Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 13

Peter nodded and smiled at some of his fellow tenants, but he wasn't friendly with any of them. He had rebuffed friendly overtures for a number of reasons, among them the problems he saw in a.s.sociating socially with bright young couples who smoked cannabis sativa, and probably ingested by one means or another other prohibited substances.

To bust, or not to bust, that is the question! Whether 'tis n.o.bler to apprehend (which probably would result in a stern warning, plus a slap on the wrist) or look the other way.

Or, better yet, not to know about it, by politely rejecting invitations to drop by for a couple of drinks, and maybe some laughs, and who knows what else. They believed, he thought, what he had told them: that he worked for the city. They probably believed that he was a middle-level functionary in the Department of Public Property, or something like that. He was reasonably sure that his neighbors did not a.s.sociate him with the fuzz, the pigs, or whatever pejorative term was being applied to the cops by the chicly liberal this week.

And then there was the matter of his having two of the four garages, which meant that some of his fellow tenants had to park their cars on the street, or in the driveway, or find another garage someplace else. He had been approached by three of his fellow tenants at different times to give up one of his two garages, if not for fairness, then for money.

He had politely rejected those overtures, too, which had been visibly disappointing and annoying to those asking.

The apartment looked as if it had been decorated by an expensive interior decorator. The walls were white; there was a s.h.a.ggy white carpet; the furniture was stylish, lots of gla.s.s and white leather and chrome. He had been going with an interior decorator at the time he'd taken the apartment, and willing to acknowledge that he knew next to nothing about decorating. Dorothea had decorated it for him, free of charge, and got the furniture and carpet for him at her professional discount.

Dorothea was long gone, they having mutually agreed that the mature and civilized thing to do in their particular circ.u.mstance was to turn him in on a lawyer, and so was much of what she had called the "unity of ambience.''

A men's club downtown had gone under, and auctioned off the furnis.h.i.+ngs. Peter had bought a small mahogany service bar; two red overstuffed leather armchairs with matching footstools; and a six-by-ten-foot oil painting of a voluptuous nude reclining on a couch that had for fifty odd years decorated the men's bar of the defunct club. That had replaced a nearly as large modern work of art on the living room wall. The artwork replaced had had a t.i.tle (!! Number Three.), but Peter had taken to referring to it as "The Smear," even before Love in Bloom had started to wither.

Dorothea, very pregnant, had come to see him, bringing the lawyer with her. The purpose of the visit was to see if Peter could "do anything'' for a client of the lawyer, who was also a dear friend, who had a son found in possession of just over a pound of Acapulco Gold brand of cannabis sativa. Dorothea had been even more upset about the bar, the chairs, and the painting than she had been at his announcement that he couldn't be of help.

"You've raped the ambience, Peter," Dorothea had said. "If you want my opinion."

When Peter went into the bedroom, the red light was blinking on his telephone answering device. He snapped it off and picked up the telephone. "h.e.l.lo?"

"We're just going out for supper," Chief Inspector (Retired) August Wohl announced, without any preliminary greeting, in his deep, rasping voice, "and afterward, we're going to see Jeannie and Gertrude Moffitt. Your mother thought you might want to eat with us."

"I was over there earlier, Dad," Peter said. "Right after it happened."

"You were?" Chief Inspector Wohl sounded surprised.

"I went in on the call, Dad," Peter said.

"How come?"

"I was on Roosevelt Boulevard. I was the first senior guy on the scene. I just missed Jeannie at Nazareth Hospital, but then I saw her at the house."

"But that was on the job," August Wohl argued. "Tonight's for close friends. The wake's tomorrow. You and Dutch were friends."

"It won't look right, if you don't go to the house tonight." Mrs. Olga Wohl came on the extension. "We've known the Moffitts all our lives. And, tomorrow, at the wake, there will be so many people there ..."

"I'll try to get by later, Mother," Peter said. "I'm going out to dinner."

"With who, if you don't mind my asking?"

He didn't reply.

"You hear anything, Peter?" Chief Inspector Wohl asked.

"The woman who shot Dutch is a junkie. They have an ID on her, and on the guy, another junkie, who was involved. I think they'll pick him up in a couple of days; I wouldn't be surprised if they already have him. My phone answerer is blinking. A Homicide detective named Jason Was.h.i.+ngton's got the job-"

"I know him," August Wohl interrupted.

"I asked him to keep me advised. As soon as I hear something, I'll let you know."

"Why should he keep you advised?" August Wohl asked.

"Because the commissioner, for the good of the department, has a.s.signed me to charm the lady from TV."

