The Witness boh-4

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Yes, sir," Coughlin said.

  The mayor turned to Matt Lowenstein. "You're the Chief Inspector of Detectives. Get out there and detect. Whatever you're doing now isn't working."

  Lowenstein's face flushed, but he didn't reply.

  "And you, Peter: I won't start telling you how to run Special Operations. If you're comfortable having a guy who beats up on his wife and has paranoid ideas about Bob Holland in charge of protecting the only goddamned witness we have, okay. I'm sure you're smart enough to understand that it's your ass if this goes wrong."

  "Yes, sir, I understand."

  "And you will, all three of you, keep Commissioner Czernick up to date on what's going on. I'm sick and tired of calling him up and having him tell me, 'I don't know, Jerry. I haven't talked to Wohl, or Lowenstein or Coughlin today.' "

  "Yes, sir," the three of them replied almost in unison.

  The mayor ground out his cigar in the ashtray in front of him, stood up, and walked out of the room without another word.

  "When the police department looks bad," Commissioner Czernick said, " it makes all of us, but especially the mayor, look bad. I think we should all keep that in mind."

  "You're right, Tad," Matt Lowenstein said. "You're absolutely right."

  He turned his face so Czernick couldn't see him and winked at Coughlin and Wohl.

  ****

  At just about the same time, Officer Charles McFadden looked over Officer Matthew Payne's shoulder at what was being stirred in a small stainless steel pot and offered:

  "I always wondered how they made that shit."

  "I gather that creamed beef is not a regular part of your diet?"

  "I eat in restaurants all the time, but I never had it in a house before."

  "But then, until you met me, you never knew that people had indoor toilets, did you?"

  "Fuck you."

  "What's his name?" Matt asked, softly, nodding toward the living room, where a large, muscular young man with a crew cut sat facing the television.

  "Hartzog," Charley furnished quietly.

  "You sure you don't want some of this, Hartzog?" Matt called, raising his voice. "There's more than enough."

  "It's okay. I ate just before I came over," Hartzog replied.

  Matt began to swirl the boiling water in another stainless steel pot.

  "What the hell are you doing now?"

  "I am about to poach eggs. Eggs are these unborn chickens in the obloid white containers you see in my hand."

  "In there?" Charley asked, genuinely surprised as Matt skillfully cracked eggs with one hand into the swirling water.

  "As you see," Matt said.

  "My mother uses a little pan. It's got little cups you put the eggs in."

  "Is that so?"

  "I'll be damned," Charley said, peering into the pan. "That works, don't it?"

  "Just about every time," Matt said. "Now, if you will be so good as to take the English muffins from the toaster-"

  Matt split the English muffins, laid a half on each of two plates, ladled creamed beef on top of them, and then added, using a pierced spoon, two poached eggs on top.

  "Maybe you are good for something," Charley said, taking the plates and carrying them into the living room.

  Matt, using a cane, hobbled after him. He lowered himself into the arm chair and Charley handed him his plate.

  "Oh, good!" Matt said. "We're in time for today's episode of Mary Trueheart, Girl Nymphomaniac."

  Officer Hartzog looked at him without comprehension.

  "I got the Today Show on there. Is that all right?"

  "Fine," Matt said.

  "Is there really such a thing?" Charley asked.

  "As what?"

  "As a nymphomaniac."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "How come I never met one?"

  "They only go after men whose dicks are longer than two inches," Matt said.

  "Then I guess you never met one, either, huh?"

  In point of fact, I have. Or at least it could be argued that Helene' s peculiar sexual appetites might, using the term loosely, qualify her as a nymphomaniac. But somehow, Charley, I don't think you would approve if I told you about her.

  "One works downstairs," Matt said. "Brunette. Name of Jasmine."

  "No shit?" Charley asked, fascinated, and then saw the look on Matt's face. "Bullshit."

  "There was one when I was in junior high school," Officer Hartzog said. "They caught her fucking the janitor. They arrested him and sent her off to a girl's home someplace."

  The door buzzer sounded.

