Badge of Honour 06 - The Murderers (11 page)

Kellog was in Narcotics. If they ever found out who the doer, or doers, were, it was ten-to-one it would have something to do with Narcotics. But they might not ever find the doers, and until they did, Helene was going to be a suspect, and so was he.

The interview in Homicide was the most humiliating thing that Wally could remember ever having to go through. Except maybe being driven to his apartment by Ken Summers to pick up his guns, and having Ken look around “professionally” to see what he could see that might connect him with the Kellog shooting.

And when he finally got to see Helene, he could see that she had been crying, and she told him that D’Amata and Staff Inspector Weisbach had been to see her, and that she thought it would be better for everybody concerned if they didn’t see each other until things settled down, at least until after the funeral, and that she was going to the apartment right then to pick up her things and take them to her apartment. And that she thought it would be better if he didn’t try to see her, or even telephone, until she thought it would be all right, and when she thought it would be she would telephone him.

She didn’t even kiss him before she walked away.

Wally did the only thing he could think of doing. He worked on the Grover job. And nothing. Not from interviewing neighbors or friends, or what he learned from New Haven. She did not have an insurance policy on her husband, except for the ones she told him about. And neither did anyone else.

But she did him. Wally was sure about that. Somehow, he was going to get her.

He went to the apartment about six and had a beer and made himself a hamburger, and it was pretty goddamned lonely. Then he tried to sleep, setting the alarm for eleven. With nothing else to do, he might as well go to work.

He woke up at nine-thirty, alone in their bed, and couldn’t get back to sleep, and got up and drank a beer, and then he thought about going to a bar and having a couple of drinks, and fuck going to work. Captain Quaire had told him to take off what time he needed.

But he knew that would be dumb, so he just had the one beer, and took a shower and a shave and left the apartment at half past eleven for the Roundhouse.

The door opened and a very large, black, impeccably dressed gentleman got out. He was Sergeant Jason Washington of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department, known—behind his back, of course—to his peers as “the Black Buddha.”

He believed himself to be the best investigator in the Philadelphia Police Department. This opinion was shared by a number of others, including the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, by Inspector Peter Wohl, Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Division, for whom Washington worked, and by Detective Matthew M. Payne, who worked for Sergeant Washington.

Sergeant Washington was wearing a light gray pin-striped suit. His Countess Mara necktie was fixed precisely in place at the collar of a custom-made crisply starched white Egyptian cotton shirt, and gold cuff links bearing his initials gleamed at the shirt’s cuffs.

For most of their married life, Jason Washington and his wife had lived frugally, although their combined income had been above average. He had spent most of his career in Homicide, where overtime routinely meant a paycheck at least as large as an inspector’s, and Martha had a very decent salary as an artist for a Center City advertising agency.

They had put money away faithfully for the education of their only child, a daughter, and they had invested what they could carefully, and, it turned out, wisely.

In the last three or four years, they had become affluent. Their daughter had married (much too young, they agreed) an electrical engineer, at whom (they also agreed) RCA in Cherry Hill seemed to throw money. Her marriage had, of course, relieved them of the expense of her college education, and at about the same time, what had begun as Martha’s dabbling in the art market had suddenly blossomed into the amazingly profitable Washington Galleries on Chestnut Street.

They could afford to live well, and did.

Sergeant Washington walked to the plate-glass door of the Cancer Society Building and waited until it was opened to him by the rent-a-cop on duty.

“Is Supercop at home?” Sergeant Washington greeted him. The rent-a-cop was a retired police officer whom Washington had known for years.

“Came in about ten minutes ago. What’s he done now?”

“Since he works for me, I’m embarrassed to tell you,” Washington said, and then had a sudden thought: “Did he come home alone?”

“For once,” the rent-a-cop said.

“Good. I would not like to redden the ears of his girlfriend with what I have to say to him,” Washington said, smiling, as he got into the elevator.

He rode to the third floor, then pushed a doorbell beside a closed door.

“Yes?” A voice came over an intercom.

“Would you please let me in, Matthew?”

“Hey, Jason, sure.”

The door’s solenoid buzzed and Washington opened the door. He climbed a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Matt Payne waited for him, smiling.

