“Princess, that model of the Bennington mommy—and God knows, I know them well; your mommy, Chad’s mommy, Daffy’s mommy, and Penny’s mommy were all stamped out of the same mold—is not really as airheaded and naive as they would have their children believe.”
“Meaning what?”
“They’ve figured it out that if the children think they’re stupid, the children won’t try so hard to put something over on them, and thus they get to know what’s going on.”
“You really think my mother knows about us?”
“Knows? No. Not unless she’s climbed the fire escape to look in the window—which I suppose is possible. But does she have deep, and justifiable, suspicions? Hell, yes, she does.”
“I don’t believe that!”
“Susan, you told your mother you were out with me listening to jazz in Philadelphia until six in the morning. You don’t really think she believes that, do you? That all we were doing was holding hands, snapping our fingers to the music, and having good clean fun?”
Susan’s face showed that she had never considered this before.
“Do you really believe this, or are you just saying it to get me to stay?”
“I really believe it; and I’m saying it because I don’t want you to go. And what the hell difference does it make? In three days, maybe—probably—much sooner, the fact that we’ve been playing Hide the Salami won’t seem at all important to your mother—or, for that matter, your father. When the problem has become how to keep their Presbyterian princess out of the slam, the fact that she has been—”
“Oh, God!” Susan said. “God, you can be cruel! Sometimes I hate you!”
He looked up at her and was as astonished by the wave of fury that suddenly swept through him as he was by what he heard himself say.
“Well, fuck you, too, Susan!”
“What did you say?” she asked, horrified.
“I said ‘Fuck you.’ Goddamn you, go home and play the goddamn game with your goddamned mommy!”
He jumped out of bed and marched angrily into the bathroom.
He half expected her to come knock at the bathroom door. Or throw something at it. Or scream at him.
There was no response from the bedroom at all.
He looked at the closed door and decided the gentlemanly thing to do would be to give her the time to get dressed and make a dignified withdrawal from the scene of battle.
That gentlemanly decision lasted approximately ninety seconds.
Fuck it! Why should I wait in here? Screw her!
He pulled the door open.
Susan, still naked, was sitting on the bed, talking on the telephone.
“Be sure to give Mommy my best regards!” Matt said nastily.
“Thank you,” Susan said into the telephone, and hung up.
She looked at Matt. He saw there were tears in her eyes.
“I was ordering our breakfast,” she said.
Captain David Pekach was at the urinal mounted on the wall of the bathroom of the master suite of the Peebles mansion on Glengarry Lane when the telephone rang.
He had been examining his reflected image in the mirror that lined the upper half of the wall. He was wearing silk pajamas, because he had come to understand that Martha—although she had said nothing—thought that his pre-Martha sleeping attire—a T-shirt—was a little crude.
The pajamas bore the label of A. Sulka & Company, Rue de Castiglione, Paris. Pekach had never been to Paris, although Martha thought it would be a nice place to spend at least a few days of their upcoming honeymoon.
The pajamas had been purchased by Martha’s late father in Paris, and then brought home and apparently forgotten. When Pekach found them in what was now his dresser (Martha called it a chest of drawers), they were still in their cellophane packaging.
The truth was, he had just concluded when the telephone began to buzz (not ring), that he really liked the pajamas, although the buttons had been a little hard to get used to at first, and woke him up when he rolled over onto his belly. And he also liked taking a leak in the urinal, the first he had ever seen in a private home.
And he thought again that it was a shame he’d never gotten to meet Martha’s father. He had apparently been one hell of a man. A man’s man, and not only because he had hunted and shot at least one each of the world’s big game, but also because he did things like install a urinal in his bathroom, because that’s what he wanted, and to hell with what people thought.
Martha had told him she was positive her father would have loved him. Pekach wasn’t so sure about that. He thought it more likely that if he were Alexander F. Peebles he would have wondered long and hard about whether Captain David Pekach was in love with his daughter or her money.
As far as Dave Pekach was concerned, if Martha didn’t have a goddamned dime, she would still be the best thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life. But right now, there were only two people who believed that: he and Martha. Well, maybe Matt Payne. And probably, too, Matt’s father, the lawyer.
If Brewster Cortland Payne thought all he was after was Martha’s money, he would have done something about it. He’d been Martha’s father’s lawyer—and friend—for a long time. He wasn’t going to stand idly by and just watch her get screwed. Get taken advantage of. If he believed that, or even suspected it, Brewster C. Payne would not be going to give the bride away when they got married. More than that, he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to fix their getting married by both a Roman Catholic monsignor (to satisfy Dave’s mother) and an Episcopalian (to satisfy what Martha thought her father would want).
But everybody else figured that he was going to marry her for her money. Nobody was willing to believe that it had been love at first sight, any more than anyone would believe that he was the first man Martha had ever gone to bed with. And, of course, he couldn’t say anything about that.
When the telephone began to buzz, Dave Pekach was nowhere close to finishing what he had risen from bed to accomplish.
