The Investigators

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Chief, I don’t think Matt would make that kind of mis—”

  “Indulge me,” Coughlin shut him off.

  Wohl nodded.

  “Sorry.”

  “But we have enough to arrest Officer Calhoun anyway.”

  “And we know he’s there,” Wohl said. “Or at least his car is parked at his uncle’s house.”

  “I wonder what kind of favor Chief Mueller owes Walter Davis?” Coughlin said. “That didn’t take us long to find out, did it?”

  “No. Maybe there is a role for the FBI in law enforcement, after all.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Coughlin said. “And say something you’ll regret later.”

  “Maybe I’m just carried away with the Jason Washington style of psychological interrogation—but I was thinking this before he called just now.”

  Wohl waited for him to go on.

  “Let’s say I’m right. For whatever reasons, we can’t tie Calhoun to the safe-deposit box, but we arrest him anyway. Matt would arrest him anyway, on the warrant here. This guy is not stupid. He’s not going to say a word until he talks to a lawyer, and he’ll figure out that if we had something on him about the safe-deposit box, we would have used it.”

  “I don’t see where you’re going, Chief,” Wohl said.

  “And Matt has no idea what’s happened here,” Coughlin said.

  “So?”

  “McFadden and Martinez go to Harrisburg now, with the warrant. They’re with Matt when Lieutenant Deitrich tells Matt what, if anything, he’s come up with. If zilch, finding the black cloud, Deitrich has the Harrisburg police pick up Calhoun. After he’s been in the holding pen an hour or so, here come McFadden and Martinez—who used to be undercover narcs themselves, and who Calhoun knows. That should upset Calhoun a little. McFadden and Martinez transport Calhoun here, and en route, they convince him how much trouble he’s in. I would like to have Officer Calhoun in a very disturbed state of mind when Washington talks to him.”

  “That makes sense,” Wohl said.

  “And it leaves Matt in Harrisburg,” Coughlin said. “I figure we owe Davis that.”

  “Martinez and McFadden will be curious about that,” Wohl said. “If Matt doesn’t come back with them.”

  “Yeah. Let me think about that,” Coughlin said. “But let’s suppose we get lucky again, and Deitrich can tie Calhoun to the safe-deposit box, and there’s something in it. Same scenario, in spades. Calhoun will know we have him, and then spending two hours, handcuffed, in the back of McFadden’s car on the way to Philadelphia, while those two inform him of all the nice things that are going to happen to him in the slam, and Calhoun will beg Jason for a chance to tell him everything he knows.”

  “That makes sense, Chief,” Wohl said.

  “So why will Matt stay in Harrisburg? To tie up loose ends? It’s none of their business?”

  “When all else fails, tell as little of the truth as possible,” Wohl said. “Matt is working on another case. Not specified. None of their business.”

  “I’m a little afraid of that,” Coughlin said. “You ever hear ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’?”

  “You mean, tell them everything?”

  Coughlin nodded.

  “Yeah. I think that would be safer in the long run. And have them bring Matt up-to-date on what’s happened here.”

  “Including the rape? The connection to Savarese?”

  “I don’t like that, frankly. But I’m at the stage where I don’t know who knows what. That’s a bad situation, Peter. I can’t see where these three knowing everything is going to cause any trouble, and I can see something going wrong if they don’t. You agree?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Because you agree, or because you’re afraid to disagree?”

  “A little of both,” Wohl said.

  “Okay. Decision’s made. Get them in here, tell them everything, and send them to Harrisburg.”

  Wohl reached for one of the telephones on his desk, punched a button, and told Officer Tiny Lewis, who answered the Investigations Section telephone, to send Detectives McFadden and Martinez to his office right away.

  It was five minutes to seven when Detective Charles McFadden pulled his unmarked Plymouth up in front of the Penn-Harris Hotel.

  He looked at Detective Jesus Martinez.

  “I think we just broke the Philadelphia-Harrisburg speed record,” he said.

  “Oh, shit!” Detective Martinez replied.