“Don’t smile,” Washington said. “I just had a call from Tony Harris vis-à-vis your human-fly stunt, you goddamned fool! What the hell is the matter with you?”

“The Lieutenant’s lady friend opened the window and knocked the mike suction cup loose. We weren’t getting anything at all.”

“These people are not plotting the overthrow of Christian society as we know it, you damned fool! We have some dirty cops, that’s all. Not one of them, not this whole investigation, is worth risking your life over.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good God, Matt! What were you thinking?”

Matt didn’t reply.

“I would hate to think that you were trying to prove your all-around manhood,” Washington said.

It was a reference to one of the reasons offered for a nice young man from the Main Line electing to follow a police career instead of a legal one. He had failed, at the last minute before entering upon active duty, the Marine Corps’ Pre-Commissioning Physical Exam. He had then, the theory went, joined the Police Department as a means to prove his masculinity.

“I was thinking I could put the mike back without getting hurt,” Matt said coldly. “And I did.”

Washington saw in his eyes that he had gotten through to him. He fixed him with an icy glance for another thirty seconds, which seemed much longer.

Then he smiled, just a little.

“It would seem to me, considering the sacrifice it has meant for me to come here at this late hour to offer you my wise counsel, that the least you could do would be to offer me a small libation. Perhaps some of the Famous Grouse scotch?”

“Sure, sorry,” Matt said, smiling. He went into his kitchen. As he opened first one, and then another over-the-sink cabinet, he called, “What are you doing out this late?”

“Our beloved Mayor has been gracious enough to find time to offer me
his
wise counsel.”

“Really?”

“Specifically, he is of the opinion that we should go to Officers Crater and Palmerston and offer them immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony against Captain Cazerra and Lieutenant Meyer.”

“Jason,” Matt said, “I can’t find a bottle of any kind of scotch. Not even Irish.”

“I am not surprised,” Washington said. “It’s been one of those days. Get your coat. We will pub crawl for a brief period.”

“There’s some rum and gin. And vermouth. I could make you a martini.”

“Get your coat, Matthew,” Washington said. “I accept your kind offer of a drink at the Rittenhouse Club bar.”

“Oh, thank you, kind sir,” Matt said, mockingly, and started shrugging into Chad Nesbitt’s tweed jacket. “I think the Mayor’s idea stinks.”

“Why?”

“Because any lawyer six weeks out of law school could tear them up on the stand, and we know Cazerra and Meyer’s lawyers will be good.”

“Armando C. Giacomo, Esquire,” Washington agreed, citing the name of Philadelphia’s most competent criminal lawyer. “Or someone of his ilk. Perhaps even the legendary Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, Esquire.”

Matt laughed. “No way. My father would go ballistic. I’m ready.”

“I made that point to His Honor,” Washington said as he pushed himself out of one of Matt’s small armchairs.

“And?”

“And as usual got nowhere. Or almost nowhere. We have two weeks to get something on Cazerra and Meyer that will stand up in court. He wants those two in jail.”

“Or what?”

“We work Crater and Palmerston over, figuratively speaking of course, with a rubber hose.”

“What does Wohl say?” Matt asked as he waved Washington ahead of him down the stairs.

“I haven’t told him yet. I figured I would ruin tomorrow for him by doing that first thing in the morning.”

“What do we do now?” Matt asked.

“Why don’t we take a stroll down Market Street?” Washington replied. “It will both give us a chance to see how the other half lives, and trigger memories of those happy days when Officer Washington was walking his first beat.”

“You walked a beat on Market Street?” Matt asked. It was difficult for him to imagine Washington in a police officer’s uniform, patrolling Market Street.

Officer Friendly Black Buddha
, he thought,
impeccably tailored and shined, smiling somewhat menacingly as he slapped his palm with his nightstick
.

“Indeed I did. Under the able leadership of Lieutenant Dennis V. Coughlin. And on
our
watch,” Washington announced sonorously, “the thieves and mountebanks plied their trade in someone else’s district.”

“This is the Inferno Lounge,” his caller announced. “1908 Market. There’s been a shooting, and somebody may be dead.”

“Your name, sir, please?”

