Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “What can I do for you?” the uniform—a football-tackle type, with a ruddy complexion—asked after he had given the ID and Matt a good look.

  “Philadelphia, huh?” the uniform said, then looked back at Matt’s car and added, “Blue Plymouth. We got the word on you.”

  “What word is that?”

  “That you’re up here looking for some money some dirty cop in Philadelphia’s trying to hide up here, and we should leave you alone.”

  “Guilty.”

  “This is part of that?”

  “No. This is personal. You are about to ruin my romantic evening. How does the Harrisburg Police Department feel about professional courtesy?”

  “You know how fast she was going?”

  “Too fast for me to take my eyes off the road to look for speed-limit signs.”

  “Sixty-five. This is zoned forty.”

  “I understand. If you feel that duty requires you toss her in the slam and ruin the best chance I’ve had in six months, I will understand.”

  The uniform laughed.

  “If you put it that way, how could I run her in?”

  “You could be a prick like my corporal when I was in Highway.”

  “Have a word with her,” the uniform said, chuckling.

  “I will,” Matt said, and put out his hand. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Good luck,” the uniform said, and got back in his car.

  Matt walked up to Susan’s car. The window was down, but she didn’t say anything. She looked a little frightened.

  “I just got you off,” he said. “Say, ‘Thank you, Matthew. ’ ”

  “I heard,” she said. “Everything. I think I’d rather have gotten the ticket.”

  “You’re welcome,” Matt said.

  The window whooshed up.

  “Drive slow,” Matt muttered a little bitterly and then walked back to the Plymouth.

  When he flicked the Plymouth’s headlights, the Porsche moved off the shoulder and down the road and he followed it.

  He had a sudden insight:

  She was not being routinely rude. She was frightened. But why? I just got the uniform not to pinch her. And she knew that. She said she “heard everything.”

  In which case, she heard the uniform verify my story about why I’m in Harrisburg. That should have put her mind at rest about me, if indeed Daddy had turned on her alarm system and she was wondering if I was really here looking for hidden money.

  But if I was involved in something like she is, and a police car with its bubble-gum machine flashing pulled me over, I’d be pissing my pants, too. And while Wohl is probably right—Chenowith, who robs banks with a sawed-off shotgun, and the scumbag with the acne are dangerous—from what I’ve seen tonight, Susan is more a Presbyterian Princess who calls her parents “Mommy” and “Daddy,” than a cold-blooded terrorist.

  She didn’t blow up the Biological Sciences building. If she had, the FBI would have said so. Helping those lunatics makes her an accessory after the fact, sure, but it doesn’t mean she’s as cold-blooded as they are.

  Can I use that somehow?

  FOURTEEN

  If he saw it at all, Mr. Ronald R. Ketcham paid little attention to the black GMC Suburban truck parked near the elevator in the basement garage of his garden apartment building on Overbrook Avenue.

  The truck was inconspicuous, and intended to be that way. It was painted black, and all but the windshield and front-seat windows had been painted over. There were no signs on its doors or sides indicating its ownership or purpose; it was classified as a “Not For Hire” vehicle, and none were required by law.

  The inconspicuous Suburban was normally used to carry the remains of the recently deceased from their place of death—usually a hospital, but sometimes from the Medical Examiner’s office, if the deceased had died at home, or for some other reason was subject to an official autopsy—to a funeral home.

  Larger undertaking establishments often had their own discreet vehicles for the purpose of collecting bodies and bringing them to their places of business, as they had their own fleets of hearses, flower cars, and limousines to carry the dear departed, his/her floral tributes, and his/her mourners to his/her final resting place. But many—perhaps most—of Philadelphia’s smaller funeral homes had found it good business to take advantage of the corpse pickup service and delivery service offered by Classic Livery, Inc., which owned the Suburban Mr. Ketcham did not notice as he drove his Buick into his garage.

