The Witness Read online

  He would not, however, promise (as Washington asked) to return them to Homicide once they caught whoever had murdered Jerome Nelson.

  That job had just about solved itself when two critters had been caught by the cops in Atlantic City using Nelson’s credit cards, but by then a looney tune in Northwest Philadelphia had started abducting and then carving up women, and the process had been repeated: Jerry Carlucci had called a press conference to announce he had given the job of apprehending the Northwest serial rapist to Special Operations, and Wohl had given it to Washington and Harris.

  Washington and Harris had just about identified the psychopath who was carrying women off in the back of his van when, in one of those lucky breaks that sometimes happen, his van had been spotted by the rookie cop Wohl had had dumped in his lap by Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and was using as his driver.

  Denny Coughlin, in what some people would call blatant nepotism but which Jason Washington felt perfectly sensible, had sent Officer Matthew M. Payne right out of the Police Academy to Special Operations, his intention clearly being to keep the kid from getting hurt before he came to his senses and quit the cops.

  The kid had been born Matthew Mark Moffitt, three months after his father, Sergeant John Xavier Moffitt, had gotten himself shot to death answering a silent alarm. Sergeant Moffitt and Denny Coughlin had gone through the Academy together, and Coughlin had wept shamelessly at his funeral and when he had become the baby’s godfather three months later.

  Washington had always had the private opinion that Denny Coughlin had been more than a little sweet on the widow. If he had been (or, for that matter, if he still was; he had never married), he hadn’t been able to do anything about it, for six months after Sergeant Moffitt had been killed, his widow got a job working as a trainee-secretary for Lowerie, Tant, Foster, Pedigill and Payne, a large and prestigious law firm. She hadn’t worked more than a month or so when, pushing the kid in a stroller by the Franklin Institute on a Sunday afternoon, she met Brewster Cortland Payne II, walking his kids.

  Payne recognized her vaguely from work; she was one of the girls in the typing pool. He spoke to her, and Patty Moffitt replied, because she had seen him at work too. He was the only son of one of the two founding partners of the law firm.

  Within half an hour, Brewster Cortland Payne II learned that Mrs. Moffitt was a widow, and Patty Moffitt learned that his kids were motherless: Mrs. Payne had been killed in an auto accident returning from the Payne lodge in the Poconos some months before.

  A month later Patricia Moffitt, enraging her family, her late husband’s family, and the Payne family establishment, became Mrs. Brewster C. Payne II. Nice Irish Catholic Widows do not marry Main Line WASPs in an Episcopal Church, nor let their fatherless children be adopted by WASPs, nor become Episcopalians.

  Similarly, Main Line WASPs, scions of distinguished families, and heirs apparent to prestigious law firms, do not consort with—much less marry—little Irish typists from Kensington. Brewster C. Payne II resigned from the family law firm and set up his own practice in a two-room office with his bride functioning as his secretary.

  That was twenty-odd years ago. Mrs. Brewster C. Payne II (who had borne Mr. Payne two additional children) was now a Main Line Matron of impeccable reputation, and Brewster C. Payne, Attorney At Law, was now the presiding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, Lawyers, whose offices and eighty-four junior partners and associates occupied two entire floors of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, and were arguably the most successful and unquestionably one of the two or three most prestigious law firms in the city.

  Mrs. Payne had done what she could (in Jason Washington’s opinion, taken the extra step, and then a couple more) to see that her son did not lose contact with either her late husband’s family or with her late husband’s best friend, Dennis V. Coughlin.

  Her late husband’s family were cops. John X. Moffitt’s father and grandfather had been cops, and his brother (Richard C., known as “Dutch”) was a cop. Her ex-mother-in-law, known as Mother Moffitt, a formidable German/Irish lady in her late sixties, had a father and two brothers who had retired from the Department.

