment had been turned over to a realtor, with final approval of the tenant assumed by Mrs. Irene Craig. There had been a number of applicants, male and female, whom Irene Craig had rejected. The sensitivities of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society had to be considered, and while Irene Craig felt sure they were as broad-minded as anybody, she didn’t feel they would take kindly to sharing the building with gentlemen of exquisite grace, or with ladies who were rather vague about their place of employment and who she suspected were practitioners of the oldest profession.

  It was, she decided, in Brewster C. Payne II’s best interests to wait until the ideal tenant—in Irene’s mind’s eye, a sixtyish widow who worked in the Franklin Institute—came along. And she waited.

  And then Matt Payne had come along, needing a residence inside the city limits to meet a civil service regulation, and about to be evicted from his fraternity house. She called the Director of Administration at the Cancer Society and told him that the apartment had been rented, and that, as he had been previously informed, the two parking spaces in the garage behind the building, which they had until now been permitted to use temporarily, would no longer be available to them.

  She assured him that the new tenant was a gentleman whose presence in the building would hardly be noticed, and devoutly hoped that would be the case.

  Air conditioning had also been an afterthought, or more accurately an after-afterthought. Not only was their insufficient capacity in the main unit already installed, but there was no room to install the duct work that would have been necessary. Two 2.5-ton window units had been installed, one through the side wall, the second in the bedroom in the rear.

  The wave of hot muggy air that greeted Matt Payne when he trotted up the narrow stairway from the third floor and unlocked his door told him that he had forgotten to leave either unit on when he had last been home.

  He put the carton of requisition forms on the desk in the living room and quickly turned both units on high. The desk, like the IBM typewriter sitting on it, had been “surplus” to the needs of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester. With a great deal of difficulty, four burly movers had been able to maneuver the heavy mahogany desk up the narrow stairs from the third floor, but, short of tearing down a wall, there had been no chance of getting it into the bedroom, as originally planned.

  He then stripped off his clothes and took a shower. Despite the valiant efforts of the air conditioners, the apartment was still hot when he had toweled himself dry. If he got dressed now, he would be sweaty again. Officer Charley McFadden had told him, in response to Matt’s question as to how he should dress while they sought to locate Mr. Walton Williams, “Nice. Like you are now. He’s an arty fag, not the leather and chains kind.”

  Matt then did what seemed at the moment to be entirely logical. He went into the living room in his birthday suit, sat down behind the IBM typewriter in that condition, and started typing up the forms.

  He had been at it for just over an hour when his concentration was distracted by a soft two-toned bonging noise that he recognized only after a moment as his doorbell.

  He decided it was his father, who not only had a key to the downstairs, but was a gentleman, who would sound the doorbell rather than just let himself in.

  He trotted naked to the door and pulled it open.

  It was not his father. It was Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, his big sister.

  “Jesus Christ, Amy! Wait till I get my goddamned pants on.”

  “I really hope I’m interrupting something,” Amy said as she entered the apartment. She smirked at the sight of her naked brother trotting into his bedroom and then looked around.

  Amy Payne was twenty-seven, petite and intense, a wholesome but not quite pretty woman who looked a good deal like her father. She was in fact not related to Matt except in the law. Her mother had been killed in an automobile accident. Six months later, her father had married Matt’s widowed mother, and Brewster
Payne had subsequently adopted Matthew Mark Moffitt, her infant son. Patricia Moffitt Payne and Matt had been around as far back as Amy could remember.

  In Amy’s mind, Patricia Moffitt Payne was her mother, and Matt her little brother.

  Matt returned to the living room bare-chested and zipping up a pair of khaki pants.

  “How’d you get inside?” he asked.

  “Dad gave me a key so that I could use the garage,” she said. “It also opens the door downstairs, as I just found out.”

  “Not to the apartment?” he challenged.

  “No, not to the apartment,” Amy said.

  “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?” Matt asked. “You want a beer or a Coke or something?”

  “I want to talk to you, Matt.”

  “Why does that cause me to think I’m not going to like this? The tone of your voice, maybe?”

  “I don’t care if you like what I have to say or not,” she said. “But you’re going to listen to me.”

  “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  He looked at the desk, and then at the clock, and then decided he had typed the last form he was going to have to type tonight, and he could thus have a beer.

  He walked to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Heineken. He held it up.

  “You want one of these?”

  “I don’t suppose you would have any white wine in there?”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said, and took a bottle from the refrigerator door.

  “How long has that been in there, I wonder?” she asked.

  “You want it or not?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Please.”

  He took a stemmed glass from a cupboard over the sink, filled it nearly full with wine, and handed it to her.

  “Make this quick, whatever it is,” he said. “I have to work tonight, and between now and nine, I’ve got to grab a sandwich or something.”

  She didn’t respond to that. Instead she raised her glass toward the mantelpiece of the fireplace, which showed evidence of having recently been bricked in.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “Your temple of the phallic symbol?”

  “What?”

  “Firearms are a substitute phallus,” she said.

  He saw that she was referring to his pistols, both of which he had placed on the wooden mantelpiece.

  “Only for people with performance problems,” Matt snorted. “I don’t have that kind of problem. Not only did I take Psychology 101, too, Amy, but I stayed awake through the parts you missed.”

  “That’s why you have two of them, right?” she replied. “I hope they’re not loaded.”

  “One of them is,” he said. “Leave them alone.”

  “Why two?”

  “I bought the little one today; it’s easier to conceal,” he said. “Is that the purpose of your uninvited visit, to lay some of your psychiatric bullshit on me?”

  She turned to face him.

  “I had lunch with Mother today,” she said. “She worries me.”

  “What’s the matter with Mother?” he asked, concern coming quickly into his voice.

  “Why you are, of course,” she said. “Don’t tell me that hasn’t run through your mind.”

