Men In Blue Page 8

  Brewster was probably right—he usually was—but Patricia wasn’t sure. From what she had reliably heard about what took place on the University of Pennsylvania campus, and particularly along Fraternity Row, there was a large garden of flowering blossoms just waiting to be pollinated. Matt could be in love, of course, with some girl immune to his charms, which would explain a good deal about his behavior, but Patricia had a gut feeling that it was something else.

  And whatever was bothering him, the murder of his uncle Dutch was going to make things worse.

  The traffic into Philadelphia was heavy, and it took Patricia Payne longer than thirty minutes to get into town, and then when she got to the University of Pennsylvania campus, there was a tie-up on Walnut Street by the Delta Phi Omicron house, an old and stately brownstone mansion. A car had broken down, against the curb, forcing the cars in the other lane to merge with those in the inner; they were backed up for two blocks, waiting their turn.

  And then she drew close and saw that the car blocking the outside lane, directly in front of the fraternity house, was a black Oldsmobile. There was an extra radio antenna, a short one, mounted on the inside shelf by the rear window. It was Denny Coughlin’s car.

  When you are a chief inspector of the Philadelphia Police Department, Patricia Payne thought wryly, you park any place you damned well please.

  She pulled in behind the Oldsmobile, slid across the seat, and got out the passenger side. Denny was already out of the Oldsmobile, and another man got out of the driver’s side and stepped onto the sidewalk.

  She kissed Denny, noticing both that he was picking up some girth, and that he still apparently bought his cologne depending on what was cheapest when he walked into Walgreen’s Drugstore.

  “By God, you’re a good-looking woman,” Denny said. “Patty, you remember Sergeant Tom Lenihan?”

  “Yes, of course,” Pat said. “How are you, Sergeant?”

  “Tom, you think you remember how to direct traffic?” Coughlin said, pointing at the backed-up cars.

  “Yes, sir,” Lenihan said.

  “We won’t be long in here,” Coughlin said, and took Pat’s arm in his large hand and walked her up the steep, wide stone stairs to the fraternity house.

  “Can I help you?” a young man asked, when they had pushed open the heavy oak door with frosted glass inserts and were in the foyer of the building.

  “I’m Mrs. Payne,” Pat said. “I’m looking for my son.”

  The young man went to the foot of the curving staircase.

  “Mr. Payne, sir,” he called. “You have visitors, sir. It’s your mommy!”

  Denny Coughlin gave him a frosty glance.

  Matthew Mark Payne appeared a moment later at the head of the stairs. He was a tall, lithe young man, with dark, thick hair. He was twenty-one, and he would graduate next month, and follow his father into the marines. He had taken the Platoon Leader’s Course, and was going to be a distinguished graduate, which meant that he could have a regular marine commission, if he wanted it, and another of Patricia Payne’s worries was that he would take it.

  His eyes were dark and intelligent, and they flashed between his mother and Coughlin. Then he started down the stairs, not smiling. He was wearing gray flannel slacks, a button-down collared blue shirt, open, and a light gray sweater.

  Coughlin turned his back to him, and said, softly. “He’s a ringer for Johnny, isn’t he?”

  “And as hardheaded,” Pat Payne said.

  Matt Payne kissed his mother without embarrassment, and offered his hand to Coughlin.

  “Uncle Denny,” he said. “What’s all this? Has something happened? Is it Dad?”

  “It’s your uncle Dick,” Patricia Payne told her son, watching his face carefully. “Dutch is dead, Matt.”

  “What happened?” he asked, tightly.

  “He walked up on a holdup,” Denny Coughlin said. “He was shot.”

  “Oh, shit!” Matt Payne said. His lips worked, and then he put his arms around his mother.

  I don’t know, she thought, whether he’s seeking comfort or trying to give it.

  “Goddamn it,” Matt said, letting his mother go.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Denny Coughlin said.

  “Did they get who did it?” Matt asked. Now, Coughlin saw, he was angry.

  “Dutch put the one who shot him down,” Coughlin said. “The other one got away. They’ll find him, Matt.”

  “Did he kill the one who shot him?” Matt asked.