  “I mean it, Jesus,” Charley said. “I mean, think about it. Who else has a chance to come all the way from Philly out here to the sticks like we did and fuck the speed limit?”

  “Grow up, for Christ’s sake, Charley. You almost got us killed, the way you was driving!”

  Martinez got out of the car and walked toward the revolving door.

  They had been stopped twice for speeding on their way to Harrisburg. The first time, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Detective McFadden had been at the wheel. In the rather pleasant conversation he had had with the state trooper, the state trooper told him, before waving a friendly farewell, that he had clocked him at eighty-seven miles per hour.

  The second time, shortly after they had turned off the turnpike onto 222 and made a piss stop at a diner, Detective Martinez had been at the wheel. In the rather unpleasant conversation he had had with the local cop, Detective Martinez had been told that he had been clocked at sixty-four miles per hour in a fifty-five-mile per hour zone, and that the local cop personally didn’t give a damn for professional courtesy, and that unless he could come up with a better reason for Martinez having exceeded the posted limit than having to get to Harrisburg in a hurry, he was going to write him a ticket.

  Charley asked the local cop if he could talk to him a minute, took him behind the car, and managed to talk him out of writing Jesus a ticket, but only on condition that he get back behind the wheel.

  Detective Jesus Martinez had thereafter been in a rather nasty mood.

  A doorman came out and told Charley he couldn’t leave the car where he’d stopped, and directed him to a parking garage.

  Jesus was waiting, impatiently, slumped in an armchair, when, maybe five minutes later, Charley finally walked into the hotel lobby.

  He got to his feet when he saw Charley, and motioned toward the bank of elevators.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded when Charley had joined him there.

  “I stopped to get laid, okay? Where the fuck do you think?”

  “He’s ‘not taking calls.’ Can you believe that shit?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I tried to call him,” Martinez said, and then, in falsetto, quoted the hotel operator: “ ‘I’m sorry, Mister Payne is not taking calls until seven forty-five. May I ask you to call back then?’ ”

  Charley was amused—by Jesus’s indignation, his accurate mimicry of the telephone operator’s voice, and by Matt “not taking calls.”

  He smiled, which was the wrong thing to do.

  “Who the fuck does he think he is?” Jesus demanded indignantly.

  “What’s the big deal, Jesus? He wants his sleep.”

  “Fuck him and his sleep.”

  They rode the sixth floor and got off.

  McFadden consulted a well-battered pocket notebook and came up with the room number Inspector Wohl had given him.

  “Six twelve,” he said. “To the right.”

  There was a room-service cart with breakfast remnants in the corridor outside Suite 612.

  “What the fuck is that?” Jesus asked. “He’s too good to eat breakfast in the fucking dining room, right?”

  “If it feels good, Jesus, do it,” Charley said. “He can afford it, okay?”

  “Knowing your buddy, he’s probably figured some scam to get the department to pay for it.”

  There was a brass knocker on the door. Jesus thumped it, several times, and much harder than Charley thought was necessary to attrac
t the attention of someone inside.

  When there was no immediate response, Jesus put his hand to the knocker again.

  McFadden, who was nearly a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier than Martinez, shouldered him aside.

  “Cool it, Jesus, okay? Give him a second!”

  At the moment the door opened, Detective Payne looked out the crack, saw Detectives McFadden and Martinez, said, “Oh, shit!” and started to close the door.

  Detective McFadden, in what was a Pavlovian response—he was accustomed to having people attempt to shut doors in his face—shoved his foot into the doorjamb and pushed against the door with his shoulder.

  He didn’t get it open, but neither did Detective Payne manage to close it.

  They looked at each other through the crack.

  “Can I come in or what?”

  “Open the fucking door, Payne!” Jesus said.

  Detective Payne shrugged, and opened the door.

  “Surprise, surprise!” he said.

  McFadden and Martinez walked through the door.

  “What was that all about?” Charley asked, making reference to Matt’s attempt to close the door in his face. And then he looked across the sitting room to the bedroom, and saw a damned good-looking female getting dressed. She was fastening her brassiere; apparently she had not yet had time to put on her underpants.

