The Assassin boh-5 Read online

  "The East Detective captain is a friend of mine, Brewster," Denny Coughlin said, finally. "I think Personnel will send Matt there. He'll have a chance to work with some good people, really learn the trade. He needs the experience, and they'll keep an eye out for him."

  Brewster Payne knew Denny Coughlin well enough to understand that if he said he thought Personnel would send Matt somewhere, it was already arranged, and with the understanding that Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin would be keeping an eye on the people keeping an eye on Matt.

  "Thank you, Denny," Brewster Cortland Payne II had said.

  ****

  When Matt drove the Bug into the parking garage beneath the Delaware Valley Cancer Building (and the buildings to the right and left of it) he found that someone was in his reserved parking spot. Ordinarily, this would have caused him to use foul language, but he recognized the Cadillac Fleetwood. He knew it was registered to Brewster C. Payne, Providence Road, Wallingford.

  When he had moved into the apartment, his father had told him that he had reserved two parking spaces in the underground garage for the resident of the attic apartment, primarily as a token of his affection, of course, and only incidentally because it would also provide a parking space for his mother, or other family members, when they had business around Rittenhouse Square.

  Until three weeks before it had never posed a problem, because Matt had kept only one car in the garage. Not the battered twelveyear-old Volkswagen Beetle he was now driving, but a glistening, yearold, silver Porsche 911. It had been his graduation present from his father. From the time he had been given the Porsche, the Bug-which had also been a present from his father, six years before, when he had gotten his driver's license-had sat, rotted actually, in the garage in Wallingford. He had for some reason been reluctant to sell it.

  Three weeks before, as he sat taking his promotion physical, he had realized that not selling it had been one of the few wise decisions he had made in his lifetime.

  One of the dumber things he had ever done, when assigned to Special Operations out of the Police Academy, was to drive to work in the Porsche. It had immediately identified him as the rich kid from the Main Line who was playing at being a cop. He would not make that same mistake when reporting to East Detectives as a rookie detective.

  The battery had been dead, understandably, when he rode out to Wallingford with his father to claim the car, but once he'd put the charger on it, it had jumped to life. He'd changed the oil, replaced two tires, and the Bug was ready to provide sensible, appropriate transportation for him back and forth to work.

  The Porsche was sitting in the parking spot closest to the elevator, beside the Cadillac, which meant that he had no place to park the Bug, since his mother had chosen to exercise her right to the "extra" parking space. He was sure it was his mother, because his father commuted to Philadelphia by train.

  There were several empty parking spaces, and after a moment's indecision, he pulled the Bug into the one reserved for the executive director. With a little bit of luck, Matt reasoned, that gentleman would have exercised his right to quit for the day whenever he wanted to, and would no longer require his space.

  He walked up the stairs to the first floor, however, found the rent-a-cop, and handed him the keys to the Bug.

  "I had to park my Bug in the executive director's slot; my mother' s in mine."

  "Yourfather" the rent-a-cop said. He was a retired police officer. "He said if I saw you, to tell you he wants to see you. He'll be in the Rittenhouse Club until six. I stuck a note under your door."

  "Thank you," Matt said.

  "I'll take care of the car, don't worry about it. I think he's gone for the day."

  "Thank you," Matt said, and got on the elevator and rode up to the third floor, wondering what was going on. He had a premonition, not that the sky was falling in, but that something was about to happen that he was not going to like.

  He unlocked the door to the stairway, opened it, and picked up the envelope on the floor.

  4:20 P.M.

  Matt:

  If this comes to hand after six, when I will have left the Rittenhouse, please call me at home no matter what the hour. This is rather important.

  Dad.

  He jammed the note in his pocket and went up the stairs. The red light on his answering machine was blinking. There were two messages. The first was from someone who wished to sell him burglar bars at a special, one-time reduced rate, and the second was a familiar voice:

  "I tried to call you at work, but you had already left. Your dad and I are going to have a drink in the Rittenhouse Club. You need to be there. If you don't get this until after six, call him or me when you finally do."