He was, therefore, not surprised when he went back into the bedroom to find that the bedside lights were lit, and that Martha was sitting up against the massive carved headboard (her father had bought the bed in Borneo; the most prominent of the bas-relief carvings was of a snarling tiger with ivory teeth) holding the telephone out to him.
“It’s Peter Wohl, precious,” she said.
Martha had long hair, which she braided at night, and which Dave thought was really beautiful. He could also see her nipples through her thin nightgown. Just the sight of Martha’s nipples made his heart jump, and he sometimes wondered if that was dirty of him, or whether it was just one more proof that he loved her.
“I’m sorry you woke up,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I always wake up whenever you get up,” she said.
“Yes, sir,” Dave said into the telephone.
“Sorry to do this to you, Dave,” Wohl said. “But I want you in my office, in uniform, and in a Highway Patrol car as soon as you can get there.”
“What’s up?”
Wohl did not respond to the question.
“If I’m not there—I’m calling from South Detectives—wait for me,” Wohl said, and hung up.
“What is it?” Martha asked.
“He wants me in his office right away,” he said. “What time is it?”
Martha glanced at the clock on her bedside table.
“Twenty after three,” she said and started to get out of bed.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re not going out at this hour without at least a cup of coffee,” she said.
“Sweetheart, there’s no time.”
“By the time you’ve dressed, I’ll have it ready.”
“You don’t have to, baby.”
“Precious, I want to.”
He returned his attention to the telephone and dialed a number from memory.
“Special Operations, Lieutenant Malone.”
&n
bsp; “Dave Pekach, Jack. Is anything going on around there?”
“No, sir. Quiet as a tomb.”
“I’m on my way in,” Pekach said.
“Is something going on?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” Pekach said “Wohl just put the arm on me. I have no fucking idea what he wants.”
He hung up, then looked at Martha, who had a some what pained look on her face. “Sorry, baby.”
“I understand,” she said. “You’re upset.”
“I’m really sorry. I really try to watch my language, but sometimes I just forget.”
“I understand,” she said. “And I know you’re trying.”
“Jesus Christ, I love you!”
“ ‘Jesus Christ’ you love me?”
He threw his hands up helplessly.
“I love you, too, precious,” she said.
TWENTY-TWO
Gertrude—Mrs. Thomas J.—Callis reached over the curled-up body of her husband and picked up the telephone, thinking as she did so, for perhaps the five hundredth time, that if he insisted on having the phone on his side of his bed so he wouldn’t disturb her when the inevitable middle-of-the-night calls came, the least the son of a bitch could do was wake up when the damned thing did ring.
“Yes?”
“Gertrude? Dennis Coughlin. I’m sorry to bother you at this—”
“I’ll see if I can wake him, Denny. He’s sleeping like a log.”
The district attorney for Philadelphia was brought from his slumber by a somewhat terrifying feeling that he was being asphyxiated. He swatted at whatever was blocking his nostrils and mouth, and fought his way to a sitting position.
“What the hell?”
“Denny Coughlin,” Gertrude said, handed him the telephone, and lay back down with her back to him.
“Yeah, Denny.”
“Sorry to wake you up, Tony.”
“No problem, what’s up?” Callis said. He picked up the clock on the bedside table and looked at it. “Christ, it’s twenty-five after three!”
“I didn’t think this should wait until morning,” Coughlin said.
“What wouldn’t wait until morning?”
“We have just found some very dirty cops,” Coughlin said.
“That won’t wait until morning? Nothing personal, Denny, but these are not the first dirty cops you’ve found this year.”
That’s not true. There have been dirty cops, but Denny Coughlin didn’t find them. Peter Wohl did. What’s going on here?
“This is sort of complicated, Tony. What I would like to do—”
“How complicated, Denny?”
“This is a real can of worms,” Denny Coughlin said. “And it won’t wait. I’d rather explain it to you in person, if that would be possible. The FBI is involved, and—”
“The FBI is involved?”
“—and Walter Davis just spoke with the U.S. Attorney. He’s going to meet with us right now. I just sent a car for him, and I’d like to send one for you.”
“Okay. If you think it’s that important, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
“What cops, Denny? Can you tell me who?”
“I don’t think you’d know the names. The Narcotics Unit Five Squad.”
“And what did some narc do to attract the interest of the FBI?”
“It’s more than one narc, Tony. I’m afraid it’s the whole Five Squad.”
“Now I’m getting interested.”
“I’ll explain it all when I see you,” Coughlin said. “By the time you walk out your front door, there will be a Highway Patrol car waiting for you.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you, Tony,” Coughlin said, and hung up.
Callis swung his feet out of bed. Gertrude rolled onto her back.
“You’re not going out?”
“Go back to sleep, honey.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t really know,” Callis replied, thinking aloud. “But Denny Coughlin doesn’t do something like this—”
“Like what?”
“—like sending a Highway Patrol car for me at half past three in the morning unless it’s important.”
“But he didn’t say what?”
“Only that the FBI is involved, and that the whole Five Squad is dirty.”
“What’s the Five Squad?”
