Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Maybe I get this from the movies,” Charley said, “but those Homicide detectives seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “I know two that don’t,” Matt said. Charley looked at him in surprise. “These two,” Matt finished.

  “You’re Homicide?”

  Matt nodded.

  “And that’s what we’re doing here. Trying to run this guy down. We understand Cheryl used to come in here.”

  “Who told you that?” Charley asked.

  “Her mother,” Olivia said. “And she gave me a list of people Cheryl hung out with.” She handed him the list. “Do you know any of these people?”

  “Most of them,” Charley reported after a minute.

  “Any of them in here right now?”

  Charley looked down the bar, then looked through the doors of two adjacent rooms and came back to report that none of them were.

  “Well, we’ll run them down,” Matt said.

  “It would help if you could tell us anything about Cheryl,” Olivia said. “What kind of a girl was she?”

  “Let me say something unpleasant,” Matt said. “It’s okay to say unkind things about the dead if the purpose is to find out who killed them.”

  Charley considered that a moment.

  “I take the point,” he said. “Okay, so far as I know, she was really a nice girl. If she were a bimbo, I’d say so, okay? You want my gut feeling?”

  “Please,” Olivia said.

  “I think she came in here hoping that Mr. Right, the guy on the white horse, you know what I mean, would walk in and make eyes at her. And I don’t think he ever did. She was good-looking. Guys hit on her. But she wasn’t looking for a one-night stand, and I never saw her leave here with a guy. Sometimes, when she was in here with her girlfriends, a couple of them would leave together with a couple of guys. Never alone. You know what I mean?”

  “I get the picture,” Matt said.

  Matt’s cell phone went off.

  “Payne.”

  “D’Amata, Matt. Where are you?”

  “Halligan’s Pub.”

  “Yeah. Lassiter said you’d be going there. She with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You eat yet?”

  “Just finished.”

  “I’m in Liberties,” D’Amata said. “I figured you might want to compare notes.”

  He’s taking care of me. That’s nice.

  “Okay.”

  “The Black Buddha’s going to want to know what’s going on, and he’ll be finished with that artsy thing pretty soon. If you don’t want to come to Center City, I could meet you someplace. ”

  “I’ll come there. I’ve got to pick up my car at the Roundhouse anyway. Thirty minutes?”

  “Thirty minutes,” D’Amata said, and hung up.

  Matt looked at Olivia.

  “We have to meet D’Amata, Mother,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” Matt asked the bartender.

  “Name it.”

  “I’m going to give you a card—a bunch of cards—with my number on it. If any of the people on the list Mother gave you come in, would you hand them one and ask them to call?”

  “Sure.”

  "Give one to anybody who might have an idea,” Matt said. "Okay?”

  “You got it.”

  Matt took a small, stuffed-to-capacity card case from his pocket.

  “These are old,” Matt said. “They say Special Operations. But the number I write on them will be Homicide. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell them to ask for me or Detective Lassiter, but if neither of us is there, to talk to any Homicide detective, and leave a phone number and an address.”

  “Got it.”

  It took Matt and Olivia about five minutes to write her name and the Homicide number on all of the cards.

  Then Matt asked for the check.

  “On me,” Charley the bartender said.

  “No,” Matt said, firmly, handing over his American Express card. “The one drink—between friends—we’ll take with thanks. The rest we pay for.”

  Charley shrugged, but took the card.

  Matt signed the receipt, looked at it, and said, “Mother, your half comes to fifteen-fifty, with tip.”

  She dug in her purse and came up with a five and a ten and handed it to him.

  “I owe you fifty cents.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said.

  He put out his hand to Charley.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said. “You’ve been more helpful than I think you understand. I’ll probably come by again tomorrow, or Mother will. Okay?”

  “Any time,” Charley said.

  “What we’ll do, Mother, is go by the Roundhouse. I’ve got to get a property receipt for the sales slip I got in New York, and I want to pick up my car,” Matt said when they were in the Porsche. “You can take it home after we meet with Joe D’Amata.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Olivia said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not sure I should be driving. I’m not used to three drinks of scotch in forty-five minutes, and that third drink was really a double.”

  He looked at her and smiled.

  “Mother, are you plastered?” he asked, amused.

  “Tiddly, not plastered,” Olivia said. “And I’m not your mother.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said, and he saw that she was blushing.

  “In vino veritas,” Matt said, softly.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Matt said, and moved his head the six or eight inches necessary to kiss her.

  She didn’t pull away.

  “I really didn’t want that to happen,” she said, softly a moment later.

  “Are you sorry?”

  “Just drive the goddamn car, will you, please?”

  He put the Porsche in gear and started off.

  ELEVEN

  [ONE]

  As Matt approached Liberties Bar on North Second Street, he saw Martha Washington’s Mercedes parked in front, beside Peter Wohl’s Jaguar and a half-dozen unmarked cars.

  Well, so much for Joe D’Amata’s noble attempt to bring me up to speed before Washington asks what I’ve been doing on my first day as a Homicide sergeant.

  He pulled the Porsche to the curb beside one of the unmarked cars, turned off the key, and turned to Olivia.

