"So you're saying, just let the kid go, right? 'For the good of the Department'?"
"Pekach and Sabara say they know people in the 12^th. They'll put in a good word for him."
"You won't?"
"Feldman is the captain. When I was working as a staff inspector, I put his brother-in-law away."
"Christ, I forgot that. Lieutenant in Traffic? Extortion? They gave him five to fifteen?"
Wohl nodded. "I really don't think Captain Feldman would be receptive to anything kind I would have to say about Matt Payne."
"Interesting, isn't it, that Czernick sent Payne to the 12^th?"
Wohl grunted.
"You think I could talk to Payne, tell him to hang in?"
"I wish you would. I think you might tip the scales."
"Okay," Jason Washington said, nodding his head. And then he changed the subject: "So what's the real story about DeZego and the pimp getting hit?"
"It's your job, you tell me," Wohl said.
"You haven't been thinking about it? That something smells with Savarese pointing Pekach at the pimp? Doing it himself?"
"I've been thinking that it smells," Wohl replied.
"Intelligence has a guy, I guess you know, in the Savarese family."
Wohl nodded.
"I talked to him about an hour ago," Jason Washington said.
"Intelligence know you did that?"
"Intelligence doesn't even know I know who he is," Washington said. "He tells me that the word in the family is that Tony the Zee ripped off the pimp, the pimp popped him, and Savarese ordered the pimp hit. I even got a name for the doer, not that it would do us any good."
"One of Savarese's thugs?"
"One of his bodyguards. Gian-Carlo Rosselli, also known as Charley Russell."
"Who has eight people ready to swear he was in Atlantic City taking the sun with his wife and kids?"
Washington nodded.
"Tony the Zee ripped off the pimp?" Wohl asked. "How?"
"Drugs, what else?" Washington replied.
"You don't sound as if you believe that," Wohl said.
"I think that's what Savarese wants the family to think," Washington said.
"Why, do you think?"
"I think Savarese had DeZego hit, and doesn't want the family to know about it."
"Why?"
"Why did he have him hit? Couple of possibilities. Maybe Tony went in business for himself driving the shrimp up from the Gulf Coast. That would be enough. Tony the Zee was ambitious but not too smart. He might have figured, who would ever know if he brought a kilo of cocaine for himself back up here in his suitcase."
"Interesting," Wohl said.
"He was also quite a swordsman," Washington went on, "who could have played hide-the-salami with somebody's wife. They take the honor of their women seriously; adultery is a mortal sin."
"Wouldn't Savarese have made an example of him, if that was the case?"
"Not necessarily," Washington said. "Maybe the lady was important to him. Her reputation. Her honor. He might have ordered him hit to remove temptation. It didn't have to be a wife. It could have been a daughter-I mean, unmarried daughter. If it came out that Tony haddishonored somebody's daughter, she would have a hell of a time finding a respectable husband. These people are very big, Peter, on respectability."
Wohl chuckled.
"You never heard of honor among thieves?" Washington asked innocently.
They both laughed.
"Why the hell are we laughing?" Wohl asked.
"Everyone laughs at quaint native customs," Washington said, and then added, "Or both of the above. Bottom line: For one or more reasons we'll probably never find out, Savarese decided Tony the Zee had to go; he didn't want his family to know that he had ordered the hit, for one or more reasons we'll probably never find out, either; imported those two guys in the photos Dolan took to do the hit; and then had Gian-Carlo Rosselli, aka Charley Russell, hit Lanier, conveniently leaving the shotgun the imported shooters had used on Tony at the crime scene; and finally, pointed us at the pimp. We would then naturally assume that Lanier had gotten popped for having popped Tony DeZego and tell Mickey O'Hara and the other police reporters, which would lend credence to Savarese's innocence. He almost got away with it. He would have, if it hadn't been for Dolan's snapshots and those two Highway cops hassling the pimp and coming up with another shotgun."
Wohl exhaled audibly.
