The Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “That’s interesting. Maybe if I can find him, and that shouldn’t be hard, I can get something out of him.”

  “All I want you to do, Peter, is remember that I have a very sick girl on my hands to whom irreparable damage can be done if—”

  “Honey, I understand,” Peter said.

  “You want to see Dr. Martinez and Loretta Dubinsky now?”

  Peter nodded.

  “They’re crapped out in a room down the hall,” she said. “I’ll take you.”

  “ ‘Crapped out’? Doctor, you really should watch your mouth!”

  “Fuck you, Peter,” she said.

  “I love it when you talk dirty,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I do it.”

  She got up from behind her desk and started for the door. He waved her ahead of him. She stopped and touched his cheek.

  “And, goddamn it, I don’t want to, but I guess I do love you.”

  NINETEEN

  It took Irene Chason even longer than she thought it would to wake her husband up.

  But finally, he rolled over on his back and looked up at her in mingled indignation and concern.

  “What’s up?”

  “You plan to get up today, or what?”

  “I’m a little hungover, all right? Get off my back, Irene.”

  “There’s some guy on the phone for you.”

  “Some guy?”

  “This is the third time he’s called,” Irene said.

  “What’s he want?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Fiorello. It has to be Joey Fiorello. What’s with him?

  “Is he still on the phone?”

  “Yeah,” she said and lifted the handset from the bedside-table telephone and handed it to him.

  “Philip Chason.”

  “Joey Fiorello, Phil.”

  “What can I do you for?”

  “I got a quick, good-paying job for you, if you’re interested.”

  “Joey, I’m up to my ass in alligators.”

  “You heard what I said about good-paying?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “This is important to me.”

  “What does that come out to in round figures? And for what?”

  “Phil, you’re hurting my feelings. You know that I pay good. I thought we were friends.”

  “What do you want from me, Joey?”

  “I want you to ask a few quick, discreet questions.”

  “Ask who a few quick, discreet questions?”

  “Look, Phil, are you going to help me out on this or not?”

  “I told you, Joey, I’m up to my ass in work. Whether I can help you depends on what you want me to do, and how much it’s worth to you.”

  “Let me put it to you this way, Phil. You come to my office in the next hour, and let me explain what I want you to do for me, and that’ll be worth two hundred to me, whether or not you can help me out.”

  “Two-fifty, Joey,” Phil said.

  “Jesus. And I thought we were friends,” Joey Fiorello said, obviously pissed. “Okay. Two-fifty. I’ll be expecting you. Thank you, Phil.”

  The line went dead in his ear.

  “What was that all about?” Irene asked.

  “I don’t have a goddamn clue,” Phil said as he swung his feet out of bed.

  The warm smile on Joey Fiorello’s face when Phil Chason walked into his office at Fiorello’s Fine Cars forty-five minutes later, was, Phil thought, about as phony as a three-dollar bill.

  I wonder why he didn’t tell me to go fuck myself when I held him up for two-fifty? And he must need me; otherwise, he would have.

  “Thank you for coming, Phil,” Joey said. “I appreciate it.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “Can I have Helene get you a cup of coffee? Or a Danish? And a Danish?”

  “Yeah. Thank you. You said this was important, so I came right away without my breakfast.”

  “I appreciate that,” Joey said and raised his voice: “Helene!”

  The magnificently bosomed Helene put her head in the door.

  “Honey, would you get Mr. Chason a cup of coffee and a Danish, please?”

  “Be happy to. If there’s any Danish left.”

  “If there’s no Danish left, honey, send one of my so-called salesmen after some.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Fiorello,” Helene said.

  Joey reached into his pocket and peeled five fifty-dollar bills off a wad held together with a gold paper clip and handed them to Phil.

  “If I can’t get you a Danish, the least I can do is pay what I owe you,” he said with a smile.

  “Thank you,” Phil said. “Like the man said, money may not be everything, but it’s way ahead of whatever’s in second place.”

  “Absolutely,” Joey said.

  “So, what’s on your mind, Joey?”

  “I’m sure I can trust you to keep what I’m about to tell you to yourself.”

  “That would depend on what you want to tell me,” Phil said. “Let me put that another way. As long as it’s legal, you can trust me.”

  “Absolutely goddamned legal,” Joey said. “Jesus Christ, Phil, what do you think? I’m a businessman.”

  What I think is that you’re in bed with the mob, is what I think.

  “No offense, Joey. But we should understand each other.”

  “I agree one hundred percent,” Joey said. “And you have my word I would never ask you to do anything that would in any way be illegal.”

  “Okay. Fine.”

  “The thing is, Phil, I’m a silent partner in the Howard Johnson motel on Roosevelt Boulevard. You know where I mean?”

  Phil nodded.

  Why don’t I believe that?

  “Nice, solid investment. You know, people trust a place with Howard Johnson’s name on it.”

  “Yeah, I guess they do.”

