Final Justice boh-8

by W. E. B Griffin

  Chad laughed.

  “Oh, God!” Terry said.

  “I can’t believe you did that!” Daffy said.

  “But you’re smiling, Daffy darling!”

  “We thought we’d eat in,” Daffy said, quickly changing the subject. “Terry has to be at the airport at eleven-thirty. I bought some shrimp at the Twelfth Street Market, but Monday the cook is off.”

  “That’s Daffy’s way, Terry,” Matt said, “of asking whether I will be good enough to prepare my world famous Wild Turkey shrimp.”

  “Wild Turkey shrimp?”

  “Over wild rice,” Matt said. “Yes, Daffy, I will. But you’ll have to peel the slimy crustaceans. That’s beneath the dignity of a master chef such as myself.”

  “I’ve got to give Penny her bath,” Daffy complained.

  “I’ll peel the shrimp,” Terry said. “I have to see this. Wild Turkey-you’re talking about the whiskey?…” Matt nodded. “… shrimp?”

  “Bring your glass, I’ll bring the bottle. The kitchen for some unknown reason is on the ground floor.”

  Matt led Terry into the kitchen, turned on the fluorescent lights, and then took his jacket off and laid it on a counter. Then he took his pistol from its shoulder holster, held it toward the floor, away from Terry, removed the clip, and then ejected the round in the chamber.

  “I’m impressed,” Terry said. “If that was your intention.”

  He gave her a dirty look but didn’t reply. He reloaded the ejected round in the magazine, put the magazine in the pistol, the pistol in the shoulder holster, then shrugged out of that and hung it on an empty hook of the pot rack above the stainless-steel stove.

  Then he looked at her.

  “I wasn’t trying to impress you. I don’t like leaving guns around with a round in the chamber.”

  “Sorry,” she said, and then asked, “What kind of a gun is that?”

  He looked at her for a moment before deciding the question was a peace offering.

  “It’s an Officer’s Model Colt,” Matt said. “A. 45. A cut-down version of the old Army. 45.”

  “That’s what all the cops carry?”

  “No. Most Philadelphia cops carry Glocks. They’re semiautomatic, like this one, but nine-millimeter, not. 45.”

  “Then?”

  “I think this a better weapon.”

  “And they let you do that?”

  “With great reluctance. I had to go through a lot of bureaucratic bullsh-difficulty before I got permission to carry this.”

  “What is it with Colt?” Terry asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There’s some sort of significance, obviously. Stan actually changed his name legally to Colt. And he always carries a Colt automatic in his films.”

  “What was his name before?”

  “Coleman.”

  “Stan Colt, nee Stanley Coleman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatever works, I guess,” Matt said, chuckling. “To answer your question, I suppose there is a certain romance to ‘Colt.’ They call the old Colt. 44 revolver ‘The Gun That Won the West,’ and then the Colt Model 1911-the big brother of my pistol-was the service weapon right through Vietnam. Now the services use a nine-millimeter Beretta.”

  “You ever shoot anybody with that pistol?”

  “Not with that one.”

  “But you have shot someone?”

  “Why don’t we just drop this subject right here?” Matt flared.

  “Sorry,” she said, offended and sarcastic.

  He found a plastic bag of shrimp in the refrigerator, took it to the sink, tore the bag open, and started to peel them.

  After a long moment, Terry went and stood beside him and took a handful of shrimp.

  He glanced at her but said nothing.

  They peeled shrimp in silence for perhaps three minutes, and then Matt said, “That’s not the first time you’ve peeled shrimp.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Most people don’t know how to squeeze the tail that way.”

  “My dad has a boat. We have a place on Catalina Island. I practically grew up peeling shrimp.”

  “Your father’s a movie star? Producer? Executive?”

  “Lawyer,” she said. “With connections in the industry. Enough to get me my first job with GAM.”

  “So’s mine,” Matt said. “A lawyer with connections.”