  "Who the hell can that be?" Charley wondered aloud.

  Hartzog got up and went to get his shotgun, which he had leaned against the wall at the head of the stairs. Charley went to the intercom in the kitchen.

  "Who's there?"

  "My name is Young."

  "What can we do for you?"

  "I'd like to see Matt Payne."

  "What for?"

  "Am I speaking with a police officer?"

  "What kind of a question is that?"

  "This is Special Agent Frank F. Young of the FBI. Would you let us in please?"

  "I know him, Charley," Matt called. "Let him in."

  Hartzog went down the stairs, two at a time, carrying his shotgun.

  There was the sound of multiple footsteps on the stairs, and then Young appeared, followed by another neatly dressed, hat wearing, clean-cut man who didn't look any older than Matt or Charley.

  "Hello, Matt," Young said with a smile. "I see you're in good hands."

  "How are you, Mr. Young?"

  What the fuck do you want?

  "I apologize for the hour, but we had to be in this neck of the woods, and I thought we'd take the opportunity to drop by."

  "Can we offer you coffee?"

  "Love a cup. It's bitter cold out there. This is Special Agent Matthews."

  Matthews walked up to Matt, offered his hand, and said, "Jack Matthews. I've wanted to meet you."

  "How are you?" Matt said. "The large one is Officer Charley McFadden. The other's Officer Hartzog."

  They shook hands. Hartzog put the shotgun back and sat down where he had been sitting watching television.

  "Charley, will you get the FBI some coffee?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "You've wanted to meet him, too, Jack," Young said. "Officer McFadden is the man who located, and ran to earth, the individual who shot Captain Moffitt."

  "Yes, I have," Matthews said. "I'm one of your fans, McFadden. That was good work."

  Charley looked uncomfortable.

  "You want something in your coffee, or black?" he responded.

  "Black for me, please."

  "A little sugar for me, if you have it, please," Young said.

  "You want some more, Matt? Hartzog?"

  "Please," Matt said.

  "Not now, thanks," Hartzog said.

  "How do you feel, Matt?" Young asked.

  "I feel all right."

  "No pain in the leg?"

  "Only when I forget and step on it."

  "It'll take a while," Young said. "It could have been a lot worse.. 45, wasn't it?"

  "Apparently a ricochet," Matt said.

  Charley passed out the coffee.

  "They must be taking this ILA threat pretty seriously," Young said. " Judging by the fact that you have two men on you."

  "I'm off duty," McFadden said. "Hartzog came on at eight. Just one."

  "Matt, is there somewhere we could have a word?" Young asked.

  What the hell is this all about?

  "We can go in my bedroom."

  "Please," Young said, smiling. "You need any help?"

  "No. I just move a little slowly."

  He pushed himself out of the chair and, using a cane, made his way to his bedroom.

  Young followed and closed the door after them.

  "Nice apartment."

  "It gets a little crowded with more than me in it."

  Young sm
iled dutifully, then said, seriously, "Matt, I won't ask you if I can trust your discretion, but you didn't get this from me, all right?"

  "All right."

  "I heard yesterday that a charge has been brought that you have violated the civil rights of Charles David Stevens, and that Justice will ask us to conduct an investigation."

  "What?"Matt asked, incredulously.

  "It's becoming a fairly standard tactic. All it does as far as we're concerned-in cases like yours-is waste manpower. From their standpoint, the only thing I can imagine is that they hope the very charge will sow a seed of doubt in some potential juror's mind. If the FBI is investigating, the police, the police officer, must have done something wrong."

  "Who brought the charges?" Matt asked, angrily.

  "One of the civil rights groups, I don't remember which one. But it's more than safe to say that Armando C. Giacomo is behind it."

  "What, exactly, am I being charged with?"

  "Violating the civil rights of Stevens by taking his life unlawfully, or excessive force, something like that."

  "That sonofabitch was trying to kill me when I shot him!"

  "Don't get all excited. The investigation will bring all that out. There's also a story that they're going to take you before the Grand Jury. Is that right?"

