The Victim

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes, sir. I thought you would like to know.”

  “Why do they think he was involved?”

  “There was another victim, Inspector. A girl. Penelope Detweiler. A 9th District wagon carried her to Hahneman. Payne knew her. And he removed his car from the crime scene right afterward. I think that’s what made them suspicious.”

  There was a moment’s silence on the line.

  “Where do they have him?”

  “They had him here, but they just left. Sergeant Dolan?”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “And another guy. Plainclothes or a detective. I don’t know him. Dolan said they were going to get Payne’s girlfriend and his car—she has the car—and finish the interview at Narcotics.”

  “Thank you, Lou. I owe you one. How many does that make now?”

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl hung up without waiting for a reply.

  Peter Wohl put the telephone back in its cradle and stood up. He had been sprawled, in a light blue cotton bathrobe, on the white leather couch in his living room, dividing his attention between television (a mindless situation comedy but one that featured an actress with a spectacular bosom and a penchant for low-necked blouses) and a well-worn copy of a paperbound book entitled Wiring Scheme, Jaguar 1950 XK120 Drophead Coupe.

  Above the couch (which came with two matching armchairs and a plate-glass and chrome coffee table) was a very large oil painting of a voluptuous and, by current standards, somewhat plump, nude lady that had once hung behind the bar of a now defunct men’s club in downtown Philadelphia. The service bar of the same club, heavy 1880s mahogany, was installed across the room from the leather furniture and the portrait of the naked, reclining, shyly smiling lady.

  The decor clashed, as Peter Wohl ultimately had, with the interior designer who had gotten him the leather, glass, and chrome furniture at her professional discount when she had considered becoming Mrs. Peter Wohl. Dorothea was now a Swarthmore wife, young mother, and fading memory, but he often thought that the white leather had become a permanent part of his life. Not that he liked it. He had found out that the resale value of high-fashion furniture was only a small fraction of its acquisition cost, even if that cost had reflected a forty-percent professional discount.

  He turned the television off and went into his bedroom. His apartment had once been the chauffeur’s quarters, an apartment built over the slate-roofed, four-car garage behind a turn-of-the-century mansion on Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill. The mansion itself had been converted into luxury apartments.

  He went to his closet, hung the bathrobe neatly on a hanger, and took a yellow polo shirt, sky-blue trousers, and a seersucker jacket from the closet. He put the shirt and trousers on, and then a shoulder holster that held a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber Chief’s Special five-shot revolver.

  Still barefoot, he sat down on his bed and pulled the telephone on the bedside table to him.

  “Special Operations, Lieutenant Lucci.”

  “Peter Wohl, Tony,” Wohl said. Lieutenant Lucci was actually the watch officer for the four-to-midnight shift of the Highway Patrol. When Special Operations had been formed, it had moved into the Highway Patrol headquarters at Bustleton and Bowler Streets in Northeast Philadelphia. For the time being at least, with Special Operations having nowhere near its authorized strength, Wohl had decided that there was no way (for that matter, no reason) to have the line squad supervisor on duty for the four-to-midnight and midnight-to-eight shift. The Highway watch officer could take those calls.

  “Good evening, sir,” Lucci said. Two weeks before, Lucci had been a sergeant, assigned as Mayor Jerry Carlucci’s driver. Before that he had been a Highway sergeant. Wohl thought he was a nice guy and a good cop, even if his closeness to the mayor was more than a little worrisome.

  “What do you know about DeZego getting himself shot, Tony?”

  “Blown away, Inspector,” Lucci said. “With a shotgun. On the roof of that parking garage behind the Bellevue-Stratford. Nick DeBenedito went in on the call. We were just talking about it.”

  “Is he there?”

  “I think so. You want to talk to him?”

  “Please.”

  Sergeant Nick DeBenedito came on the line thirty seconds later. “Sergeant DeBenedito, sir.”

  “Tell me what happened with Tony the Zee, DeBenedito.”

  “Well, I was downtown, and there was a ‘shots-fired,’ so I went in on it. It was on the roof of the parking garage behind the Bellevue. Inspector, I didn’t know he was a cop.”

