The Victim

by W. E. B Griffin

  Washington, a gentleman (he perfectly met Matt’s father’s definition of a gentleman: He was never seen in public unshaven, in his undershirt, or with run-down heels; and he never unintentionally said something rude or unkind), hadn’t told anyone that Matt had passed out and had gone much further than he had to, trying to make Matt feel better about it.

  But the humiliation still burned.

  When Matt reached the street, at the entrance ramp a taxi was discharging a passenger with a distracted, I’m-in-a-hurry look on his face. Matt ran to the cab and got in, thinking that if the man getting out had parked his car in the garage, he was about to find something he could talk about when he got home.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Myrtle, but when I went to get the car from the garage, the goddamn cops wouldn’t let me have it. They had some kind of crime in there, and they acted as if I had something to do with it. Can you imagine that? I had to come home in a cab, and I don’t have any idea when I can get the car back.”

  “The Roundhouse,” Matt told the cabdriver.

  “Where?”

  “The Police Department Administration Building at 8th and Race,” Matt answered.

  “You a cop?” the driver asked doubtfully.

  “Yeah.”

  “I saw the badge,” the driver said. “What’s going on in there?”

  “Nothing much,” Matt said.

  “I come through here twenty minutes ago, and there was cop cars all over the street.”

  “It’s over now,” Matt said.

  The cab dropped him at the rear of the administration building. There is a front entrance, overlooking Metropolitan Hospital, but it is normally locked.

  At the rear of the building a door opens onto a small foyer. Once inside, a visitor faces a uniformed police officer sitting behind a heavy plate-glass window.

  To the right is the central cell room, in effect a holding prison, to which prisoners are brought from the various districts to be booked and to face a magistrate, who sets (or denies) bail. Those prisoners for whom bail is denied, or who can’t make it, are moved, males to the Detention Center, females to the House of Correction.

  The magistrate’s court is a small, somewhat narrow room separated from the corridor leading to the gallery where the public can view arraignment proceedings. This, a dead-end corridor, is walled by large sections of Plexiglas, long fogged by scratches received over the years from family, friends, and lovers, pressing against it to try to get closer to the accused as they are being arraigned.

  The arraignment court, as you look down on it from the gallery, has a bench on the left-hand side where the magistrate sits; tables in front of the bench where an assistant district attorney and a public defender sit; and across from them are two police officers, who process the volumes of paperwork that accompanies any arrest. The prisoners are brought up from the basement detention unit via a stairway shaft, which winds around an elevator. All the doors leading into the arraignment court are locked to prevent escape.

  To the left is the door leading to the main foyer of the Police Department Administration Building. The door has a solenoid-equipped lock, operated by the police officer behind the window.

  Matt went to the door, put his hand on it, and then turned so the cop on duty could see his badge. The lock buzzed, and Matt pushed open the door.

  He went inside and walked toward the elevators. On one wall is a display of photographs and police badges of police officers who have been killed in the line of duty. One of the photographs is of Sergeant John Xavier Moffitt, who had been shot down in a West Philadelphia gas station while answering a silent burglar alarm. He had left a wife, six months pregnant with their first child.

  Thirteen months after Sergeant Moffitt’s death, his widow, Patricia, who had found work as a secretary-trainee with a law firm, met the son of the senior partner as they walked their small children near the Philadelphia Museum on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

  He told her that his wife had been killed eight months before in a traffic accident while returning from their lake house in the Pocono Mountains. Mrs. Patricia Moffitt became the second Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II two months after she met Mr. Payne and his children. Shortly thereafter Mr. Payne formally adopted Matthew Mark Moffitt as his son and led his wife through a similar process for his children by his first wife.

  “Can I help you?” the cop on duty called to Matt Payne as Matt walked toward the elevators. It was not every day that a young man with a police officer’s badge pinned to the silk lapel of a tuxedo walked across the lobby.

  “I’m going to Homicide,” Matt called back.

  “Second floor,” the cop said.

  Matt nodded and got on the elevator.

  The Homicide Division of the Philadelphia Police Department occupies a suite of second-floor rear offices.

  Matt pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were half a dozen detectives in the room, all sitting at rather battered desks. None of them looked familiar. There was an office with a frosted glass door, with a sign, CAPTAIN HENRY C. QUAIRE, above it. Matt had met Captain Quaire, but the office was empty.

  He walked toward the far end of the room, where there were two men standing beside a single desk that faced the others. Sitting at the desk was a dapper, well-dressed man in civilian clothing whom Matt surmised was the watch officer, the lieutenant in charge.

  As he walked across the room he noticed that one of the two “interview rooms” on the corridor side of the room was occupied; a large, blondheaded man in a sleeveless T-shirt was sitting in a metal chair, his left wrist encircled by a handcuff. The other handcuff was fastened to a hole in the chair. The chair itself was bolted to the floor.

  He saw Matt looking at him and gave him a look of utter contempt.