  "Daffy told me-when she was selling me on the blind date.”

  “Actually, he’s my adoptive father,” Matt said, as he took a large skillet from an overhead rack.

  “Your parents were divorced? Mine too.”

  “My father was killed before I was born,” Matt said. “He was a cop, a sergeant named John X. Moffitt, and he answered a silent alarm and got himself shot. My mother married my dad-that sounds funny, doesn’t it? — about six months later. He’d lost his wife in a car crash. A really good guy. He adopted me legally.”

  “Is that why you’re a policeman? Because of your father?”

  “That’s one of the reasons, certainly,” Matt said, as he unwrapped a stick of butter. “I like being a cop.”

  “Daffy doesn’t approve,” Terry said.

  “I know. Daffy would be delighted-because of Chad-if I married a nice young woman, such as yourself, went to law school, and took my proper role in society.”

  “Yeah,” Terry replied thoughtfully. “I picked up a little of that. Tell me about your promotion.”

  “The sergeant’s examination list came out today,” Matt said. “With underwhelming modesty, I was number one, and get to pick my assignment.”

  “Which is?”

  “Homicide.”

  “What is that, some sort of a death wish?”

  “Huh?”

  “Homicide sounds dangerous,” she said. “Killers, right?”

  “I never thought about it,” Matt said. “But now that I do… Homicide’s not dangerous. Being on the street is dangerous. My father was a uniform sergeant in a district. That’s dangerous. Cops get hurt answering domestic-disturbance calls. Stopping speeders. Homicide’s nothing like that. You’ve been watching too many Stan Colt movies.”

  “I don’t really understand.”

  “Street cops face the bad guys every day. Last night, a uniform cop answered a robbery-in-progress call at the Roy Rogers restaurant on Broad Street. One of the two bad guys shoved a revolver under his bulletproof vest and killed him. The first homicide guy didn’t get to the scene for maybe fifteen minutes. By then, the bad guys were long gone.”

  She looked at him but said nothing.

  “The trick to this is to saute them slowly in butter with a little Cajun seasoning,” he said. “You add the booze just before serving, and flame it. And since the rice isn’t done, we can put this on hold and have another glass of wine while we wait for the rice and the bathers to finish with the bathee.”

  “What about when they arrest… the bad guys? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “First you have to find out who the bad guys are. Then make sure you can-to the district attorney’s satisfaction- make the case against them. Then, if they’re not already in the Roundhouse surrounded by cops, if you have to go out to arrest them, you take enough uniforms with you to make sure nobody gets hurt.”

  “That’s not much like one of Stan’s movies, is it?” she asked.

  “Not much,” he agreed, as he filled her glass.

  “Then why does Homicide have the prestige? You were as proud as a peacock to tell me you were going to Homicide.”

  “Homicide detectives are the best detectives in the department, ” he said. “When you’re trying somebody for a capital offense, all the ‘t’s have to be crossed and the ‘i’s dotted. There’s no room for mistakes. People who kill people should pay for it.”

  “And Homicide sergeants?”

  “Modesty precludes my answering that question.”

  “Modest you ain’t, Sergeant.”

  “Sergeant I ain’t, either.
I’m just number one on The List. God only knows when I’ll actually get promoted and sent to Homicide.”

  “And in the meantime, you’ll have to do something beneath your dignity, like protecting Stan from his adoring fans? Or vice versa.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Now that we’re going to be professionally associated, I think I should tell you that Stan likes young women. Very young women.”

  “That ought to go over big with the monsignor and the cardinal. And I’m not-I am now really sorry to say-going to be involved in that. That’s Dignitary Protection, and sometimes, since the subject came up, that can be really dangerous. Dignitaries, celebrities, attract lunatics like a magnet.”

  “You’re not going to be involved?”

  “No. I was just there this morning to see-for my boss- what the triumphal visit will involve. I’m with Special Operations, and we usually provide the bodies needed.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said.