  “That who was a cop?”

  “Payne. I mean, he was wearing a tuxedo and he had a gun, so I put him down on the floor. As soon as Martinez told me he was a cop, I let him up and said I was sorry.”

  Peter Wohl smiled at the mental image of Matt Payne lying on the concrete floor of the parking garage in his formal clothes.

  “What went down on the roof?”

  “Well, the way I understand it, Payne went up there in his car with his girlfriend, saw the first victim—the girl. She was wounded. So he sent his girl downstairs to the attendant’s booth to call it in, tried to help the girl, and then he found Tony the Zee. The doer—doers—had a shotgun. They practically took Tony the Zee’s head off. Anyway, then we got there. The doers were long gone. I sent Martinez with the wagon to see if he could get a dying declaration—”

  “Did she die?”

  “No, sir. But Martinez said she was never conscious, either.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I hung around until Lieutenant Lewis from the 9th, and then the Homicide detectives, showed up, and then I went to the hospital and got Martinez and we resumed patrol.”

  “Do you have any reason to think that Payne was involved?”

  “Lieutenant,” DeBenedito said uncomfortably, “what I saw was a civilian with a gun at a crime scene. How was I supposed to know he was a cop?”

  “You did exactly the right thing, Sergeant,” Wohl said. “Thank you. Put Lieutenant Lucci back on, will you?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Where’s Captain Pekach?”

  “Probably at home, sir. He said either he’d be there or in Chestnut Hill. I got the numbers. You want them?”

  “No thank you, Tony, it’s not that important. I’m going to Narcotics. If I go someplace else, I’ll call in.”

  “Are we involved in this, Inspector?”

  “No. But Narcotics is interviewing a very suspicious character they think is involved. I want to find out what they think they have.”

  “No kidding? Anybody we know?”

  “Officer Payne.” Wohl chuckled and hung up.

  Captain David Pekach, the recently appointed Highway commander, previously had been assigned to the Narcotics Division. If he had happened to be either at Bustleton and Bowler or on the streets, Wohl would have asked him to meet him at Narcotics, which was located in a onetime public-health center at 4th Street and Girard Avenue, sharing the building with Organized Crime.

  But he wasn’t working. That meant he was almost certainly in Chestnut Hill with his lady friend, Miss Martha Peebles. Dave Pekach was thirty-two or thirty-three, and Martha Peebles a couple of years older. It was the first romance either had had, and Wohl decided that the problem with Narcotics was not serious enough to interfere with true love.

  Lieutenant Anthony Lucci, who knew that Pekach, his immediate superior, had come to Highway from Narcotics, did not know of Pekach’s relationship with Miss Martha Peebles. All he knew was that his orders from Captain Pekach had been to keep him informed of anything out of the ordinary.

  So far as he was concerned, when Wohl, who was Captain Pekach’s immediate superior, announced he was going to Narcotics, to see what they had on Officer Matthew Payne, who, it was common knowledge, had a very powerful rabbi, Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, and in whom the mayor himself, after the kid had taken down the Northwest Philly serial rapist, had a personal interest, that was something out of the ordinary.

 
He dialed Pekach’s home number and, when there was no answer, dialed the number in Chestnut Hill Pekach had provided.

  A very pleasant female voice answered and, when Lucci asked for Captain Pekach, said, “Just one moment, please.”

  Less clearly, Lieutenant Lucci heard her continue. “It’s for you, Precious.”

  SEVEN

  When Officer Robert F. Wise saw the Jaguar pull into the Narcotics Division Building parking lot, and into the spot reserved for inspectors, he went quickly from inside the building and intercepted the driver as he was leaving his car.

  Officer Wise, who was twenty-five, slightly built, and five feet eight inches tall, had been on the job not quite three years. He had hoped, when just over a year ago he was transferred to Narcotics, he would be able to work his way out of his present duties—which could best be described as making himself useful (and visible in uniform) around the building—and into a job as a plainclothes investigator.