  “Yes,” Coughlin said. “It was a woman, Matt, a girl.”

  “Jesus!”

  “We’re going to see your aunt Jean,” Patricia Payne said. “I thought you might want to come along.”

  “Let me get a coat and tie,” he said, and then, “Jesus! The kids!”

  “It’s a bitch, all right,” Coughlin said.

  Matt turned and went up the stairway, taking the steps two at a time.

  “He’s a nice boy,” Denny Coughlin said.

  “He’s about to go off to that damned war,” Patricia Payne said.

  “What would you rather, Patty? That he go to Canada and dodge the draft?”

  “But as a marine. “

  “I wouldn’t worry about him; that boy can take care of himself,” Coughlin said.

  “Like Dutch, right? Like his father?”

  “Come on, Patty,” Coughlin said, and put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her.

  “Oh, hell, Denny,” Patricia Payne said.

  When Matt Payne came down the stairs, he was wearing a gray flannel suit.

  Denny’s right, Patricia Payne thought, he looks just like Johnny.

  They went down the stairs. Matt got behind the wheel of the Mercury station wagon.

  “It must be nice to be a cop,” Matt said. “Park where you damned well please. A guy in the house stopped here last week, left the motor running, ran in to get some books. By the time he came out, the tow truck was hauling his car off. Cost him forty bucks for the tow truck, after he’d paid a twenty-five-dollar fine for double parking.”

  She looked at him, but didn’t reply.

  The Oldsmobile moved off.

  “Here we go,” Matt said, as he stepped on the accelerator. “Want to bet whether or not we break the speed limit?”

  “I’m not in the mood for your wit, Matt,” Patricia said.

  “Just trying to brighten up an otherwise lousy afternoon,” Matt said.

  Sergeant Lenihan turned right onto North Thirty-third Street, cut over to North Thirty-fourth at Mantua, and led the Mercury past the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens; turned left again onto Girard for a block, and finally right onto the Schuylkill Expressway, which parallels the West Bank of the river. He drove fast, well over the posted speed limit, but not recklessly. Matt had no trouble keeping up with him. He glanced at the speedometer from time to time, but did not mention the speed to his mother.

  When they crossed the Schuylkill on the Twin Bridges their pace slowed, but not much. Going past Fern Hill Park, Matt saw a police car parked off the road, watching traffic. And he saw the eyes of the policeman driving follow him as they zipped past. But the car didn’t move.

  Lenihan slowed the Oldsmobile then, to a precise forty-five miles an hour. They had to stop for the red light at Ninth Street, but for no others. The lights were supposed to be set, Matt recalled, for forty-five. That they didn’t have to stop seemed to prove it.

  “There it is,” his mother said.

  “There what is?”

  “The Waikiki Diner,” she replied. “That’s where Denny said it happened.”

  He turned to look, but couldn’t see what she was talking about.

  Lenihan turned to the right at Pennypack Circle, onto Holme Avenue, and into the Torresdale section of Philadelphia.

  There was a traffic jam, complete to a cop directing traffic, at the intersection of Academy Road and Outlook Avenue. The cop waved the Oldsmobile through, but then gestured vigorously for the Mercury to keep goi
ng down Academy.

  Matt stopped and shook his head, and pointed down Outlook. The white-capped traffic cop walked up to the car. Matt lowered the window.

  “Captain Moffitt was my uncle,” Matt said.

  “Sorry,” the cop said, and waved him through.

  There were more cars than Matt could easily count before the house overlooking the fenced-in fairway of the Torresdale Golf Course. Among them was His Honor the Mayor Jerry Carlucci’s Cadillac limousine.

  Matt saw that there was at least one TV camera crew set up on the golf course, on the other side of the fence that separated it from Outlook Avenue. And there were people with still cameras.

  “Park the car, Tom, please,” Chief Inspector Coughlin said to his aide, “and then come back and take care of their car, too.”

  He got out of the Oldsmobile and stood in the street, waiting for Matt and Patty to drive up.

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl walked up to him.

  “Can’t we run those fucking ghouls off, Peter?” Coughlin said, nodding toward the press behind the golf course fence.

