Men In Blue boh-1

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Christ," he said, "Charley could retire atforty-five years old, still a young man, and go get another job, and every month there would be a check from the city for as long as he lived."

  And he added that if Charley didn't want to work for the gas works, that was his business.

  Mr. and Mrs. McFadden, however, were in agreement concerning Charley' s duties within the police department. They didn't like that one damned bit, even if they tried (with not much success) to keep it to themselves.

  He went around looking like a goddamned bum. Facts are facts. Agnes hadn't let Kevin go to work in clothes like that, even way back when he didn't have much seniority and was working underground. God only knew what people in the neighborhood thought Charley was doing for a living.

  Not that he was around the neighborhood much. They hardly ever saw him, they couldn't remember the last time he had gone to church with them, and he never even went to Flo amp; Danny's Bar amp; Grill with his father anymore.

  Theyunderstood, of course, when he told them he had been assigned to the Narcotics Squad, in a "plainclothes" assignment, and that the reason he dressed like a bum was you couldn't expect to catch drug guys unless you looked like them. It wasn't like arresting somebody for speeding. And they believed him when he said it was an opportunity, that if he did good, he could get promoted quickly, and that there was practically unlimited overtime right now.

  So far as Agnes McFadden was concerned, overtime was fine, but there was also such a thing as too much of a good thing. Charley had had his own phone put in; and two, three, and sometimes even more nights a week, he would no sooner get home, usually at some ungodly hour after they had gone to bed, than it would ring, and it would be his partner calling; and she would hear him running down the stairs and slamming the front door (he'd been doing that since he was five years old) and then she would hear him starting up the battered old car-a Volkswagenhe drove and tearing off down the street.

  Maybe, Agnes McFadden thought, if he was areal cop, and wore a uniform, and shaved, and had his hair cut; and rode around in a prowl car giving out tickets, going to accidents, and doingreal cop-type things; it wouldn't be so bad; but she didn't like it at all, now, and if he wouldn't admit it, neither did his father.

  Charley was twenty-five, and it was time for him to be thinking about getting married and starting a family. No decent girl would want to be seen with him in public, the way he looked (and sometimes smelled) and no girl in her right mind would marry somebody she couldn't count on to come home for supper, or who would jump out of bed in the middle of the night every time the phone rang. Not to mention being in constant danger of getting shot or stabbed or run over with a car by some nigger or spic or dago full of some kind of drug.

  Officer Charles McFadden, who had been engaged in dipping a piece of toast into the yolk of his fried eggs, looked up at his father.

  "Pop, ask me how many stars are in the sky?"

  His father, who had been checking the basketball scores in the sports section of thePhiladelphia Daily News, eyed him suspiciously, and took another forkful of his own eggs.

  "It's not dirty," Charley McFadden said, reading his father's mind.

  "Okay," Kevin McFadden said. "How many stars are in the sky?"

  "All of them," Charley McFadden said, pleased with himself.

  It took Kevin a moment, but finally he caught on, and laughed.

  "Wiseass," he said.

  "Chip off the old block," Charley said.

  "I don't understand," Agnes McFadden said.

  "The only place, Mom, stars is, is in the sky," Charley explained.

  "Oh," she said, not quite sure why that was funny. "There's some more home fries in the pan, if you want some."

  Charley had come in in the wee hours, and slept until, probably, he smelled the coffee and the bacon, and then come down. It was now quarter after nine.

  "No, thanks, Mom," Charley said. "I got to get on my horse."

  "You goin' somewhere?" Agnes McFadden asked when Charley stood up and carried his plate to the sink. "Here, give me that. Neither you or your father can be trusted around a sink with dishes."

  "I got to change the oil in the car," Kevin McFadden said. "And I bought some stuff that's supposed to clean out the carburetor. Afterward, I thought maybe you and me could go to Flo and Danny's and hoist one."

  "I can't, Pop," Charley said. "I got to go to work."

  "You didn't get in until four this morning-" Agnes McFadden said.

