W E B Griffin - Badge of Honor 04 - The Witness

by The Witness(lit)

  And then something wrong caught his eye. There was a guy sitting in a beat-up old Mustang in an alley.

  If I hadn't been looking to see where the fuck I was, I would never have seen him.

  What's wrong about it? Well, maybe nothing. Or maybe he's drunk. Or dead. Or maybe not. Now that I think of it, he was smoking a cigarette. People don't sit in alleys smoking ciga-rettes at midnight. Not around here.

  He made the next right, and the next, and pulled to the curb.

  Fuck it, McFadden. It ain't any of your business, and you ain't Sherlock Holmes.

  Fuck fuck it!

  Charley turned off the headlights and got out of the car. He took his wallet ID folder from his pocket and folded it back on itself, so the badge was visible, and then he took the snub nose from its holster, and held it at arm's length down along his leg so that it would be kind of hard to see,

  Then he went in the alley, and sort of keeping in the shadows walked down close to the Mustang.

  Piece of shit, that car.

  Moving very quickly now, he walked up to the driver's win-dow. He tapped on the window with his badge.

  He scared shit out of the guy inside, who jumped.

  The window rolled down.

  "Excuse me, sir. I'm a police officer. Is everything all right?"

  "I'm a Three-Six-Nine," the man said. "Everything's okay. On the job."

  Oh, shit. He's probably a Central Detective on stakeout. Why didn't you mind your own fucking business ?

  Fuck fuck fuck it. Maybe he ain't.

  "Let me see your folder, please," Charley said, and pulled the door open so the light would come on. It didn't.

  Lieutenant Jack Malone thinking, This big fucker, whoever he is, smells something wrong, and he's got his gun out, very slowly and nonthreateningly found his badge and photo ID and handed it to Officer Charles McFadden.

  "Lieutenant, I'm sorry as hell about this."

  "Don't be silly. You were just doing your job. I suppose I did look a little suspicious."

  "I didn't know what the fuck to think, so I thought I'd better check. Sorry to bother you, sir."

  "No problem, I told you that," Malone said. "But I don't want this on the record. You call it in?"

  "No, sir. I'm in my own car. No radio."

  "Just keep this between ourselves. What did you say your name was?"

  "McFadden, sir."

  "You work this district?"

  "No, sir. I'm Highway."

  "Well, I'll certainly tell Captain Pekach how alert you were. But I don't want anyone else to know you saw me here. Okay?"

  "Yes, sir. I understand. Good night, sir."

  Charley stuffed his pistol back in its holster and walked back up the alley.

  Nice guy. I really could have got my ass in a crack doing that. But he understood why I did it. Malone was his name. I wonder where he works. He said he knows Captain Pekach.

  And then he got back in the Volkswagen, and there was still a faint smell of Margaret's soap, and he started to think about her, and her in the shower, and what she had said about her having those kinds of thoughts too, and Lieutenant Malone and the rusty piece of shit he was driving were relegated to a far corner of his mind.

  TEN

  The time projected on the ceiling by the clever little machine that had been Amelia Payne, M.D.'s birthday present to her little brother showed that it was quarter past eleven.

  It should be later than that, Matt thought, considering all that's happened.

  He bent one of the pillows on the bed in half and propped it under his head. Then he reached down and pulled up the blanket. The sheet that covered him wasn't enough; he felt chilled.

  He could hear the shower running in the bath, and in his mind's eye saw Helene at her ablutions, and for a moment considered leaping out of the bed and getting in the shower with her.

  He sensed that it would be a bad idea, and discarded the notion.

  Three times is a sufficiency. At the moment, almost certainly, the lady is not burning with lust.

  Well, two and a half, considering the first time was more on the order of premature ejaculation than a proper screw.

  With an effort, she had been very kind about that. He was not to worry. It happened sometimes. But she had been visibly pleased at his resurgent desire, or more precisely when El Wango had risen phoenix like from the ashes of too-quickly burned passion.

  And clearly done his duty: There is absolutely no way that she could have faked that orgasm.

  Orgasms ?

  Passion followed by sleep, followed by slowly becoming de-lightedly aware that what one is fondling in one's sleep is not the goddamn pillow again, but a magnificent real live boob, attached to a real live woman.

  One who whispered huskily in the dark "Don't stop!" when, ever the gentleman, I decided that copping a feel was perhaps not the thing to do under the circumstances.

  And El Wango, God bless him, had risen to the occasion, giving his all for God, Mother, and Country, as if determined to prove that what good had happened previously was the norm, and that "oh, shit" spasm earlier on a once-in-a-century ab-erration.

  She had said, "I'll be sore for a week," which I understand could be a complaint, but which, I believe, I will accept as a compliment.

