The Victim boh-3

by W. E. B Griffin

  Realizing that she was slipping into depression, which, of late, had meant that she would drink more than was good for her, she resolved to fight it.

  She took out a bottle of the port her father had liked so much and taught her to appreciate, and drank two glasses of it, and not a drop more, and then left the gun room, carefully locking it after her.

  In the next two days there were more thefts of bric-a-brac and other valuables, and she called the police again, and again they did nothing.

  So she got in her car and drove downtown to see Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, one of the senior partners in the law firm of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building. Colonel Mawson wasn't there, but another senior partner, Brewster C. Payne, of whom, she remembered, her father had spoken admiringly, saw her.

  She told him what was going on, of the thefts and the break-ins, and how the police had been absolutely useless. He tried to talk her into moving out of the house until the police could get to the bottom of what was happening. She told him she had no intention of being run out of her own house.

  He told her that Colonel Mawson and Police Commissioner Czernick were great friends, and that as soon as Colonel Mawson returned to the office, he would tell him of their conversation and that he felt sure Colonel Mawson would get some action from the police.

  The very same day, late in the afternoon, Harriet Evans, the gentle black woman who-with her husband-had been helping them run the house as long as Martha could remember, came upstairs and said, "Miss Martha, there's another policeman to see you. This one's a captain."

  Miss Martha Peebles received Captain David Pekach, commanding officer of the Highway Patrol, in the upstairs sitting room. She explained the problem all over again to him, including her suspicion that Stephen's "actor" friend was the culprit. He assured her that the entire resources of the Highway Patrol would from that moment guarantee the inviolability of her property.

  Somehow in conversation it came out that Captain Pekach was not a married man. And she mentioned her father's weapons, and he expressed interest, and, somewhat reluctantly, she took him to the gun room.

  When he showed particular interest in one piece, she identified it for him: "That is a U.S. rifle, that is to say, a military rifle, Model of 1819-"

  "With a J. H. Hall action," Captain Pekach interrupted.

  "Oh, do you know weapons?"

  "And stamped with the initials of the proving inspector," he went on. "Z. E. H."

  "Zachary Ellsworth-" Martha began to explain.

  "Hampden," Captain Pekach concluded as their eyes met. "Captain, Ordnance Corps, later Deputy Chief of Ordnance."

  "He was born in Allentown, you know," Martha said.

  "No. I didn't know."

  "There are some other pieces you might find interesting, Captain," Martha said, "if I'm not taking you away from something more important."

  He looked at his watch.

  "I'm running late now," he said.

  "I understand," she said.

  "But perhaps some other time?"

  "If you like."

  He gestured around the gun room.

  "I could happily spend the next two years in here," he said.

  He means that. He does want to come back!

  "Well, perhaps when you get off duty," she said.

  He looked pained.

  "Miss Peebles, I'm commanding officer of the Highway Patrol. We're trying very hard to find the man the newspapers are calling the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist."

  "Yes, I read the papers."

  "I want to speak to the men coming off their shifts, to see if they may have come up with something. That will keep me busy, I'm afraid, until twelve-thirty or so."

  "I understand," she said. Then she heard herself say, actually shamelessly and brazenly lie, "Captain, I'm a night person. I rarely go to bed until the wee hours. I'm sure if you drove past here at one, or even two, there would be lights on."

  "Well, I had planned to check on your property before going home," he said. "I've stationed officers nearby."

  "Well, then, by all means, if you see a light, come in. I'll give you a cup of coffee."

  After five minutes past one that morning Martha Peebles could no longer think of herself as the world's oldest virgin, except for cloistered nuns, perhaps.

  And her father, she thought, would have approved of David, once he had gotten to know him. They were very much alike in many ways. Not superficially. Inside.

  Martha knew from the very beginning, which she placed as the moment, post coitus, that he had reached out to her and rolled her over onto him, so that she lay with her face against the hair on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, feeling the firm muscles of his leg against hers, that David was the man she had been waiting forwithout of course knowing it-all her life.

