“There was only one image, Double-A Zee,” Washington explained. “But they made a number of different prints, trying to see if they could come up with something useful. You know, they blew up different parts of the picture.”
“Oh, yeah,” Amal al Zaid said.
"I tried that myself,” O’Hara said, “and got nowhere.”
“What are you looking for, Jason?” Harris asked.
“I want to see if this fellow left the scene wearing his shade,” Washington said. “Maybe Mickey’s pictures will at least show that.”
Tony Harris rummaged through the salesman’s case and came out with a manila envelope stuffed with prints. There were, in all, about twenty prints of the one digital image Mickey O’Hara had made as he walked up to the Roy Rogers restaurant. Most were eight by ten inches, and most of them concentrated on the heads and shoulders of the doers, although the process had failed to overcome the bad quality and bring out more details than in the original print.
Washington began to examine each print carefully. After looking at perhaps ten of them, he set one aside.
“You got something?” Mickey asked.
Washington didn’t reply.
After a moment, Mickey took the pictures Washington was finished with and started looking at them. As he finished the first one, he slid it across the table to Amal al Zaid, who looked at it and slid it to Harris. When Washington finished, he had set two more prints aside. He slid the rest to Mickey, then patiently waited until they were all through, before handing Mickey the three prints he had set aside.
“So far as I can determine from these,” Washington said, “neither of these gentlemen was wearing anything on his cranium as they left the scene.”
“I don’t think a jury would fall in love with these,” Mickey said. “But I do see silhouetted heads, and there ain’t nothing on either of them.”
Washington again waited until both Amal al Zaid and Tony Harris had examined all three prints.
“So what?” Amal al Zaid asked.
“This poses the question, Double-A Zee,” Washington said. “If this fellow came into the restaurant wearing a shade, where is it now?”
Harris went back into the salesman’s case.
He came out with a typewritten list.
“Here it is,” he said, “On the unclaimed property list. Number fifteen. ‘One black sun visor, make unknown, gray cotton-covered visor, plastic headband.’ They found it under the table. So far as prints are concerned. . . . ‘One partially smudged print, possibly index finger, on rear of headband.’ ”
“That won’t be enough, will it?” O’Hara asked.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Washington said.
He took out his cellular telephone and pushed an autodial key.
“Has Captain Quaire gone for the day?” he asked, and then a moment later, “Would you switch me to him, please?”
There was a brief pause.
“Lieutenant Washington, sir,” he said, “with a request.”
There was another pause.
“On the list of unclaimed property found in the Roy Rogers, as item fifteen, there is ‘One black sun visor, make unknown, gray cotton-covered visor, plastic headband.’ We have reason to believe it was left behind by one of the doers. The lab reports one partially smudged print, possibly index finger. I would like to inspire them to greater effort. This might be possible if you took the item down there personally, sir. . . .”
There was another brief pause.
“Thank you very much. And may I suggest that you tell them I will be in later tonight to check on their progress?” Pause. “Thanks, Henry. It’s all that we have right now.”
He pushed the End key and turned to Amal al Zaid.
“Double-A Zee, I think we’re at the point where the doer took off his shade. What happened next?”
[THREE]
At twenty after six, just as he turned onto I-95 South, Matt’s cellular rang.
“Payne.”
“Sergeant, this is Lassiter.”
“I have a surfeit of bad news, Detective Lassiter. With that caveat, you may proceed.”
He thought he heard her giggle, and found it charming.
“No bad news. I just left the Williamsons’ . . .”
“And?”
“Everything’s under control. Their minister is there. I don’t think she’s going to change her mind about the uniforms being right in not taking the door. And I’m going back in the morning—she asked me to.”
“You get a gold star to take home to Mommy, Detective Lassiter,” Matt said.
“Sergeant,” she said, a tone of exasperation in her voice, “Northwest wants their car back, that’s one thing. The second thing is, Mrs. Williamson told me Cheryl used to hang out in a bar called Halligan’s Pub. I’d like a look, but thought I’d better check with you first.”
“Do they serve food in Halligan’s Pub?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
Matt looked at his watch.
“I’ll meet you at Northwest in twenty-five, thirty minutes,” he said. “You can give them their car back. Where is this Halligan’s Pub?”
“In Flourtown.”
“Okay. Then we will go together to Halligan’s Pub. And after that, we’ll see. Washington called. I can pick up my car at the Roundhouse.”
“Fine,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Call Joe D’Amata and tell him we’re going to check out the saloon.”
“Right.”
A uniform sergeant put out his hand to stop the silver Porsche as it rolled into the POLICE VEHICLES ONLY parking lot at the Thirty-fifth District Building. Except for a few rooms used by the Inspector for the North Police Division, Northwest Detectives occupied most of the second floor of the building.
The driver of the Porsche rolled down the window.
“I think it’ll be all right, Officer,” he said. “I’m just here to pick up my date.”
He pointed toward Detective Olivia Lassiter, who was leaning against the wall by the entrance.
The uniform sergeant whistled shrilly, attracting Detective Lassiter’s attention.
