Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “You mean, you and Chad in the backseat of the car, making elephants-in-rut-type noises?”

  “Screw you, you know what I mean,” Daffy said. “Are you seeing much of Amanda these days?”

  He shook his head, “no.”

  “Why not? She’s a really nice girl.”

  “We never seem to be free at the same time,” Matt said.

  “Yeah,” Daffy said, and changed the subject: “Well, since we all can’t fit in your car, I’d better see about ours.”

  “Either this child has terminal B.O., or it needs a diaper change,” Matt said.

  Daffy picked up her baby and walked out of the room with her. Chad appeared a moment later, walked to the bar, poured whiskey in a glass and tossed it down, then held his finger in front of his lips in a signal that Daffy was not to know he had a little predinner drink.

  Daffy reappeared, and they went down the stairs. The rent-a-cop was not in sight, and Matt wondered where he was.

  When they went outside, the rent-a-cop was standing beside an Oldsmobile 98 sedan, the doors of which were open.

  Daffy and Chad got in the backseat, the rent-a-cop got behind the wheel, and Matt got in the front passenger seat beside him.

  “You know the La Bochabella restaurant?” Chad asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where’d you get this?” Matt asked when they were inside. “It’s new, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Chad said. “Tell him, Mr. Frazier.”

  “The statistics show,” Frazier announced, very seriously, “that there are far fewer incidents involving Olds mobiles and Buicks than there are involving Cadillacs and Lincolns. Presumably, they don’t attract the same kind of attention from the wrong kind of people.”

  “You’re telling me your old man is going to turn in his Rolls Royce on an Olds?” Matt asked. “To avoid an incident ?”

  “No.” Chad laughed. “But he’s stopped going anywhere in it alone.”

  “You seem to feel this is funny, Matt,” Daffy said. “I don’t. We don’t.”

  “Straight answer, Daffy?”

  “If you can come up with one.”

  “As a cop, I’m a little embarrassed that Chad’s father, and your mothers, and you really feel it’s necessary.”

  “That brings us back to my ounce of prevention,” Chad said.

  Matt confessed to the maître d’ of La Bochabella that he didn’t have a reservation, and asked how much of a problem that was going to be.

  The maître d’ consulted his reservations list at length, frowning, and shaking his head.

  If this son of a bitch is waiting for me to slip him money, we’ll be here all night.

  “I’m afraid, sir . . .” the maìtre d’ began.

  A chubby, splendidly tailored man in his late twenties walked up to the maître d’s stand.

  “Ricardo,” he announced, “Mr. Brewer just phoned and canceled his reservation.” He looked at Matt. “If you’re willing to wait just a few minutes, sir, we’ll be happy to accommodate you.”

  “Thank you,” Matt said.

  “And your name, sir?”

  “Payne,” Matt said. The maître d’ wrote that at the head of his list of reservations.

  “Initial?” the splendidly tailored chubby fellow said.

  “M,” Matt said.

  “Perhaps you’d like to wait at the bar,” the splendidly tailored chubby fellow suggested. “It will be a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” Matt said, and led the way to the bar, which occupied most of the left side of the corridor leading from the door to the dining room. When he had slid onto a stool, he saw Frazier sitting at the end of the bar, near the door.

  He wondered, idly, what Frazier was drinking.

  Can you sit at the bar of an expensive place like this and drink soda? Or does a rent-a-cop on duty order a scotch straight up with soda on the side, and not drink the scotch? Or pour it on the floor, when no one’s looking?

  The bartender appeared.

  “I’ll have what that gentlemen is drinking,” Matt said, indicating Frazier.

  “The gentleman is drinking soda with a lemon slice, sir,” the bartender said.

  “In that case, I think I’d better take a look at the wine list,” Matt said. “We can take a bottle to the table later, right?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “What are we celebrating, Matt?” Daffy asked.

  “Nothing, so far as I know. Why?”

  “I don’t trust you when you are charming. You asking for the wine list?”

  “Then screw you, baby! You don’t get no wine.”

  She smiled.

  “Better. That’s the old Matt, the one I have always loathed and despised.”

  Chad chuckled.