  "Three, Mom," Charley interrupted. "It was ten after three when I walked in the door."

  "Threethen," she granted. "And you got to go back? Your father has the day off, and it would be good for you to spend some time together. And fun, too. You go down to Flo and Danny's and when I finish cleaning up around here, I'll come down and have a glass of beer with the two of you."

  "Mom, I got to go to work."

  "Why?" Agnes McFadden flared. "What I would like to know is what's so important that it can't wait for a couple of hours, so that you can spend a little time with your family."

  She was more hurt, Charley saw, than angry.

  "Mom, you see on the TV where the police officer, Captain Moffitt, got shot?"

  "Sure. Of course I did. What's that got to do with you?"

  "There was two of them," Charley said. "Captain Moffitt shot one of them, and the other got away."

  "I asked, so what's that got to do with you?"

  "I think I know where I can catch him," Charley said.

  "Mr. Big Shot," his mother said, heavily sarcastic. "There's eight thousand cops-I know 'cause I seen it in the newspaper-there's eight thousand cops, and you, you been on the force two years, and all you are is a patrolman, though you'd never know it to look at you, and you 're going to catch him!"

  Charley's face colored.

  "Well, let me just tellyou something, Mom, if you don't mind," he said, angrily. "I'mthe officer who made the identification of the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, and those eight thousand cops you're talking about areall looking for a guy named Gerald Vincent Gallagher, because I was able to identify him as a known associate of the girl."

  "No shit?" Kevin McFadden asked, impressed.

  "Watch your tongue," Agnes McFadden snapped. "Just because you work in a sewer doesn't mean you have to sound like one!"

  "You bet your ass," Charley said to his father. "And I got a pretty good idea where the slimy little bastard's liable to be!"

  "I won't tolerate that kind of dirty talk from either one of you, I just won't put up with it," Agnes said.

  "Agnes, shut up!" Kevin McFadden said. "Charley, you're not going to do anything dumb, are you? I mean, what the hell, why take a chance on anything if you don't have to?"

  "What I'm going to do, Pop, is find him. If I can. Hang around where I think he might be, or will show up. If I see him, or if he shows up there, I'll get Hay-zus to go with me."

  Officer Jesus Martinez, a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican, was Officer Charley McFadden's partner. He pronounced his Christian name as it was pronounced in Spanish, and Charley McFadden had taken to using that pronounciation when discussing him with his mother. Agnes McFadden had made it plain that she was uncomfortable with Jesus as somebody's first name. Hay-zus was all right. It was like Juan or Alberto or some other strange spic name.

  "I wishyou wore a uniform," Agnes McFadden said.

  "Yeah, sure," Charley said. "Maybe be a traffic cop, right? So I can stand in the middle of the street downtown somewhere, and freeze to death in winter and boil my brains in the summer? Breathing diesel exhaust all the time?"

  "It would be better than what you're doing," his mother said.

  "Mom, you don't get promoted guarding school crossings," Charley said. "Or riding around some district in a car on the last out shift."

  "I don't see you getting promoted," Agnes McFadden said.

  "Leave him alone, Agnes," Kevin McFadden said. "He hasn't been with the cops long enough to get promoted."r />
  "The detective's examination is next month, and I'm going to take it," Charley said. "And for your information, I think I'm going to pass it. If I can arrest this Gallagher punk, Iknow I 'd make it."

  "You're getting too big for your britches," Agnes McFadden replied, aware that she was angry and wondering why.

  "Yeah? Yeah? My lieutenant, Lieutenant Pekach, you know how oldhe is? He'sthirty years old, that's all how old he is. And he's a lieutenant, and he's eligible to take the captain's examination."

  "That's young for a lieutenant," Kevin McFadden said. "I suppose they do all right on payday."

  "You can do it," Charley said. "Pop, when I went to identify the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, down to the medical examiner's, where they were autopsying her, Lieutenant Pekach introduced me to Staff Inspector Wohl."