“You know this guy, Lassiter?”
She looked, and then nodded.
“Yeah.”
She walked to the Porsche.
“Next time, find some other place to park,” the sergeant said.
“Yes, sir,” Matt said.
Olivia got in the Porsche.
Where the hell did he get this car? A Porsche on a detective’s pay?
“Have a good time, Lassiter,” the sergeant said.
Matt grinned, but didn’t say anything as he turned the Porsche around.
“What was that all about? ‘Have a good time’?” Olivia asked.
Matt shrugged.
“What did you say to him?” Olivia challenged.
“Nothing,” Matt said.
The hell you didn’t. You’re really a smart-ass. “You get a gold star for Mommy!” Jesus!
“Did you get anything from the Williamsons besides the name of this saloon?” Matt asked.
“The names of half a dozen guys Cheryl dated,” she said. “And of a couple of her girlfriends.”
“You’ll have to give them to Joe.”
“I already did.”
“Where exactly is this saloon?”
“It’s called Halligan’s Pub. At Bethlehem Pike and College Avenue in Flourtown. I’ve been there. Sort of a neighborhood bar for the young and unattached.”
“Spend a lot of time in places like that, do you?” Matt asked, innocently. “Looking for a little action?”
You sonofabitch!
She glared at him but said nothing.
If he thinks I’m looking for action, and so much as lays a hand on my hand, I’ll knock him into next week.
“Hey, I’m kidding!” Matt said.
“I haven’t been amused,” Olivia snapped.
“Look, this is my first time,” Matt said.
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“First time for what? Working with a female detective, you mean?”
“Yeah. Or at least a good-looking one.”
“Can we keep this professional?”
“I worked a couple of jobs with an Intelligence detective, a female,” Matt said. “But she was old enough to be my mother. We got to be friends. So I asked her—we were having a couple of drinks—how I should behave with a younger female cop. And she said treat her like you would treat any other cop. That’s what I was doing. Making a little joke.”
Why do I believe him?
“What kind of a little joke were you making with Sergeant Pinski?”
“The uniform in the parking lot?”
“Yeah. What did you say to him?”
“I told him I was just picking up my date.”
“You thought that was funny?”
“He believed it. And my other choice was to tell him I was on the job and show him my badge. Thirty minutes later, every uniform in the Thirty-fifth, and all your pals in Northwest Detectives, would have heard about the Homicide sergeant driving a Porsche picking up Northwest’s good-looking Detective Lassiter.”
He’s right. That’s exactly what would have happened.
“Where did you get this car, anyway?”
“When I finished college. It was my graduation present.”
“It looks brand-new.”
“It’s five years old. I take pretty good care of it.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said in genuine appreciation.
That was dumb. What’s the matter with me?
“They’re nice,” Matt said. “Look, let’s spell this out. I was not making a pass at you. I will not make a pass at you. I just got promoted, and I just transferred to Homicide. The last thing I want is for somebody to say Payne walked in, hung up his hat, and started hitting on Lassiter. That’s the truth.”
“Okay. Just so we understand each other.”
“So what were you doing in Halligan’s Pub? Looking for a little action?”
“You sonofabitch!” Olivia said, but she laughed.
And they found themselves looking at each other. And both looked quickly away.
“What can I get you?” the bartender at Halligan’s Pub asked when they had taken stools at the bar.
“I don’t know about Mother, but I would like a Famous Grouse on the rocks and a menu.”
“You want to eat at the bar?” the bartender asked.
“I want to talk to you, and you’re here,” Matt said.
“And what for you, honey?” the bartender asked.
I will not ask what a famous whatever is.
“The same, please,” Olivia said.
“You’ve been in here before, right?”
“Indeed she has,” Matt said. “Mother tells me this is where the action is. Presumably there will be a shill’s fee for her?”
The bartender chuckled, then turned to make their drinks. He put them on the bar and then laid two plastic covered menus on it.
Olivia picked up her glass and sipped it.
Scotch. Probably one of those very chic, very in, single malts or whatever they call them that the in people drink.
“Hot roast beef sandwich, please,” Matt ordered after a ten-second perusal of the menu. “French fries, green beans. What about you, Mother?”
What the hell is that Mother business?
Damn it, a hot roast beef sandwich sounds good. But I’ll sound like his echo.
To hell with it.
“The same, hold the fries,” Olivia said.
“Coming right up,” the bartender said, and walked down the bar to a computer.
Matt picked up his glass and raised it to Olivia.
“Mud in your eye, Mother.”
“What’s with ‘Mother’?” Olivia asked.
“Even the Casanova of Center City does not make a pass at a mother,” Matt replied.
“Oh, Jesus!” Olivia said.
“I’m just ensuring that I will not get carried away,” Matt said.
“I won’t let that happen,” Olivia said.
“Good. I invariably falter in the face of temptation.”
“You’re out of your mind, you know that?”
“You sound just like my sister, Mother.”
She shook her head, but she smiled.
