Special Operations

by W. E. B Griffin

  Two hamburgers generously dressed with fried and raw onions (Charley McFadden, not knowing Matt’s preference, had brought one of each) and two enormous foam containers of coffee, while they produced gas, did not keep Officer Matthew Payne awake on his post.

  Neither did half a dozen walks down the street and up the driveway of the Peebles residence. Neither did getting out of the car and waving his arms around and doing deep knee bends.

  At five minutes after eleven, while he was, for the tenth or fifteenth time, mentally composing the letter of resignation he would write in the morning, striving for both brevity and avoiding any suggestion that he would entertain any requests to reconsider, his head dropped forward and he fell asleep.

  Five minutes after that, he twisted in his sleep, and slid slowly down on the seat.

  Five minutes after that, as Officer McFadden had predicted, a senior supervisor did drive by the Peebles residence. He spotted the car, but paid only cursory attention to it, for he had other things on his mind.

  Captain David Pekach thought the odds were about twenty-to-one that he was about to make a complete fool of himself. He was imagining that the fingers of Miss Martha Peebles had lingered tenderly and perhaps even suggestively on his when he had damned near dropped the Ludwig Hamner Remington rolling-block Schuetzen, and it was preposterous to think that he really saw what he thought he saw in her eyes when she had seen him to the door.

  What he was going to do, he decided, as he turned into the Peebles driveway, was simply perform his duty, that given to him by Peter Wohl; to assure the lady that everything that could conceivably be done by the Philadelphia Police Department generally and the Highway Patrol, of which he was the commanding officer, specifically, to protect her property from the depredations of Walton Williams; and to apprehend Mr. Williams; was being done. His presence would be that proof.

  The odds are, he thought, that she went to bed long ago, anyway.

  But there was a light in the library, and the light over the entrance was on, so he went on the air and reported that Highway One was out of service at 606 Glengarry Lane, checking the Peebles residence.

  He walked up the stairs and had his finger out to push the doorbell when the door opened.

  “I saw you coming up the drive,” Martha Peebles said. “I wasn’t sure that you would come.”

  “Good evening,” David Pekach said, unable to choose between “Miss Peebles” and “Martha” and deciding quickly on neither one.

  “Please come in,” she said.

  She was wearing a dressing robe.

  Nothing sexy or suggestive or anything like that; it goes from her neck to her ankles. Just what a lady like herself would wear when she was about to go to bed.

  “I said I would stop by and check on you,” David Pekach said.

  “I know,” she said.

  She started to walk to the stairway, stopped and looked over her shoulder to see if he was following her.

  Where the hell is she going?

  “And I’ve ordered cars to check on you regularly,” he said.

  “I’ve seen them,” she said. “That’s why I thought you might not be coming. That you had sent the other cars in your stead.”

  “If I say I’ll do something, I do it,” David Pekach said.

  “I was almost sure of that, and now that you’re here, I’m convinced that you are a man of your word,” Martha Peebles said.

  They were at the landing before the stained glass window of Saint Whatsisname the Dragon Slayer by then.

  “I made a little midnight snack,” Martha Peebles said.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to,” she said, and took his arm.

  “And there’s a plainclothes officer in an unmarked car parked just up the block,” David said.

  Or I think there is. I didn’t see anybody in the goddamned car, now that I think about it.

  “I saw him, too,” she said. “He’s been up the drive four times, waving his flashlight around.”

  “We’re doing our very best to take care of you.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you—if you came, that is—if you could drink on duty, so I made coffee. But there’s wine. Or whiskey, too, if you’d rather.”

  They were on the second floor now, moving down the corridor, away from the gun room.

  “Oh, I don’t think law and order would come crashing down if I had a glass of wine,” David said.

  “I’m glad. I put out a port, a rather robust port, that Father always enjoyed.”

  A door was open. Inside, David saw a small round table with a tablecloth that reached to the floor. There was a tray of sandwiches on it, with the crusts cut off, and a silver coffee set, and beside it was a wine cooler with the neck of a bottle of wine sticking out of it.

  Jesus!

  And when he stepped inside, he saw that there was an enormous, heavily carved headboard over a bed on which the sheets had been turned down.

  Jesus!

  “The maiden’s bed,” Martha Peebles said.

  “Excuse me?” David said, not sure that he had heard her correctly.

  “The maiden’s bed,” Martha said. “My bed. I suppose you think that’s a bit absurd in this day and age, a maiden my age.”

  “Not at all.” He seemed to have trouble finding his voice.

  “I’m thirty-five,” Martha said.

  “I’m thirty-seven.”

  “Do you think I’m absurd?” Martha Peebles asked.

  “No,” he said firmly. “Why should I think that?”

  “Enticing you, trying to entice you, up here like this?”

  “Jesus!”

  “Then you do,” she said. “I didn’t…it wasn’t my intention to embarrass you, David.”

  “You’re not embarrassing me.”

  “I’ll tell you what is absurd,” she said. “I never even thought of doing something like this until you came here this afternoon.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” David said. “Christ, I’ve been thinking about you all day…ever since I almost dropped the Hamner Schuetzen.”

  “When our hands touched?”

