The Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “What baby?”

  The FBI doesn’t know anything about a baby. An infant in arms considerably cuts into the number of wanted females meeting a physical description. I would have been told. It would even have been in their movie.

  “They have a baby boy.”

  “Jesus H. Christ! Wouldn’t you consider that a little irresponsible, considering their circumstances?”

  “Maybe it happened to them the way it could have happened to us just now,” Susan said.

  “Stop finding excuses for her, Susan,” Matt said. “If you’re facing life in prison, you don’t get pregnant.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I told you, she’s all fucked up.”

  “Okay. Where were we? I was telling how this will go down. You’re on the FBI’s list. The moment they arrest Chenowith, they’ll have you picked up as an accessory after the fact. The same day, probably, if they don’t have one already, they’ll get a search warrant for your house, your office, the place in the Poconos. . . . Where is the money?”

  “In my safe-deposit box,” she said. “In the Harrisburg Bank and Trust Company.”

  “And for that,” Matt said. “They will find the money, and since you have no other explanation for it, and there is evidence that you have been meeting with Chenowith, it will (a) be seized as recovered loot from bank robberies, and (b) used as evidence that you are an active accessory after the fact.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “For both, probably,” he went on as he thought about it. “I think they’ll probably try to make you an accessory to the bank robberies, too.”

  “Why bother, if they are going to send me to prison for life for helping Jennie?”

  “You, and Poor Little Jennie, and Bryan Chenowith, and the guy with the acne—Edgar Leonard Cole—and the other female. What’s her name? Eloise Anne Fitzgerald,” he said. “Where are they, by the way?”

  “I don’t know, Matt.”

  “You don’t know, or you’re overwhelmed with compassion because they had unpleasant childhoods?”

  “I don’t know, Matt,” she said, half crying, looking at him. “I don’t know if I’d tell you if I did, but I don’t know.”

  Then she started to cry.

  “Jesus, please don’t do that,” Matt said.

  Once she started, she couldn’t stop. It was soft, almost a moan, as she hugged her breasts and her chest heaved with sobs.

  Matt moved to her, spilling the plate of roast beef, and put his arms around her.

  “Come on, honey,” he said. “That’s not going to do any good.”

  “I wish I was dead,” she spluttered.

  “What is that, a commentary on our lovemaking?”

  “You bastard!”

  “Two things have happened,” he said.

  “What two things?” she said, sobbing.

  “I have asparagus in my pubic hair, au jus on my balls, and holding you like this is making me horny.”

  She pushed herself away from him and looked.

  It was all true.

  Half crying, half giggling, she shook her head.

  “Go take a bath,” she said.

  “You got some of it, too,” he said, pointing. “Come with me.”

  “Take a shower with you?”

  “Why not? Or would you rather sit here in the roast beef and blubber?”

  She put her hand out and touched his cheek.

  “My God, I think I do love you,” she said.

  “You wash my back, and I’ll let you have the asparagus,” Matt said, and took her hand and pulled her out of the bed.

  “We have to get that money out of your safe-deposit box,” Matt said as he was toweling himself in the bathroom and shamelessly watching Susan do the same.

  “What did you say?” Susan asked, her voice muffled by the towel she had over her head.

  He didn’t repeat the statement; he had thought of something else.

  “Just before we came in here, you said Poor Pathetic Jennie called you. What did she want?”

  She took the towel off her head and looked at him. “Do you have to call her that?”

  He shrugged but didn’t reply directly.

  “What did she want?”

  “She said she had another package she wanted me to keep for her—”

  “From the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Clinton, New Jersey, no doubt,” Matt interrupted. “And when did you tell her you were going to meet her?”

  “I told her I wouldn’t,” Susan said. “I told the both of them that. She put him on the phone.”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought, so soon after I was in Philadelphia, that it would be suspicious. And I told them I had a cop on my back.”

  “Jesus! But you said you didn’t—”

  “At the time, I believed you,” Susan said. “At the time, I thought you were what your friends told me you were.”

  “Which friends? What did they tell you I was?”

  “Your two old school pals at Daffy’s party. They told me you were a mixed-up screwball playing at being a cop. To prove your manhood. You’re not, are you? You’re really a cop, and what you’re playing at is being a screwball. It’s a good act. It had me fooled.”

  “And now that my facade has been torn away, what do you think?”

  “I’m afraid about how much I like what I see,” she said. “I’m afraid that it’s going to be taken away from me.”

  “You want to go back in the shower?” Matt asked.

  “No. God, I can’t believe we did that. I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want you to spread this around, but that was a first for me, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course, I never had a woman look for asparagus bits in my—”

  “Stop!”

  “Yeah. We have to stop,” he said seriously. “But let’s finish Poor . . . What happened when you were on the phone with Jennifer and Chenowith?”

  “That’s it. He asked about you. He said you might really be an FBI agent, and I assured him you were just a cop.”

  “When are you going to meet with them?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I told him I wasn’t going to do it, and when he started to argue, I hung up on him.”