  “You all right, Mother?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m all right,” she snapped.

  “Hey, you’re the one who admitted she was too . . . ‘tiddly’ . . . to drive.”

  “You’re an arrogant sonofabitch, you know that?”

  He looked at her a moment.

  “I owe you that one,” he said. “But that ends it. I am not going to burn for my sin through all eternity. You could have turned your head.”

  “You bastard!”

  “What I’m doing right now—fully aware that no good deed ever goes unpunished—is trying to be a nice guy.”

  “How?” she asked, thickly sarcastic.

  “You go in there and they see you’re plastered and bitchy, you’ll be back at Northwest in the morning.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  Why can’t I keep my mouth shut?

  Why did I have to call him an arrogant sonofabitch? And a bastard?

  Because I’m bitchy and plastered, that’s why.

  Shit!

  “The Mercedes belongs to Lieutenant Washington—or his wife, same thing—and the Jaguar to Inspector Wohl. There’s a new unmarked, which probably means Captain Quaire. . . . You getting the picture?”

  “Got it,” Olivia said. “Thanks.”

  “Just sit there, pay attention, and speak only when spoken to, smile, and lay off the booze. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Matt got out of the car and stood impatiently, waiting for Olivia to
figure out the seat belt and get out of it. He did not hold the door to the bar open for her, but once he was through it, he did hold it open long enough so that it didn’t close in her face.

  Matt walked to the table holding Jason Washington, Peter Wohl, Joe D’Amata, Harry Slayberg, and—surprising him— Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin and Captain Francis X. Hollaran; the new unmarked car was the commissioner’s. Matt stood there, sort of waiting for permission to sit down.

  Coughlin smiled at Detective Lassiter.

  “Matt been keeping you busy, Detective?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good work with the Williamsons, Detective,” Coughlin said. “I think—between you and the story Mickey O’Hara had in the paper—that fire’s now under control.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Sit down, and help yourself,” Coughlin ordered, nodding at the bottles on the table. “You, too, Matt.”

  “Could I get a Diet Coke?” Olivia called to the bartender.

  “You don’t drink?” Coughlin asked, making it a statement. “Sorry.”

  “Sometimes, sir, not now.”

  “Joe tells me you got the sales slip for the camera in New York?” Coughlin asked Matt.

  “Yes, sir. Henry Ford of Detroit, Michigan, himself bought it.”

  “You might call out there and see if they have something similar. Maybe there is a Detroit connection.”

  “I’ve already done that, sir,” Matt said, and added, to Washington, “I gave a Homicide sergeant there your number. I didn’t have any other direct Homicide number.”

  Washington nodded.

  “How did you do at Halligan’s Pub?” he asked.

  “The bartender said she was looking for Mr. Right to come riding in on a white horse,” Matt replied. “That so far as he knew, she didn’t play around. We left him cards to pass out to anybody who might know anything, specifically including the names of the guys Mother got from Mrs. Williamson.”

  " ’Mother’?” Coughlin asked.

  “I call Detective Lassiter that to remind myself this beautiful female is Detective Lassiter, and that sergeants aren’t supposed to notice the beautiful part.”

  There was laughter and chuckles.

  “Good thinking, Sergeant,” Coughlin said, smiling broadly.

  Goddamn him!

  Does he really think I’m beautiful?

  “What we’re doing now, Lassiter,” Wohl said, “is waiting for another beautiful woman—”

  “You’ll notice he used the word ’beautiful,’ ” Coughlin interrupted, “which suggests that war of the sexes is in the armistice mode.”

  Wohl flashed him an angry look. The others chuckled.

  “—Dr. Payne,” Wohl continued, “who has graciously agreed to provide her take on the Williamson doer.”

  “Where is she?” Matt said.

  “Where else, Matt? At the hospital. We were on our way here when her phone buzzed.”

  What’s going on here? Is Inspector Wohl in a relationship with Matt’s sister? They had a fight, and everybody knows about it? That maybe they fight all the time?

  “What did Amy give you so far?” Matt asked.

  “Why don’t we wait and get it from her?” Wohl said.

  “In the meantime,” Washington said, “we may have, using the term ‘lead’ in the broadest possible sense, finally come up with a lead in the Roy Rogers job.”

  “Jason looked under the rock under the rock again,” Coughlin said, approvingly.

  “The witness neglected to tell us,” Washington went on, “that the miscreant presently known, for lack of more precise information, as ‘the fat guy’ was wearing a visor—a crownless baseball cap, so to speak—when he sat down at the booth by the kitchen door. He was not wearing it when he left the scene.”

  “How do we know that?” Olivia asked.

  Washington’s look showed that he did not like to be interrupted.

  And Matt told me to keep my mouth shut!

  “While O’Hara’s digital image does not show the faces of the malefactors, Mother, it does offer rather sharp silhouettes of their heads. No visor—the witness said he was wearing the visor to the rear, over his neck—was visible fore or aft.”

  He called me “Mother.” Goddamn it, now everybody will.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt you, sir,” Olivia said.