"One flaw in your analysis," he said finally. Washington looked at him curiously. "You said, 'He almost got away with it,' " Wohl went on. "He did get away with it. What the hell have we got, Jason? We don't know who the professional hit men are, and we're not likely to find out. And if we did find them, we don't have anything on them. The only witness we have is a socialite junkie whose testimony would be useless even if we got her on the stand. And we can't hang the Lanier murder on Rosselli, or Russell, or whatever he calls himself. So the bastard did get away with it. Goddamn, that makes me mad!"
"You win some and you lose some," Washington said, "that being my profound philosophical observation for the day."
"On top of which we look like the Keystone Kops in the newspapers and, for the cherry on top of the cake, have managed to antagonize H. Richard Detweiler, Esquire. Christ only knows what that's going to cost us down the pike.Damn!"
"What I was going to suggest, Peter," Washington said softly, " presuming you agreed with what I thought, is that I have a talk with Mickey O'Hara."
"About what?"
"Mickey doesn't like those guineas any more than I do. He could do one of those 'highly placed police official speaking on condition of anonymity' pieces."
"Saying what?"
"Saying the truth. That Tony the Zee was hit for reasons known only to the mob, and that What's-his-name the pimp, Lanier, didn't do it. That would at least embarrass Savarese."
Wohl sat for a long moment with his lips pursed, tapping the balls of his fingers together.
"No," he said finally. "There are other ways to embarrass Mr. Savarese."
"You want to tell me how?"
"You sure you want to know?"
Washington considered that a moment.
"Yeah, I want to know," he said. "Maybe I can help."
****
"So what you were telling me before," Martha said to Dave, interrupting herself to reach down on the bed and pull a sheet modestly over her, "is that although it's really not Inspector Wohl's fault, he looks very bad?"
"Goddamn shame. He's a hell of a cop. I really admire him."
"And those gangsters are just going to get away with shooting the other gangster?"
"That happens all the time," Pekach said. "It's not like in the movies." He tucked his shirt in his trousers and pulled up his zipper. "Even if we somehow found those two, they would have alibis. They'll never wind up in court, is what I mean."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Sometimes some things happen," Pekach said.
"Precious, what in the world are you talking about?"
"Nothing," he said. "What makes Wohl look bad is the shot cop. We don't have a damn thing on that. And that's bad. It makes the Department look incompetent, stupid, if we can't get people who murder cops in cold blood. And it makes Peter Wohl look bad, because the mayor gave him the job."
"I understand," she said. "And there's nothing that he can do?"
"There's nothing anybody can do that isn't already being done. Unless we can find somebody who saw something-"
"What about offering a reward? Don't you do that?"
"Rewards come from people who are injured," Dave explained. "I mean, somebody knocks off the manager of an A amp;P supermarket, A amp;P would offer a reward. The Department doesn't have money for something like that, and even if there was a reward, we'd look silly, wouldn't we, offering it? It would be the same thing as admitting that we can't do the job the taxpayers are paying us to do."
"Idon't think so," Martha said.
He fini
shed dressing and examined himself in the mirror.
His pants are baggy in the seat, Martha thought. And that shirt doesn't fit the way it should. I wonder if that Italian tailor Evans has found on Chestnut Street could make him up something a little better? He has a marvelous physique, and it just doesn't show. Daddy always said that clothes make the man. I never really knew what he meant before.
Pekach walked to the bed and leaned down and kissed Martha gently on the lips.
"Gotta go, baby," he said.
"Would you like to ride out to New Hope and have dinner along the canal?" Martha asked. "You always like that. It would cheer you up. Or I could have Evans get some steaks?"
"Uh," Pekach said, "baby, Mike Sabara and I thought that we'd try to get Wohl to go out for a couple of drinks after work."
"I thought Captain Sabara wasn't much of a drinking man," Martha said, and then: "Oh, I see. Of course. Can you come over later?"
