The Witness Read online

  “Duffy. Jack Duffy, Chief,” Williamson furnished. Williamson was a well-dressed man of forty-two who took especial pains with his full head of silver-gray hair.

  “—Duffy of—what’s his title, Glenn?”

  “Assistant to the commissioner, Chief.”

  “—whatever—as soon as possible. Either this afternoon, or first thing in the morning,” Davis finished.

  For reasons SAC Davis really did not understand, cooperation between the Philadelphia Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not what he believed it should be. Getting anything out of them was like pulling teeth. When he had found the opportunity, he had discussed the problem with Commissioner Czernich. Czernich had told him that whenever he wanted anything from the Department, he should contact Captain Duffy, who would take care of whatever was requested. It had been Davis’s experience that bringing Duffy into the loop had served primarily to promptly inform Czernich that the FBI was asking for something; it had not measurably speeded up getting anything. The reverse, he thought, might actually be the case.

  But now that Duffy was in the loop, Duffy would have to be consulted.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You might mention I had an unofficial word with Wohl. Whatever you think best.”

  “Yes, sir. How did it go with Wohl, sir?”

  “Very interesting man. He had his straight man with him. I was thinking of lunch at Alfredo’s, and we wound up in a greasy spoon in South Philadelphia.”

  “His straight man, sir?” A-SAC (Criminal Affairs) Frank F. Young asked. Young was a redhead, pale-faced, and on the edge between muscular and plump.

  “His driver. A young plainclothes cop named Payne. They have a little comedy routine they use on people Wohl’s annoyed with. I had to keep Wohl waiting twice, you see—”

  “Oh, you met Payne, Chief?” A-SAC (Counterintelligence) Isaac J. Towne asked. He was a thirty-nine-year-old, balding Mormon, who took his religion seriously, a tall, hawk-featured man who had once told Davis, perfectly serious, that he regarded the Communists as the Antichrist.

  “You know him?” Davis asked, surprised.

  “I know about him,” Towne replied. “Actually, I know a good deal about him. Among other things, he’s the fellow who blew the brains of the serial rapist all over his van.”

  “Oh, really?” A-SAC Young asked, genuine interest evident in his voice. Davis knew that Young had a fascination for what he had once called “real street cop stuff”; Davis suspected he was less interested in some of the white-collar crime that occupied a good deal of the FBI’s time and effort.

  “How is it you know ‘a good deal about him,’ Isaac?” Davis asked.

  “Well, when I saw the story in the papers, the name rang a bell, and I checked my files. We had just finished a CBI on him.” (Complete Background Investigation.)

  “He’d applied for the FBI?”

  “The Marine Corps. He was about to be commissioned.”

  “Apparently he wasn’t?”

  “He flunked the physical,” Towne said. “His father, his adoptive father, is Brewster Cortland Payne.”

  “As in Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and whatever else?”

  “And Lester. Right, Chief.”

  SAC Davis found that fascinating. He was himself an attorney, and although he had never actively practiced law, he was active in the Philadelphia Bar Association. He knew enough about the Bar in Philadelphia to know that Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester was one of the more prestigious firms.

  “His ‘adoptive’ father, you said?”

  “Yes, sir. His father was a Philadelphia cop. A sergeant. Killed in the line of duty. His mother remarried Payne, and Payne adopted the boy.”

  That would stick in your mind, Davis thought, a street cop killed in the line of duty.

  “I wonder why he became a cop?” Davis wondered aloud, and then, without waiting for a reply, asked, “You say he was the man who shot the serial rapist?”

  “Right, Chief. In the head, with his service revolver. Blew his brains all over the inside of his van.”

  And that, too, would stick in your mind, wouldn’t it, Isaac?

  “I seem to remember seeing something about that in the papers,” Davis said. “But as I was saying, Wohl, once he’d made his annoyance with me quite clear, was very cooperative. He’s going to photocopy everything in his files and have this Payne fellow bring it over here tomorrow.”