  The chubby, splendidly tailored man in his late twenties, whose name was Anthony Joseph Desidiro, waited until he saw that Mr. Payne and party had taken seats at the bar, and then he walked to the rear of the dining room. Against the rear wall was a table shielded by a light green silk screen. The screen’s weave was such that people seated at the table could see the dining room but people in the dining room could not see who was sitting at the table.

  There were two men at the table. One was Mr. Desidiro’s cousin, a large, well-muscled, equally splendidly tailored gentleman whose name appeared on the liquor and restaurant licenses of La Bochabella as the owner. His name was Paulo Cassandro. His mother and Mr. Desidiro’s mother were sisters. Mr. Cassandro had provided his cousin Tony with both his tuition at the Cornell School of Hotel & Restaurant Administration, and a generous allowance while he was there so he would be able to devote his full time to learning the hotel and restaurant administration profession.

  On his graduation, Mr. Desidiro spent two years working—he thought of it as an internship—at the Ristorante Alfredo, another of Philadelphia’s more elegant Italian restaurants, on whose liquor and restaurant licenses Mr. Cassandro was also listed as owner.

  Two months before, Mr. Desidiro had been named manager of La Bochabella. He had told his cousin Paulo that it was his plan that La Bochabella would become known as the best Northern Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, catering to the social and economic upper crust of Philadelphia.

  He wanted to raise prices sufficiently to discourage the patronage of those who thought Italian cuisine was primarily sausage and peppers and spaghetti and meatballs, and that fine Italian wine began and ended with Chianti in raffia-wrapped bottles.

  “You got eighteen months, Tony,” Cousin Paulo had told him. “Mr. S. thinks maybe you got a good idea. You got eighteen months to make it work.”

  Mr. S. was what his intimates called Mr. Vincenzo Savarese, and Mr. Desidiro was aware that Cousin Paulo’s name on the licenses notwithstanding, Mr. Savarese had the controlling interest in both La Bochabella and Ristorante Alfredo.

  Mr. Desidiro thought it was fortuitous that Mr. Savarese had chosen tonight to have dinner in La Bochabella with Cousin Paulo—he came in only every couple of weeks, and then mostly for lunch, not dinner—and he would thus have the opportunity to prove to Mr. Savarese that his philosophy for the successful operation of the restaurant was bearing fruit.

  He stepped behind the curtain. Both Cousin Paulo and Mr. Savarese interrupted their meal to look at him.

  “Is everything all right?” Mr. Desidiro asked. “Do you like the lamb, Mr. Savarese?”

  “Very much,” Mr. Savarese said. “The garlic—how do I say this?—is delicate.”

  “We throw garlic buds, crushed but in their skins, directly on the coals when the leg is still raw,” Mr. Desidiro said. “It delicately infuses the meat with the flavor, I think. I’m pleased that you like it.”

  “Very nice,” Mr. Savarese said.

  “Yeah, Tony,” Cassandro said.

  “You know who we have outside, waiting for a table?” Mr. Desidiro said, and went on before a reply could be made. “Mr. and Mrs. Nesbitt the Fourth, of Nesfoods International.”

  �
��Yes,” Mr. Savarese said. “I saw them. I was going to have a word with you about them.”

  Mr. Desidiro tried not to show his surprise that Mr. Savarese recognized the heir to Nesfoods International and his wife.

  “Yes, Mr. Savarese.”

  “They have a friend with them,” Mr. Savarese said.

  “A Mr. Payne,” Mr. Desidiro said.

  “Yes, I know,” Mr. Savarese said. “You should be very careful around him, Tony.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “He is not only a policeman, but he shoots people in the head,” Mr. Savarese said. “Isn’t that so, Paulo?”

  “That’s right, Mr. S.,” Paulo agreed.

  “You remember that crazy man, Tony, who was kidnapping and then doing sexual things to women in Northwest Philadelphia?” Mr. Savarese asked.

  “Yes, I do. A policeman shot him?”

  “That policeman,” Mr. Savarese said.

  “Right in the head, Tony,” Cassandro said, miming someone shooting a pistol. “Ka-pow! Ka-pow!”