  As Matt approached the desk at the end of the room the mustached, dark-skinned man sitting at it saw him coming and moved his head slightly. The other two men turned to look at him. Matt saw a brass nameplate on the desk, LIEUTENANT LOUIS NATALI, whom Matt surmised was the lieutenant in charge.

  “My name is Payne, Lieutenant,” Matt said as he reached the desk. “I was told to report here.”

  No one responded, and Matt was made uncomfortable by the unabashed examination he’d been given by all three men. The examination, he decided, was because of the dinner jacket, but there was something else in the air too.

  “He’s all yours,” Lieutenant Natali said finally.

  “Let’s find someplace to talk,” the smaller of the two detectives said, and gestured vaguely down the room.

  There was an unoccupied desk, and Matt headed for it.

  “Let’s use this,” the detective called. Matt stopped and turned and saw that the detective was pointing to the second, empty interview room. That seemed a little odd, but he walked through the door, anyway.

  The two detectives followed him inside. One closed the door after them. The other, the one who had suggested the use of the interview room, signaled for Matt to sit in the interviewee’s chair.

  Matt looked at it with unease. There was a set of handcuffs lying on it, one of the cuffs locked through a hole in the chair.

  “Go on, sit down,” the detective said, adding, “Payne, my name is Dolan. Sergeant Dolan.”

  Matt offered his hand. Sergeant Dolan ignored it. Neither did he introduce the other detective.

  “Where’s your car, Payne?” Sergeant Dolan asked. “Outside? You mind if we have a look in it?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if you mind if we have a look in your car.”

  “I don’t know where my car is right now,” Matt replied. “Sorry. Why are you interested in my car?”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know where your car is?”

  “I mean, I don’t know where it is. I loaned it to somebody.”

  “Somebody? Does somebody have a name?”

  “You want to tell me what this is all about?”

  “This is an interview. You’re a
police officer. You should know what an interview is.”

  “Hey, all I did was find the injured girl and the dead guy.”

  “What I want to know is two things. What were you doing up there, and where’s your car? Three things: Why were you so anxious to get your car away from the Penn Services Parking Garage?”

  “And I’d like to know why you’re asking me all these questions.”

  “Don’t try to hotdog me, Payne, just answer me.”

  Matt looked at Sergeant Dolan and decided he didn’t like him. He remembered two things: that his mother was absolutely right when she said he too often let his mouth run away with him when he was angry or didn’t like somebody; and that he was a police officer, and this overbearing son of a bitch was a police sergeant. It would be very unwise indeed to tell him to go fuck himself.

  “Sorry,” Matt said. “Okay, Sergeant. From the top. I went to the top of the garage because I wanted to park my car and there were no empty spots on the lower floors. When I got there, I found Miss Detweiler lying on the floor. Injured. The lady with me—”

  “How did you know the Detweiler girl’s name? You know her?”

  “Yes, I know her.”

  “Who was the lady with you?”

  “Her name is Amanda Spencer.”

  “And she knows the Detweiler girl too?”

  “Yes. I don’t know how well.”

  “How about Anthony J. DeZego? You know him?”

  “No. Is that the dead man’s name?”

  “You sure you don’t know him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Lieutenant Louis Natali had watched as the two Narcotics detectives led Payne into the interview room and closed the door. He opened a desk drawer and took a long, thin cigar from a box and very carefully lit it. He examined the glowing coal for a moment and then made up his mind. Whatever the hell was going on smelled, and he could not just sit there and ignore it.

  He stood up, walked down the room, and entered the room next to the interview room. It was equipped with a two-way mirror and a loudspeaker that permitted watching and listening to interviews being conducted in the interview room.

  The mirror fooled no one; any interviewee with more brains than a retarded gnat knew what it was. But it did serve several practical purposes, not the least of which was that it intimidated, to some degree, the interviewees. They didn’t know whether or not somebody else was watching. That tended to make them uncomfortable, and that often was valuable.

  But the primary value, as Natali saw it, of the two-way mirror and loudspeaker was that it provided the means by which other detectives or Narcotics officers could watch an interview. They could form their own opinion of the responses the interviewee made to the questions, and of his reaction to them. Sometimes a question that should have been asked but had not occurred to them, and they could summon one of the interviewers out of the room and suggest that he go back in and ask it.

  And finally, as was happening now, the two-way mirror afforded supervisors the means to watch an interview when they were either curious or did not have absolute faith in the interviewers to conduct the interview, keeping in mind Departmental regulations and the interviewees’ rights.

  While Lieutenant Natali was happy to cooperate with the Narcotics Division, as he was now, he had no intention of letting Narcotics do anything in a Homicide interview room that he would not permit a Homicide detective to do. And there was something about this guy Dolan that Natali did not like.

  “So if you had to guess, Payne, where would say your car is now?” Sergeant Dolan asked.

  “Another parking lot somewhere. I just don’t know.”

  “And your girlfriend?”

  “I suppose she’s back at the Union League having dinner.”

  “Why don’t we go get her?”

  “Why can’t we wait until the party is over? Detective D’Amata, who was there when Lieutenant Lewis sent me to tell the Detweilers what happened, didn’t say anything about getting her over here right away.”