  But that hadn’t happened. One of the sergeants had been kind enough to tell him that he didn’t think it would ever happen. He was too nice a guy, the sergeant said, which Wise understood to mean that he could never pass himself off as a drug peddler. A month before, Wise had applied for transfer to the newly formed Special Operations Division. He hadn’t heard anything about the request. In the meantime he was doing the best job he knew how to do.

  He had been told to keep his eye on the parking lot behind the building. There had been complaints from various inspectors that when they had come to visit Narcotics, the parking space reserved for visiting inspectors had been occupied by various civilian cars, most of them junks, which they knew damned well were not being driven by inspectors.

  The Jaguar that had just pulled up with its nose against the INSPECTORS sign in the parking lot certainly could not be called a junk, but Officer Robert F. Wise doubted that the civilian in the nice, but sporty, clothes was an inspector. Inspectors tended to be fifty years old and wore conservative business suits, not yellow polo shirts, sky-blue pants, and plaid hats.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Officer Robert F. Wise said, “but you’re not allowed to park there.”

  “Why not?” the young man in the plaid hat asked pleasantly enough.

  “Sir, this is a Police Department parking lot.”

  “You could have fooled me,” the young man said, smiling, and gestured toward the other cars in the lot. A good deal of Narcotics work requires that investigators look like people involved in the drug trade. The undercover cars they used, many of them confiscated, reflected this; they were either pimpmobiles or junkers.

  “Sir, those are police cars.”

  “I’m a 369,” the young man said.

  A police officer in civilian clothes who wishes to identify himself as a cop without producing his badge or identity card says “I’m a 369.”

  “Well, then,” Officer Wise said, “you should know better than to park in an inspector’s spot. Move it out of there.”

  “I’m Inspector Wohl,” the young man said, smiling. “Keep up the good work.” He started toward the rear door of the Roundhouse.

  Two things bothered Officer Wise. For one thing, there were three different kinds of inspectors in the Philadelphia Police Department. There were chief inspectors, who ranked immediately below deputy commissioners. These officers were generally referred to as, and called themselves, Chief. When in uniform, they wore a silver eagle, identical to Army and Marine Corps colonels’ eagles, as their insignia of rank.

  Next down in the rank hierarchy were inspectors, who, in uniform, wore the same silver oak leaf as Army and Marine Corps lieutenant colonels. And at the bottom were staff inspectors, who wore a golden oak leaf as their insignia. There were not very many staff inspectors (Wise could not remember ever having seen one), but he understood they were sort of super-detectives and handled difficult or delicate investigations.

  The guy in the sky-blue pants didn’t look to Wise much like a cop, much less a senior officer. He was more than likely a cop, but a wise guy, and no more a chief inspector and/or division chief, and thus entitled to park where he had parked, than Wise was.

  “Excuse me, sir, would you mind showing me some identification?”

  An unmarked car came into the parking lot at that moment and drove up to them quickly. Wise saw first that it was an unmarked Highway Patrol car. For one thing, it was equipped with more shortwave antennae than ordinary police cars, marked or unmarked, normally carried; and for another, the driver was wearing the crush-crowned uniform cap peculiar to Highway.

  Then he saw that the driver was wearing a white shirt, which identified him as at least a lieutenant, and then, when he stopped the car and got out, Wise saw his rank insignia, the twin silver bars of a captain, and then he recognized him. It was Captain David Pekach.

  The young guy in the sky-blue pants smiled and said, “You just happened to be in the neighborhood, right? And thought you’d drop by?”

  “Lucci called me,” Pekach said. “Don’t blame him. I told him to call me when something out of the ordinary happened.”

  “I didn’t want to interfere with your love life, Dave. I had visions of you sipping fine wine by candlelight as Miss What’s-her-name whispered sweet nothings in your ear,” Wohl said.

  “What’s going on here?” Pekach said. He did not like being teased about Miss Martha Peebles. “Lucci said something about young Payne?”