  Why don't I want to tell him?

  "I've heard they are."

  "Well, that may-more than likelywill- take the wind out of their sails. I can't imagine a Grand Jury returning a true bill under the circumstances. As I say, what I really think they're after is sowing that seed of doubt. Where there's smoke, there must be fire, so to speak."

  "I will be Goddamned!"

  "As well as I can, there's an ethical question here, of course, I will keep you advised. More specifically, when I hear something I think you ought to know, I'll have Matthews pass the word to you. He's one of the good guys."

  "Jesus!" Matt said. "That's absolute bullshit! He tries to kill me. I defend myself, andI'm accused of violatinghis civil rights."

  "It's a crazy world. But don't worry too much about it. Remember, you didn't do anything wrong."

  "Yeah."

  "Do you play chess?"

  What the hell has that got to do with anything?

  "Yes, I play chess."

  "So does Matthews. That would give him an excuse to come here."

  Why is he doing this?

  "I very much appreciate your telling me this, Mr. Young."

  "Frank, please. What the hell, we have different badges, but we're both cops, right?"

  I really would like to believe that. I wonder why I don't?

  Young looked at his watch.

  "Gotta get moving," he said, and offered Matt his hand.

  When Matt followed him back into the living room, Matthews was holding the Queen of a set of green jade chess pieces Matt had been given for his fifteenth birthday.

  "Interesting set," Matthews said. "Do you play much?"

  "Some."

  "We'll have to have a game sometime."

  "Anytime. I'll be here."

  "I might surprise you, and just come knocking some night."

  "I wish you would."

  TWENTY-THREE

  "How are you, Inspector?" Lieutenant Warren Lomax greeted Peter Wohl cheerfully, offering his hand. "What can we do for you?"

  Lomax was a tall, quite skinny man in his early forties. He had been seriously injured years before in a high-speed chase accident as a Highway Patrol sergeant, and pensioned off.

  After two years of retirement, he had (it was generally acknowledged with the help of then Commissioner Carlucci) managed to get back on the job on limited duty. He'd gone to work in the Forensics Laboratory as sort of the chief clerk. There, he had become fascinated with what he saw and what the lab did, actually gone back to school at night to study chemistry and electronics and whatever else he thought would be useful, and gradually become an expert in what was called "scientific crime detection."

  Three years before he had managed to get himself off limited duty, taken and passed the lieutenant's exam, and now the Forensics Lab was his.

  Wohl thought, as he always did, that Lomax looked like a sick man (he remembered him as a robust Highway sergeant), felt sorry for him, and then wondered why: Lomax obviously didn't feel sorry for himself, and was obviously as happy as a pig in mud doing what he was doing.

  "How are you, Warren?" Wohl said, and handed him the cassette tape from Matt Payne's answering machine with his free hand.

  "What's this?" Lomax asked.

  "The tape from Officer Matt Payne's answering machine. Payne told me that Chief Coughlin wanted to run them through here. And as I had to come here to face an irate mayor anyhow, I brought it along."

  "Christ, Carlucci even called me, wanting to know if I had heard anything about the-what is it-the Islamic Liberation Army."

  "Had you?"

  "The first I ever heard of them was in the newspapers. Who the hell are they, anyway?"

  "I wish I knew," Wohl said. "You come up with anything on Payne's car?"

  Lomax turned and walked stiffly, reminding Wohl that the accident had crushed his hip, to a desk and came back with a manila folder.

  "My vast experience in forensics leads me to believe a. that the same instrument was used to slice his tires and fuck up his paint job, and b. that said instrument was a pretty high quality collapsible knife, probably with a six-inch blade."

  "How did you reach these conclusions, Dr. Lomax? And what is a collapsible knife?"

  "Aswitchblade," Lomax said, "is like a regular penknife, the blade folds into the handle, except that it's spring loaded, so that when you push the button, it springs open. Acollapsible knife is one where the blade slides in and out of the handle. Some are spring loaded, and some you have to push. You follow me?"