  “I wish we could, sir,” Wohl said. “If you’ve got a minute, Chief?”

  Matt stopped the Mercury at Coughlin’s signal. Patty lowered the window, and Coughlin leaned down to it.

  “Just leave the keys, Matt,” he said. “Lenihan will park it, and then catch up with us.” He opened Patty’s door, and she got out. “I’ll be with you in just a minute, dear. I gotta talk to a guy.”

  He walked Wohl twenty feet down the sidewalk.

  “Shoot,” he said. “I gotta get inside. That’s Dutch’s sister-in-law. Ex-sister-in-law. And his nephew.”

  “The commissioner said if I saw you before he did, I should tell you what’s going on.”

  “He here?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wohl said. “There was an eyewitness, Chief, Miss Louise Dutton, of Channel Nine.”

  “The blonde?” Coughlin asked.

  “Right,” Wohl said. “She was with Captain Moffitt at the time of the shooting,” he added, evenly.

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Wohl said.

  “You don’t know?” Coughlin asked, on the edge of sarcasm.

  “She said that she was meeting him to get his reaction to people calling the Highway Patrol ‘Carlucci’s Commandos,’ “ Wohl said. “She was very upset, sir, when I got there. She was kneeling over Captain Moffitt, weeping.”

  “Where is she?” Coughlin asked.

  “She went from the diner to Channel Nine—”

  “They didn’t take her to the Roundhouse?” Coughlin interrupted. “Who let her go?”

  “The commissioner ... I was a couple of blocks from the Waikiki Diner, and responded to the call, and I was the first supervisor on the scene, and I called him. The commissioner said I should do what had to be done. I didn’t think sending her to the Roundhouse was the thing to do. So I borrowed two uniforms from the Second District, and sent them with her. I told them to stay with her, to see that she got home safely. Homicide will send somebody to talk to her at her apartment.”

  Coughlin grunted. “McGovern say anything to her?” he asked.

  “I don’t think Mac saw the situation as I did, Chief.”

  “Probably just as well,” Coughlin said. “Mac is not too big on tact. Is there anything I should be doing?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. The commissioner knows how close you were to Dutch ...”

  “Is there ... is this going to develop into something awkward, Peter?”

  “I hope not,” Wohl said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Coughlin said. “This is going to be tough enough on Jeannie without it being all over the papers and on the TV that Dutch was fooling around with some bimbo ...”

  “I think we can keep that from happening, Chief,” Wohl said; and then surprised himself by adding, “She’s not a bimbo. I like her. And she seems to understand the situation.”

  Coughlin looked at him with his eyebrows raised.

  “The commissioner asked me to make sure nothing awkward develops, Chief,” Wohl said. “To find out for sure what Captain Moffitt’s relationship with Miss Dutton was ...”

  “I went through the academy with Dutch’s brother,” Coughlin interrupted. “Dutch was then, what, sixteen, seventeen, and he was screwing his way through the cheerleaders at Northeast High. He never, as long as I knew him, gave his pecker a rest. I’ve got a damned good idea what his relationship with Miss—whatsername?—was.”

  “Dutton, Chief,” Wohl furnished, and then added: “We don’t know that, Chief.”

  “You want to give me odds, Peter?” Coughlin asked.

  Mrs. Patricia Payne and Matthew Payne walked up to them.

  “Patty, do you know Inspector Wohl?” Coughlin asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Patricia Payne said, and offered her hand. “This is my son Matt, Inspector. Dutch’s nephew.”

  “I’m very sorry about this, Mrs. Payne,” Wohl said. “Dutch and I were old friends.” He offered his hand to Matt Payne.

  “Inspector Wohl, did he say?” Matt asked.

  “Staff Inspector Wohl,” Coughlin furnished, understanding Matt’s surprise that Wohl, who didn’t look much older than Matt, held such a high rank. “He’s a very good cop, Matt. He went up very quickly; the brass found out that when they gave him a difficult job, they could count on him to handle it.”

  There’s something behind that remark, Patricia Payne thought. I wonder what?