  The caller had not identified himself. Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin did not like to waste words, and he correctly assumed that his voice would be recognized.

  And, Matt thought, there had been something in his voice suggesting there was something wrong in a new detective having gone off shift at the called-for time.

  What the hell is going on?

  Matt picked up the telephone and dialed a number from memory.

  "Yeah?" Detective Charley McFadden was not about to win an award for telephone courtesy.

  "This is Sears Roebuck. We're running a sale on previously owned wedding gowns."

  Detective McFadden was not amused. "Hi, Matt, what's up?"

  "I don't know, but I'm not going to be able to meet you at six. You going to be home later?"

  "How much later?"

  "Maybe six-thirty, quarter to seven?"

  "Call me at McGee's. I'll probably still be there."

  "Sorry, Charley."

  "Yeah, well, what the hell. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll get lucky without you."

  Matt hung up, looked at his watch, and then quickly left his apartment.

  ****

  Matt walked up the stairs of the Rittenhouse Club, pushed open the heavy door, and went into the foyer. He looked up at the board behind the porter's counter, on which the names of all the members were listed, together with a sliding indicator that told whether or not they were in the club.

  "Your father's in the lounge, Mr. Payne," the porter said to him.

  "Thank you," Matt said.

  Brewster Cortland Payne II, a tall, angular, distinguished-looking man who was actually far wittier than his appearance suggested, saw him the moment he entered the lounge and raised his hand. Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, a heavyset, ruddy-faced man in a wellfitting pin-striped suit, turned to look, and then smiled. They were sitting in rather small leather-upholstered armchairs between which sat a small table. There were squat whiskey glasses, small glass water pitchers, a silver bowl full of mixed nuts, and a battered, but wellshined, brass ashtray with a box of wooden matches in a holder on it on the table.

  "Good," Brewster Payne said, smiling and rising from his chair to touch Matt softly and affectionately on the arm. "We caught you."

  "Dad. Uncle Denny."

  "Matty, I tried to call you at East Detectives," Coughlin said, sitting back down. "You had already gone."

  "I left at fiveafter four, Uncle Denny. The City got their full measure of my flesh for their day's pay."

  An elderly waiter in a white jacket appeared.

  "Denny's drinking Irish and the power of suggestion got to me," Brewster Payne said. "But have what you'd like."

  "Irish is fine with me."

  "All around, please, Philip," Brewster Payne said.

  I have just had a premonition: I am not going to like whatever is going to happen. Whatever this is all about, it is not "let's call Good Ol' Matt and buy him a drink at the Rittenhouse Club."

  THREE

  "Are we celebrating something, or is this boys' night out?" Matt asked.

  Coughlin chuckled.

  "Well, more or less, we're celebrating something," Brewster Payne said. "Penny's coming home."

  "Is she really?" Matt said, and the moment the words were out of his
mouth, he realized that not only had he been making noise, rather than responding, but that his disinterest had not only been apparent to his father, but had annoyed him, perhaps hurt him, as well.

  Penny was Miss Penelope Alice Detweiler of Chestnut Hill. Matt now recalled hearing from someone, probably his sister Amy, that she had been moved from The Institute of Living, a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut, to another funny farm out west somewhere. Arizona, Nevada, someplace like that.

  Matt had known Penny Detweiler all his life. Penny's father and his had been schoolmates at Episcopal Academy and Princeton, and one of the major-almost certainly the most lucrative-clients of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, his father's law firm, was Nesfoods International, Philadelphia's largest employer, H. Richard Detweiler, president and chief executive officer.

  After a somewhat pained silence, Brewster Payne said, "I was under the impression that you were fond of Penny."

  "I am," Matt said quickly.

  I'm not at all sure that's true. I am not, now that I think about it, at all fond of Penny. She's just been around forever, like the walls. I've never even thought of her as a girl, really.