  Even the larger undertaking establishments, when business was good, often used one of the four black Suburbans Classic Livery had made available to the trade, as they similarly availed themselves of hearses, flower cars, and limousines from Classic Livery’s fleet when their own equipment was not sufficient to meet the demands of that particular day’s service to the deceased and bereaved.

  Classic Livery, Inc., also owned the black Lincoln sedan parked among the rows of cars in the basement garage of Ketcham’s garden apartment, and the four men in it—who had been waiting for Ketcham for two hours before the shit-ass finally showed up—were longtime employees of Classic Livery.

  Ketcham parked his Buick coupe in the place reserved for it, got out, reached in and took his briefcase from the rear seat, and walked toward the elevator.

  As Ketcham did so, everyone in the Lincoln sedan except the driver got out, and the driver of the remains-transporting Suburban started his engine.

  The three men from the Lincoln reached the door to the elevator at about the time Ketcham reached it. One of them, a well-dressed thirty-five-year-old of Sicilian ancestry, smiled at Ketcham and waved him into the open elevator door. When Ketcham had entered the elevator, the three men got into it with him.

  The elevator door closed.

  The driver of the black Suburban drove to the door of the elevator and backed up to it. The doors were opened from the inside.

  The elevator door opened again not quite a full minute later. Ketcham, the upper part of his body now concealed in an overcoat, and staggering, as if he had been subjected to some sort of blow to the head, emerged from the elevator, supported by two of the three men who had entered the elevator with him.

  Ketcham was assisted into the Suburban, and one of the three men from the Lincoln got in with him. Ketcham was dragged toward the front of the Suburban—all but the front seat, of course, had been removed, so there would be room for a cadaver—where he lay upon his stomach. The doors were closed.

  The other two men walked unhurriedly back to the Lincoln and got in. When the black Suburban drove away from the elevator door toward the entrance of the garage, the Lincoln followed it.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Ketcham asked, his voice somewhat muffled by the overcoat over his head and shoulders.

  The man who had opened the doors from the inside, and was now half sitting on a small ledge in the side of the Suburban, kicked him in the face.

  “Shut your fucking face,” he said.

  He then proceeded to wrap two-inch-wide white surgical—or perhaps “morticians and embalmers”—white gauze around Ketcham’s neck, in such a manner that the overcoat would not become dislodged.

  Next, he used the tape to bind Ketcham’s wrists together, and then his ankles.

  Approximately five minutes later, Ketcham, who sounded close to tears, said one word: “Please . . .”

  This earned him two sharp kicks, one in the ear from the man in the front, and a second in the buttocks, delivered by the man who had smiled at him as he had entered the elevator and who had gotten into the Suburban with him.

  Ketcham said nothing else during the rest of the journey, which took approximately forty minutes, and neither did either of the two men with him in the rear of the remains-transporting Suburban.

  Ketcham tried to recognize, and make sense of, the sounds and noises he heard during the trip. From the frequent stops and starts, and the sounds of automobiles accelerating and shifting gears, Ketcham deduced they were in
traffic somewhere.

  He searched his memory, very hard, in an attempt to guess who was doing this to him and why, but to no avail. The first thing that occurred to him, perhaps naturally, was that it had something to do with Mr. Amos J. Williams.

  At first—Ketcham was understandably upset and not thinking too clearly, although the two lines of cocaine he had nasally ingested in the men’s room of the Blue Rock Tavern on his way home gave him a feeling of euphoria about all things, including a sense that his mind was really firing on all twelve cylinders—that seemed the most logical inference to draw.

  Williams—and his thugs—had been arrested at the Howard Johnson motel on Roosevelt Boulevard, and I wasn’t. That damned well might have made him suspicious, maybe made him think I had set him up with the police. And his getting arrested had also caused him to lose the cocaine he had intended to sell me. Even if he had paid only half of what he was going to sell it to me for, that’s still ten thousand dollars, and he would be very unhappy about losing that much money.