  “We will solve that problem when you come back,” he said. “I really want to see more of you.”

  “So what do you do in Special Operations?” she said, obviously changing the subject.

  “Today, for example, I think I proved that a cop who’s been spending more money than a cop makes came by it entirely honestly.”

  “Internal Affairs?”

  “No. This was unofficial, before Internal Affairs got involved. Now there won’t be an Internal Affairs investigation. A good thing, because just being involved with Internal Affairs makes people look bad.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV and a freshly bathed Penelope in her nightgown appeared in the kitchen at this point, and Detective Payne resumed his preparation of Wild Turkey shrimp over wild rice.

  At 10:45 Matt said that he would be happy to deliver Terry to the airport to catch the red-eye to the coast.

  At 11:17, as he closed the trunk of the Porsche after having taken Terry’s luggage from it, and she was standing close enough to him to be kissed, a uniform walked up and said, “You’re going to have to move it, sir. Sorry.”

  Matt took out his badge and said, “Three sixty-nine,” which was police cant for “I am a police officer.”

  The uniform walked away. Matt looked at Terry, saddened by the lost opportunity.

  Terry stood on her toes and kissed him chastely on the lips.

  “Thanks,” she said, then quickly turned and entered the airport. She turned once and looked back at him, and then he lost sight of her.

  He got back in the Porsche, and on the way to Rittenhouse Square decided that, all things considered, today had been a pretty good day.

  The Hon. Alvin W. Martin, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, a trim forty-three-year-old in a well-cut Harris plaid suit, smiled at Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani and waved him into his City Hall office.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly, Ralph,” he said. “Have you had your coffee?”

  The mayor gestured toward a silver coffee service on a sideboard.

  “I could use another cup, thank you,” Mariani said. He was a stocky Italian, balding, natty.

  “I was distressed, Ralph,” the mayor said, “to hear about the trouble at the Roy Rogers.”

  “Very sad,” Mariani said. “I knew Officer Charlton. A fine man.”

  “And Mrs. Fernandez, who paid with her life for calling 911.”

  “A genuine tragedy, sir,” Mariani said.

  “I’m going to the funeral home at three this afternoon,” Martin said. “I should say ‘homes.’ Officer Charlton’s first, and then Mrs. Fernandez’s. I think it would be a good idea if you went with me.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “I feel sure the press will be there,” the mayor said. “I’d really like to have something to tell them.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much news, Mr. Mayor,” Mariani said. “We’re working on it, of course. And it’s just a matter of time until we nail those animals, but so far…”

  “When you say you’re working on it, what exactly does that mean?”

  “That we’re applying all our resources to the job.”

  “Who’s in charge of the investigation?”

  “Lieutenant Washington, of Homicide, sir.”

  The mayor knew Lieutenant Jason Washington, which was not the same thing as saying he liked him. The mayor thought of Washington as a difficult man who was not able to conceal-or perhaps didn’t want to conceal-his contempt for politicians.

  Mayor Martin had sought Lieutenant Washington out shortly after taking office. The police department always provides a police officer, sometimes a sergeant, but most often a lieutenant, to drive the mayoral limousine, serving simultaneously, of course, as bodyguard.

  He’d toyed with the idea of having a white officer-a very large, happy, smiling Irishman who would look good in the background of news photos came to mind-but before he could make the appointment, he’d seen Washington striding purposefully though the lobby of the Roundhouse, and asked who he was.

  That night he had mentioned the enormous lieutenant to his wife, Beatrice, at supper.

  “I thought you knew Jason,” Beatrice said. “He’s Martha’s husband.”

  The mayor knew his wife’s friend, Martha Washington. Beatrice, as the mayor thought of it, was “into art and that sort of thing,” and Martha Washington was both a very successful art dealer and a painter of some repute.

  “No, I don’t,” the mayor confessed. “How do you think he’d like to be the mayor’s driver?”

