Badge of Honour 06 - The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Let us say the version of the incident related by the not-so-bereaved husband is not regarded as being wholly true,” Matt said.

  “But why are you going to Homicide?” Amy asked.

  She didn’t get an answer.

  “Jesus Christ, what’s this?” Matt exclaimed. “It looks like a used-car lot.”

  Amy looked out the windshield. The wide cobblestone drive in front of the Detweiler mansion and the last fifty yards of the road leading to it were crowded with cars, a substantial percentage of them Cadillacs and Lincolns. There were five or six limousines, including two Rolls Royces.

  “Dad said family and intimate friends,” Amy said. “It’s apparently gotten out of hand.”

  “Intimate friends, or the morbidly curious?” Matt asked. “With a soupçon of social climbers thrown in for good measure?”

  “Matt, have those acidulous thoughts if they make you feel better, but for the sake of Uncle Dick and Aunt Grace—and Mother and Dad—please have the decency to keep them to yourself.”

  “Sorry,” he said, sounding contrite.

  “What were they supposed to say when someone called, or simply showed up? ‘Sorry, you’re not welcome’?”

  “Oh, shit, there’s Chad,” Matt said. “And the very pregnant Daffy and friend.”

  “Why are you surprised, and why ‘oh, shit’?”

  “I would just as soon not see them just now.”

  Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV glanced down the drive as the station wagon drove up, recognized the occupants, and touched the arm of his wife. Mrs. Nesbitt in turn touched the arm of Miss Amanda Chase Spencer, a strikingly beautiful blonde who was wearing a black silk suit with a hat and veil nearly identical to Mrs. Nesbitt’s. All three stopped and waited on the lower of the shallow steps leading to the flagstone patio before the mansion’s front door.

  “How are you holding up, buddy?” Chad asked, grasping Matt’s arm.

  “Oh, Matt,” Daffy said. “Poor Matt!”

  She embraced him, which caused her swollen belly to push against him.

  “Hello, Matt,” Amanda said. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Matt said, reaching around Daffy to take the gloved hand she extended.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Daffy said as she finally released Matt.

  “I’m Amelia Payne,” Amy said to Amanda.

  “How do you do?”

  “I thought this was supposed to be family and immediate friends only,” Matt said, gesturing at all the cars.

  “Matt, I can’t believe you said that!” Daffy said, horrified.

  Matt looked at her without comprehension.

  “Amanda’s been staying with us, for Martha Peebles’s engagement party,” Chad said coldly.

  “Oh, Christ, I wasn’t talking about you, Amanda,” Matt said, finally realizing how what he had said had been interpreted.

  “I know you weren’t,” Amanda said.

  “I didn’t see you out there,” Matt said.

  “I didn’t want you to,” Amanda said simply.

  “Penny and Amanda were very close,” Daffy said.

  “No, we weren’t,” Amanda corrected her. “We knew each other at Bennington. That’s all.”

  Good for you, Matt thought. Cut the bullshit.

  Chad Nesbitt gave her a strange look.

  “Shall we go in?” he said, taking his wife’s arm.

  Baxley, the Detweiler butler, opened the door to them. He was a man in his fifties, and wearing a morning coat with a horizontally striped vest.

  “Mr. Detweiler’s been expecting you, Doctor,” he said.

  The translation of which is that Mother D is about to lose control. Or has already lost it, Matt thought.

  “I’ll go up,” Amy said. “Thank you, Baxley.”

  “Coffee has been laid in the library,” Baxley said. “Miss Penny is in the sitting room.”

  “Thank you, Baxley,” Chad Nesbitt said. He put his hand on Matt’s arm.

  “Take care of him, Chad,” Amy said. “I’ll go see Aunt Grace.”

  “I will,” Chad said. “Coffee first, Matt?”

  “Yeah.”

  As they walked across the foyer, Matt glanced through the open door of the sitting room. He could see the foot of a glistening mahogany casket, surrounded by flowers.

  Shit, I didn’t even think about flowers.

  Mother certainly sent some in my name, knowing that I wouldn’t do it myself.

  Heads turned as the four of them went into the library. There were perhaps twenty-five people in the room, most of whom Matt knew by sight. A long table had been set with silver coffee services and trays of pastry. A man in a gray jacket and two maids stood behind the table. A small table behind them held bottles of whiskey and cognac.

  Chad propelled Matt to the table.

  “I need a little liquid courage myself to face up to going in there,” Chad said, indicating to the manservant to produce a bottle of cognac. “Straight up, Matt? Or do you want something to cut it with?”

  I don’t want any at all, strangely enough. I don’t need any liquid courage to go in there and look at Penny’s body. For one thing, it’s not Penny. Just a body. And I’m used to bodies. Just the other day, I saw two of them, both with their brains blown all over the room. If that didn’t bother me, this certainly won’t. I am not anywhere close to the near-state of emotional collapse that everyone seems to think I’m in.

  “It’s a little early for me, Chad,” Matt said. “Maybe later.”

  “Suit yourself,” Chad said, taking the cognac bottle from the man behind the table, pouring half an inch of it into a snifter, and tossing it down.