  The three A-SACs nodded their understanding.

  “I just had a thought,” Davis went on. “Do you happen to recall precisely why Payne failed the Marine Corps physical?”

  Isaac Young searched his memory, then shook his head. “No.”

  “Can you find out?” Davis ordered. “The FBI is always looking for outstanding young men.”

  “Right, Chief,” Isaac Young said.

  “And when Officer Payne delivers the material from Inspector Wohl, I think one of us should receive it. Tell the receptionist. Make sure she understands. Show him around the office.”

  “Right, Chief,” Young said.

  I mean, after all, Davis thought, why would a bright young man of good family want to be a cop when he could be an FBI agent?

  And if that doesn’t turn out, it can’t hurt to have a friend—especially a kid like that, who must hear all sorts of interesting things in the Department.

  Matt Payne, feeding documents into the Xerox machine, jumped when Peter Wohl spoke in his ear.

  “I have bled enough for the city for one day,” Wohl announced. “I am going home and get into a cold martini or a hot blonde, whichever comes first.”

  “Yes, sir.” Matt chuckled. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “One of the wounds from which I’m bleeding has to do with what you’re doing—”

  “Sir?” Matt asked, confused.

  “I just got off the phone with Commissioner Czernich,” Wohl went on. “I don’t know what Davis’s agenda really is, and I wondered why he came to me with the request for all that stuff. One possibility was that he didn’t want the commissioner to know he was asking for it. With that in mind, I called the commissioner and told him where and with whom we had lunch—” He saw the confused look still on Payne’s face and stopped.

  “I’m—I don’t follow you, Inspector,” Matt said.

  “For reasons I’m sure I don’t have to explain, we are very careful what we pass to the FBI,” Wohl said.

  I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Nothing goes over to them unless the commissioner approves it. Denny Coughlin or Matt Lowenstein might slip them something quietly, but since career suicide is not one of my aims, I won’t, and Davis must know that.”

  “So why did he ask you?”

  “Right. So I called the commissioner. The commissioner told me I had done the right thing in calling him, and that I should use my good judgment in giving him whatever I felt like giving him.”

  “Okay,” Matt said thoughtfully.

  “Two minutes after I hung up, Czernich called back. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking it over, and I think I know why Davis went directly to you.’ So I said, ‘Yes, sir?’ and he said, ‘It’s because you and the Payne kid look more like FBI agents than cops. Hahaha!’ And then he hung up.”

  “Jesus!” Matt said.

  “It may well be Polish humor,” Wohl said. “But I’m paranoid. The moral to this little story is that I want you to clearly understand you are to pass nothing to the FBI, or the feds generally, unless I tell you to. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. Then I will say good night.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, sir.”

  “God willing, and if the creek don’t rise,” Wohl said solemnly, and walked out of the room.

  Matt Payne finished making copies of the documents he had taken from the file, stuffed the copies into a large manila envelope, and then returned the
originals to their filing cabinet.

  It was quarter to four. He would still have to see Detective Tony Harris, and then go downtown to Homicide and see if their files contained something he hadn’t found, or would get from Harris. He would not be able to quit at five.

  Tony Harris was not in the closet-sized office he shared with Detective Jason Washington. Washington, he knew, had taken the day off; he had a place at The Shore that always seemed to need some kind of emergency repair.

  He really should, he thought, talk to Washington about the file Wohl wanted to pass to the FBI. Washington had worked with Harris on the Nelson job. He remembered overhearing Washington telling Wohl he would be back sometime in the afternoon.

  The tour lieutenant, Harry Jensen, a Highway guy, said that Harris was out on the street somewhere. Both he and Washington were running down increasingly less promising leads to find whoever had shot down Joe Magnella, the young 22nd District cop. Wohl, Matt thought, had not really been kidding when he had said he had bled enough for the city for one day; the pressure on him to find the Magnella doers was enormous.