  “But you told him about me?”

  “I just told you I did,” she said. “That was before you pointed out to me the many benefits of changing sides.”

  “Don’t start playing the bitch again. We don’t have time for that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sounding genuinely contrite. “Forgive me. Matt, so much has happened—”

  “Whatever happened to ‘honey’?”

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “You think he took ‘no’ for an answer? Or will he call again?”

  “He’ll probably call again.”

  “If he does, stall him again. I don’t know how yet, I’ll have to think about it, but maybe we can put his wanting to hide the bank money to our advantage.”

  “Matt, I don’t want to betray them!”

  “For the last fucking time, Susan, get it through your head that you don’t have any options. They’re going down, and all we can hope for is that I can figure out some way to keep you from going down with them!”

  She met his eyes but didn’t reply.

  He angrily tossed his towel on the floor and walked out of the bathroom.

  After a moment, she went after him.

  He was on his hands and knees, reaching under the bed, and he pulled his and her clothing out from where he had kicked it. And something else. A snub-nosed revolver in a holster.

  “Did you really think you would have to use that on me?” Susan asked.

  “I’m a cop. Cops carry guns,” he said somewhat abruptly. He tossed the clothing and then the pistol onto the bed, and reached for his shorts.

  “Honey, I’m sorry,” Susan said. “I really don’t want you to be angry with me.”

  “I’m not angry.�
��

  “Yes, you are.”

  He looked at her.

  “You’re too goddamned smart to be stupid,” he said. “And we can’t afford it.”

  “I like the way you said ‘we,’ ” she said softly.

  That made him smile.

  He made the sign of the cross. “I grant you absolution. Go, and be stupid no more.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  She started to dress.

  “Did you see what you did to my bra?” she asked a moment later, and showed it to him.

  “I did that?”

  “Yes, you did that.”

  “What’s Mommy going to think when you come in the house flopping all over?”

  “I’ll keep my coat on.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “The bra? Throw it away. It’s beyond repair.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Make a trophy out of it. A little foam rubber, so it looks lifelike, and a brass plate reading, ‘Susan, 34B, Hotel Hershey,’ and the date. Then I’ll mount it on the wall, with all the others.”

  “Damn it, I’m serious.”

  He met her eyes.

  “I don’t know why I want it,” he said. “I just do.”

  She held it out to him. When he put his hand out, she caught it and kissed it.

  “For the record, it’s a 34C,” she said.

  She let go of his hand, and he took the brassiere and stuffed it in his trousers pocket.

  “Thank you, honey, for wanting it,” Susan said.

  When Phil Chason came home from Captain Karl Beidermann’s retirement party, it was half past two in the morning and he was half in the bag, and he almost didn’t go into his basement office to see if there were any messages for him on the answering machine.

  Phil and Karl Beidermann had gone through the Academy together, had had their first assignment—to the Central District—together, and had done a hell of a lot of things together on the job, although Karl had liked working in uniform (he retired as commanding officer of the 16th District) and Phil had decided he’d rather be—and stay—a detective, who with overtime took home as much money as a captain anyhow.

  And it was good to see a lot of the people at the party. Once you went off the job, you didn’t see people very much, and that was sort of sad. On the way home, Phil had thought that if he had to do it all over again, he still would have become a cop. He had had a good twenty-six years on the job, and no real complaints.

  As he started up the stairs to his bedroom, he remembered about the answering machine downstairs in the office, and decided, fuck it, even if there was something on it, it would most likely be somebody trying to sell him a house in Levittown or just begging for money, and not somebody who needed the professional services of Philip Chason, retired Philadelphia Police Department detective.

  But halfway up the stairs, he decided that he might as well check the son of a bitch, or otherwise he would stay awake all goddamn night wondering what might be on it.

  He stopped, turned around on the stairs, and went back down them and then into the basement.

  When he opened the door, the little red light indicating that somebody had called was flashing, so he flipped on the light switch, waited for the fluorescent light fixtures to take their own goddamned sweet time to come on, then sat down at the desk and pushed the Play switch.

  “Phil, this is Joe Fiorello.”

  Fuck you, Joey Fiorello. Now I’m sorry I came down here.

  “I’m really sorry to call this late, but at least, since I got your answering machine, I didn’t wake you up, right?”

  Get to the fucking point, Fiorello!

  “Well, I guess you can guess why I’m calling, right, Phil? I got another job for you.”

  I figured you called me because you love me, asshole.

  “So as soon as you get this message, you want to give me a call, Phil?”

  It’s half past two in the morning, Joey. You mean you want me to call you at half past two?

  “This is important, Phil. And I would consider it a favor if you would get back to me just as soon as you can.”

  If it’s important to you, then whatever it is, it’s going to cost you through the nose, you sleazeball.

  “I guess you’ve got the numbers, but just to be sure, I’ll give you my private line at the lot and my number here at the house.”

  Fiorello recited the numbers slowly, then repeated them.