  Captain David Pekach drove directly from the meeting in Staff Inspector Peter Wohl's office at Bustleton and Bowler to 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill. He parked his unmarked car in one of the four garage stalls in what had been the carriage house behind the house, then walked back down the drive to the entrance portico.

  The door opened as he got there.

  "Good evening, Captain," Evans, the black guy, greeted him. He was wearing a gray cotton jacket and a black bow tie.

  "What do you say, Evans?"

  "Miss Martha said to say that if you would like to change, she will be with you in a moment."

  "We're going to dinner," Pekach said.

  "So I understand, sir. Can I get you a drink, Captain? Or a glass of beer?"

  "A beer would be fine, thank you," Pekach said.

  "I'll bring it right up, sir," Evans said, smiling.

  Martha had told David that Evans "adores you, and so does Harriet," and Evans was always pleasant enough, but there was something about him-and about his wife-living in the house and knowing about him and Martha that made Pekach uncomfortable.

  Pekach climbed the wide curving stairs and went down the corridor to "his room." That was a little game they were playing. The story was that because he lived to hell-and-gone on the other side of Philadelphia, he sometimes "stayed over." When he "stayed over," he stayed in a guest room, which just happened to have a connecting door to Martha's bedroom.

  Every time he "stayed over," which was more the rule than the exception, either he or Martha carefully mussed the sheets on the bed in the guest room, sometimes by even bouncing up and down on them. And every morning either Harriet or one of the nieces made up the guest room bed and everyone pretended that was where he had slept.

  When he went in the guest room, there was clothing, not his, on what-because he didn't know the proper term-he called the clotheshorse. It was a mahogany device designed to hold a jacket and trousers. There was a narrow shelf behind the jacket hanger, intended, he supposed, to hold your wallet and change and watch. He had never seen any clothing on it and had never used it. He hung his uniforms and clothes in an enormous wardrobe.

  When he opened the wardrobe to change into civilian clothing, there was another surprise. He had expected to find his dark blue suit and his new gray flannel suit (Martha bought it for him at Brooks Brothers, and he hated to remember what it had cost). The wardrobe was now nearly full of men's clothing, but neither his dark blue suit nor his new gray flannel suit was among them.

  "What the hell?" he muttered, confused. He turned from the wardrobe. Both Evans (bearing a tray with a bottle of beer and a pilsner glass) and Martha were entering the room.

  Martha was wearing a black dress and a double string of pearls long enough to reach her bosom.

  My God, she's good-looking!

  "Oh, damn, you haven't tried it on yet!" Martha said.

  "Tried what on?"

  "That, of course, silly," she said, and pointed at the clothing on the clotheshorse.

  "That's not mine," he said.

  "Yes and no, Precious," Martha said. "Try it on."

 
She took the coat-he saw now that it was a blue blazer with brass buttons.

  "Honey," he said, "I told you I don't want you buying me any more clothes."

  "And I haven't," she said. "Have I, Evans?"

  "No, Captain, she hasn't."

  There was nothing to do but put the jacket on. It was doublebreasted and it fit.

  "Perfect," Evans said.

  "Look at the buttons," Martha said. He looked. The brass buttons were the official brass buttons of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia.

  "Thank Evans for that," Martha said. "You have no idea how much trouble he had getting his hands on those."

  "Where did the coat come from?"

  "Tiller and Whyde, I think," Martha said.

  "That's right, Miss Martha," Evans confirmed.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "Daddy's tailor-one of them-in London," Martha said. "Precious, you look wonderful in it!"

  "This is your father's?" he asked. The notion made him slightly uncomfortable, quite aside from considerations of Martha getting him clothes.

  "No, it's yours.Now it's yours."

  "I suggested to Miss Martha, Captain," Evans said, "that you and Mr. Alex were just about the same size, and all his clothes were here, just waiting to feed the moths."

