Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Get somebody good to do it. Somebody smart and fast.”

  “Detective Payne is transcribing them,” Wohl said.

  “And working hard at it, sir. Like last night at midnight,” Mike Sabara interjected. “I listened to a little of them . . .”

  “Did you?” the mayor asked, not pleasantly.

  “I was surprised he’s able to get anything off them at all,” Sabara said.

  “So they’re useless?” the mayor said.

  “No, sir,” Peter Wohl said. “Both Payne and Sergeant Washington, who has read what Payne has transcribed so far, believe there will be something useful in them when we’re finished. ”

  “The point I’m trying to make, Peter, and I’m not just trying to give you a hard time, is that we really don’t have anything, except accusations made by a Five Squad wife who wasn’t sleeping with her own husband,” Carlucci said. “Against which, we have the opinion of a damned good cop who used to work Narcotics and says if there was anything wrong, he would have known about it.”

  No one replied.

  The mayor looked at Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin.

  “You think we’d be spinning our wheels on this one, Denny?”

  “It may turn out that way, but I think we have to do it,” Chief Coughlin said.

  “Matt?” the mayor asked, turning his head to Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein.

  “I agree with Denny,” Lowenstein said, looking at the butt of his cigar.

  “You think we should go ahead, in other words?”

  “Yeah, Jerry, I do.”

  “You don’t seem very happy about it.”

  “No, I’m not. For one thing, if we find dirty cops in Five Squad, the whole department looks bad. Internally, so does Internal Affairs because we dug it out, not them. Let’s say you give this to Peter—”

  “I’m thinking of suggesting to the commissioner that it be given to Ethical Affairs.”

  “Same thing. Nothing personal, Mike,” Lowenstein said, looking at Staff Inspector Weisbach, “but you can’t do it without Peter’s help, which, the way I see it, puts Peter in charge.”

  “And since Peter—nothing personal, Peter—” the mayor said, “can’t do it without the help of the chief inspector of detectives, the way you see it, does that put you in charge?”

  “Come on, Jerry.”

  “Or without the help of Chief Coughlin, does that put Denny in charge?”

  “What are you driving at, Jerry?” Coughlin asked “That you want me, or Matt, to take this?”

  “Nobody pays attention to what I say is what I’m driving at. I’ll try again. I’m going to suggest to Commissioner Czernich than an investigation of certain allegations concerning the Narcotics Unit is in order, and that it should be conducted by the Ethical Affairs Unit. Therefore, Mike Weisbach will be in charge. I am also going to suggest to the Commissioner that he direct Peter, Denny, and you, Matt, to provide Mike with whatever he thinks he needs to get the job done. Now, is that clear in everybody’s mind?”

  There was a chorus of “Yes, sir.”

  “And since everybody involved is an experienced police officer, it will not be necessary for me to tell you that the best way to blow this investigation is to let those scumbags even suspect somebody’s taking a close look at them, right? Do I make that point? I want them. I want them bad. If there’s anything worse than a drug dealer, it’s a police officer either hiding drug dealers behind his badge, or, God forbid, dealing drugs himself.”

  He looked around at all of them.

  “Peter, since you’ll be working closer with Mike than anybody else, once a day, either Fellows or myself will telephone you and you’ll tell us what’s happened in the past twenty-four hours. You’ll also keep Matt and Denny up to speed. As little as possible in writing. Papers have a way of turning up in the wrong hands.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter Wohl said.

  SIX

  When Matt Payne glanced into the lobby as he drove past the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building, he saw two men in business suits sitting on the leather-and-chrome seats facing the receptionist’s desk.

  Except for the Wachenhut rent-a-cop the Cancer Society installed behind the receptionist’s desk, they closed down tight at night and on weekends. It was therefore possible—even likely—that anyone in the lobby was waiting for him, not for someone connected with the Cancer Society.