  What I really should do is call you at your house and wake your greasy ass up!

  Fuck it! I never should have come down here in the first place!

  Phil stood up and walked to the door, turned off the flickering lights, and closed the door.

  When he got to his bedroom, Mrs. Irene Chason greeted him by saying she knew he must have had a good time, because his breath smelled like a spittoon.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Seven-C,” Mrs. Loretta Dubinsky, RN, answered the telephone on her desk.

  Ward 7C was the private-patient section of the Psychiatric Division of University Hospital. Mrs. Dubinsky, a slight, very pale-skinned redhead who looked considerably younger than her thirty years, was the supervisory psychiatric nurse on duty.

  “Dr. Amelia Payne, please,” the caller said.

  “Dr. Payne’s not on the ward.”

  “I got to talk to her. Do you know where I can find her?”

  “I suggest you try her office. In the morning.”

  “I got to talk to her tonight.”

  “I can give you the number of Dr. Payne’s answering service.”

  “I got that. They don’t know where she is.”

  Mrs. Dubinsky knew better than that. The way the answering service worked, they never said they didn’t know where someone was, they asked the caller for their number, and said they would try to have Dr. Whoever try to call the caller back. Then—unless the caller said it was an emergency, and especially at this time of night; it was half past two—they would make a note on a card and keep it until Dr. Whoever called in for his messages.

  If the caller said it was an emergency, same procedure, except that they would call the numbers Dr. Whoever had given them, where he could be reached in an emergency.

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir,” Mrs. Loretta Dubinsky, RN, said.

  “Look, I got an important message for her.”

  “Then I suggest you call her in the morning.”

  “This won’t wait until morning.”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to have to, sir. There’s nothing I can do to help you.”

  “Who are you?”

  Mrs. Dubinsky replaced the telephone in its cradle.

  Two minutes later—Paulo Cassandro having worked his way through the hospital switchboard again—the telephone rang again, and Nurse Dubinsky picked it up.

  “Seven-C.”

  “Look, lady, you don’t seem to understand. This is important.”

  “Sir, I told you before,” Mrs. Dubinsky said, her pale skin coloring, “that Dr. Payne is not on the ward, and that I have no idea where she is.”

  “I got to get a message to her.”

  “What is it?”

  “Who are you? This is private, personal.”

  “My name is Dubinsky. I’m the nurse-in-charge.”

  “There’s no doctor around there?”

  “You want to give me the message or not?”

  “Let me talk to a doctor,” Cassandro said.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Mrs. Dubinsky said.

  “Let me talk to a goddamn doctor!”

  Mrs. Dubinsky again replaced the handset in its cradle.

  And two minutes later, the telephone ran again.

  “Seven-C.”

  “Look, lady, I’m sorry I lost my temper. But this is really important.”

  “I will try to get a message to Dr. Payne. What is it?”

  “I need to
talk to a doctor. Could you please get one on the line?”

  “I told you, sir, that’s just not possible.”

  “Jesus Christ, will you get a goddamn doctor on the phone?”

  Mrs. Dubinsky again replaced the handset in its cradle.

  And two minutes later, the telephone rang again.

  “Seven-C.”

  “You might as well get it through your goddamn head that I’m gonna speak to a goddamn doctor if I have to call every two minutes until the goddamn sun comes up!”

  Mrs. Dubinsky, her facial skin now blotched with red spots, started to replace the handset in its cradle again, but at the last moment instead laid it on the plate glass on her desk.

  Shaking her head, she got out of her chair, left the nurses’ station, and walked down the corridor to her left, where she entered a room about halfway down. She walked to the bed, where a very small, thin, brown-skinned man in a medical smock was sleeping under a sheet.

  She gently pushed his arm, and when he showed no sign of waking, pushed harder.

  “Doctor?” she said.

  Juan Osvaldo Martinez, M.D., opened his eyes and sat up abruptly.

  “Sorry,” Nurse Dubinsky said.

  “There is a problem?”

  “There’s a nut on the phone who insists on speaking to a doctor.”

  Dr. Martinez’s eyebrows rose in question.

  “He won’t give up, Doctor. He calls every two minutes.”

  He nodded his understanding, swung his feet off the bed, and sort of hopped to the floor.

  He retraced his steps to the nurses’ station and picked up the telephone.

  “Dr. Martinez,” he said.

  There was no reply. He looked at Nurse Dubinsky and shrugged helplessly.

  “No one on the line.”

  “Hang up. He’ll call back,” Nurse Dubinsky said with certainty.

  Dr. Martinez hung up the phone. The two of them stared at it for two long minutes. It did not ring.

  “Well,” Dr. Martinez said, and shrugged again.

  That figures, Nurse Dubinsky thought, after I wake this poor young man up, then this bastard decides to hell with it, he’ll wait ’til morning.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor.”

  “It is not a problem,” Dr. Martinez said, and started back down the corridor.

  He had taken a half-dozen steps when the telephone rang.