"I think I might be able to squeeze that into my busy schedule," Pekach said, and kissed her again.
When he left the bedroom, Martha got out of bed and went to the window and watched the driveway until she saw Pekach 's unmarked car go down it and through the gate.
She leaned against the window frame thoughtfully for a moment, then caught her reflection in the mirrors of her vanity table.
"Well," she said aloud, not sounding entirely displeased, "aren' tyou the naked hussy, Martha Peebles?"
And then walked back to the bed, sat down on it, fished out a leather-bound telephone book, and looked up a number.
****
Brewster Cortland Payne, Esquire, saw that one of the lights on one of the two telephones on his desk was flashing. He wondered how long it had been flashing. He had been in deep concentration, and lately that had meant that the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, visible from his windows on a high floor of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, could have tumbled into the Delaware without his noticing the splash.
It probably means that when I'm free, Irene has something she thinks I should hear, he thought. Otherwise, she would have made it ring. Well, I'm not free, but I'm curious.
As he reached for the telephone it rang.
"Yes, ma'am?" he asked cheerfully.
"Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler are here, Mr. Payne," his secretary of twenty-odd years, Mrs. Irene Craig, said.
Good God, both of them?
"Ask them to please come in," Payne said immediately. He quickly closed the manila folders on his desk and slid them into a drawer. He had no idea what the Detweilers wanted, but there was no chance whatever that they just happened to be in the neighborhood and had just popped in.
The door opened.
"Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler, Mr. Payne," Irene announced.
Detweiler's face was stiff. His smile was uneasy.
"Unexpected pleasure, Grace," Payne said, kissing her cheek as he offered his hand to Detweiler. "Come on in."
"May I get you some coffee?" Irene asked.
"I'd much rather have a drink, if that's possible," Detweiler said.
"The one thing you don't need is another drink," Grace Detweiler said.
"I could use a little nip myself," Payne lied smoothly. "I'll fix them, Irene. Grace, will you have something?"
"Nothing, thanks."
"We just came from the hospital," Detweiler announced.
"Sit down, Dick," Payne said. "You're obviously upset."
"Jesus H. Christ, am I upset!" Detweiler said. He went to the wall of windows looking down toward the Delaware River and leaned on one of the floor-to-wall panes with both hands.
Payne quickly made him a drink, walked to him, and handed it to him.
"Thank you," Detweiler said idly, and took a pull at the drink. He looked into Payne's face. "I'm not sure if I'm here because you're my friend or because you're my lawyer."
"They are not mutually exclusive," Payne said. "Now what seems to be the problem?"
"If five days ago anyone had asked me if I could think of anything worse than having my daughter turn up as a drug addict, I couldn't have imagined anything worse," Grace Detweiler said.
"Penny is not a drug addict," H. Richard Detweiler said.
"If you persist in that self-deception, Dick," Grace said angrily, "you will be compounding the problem, not trying to solve it."
"She hasa problem," Detweiler said. "That's all."
"And the name of that problem, goddamn you, is addiction," Grace Detweiler said furiously. "Denying it, goddammit, is not going to make it go away!"
H. Richard Detweiler looked at his wife until he cringed under her angry eyes.
"All right," he said very softly. "Addicted. Penny is addicted."
Grace nodded and then turned to Brewster C. Payne. "You're not even a little curious, Brewster, about what could be worse than Penny being a cocaine addict?"
"I presumed you were about to tell me," Payne said.
"How about getting rubbed out by the Mob? Does that strike you as being worse?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Payne said.
"Officer Matthew Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department marched into Penny's room a while ago-past, incidentally, the private detective Dick hired to keep people out of her room-and showed Penny some photographs. Penny, who is not, to put it kindly, in full possession of her faculties, identified the man in the photographs as the man who had shot her and that Italian gangster. And then she proceeded to confess to him that she had been involved with him. With the gangster, I mean. In love with him, to put a point on it."
"Oh, God!" Payne said.