  He corrected himself: There was that incident when we were four or five when I talked her into showing me hers and her mother caught us at it, and had hysterically shrieked at me that I was a filthy little boy, an opinion of me I strongly suspect she still holds.

  But fond? No. The cold truth is that I now regard Precious Penny (to use her father's somewhat nauseating appellation) very much as I would regard a run-over dog. I am dismayed and repelled by what she did.

  "You certainly managed to conceal your joy at the news they feel she can leave The Lindens."

  The Lindens, Matt recalled, is the name of the new funny farm. And it's in Nevada, not Arizona. She's been there what? Five months? Six?

  There was another of what Matt thought of as "Dad's Significant Silences." He dreaded them. His father did not correct or chastise him. He just looked at the worm before him until the worm, squirming, figured out himself the error, or the bad manners, he had just manifested to God and Brewster Cortland Payne II.

  Finally, Brewster Payne went on: "According to Amy, and according to the people at The Lindens, the problem of her physical addiction to narcotics is pretty much under control."

  Matt kept his mouth shut, but in looking away from his father, to keep him from seeing Matt's reaction to that on his face, Matt found himself looking at Dennis V. Coughlin, who just perceptibly shook his head. The meaning was clear:You and I don't believe that, we know that no more than one junkie in fifty ever gets the problem under control, but this is not the time or place to say so.

  "I'm really glad to hear that," Matt said.

  "Which is not to say that her problems are over," Brewster Payne went on. "There is specifically the problem of the notoriety that went with this whole unfortunate business."

  The newspapers in Philadelphia, in the correct belief that their readers would be interested, indeed, fascinated, had reported in great detail that the good-looking blonde who had been wounded when her boyfriend-a gentleman named Anthony J. "Tony the Zee" DeZego, whom it was alleged had connections to organized crime-had been assassinated in a downtown parking garage was none other than Miss Penelope Detweiler, only child of the Chestnut Hill/Nesfoods International Detweilers.

  "That's yesterday's news," Matt said. "That was seven months ago."

  "Dick Detweiler doesn't think so," Brewster Payne said. "That's where this whole thing started."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Dick Detweiler didn't want Penny to get off the airliner and find herself facing a mob of reporters shoving cameras in her face."

  "Why doesn't he send the company airplane after her?" Matt wondered aloud. "Have it land at Northeast Philadelphia?"

  "That was the original idea, but Amy said that she considered it important that Penny not think that her return home was nothing more than a continuation of her hospitalization."

  "I'm lost, Dad."

  "I don't completely understand Amy's reasoning either, frankly, but I think the general idea is that Penny should feel, when she leaves The Lindens, that she is closing the door on her hospitalization and returning to a normal life. Hence, no company plane. Equally important, no nurse, not even Amy, to accompany her, which would carry with it the suggestion that she's still under care."

  "Amy just wants to turn her loose in Nevada?" Matt asked incredulously. "How far is the funny farm from Las Vegas?"

  Brewster Payne's face tightened.

  "I don't at all like your choice of words, Matt. That was not only uncalled for, it was despicable!" he said icily.

  "Christ, Matty!" Dennis V. Coughlin said, seemingly torn between disgust and anger.

  "I'm sorry," Matt said, genuinely contrite. 'That just: came out. But just turning her loose, alone,that's insane."

  "It would, everyone agrees, beill-advised," Brewster Payne said. " That's where you come in, Matt."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Amy's reasoning here, and in this I am in complete agreement, is that you are the ideal person to go out there and bring her home…"

  "No. Absolutely not!"

  "…for these reasons," Brewster Payne went on, ignoring him. "For one thing, Penny thinks of you as her brother…"

  "She thinks of me as the guy who pinned the tail on her," Matt said. "If it weren't for me, no one would have known she's a junkie."