  “Oh, not that again!”

  “Yes, that again,” she said. “And she has every reason to feel that way. She’s had a husband killed, and a brother-in-law, and she’d be a fool if she closed her mind to the possibility that could happen to a son, too.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “Of course not,” Amy said. “Mother’s not the type to whine.”

  “We have, I seem to recall,” Matt said, “been over this before. My position, I seem to recall, was that I had—there was a much greater chance of my getting myself blown away if I had made it into the Marines. I didn’t hear any complaints, I seem to recall, from you about my going in the Marines.”

  “You had no choice about that,” she said. “You do about being a policeman.”

  “Oh, shit!” he said, disgustedly. “When you get a real complaint about me from Mother, then come to see me, Amy. In the meantime, butt out.”

  “You refuse to see, don’t you, that this entire insane notion of yours to be a policeman is nothing more than an attempt to overcome the psychological castration you underwent when you failed the Marine physical.”

  “I seem to recall your saying something like that, before, Dr. Strangelove.”

  “Well, I don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that your being a policeman is tearing Mother up!”

  “But your being a shrink makes it easier, right?”

  The telephone rang. Matt picked it up.

  “Dr. Payne’s Looney-Bin, Matt the Castrated speaking.”

  “Peter Wohl, Matt,” his caller identified himself.

  Oh, shit! Those two bastards in the highway RPC sure didn’t lose any time squealing on me!

  And, oh, Jesus, what I just said!

  “Yes, sir?”

  Amy looked at him curiously. The phrase “yes, sir” was not ordinarily in his vocabulary.

  “That was an interesting way to answer your phone,” Peter Wohl said.

  “Sir,” Matt said, lamely. “My sister is here. We were having a little argument.”

  “Actually, that’s what I called you about. You did mean your sister the psychiatrist?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jason Washington was just in to see me. He didn’t turn up anything useful interviewing Miss Flannery. I’m sort of clutching at straws. In other words, I was hoping that your offer to talk to your sister was valid.”

  “Yes, sir, of course. I’m sure she’d be happy to speak with you.”

  “Who is that?” Amy asked in a loud whisper. Matt held up his hand to silence her, which had the exact opposite reaction. “Who is that?” Amy repeated, louder this time.

  “I’m talking about now, Matt,” Wohl said.

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said. “Now would be fine.”

  “I suppose you’ve eaten?”

  “Sir?”

  “I asked, have you had dinner?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, then, why don’t I pick you up, and we’ll get a little something to eat, and I can speak with her. Would that be too much of an imposition on such short notice?”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “You live in the 3800 block of Walnut, right?”

  “No, sir. I’ve moved. I’m now on Rittenhouse Square, South, in the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building—”

  “I know where it is.”

  “In the attic, sir. Ring the button that says ‘Superintendent’ in the lobby.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Wohl said. “Thank you.”

  The phone went dead.

  “What was all that about? Who were you talking to?”

  “That was my boss,” Matt said. “He wants to talk to you. I told him about you.”

  “Tell him to call the office and make an appointment,” Amy snapped. “My God, you’ve got your nerve, Matt!”

  “It’s important,” Matt said.

  “Maybe it is to you, Dick Tracy, to polish the boss’s apple, but it’s not to me. The nerve! I don’t believe that you really thought I would go along with this!”

  “A lunatic who has already raped, so to speak, a half dozen women, grabbed another one last night, forced her into his van at knifepoint, and hasn’t been seen since,” Matt said, evenly. “Inspector Wohl thinks you might be able to provide a profile of this splendid fellow, and that might possibly help us to find him.”

  “Doesn’t the Police Department have its own psychologists, psychiatrists?” Amy asked.

  “I’m sure they do,” Matt said. “But he wants to talk to you. Please, Amy.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged.

  “Why did you say, ‘raped, so to speak’?”

  “Because, so far,” Matt said, as evenly, “there has been no vaginal or
anal penetration, and the forced fellatio has not resulted in ejaculation.”

  “You should hear yourself,” she said, softly. “How cold-blooded and clinical you sound. Oh, Matt!”

  It was, she realized, a wail of anguish at the loss of her little brother’s innocence.

  “Under these circumstances,” she added, as cold-bloodedly as she could manage, “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  “Not really,” Matt said. “He’s going to take us to dinner.”

  “I can’t go anywhere looking like this,” she said. “I came here right from the hospital.”

  “Well, then, we’ll go someplace where you won’t look out of place,” Matt said.

  “The bathroom, presumably, is in there?” Amy asked, pointing toward his bedroom.

  “Vanity, thy name is woman,” Matt quoted sonorously.

  “Screw you, Matt,” Dr. Amelia Alice Payne replied.

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl was not what Amy Payne expected. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had expected—maybe a slightly younger version of Matt’s “Uncle Denny” Coughlin—but she had not expected the pleasant, well-dressed young man (she guessed that he was in his early thirties) who came through Matt’s apartment door.

  “Amy,” Matt said, “this is Inspector Wohl. Amy Payne, M.D.”

  Wohl smiled at her.

  “Doctor, I very much appreciate your agreeing to talk to me like this,” he said. “I realize what an imposition it is.”

  “Not at all,” Amy said, and hearing her voice was furious with herself; she had practically gushed.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to do this,” Wohl said. “What I would like you to do, if you would be so kind, would be to read the file we have on this man, and then tell me what kind of man he is.”

  “I understand,” Amy said.

  He gave her a look she understood in a moment was surprise, even annoyance, that she had interrupted him.

  He smiled.

  “But that isn’t really the sort of thing you want to talk about over dinner. And dinner is certainly necessary. Then there’s Matt.”

  “Sir?” Matt said.

  There he goes again with that “Sir” business, Amy thought. Who does he think this cop is, anyway?