  “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Payne, Matt,” Wohl said. “I just regret the circumstances. I’ve got to get back on the job.”

  Chief Inspector Coughlin nodded, and then turned and took Mrs. Patricia Payne’s arm and led her to Dutch Moffitt’s front door.

  FIVE

  With some difficulty, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl extricated his car from the cars jammed together on the streets, driveways, and alleys near the residence of Captain Richard C. Moffitt. He turned onto Holme Avenue, in the direction of Pennypack Circle.

  When he was safely into the flow of traffic, he leaned over and took the microphone from the glove compartment.

  “Isaac Twenty-three,” he said into it, and when they came back at him, he said he needed a location on Two-Eleven, which was the Second District blue-and-white he’d commandeered from Mac McGovern to escort Miss Louise Dutton.

  “I have him out of service at WCBL-TV at Seventeenth and Locust, Inspector,” the radio operator finally told him. “Thirty-five minutes ago.”

  “Thank you,” Wohl said, and put the microphone back inside the glove compartment and slammed the door.

  There would be time, he decided, to see what the medical examiner had turned up about the female doer. There was no question that there would be other questions directed at him by his boss, Chief Inspector Coughlin, and very possibly by Commissioner Czernick or even the mayor. Peter Wohl believed the Boy Scouts were right; it paid to be prepared.

  A battered Ford van pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the medical examiner’s office at Civic Center Boulevard and University Avenue. The faded yellow van had a cracked windshield. On the sides were still legible vestiges of a BUDGET RENT-A-CAR logotype. The chrome grille was missing, as was the right headlight and its housing. The passenger-side door had apparently encountered something hard and sharp enough to slice the door skin like a knife. There was a deep, but not penetrating, dent on the body on the same side. The body was rusted through at the bottom of the doors, and above the left-rear fender well.

  The vehicle had forty-two unanswered traffic citations against it, most for illegal parking, but including a half dozen or so for the missing headlight, the cracked windshield, an illegible license plate, and similar misdemeanor violations of the Motor Vehicle Code.

  Two men got out of the van. One of them was young, very large, and bearded. He was wearing greasy blue jeans, and a leather band around his forehead to keep his long, unkempt hair out of his
eyes. After he got out of the passenger’s side, the driver, a small, smooth-shaven, somewhat weasel-faced individual wearing a battered gray sweatshirt with the legend support your local sheriff printed on it slid over and got out after him. They walked into the building.

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl and Sergeant Zachary Hobbs of Homicide were standing by a coffee vending machine in the basement, drinking from Styrofoam cups. Wohl shook his head when he saw them.

  “Hello, Inspector,” the weasel-faced small man, who was Lieutenant David Pekach of the Narcotics Squad, said.

  “Pekach, does your mother know what you do for a living?” Wohl replied, offering his hand.

  Pekach chuckled. “God, I hope not.” He looked at Hobbs. “You’re Sergeant Hobbs?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hobbs said.

  “You know Officer McFadden?” Pekach asked, and both Wohl and Hobbs shook their heads, no.

  “Charley, this is Staff Inspector Wohl,” the weasel-faced man said, “And Sergeant Hobbs. Officer Charley McFadden.”

  “How do you do, sir?” Officer McFadden asked, respectfully, to Wohl and Hobbs each in turn.

  “Where is she?” Pekach asked.

  “In there,” Wohl said, nodding at double metal doors. “He’s not through with her.”

  “Don’t tell me you have a queasy stomach, Inspector?” Pekach asked, innocently.

  “You bet your ass, I do,” Wohl said.

  Pekach walked in. McFadden followed him.

  Unidentified White Female Suspect was on a stainless steel table. She was naked, her legs spread, one arm lying beside her, the other over her head. Body fluids dripped from a corner drain on the table into a stainless steel bucket on the tile floor.

  A bald-headed man wearing a plastic apron over surgical blues stopped what he was doing and looked up curiously and unpleasantly at Pekach and McFadden. What he was doing was removing Unidentified White Female Suspect’s heart from the opening he had made in her chest.

  “I’m Lieutenant Pekach, Doctor,” Pekach said. “We just want to get a look at her face.”