  “I wish I could have one of those,” Daffy said.

  “Baby, you can’t,” Chad said sympathetically.

  “If it’s a girl, I want to name her Penelope,” Daffy said.

  Matt saw this idea didn’t please the prospective father, but that he was wise enough not to argue with his wife here.

  “You’re not having anything?” Amanda asked, at Matt’s elbow.

  “Probably later,” he said.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Chad said.

  “That’s a terrible thing…” Daffy protested.

  “Unless you want to go in alone first, Matt?” Chad asked solicitously.

  Anything to get away from these three. Go in there alone, stay what seems to be an appropriate period for profound introspection and grief, and then get the hell out.

  “Thank you,” Matt said softly.

  “Thank you,” the hypocrite said, with what he judged to be what his audience expected in grief-stricken tone and facial demeanor.

  He smiled wanly at Chad, Daffy, and Amanda and walked away from them, out of the library, across the foyer and into the sitting room. There was a line of people, maybe half a dozen, waiting for their last look at the mortal remains of Miss Penelope Detweiler. He took his place with them, and slowly made his way to the casket, looking for, and finally finding, behind the casket, a floral display bearing a card reading “Matthew Mark Payne” and then noticing the strange mingled smells of expensive perfume on the woman in front of him and from the flowers, and comparing it with what he had smelled in the office of the Inferno Lounge, the last time he’d looked at mortal remains. There it had been the sick sweet smell of the pools of blood under the bodies, mingled with the foul odors of feces and urine released in death.

  And then it was his turn to look down at Penny in her coffin.

  She looks as if she’s asleep, he thought, which is the effect the cosmetic technologist at the undertaker’s was struggling to achieve.

  And then, like a wall falling on him, and without warning, his chest contracted painfully, a wailing moan saying “Oh, shit!” in a voice he recognized as his own came out of it, and his chest began to heave with sobs.

  He next became aware that someone was pulling him away from the casket, where his right hand was caressing the cool, unmoving flesh of Penny
’s cheeks, and then that the someone was Chad, gently saying, “Come on, ol’ buddy. Just come along with us,” and then that Daffy’s swollen belly was pressing against him as they led him out of the sitting room past those next in line, and that, when he looked at her, tears were running down her cheeks, cutting courses through her pancake makeup.

  “Inspector Wohl,” Peter answered his telephone.“The funeral’s over,” Amy said.

  “I was hoping you’d call. How did it go?”

  “Matt has a way with words. When we got here, he said it was ‘intimate friends, and the morbidly curious, with a soupçon of social climbers thrown in for good measure.’”

  “How did he handle it?”

  “He broke down when he saw her in the casket. Really broke down. Chad Nesbitt and his very pregnant wife had to practically carry him out of the room.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Wohl said:

  “You said last night you expected something like that to happen.”

  “That was a clinical opinion; professionally, I’m relieved. It’s the first step, acceptance, in managing grief. Personally, he’s my little brother. It was awful. I felt so damned sorry for him.”

  “How’s he now? Where is he now?”

  “Oh, now he’s got his stiff upper lip back in place. He and Chad are into the booze. There’s quite a post-interment party going on out here.”

  “You want me to send someone out there and get him? I sent Tiny Lewis to sit on him, but…”

  “I know,” Amy said. “What I was hoping to hear was you volunteering to come out here and get the both of us.”

  “It was bad for you?”

  “As we were coming back here from the cemetery—I thought Grace Detweiler might need me, so I rode with them—I caught her looking at me as if she had just realized that if I had done my job, Penny would still be here.”

  “That could be an overactive imagination.”

  “I don’t think so. I got the same look here in the house when I was getting a tranquilizer out of my purse for her. She’s decided—seeing how Matt collapsed completely probably had a lot to do with it—that he’s still an irresponsible boy, who can’t be blamed. She needs somebody to blame. I make a fine candidate to be the real villain, because I really didn’t help Penny at all.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Wohl said, “I’m on my way, Amy,” and the line went dead in her ear.

  “It’s a good thing I know you’re a doctor,” Inspector Peter Wohl said to Dr. Amelia Payne as they came off the elevator into the lobby of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building on Rittenhouse Square.“Meaning what?”

  “The folklore among us laypersons is don’t mix booze and pills.”

  “That’s a good general rule of thumb,” Amy said. “What I gave Matt is what we doctor persons prescribe as a sedative when the patient person has been soaking up cognac like a sponge. It is my professional opinion that that patient person will be out like a light for the next twelve to eighteen hours without side effects. Any other questions, layperson?”

  Wohl smiled at her.

  “How about dinner tonight?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I guess that makes breakfast tomorrow out of the question.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Amy said. “I said no dinner. I have to make my rounds, and then there’s a very sick young woman I want to spend some time with. But I didn’t say anything about breakfast, or, for that matter, a midnight supper with candles and wine, being out of any question.”

  “My place or yours, doctor person?”

  She didn’t reply directly.

  “We left my car at the Detweilers’s.”

  “Give me the keys. I’ll have someone run me out there, and I’ll drop it by—where? The hospital? Your place?”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier if you took it to your place? When I leave the hospital, I’ll catch a cab out there. It’ll probably be after eleven.”