  Payne went to Special Operations communications and tried to raise Harris on the radio. There was no reply, which meant that Harris was either working and away from his car, or that he had hung it up for the day.

  That left Homicide, and opened the question of how to get there. He could go to the sergeant and get keys to one of the Special Operations cars. Or he could see if he could catch a ride downtown in either a Special Operations car or a Highway car. In either case, when he was finished at the Roundhouse, that would leave him downtown and his personal car here.

  There was no reason for him to come back here, except to get his car, because it would be long past quitting before he finished at Homicide and finally ran Harris down, if he managed to do that.

  He went back to Lieutenant Jensen and told him that if Inspector Wohl called for him, to tell him that he had gone to Homicide in his own car, and was going to quit for the day when he finished there.

  “The inspector know where to reach you?”

  “I’ll either be home or I’ll call in,” Matt said.

  “But you are going to Homicide?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Jensen, Matt suspected, was one of a large number of people, in and out of Highway, who nursed a resentment toward him. That a rookie should have a plainclothes assignment as administrative assistant to a division commander was part of it; and part of it, Matt knew, was that he had about as powerful a rabbi, in the person of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, as they came.

  He had once discussed this with Detective Jason Washington, who had said it was clear to him that the only option Matt had in the circumstances was to adopt a “fuck you” philosophy.

  “You didn’t ask for the assignment, Matt, the mayor set that up. And it’s not your fault that Denny Coughlin looks on you as the son he never had. If people can’t figure that out for themselves, fuck ’em.”

  In time, Matt hoped, the resentment would pass.

  He drove downtown via North Broad Street, and was surprised, until he considered the hour, to find a spot in the parking area behind the Roundhouse.

  If I were a cynical man, he thought, I might be prone to suspect that not all of the captains, inspectors, and chief inspectors who toil here in The Palace scrupulously avoid leaving their place of duty before fiveP.M.

  He entered the Roundhouse by the rear door, waved his ID at the corporal behind the thick plastic window, and the corporal pushed the button that triggered the solenoid in the door to the lobby.

  He got in one of the curved elevators and rode it up one floor, and then walked down the curved corridor to the Homicide Bureau.

  He had been here often before, and twice under more or less involuntary conditions. The first time, which ranked among the top two or three most unpleasant experiences of his life, had been an eight-hour visit following his shooting of Warren K. Fletcher, aka the Northwest serial rapist.

  He had been “interviewed” by two very unpleasant Homicide detectives, under the cold eye of a Homicide captain named Henry Quaire, all three of whom seemed to feel that the shooting was not a good shooting. It had not helped at all that both Peter Wohl and Denny Coughlin had established themselves in Quaire’s office during the “interview.” By the time the “interview” was over, Matt was beginning to wonder whose side the Homicide guys were on.

  The second time was when an asshole Narcotics sergeant had actually suspected (with nothing more, really, to go on than the Porsche) that Matt was (a) involved with drugs, and therefore (b) connected with the shotgun slaying of a Mafia guy named Tony DeZego.

  That was all the bastard had. And all Matt had done to arouse his suspicion was to have driven onto the crime scene a minute or two after the shooting had taken place. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that if Matt had been involved, he wouldn’t have been the one who had sent his date to call the shooting, hospital case in.

  This afternoon, however, all was sweetness and light. He had no sooner got to the railing barring access to the interior of the Homicide Bureau when he heard his name being called, and then saw Captain Quaire smiling and waving him inside.

  Quaire offered his hand.

  “How are you, Payne? Inspector Wohl called. We’ve been expecting you.”

  “How are you, sir?”

  “I had them pull the files,” Quaire said, tapping a stack of folders on his desk.

  “I appreciate that,” Matt said.

  “I would have them Xeroxed,” Captain Quaire said, “but I didn’t know what you already had.”

  “I got a bunch,” Matt said, holding up the well-stuffed manila envelope.