  "So we checked, and Evans was right, and all we had to do was take the trousers in a half inch, and an inch off the jacket sleeves, and of course find your policeman's buttons. Evans knows this marvelous Italian tailor on Chestnut Street, so all you have to do is say 'Thank you, Evans.' "

  "Allof those clothes?" Pekach said, pointing to the wardrobe.

  "Mr. Alex always dressed very well," Evans said.

  Captain David Pekach came very close to sayingOh, shit,I don't want your father's goddamn clothes.

  But he didn't. He saw a look of genuine pleasure at having done something nice on Evans's face, and then he looked at Martha and saw how happy her eyes were.

  "Thank you, Evans," Captain Pekach said.

  "My pleasure, Captain. I'm just glad the sizes worked out; that you were just a little smaller than Mr. Alex, rather than the other way around."

  "It worked out fine, thank you, Evans."

  Evans smiled and left the room.

  "I don't know what I'm going to do with you," Pekach said to Martha.

  She met his eyes and smiled. "Oh, you'll think of something."

  Martha walked to where Evans had left the beer, poured some skillfully in the glass, and handed it to Pekach.

  "I love it when I can do something nice for you, my Precious," she said.

  He kissed her gently, tasting her lipstick.

  "I better take a shower," he said.

  She came into the bathroom, as she often did, and watched him shave. She had told him she liked to do that, to feel his cheeks when he had just finished shaving.

  When they went downstairs, Evans had brought her Mercedes coupe around to the portico from the garage, and was holding the door open for her. Pekach got behind the wheel and glanced at her to make sure she had her seat belt fastened. There was a flash of thigh and of the lace at the hem of her black slip.

  For a woman who didn't know the first fucking thing about sex, he thought for perhaps the fiftieth time, she really knows how to pick underwear that turns me on.

  He put the Mercedes in gear, drove down the drive to Glengarry Lane, and idly decided that the best route downtown would be the Schuylkill Expressway.

  Just north of the Zoological Gardens, Martha asked if they had caught whoever had shot the policeman.

  "No. And we don't have a clue," Pekach said. "Just before I came

  … to your place"-he'd almost said "home"- "we had a meeting, and Tony Harris, who's running the job, and is a damn good cop, said all he knows to do is go back over what he already has."

  "You almost said 'home,' " Martha said, "didn't you?"

  He looked at her and was surprised to find they were holding hands.

  "Slip of the tongue," he said.

  "Nice slip, I like it."

  "You too."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I like your slip," he said.

  "Oh," she said. "Thank you."

  She raised his hand to her mouth and kissed it.

  There was the howl of a siren. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a Highway car behind him and dropped his eyes to the large round speedometer of the Mercedes. The indicator was pointing just beyond seventy.

  "Shit," he said, freed his hand, and moved into the right lane.

  The Highway car pulled up beside him. The police officer in the passenger seat gestured imperiously for him to pull to the curb, the gesture turning into a friendly wave as Officer Jesus Martinez, a stricken look on his face, recognized the commanding officer of the Highway Patrol. The Highway car suddenly slowed and fell behind.

  "I hate that," Pekach said. "Getting caught by my own men."

  "Then you shouldn't speed, Precious." Martha laughed. "You should see your face!"

  "It's this damn car," Pekach said. "They don't know it. If we were in my car, that wouldn't have happened."

  "Then you should drive this car more, so they get to know it."

  "I couldn't drive your car to work," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's yours."

  "Let me give it to you, then."

  "Martha, Goddammit, stop!"

  "We've been over this before," she said. "It makes me happy to give you things."

  "It's not right," he said.

  "I love you and I can easily afford it, so what's wrong with it?"

  "It's not right," he repeated.

  "Sorry," Martha said.

  "Honey, you always giving me things…"He searched for the words. "It makes me feel less than a man."

  "That's absurd," she said. "Look at yourself! As young as you are, being a captain. Commanding Officer of Highway. You're worried about being a man?"