  “You know how that works, Phil? I mean, it’s a franchise. We pay them a percentage of the gross. We get to use the name, and they set the standards. They got inspectors—you never know who they are—who come and stay in the place, and eat in the coffee shop, and check things . . . see if the bathrooms are clean, that sort of thing. You understand?”

  Phil nodded.

  “They insist that we run a high-class operation,” Joey said. “A nice, clean, respectable place, a family place, by which I mean that a Howard Johnson is not a no-tell motel, you know what I mean?”

  “I understand,” Phil said.

  “The way the contract is drawn, we don’t keep the place up to standard, they have the right to do one of two things: either make us sell the place, or take down the sign.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Which would cost us a bundle. Which would cost me, since I have a large piece of that action, a large bundle, if Howard Johnson should decide to pull our franchise.”

  “And you’re worried about that happening, is that what you’re driving at?”

  “I am worried shitless,” Joey said.

  “Why?”>

  “Can you believe there was a drug bust at the Howard Johnson last Thursday night? Can you believe that?”

  “Drugs are all over, Joey, you know that.”

  “Not in my fucking Howard Johnson motel, they’re not supposed to be.”

  “Those things happen, Joey.”

  “Like I said I’m a silent partner. I put up the money, and the other partners run the place. Which means they hire the manager.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s a brother-in-law of one of the partners. His name is Leonard Hansen.”

  “And?”

  “So far as I know, he’s as honest as the day is long.”

  “Okay.”

  “So far as I know, is what I said.”

  Helene came into the office with two mugs of coffee and a half-dozen Danish.

  She gave Phil—maybe innocently, maybe not—a good look down her dress as she put his mug and the Danish on the coffee tab
le in front of him.

  “No calls, and make sure nobody walks in here on Mr. Chason and me, Helene,” Joey said.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Fiorello.”

  Joey waited until she had left the office and closed the door.

  “Where was I, Phil?”

  “You were saying that so far as you know, the manager of the Howard Johnson is honest.”

  “Right. And, so far as I know, he knows how to run a motel. We take a nice little profit out of that place.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. Now, maybe I’m wrong, and I hope to Christ I am, but two things worry me.”

  “Such as?”

  “The drug bust, of course. And then me not hearing about it for three days. Not until last night, and it happened on Thursday.”

  “Why does that worry you?”

  “Like I said, I really hope I’m wrong, but with the amount of money we’re talking about, hope don’t count.”

  “I’m not sure where you’re going, Joey. You think the manager has something to do with the drugs?”

  “What I’m saying, Phil, is that we don’t pay him a whole hell of a lot of money. I don’t really know what I’m talking about here. But drugs in a Howard Johnson motel?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t have any idea how it could have gotten started, but hear me out. You got a guy making peanuts, like Leonard Hansen. He finds out that he can pick up a couple of hundred tax-free by loaning somebody a motel-room key for a couple of hours. You beginning to see where I’m coming from?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And all of a sudden, it comes out—I have the highest respect for the detectives who work Narcotics—that my Howard Johnson motel is a no-tell motel. Not hookers, but much fucking worse—as far as the Howard Johnson people are concerned—drugs. That’s all Howard Johnson would have to hear. So long, franchise. They’d pull that franchise so quick . . .”

  “I see your point. So you want me to check this Leonard Hansen out?”

  “I really hope you find him as clean as a whistle,” Joey said. “But you understand, Phil, why I have to know?”

  “I understand your problem, Joey.”

  “And discreetly, Phil. Like I said, he’s a brother-in-law of one of my partners. He would get pissed in a second if he heard I’d asked you to check this guy out.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll give you fifty an hour, plus all your expenses, if you can get on this right away, Phil.”

  “I told you, Joey, I’m up to my ass—”

  “This is important to me, Phil, but I would hate to think you’re trying to hold me up. We have a good relationship here. . . .”

  “I wasn’t talking about money. I was talking about other jobs I have, Joey.”

  “No offense, Phil.”

  “No offense taken, Joey. I’ll get on it as soon as I can.”

  “I appreciate that, Phil,” Joey said.

  He got up behind his desk and put out his hand.

  “You get me something on this guy I can take to my partners, something solid, and there’ll be a bonus in this for you, Phil.”

  “If there’s something there, I’ll find it,” Phil said.

  “Jesus, I just had a thought,” Joey said.

  “What?”

  “Let me throw this at you. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

  “Think of what before?”

  “If anybody knew if my Howard Johnson motel is being used as a fucking drug supermarket, it would be the narcotics cops, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, my ass. They did one drug bust there. They had to have a reason, a suspicion, that something was going on there.”

  “So what?”

  “Could you ask them? You know any of them?”

  “No, and no. I don’t know any of them, and if I did know one of them, and asked him something like that, he’d tell me to go fuck myself.”

  “I thought you cops got along pretty well,” Joey said visibly disappointed.

  “I’m a retired cop, which is the same thing as saying, so far as they’re concerned, that I’m a civilian. They don’t tell civilians anything. So far as that goes, they don’t tell other cops anything.”