  Quaire picked up the folders on his desk and carried them to an unoccupied desk in the outer office and sat there as Matt went through the Homicide files on the Nelson murder.

  There were only three things—none of which looked important—in the Homicide files that Matt hadn’t already found at Bustleton and Bowler, but it took half an hour to find them.

  “I didn’t think there’d be much,” Captain Quaire said as Matt was making copies. “Anything else we can do for Special Operations?”

  “I need to use the phone, sir,” Matt said. “I’m supposed to see if Mr. Harris has anything.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Harris,” Quaire said, dryly sarcastic. “Mr. Harris used to work here, you know.”

  “He’s told me,” Matt said, smiling.

  Quaire laughed.

  “Help yourself,” Quaire said, pointing at a telephone.

  Matt called Harris’s number at Special Operations. There was no answer. Then he called Police Radio and asked the operator if she could contact W-William Four and ask him to call Homicide.

  A minute later she reported there was no response from W-William Four.

  “Thank you,” Matt said, and hung up.

  “For your general information, Officer Payne,” Captain Quaire said, “in my long experience with Mr. Harris, when he worked here, you understand, it is often difficult to establish contact with him at the cocktail hour.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll remember that.”

  “Why don’t you try him at his apartment in an hour or so?”

  “I will,” Matt said.

  Two detectives walked into the room. One of them, a slightly built, natty, olive-skinned man, Matt recognized. He was a Homicide detective, Joe D’Amata. The other one, a large, heavy, round-faced man, he didn’t know.

  “What have you got, Joe?” Captain Quaire said.

  “High noon at the OK Corral, Captain,” D’Amata said. “Whaddaya say, Payne? How are you?”

  “Hello, Joe.”

  “He calls Tony Harris ‘Mr.’” Captain Quaire said. “That tell you anything?”

  “Tony Harris is much older than I am,” D’Amata said, grinning. He turned to the other detective. “You know Payne, don’t you?”

  The other detective shook his head no
.

  “Jerry Pelosi, Central Detectives, Matt Payne, Special Operations, also known as ‘Dead Eye.’”

  “I know who he is, I just never met him. How are you, Payne?” Pelosi said, offering Matt a large, muscular hand and a smile.

  “Hi,” Matt said, and then, to keep D’Amata from making further witty reference to the shooting, he asked, “What’s this ‘OK Corral’ business?”

  “‘High Noon at the OK Corral,’” D’Amata corrected him. “The current count of bullets fired and found at Goldblatt’s, not counting what the medical examiner will find in Mr. Cohn—three, maybe four—is twenty-six.”

  “Jesus,” Captain Quaire said.

  “And they’re still looking.”

  “What’s Goldblatt’s?” Matt asked.

  “Furniture store on South Street,” Pelosi explained. “Robbery and murder. Early this afternoon.”

  “And a gun battle,” Matt offered.

  “No,” D’Amata said, as much to Captain Quaire as to correct Payne. “Not a gun battle. Nobody took a shot at them. Nobody even had a gun. The doers just shot the place up, for no reason that I can figure.”

  Quaire looked between the two detectives. When his eyes met Pelosi’s, Pelosi said, “What I can’t figure, Captain, is why they hit this place in the first place. They never have much cash around, couple of hundred bucks, maybe a thousand tops. They could have hit any one of the bars around there, and got more. And why did they hit it now? I mean, right after the holidays, there’s no business?”

  “You have any idea who the doers are?” Quaire asked.

  “No, but we’re working on that,” D’Amata said. “The victims are still a little shaky. I want them calm when I show them some pictures.”

  Quaire nodded.

  “I’d better get out of here,” Matt Payne said, suspecting he might be in the way. “Thank you for your help, Captain. And it was nice to meet you.”

  “Same here,” Pelosi replied.

  “Anytime you want to sell that piece of shit you drive around in, Payne, cheap, of course, call me,” D’Amata said, punching Matt’s shoulder.