  “Detective D’Amata has nothing to do with this investigation,” Dolan said. “He’s Homicide. I’m Narcotics. Let’s go get your girlfriend, Payne.”

  “What the hell is this all about?” Payne asked. Natali saw that he was genuinely surprised and confused to hear that Dolan was from Narcotics. Surprised and confused but not at all alarmed.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Dolan said.

  Lieutenant Natali walked out of the small room as the other Narcotics detective came out of the interview room, followed by Payne and then Sergeant Dolan.

  Dolan looked at Natali, and it was clear to Natali that he knew he had been watching the interview, and was surprised and annoyed that he had.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Dolan said. “We’re going to see if we can find Officer Payne’s lady friend and his car, and finish this at Narcotics. I’ll see that the both of them get back over here.”

  Natali nodded but didn’t say anything.

  He watched as they left the office and then went into Captain Henry C. Quaire’s office and closed the door after him. He had called Quaire at home before going to the Penn Services Parking Garage, and Quaire had shown up there ten minutes after he had, and sent him back to the Roundhouse.

  He went to the desk and, standing up, dialed a number from memory.

  “Radio,” Foster H. Lewis, Jr., answered.

  “This is Lieutenant Natali, Homicide. Can you get word to W-William One to call me at 555-3343?”

  “Hold One, Lieutenant,” Foster H. Lewis, Jr., said, and then activated his microphone and threw the switch that would broadcast what he said over the command band.

  W-William One was the radio call sign of the commanding officer, Special Operations Division. The private official telephone number of the commanding officer of the Homicide Division was 555-3343.

  There were some official considerations—and some ethical and political ones—in what Lieutenant Natali was doing. Viewed in the worst light, Natali was violating Departmental policy by advising the commanding officer of the Special Operations Division that one of his officers was being interviewed by Narcotics officers. That was technically the business of the commanding officer of the Narcotics Division, who would probably confer with Internal Affairs before notifying him.

  Ethically he was violating the unspoken rule that a member of one division or bureau kept his nose out of an investigation being conducted by officers of another division or bureau.

  Politically he knew he was risking the wrath of the commanding officer of the Narcotics Division, who almost certainly would learn—or guess, which was just as bad—what he was about to do. And it was entirely possible that the commanding officer of the Special Operations Division, who was about as straight a cop as they came, would, rather than being grateful, decide that Natali had no right to break either the official or unofficial rules of conduct.

  On the other hand, if he had to make a choice between angering the commanding officer of the Narcotics Division or the commanding officer of Special Operations, it was no contest. For one thing, the commanding officer of Special Operations outranked the Narcotics commanding officer. For another, so far as influence went, the commanding officer of Special Operations won that hands down too. He held his present assignment because the word to give it to him had come straight from Mayor Jerry Carlucci. And he was very well connected through the Department.

  Peter Wohl’s father was Chief Inspector August Wohl (retired). Despite a lot of sour-grapes gossip, that wasn’t the reason Peter Wohl had once been the youngest sergeant in Highway, and was now the youngest staff inspector in the Department, but it hadn’t hurt any, either.

  But what had really made Louis Natali decide to telephone Staff Inspector Peter Wohl was his realization that not only did he really like him but thought the reverse was true. Peter Wohl would decide he had called as a friend, which happened to be true.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Foster H. Le
wis, Jr., reported, “W-William One doesn’t respond. Shall I keep trying?”

  “No. Thanks, anyway,” Natali said, and hung up.

  He left Captain Quaire’s office and walked back to his desk and searched through it until he found Peter Wohl’s home telephone number. He started to go back to Quaire’s office for the privacy it would give him and then decided to hell with it. He sat down and dialed the number.

  On the fourth ring there was a click. “This is 555-8251,” Wohl’s recorded voice announced. “When this thing beeps, you can leave a message.”

  Natali raised his wrist to look at his watch and waited for the beep.

  “Inspector, this is Lieutenant Natali of Homicide. It’s five minutes after nine. If you get this message within the next forty-five—”

  “I’m here, Lou,” Peter Wohl said, interrupting. “What can I do for you?”

  “Sorry to bother you at home, Inspector.”

  “No problem. I’m sitting here trying to decide if I want to go out for a pizza or go to bed hungry.”

  “Inspector, did you hear about Tony the Zee?”

  “No. You are talking about Anthony J. DeZego?”

  “Yes, sir. He got himself blown away about an hour and a half ago. Shotgun. On the roof of the Penn Services Parking Garage behind the Bellevue-Stratford. There’s some suggestion it’s narcotics-related.”

  “Those who live by the needle die by the needle,” Wohl said, mockingly sonorous. “You got the doer?”

  “No, sir. Not a clue so far.”

  “Am I missing something, Lou?” Wohl asked.

  “Inspector, Narcotics is interviewing one of your men. He found the body and—”

  “They think he’s connected. Got a name?”

  “Payne,” Natali said.

  “Payne?” Wohl parroted disbelievingly. “Matthew Payne?”