  And if he has decided—he’s not intelligent, obviously, so he’s liable to decide anything—that I had something to do with his arrest, then this may be my punishment for that.

  Unlikely. The first thing he would do—intelligent or not, he has a certain criminal cunning—would be to recoup his losses. At least the ten thousand he had invested, and possibly the entire twenty I had agreed to pay him. Once he had done that, he might well kill me. But what would be the purpose?

  If it’s money he wants, I’ll promise to get it for him. Under these circumstances, I will be certainly motivated to find it somewhere.

  But wait a minute! If this, whatever this is, has something to do with Amos Williams & Company, he would have sent his man Baby Brownlee. The people who are doing this to me are white men!

  Could this be a case of mistaken identity?

  For that matter, could I be hallucinating? This does feel like a bad dream. Am I going to wake up in just a minute?

  Or could I really be hallucinating? I did a couple of lines . . . what, forty minutes ago? Was it bad stuff?

  No. That was from my next-to-last packet of emergency supplies. I’ve been into it twenty, perhaps thirty, times without anything unpleasant happening.

  Ketcham became aware that the sound of the vehicle’s passageway over the roadway had changed. For one thing, he sensed that they were moving more slowly than they had been.

  The vehicle stopped.

  Ketcham heard the sound of the vehicle’s door opening, and then it moved as if someone had gotten out.

  He heard a metallic screech and decided, after a moment, that it was the sound of a door opening, and then changed that to suspect strongly that it was the sound a gate in a Cyclone fence—as those surrounding a tennis court—makes when being opened.

  The vehicle moved a short distance forward. Ketcham heard the sound of the squeaking gate again. The vehicle tilted as if someone had gotten in the front seat. The door slammed shut and the vehicle drove off.

  Ketcham sensed that they were no longer on a paved road, and confirmation of this came when the vehicle, moving slowly, encountered one hole in the road after another.

  What are they doing? Taking me out in the woods someplace to kill me?

  But if they wanted to kill me, they had ample opportunity in my garage.

  If they’re not going to kill me, then what? They must want something from me. What?

  If this is a case of mistaken identity, which seems as likely an answer as anything else I’ve been able to come up with, then there will be the opportunity to clear things up, to let them know I’m not who they are looking for.

  Or, even if it’s not a case of mistaken identity, if they want something from me—maybe they know I’m a stockbroker, and think we keep large amounts of cash around the office. They’re Italian, they could be the Mafia. That sounds like something the Mafia would do. And they might not know the only cash around the office is in the petty-cash box, and I don’t even know of any negotiable instruments at all. Anyway, if they do want something from me, there will certainly be an opportunity to talk, to negotiate.

  Those thoughts made Ketcham feel better.

  After two or three minutes of lurching down what Ketcham was now convinced was an unpaved road, the vehicle moved onto a solid, flat, and thus presumably paved surface and stopped.

  There was the sound of two doors being opened, the sense of shifting as if two persons had left the vehicle, and the doors slammed shut.

  Then Ketcham heard the rear doors of the vehicle being opened.

  “Cut that shit off his legs,” a voice ordered.

  There was a clicking sound, which Ketcham decided just might be the sound of a switchblade, and a sensation of sawing around his ankles. He felt the pressure that had been holding his ankles together go away.

  Ketcham was dragged out of the Suburban and set on his feet. He felt a hand on each arm, as if there was a man on each side of him.

  He was pushed into motion. Without quite knowing why, he sensed that he had entered some kind of a building. The sense grew stronger as he was guided down what he now believed to be a corridor, and confirmation came when he was stopped, and heard the sound of a door—a heavy metal door, he deduced. Where am I? In a factory? Or a garage?—being opened.

  Ketcham was pushed through the door, led fifteen feet inside, and stopped.

  “Cut his hands loose,” the same voice ordered, and again there was the sort of slick clicking sound a switchblade knife made, and again the sawing sensation, this time at his wrists.

  And then they were free.

  “Without taking the coat off your head, take off your clothes,” the same voice ordered.