  “I don’t think so,” Beatrice had said. “I can’t imagine Jason as a chauffeur-yours or anyone else’s.”

  “You’re going to have to get used to being the mayor’s wife, precious.”

  Mayor Martin had taken the trouble to meet Washington socially, which had proven more difficult to do than he thought it would be.

  The mayor had arranged for the Washingtons to be invited to a friend’s cocktail party, and when they sent their regrets, to a second friend’s cocktail party, which invitation they also declined with regret. On the third try, he finally got to meet them, and Alvin W. Martin’s first impression of Jason Washington that night was that he was going to like him, possibly very much, and that he would look just fine in the background of press photos.

  Washington was an imposing man, superbly tailored, and erudite without rubbing it in your face. The mayor, studying Washington’s suit with the eye of a man who appreciated good tailoring, wondered how he could afford to dress that well on a detective’s salary. He decided the artist wife picked up the tab.

  He finally managed to get him alone.

  “I’d really like to get together with you, Jason. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Jason,’ do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m in the process of selecting a driver. Would you be interested?”

  “With all possible respect, Mr. Mayor, absolutely not.”

  “Actually, it would entail more than just driving the limo,” the mayor had said. “I really need someone around who can explain the subtleties of the police department to me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding such a person, Mr. Mayor.”

  “And, specifically, I need input from someone knowledgeable about what I might be able to do for our fellow blacks in the police department.”

  “I can tell you that, Mr. Mayor, in a very few words: Really support a meaningful pay raise; get it through the City Council. Policemen often have a hard time making ends meet.”

  “I was speaking specifically of black police officers.”

  “There are two kinds of police officers, Mr. Mayor. The bad ones-a small minority-and all the others. And all the others are colored blue.”

  “That’s a little jingoistic, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

  “Simplistic, perhaps, Mr. Mayor, and perhaps chauvinistic, but I don’t think jingoistic, which, as I understand the word, carries a flavor of belligerence I certainly didn’t intend.”
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br />   “Let me be very frank,” the mayor said. “When I asked around for the name of an outstanding black officer to whom I could turn with questions regarding the police department generally, and black officers in the department specifically, your name immediately came up. You have a splendid reputation. And I wondered how it is you’re a lieutenant.”

  “ ‘Only’ a lieutenant? Is that what you mean?”

  “All right, if you want to put it that way. You don’t think race had anything to do with you having been a policeman twenty-three years before being promoted to lieutenant?”

  “Mr. Mayor, I’ve spent most of my career in Homicide…"”

  “You’ve been described to me as one of the best homicide investigators anywhere.”

  Washington ignored the compliment, and continued:

  “… where, because of the extraordinary amount of overtime required, most detectives make as much as inspectors and some as much as chief inspectors. I was a little late reaching my present rank because I never took the examination until I had assurance, in writing, that should I pass and be promoted, I would not be transferred from Homicide.”

  Aware that his temper was rising, the mayor said, “I wasn’t aware that you could make deals like that.”

  “They aren’t common.”

  “Frankly, the more you reject the idea, the more it appeals to me. I need someone who will tell me how things are, rather than what they think I want to hear. And I was under the impression that police officers serve where their superiors decide they can be of the most value.”

  “That’s true, of course,” Washington had replied. “But it is also true that police officers my age with twenty years or more of service can retire at any time they so desire.”

  The mayor suddenly saw the headline in the Bulletin: ACE HOMICIDE LIEUTENANT RETIRES RATHER THAN BECOME MAYOR’S DRIVER.

  “Well, I’m disappointed, of course,” the mayor had said. “But I will certainly respect your wishes. You will be available, won’t you, if I need an expert to explain something to me?”

  “I’m at your service, Mr. Mayor,” Washington had said.

  Mayor Martin now looked across his desk and asked, “And what does Lieutenant Washington have to say about why these people haven’t been arrested? It’s been two days, Commissioner.”