  “If they knew—even suspected; we wouldn’t need any proof—about something going on at my motel, that would settle this thing in a hurry. Which is what I’m after, Phil, finding out yes or no in a hurry.”

  “I told you, Joey, if the Narcotics Unit knew that drug deals were going on every hour on the hour at your motel, they wouldn’t tell me.”

  “You couldn’t explain the situation to them?”

  “Jesus, you don’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer, do you?”

  “Not when I’m about to lose a lot of fucking money, I don’t,” Joey said. He paused. “The bonus I was talking about would kick in, of course.”

  Phil shook his head. “No.”

  “Well, how about this? Get me a couple of names of detectives in the Narcotics Unit. Get me two names of the detectives who did the drug bust at my motel last Thursday. I’m a very reasonable guy. I can talk to them, explain my problem.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Phil said. “No promises.”

  “One promise. You get me two names, I pay you for ten hours of your time, and throw in the bonus.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Joey,” Phil repeated.

  From the glass-walled office that had been loaned to him by Vice President James C. Chase of the First Harrisburg Bank & Trust Company, Detective Matthew Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department devoted a good deal of his attention throughout the morning to the bank’s employees and customers.

  He was looking for someone who might be an FBI agent, on surveillance duty, and charged with keeping an eye on the safe-deposit box leased by Miss Susan Reynolds, who was aiding and abetting the Chenowith Group in their unlawful flight to escape prosecution for murder and their participation in a series of bank robberies.

  It had been agreed between them that in the event Matt saw someone who might be the FBI, he was to signal Susan cleverly—with a negative shake of the head—on her arrival in the lobby. If he gave such a signal, she was not to go to her safe-deposit box but, instead, come directly to his office, from which they would go to lunch.

  If he did not give her a negative shake of the head, she would go to her safe-deposit box, take out the bank loot, and then come to Matt’s office. After transferring the money to his brand-new hard-sided attaché case, they would then go to lunch.

  The only person he saw who even remotely looked like a police officer of any kind was the gray-uniformed bank guard, who was about seventy years old and had apparently learned to sleep on his feet with his eyes open. Matt didn’t think he would notice if someone walked into the lobby and began to carry out one of the ornate bronze stand-up desks provided for the bank’s clientele.

  There was something unreal about the whole thing, starting with the fact that someone like Susan would even know someone who robbed banks, now with a homemade movie-style machine pistol. And it was, of course, absolutely unbelievable that, in violation of everything that, before the Hotel Hershey, he had believed was really important to him, he was actively involved in the felony of concealing evidence in a capital criminal case.

  Or as unbelievable as what had happened—or at least how many times it had happened—in his hotel room that morning, before Susan finally got out of bed and put her clothes back on just in time to go to work.

  But that was true, and so was the fact that he was a yet-undetected criminal.

  He wondered, idly, once or twice during the morning if this detachment from reality was the way it was for real criminals—he changed that to “other criminals”—and might explain the calm, I don’t give a shit behavior many of them manifested.

  And then, at ten to twelve—Susan said she would probably be at the bank at 12:05—he spotted a familiar head walking across the marble
floor to the bronze gate to the safe-deposit room door.

  The familiar head needed both a shave and a haircut. The man was wearing blue jeans and a woolen, zippered athletic jacket.

  Not what one expects from the usually natty FBI. Which means that not only are they surveilling the safe-deposit boxes, but using an undercover agent to do it.

  He felt bile in his mouth.

  Christ, we’re going to get caught! What made me think we could get away with this?

  And then he realized, with mingled relief, chagrin, and surprise, that while the unshaven man in the jeans and athletic jacket was indeed a law-enforcement officer, he was not in the employ of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  He gets his paychecks from the same place I do. That son of a bitch is Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit!

  Matt’s mind made an abrupt right turn: Christ, there’s four paychecks in my desk. I’ve got to find the time to go to the goddamn bank and deposit them!

  And then returned to the lobby of the First Harrisburg Bank & Trust Company. He lowered his head and raised his hand to shield his face.

  He won’t expect to see me here, of course, but the son of a bitch is a cop, and he just might recognize me. He gave me a long hard look the last time I saw him.

  That flashed through his mind. He had been startled then, too, to recognize Calhoun, the first time he had ever laid eyes on him. He’d just come from going through the personnel records of Five Squad, which had included a photograph of clean-shaven Officer Calhoun taken on his graduation from the Academy.

  But that had been enough for him to recognize unshaven undercover officer Calhoun in the Roundhouse parking lot. He had followed him into the building and watched as he and somebody else—Coogan, Officer Thomas P.—had processed prisoners into Central Lockup.

  And the both of them looked at me long and hard when they saw me later in the parking lot. If he sees me here, he will recognize me!

  But what the hell is he doing here?

  I’ve already cross-checked the names I got from his record against the names of people who rent safe-deposit boxes here, and there wasn’t a match.

  Which means either I was not doing my job well—which seems possible, since I have had other things on my mind—or that the box is rented in the name of somebody whose name I don’t have.