“The Narcotics Unit has sort of a special squad, the Five Squad, that works the more serious drug cases.”
“And you have to do whatever you’re going to do at half past three in the morning?”
“According to Coughlin, there’s some sort of time problem,” Callis said.
He didn’t say that. But that’s obviously what it has to be.
Callis walked into his bathroom and plugged in his electric razor.
As he was slapping aftershave on his face, he heard the wail of a far-off siren. It seemed to be getting closer, and then the sound died.
He went back into his bedroom, dressed, and leaned over the bed to kiss Gertrude.
She rolled on her back again.
“You’re getting too old for this, Tony,” she said. “It’s not good for you to have to get out of bed at half past three in the morning.”
“I think I have a couple of good years left,” he said.
He pulled down a couple of slats on the venetian blinds and looked out to the street.
A Highway Patrol sergeant, with his cartridge-studded Sam Browne belt and motorcycle boots, was leaning against the fender of an antenna-festooned car, waiting for him.
That was the siren I heard. They turned it—and the flashing lights—off when they got close. And as soon as we’re half a block away from the house, I’ll bet they turn them on again.
The truth of the matter is, I like this. I’d make a hell of a lot more money if I went into private practice, but divorce lawyers don’t often get to ride through town in the middle of the night in a Highway Patrol car with the siren screaming.
And knowing that the cops need me makes me feel like a man.
Or a boy playing at cops and robbers? Is Gertrude right? Am I getting too old for this?
I wonder what the hell this is all about?
There was not much going on at 3:40 A.M. in Central Lockup in the Roundhouse. It had been a relatively slow night (the moon was not full, for one thing) and the usual ten-thirty-to-one-A.M. busy period was over.
Sergeant Keyes J. Michaels, on the desk, had been reading the Philadelphia Daily News when he heard the solenoid that controlled the door from the corridor between the lobby of the Roundhouse and the Lockup room buzz.
What looked to Michaels like one more ambulance-chaser—a rumpled-looking, plump little man wearing eyeglasses and needing a shave—came through the door and walked toward Michaels’s desk.
Michaels wondered how come they had passed him into Lockup—the ambulance-chasers were ordinarily not allowed in Lockup—but really didn’t give much of a damn. It was almost four o’clock, and he was sleepy.
The ambulance-chaser stood patiently in front of Sergeant Michaels until Michaels raised his eyes to him.
“Can I do something for you, sir?”
“Who’s the supervisor on duty? I’d like to speak to him, please?”
The supervisor on duty, Lieutenant Mitchell Roberts, after making sure that nothing further required his attention, had retired to a small room in which there just happened to be a cot.
Michaels, who liked Roberts, was reluctant to have him woken up by an ambulance-chaser who almost certainly wanted special treatment for some scumbag.
“Can I help you, sir? The supervisor’s not here at the moment.”
“I’m afraid not, Sergeant. I need to speak to the supervisor on duty.”
“I just told you, sir, he’s not here at the moment.”
“Where is he?”
“Just who the hell do you think you are?”
“My name is Weisbach,” the ambu
lance-chaser said. “Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach. Does that change anything, Sergeant?”
“Sorry, sir. The lieutenant has stepped out for a moment. I’ll let him know you’re here, sir?”
“Where is he? In that little room with the cot?”
“I’ll get him for you, sir.”
“Keep your seat, Sergeant,” Weisbach said. “I know where it is. I’ve crapped out there myself more than once.”
“Yes, sir.”
Weisbach went to the closet-size room, opened the door, and snapped on the lights. He knew the large, muscular man sleeping on his back, his mouth open, snoring lightly, but not well; they had never really worked together. Searching his memory, he couldn’t come up with one thing, good or bad, about Lieutenant Mitchell Roberts, except what everybody thought about him. He was a good cop. Not an exceptional cop. It had taken him four shots at the lieutenants’ examination before he scored high enough on it to make the promotion list.
Lieutenant Mitchell Roberts woke and pushed himself up on the cot, supporting himself on his elbows, squinting in the sudden light.
“Who are you?” he asked, half indignantly, half curiously.
“Mike Weisbach, Mitch. Sorry to wake you.”
“Jesus, Inspector, I didn’t recognize you right off. Sorry.”
“Sorry to have to wake you.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I need to look at some of your records,” Weisbach said.
“Sure,” he said, and then had a second thought: “Jesus, at this time of night? I thought you guys worked the day shift.”
“At this time of night,” Weisbach said, and then made a decision based on nothing more than intuition: Lieutenant Mitchell Roberts could be trusted.
“I’m really glad to see you here, Mitch.”
“Asleep?” Roberts asked.
“I’ve taken a nap or two in here myself,” Weisbach said. “What I meant was that I know I can trust you to keep your mouth shut.”
“Yes, sir. Sure you can.”
“Can you tell your sergeant he didn’t see me in here? And expect him to keep his mouth shut?”
“Yes, sir,” Roberts replied, after taking time to think it over. “Michaels is a good cop.”
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