  The drumming of the shower died, and he could hear the last gurgle as the water went down the drain, and he could hear other faint sounds, including what he thought was the sound of his hairbrush clattering into the washbasin.

  And then she came out. In her underwear, but still modestly covering herself with a towel.

  "You're not leaving?" Matt said. "The evening is young."

  "The question is what about the Opera Ball people?"

  She sat on the edge of the bed, keeping the towel in place.

  I was right. Thrice, or even twice and a half, is a more than a sufficiency, it is a surfeit.

  "I haven't heard the elevator in a while. I guess they're all gone. Would you like me to take you home?"

  "I have a car."

  "Where?"

  "In the garage in the basement."

  "Parked right next to the elevator?"

  "How did you know that?"

  "You're the Cadillac in my parking spot. Spots. The gods-the Greco-Roman ones, who understand this sort of thing- obviously wanted us to get together."

  "I don't know about that, but I do know what got us to-gether. It's spelled G I N. As in, I should know better than to drink martinis."

  "Are you sorry?"

  "Yes, of course, I'm sorry," Helene said. "I expect you hear this from all your married ladies, but in my case it's true. I normally don't do things like this."

  "Well, I'm glad you made an exception for me," Matt said. "And just for the record, you're my first married lady. I would like to thank you for being gentle with me, it being my first time."

  She laughed, and then grew serious.

  "I would like to say the same thing," she said. "But you're the third. And I decided just ninety seconds ago, the last."

  "I didn't measure up?"

  "That's the trouble. You-left nothing to be desired. Except more of you, and that's obviously out of the question."

  "Why is it obviously out of the question?"

  She got up suddenly from the bed, dropped the towel, and walked out of the bedroom, snapping, "I'm married," angrily over her shoulder.

  She'll be back, Matt thought confidently. She will at least say good-bye.

  But she did not come back, so he picked up the towel she had dropped and put it around his waist and went looking for her.

  She was gone.

  I don't even know what her last name is.

  ***

  During his military service Staff Inspector Peter F. Wohl had learned that rubber gloves were what smart people wore when applying cordovan shoe polish to foot wear, otherwise you walked around for a couple of days with brown fingernails. When the last pair had worn out, the only rubber gloves he could find in the Acme
Supermarket had been the ones he now wore, which were flaming pink in color and decorated in a floral pattern. At the time, their function, not their appearance, had seemed to be the criteria.

  Now he was not so sure. Mrs. Samantha Stoddard, the 230-pound, fifty-two-year-old Afro-American grandmother who cleaned the apartment two times a week had found them under the sink and offered the unsolicited opinion that he better hope nobody but her ever saw them. "I know you like girls, Peter. Other people might wonder."

  Mrs. Stoddard felt at ease calling Staff Inspector Wohl by his Christian name because she had been doing so since he was four years old. She still spent the balance of the week working for his mother.

  When the telephone rang, at ten past seven in the morning, Wohl was standing at his kitchen sink, wearing his pink rubber gloves, his underwear, an unbuttoned shirt, and his socks, ex-amining with satisfaction the shine he had just caused to appear on a pair of loafers. At five past seven, as he prepared to slip his feet into them, he had discovered that they were in desper-ate need of a shine.

  From the sound of the bell, he could tell that it was his official telephone ringing. He headed for the bedroom, hur-riedly removing the flaming pink rubber gloves as he did so. The left came off with no difficulty; the right stuck. Before he got it off, he had cordovan shoe polish all over his left hand.

  "Shit!" he said aloud, adding aloud. "Why do I think this is going to be one of those days?"

  Then he picked up the telephone.

  "Inspector Wohl."

  "Matt Lowenstein, Peter. Is there some reason you can't meet me at Tommy Callis's office at eight?"

  "No, sir."

  "Keep it under your hat," Lowenstein said, and hung up.

  Wohl replaced the handset in its cradle, but, deep in thought, kept his hand on it for a moment. Thomas J. Callis was the district attorney. He could think of no business he-that is to say Special Operations, including Highway Patrol-had with the district attorney. If something serious had happened, he would have been informed of it.

  A wild hair appeared-Tony Harris was on a spectacular bender; he could have run into a school bus or something- and was immediately discarded. He would have heard of that too, as quickly as he had learned that they had held Tony over-night in the 9th District holding cell.

  He shrugged, and dialed the Special Operations number. He told the lieutenant who answered that he would be in late. He did not say how late or where he would be. Lowenstein had told him to keep the meeting at the DA's office under his hat. He looked at his watch, then shook his head. There was no time to go somewhere for breakfast.

  He returned to the kitchen, put a pot of water on the stove to boil, and got eggs and bread from the refrigerator. He de-cided he would not make coffee, because that would mean having to clean the pot, technically a brewer his mother had given him for Christmas. It made marvelous coffee, but unless it was cleaned almost immediately, it turned the coffee grounds in its works to concrete and required a major overhaul.

