“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&P supermarket, A&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.”
“I don’t think so,” Martha said.
He finished 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’t you 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 has a 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. A statement.”
“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 did wasn’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 judgment is—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.
“There is a place in Hartford,” Grace said, “that’s supposed to be the best in the country. The Institute for Living, something like that—”
“Institute of Living,” Payne said. “I know of it. It has a fine reputation.”
“Anyway, she’s going there,” Grace Detweiler said.
“I had a hell of a time getting her in,” H. Richard Detweiler said.
“‘I’?” Grace Detweiler snapped, icily sarcastic.
“Really?” Payne asked quickly. He had seen Grace Detweiler in moods like this before.
“There’s a waiting list, can you believe that? They told Dotson on the phone that it would be at least three weeks, possibly longer, before they’d take her.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate, but—” Colonel Mawson said.
“We got her in,” Detweiler said. “We had to call Arthur Nelson—”
“Arthur Nelson?” Payne interrupted. “Why him?”
Arthur J. Nelson, Chairman of the Board of Daye-Nelson Publications, one of which was the Philadephia Ledger, was not among Brewster C. Payne’s favorite people.
“Well, he had his wife in there, you know,” Grace Detweiler answered for her husband. “She had a breakdown, you know, when that sordid business about her son came out. Arthur put her in there.”
“Yes, now that you mention it, I remember that,” Payne said. “Was he helpful?”
“Very helpful,” H. Richard Detweiler said.
“Dick, you’re such an ass,” Grace said. “He was not!”
“He said he would do everything he could to minimize unfortunate publicity,” H. Richard Detweiler said. “And he gave us Charley Gilmer’s name.”
“Charley Gilmer?” Payne asked.
“President of Connecticut General Commercial Assurance. He’s on the board of directors, trustees, whatever, of that place.”
“Whose name, if you were thinking clearly,” Grace Detweiler said, “you should have thought of yourself. We’ve known the Gilmers for years.”
H. Richard Detweiler ignored his wife’s comment.
“It was not very pleasant,” H. Richard Detweiler said, “having to call a man I have known for years to tell him that my daughter has a drug problem and I need his help to get her into a mental institution.”
“Is that all you’re worried about, your precious reputation?” Grace Detweiler snarled. “Dick, you make me sick!”
“I don’t give a good goddamn about my reputation—or yours, either, for that matter. I’m concerned for our daughter, goddamn you!”
“If you were really concerned, you’d leave the booze alone!”
“Both of you, shut up!” Brewster C. Payne said sharply. Neither was used to being talked to in those words or that manner and looked at him with genuine surprise.
“Penny is the problem here. Let’s deal with that,” Payne said. “Unless you came here for an arena, instead of for my advice.”
“I’m upset,” H. Richard Detweiler said.
“And I’m not?” Grace snapped.
“Grace, shut up,” Payne said. “Both of you, shut up.”
They both glowered at him for a moment, the silence broken when Grace Detweiler walked to the bar and poured an inch and a half of Scotch in the bottom of a glass.
She turned from the bar, leaned against the bookcase, took a swallow of the whiskey, and looked at both of the men.
“Okay, let’s deal with the problem,” she said.
“We’re sending Penny up there tomorrow, Colonel Mawson,” Detweiler said, “to the Institute of Living, in an ambulance. It’s a six-week program, beginning with detoxification and then followed by counseling.”
“They know how to deal with the problem,” Mawson replied. “It’s an illness. It can be cured.”
“That’s not the goddamn problem!” Grace flared. “We’re talking about Penny and the goddamn gangsters!”
“Excuse me?” Colonel H. Dunlop Mawson asked.
“Let me fill you in, Dunlop,” Payne said, and explained the statement Matt had taken and Penny’s determination to testify against the man whom she had seen shoot Anthony J. DeZego.
Colonel Mawson immediately put many of the Detweilers’ concerns to rest. He told them that no assistant district attorney more than six weeks out of law school would go into court with a witness who had a “medical history of chemical abuse.”
The statement taken by Matt Payne, in any event, he said, was of virtually no validity, taken as it was from a witness he knew was not in full possession of her mental faculties, and not even taking into consideration that he had completely ignored all the legal t’s that had to be crossed, and i’s dotted, in connection with taking a statement.
“And I think, Mr. Detweiler,” Colonel Mawson concluded, “that there is even a very good chance that we can get the statement your daughter signed back from the police. If we can
, then it will be as if she’d never signed it, as if it had never existed.”
“How are you going to get it back?”
“Commissioner Czernich is a reasonable man,” Colonel Mawson said. “He’s a friend of mine. And by a fortunate happenstance, at the moment he owes me one.”
“He owes you one what?” Grace Detweiler demanded.
Brewster C. Payne was glad she had asked the question. He didn’t like what Mawson had just said, and would have asked precisely the same question himself.
“A favor,” Mawson said, a trifle smugly. “A scratch of my back in return, so to speak.”
“What kind of a scratch, Dunlop?” Payne asked, a hint of ice in his voice.
“Just minutes before I came in here,” Mawson said, “I was speaking with Commissioner Czernich on the telephone. I was speaking on behalf of one of our clients, a public-spirited citizeness who wishes to remain anonymous.”
“The point?” Payne said, and now there was ice in his voice.
“The lady feels the entire thread of our society is threatened by the unsolved murder of Officer Whatsisname, the young Italian cop who was shot out by Temple. So she is providing, through me, anonymously, a reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the perpetrators. Commissioner Czernich seemed overwhelmed by her public-spirited generosity. I really think I’m in a position to ask him for a little favor in return.”
“Well, that’s splendid,” H. Richard Detweiler said. “That would take an enormous burden from my shoulders.”
“What do we do about the newspapers?” Grace Detweiler asked. “Have you any influence with them, Colonel?”
“Very little, I’m afraid.”
“Arthur Nelson will do what he can, I’m sure, and that should take care of that,” H. Richard Detweiler said.
“I don’t trust Arthur J. Nelson,” Grace said.
“Don’t be absurd, Grace,” H. Richard Detweiler said. “He seemed to understand the problem, and was obviously sympathetic.”
“Brewster, will you please tell this horse’s ass I’m married to that even if Nelson never printed the name Detweiler again in the Ledger, there are three other newspapers in Philadelphia that will?”
The Victim Page 35