“This is nice booze,” she said. “I’m afraid to ask what it costs.”
“Fear not, Mother, that was my round. But actually it’s not very expensive. Not like twelve-year-old or single malts. I found it in Scotland. It was the bar whiskey.”
“In Scotland?”
“My father and I, and my father’s buddy and his-son-my-buddy, were shooting driven birds over there.”
What the hell does that mean?
“I don’t know what that means,” Olivia confessed.
“They raise pheasants,” Matt explained, “and charge people to shoot them. They call it a ‘drive.’ The shooters form a line, and then the beaters drive the birds—hence ‘driven birds’—toward the line of shooters. Great shooting.”
“It sounds barbaric,” Olivia said.
“You’re a vegetarian?”
“No.”
“Where do you think your roast beef came from? A steer that died of old age?”
Olivia didn’t reply.
“The pheasants are raised to be eaten, just like chickens and turkey. I suppose you could argue that wringing their necks would be kinder than shooting them, but I don’t see the difference. And three hours after they’re shot, they’re cleaned, plucked, packed in ice, and on the way to a gourmet restaurant. ”
“And you get your kicks by slaughtering the pheasants, right? You get a real kick out of killing things, right?”
“You got it, Mother,” Matt said. “Once you understand that, everything falls in place.”
She could tell by both the bitter tone of his voice and his eyes that she had really angered him.
He shook his head in disgust, turned away, and picked up his glass.
What made him so angry?
Oh, God! When Mickey O’Hara called him Wyatt Earp, he blew up. And then O’Hara told me about the bad guy Matt “put down”—by which he meant killed. I didn’t mean to suggest he liked killing people! But I guess it sounded like I did.
So what do I do now, apologize?
The waiter slid plates holding hot roast beef sandwiches across the bar to them.
“I think you probably have just saved my life,” Matt said, sniffing appreciatively and picking up a French fry. “But just to make sure, you’d better give me another of these.”
Olivia saw that he had drained his glass.
The bartender chuckled and looked at Olivia.
“Why not?” she said.
Matt looked at her in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry for what, Mother?”
“I was out of line,” she said.
Matt met her eyes. It made her uncomfortable, but she couldn’t look away.
After a long moment, he said, “I guess that makes us even.”
And then he looked away, and unwrapped his knife and fork from its napkin wrap and attacked the sandwich.
Olivia took a healthy swallow of her drink, and when the bartender delivered the second round, emptied what was left of hers into the new glass.
She was astonished at the speed with which Matt emptied his plate of the roast beef, the potatoes, and the beans. She had taken only her third bite when she saw him lay his knife and fork on the empty plate and slide it across the bar toward the bartender.
“Very nice,” Matt said.
“Glad you liked it.”
“Did you know Cheryl Williamson?” Matt asked the bartender.
“I guess you heard?” the bartender replied.
Matt nodded.
“Goddamned cops,” the bartender said. “I guess you heard what those bastards did? Or didn’t do. Pardon the French.”
“What did
you say your name was?” Matt asked.
“Charley,” the bartender said.
“Mother, show Charley your badge,” Matt said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“Detective Lassiter, show Charley your badge,” Matt ordered.
Olivia pulled her oversweater far enough to one side so the bartender could see her badge, which she had pinned to the waistband of her skirt.
“Sorry, I didn’t know . . . ” Charley the bartender said, uncomfortably.
“No problem,” Matt said. “The reason we don’t wear uniforms is so people can’t spot us as cops right off. By the way, I’m Sergeant Payne. My friends call me ‘Matt.’ ”
He extended his hand across the bar until Charley the bartender took it.
“Tell me, Charley,” Matt said, as he slipped back onto his stool. “Have you made up your mind for all eternity, or would you be interested in the facts about what those goddamned bastard cops did or didn’t do?”
“Hey, Sergeant, I said I was sorry. . . .”
“If we’re going to be friends, call me Matt,” Matt said. “And that wasn’t the question, Charley. Are you interested in the facts, or have you made up your mind, and don’t want the facts to get in the way?”
“Okay. Let’s have the facts,” Charley said.
“Mother, give Charley the facts,” Matt said.
“Is that your name?” Charley blurted.
“I call her that to remind myself not to make a pass at her,” Matt said.
“Really?”
“Really,” Matt said. “Tell Charley what really happened, Mother.”
“Okay. From the top . . . ” Olivia began.
“. . . so at the end, what you have are two decent young cops who feel guilty as hell for not breaking into her apartment,” Olivia finished. “Even though they did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
“Jesus,” Charley the bartender said, and turned away, to return in a moment with the bottle of Famous Grouse.
“On me,” he said, as he started pouring. “Not on the house, on me. I feel bad about what I said before.”
“That’s absolutely unnecessary and we shouldn’t,” Matt said. “But we will.”
“Are they going to catch this guy?” Charley asked.
“We’re going to get him,” Matt said. “The question is when. The sooner they get him, the sooner they’ll be able to be sure he won’t be able to do something like this to somebody else.”
Final Justice Page 26