  “Very interesting,” Mr. Desidiro said, wondering what a cop was doing having dinner—Mr. S. had said “a friend”—with the guy whose father owned Nesfoods International.

  “If Mr. Payne should ask for the check, Tony,” Mr. Savarese said, “please tell him that it has been taken care of by a friend—make that ‘an admirer.’ ”

  “Right, Mr. Savarese. ‘An admirer.’ ”

  “Please have the courtesy to let me finish, Tony,” Mr. Savarese said.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Savarese,” Mr. Desidiro said. “I beg your pardon.”

  “You should learn to listen, Tony,” Mr. Savarese said.

  “Jesus Christ, Tony!” Cassandro snapped.

  “If young Mr. Payne asks for the check, please tell him that it has been taken care of by an admirer of his father,” Mr. Savarese said.

  “Of his father,” Mr. Desidiro said. “Right, Mr. Savarese.”

  And then he had a question, which, after a moment, he spoke aloud.

  “And if Mr. Nesbitt should ask for the check, Mr. Savarese?”

  “Then give it to him,” Mr. Savarese said. “I am not indebted to his father.”

  “Right, Mr. Savarese.”

  “You understand, Tony,” Cassandro said. “You don’t mention Mr. S.’s name?”

  “Right. Of course not.”

  “I’m going to Harrisburg,” Matt Payne announced after they had all ordered, at the suggestion of the waiter, roast lamb with roasted potatoes, a spinach salad, and were waiting for the shrimp cocktail they had ordered for an appetizer.

  “I didn’t know anyone went there on purpose,” Chad said.

  “I am being sent to Harrisburg,” Matt corrected himself.

  “Susan lives outside Harrisburg,” Daffy said.

  “You do something wrong?” Chad said, reaching for the bottle of Merlot.

  “Of course not,” Matt said. “I am known in the department as Detective Perfect. Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? She told me that.”

  “Shit!” Chad said. “Who told you what?”

  “Susan Whatsername told me she lived in Harrisburg.”

  “Camp Hill,” Daffy corrected him. “Outside Harrisburg.”

  “What are you being sent to Harrisburg for?” Chad asked.

  “They are having a crime wave, and require the services of a big-city detective to solve it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You remember reading about the lieutenant the Department threw in the slammer for protecting the call girl ring?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not for publication, I’m tying up some loose ends on that,” Matt said.

  “A call girl ring?” Daffy said. “Right down your alley. You should love that.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “You really should call her,” Daffy said.

  “Call who? Any call girl? Or do you have a specific one in mind?”

  “Susan, you ass.”

  “Your pal Susan shot me down in flames, you will recall.”

  “If at first you don’t succeed,” Daffy said.

  “I have her phone number,” Matt said. “You gave it to me.”

  “Call her. If nothing else, it’ll keep you out of trouble with the call girls,” Daffy said.

  “I don’t know,” Matt said doubtfully.

  “Call her, damn you. She’s a very nice girl.”

  A very nice girl, Matt thought, who is aiding and abetting four murdering lunatics.

  “Are you going to be talking to her?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Daffy replied. “I can. Why?”

  “I don’t suppose you would be willing to tell her you were only kidding when you told her what an all-around son of a bitch I am?”

  “I wasn’t kidding. But, okay, I’ll call her and put in a good word for you. If you promise to call her when you’re there.”

  “If I can find the time,” Matt said.

  “Find the time,” Chad said.

  “She’s really a very nice girl,” Daffy said.

  Now, if you call our Susan and tell her, or let surmise, that my calling her was your and Chad’s idea, and I’m not thrilled about it, that just may allay her suspicions that I might have a professional interest in her activities, and this charade will not have been in vain.

  “Ah,” Matt said. “Here comes the shrimp. Can we change the subject, please?”

  “Take her to the Hotel Hershey,” Daffy said. “That’s romantic as hell.”

  “All I want to do with her, Daffy,” Matt said, sounding serious, “is get her in bed. I didn’t say a word about . . .”

  “You bastard!” Daffy said, smiling at him. “Now I will call her. Susan may be just the girl to bring you under control.”