  “Done,” he said, putting his hand out for the keys.

  “You’re headed for the hospital now?” he asked. She nodded. “You want a ride?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Wherever you need to go is right on my way.”

  “I’ll catch a cab,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  Their eyes met, and held. Somewhat hesitantly, Wohl moved his face closer to hers.

  “Don’t push me, Peter,” Amy said, and then moved her face closer to his and kissed him on the lips.

  Then she quickly walked away from him, out the door and onto Rittenhouse Square. He started to follow her, then changed his mind.

  He went to the receptionist’s desk and asked to use her telephone.

  “Of course,” she said with a smile that suggested she did not find him unattractive.

  He smiled at her and dialed a number from memory.

  “Inspector Wohl,” he said as he watched Amy get into a cab. “Anything for me?”

  “Chief Lowenstein’s been trying to reach you all afternoon, sir,” the tour lieutenant reported.

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ll call Chief Lowenstein and get back to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wohl broke the connection with his finger and dialed Chief Lowenstein’s private number.

  “Lowenstein.”

  “Peter Wohl, Chief.”

  “Where are you, Peter?”

  “Center City. Rittenhouse Square.”

  “With Matt Payne?”

  “I just left him.”

  “How is he?”

  “His sister gave him a pill she said will knock him out until tomorrow.”

  “I really feel sorry for him,” Lowenstein said, and then immediately added: “I need to talk to you, Peter.”

  “I’m available for you anytime, Chief.”

  “Why don’t you let me buy you a drink at the bar in the Warwick?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ten minutes, Peter,” Lowenstein said. “Thank you.”

  FIFTEEN

  Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein was sitting, with an eight-inch black cigar in his mouth, on a stool at the street end of the bar in the Warwick Hotel when Inspector Peter Wohl got there.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Chief.”“What will you have, Peter?” Lowenstein asked, ignoring the apology.

  “I would like a triple scotch, but what I’d better have is a beer,” Wohl said.

  “Bad day for you?” Lowenstein asked, chuckling, and got the bartender’s attention. “Give this nice young man one of these. A single.”

  “Thank you,” Peter said.

  “I turned in my papers this morning,” he said. “You hear about that?”

  Wohl nodded.

  “Carlucci came out to the house and made me a deal to stay.”

  Wohl’s face was as devoid of expression as he could make it.

  “The deal,” Lowenstein said, “is that I have his word that you will bring me in on anything interesting his personal detective squad, now called Ethical Affairs Unit, comes up with, and I get to define the term ‘interesting.’ You have any problem with that, Peter?”

  “I had a problem with keeping you out of the Cazerra investigation. That wasn’t my idea, Chief.”

  “So Carlucci told me. I asked you, do you have any problems with the new arrangement?”

  “None at all.”

  “Tell me what interesting things you have heard today, Peter.”

  “How about yesterday, Chief?”

  “Start with yesterday.”

  “I had lunch with Armando C. Giacomo, Esquire, at the Rittenhouse Club. Weisbach and I did. Mr. Paulo Cassandro really doesn’t want to go to jail. As a public-spirited citizen, he is willing to testify against Cazerra in exchange for immunity from prosecution.”

  Lowenstein snorted.

  “Giacomo is pissing in the wind. He knows he has nothing to d
eal with. And if he did, he would have gone to the District Attorney with it. Why you?”

  “I thought that was interesting. Weisbach told him that, offhand, the only thing he could think of that we were interested in was the Inferno doer, or doers. And/or the Kellog doer.”

  “And how did the dapper little dago react to that?”

  “He didn’t say no.”

  “You think either one was a mob hit, Peter?”

  “I didn’t until Giacomo didn’t say no.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I thought so. And then Jason Washington called me this morning. One of his informants said that the Inferno was a mob hit, and gave him a name. Frank—Frankie—Foley.”

  There was a just-perceptible pause as Lowenstein searched his memory.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Neither has Washington. Or Harris. Or me. Or Intelligence or Organized Crime.”

  “Who’s the informant?”

  “Washington said that what this guy has given him in the past—which wasn’t much—was reliable. I think he would have said something if there was a mob connection.”

  “Huh!” Lowenstein snorted.

  “Going back even further than yesterday, the day Kellog was shot, that night, his widow showed up at Washington’s apartment. Did you hear about that?”

  “Tell me about it,” Lowenstein said.

  Which means either that you did hear about it or didn’t hear about it, but if you did, you want to hear my version of it anyway.

  “She told Washington (a) her husband was dirty, (b) the entire Narcotics Five Squad is dirty, and (c) that they did her husband.”

  “What did Washington think about it?”

  “He said he believes she thinks she’s telling the truth.”

  “So what are you going to do with this? All of this?”

  “I told Washington to give the Frankie Foley name to Homicide. By now, they probably have it.”

  “And the Five Squad allegations?”

  “Before Ethical Affairs popped up, I was going to have a quiet word with a staff inspector I know pretty well, and ask him to please keep me out of it.”

  Lowenstein chuckled. “A staff inspector named Weisbach?”

  “Yeah.”