  Wohl nodded.

  "Okay. Switchblades aren't much good for stabbing tires, particularly high-quality tires like the Pirelli's on Payne's car. They're slashing instruments. The blades are thin. You try to stab something, like the walls of tires, the blade tends to snap. Payne's tires were stabbed, more than slashed. The contour of the penetration, the holes, shows that the blade was pretty thick on the dull side. A lot of switchblades are just thin pieces of steel sharpened onboth sides. Hence, a collapsible knife of pretty good quality. Six inches long or so because there's generally a proportion between blade width and length. The same instrument because we found particles of tire rubber in the scratches in the paint. And, for the hell of it, the size and depth of the scratches indicates a blade shape, the point shape, confirming what I said before."

  "I am dazzled," Wohl said.

  "Now all you street cops have to do is find the knife, and there's your doer. There can't be more than eight or ten thousand knives like that in Philadelphia. Forensics is happy to have been able to be of service."

  Wohl slid photographs out of the folder and looked at them.

  "I hate to think what it's going to cost to have that car repainted," he said.

  "Well, I have a nice heel print of who I suspect is the doer," Lomax said. "Heel and three clear fingers, right hand. Maybe you can get him to pay to have it painted."

  Wohl looked at him curiously.

  "It's in a position suggesting that he laid his hand on the hood, left side, when he bent over to stick the knife in the ninety-dollar tire," Lomax said, and then pointed to one of the photographs. " There."

  "Well, when we have a suspect in custody," Wohl said, "I'm sure that will be very valuable."

  Lomax laughed. Both knew that while the positive identification of an individual by his fingerprints has long been established as nearly infallible-fingerprints are truly unique-it isnot true that all you have to do to find an individual is have his fingerprint or fingerprints. Trying to match a fingerprint without a name to go with it, with fingerprints on file in either a police department or in the FBI's miles of cabinets in Washington, and thus come up with a name, is for all practical
purposes impossible.

  "What's on here?" Lomax asked, picking up the cassette tape.

  "I don't know. I didn't hear it. I don't think anybody has. They're calling there every fifteen minutes or so, so McFadden-one of the guys sitting on Payne-fixed it so that the machine worked silently."

  "You want to hear it?"

  "Not particularly," Wohl said, and then reconsidered. He looked at his watch. "Maybe I'd better," he said. "Let me have the phone, will you, please, Warren?"

  Lomax pushed a telephone to him, and Wohl dialed a number.

  "This is Inspector Wohl. Have Detective Harris call me at 555-3445."

  When he had put the phone down, Lomax asked, "He getting anywhere with the Magnella job?"

  "Not so far."

  "How's he doing?"

  "If you mean, Warren, 'is he still on a bender?' he better not be. Christ, is that all over the Department?"

  "People talk, Peter."

  "The word is gossip, and cops do it more than women," Wohl said.

  "I was having my own troubles with good ol' Jack Daniel's for a while," Lomax said. "I'm sympathetic."

  "I sometimes wonder if people weren't so sympathetic if the people they feel sorry for would straighten themselves out."

  "He's a good cop, Peter."

  "So I keep telling myself," Wohl said. "But then I keep hearing stories about him waving his gun around and getting thrown in a holding cell to sober up."

  "You heard that, huh?"

  "Let's play the tape."

  Lieutenant Lomax had methodically made notes on seventeen recorded messages when his telephone rang. He answered it, then handed it to Wohl. "Tony Harris."

  "Where are you working, Harris?" Wohl asked. There was a pause while Harris told him. Wohl thought a moment, then said, "Okay. Meet me at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard at noon. If you get there before I do, get us a booth."

  He hung up without waiting for a reply.

  "Would you think me a racist if I told you I suspect all of these calls were from those of the Afro-American persuasion?" he asked.

  "What did you expect?" Lomax replied. "Two kinds, though, I think. Some of these sleaze-balls have gone past the sixth grade."

  "Yeah, I sort of noticed that. A little affectation in the diction."