  Philip Chason, a slightly built fifty-five-year-old who walked with a limp, turned his three-year-old Ford sedan off Essington Avenue—sometimes called “Automobile Row”—and onto the lot of Fiorello’s Fine Cars.

  It was one of the larger lots; Chason figured there must be 150 cars on display, ranging from year-old Cadillacs and Buicks down to junkers one step away from the crusher.

  Chason was not in the market for a car. And if he was going shopping for one, he wouldn’t have come here. Joe Fiorello was somehow tied to the mob. Chason didn’t know exactly what the connection was, but he knew there was one. And Chason had a thing about the mob; he didn’t like the idea of them getting any of his money.

  Chason had spent twenty-six years of his life as a Philadelphia policeman, and eighteen of the twenty-six years as a detective, before a drunk had run a red light and slammed into the side of his unmarked car. That had put him in the hospital for six weeks, given him a gimp leg that hurt whenever it rained, and gotten him a line-of-duty-injury pension.

  After sitting around for four months watching the grass grow, Phil Chason had got himself a private investigator’s license, made a little office in the basement of his house, put in another telephone and an answering machine, and took out an ad in the phone book’s yellow pages: “Philip Chason, Confidential Investigations. (Retired Detective, Philadelphia P.D.).”

  It was not a quick way to get rich in any case, and it had been tough getting started at all. But gradually jobs started coming his way. Too many of them were sleaze, like following some guy whose wife suspected he was getting a little on the side, or some dame whose husband figured she was.

  He got some seasonal work, like at Christmas at John Wanamaker’s Department Store, helping their security people keep an eye on shoplifters and seasonal employees. And Wachenhut called him every once in a while to work, for example, ritzy parties at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, or a big reception at one of the hotels, keeping scumbags from ripping people off.

  Both Wanamaker’s and Wachenhut had offered him a full-time job, but the money was anything but great, and he didn’t want to get tied down to having to go to work every day, especially when the leg was giving him trouble.


  He got some work from the sleazebags who hung around the courts and called themselves “The Criminal Bar,” but there were two things wrong with that: he didn’t like helping some scumbag lawyer keep some scumbag from going to jail, and they paid slow.

  And he’d done a couple of jobs for Joe Fiorello before this one. Fiorello had called him out of the blue about a year ago, said he’d seen the ad in the yellow pages, and needed a job done.

  Chason had told Joey his “initial consultation fee” was fifty bucks, whether or not he took the job. He knew who Fiorello was and he had no intention of doing something illegal. Joey had told him no problem, that he should come by the used-car lot and he’d tell him what he wanted done, and Chason could decide whether or not he wanted to do it.

  What Joey wanted the first time was for Chason to check out a guy he was thinking of hiring as a salesman. The guy had a great reputation as a salesman, Joey said, but there was something about him that didn’t smell kosher, and before he took him on, he wanted to be sure about him, and how much would that cost?

  Chason had told him it would probably take about ten hours of his time, at twenty-five dollars an hour, plus expenses, like getting a credit report, and mileage, at a dime a mile, and Joey thought it over a minute and then said go ahead, how long will it take, the sooner the better.

  That time, Chason had found out the guy was what he said he was, what his reputation said he was, a hard-working guy with a family, who paid his bills, didn’t drink a hell of a lot, went to church, and even, as far as Chason could find out, slept with his own wife.

  Chason couldn’t figure why a guy like that, who already had a good job as sales manager for the used-car department of the Pontiac dealer in Willow Grove, would want to work in the city for Fiorello. The answer to that was that he didn’t. The second time Joey Fiorello called Chason, to do the same kind of a job on another guy Joey was thinking of hiring, Chason asked him what happened to the first guy, and Joey told him he’d made the guy an offer that wasn’t good enough—the guy wanted an arm and a leg, Joey said—and that hadn’t worked out.

  The second time had been like the first job. Only this time the guy was selling furniture on Market Street, and thought he might like selling cars. Another Mr. Straight Citizen. Wife, kids, church, the whole nine yards. And he either came to his senses about what a good job he already had, or somebody whispered in his ear that Joey Fiorello wasn’t the absolutely respectable businessman he wanted everybody to think he was. Anyway, he didn’t go to work for Fiorello Fine Cars, either.