  Seven months before, when Captain “Dutch” Moffitt had been given a police funeral presided over by the cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia at Saint Monica’s Church, Mother Moffitt had let the world know that she had not forgiven her ex-daughter-in-law for leaving Holy Mother Church and taking her son with her. Patricia Moffitt Payne’s name had been conspicuously absent not only from the list of family members entitled to sit in a reserved pew but from the list of Friends of the Family as well.

  When Denny Coughlin had told the inspector working the door that the entire Payne family was to be seated inside and up front in Saint Monica’s if that meant evicting members of the City Council, Mother Moffitt had pretended Patty Payne and her husband and their kids were invisible.

  Three days later Matthew M. Payne had walked into the City Administration Building across from City Hall, taken the exam, and joined the cops.

  There was nothing that either Brewster C. Payne or Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin could do about it. The two, who over the years had become friends, had a long talk over lunch at the Union League Club. They agreed that Matt’s motives were fairly obvious: The fact that his Uncle Dutch had been killed obviously had a lot to do with it, and so did the results of a physical examination that found something wrong with his eyes and would keep him from becoming a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps when he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

  He could prove his challenged masculinity by becoming a cop, in the footsteps of his real father, uncle, and grandfather.

  Adoptive father and godfather agreed that what Matt really should do was go on to law school, but they also agreed that he was just as hardheaded as his mother when he wanted to do something, and could not be talked out of joining the cops.

  It was to be hoped that when the emotions caused by Dutch’s death and the Marine Corps rejection had time to simmer down, he would come to his senses. They were both agreed that Matt was a more levelheaded kid than most. With a little bit of luck that would happen before he was close to graduating from the Police Academy.

  It didn’t happen. He did well in the Academy.

  Dennis V. Coughlin, as a sergeant, had gone to Patricia Moffitt’s apartment to tell her that her husband had just been shot to death. He had no intention of going to Patricia Moffitt Payne to tell her her son had just been killed as a cop. The most influential of the seven chief inspectors had a word with the chief of Personnel, and Officer Payne was assigned to Special Operations.

  There, after Denny Coughlin had a quiet word with Peter Wohl, Officer Payne was assigned duties as a sort of clerk/driver, the hope now being that when he saw what police work was really like, he would finally come to his senses, quit the cops, and go to law school.

  What Jason Washington hadn’t already known of Matt Payne’s background had been filled in by Peter Wohl when he gave him Payne as a gofer. The investigation of the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist/murderer had become very intense. Washington needed someone to run errands, make telephone calls, and otherwise save his time.

  Payne had gone with Washington to Bucks County, where the body of the latest victim had been found. Washington had gotten a description of the man, his van, the license plate number, and had made plaster casts of the van’s tire tracks. Within hours, they would know who they were looking for.

  Washington had sent Payne back to Philadelphia with the tire casts and orders to tell Peter Wohl of the latest developments before he quit for the day. Payne had dropped off the tire casts at the laboratory in the Roundhouse, and then turned in the unmarked police car he had been driving at Special Operations headquarters at Bustleton and Bowler Streets.

  In his own car, on the way to Wohl’s apartment in Chestnut Hill, Payne had spotted the van. There was no way he could call for backup. In the very first time he
had ever attempted to exercise his authority as a police officer, Payne had walked up to the van.

  The driver had then tried to run him over. Payne had jumped out of the way, but the van had wiped out the rear end of Payne’s Porsche 911 and then raced away.

  Payne had fired five shots, all the cylinder of his snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Undercover held. One bullet, in what Jason Washington believed (and, more importantly, Payne realized) was blind luck, had struck the van driver in the back of the head.

  The van had crashed into a tree. When Payne jerked the door open, he found the looney-tune’s next intended victim, already stripped naked and trussed up like a Christmas turkey, under a tarpaulin in the back.

  When Police Radio had put out the beep beep beep, assist officer, shots fired, hospital case the second response had been “M-Mary One in on the shots fired.”