  “Yeah, and when you looked at me that way,” he said.

  “I thought you were looking into my soul,” Martha said.

  “Jesus!”

  “That made you uncomfortable, didn’t it?” Martha asked. “For me to say that?”

  “I felt the same damned thing!”

  “Oh, David!”

  He put his arms around her. At first it was awkward, but then they seemed to adjust their bodies to each other, and he kissed the top of her head, then her forehead, and finally her mouth.

  “David,” Martha said, finally. “Your…equipment…the belt and whatever, your badge, is hurting me. If we’re going—shouldn’t we take our things off?”

  David backed away from her and looked down at his badge, then started to take off his Sam Browne belt.

  When he glanced at Martha, he saw that she had removed her dressing gown. She hadn’t been wearing anything under it.

  “Are you disappointed?” she asked.

  “You’re beautiful!”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you think so!”

  At fifteen minutes to midnight, Officer Jesus Martinez drove down Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, saw the unmarked car parked by the side of the Peebles house, recognized it as one he had ferried from the Academy, and wondered who the hell was in it. Obviously, one of the brass hats, stroking the lady. If there had been anything going on, it would have come over the radio.

  He saw Matt Payne’s unmarked car and drove past it, made a U-turn, and pulled in beside it. Payne wasn’t in the car; maybe he was in the house with the supervisor.

  He turned the engine off, and slumped back against the seat waiting for Payne to show up.

  When ten minutes passed and he had not, Jesus Martinez got out of his car and walked up to Payne’s. Payne knew he was coming. Maybe he had left a note for him on the dashboard or s
omething, saying where he was.

  When he saw Matt on the seat, the first thing that occurred to him was that violence had occurred, that maybe he’d run into Walton Williams or something. He was just about to jerk the door open when Matt snored.

  The cocksucker’s asleep! The cocksucker is really asleep!

  This was followed by a wave of righteous indignation approaching blind fury.

  The sonofabitch is sleeping when I’ve been out busting my ass all night looking for the asshole burglar! Before I have to baby-sit this fucking place!

  Officer Matthew Payne was a hair’s breadth away from being jerked out of the car by his feet when Martinez had one more reaction that infuriated him even more than finding Payne asleep.

  The sonofabitch has been getting away with it! While I have been out busting my ass in every tinkerbell saloon in Philadelphia, he has been sleeping and nobody caught him! Highway cars have been going past here every half hour, and nobody caught him—or gave a damn if they did—and every fucking supervisor around, District, Highway, Northwest Detectives, maybe even Wohl and Sabara and that new Sergeant, have ridden by here and nobody noticed!

  Officer Martinez stood by the side of Matt’s car for a moment, his arms folded angrily across his chest, as he considered the various options open to him to fix the rich-boy rookie’s ass once and for all for this. When the solution came to him, it was simplicity itself.

  Now smiling, he took his penknife from his pocket, tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb, and then knelt by the left front wheel. He sliced into the rubber tire valve where it passed through the tire. There was a piercing whistle of escaping air, which Martinez quickly muffled with his fist.

  On the right front and rear wheels, he used his handkerchief to muffle the whistle of air escaping from sliced air valves.

  Then he got back in his car and drove off, wearing a smile of satisfaction. The smile grew broader as he thought of the finishing touch. He reached for his microphone.

  “W-William Two Eleven, W-William Two Twelve,” he said.

  “Go,” Charley McFadden’s voice came back immediately.

  “I’m at Broad and Olney, working on something,” Martinez said. “I ain’t gonna be able to relieve our friend on time. What should I do?”

  “I’ll go relieve him,” Charley replied immediately. “You want to come when you get loose, or do you want me to take the tour?”

  “I’ll relieve you at three, if that’s all right,” Martinez said.

  “Yeah, fine,” McFadden said.

  That means I’ve got to hang around until three, Jesus Martinez thought. But what the fuck. It’s worth it!

  And then he thought that the sonofabitch would probably still be asleep when Charley rode up.

  Good, let Charley see for himself what a useless prick Richboy is.

  TWENTY

  Officer Charles McFadden attempted to contact Officer Matthew Payne by radio as he drove to Chestnut Hill. There was no reply, which Charley thought was probably because Payne was walking around, the way he told him to, to keep awake.

  But he sensed that something was wrong when he pulled up behind Matt’s car and didn’t see him. He had had plenty of time to stretch his legs from the time he had called; he should have been back by now. McFadden got cautiously out of his car and walked warily to Matt’s.

  Then he sensed something was wrong with the car and looked at it and found the four flat tires. McFadden squatted and took his revolver from his ankle holster, then approached the car door, and saw Matt sprawled on the seat.

  “Matt!” he called, and then, louder, “Payne!”

  Matt sat up, sleepily.

  “You dumb fuck!” Charley McFadden exploded. “What in the goddamned hell is wrong with you? If one of the supervisors caught you, you’d be up on charges.”

  “I guess I fell asleep,” Matt said, pushing himself outside the car, and then raising his arms over his head.

  “What happened to your tires?” McFadden asked.

  “My tires? What about my tires?”

  “They’re flat,” McFadden said. And then he felt rage rise up in him.