  “You son of a bitch!” Charley said, somewhat admiringly.

  Matt went to the door to the bedroom and pulled it closed.

  “I don’t believe this. I honest to Christ don’t believe this!” Jesus said.

  “Sorry, Matt,” Charley said. “What do you want us to do? Wait in the hall?”

  “Why?” Matt said. “The cat, so to speak, is out of the bag. Just tell your friend there if he says something out of line, I’ll tear his leg off and shove it up his ass.”

  “Try it, hotshot!” Martinez said.

  “Shut up, Jesus,” Charley said firmly. “And keep it shut!”

  “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

  “Wohl sent us. Or maybe Chief Coughlin did. We got a warrant for Calhoun. . . . How long is—your friend—going to be in there?”

  “She’s about to leave,” Matt said.

  “Why don’t we wait until she does?” McFadden said.

  Matt nodded and went into the bedroom.

  Susan was zipping up her skirt. She looked frightened, on the edge of tears.

  “They’re two guys I work with . . .” Matt began.

  “You could have closed the goddamn door!” Susan said, almost sobbed.

  “Honey! I didn’t know. . . .”

  “What do they want?”

  “They’ve got a warrant for a guy, the dirty cop, I’ve been watching.”

  “I thought they’d come for me!”

  “They don’t even know who you are,” Matt said reassuringly.

  “Just some bimbo you spent the night with, right?” she said, trying to make a joke of it.

  “Well, I could introduce you to them as my fiancée, I suppose,” Matt said, and then had a sobering thought. “What I am going to do is introduce you as somebody else. How about ‘Patricia Walsh’? How does that sound?”

  She looked at him with a blank expression.

  “Just trying to cover all the bases,” Matt said.

  She went into the bathroom. He followed her and watched as she combed her hair and put on her lipstick.

  “I’ll call you at the office when I find out what’s going on,” Matt said.

  “They have a recorder on my telephone at the office,” Susan said.

  “Shit,” Matt said, furious with himself for not remembering that. “Okay. Unless something happens, meet me downstairs at noon. We’ll have lunch.”

  “Not at the bank?”

  “Downstairs,” he said. “Honey, I didn’t have any idea those two were going to show up here!”

  She walked out of the bathroom past him and stopped by the side of the bed to slip her feet into her shoes.

  Matt thought there was something delightfully graceful and feminine in the way she did that, standing on one leg at a time, and then he saw the briefcase half full of the money Bryan Chenowith had stolen from banks and had given Susan to hold for him where he’d put it, between the bedside table and the bed.

  Shit!

  Susan finished putting on her shoes, smiled uneasily at him, walked to the door to the sitting room, and waited for him.

  He walked to her.

  “I love you,” Matt said.

  “Oh, God!” Susan said, and put her hand up to touch his cheek.

  Matt opened the door and motioned for her to precede him through it.

  “Pat,” he said. “This is Detective McFadden and Detective Martinez. This is Patricia Walsh.”

  “I’m happy to meet you, Pat,” McFadden said, and smiled.

  “How do you do?” Susan said.

  Martinez said nothing.

  Matt led Susan to the door to the corridor and opened it.

  She looked up at him and then kissed him, rather chastely, on the lips.

  “I’ll see you later,” Matt said.

  Susan nodded and went out into the corridor. Matt closed the door after her.

  “Very nice, Matt,” McFadden said. “Sorry we walked—”

  “Shit,” Martinez said.

  “What’s with you?” McFadden snapped.

  “I’m not sure if you’re trying to cover for your buddy, or just stupid.”

  “What are you talking about?” McFadden asked, genuinely confused.

  “Patricia Walsh, my ass! That was Susan Reynolds!”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” McFadden exclaimed in an exhale.

  “What do you know about Susan Reynolds?” Matt asked Martinez.

  “Wohl briefed us just before he sent us up here,” McFadden said. “We know all about her.”