"I saw the TV," Wohl's father said. "The blonde really was an eyewitness?"

"Yes, she was. She just made the identification, of the dead girl, and the guy who ran. Positive. I was there when she made it. The guy's name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher."

"White guy?"

"Yeah. The woman, too. Her name is Schmeltzer. Her father has a grocery store over by Lincoln High."

"Jesus, I know him," August Wohl said.

"Dad, I better see who called," Peter said.

"He's going to be at Marshutz & Sons, for the wake, I mean. They're going to lay him out in the Green Room; I talked to Gertrude Moffitt," Peter's mother said.

"I'll be at the wake, of course, Mother," Peter said.

"Peter," Chief Inspector Wohl, retired, said thoughtfully, "maybe it would be a good idea for you to wear your uniform to the funeral."

"What?" Peter asked, surprised. Staff inspectors almost never wore uniforms.

"There will be talk, if you're not at the house tonight-"

"You bet, there will be," Peter's mother interjected.

"People like to gossip," Chief Inspector Wohl went on. "Instead of letting them gossip about maybe why you didn't come to the house, let them gossip about you being in uniform."

"That sounds pretty devious, Dad."

"Either the house tonight, with his other close friends, or the uniform at the wake," Chief Inspector Wohl said. "A gesture of respect, one way or the other."

"I don't know, Dad," Peter said..

"Do what you like," his father said, abruptly, and the line went dead.

He's mad. He offered advice and I rejected it. And he's probably right, too. You don't get to be a chief inspector unless you are a master pract.i.tioner of the secret rites of the police department.

There was only one recorded message on the telephone answerer tape: "Dennis Coughlin, Peter. You've done one h.e.l.l of a job with that TV woman. That was very touching, what she said on the TV. The commissioner saw it, too. I guess you know-Matt Lowenstein told me he saw you-that the commissioner wants you to stay on top of this. None of us wants anything embarra.s.sing to anyone to happen. Call me, at the house, if necessary, when you learn something."

While the tape was rewinding, Peter glanced at his watch.

"d.a.m.n!" he said.

He tore off his jacket and his shoulder holster and started to unb.u.t.ton his s.h.i.+rt. There was no time for a shower. He was late already. He went into the bathroom and splashed Jamaica Bay lime cologne from a bottle onto his hands, and then onto his face. He sniffed his underarms, wet his hands again, and mopped them under his arms.

He stripped to his shorts and socks, and then dressed quickly. He pulled on a pale blue turtleneck knit s.h.i.+rt, and then a darker blue pair of Daks trousers. He slipped his feet into loafers, put his arms through the straps of the shoulder holster, and then into a maroon blazer. He reached on a closet shelf for a snap-brim straw hat and put that on. He examined himself in the full-length mirrors that covered the sliding doors to the bedroom closet.

"My, don't you look splendid, you handsome devil, you!" he said.

And then he ran down the stairs and put a key to the padlock on one of the garage doors, and pulled them open. He went inside. There came the sound of a starter grinding, and then an engine caught.

A British racing green 1950 Jaguar XK-120 roadster emerged slowly and carefully from the garage. It looked new, rather than twenty-three years old. It had been a mess when Peter bought it, soon after he had been promoted to lieutenant. He'd since put a lot of money and a lot of time into it. Even his mother appreciated what he had done; it was now his "cute little sporty car" rather than "that disgraceful old junky rattletrap."

He drove at considerably in excess of the speed limit down Lancaster Avenue to Belmont, and then to the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Inst.i.tute. Barbara Crowley, R.N., a tall, lithe young woman of, he guessed, twenty-six, twenty-seven, who wore her blond hair in a pageboy, was waiting for him, and smiled when the open convertible pulled up to her.

But she was p.i.s.sed, he knew, both that he was late, and that he was driving the Jaguar. She contained her annoyance because she was trying as hard as he was to find someone.

"We're being sporty tonight, I see," Barbara said as she got in the car.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he said. "I will prove that, if you give me a chance."

"It's all right," she said.

Impulsively, and although he knew he wasn't, in the turtleneck, dressed for it, he decided on the Ristorante Alfredo. He could count, he thought, on having some snotty Wop waiter, six months out of a Neapolitan slum, look haughtily down his nose at him.

It started going bad before he got that far.

An acne-faced punk in the parking garage gave him trouble about parking the Jaguar himself. It had taken him, literally, a year to find an unblemished, rust-free right front fender for the XK-120, and no sooner had he got it on, and had, finally, the whole car lacquered (20 coats) properly than a parking valet who looked like this one's idiot uncle sc.r.a.ped it along a concrete block wall.