  When the water boiled, he added vinegar, then, with a wooden spoon, swirled the water around until it formed a whirlpool. Then, expertly, he cracked two eggs with one hand and dropped them into the water. By the time they were done, the toaster had popped up. He took the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon, put them onto the toast, and moved to his small kitchen table. Time elapsed, beginning to end: ten minutes.

  "If I only had a cup of coffee," he announced aloud, "all would be right in my world."

  Then it occurred to him that if he was to meet with the district attorney, a suit would be in order, not the blazer and slacks he had intended to wear. And if he wore a suit, shoes, not loafers, would be in order.

  The whole goddamn shoe-shining business, including the polish-stained left hand, had been a waste of time and effort.

  He returned to the sink, and washed his hands with a bar of miracle abrasive soap that was guaranteed to remove all kinds of stain. The manufacturers had apparently never dealt with cordovan shoe polish.

  Or, he thought cynically, they knew damned well that very few people would wrap up a fifty-cent bar of soap and mail it off to Dubuque, Iowa, or wherever, for a refund. Particularly since they wouldn't have the address in Iowa, having thrown the wrapping away when they took the soap out.

  He took his pale blue shirt off, replaced it with a white one, and put on a dark gray, pin-striped suit.

  "Oh, you are a handsome devil, Peter Wohl," he said as he checked himself in the mirror. "I wonder why you don't get laid more than you do?"

  He arrived downtown at the district attorney's office with five minutes to spare, having exceeded the speed limit over almost all of the route.

  As he looked at his watch, he thought the hour was odd. He didn't think the district attorney was usually about the people's business at eight A.M. Had Callis summoned Lowenstein at this time? Probably not. If Callis had wanted to see them, somebody would have called him too. The odds were that Low-enstein had called Callis and told him he had to see him as soon as possible, and then when Callis had agreed, Lowenstein had called him.

  Why?

  Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, Detective Joe D'Amata of Homicide, and another man, obviously a detective, were in Callis's outer office when Peter walked in.

  "I was getting worried about you," Lowenstein greeted him.

  "Good morning, Chief, I'm not late, am I?"

  "Just barely," Lowenstein said. "You know Jerry Pelosi, don't you?"

  "Sure. How are you, Pelosi?"

  They shook hands.

  The mystery is over. Pelosi's the Central Detectives guy working the Goldblatt job. This is about that.

  There was no chance to ask Chief Lowenstein. A large, silver-haired, ruddy-faced man, the Hon. Thomas J. Callis, district attorney of Philadelphia, swept into his outer office, the door held open for him by Philadelphia County Detective W.H. Mahoney. The district attorney had in effect his own detective bureau. Most of them, like Mahoney, were ex-Philadelphia Po-lice Department officers. A detective bodyguard-driver was one of the perks of being the district attorney.

  "Hello, Matt," Callis said. "How the hell are you?"

  A real pol, Wohl thought. Wohl did not ordinarily like pol-iticians, but he was of mixed emotions about Callis. He had worked closely with him during his investigation-

  In those happy, happy, days when I was just one more staff inspector-

  -of Judge Findermann and his fellow scumbags, and had concluded that Callis was deeply offended by the very notion of a judge on the take, and interested in the prosecution for that reason alone, not simply because it might look good for him in the newspapers.

  "And Peter," Callis went on, "looking the fashion plate even at this un-godly hour."

  "Good morning, Mr. Callis."

  "Tommy! Tommy! How many times do I have to tell you that?"

  "Tommy," Wohl said obediently.

  "Detective D'Amata I know, of course, but I don't think I've had the pleasure-"

  "Detective Jerry Pelosi," Lowenstein offered, "of Central Detectives."

  "Well, I'm delighted to meet you, Jerry," Callis said, sounding as if he meant it, and pumping his hand.

  Callis turned and faced the others, beaming as if just seeing them gave him great pleasure.

  "Well, let's get on with this, whatever it is," he said. "Are we all going in, Matt?"

  "Why not?" Lowenstein said, after a just perceptible pause. "Mahoney knows when to keep his mouth shut, don't you, Mahoney?"

  "Yes, of course he does," Callis said. "Well then, come on in. Anybody want some coffee?"

  "I would kill for a cup of coffee," Wohl said.

  "Figuratively speaking, of course, Peter?"

  "Don't get between me and the pot," Wohl replied.

  "Black, Inspector?" Mahoney asked.

  "Please," Wohl said.

  "My time is your time, Matt, providing this doesn't last more than thirty minutes," Callis said.

  "You heard about the Goldblatt job?"
Lowenstein asked.

  "You mean the-what was it?-'Islamic Liberation Army'? It was all over the tube. The Ledger even ran a photo of their press release on the front page of the second section. Who the hell are these nuts, Matt?"