  "Who's he? Am I supposed to know what that means?" Kevin McFadden asked.

  "A staff inspector is higher than a captain," Charley explained. "All they do is theimportant investigations."

  "So?" Agnes McFadden said.

  "So, Mom, so here is this Staff Inspector Wohl, wearing a suit that must have cost him two hundred bucks, and driving this brand-new Ford LTD, and he ain't hardly any older than Lieutenant Pekach, that's what!"

  "He must have pull, then," Agnes McFadden said. "He must know somebody."

  "Ah, Jesus Christ, Mom!" Charley said, and stormed out of the kitchen.

  "You shouldn't have said that, Agnes," Kevin McFadden said. "Charley' s ambitious, there's nothing wrong with that."

  The front door slammed, and a moment later, they could hear the whine of the Volkswagen starter.

  "Talk to me about ambition," Agnes replied, "when they call up and tell you they're sorry, some bum shot him. Or stuck a knife in him."

  ****

  Peter Wohl started the LTD and looked across the seat at Louise Dutton.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  "I'm fine," she said. "Ihave seen faster typists."

  He chuckled. The typist who had typed up her statement had been a young black woman, obviously as new to the typewriter as she was determined to do a good, accurate, no strike-over, job.

  "Where to now?" he asked.

  "I've got to go to work, of course," Louise said. "But I think I had better get my car, first. On the way, you can drop off your uniform."

  "Not that I don't want your company," he said, "but I could drop you at the station, and we could get your car later. For that matter, I could bring it to the station."

  "I thought about that," she said. "And decided that since you live in Timbuctoo, I'd rather get it now. On the long way back downtown, I'll have time to think, to come up with a credible reason why I was such a disgrace to journalism last night."

  "Huh? Oh, you mean they expected you to come in and-what's the term?write upwhat happened to Nelson?"

  "Yes, they did," Louise said. "And when I didn't, I confirmed all of Leonard Cohen's male chauvinist theories about the emotional instability of female reporters. Real reporters,men reporters, don't get hysterical."

  "You weren't hysterical," Peter said. "You were upset, but you had every right to be."

  They were now passing City Hall, and heading out John F. Kennedy Boulevard, past the construction sites of what the developers said would beDowntown Philadelphia Reborn.

  Louise turned and looked at him.

  "You're a really nice guy, Peter Wohl," she said. "Anyone ever tell you that?"

  "All the time," he said.

  She laughed, and changed the subject: "When we get to your place, I have to go inside."

  "Why?"

  "Because my underwear was still wet, and I couldn't put it on," she said.

  The logical conclusion to be drawn from that statement, Peter thought, is that she is at this moment, underwear-less. Phrased another way, she is naked under her dress.

  "You should have seen your face just now," Louise said.

  "What are you talking about?" he asked.

  "Your eyes grew wide," she said. "Does that turn you on, Peter Wohl? A woman not wearing underwear?"

  "Get off my back," he flared.

  "It does!" she said, delighted. "It does!"

  He turned and glared at her. She wasn't fazed. She smiled at him.

  He returned his attention to the road. Louise noticed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  They said nothing else to each other until they reached his apartment. He pulled the nose of the Ford against the garage door, turned off the ignition, handed her the apartment key, and laid his arm on the back of the seat.

  "I would just run along," he said. "But I'm going to need my key back. I'll wait here."

  "I'll throw it out the window," she said.

  "Fine," he said.

  She went up the stairs and he leaned on the fender of the Ford LTD. A minute or so later, he heard the window in his bathroom grate open. He turned and looked up at the window. All he could see was her head; she had to be kneeling on the toilet seat.

  "Can you come up here a minute?" she said. "I've got a little trouble."

  He went up the stairs and into the apartment.

  Louise's head peered at him around his nearly closed bedroom door.

  "What's the trouble?" he asked.

  "I don't want to go to work," Louise said. "Not right now."

  "Then don't go," he said. "Stay here as long as you like."