  "I don't like that term, either, Matt, but that's Amy's point. If you appear out there, in a nonjudgmental role, as her friend, welcoming her back to her life…"

  "I can't believe you're going along with this," Matt said. "For one thing, Penny does not think of me as her brother. I'm just a guy she's known for a long time who betrayed her, turned her in. If I had been locked up out there for six months in that funny farm, I would really hate me."

  "The reason Amy, and the people at The Lindens, feel that Penny is ready to resume her life is because, in her counseling, they have caused her to see things as they really are. To see you, specifically, as someone who was trying to help, not hurt her."

  I just don't believe this bullshit, and I especially don't believe my dad going along with it.

  "Dad, this is so much bullshit."

  "Amy said that would probably be your reaction," Brewster Payne said. "I can see she was right."

  "Anyway, it's a moot point. I couldn't go out there if I wanted to," Matt said. "Uncle Denny, tell him that I just can't call up my sergeant and tell him that I won't be in for a couple of days…"

  "I'm disappointed in you, Matty," Chief Coughlin said. "I thought by now you would have put two and two together."

  I'm a little disappointed in me myself, now that the mystery of my temporary assignment, report to Sergeant McElroy, has been cleared up.

  "What did Detweiler do, call you?"

  "He called the mayor," Coughlin said. "And the mayor called Chief Lowenstein and me."

  "I don't think it entered Dick Detweiler's mind, it certainly never entered mine, that you would have any reservations at all about helping Penny in any way you could," Brewster Payne said. Matt looked across the table at him. "But if you feel this strongly about it, I'll call Amy and…"

  Matt held up both hands. "I surrender."

  "I'm not sure that's the attitude we're all looking for."

  Matt met his father's eyes.

  "I'll do whatever I can to help Penny," he said.

  There was another Significant Silence, and then Brewster C. Payne reached in his breast pocket and took out an envelope.

  "These are the tickets. You're on American Airlines Flight 485 tomorrow morning at eight-fifteen. A car will meet you at the airport in Las Vegas. You will spend the night there…"

  "At The Lindens?"

  "Presumably. And return the next morning."

  ****

  Shortly afterward, after having concluded their business with Detective Payne, Chief Coughlin and Brewste
r C. Payne went their respective ways.

  Matt spent the balance of the evening in McGee's Saloon, in the company of Detective Charley McFadden of Northwest Detectives.

  Perhaps naturally, their conversation dealt with their professional duties. Detective McFadden, who had been seven places below Matt on the detective examination listing, told Matt what he was doing in Northwest Detectives,

  Charley had been an undercover Narc right out of the Police Academy, before he'd gone to Special Operations where he and Matt had become friends. On his very first assignment as a rookie detective, he found that his lieutenant was a supervisor (then a sergeant) he'd worked under in Narcotics, and who treated him like a detective, not a rookie detective. His interesting case of the day had been the investigation of a shooting of a numbers runner by a client who felt that he had cheated.

  Matt had not felt that Detective McFadden would be thrilled to hear of his specialization in investigating recovered stolen automobiles, and spared him a recounting. Neither had he been fascinated with Detective McFadden's report on the plans for his upcoming wedding, and the ritual litany of his intended's many virtues.

  The result of this was that Matt had a lot to drink, and woke up with a hangover and just enough time to dress, throw some clothes in a bag, and catch a cab to the airport, but not to have any breakfast.

  ****

  At the very last minute, specifically at 7:40 A.M., as he handed his small suitcase to the attendant at the American Airlines counter, Detective Payne realized that he had, as either a Pavlovian reflex, or because he was more than a little hung over, picked up his Chief's Special revolver and its holster from the mantelpiece and clipped it to his waistband before leaving his apartment.

  Carrying a pistol aboard an airliner was in conflict with federal law, which prohibited any passenger, cop or not, to go armed except on official business, with written permission.

  "Hold it, please," Officer Payne said to the counter attendant. She looked at him with annoyance, and then with wide-eyed interest as he took out his pistol, opened the cylinder, and ejected the cartridges.