  He slowed and took a closer look. He recognized neither man. He shrugged and drove around the block, to the rear of the building, where he had to get out of the Porsche and use a difficult key to open the steel door lowered on weekends over the entrance to the basement garage. He entered the garage, then got out of the Porsche again to reclose the door.

  He rode to the fourth-floor landing on the elevator, unlocked his door, and climbed the narrow stairway to his apartment.

  Which seemed to be in even a greater mess than he remembered. An unpleasant sweetish odor told him that he had again forgotten to get rid of the goddamned garbage under the sink. He would, he realized, have to deal with both problems tonight.

  Just as soon as he dealt with his answering machine, the red light of which was blinking.

  “Matt,” the recorded voice said. “Mike Weisbach. Sorry to bother you on your day off. If you get in before, say, half past ten, give me a ring at home, will you? 774- 4923.”

  He slumped onto the couch and reached for the telephone.

  A woman answered.

  “Inspector Weisbach, please. Detective Payne returning his call.”

  “Hi, Matt. This is Natalie. I’ll get him.”

  “Thank you.”

  Why the hell can’t I remember her name?

  “Hey, Matt. Glad I caught you.”

  “What’s up, Inspector?”

  “Peter Wohl asked me to call you. We’ll be working together on the Five Squad mess.”

  “Yes, sir. I spoke with the inspector earlier. He said he thought we’d get stuck with that.”

  “I’m going to get together with everybody in the morning, nine o’clock, your office. But what I’m calling about now is the tapes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It seems to me the first thing we need is the tapes. How are they coming?”

  “Slowly and painfully.”

  Weisbach chuckled.

  “Captain Sabara said you were working on them late last night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How would you like some more overtime, Detective Payne?”

  “I’m very much afraid the inspector means tonight,” Matt said.

  “Other plans, Matt? Unbreakable?”

  “No, sir. I can go out there. But, Inspector, I can’t finish them tonight.”

  “Maybe we can come up with something tomorrow. Get you some help. But the more I could have before the meeting tomorrow, the better.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll go out there and do what I can.”

  “I appreciate it, Matt. Maybe I can make it up to you.”

  “I’ll do what I can, sir.”

  “Thank you, Matt. See you in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Matt put the telephone back in its cradle.

  “Shit!” he said.

  His doorbell sounded.

  “Now what?”

  He had an intercom, but it was less trouble to go down the stairs and open the door than to use it, and he did so.

  The two men he had seen in the lobby were standing there.

  “Matthew Payne?” the taller one said.

  Matt nodded.

  “I’m Special Agent Jernigan of the FBI, and this is Special Agent Leibowitz.” He showed Matt his identification, then went on: “We’d like to talk to you. May we come in?”

  “Talk to me about what?”

  “May we come in?”

  “Talk to me about what?” Matt repeated.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Payne, we’ll ask the questions,” Special Agent Jernigan said.

  “W
hat is this, some sort of a joke?” Matt asked, aware that his temper was simmering just below the surface.

  “I assure you, this is not a joke.”

  “Ask your questions,” Matt said.

  “Is Miss Susan Reynolds in your apartment?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, but no, she’s not.”

  “We’ll decide what’s our business, if you don’t mind.”

  “And I will decide whether or not I’ll answer your questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “You understand, of course, Mr. Payne, that interfering with a federal investigation is a crime?”

  “I heard that somewhere. But I also heard that declining to answer questions is not considered interfering with an investigation. I think they call that the Fifth Amendment.”

  “We understand, Mr. Payne,” Agent Leibowitz said, “that you were with Miss Reynolds last night?”

  Matt understood when Leibowitz spoke that Leibowitz was the senior agent of the two, and that Leibowitz had opened his mouth only because he understood that Agent Jernigan and the interviewee had developed a personality conflict that would interfere with the interview.

  “Yes, I was,” Matt said.

  “Would you mind telling us where you went with her when you left the Nesbitt residence together?”

  “I did not leave the Nesbitt residence with anyone,” Matt said.

  Christ, have these guys been talking to Daffy? What the hell is this all about?