  That fucking Hay-zus did this! That’s what that bullshit was about him working on something at Broad and Olney! He drove up here, and let the air out of Payne’s tires!

  “They’re?” Matt asked. “Plural? As in more than one?”

  He knelt beside Charley as Charley, pulling on a valve stem, discovered that someone had slit it with a knife.

  Someone, shit! Hay-zus!

  “All four of them, asshole!” Charley said. “Somebody caught you sleeping and slit your valve stems open. And I’ve got a good fucking idea who.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Charley.”

  “The fuck it don’t!” McFadden said. “You call for a police wrecker, how you going to explain this? Vandals? You were supposed to be sitting in the car, or close enough so that you could hear the radio. The guys on the wrecker are going to know what happened, stupid. It’ll be all over Highway and Special Operations, the District, ‘you hear about the asshole was sleeping on a stakeout? Somebody cut his tire valves.’”

  Matt was touched by Charley’s concern. This did not seem to be the appropriate time to tell him that he was going to resign in the morning. It occurred to him that he liked Charley McFadden very much, and wondered if some sort of friendship would be possible after he had resigned.

  “Well, now that I’ve made a jackass of myself, what can be done about it?”

  “I’m thinking,” Charley said. “There’s a Sunoco station at Summit Avenue and Germantown Pike I think is open all night. I think they fix tires.”

  “Why don’t we just call the police wrecker and let me take my lumps?” Matt asked.

  “Don’t be more of an asshole than you already are,” Charley said. “We’ll jack your car up, take off two tires at a time, put them in my car, and you get them fixed. Then the other two.”

  I have an AAA card, Matt thought, but this doesn’t seem to be an appropriate time to use it.

  “Come on,” Charley said. “Get off the dime! I don’t want to have to explain this to a supervisor.”

  A supervisor did in fact appear thirty minutes later, by which time Matt had returned from the service station with two repaired tires, and departed with the last two.

  “What’s going on here?” Captain David Pekach asked. “You need some help?”

  “No, sir, another officer’s helping me,” Charley said. “Payne.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “There was some roofing nails here, Captain. Got two tires.”

  “You should have called the police wrecker,” David Pekach said. “That’s what they’re for.”

  “This looked like the easiest way to handle it, sir,” Charley said.

  “Well, if you say so,” David Pekach said. “Good night—or is it good morning?—Charley.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Charley, I’ll have a word with Inspector Wohl tomorrow, and see if he won’t reconsider this bullshit stakeout.”

  “I wish you would, sir.”

  “Good night, again, Charley,” Captain Pekach said. He was in a very good mood. He was going to check in at Bustleton and Bowler, then go home and change his clothes, and then come back. Martha had said she completely understood that a man like himself had to devote a good deal of time to his duty, and that she would make them breakfast when he came back. Maybe something they could eat in bed, like strawberries in real whipped cream. Unless he wanted something more substantial.

  Jesus!

  Matt Payne walked into Bustleton and Bowler thirty minutes later and handed the keys to the car to the same Corporal who had given him hell for being late before he’d gone on the stakeout.

  “Where the hell have you been with that car? It’s after one.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Matt said. “Get off my back.”

  “You can’t talk that way to me,” the Corporal said.


  “Payne!” a voice called. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, who’s that?”

  “Jason,” Washington called. “I’m in here.”

  “Here” was Wohl’s office. Washington was sitting on the couch, typing on a small portable set up on the coffee table.

  “Do me a favor?” Washington asked, as he jerked a sheet of paper from the typewriter.

  “Sure,” Matt said.

  “I’m dead on my feet,” Washington said, “and you, at least relatively, look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  He inserted the piece of paper he had just taken from the typewriter into a large manila envelope and then licked the flap.

  “Wohl wants this tonight, at his house,” Washington said. “It’s a wrap-up of the stuff we did in Bucks County, and what’s happening here. You’d think they could find a maroon Ford van, wouldn’t you? Well, shit. We’ll have addresses on every maroon Ford van in a hundred miles as soon as Motor Vehicles opens in Harrisburg in the morning. Anyway, that’s what’s in there. He says if there are no lights on, slip it under his door.”

  “I don’t know where he lives,” Matt said.

  “Chestnut Hill,” Washington said. “Norwood Street. In a garage apartment behind a big house in front. You can’t miss it. Only garage apartment. I’ll show you on the map.”

  “I can find it,” Matt said.

  “Thanks, Matt, I appreciate it,” Washington said.

  “I appreciate…today, Mr. Washington,” Matt said. “I’ll never forget today.”

  “Hey, it’s Jason. I’m a detective, that’s all.”

  “Anyway, thanks,” Matt said.

  When he was in the Porsche headed for Chestnut Hill, he was glad he had thought to say “thank you” to Washington. He would probably never see him again, and thanks were in order. A lesser gentleman would have made merry at the rookie’s expense.

  He found Norwood Street without trouble. There was a reflective sign out in front with the number on it, and he had no trouble finding the garage apartment behind it, either.

  And there was the maroon Ford van that everybody was looking for, parked right under Staff Inspector Peter Wohl’s window.