  "You really are a very sweet guy, Peter," Louise said.

  "You seem to be a little ambiguous about that," Peter said.

  "You're sore about the way I teased you in the car, aren't you?"

  "You enjoy humiliating people, go ahead," he said.

  "I was just teasing, " she said. "If I didn'tlike you, I wouldn't tease you."

  "I understand," he said. "I don't think you're half as clever, or as sophisticated as you do, but I understand you."

  "Oh, damn you," she said, and opened the door all the way. "You don't understand me at all."

  She walked within six feet of him and stopped, and looked into his eyes.

  "Come on, Peter," she said. "Loosen up."

  "Is there anything else I can get you?" Peter asked.

  Louise unbuttoned her jacket, and then shrugged out of it.

  She raised her eyes to his.

  "What do I have to do, Peter?" she asked, very softly. "Throw you on the white couch and rip your clothes off?"

  ****

  Officer Charley McFadden pulled into a gas station and called Jesus Martinez and told him what he had in mind. Hay-zus's mother answered the phone and with obvious reluctance, after she told him Hay-zus was asleep, got him on the phone.

  "You want to help me catch Gerald Vincent Gallagher?"

  "I thought you were working with Homicide," Hay-zus said.

  "The detective with the job let me very politely know that he didn't need my help, thank you very much."

  There was a long pause.

  "Where do you think he is?" Hay-zus asked.

  "I want to look for him at the Bridge Street Terminal," McFadden said.

  The Bridge Street Terminal, which is the end of the line for the Market Street Elevated, a major transfer point for people traveling to and from Center City and West Philadelphia.

  "In other words, you don't have the first fucking idea where he is," Martinez said.

  "I got a feeling, Hay-zus," Charley McFadden said.

  Gerald Vincent Gallagher, Charley McFadden had reasoned, would have hidden someplace for a while. Then he would want to get out of the Northeast. He didn't have a car-few junkies did-but he would have the price of bus or subway fare, if he had to panhandle for it.

  There was a long pause.

  "Ah, shit," Jesus Martinez said. "I'll meet you there."

  And then he hung up.

  McFadden parked his Volkswagen fifty feet from the intersection of Frankford and Bridge Streets. He went to a candy store across the street and bought two large 7-Ups
to go (lots of ice); two Hershey bars; two Mounds bars; two bags of Planter's peanuts; and a pack of Chesterfields.

  He carried everything back to the Volkswagen, and arranged it and himself on and around the front seat. He slumped down on the seat, and lit a cigarette.

  It was liable to be a long wait for Gerald Vincent Gallagher. And, of course, he might not show.

  If he didn't show, McFadden decided, he would not put in for overtime. Nobody had told him to stake out the terminal.

  But he might. And he would really like to catch the despicable shit, so he would wait.

  He had been there ten minutes when a trackless trolley pulled in. A slight, dark, young-appearing man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt got off. He looked around until he spotted the Volkswagen and then walked to it, and got in.

  "I just thought," he said. "Since nobody told us to do this, we can't put in for overtime, right?"

  "When we catch him, we can," McFadden said. "I'll bet you believe in the Easter Bunny, too, huh?" Jesus Martinez said. Then he looked at the supplies McFadden had laid in. "No wonder you're fat," he said. " That shit's no good for you."

  He reached for one of the 7-Ups, and they settled down to wait.

  ****

  Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester maintained law offices on the eleventh floor of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building on Market Street, east of Broad. It was convenient to both the federal courthouse and the financial district.

  Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson and Brewster Cortland Payne II, the founding partners of the firm, occupied offices on either side of the Large Conference Room. They shared a secretary, Mrs. Irene Craig, a tall, dignified, silver-haired woman in her fifties. Mrs. Craig had two secretaries of her own, set up in an office off her own tastefully furnished office. Although she could, if necessary, type nearly one hundred words per minute on her state-of-the-art IBM typewriter, Mrs. Craig rarely typed anything on it except Memoranda of Incoming Calls.