  “We believe you did,” Agent Leibowitz said.

  “Frankly, I don’t care if you believe in the Easter Bunny,” Matt said. “I’m telling you I left the Nesbitt residence alone, and that’s absolutely the last thing I’m going to tell you until you tell me what this is all about.”

  “I don’t understand your hostility, frankly, Mr. Payne,” Leibowitz said. “You have something against the FBI?”

  “Some of my best friends are FBI agents, but I don’t think I would want my sister to marry one,” Matt said.

  Matt saw that Agent Jernigan’s face had grown red. And that pleased him.

  “Where are you employed, Mr. Payne?” Jernigan asked, somewhat menacingly.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be asking any more questions, are you? Didn’t Agent Leibowitz take over the interview?”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Payne,” Agent Leibowitz said, and walked toward the elevator.

  “’Bye, now,” Matt said. “Have a nice night!”

  He started back up the stairs to his apartment.

  I wonder what the hell that was all about?

  Jesus! Kidnapping?

  Did somebody kidnap Susan Reynolds? That would involve the FBI.

  And they must have talked to Daffy.

  And she told them Susan had left with me, because that’s what she told Susan’s parents.

  Goddamn her!

  Wait a minute. Don’t leap to conclusions.

  Daffy told Susan’s mother that Susan was off somewhere with me.

  Susan’s mother, or father, told Dad’s pal, Lawyer Emmons, that Susan had gone off with me.

  One of them, probably Lawyer Emmons, went to the FBI, and told the FBI the same thing.

  The FBI is investigating the kidnapping, or at least the disappearance and possible kidnapping of Susan Reynolds.

  So soon? She only turned up missing at two A.M. this morning.

  The victim is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Reynolds. Reynolds, a multimillionaire, is president of Tomar, Inc.

  And important enough to get the FBI working on a weekend.

  Goddamn Daffy!

  I am, if not a suspect, then the last person known to have seen the victim.

  Those FBI clowns were just doing their job. I probably shouldn’t have given them such a hard time. But they are such an arrogant bunch of bastards! “I am Special Agent Jernigan of the FBI, Mr. Payne. We’d like to talk to you. May we come in?” and then that “Where are you employed, Mr. Payne?” bullshit. Translation: “We’re going to get you in trouble with your boss, wise guy.”

  Fuck them! All they had to do was tell me they were looking for Susan Reynolds, that they thought she might have been kidnapped. Even if I was the kidnapper, that wouldn’t have hurt their investigation. And I would have told them everything I know . . . except, of course, that I don’t think she spent the night in her room, because I went into her room and the bed hadn’t been slept in.

  Goddamn it, going into her room was really stupid!

  He reached the top of the stairs, crossed to his couch, slumped into it, and put the telephone in his lap.

  “Hello?”

  “Daffy, curiosity overwhelms me. Where did your pal Susan finally turn up?”

  “Matt,” Daphne Browne Nesbitt said solemnly, “I am so sorry.”

  “So sorry about what?”

  “Can you keep your mouth shut?”

  “Of course.”

  “She was there all the time,” Daffy said.

  “She was where all the time?”

  “In her room. She didn’t want to answer the telephone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she told me.”

  “When was this?”

  “About an hour ago. She called just before she checked out of the hotel.”

  “You’re sure it was her?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Did she tell you why she didn’t want to answer the telephone?”

  “No, but I can guess, can’t you?”

  “You’re suggesting she was in the sack with some guy all the time?”

  “I suggested nothing of the kind. Susan isn’t that kind of girl.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Probably, about now, about halfway to Harrisburg. Matt, I feel like such a shit for getting you involved.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “I know about her father’s lawyer calling your father.”

  “No major problem, Daffy.”

  “You want to come to supper? There’s all kinds of leftovers.”

  “I’ll take a rain check.”

  “You want Susan’s telephone number? If at first you don’t succeed, et cetera, et cetera . . .”