  M-Mary One was the radio call assigned to Jerry Carlucci’s official Cadillac. The mayor had been on the way to his Chestnut Hill home after speaking at a dinner in South Philadelphia.

  The lifelong cop in Jerry Carlucci could no more resist responding to an assist officer shots fired than he could pass up a chance to speak to a group of potential voters. Then, too, he sensed that there were a lot of voters out there who liked to see pictures in the newspapers, or on television, of their mayor at a crime scene, personally leading the war against crime.

  Mickey O’Hara had also been working the streets that night. The next morning’s Bulletin had a three-column picture of Mayor Carlucci, standing so that the snub-nosed revolver on his belt was visible under his jacket, with his arm around Officer Payne’s shoulder. In the accompanying story by Michael J. O’Hara, Bulletin Staff Writer, Officer Payne was described by the mayor as both “administrative assistant” to Peter Wohl and as “the type of well-educated, dedicated, courageous young police officer” now, under his direction, being recruited for the Police Department.

  The mayor’s description of Matt Payne as Wohl’s administrative assistant had erased any notions Wohl might have had to transfer Officer Payne someplace else.

  He had joked about it to Washington: “Thank God for our mayor. I didn’t even know what an administrative assistant was, and now I have one.” But Washington sensed that Wohl was really not at all displeased.

  For one thing, a “driver,” analogous to an aide-de-camp for a general officer in the military services, was a perquisite of inspectors, chief inspectors, and deputy commissioners. Wohl was only a staff inspector, but he was also the only division commanding officer who was not at least an inspector. Before the mayor’s off-the-cuff designation of Matt Payne as his “administrative assistant,” Wohl had not had a driver, and there would have been cracks about delusions of glory from the corps of inspectors and chief inspectors, more than a few of whom thought they should have been given command of Special Operations, if he had asked for one.

  But most important, Washington thought, was that Wohl needed not only a driver, but one like Matt Payne. It may have sounded like bullshit when The Dago said it for the papers, but Washington could find nothing wrong with the notion of young police officers who were in fact well educated, dedicated, and courageous.

  “Detective D’Amata said it was ‘high noon at the OK Corral’ at the furniture store,” Matt Payne said.

  There he goes again. “Detective D’Amata,” said with respect, instead of just D’Amata, or for that matter “Joe.” Joe D’Amata would not be at all annoyed to be called by his first name by Matt. So far as D’Amata’s concerned, Matt stopped being a rookie when he shot the serial rapist.

  “Meaning what?”

  “He said the doers really shot the place up. He said they found twenty-six bullets.”

  “There was a gun battle?”

  “No. That’s what he said was interesting. They just shot off their guns. Not even the victim had a gun.”

  “There was just the one victim?”

  “He was the maintenance man; he walked in on it.”

  “They have a lead on the doers?”

  “I think Detective D’Amata has a good idea. He said that the witnesses were still pretty shaky; he wanted them to calm down a little before he showed them pictures.”

  “That may work, and it may not,” Washington said. “A lot of people, with good reason, are nervous about having to go to court and point their fingers. Particularly at scumbags like these, a gang of them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  Washington met his eyes.

  “I am not going to tell you anymore not to call me ‘sir,’” he said.

  “Sorry,” Matt said, throwing up his hands. “It just slips out.”

  “Let me show you what the postman brought today,” Washington said. He went to the table by the door and returned with a postcard and handed it to Matt.

  It was a printed form, Number 73–41, (Revised 3/72) issued by the Personnel Department of the City of Philadelphia, headed FINAL RESULTS OF EXAMINATIONS. It informed Jason Washington that his Final Average on the Examination for Police Sergeant was 96.52 and that his Rank on List was 3.

  “Jesus!” Payne exclaimed happily.

  “You asked what the occasion was,” Washington said.

  “Well, congratulations!” Matt said enthusiastically. “I didn’t even know you had taken the examination.”

  “I’d almost forgotten I had,” Washington said.