  “You’re supposed to be surveilling her, not fucking her!” Martinez said. “I can’t believe this. Not even from you, hotshot!”

  Matt looked at Charley McFadden.

  “Charley, it’s not like that. I’m not just . . . fucking her!”

  “What were you doing in there, then?” Martinez said. “Making another fucking bomb?”

  Matt, his fist balled, took two quick steps toward Martinez.

  McFadden, moving with surprising speed, stepped between them and put his hands on Matt’s shoulders.

  “Cool it, Matt!” he ordered.

  He maintained the pressure of his massive hands on Matt’s shoulders until he felt him relax, then let him go and turned to Martinez.

  “What Wohl told us, Jesus, was that we have nothing to do with what Matt’s doing for the FBI. He said he was only telling us about that, those people, so that we wouldn’t fuck it up by saying something, doing something, that might fuck up what he’s doing.”

  “What he’s doing is—”

  “Whatever he’s doing is none of our fucking business, okay?” McFadden interrupted him.

  Martinez shrugged.

  “We’re here to do what Wohl told us to do, and nothing more. You got that?”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Charley.”

  McFadden looked at his watch.

  “It’s ten minutes after seven. You’re meeting this Lieutenant . . . whatsisname?”

  “Deitrich,” Matt furnished.

  “At eight, right? Where?”

  “Here.”

  “That gives us fifty minutes,” McFadden said. “That ought to be enough time for us to tell you what’s been going down. And to have breakfast. I’m starved.”

  “I think it would be better if we ate up here,” Matt said. “What do you feel like eating?”

  “I’ve been up all night. I could eat a fucking horse,” Charley said.

  “I don’t think they have any horse,” Matt said. “But they do a nice breakfast steak.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Martinez?” Matt asked.

&
nbsp; Martinez shrugged.

  Matt picked up the telephone and ordered the Penn-Harris steak and eggs breakfast for two, and an extra-large pot of coffee.

  “Good morning, Mr. Savarese. This is Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin of the Philadelphia Police Department. I hope I didn’t call too early.”

  “What’s on your mind, Mr. Coughlin?”

  “I think it’s quite important that we have a talk, Mr. Savarese, at your earliest convenience.”

  “I’m sure that you do, inasmuch as you are calling me at my home—and on my unlisted number—at seven forty-five in the morning.”

  “Believe me, it is.”

  “You wouldn’t care to tell me what it is that’s so important?”

  “I would rather do that when we meet.”

  “And where, and when, Mr. Coughlin, do you suggest that we meet?”

  “If this would be agreeable to you, I was thinking of the restaurant in the Hotel Warwick. I thought we could talk over breakfast.”

  “You mean, right now?”

  “I believe that it would be in our mutual interest, Mr. Savarese, if we met as soon as possible.”

  “But you’re not willing to tell me why you think it would be so?”

  “I think it would be better if we talked privately.”

  “And would you be alone, Mr. Coughlin?”

  “I will have Inspector Wohl with me, but the conversation I hope we can have will be just between us. It’s a rather delicate matter.”

  “Inspector Wohl is a splendid police officer, as, indeed, was his father. What I think would be possible, Mr. Coughlin, is that I would come to the Warwick accompanied by my chauffeur, Mr. Pietro Cassandro. He and Inspector Wohl could have their breakfast together, and see that you and I are not disturbed while we are enjoying ours.”

  “That would be perfectly satisfactory to me, Mr. Savarese.”

  “Perhaps this might be a good omen, Mr. Coughlin,” Savarese said. “But Pietro just walked in the door. Shall we say in thirty minutes? Would that be convenient for you?”

  “Yes, it would. Thirty minutes it is. I look forward to seeing you, Mr. Savarese.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Coughlin.”

  Coughlin hung the phone up and turned to look at the other people in his office. In addition to Inspector Peter Wohl, they were Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadelphia; Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein; Lieutenant Jack Fellows, the mayor’s bodyguard; and Frank F. Young, Assistant Special Agent in Charge (Criminal Affairs) of the Philadelphia office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.