“Shit!” the caller responded and hung up.

David Meach had been on the job six years, long enough to be able to unconsciously make judgments regarding the validity of a call, based on not only what was said, but how it was said. Whether, for example, the caller sounded mature (as opposed to an excited kid wanting to give the cops a little exercise) and whether or not there was excitement or tension or a certain numbness in his voice. This call sounded legitimate; he didn’t think he’d be sending police cars racing through downtown Philadelphia for no purpose.

He checked to see what was available.

RPC Nine Ten seemed closest to the scene. Meach pressed a key to send two short attention beeps across the airways, then activated his microphone:

“All cars stand by. 1908 Market Street, the Inferno Lounge, report of a shooting and a hospital case. Nine Ten, you have the assignment.”

The response was immediate.

“Nine Ten, got it,” Officer Edward Schirmer called into the microphone of Radio Patrol Car Number Ten of the Ninth District, as Officer Lewis Roberts, who was driving the car down Walnut Street, reached down to the dashboard and activated the siren and flashing lights.

“Nine Seven in on that,” another voice reported, that of Officer Frederick E. Rogers, in RPC Nine Seven.

“Highway Thirteen, in on the 1908 Market,” responded Officer David Fowler.

“Nine Oh One, got it,” responded Officer Adolphus Hart, who was riding in one of the two vans assigned to the Ninth District.

Nine Oh One had five minutes before left the Police Administration Building at Eighth and Race streets, after having transferred two prisoners from the holding cells at the Ninth District to Central Lockup.

Officer Thomas Daniels, who was driving Nine Oh One, had for no good reason at all elected to drive up Market Street and was by happenstance able to be the first police vehicle responding to the “Shooting and Hospital Case” call to reach the scene.

There was nothing at all unusual about the location when they pulled to the curb. The Inferno Lounge’s neon-flames sign was not illuminated, and the establishment seemed to be closed for the night.

He stopped just long enough to permit Officer Hart to jump out of the van and walk quickly to the door of the Inferno, and to see if Hart could open the door. He couldn’t. Then he turned left on Ludlow Street, so that he could block the rear entrance.

Two civilians, a very large black man and a tall young white man, both very well dressed, were walking down Nineteenth Street, toward Market. They could have, Officer Daniels reasoned, just come out of the alley behind the Inferno.

Officer Daniels, sounding his horn, drove the van into the alley, blocking it, and jumped out of the van.

“Hold it right there, please!” he called out.

His order proved to be unnecessary. The two civilians had stopped, turned, and were looking at him with curiosity.

While a Pedestrian Stop was of course necessary, Officer Daniels made the snap judgment that it was unlikely that these two had anything to do with whatever—if anything—had happened at the Inferno. They hadn’t run, for one thing, and they didn’t look uncomfortable.

Officer Daniels had an unkind thought: This area was an unusual place to take a stroll after midnight, unless, of course, the two were cruising for women. Or men. Maybe they had just found each other.

“Excuse me, sir,” Daniels said. “May I please see some identification?”

The younger man laughed. Daniels glowered at him.

“We’re police officers,” the black man said. “What have you got?”

The younger one exhibited a detective’s badge.

“What’s going on here, Officer?” the black man asked.

Officer Daniels hesitated just perceptibly before replying: “Shooting and hospital case inside the Inferno.”

“Was the front door open?” the black man asked.

“No.”

“I’ll go block the front,” the black man said. “The rear door to this place is halfway down the alley. There’s usually a garbage can full of beer bottles, and so on.” He turned to the young white man. “You go with him, Matt.”

The young man sort of stooped, and when he stood erect again, there was a snub-nose revolver in his hand.

Officer Daniels looked dubiously at the black man.

“I told you to go with him,” the black man said to Officer Daniels, a tone of command in his voice. Then he started to trot toward Market Street.

Officer Daniels ran after the young white man and caught up with him.

“Who is that guy?” he asked.

“That is Sergeant Jason Washington. He just told me he used to walk this beat.”

“He doesn’t have any authority here.”

“You tell him that,” Matt said, chuckling as he continued down the alley.

The sound of dying sirens and the squeal of tires announced the arrival of other police vehicles.