  “Narcotics brought him and his girlfriend here. I don’t know why,” Wohl said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Give me a minute to park the car, Inspector,” Captain Pekach said, “and I’ll come with you. Or would I be in the way?”

  “I didn’t send for you, Dave, but I’m glad to see you,” Wohl said.

  He held out his badge and photo identification to Officer Wise.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Inspector,” Officer Wise said, waving it away. “Sorry to bother you.”

  Officer Wise decided that his chances of being transferred to Special Operations had just dropped from slim to zero. He had put this encounter all together now. The young guy in the silly cap and sky-blue pants was Peter Wohl, who although “only” a staff inspector, was the Special Operations division commander.

  “No bother,” Wohl said as Pekach got back in his car and drove it toward a work shed near the gasoline pump.

  “Inspector, I’m sorry about this,” Officer Wise said.

  “Never be sorry for doing your job,” Wohl said. “And don’t worry, you’re not the only one who doesn’t think I look like a cop. I get that from my father all the time.”

  A moment later Captain Pekach walked up to them again.

  “They’re searching a silver Porsche back there,” he said, pointing to the work shed.

  “Are they really?” Wohl said. “Dave, while I go ask what they’re looking for, why don’t you go inside and nose around.”

  “You going to come in, or should I come back when I find out?”

  “I’ll come in,” Wohl said, and walked to the work shed.

  Both doors of the Porsche, and the hoods over the rear engine compartment and the in-front trunk, were open when Wohl walked up to the car. Two Narcotics officers in plainclothes looked up at Wohl. He flashed his badge.

  “What are you looking for?” Wohl asked.

  “Sergeant Dolan brought it in. He says they probably got rid of it by now but to check, anyway.”

  “Got rid of what?”

  “Probably cocaine,” one of the Narcotics cops said.

  “You’ve got a search warrant?”

  “No. The owner’s a cop. We have permission.”

  “What makes you think it’s dirty?” Wohl asked.

  “Sergeant Dolan thinks he—and it—is,” the cop replied. “How else would a cop get the dough for a car like this?”

  “Maybe he’s lucky at cards,” Wohl said. “You find anything?”

  The cop shook his head no, then said, “Dolan said we probably wouldn’t.”

/>   Wohl smiled at them and then walked to the Narcotics Building.

  He found Officer Matthew Payne, his black bow tie untied and his top collar button open, sitting on one of a row of folding chairs in a room on the first floor.

  Payne stood up when he saw Wohl, but Wohl waved him back into his seat and walked down the room to a door marked NO ADMITTANCE and pushed it open.

  Captain Pekach and a tall, very thin, bald-headed man in his fifties were inside.

  “Inspector,” Pekach said, “you know Lieutenant Mikkles, don’t you?”

  “Sure do,” Wohl said. “How are you, Mick?”

  Mikkles shook Wohl’s hand but didn’t say anything.

  “Sergeant Dolan’s not here,” Pekach went on. “He went to the medical examiner’s office. They found a plastic bag full of a white crystalline powder on DeZego. He went to check it out.”

  “Where’s the girl?” Wohl asked.

  Lieutenant Mikkles pointed to a steel door with INTERVIEW ROOM painted on it.

  “You charging her with anything, Mick? Or Officer Payne?”

  “We don’t have enough to charge either one of them,” Mikkles said.

  “Just Sergeant Dolan’s feeling that they’re dirty, right?”

  “I really don’t know much about this, Inspector,” Mikkles said.

  “They want Officer Payne and the girl at Homicide to make a statement. Would it be all right with you if I took them there?”

  “I don’t see any problem with that,” Lieutenant Mikkles said.

  “What about if I asked Captain Pekach to meet with Sergeant Dolan to ask him what he thinks he’s got going here? Would you have any problem with that?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Wohl walked to the interview-room door, opened it, went inside, and closed it after him.

  Amanda Spencer, sitting in a steel chair that was bolted to the floor, looked at him warily.

  He smiled at her.

  “Well, I don’t think you did it,” he said.

  She smiled, a little hesitantly.

  “My name is Peter Wohl,” he said. “I’m Matt’s boss.”