  “What?” Ketcham asked incredulously.

  This earned him a blow in the face.

  That wasn’t a fist. That was something hard. A stick perhaps. Or perhaps a gun.

  “Without taking the coat off your head, take off your clothes,” the same voice repeated.

  The one thing I cannot afford to do, Ketcham told himself, is lose control of myself. They want me to take off my clothes, very well, I will take off my clothes—meanwhile, waiting patiently, and carefully, for my opportunity.

  With some difficulty, Ketcham removed the jacket of his dark blue, faintly striped blue suit. Without thinking what he was doing, he held the suit jacket out, as if waiting for someone to take it from him and hang it up.

  A snicker made Ketcham realize that no one was going to take the jacket from him. He let it slip from his fingers.

  Ketcham next removed his necktie, and tried to drop that on top of his suit jacket. Then he pushed his braces off his shoulders, loosened the snap and opened the fly of his trousers, and somewhat awkwardly removed his trousers, which he then attempted to drop atop his jacket, tie, and shirt.

  “I won’t be able to remove my undershirt,” he began, trying to sound as polite and reasonable as possible.

  Ketcham was then struck upon the face again, which caused him to lose his balance and fall backward onto the floor.

  “What he means,” a new voice said, “is that he can’t get his undershirt off without taking the overcoat off his head.”

  “Fuck the undershirt, then,” the first, now familiar voice replied. “Take off your shorts and your shoes and socks.”

  Ketcham complied. He was now naked save for the overcoat over his head and upper body, and his undershirt, sitting on the floor. The floor was cold.

  From its consistency, Ketcham decided the cold floor was concrete, which tended to buttress his suspicion that he was in a garage, or a factory of some sort.

  “Get up,” the familiar voice ordered.

  Ketcham complied.

  “Hold your hands out in front of you, together,” the familiar voice added.

  Ketcham complied, and almost immediately felt his wrists again being tied together.

  There was a short burst of derisive laughter.

  “Christ, look at his
cock,” a third voice, previously unheard, said. “Angelina’s Chihuahua’s got a bigger cock.”

  There were chuckles of agreement.

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” the familiar voice said.

  I will remember that when this is over and I’m out of here, Ketcham decided with some satisfaction. One of these thugs has a wife, or girlfriend, named Angelina, who has a Chihuahua.

  Then nothing happened, except for what Ketcham believed to be the sound of shuffling feet, and what could have been the sound of the door being closed.

  It was cold wherever he was, and Ketcham felt himself start to shiver.

  That should really please the thug who thinks my penis is funny, when he sees me standing here naked and shivering.

  I will not lose control. I will wait until whatever is going to happen happens.

  Five minutes later, very carefully, Ketcham uttered one word.

  “Hello?”

  There was no reply.

  Thirty seconds after that, Ketcham spoke again:

  “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  There was no reply.

  Obviously, there is no one here. If there was, and I was not supposed to have spoken, they would have hit me again.

  Will someone be coming back?

  What would they do to me if they came back and found that I had somehow been able to remove the overcoat over my head?

  Two minutes after that, after having debated the question with himself carefully, Ketcham decided to attempt to remove the overcoat that covered his head and upper body.

  Doing so was easier than he thought it would be. By maneuvering his shoulders while holding one side of the coat with his bound-together hands, he was able to get the coat off first one shoulder and then the other, and when that was done, he was able to untie the tape holding the coat around his neck.

  But when Ketcham had removed the coat, he could see absolutely nothing. There was no light of any kind whatever in the room. He suddenly felt faint and dizzy, and dropped to his knees, and then moved to a sitting position. The floor under his buttocks was rough and cold.

  Ketcham raised his wrists to his mouth, and with some difficulty, using his teeth, he managed to untie the tape binding his wrists together. That done, he groped for the overcoat, found it, and put it on. It was too small for him; he could button only a few of the buttons, and the cuffs were six inches off his wrists.