  “Apology noted,” Washington went on. “We have such a visor cap among the unclaimed items at the crime scene. On it the lab, on its first look, found a rather poor print of what may be an index finger. Detective Harris has gone to the lab asking them to exert greater effort. I have visited the lab myself with the same purpose. I am going to drop by again on my way home tonight.”

  “Would I do any good, do you think, Jason?” Coughlin asked.

  “With all due respect, Commissioner, I think that would be counterproductive.”

  “Is that so?” Coughlin challenged.

  “On the other hand, if Captain Hollaran could find a moment in his busy schedule to drop by the lab,” Washington replied, “that would suggest great interest in their activities by someone in a high position without invoking the terror a visit by you personally would generate.”

  “Terror?” Coughlin chuckled. “Your call, Jason.”

  “When, Jason?” Hollaran asked.

  “To preserve what little is left of my once-happy marriage, I am going home—via the lab—just as soon as we hear from Doctor Payne,” Washington said. “How about immediately after you see the commissioner home?”

  “Done,” Hollaran said.

  “Our finding a useful print is what the wagering fraternity would term a long shot,” Washington went on. “But at the moment, it’s all we have.”

  “Just before I came here, Matt,” D’Amata said, “I checked the results of the door-to-door interviews. Zero. Nobody saw or heard a thing. So Harry and I are going to try that again in the morning.”

  There was the sound of tortured metal, as if a bumper had scraped the curbstone.

  Wohl looked at Matt. They smiled.

  “She must have missed the fire hydrant,” Matt said.

  “One of her good days,” Wohl said.

  Amy came through the door a moment later, holding a lined pad. A stethoscope stuck out of the side pocket of her suit jacket.

  “Everybody’s here,” she said.

  She bent over Coughlin to kiss his cheek, slid into a chair beside Wohl, and smiled at the people around the table.

  “What did you just hit?” Wohl asked.

  She looked at him in genuine surprise.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  They’re all smiling. She really must be a lousy driver, Olivia thought.

  And she really doesn’t look old enough to be a doctor.

  And she doesn’t look at all like Matt.

  “I appreciate your help, sweetheart,” Coughlin said. “It’s important to us.”

  “Sweetheart”? What’s that all about?

  “What have you got for us, honey?” Wohl asked.

  “I’m not your honey, Peter,” she said. “I’m doing this as a concerned citizen.”

  Good for you!

  “Okay, Concerned Citizen,” Wohl replied, smiling, “what have you got for us?”

  “Can we get you a drink, sweetheart?” Coughlin asked.

  “God knows I earned one,” she said. “Yes, thank you, Uncle Denny.”

  “Uncle Denny”? What’s that all about? Are they related?

  “What?” Coughlin asked.

  Amy looked at Olivia.

  “What are you having?”

  “Diet Coke.”

  “That’s not going to do it,” Amy said. “I’ll have a Bushmills martini.”

  What the hell is a Bushmills martini?

  “Jerry,” Coughlin called to the bartender. “One of the Doctor’s Irish Specials, please.”

  “Coming right up.”

  He knows what she means. Which mean
s she comes in here often.

  As Wohl’s . . . what? Girlfriend? More than that? . . . But with him. Not alone. Not like that poor Williamson girl, who went to Halligan’s Pub alone looking for Mr. Right to ride in on a white horse and make eyes at her.

  Poor Williamson girl? Who am I kidding?

  When Charley the bartender told us that Cheryl wasn’t looking for a one-night stand, that he never saw her leave the place with any of the guys who hit on her, I thought, I understand. That description fits me.

  That’s how I spend my spare evenings, going to Manny’s, where I don’t think they know I’m a cop, which is important because if Mr. Right ever rides into Manny’s on his white horse and makes eyes at me, I know he will gallop right out again the moment he hears the whispered words “she’s a cop” from the bartender.

  But what if Mr. Right has just ridden into my life in a silver Porsche? At least . . .

  “You take Irish whiskey . . .” Commissioner Coughlin said.

  He’s talking to me!

  “. . . and you put it in a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake it well, and then you pour it into a martini glass. That way, you don’t dilute the whiskey as the ice melts.”

  “Very interesting,” Olivia said. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “They’re really pretty good,” Amy Payne said.

  “You want to try one?” Coughlin asked. “You really earned a drink today with the Williamsons.”

  “Why not?” Olivia said.

  “Jerry!” Coughlin called. “Two Doctor’s Irish Specials.”

  “Two Doctor’s Specials coming up,” Jerry called back.

  Olivia looked at Matt.

  He was rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

  Yeah, I know. “Lay off the booze.”

  Fuck you!

  You’re not my father. You don’t tell me when not to drink.

  How dare you be exasperated, disgusted, whatever with me?

  “Did you get a chance to talk to Dr. Mitchell, Amy?” Washington asked.

  “Cause of death was a broken neck,” Amy said, matter-of-factly. “There are contusions on the right side of the face, suggesting that she was thrown, or forced, against the bedside table with such force as to break the neck.”

  She jerked her head violently to one side in demonstration. “Big guy, huh, Doc?” Slayberg asked.

  Amy nodded.