  Matt looked at him with curiosity in his eyes, but did not ask.

  “Two days after Wohl shanghaied me to Special Operations,” Washington explained, “I put my name in. I almost didn’t take it. I never cracked a book.”

  “But you came in third,” Matt said.

  “As I said, Officer Payne, you may now call me ‘sir.’”

  “Well, I think this is splendid!”

  Spoken like a true Main Line WASP. “Splendid.”

  “Splendid?” Washington asked dryly.

  “I think so.”

  “Thank you, Matt,” Washington said.

  “So what happens to you now? Will they transfer you?”

  “I devoutly hope so,” Washington said. “Back to Homicide.”

  “I’d hate to see you go.”

  Now that I think about it, I’m not so sure I want to go back to Homicide. Not as a sergeant.

  “I don’t think Peter Wohl will let me go anywhere until we catch the cop killer,” Washington said.

  “Is that the way that works? It’s up to the inspector?”

  “No. The way it works is that assignments of newly promoted people are made by Personnel. They evaluate the individual in terms of vacancies, his future career, and the good of the Department. After a good deal of thought and paper-pushing, they reach a decision, and the promotee—is that right, ‘promotee’?”

  “Why not?” Matt chuckled.

  “—the promotee gets his new assignment. Providing of course, that certain members of the hierarchy, Denny Coughlin, for example, and Matt Lowenstein, people like that, and, of course, our own beloved commander, P. Wohl, agree. If they don’t like the promotee’s assignment, they somehow manage to get it changed to one they do like. The operative words are ‘for the good of the Department.’”

  “I think I understand,” Matt said.

  There was the sound of a key in the door. Jason Washington started toward it, but it opened before he could reach it.

  It was a very tall, sharply featured woman, her hair drawn tight against an angular skull.

  She looks, Matt thought, like one of the Egyptian bas-reliefs in the museum.

  Martha (Mrs. Jason) Washington, wearing a flowing pale green dress, stepped into the apartment. Behind her was the doorman, carrying a very large framed picture, wrapped in kraft paper.

  “Take that from him, please,” she ordered.

  Washington put his hand in his pocket, gave the doorman a couple of dollar bills, and relieved him of the picture.

  “Hello, Matt,” Martha Washington said.

  “Good evening,
” Matt said.

  “What’s this?” Jason asked.

  “I thought you could tell from the shape,” she said. “It’s a bathtub.”

  Jason Washington tore the kraft paper away. It was a turn-of-the-century oil painting of a voluptuous nude, reclining on her side.

  “Finally, some art I can understand and appreciate,” Washington said.

  “Inspector Wohl’s got one almost just like that,” Matt said.

  “That figures,” Martha said. “That’s to sell, Jason, not for you to ogle; don’t get attached to it. I found it in one of those terribly chic places off South Street. I think he needed the money to pay the rent. I bought it right, and I think I know just where to get rid of it.”

  “Well, I like it,” Matt said. “How much do you want for it?”

  “You’re too young,” she said. “And besides, it would enrage your liberated female girlfriends.”

  “Yeah,” Matt said, considering that. The prospect seemed to please him.

  She seemed to see his whiskey glass for the first time.

  “Are we celebrating something?” she asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Matt said.

  “Good evening, Matthew,” Jason Washington said. “Nice of you to drop by.”

  “Just what’s going on here?”

  “Good night, Mrs. Washington,” Matt said.

  “Jason?” Mrs. Washington asked. There was a hint of threat in her voice.

  “I took the sergeant’s exam,” Jason said.

  “Well, it’s about damned time,” she said. “And you think you passed? Is that what you’re celebrating?”

  “Not exactly,” Matt heard Jason Washington say as he pulled the door closed after him.

  EIGHT

  Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein lived in a row house on Tyson Avenue, just off Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia, with his wife, Sarah, and their only child, Samuel Lowenstein, who was fifteen.