He had since parked his car himself.

The scene annoyed Barbara further, although he resolved it with money, to get it over with.

SEVEN.

When she saw that Peter Wohl was leading her to Ristorante Alfredo, Barbara Crowley protested.

"Peter, it's so expensive!"

She sounds like my mother, Peter thought.

"Well, I'll just stiff my ex-wife on her alimony," he said, as he opened the door to Ristorante Alfredo. "Tell her to have the kids get a job, too."

Barbara, visibly, did not think that was funny. There was no ex-wife and no kids, but it was not the sort of thing Barbara thought you should joke about, particularly when there was someone who could hear and might not understand. She hadn't thought it was funny the last time he'd made his little joke, and, to judge by her face, it had not improved with age.

The headwaiter was a tall, silver-haired man, who had heard.

"Have you a reservation, sir?" he asked.

"No, but it doesn't look like you have many, either,"

Peter said, waving in the general direction of the half-empty dining room.

The headwaiter looked toward the bar, where a stout man in his early thirties sat at the bar. He was wearing an expensive suit, and his black hair was expensively cut and arranged, almost successfully, to conceal a rapidly receding hairline.

His name was Ricco Baltazari, and the restaurant and bar licenses had been issued in his name. It was actually owned by a man named Vincenzo Savarese, who; for tax purposes, and because it's hard for a convicted felon to get a liquor license, had Baltazari stand in for him.

Ricco Baltazari had taken in the whole confrontation. There was nothing he would have liked better than to have the f.u.c.king cop thrown the f.u.c.k out-what a h.e.l.l of a nerve, coming to a cla.s.s joint like this with no tie-but instead, with barely visible moves of his ma.s.sive head, he signaled that Wohl was to be given a table. It's always better to back away from a confrontation with a f.u.c.king cop, and this f.u.c.king cop was an inspector, and Mr. Savarese was in the back, having dinner with his wife and her sister, and it was better not to risk doing anything that would cause a disturbance.

Besides, he had seen in Gentlemen's Quarterly where turtlenecks were making a comeback. It wasn't like the f.u.c.king cop was wearing a f.u.c.king s.h.i.+rt and no necktie. A turtleneck was different.

"Spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s?" Peter Wohl asked, when they had been shown to a table covered with crisp linen and an impressive array of crystal and silverware, and handed large menus. "Or maybe some lasagna? Or would you like me to slip the waiter a couple of bucks and have him sing 'Santa Lucia' while you make up your mind?"

Barbara didn't think that was witty, either.

"I don't know why you come to these places, if you really don't like them."

"The mob serves the best food in Philadelphia," Peter said. "I thought everybody knew that."

Barbara decided to let it drop.

"Well, everything on here looks good," she said, with a determined smile.

Wohl looked at her, rather than at the menu. He knew what he was going to eat: First some cherrystone clams, and then veal Marsala.

She is a good-looking girl. She's intelligent. She's got a good job. She even tolerates me, which means she probably understands me. On a scale of one to ten, she's an eight in bed. What I should do is marry her, and buy a house somewhere and start raising babies. But I don't want to.

She asked him what he was going to have, and he told her, and she said that sounded fine, she would have the same thing.

"Let's have a bottle of wine," Peter said, and opened the wine list and selected an Italian wine whose name he remembered. He pointed out the label to Barbara and asked if that was all right with her. It was fine with her.

Maybe what she needs to turn me on is a little streak of b.i.t.c.hiness, a little streak of not-so-tolerant-and-under-standing.

He was nearly through the bottle of wine, and halfway through the veal Marsala, when he looked up and saw Vincenzo Savarese approaching the table.

Vincenzo Savarese was sixty-three years old. What was left of his hair was silver and combed straight back over his ears. His face bore marks of childhood acne. He was wearing a double-breasted brown pin-striped suit, and there was a diamond stickpin in his necktie. He was trailed by two almost identical women in black dresses, his wife and her sister.

Vincenzo Savarese's photo was mounted, very near the top, on the wall chart of known organized crime members the Philadelphia Police Department maintained in the Organized Crime unit.

"I don't mean to disturb your dinner, Inspector," Vincenzo Savarese said. "Keep your seat."

Wohl stood up, but said nothing.

"I just wanted to tell you we heard about what happened to Captain Moffitt, and we're sorry," Vincenzo Savarese said.

"My heart goes out to his mother," one of the women said.

Wohl wasn't absolutely sure whether it was Savarese's wife, or his sister-in-law. Looking at the woman, he said, "Thank you."