  He didn't reply.

  "And that's not the only manly thing you do very well," Martha said. She leaned over and put her tongue in his ear and groped him.

  "Jesus, honey!"

  "You must be getting tired of me," Martha teased. "I remember when you used to like that."

  "I'm not tired of you, baby," he said. "I could never get tired of you."

  "So then let me give you the car."

  "Will you ever quit?"

  "Probably not," she said, and caught his hand and held it against her cheek. Then she asked, "Where are we going? Not that it matters."

  "Ristorante Alfredo," he said, trying to pronounce it in Italian.

  "I hear that's very nice."

  "Peter Wohl says it is," Pekach said. "I asked him for a good place to go, and he said Ristorante Alfredo is very nice."

  "You like him, don't you?"

  "He's a good boss. He doesn'tact much like a cop, but from his reputation and from what I've seen, he's a hell of a cop."

  What Peter Wohl had said specifically were that there were two nice things about Ristorante Alfredo. First, that the food and atmosphere were first-class; and second, that the management had the charming habit of picking up the tab.

  "The Mob owns it, I guess you know," Wohl had said. "They get some sort of perverse pleasure out of buying captains and up their meals. You're a captain now, Dave. Enjoy. Rank hath its privileges. I try to make them happy at least once a month."

  Dave Pekach had made reservations for dinner at Ristorante Alfredo because of what Wohl had said about the food and atmosphere. He wasn't sure that Wohl wasn't pulling his leg about having the check grabbed. If that happened, fine, but he wasn't counting on it. He even sort of hoped they wouldn't. It was important somehow that he take Martha someplace that she would enjoy, preferably expensive.

  There was a young Italian guy (areal Italian, to judge by the way he mangled the language) in a tuxedo behind a sort of stand-up desk in the lobby of Ristorante Alfredo. When Pekach said his name was Pekach and tha
t he had made reservations, the guy almost pissed his pants unlatching a velvet rope and bowing them past it to a table in a far corner of the room.

  Dave saw other diners in the elegantly furnished room looking at Martha in her black dress and pearls, and the way she walked, and he was proud of her.

  The Italian guy in the tuxedo held Martha's chair for her and said he hoped the table was satisfactory, and then he snapped his fingers and two other guys appeared, a busboy and a guy in a short red jacket with what looked like a silver spoon on a gold chain around his neck. The busboy had a bottle wrapped in a towel in a silver bucket on legs.

  The guy with the spoon around his neck unwrapped the towel so that Dave could see that what he had was a bottle of French champagne.

  "Compliments of the house, Captain Pekach," the Italian guy said. "I hope is satisfactory."

  "Oh, Moet is always satisfactory," Martha said, smiling.

  "You permit?" the Italian guy said, and unwrapped the wire, popped the cork, and poured about a quarter of an inch in Pekach's glass.

  I'm supposed to sip that, to make sure it's not sour or something, Dave remembered, and did so.

  "Very nice," he said.

  "I am so happy," the Italian guy said, and poured Martha and then Pekach each a glassful.

  "I leave you to enjoy wine," the Italian guy said. "In time I will recommend."

  "To us," Martha said, raising her glass.

  "Yeah," Dave Pekach said.

  A waiter appeared a minute or so later and delivered menus.

  And a minute or so after that the Italian guy came back.

  "Captain Pekach, you will excuse. Mr. Baltazari would be so happy to have a minute of your time," he said, and gestured across the room to the far corner where two men sat at a corner table. When they saw him looking, they both gave a little wave.

  Dave Pekach decided the younger one, a swarthy-skinned man with hair elaborately combed forward to conceal male pattern baldness, must be Baltazari, whom he had never heard of. The other man, older, in a gray suit, he knew by sight. On a cork bulletin board in the Intelligence Division, his photograph was pinned to the top of the Organized Crime organizational chart. The PhiladelphiaDaily News ritually referred to him as "Mob Boss Vincenzo Savarese."