  He stopped himself just in time from saying “no.” He wrote the number down, then said good-bye to Daphne.

  Do I want to take another shot at that dame? No, I do not. Then why did I take down her phone number?

  He crumpled the sheet of notepaper up and threw it at an overflowing wastebasket. He missed.

  He spent the next thirty minutes in an only partially successful attempt to clean up the apartment, then started carrying bags of garbage down the stairs to the elevator. On his third trip, emptying the wastebasket in brown kraft paper bags from Acme Supermarkets, he saw the crumpled ball of paper with Susan Reynolds’s telephone number on it. He picked it up and after a moment’s hesitation stuffed it into his pocket.

  Then he went down in the elevator with the half-dozen bags of garbage, set them where they would be collected in the morning, and walked back to the Porsche. He debated a moment about taking the unmarked car, then decided not to. He was going on duty, sure, extra duty, and therefore the taxpayers of Philadelphia should be happy to pay for his transportation.

  But on the other hand, driving the Porsche was fun. And there was probably going to be little chance to drive it during the next week or ten days. With His Honor the mayor paying personal attention to the investigation of dirty cops in Narcotics, there was almost certainly going to be a lot of overtime.

  He drove out of the garage, closed it after him, and then started for Special Operations, via Broad Street. As he passed Hahnemann Hospital, he glanced in the rearview mirror to change lanes and saw Special Agent Leibowitz of the FBI at the wheel of a green Chevrolet, with Special Agent Jernigan sitting beside him.

  I’ll be goddamned! Those clowns are surveilling me!

  They were still behind him after twenty mi
nutes and a lengthy trip up and down the back alleys off Frankford Avenue when he pulled into the Special Operations Division parking lot and into the parking spot reserved for the unmarked car he had left in the Cancer Society Building garage.

  First of all, he thought, not without a certain pleasure, they’ll be wondering what I’m doing here. After a while—a long while, it is to be hoped—they may actually interrupt their dedicated surveillance of the kidnap suspect long enough to enter the building, identify themselves to the sergeant or the duty officer, and inquire of him if they happen to know what the occupant of the silver Porsche is doing in here.

  At that point, they may actually get in touch with their supervisor, who will tell them that there is no kidnapping after all, and they will be denied the great pleasure of hauling the uncooperative wiseass off in handcuffs.

  He went up the stairs to the Investigation Section, turned on the lights, worked the combination lock on “his” filing cabinet, took the tapes from the cabinet, seated himself at his desk, and turned on the dictating machine.

  Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach looked around the Investigations Section office at the people he had summoned—in the case of Sergeant Jason Washington, politely asked—to participate.

  Among them was the only man in uniform, Sergeant Elliot Sandow, a slight, sickly-looking former Traffic officer who had been struck on the job by a Strawbridge & Clothier delivery truck, spent four months in the hospital, and personally petitioned Mayor Carlucci to stay on the job rather than go out on disability.

  He had proved to be an unusually skilled administrator, whom Weisbach had found working in Personnel and arranged to have transferred first to the Staff Inspection Unit, and then, when he had been named to command the Ethical Affairs Unit, to EAU. At the moment, Weisbach and Sandow were the EAU.

  Also present were Detectives Anthony C. Harris, Jesus Martinez, Charles McFadden, Matthew M. Payne, and Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., a very black twenty-four-year-old who stood six feet three inches tall, weighed 230 pounds, and was known, perhaps inevitably, as “Tiny.”

  Foster H. Lewis, Sr., a lieutenant in the 9th District, was very unhappy that his son was a police officer at all, and working plainclothes in the Investigations Section of Special Operations in particular. As a parent, he would have much preferred that his son had remained a medical student rather than join the police department. As a policeman, he would have much preferred that his son learn the police profession as he had, working his way up from walking a beat, rather than going almost directly from the Academy to a plainclothes Special Operations assignment that carried with it so much overtime that he was bringing home almost as much money as his father and was usually provided with an unmarked car.