"And he got her to sign a statement," H. Richard Detweiler said. " Penny is now determined to go to court and point a finger at the man and see him sent to the electric chair. She thinks it will be just like Perry Mason on television. With Uncle Brewster doing what Raymond Burr did."
"What kind of a statement did she sign?"
"We don't know," Grace said. "Matt didn't give her a copy. Astatement."
"I'd have to see it," Payne said, as if to himself.
"I think I should tell you that Dotson has filed a complaint against Matt with the Police Department," H. Richard Detweiler said.
"For what?"
"Who knows? What Matt did was wrong," Detweiler said. "I think he said, criminal trespass and violation of Penny's civil rights. Does that change anything between us, Brewster?"
"If you're filing a complaint, it would," Payne said. "Are you?"
"That sounds like an ultimatum," Detweiler said. "If I press charges, I should find another lawyer."
"It sounded like a question to me," Grace Detweiler said. "The answer to which is no, we're not. Of course we're not. I'd like to file a complaint against Dotson. He knew that Penny was taking drugs. He should have told us."
"We don't know he knew," Detweiler said.
"God, you're such an ass!" Grace said. "Of course he knew." She turned to Brewster Payne. "Don't you think?"
"Penny's over twenty-one. An adult. Legally her medical problems are none of your business," Payne said. "But yes, Grace, I would think he knew."
"Right," Grace said. "Of course he did. The bastard!"
"If there are charges against Matt-a complaint doesn't always result in charges-but if there are and he comes to me, I'll defend him," Payne said. "Actually, if he doesn't come to me, I'll go to him. One helps one's children when they are in trouble. I am unable to believe that he meant Penny harm."
"Neither am I," Grace said. "I wish I could say the same thing for Penny's father."
"I'll speak to Dotson," Detweiler said. "About dropping his charges. I don't blame Matt. I blame that colored detective; he probably set Matt up to do what he did."
"What Matt didwasn't wrong, Dick," Grace said. "Can't you get that through your head? What he was trying to do was catch the man who shot Penny."
"Dick, I think Matt would want to accept responsibility for whatever he did. He's not a child any longer, either," Payne said.
> "I'll speak to Dotson," Detweiler said. "About the charges, I mean."
"As sick as this sounds," Grace Detweiler went on, "I think Penny rather likes the idea of standing up in public and announcing that she was the true love of this gangster's life. The idea that since they tried to kill her once so there would be no witness suggests they would do so again never entered her mind."
"Off the top of my head, I don't think that a statement taken under the circumstances you describe-"
"What do you mean, 'off the top of your head'?" H. Richard Detweiler asked coldly.
"Dick, I'm not a criminal lawyer," Brewster C. Payne said.
"Oh, great! We come here to see how we can keep our daughter from getting shot-again-by the Mob, and you tell me 'Sorry, that's not my specialty.' My God, Brewster!"
"Settle down, Dick," Payne said. "You came to the right place."
He walked to his door.
"Irene, would you ask Colonel Mawson to drop whatever he's doing and come in here, please?"
"Mawson?" Detweiler said. "I never have liked that son of a bitch. I never understood why you two are partners."
"Dunlop Mawson is reputed to be-in my judgmentis – the best criminal lawyer in Philadelphia. But if you think he's a son of a bitch, Dick-"
"For God's sake," Grace said sharply, "let's hear what he has to say."
Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson (the title making reference to his service as a lieutenant colonel, Judge Advocate Generals' Corps, U.S. Army Reserve, during the Korean War) appeared in Brewster C. Payne's office a minute later.
"I believe you know the Detweilers, don't you, Dunlop?" Payne asked.
"Yes, of course," Mawson said. "I've heard, of course, about your daughter. May I say how sorry I am and ask how she is?"
"Penny is addicted to cocaine," Grace Detweiler said. "How does that strike you?"
"I'm very sorry to hear that," Colonel Mawson said.
The Victim boh-3 Page 33
