Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 20

Charley's face colored.

"Well, let me just tell you something, Mom, if you don't mind," he said, angrily. "I'm the officer who made the identification of the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, and those eight thousand cops you're talking about are all looking for a guy named Gerald Vincent Gallagher, because I was able to identify him as a known a.s.sociate of the girl."

"No s.h.i.+t?" Kevin McFadden asked, impressed.

"Watch your tongue," Agnes McFadden snapped. "Just because you work in a sewer doesn't mean you have to sound like one!"

"You bet your a.s.s," Charley said to his father. "And I got a pretty good idea where the slimy little b.a.s.t.a.r.d's liable to be!"

"I won't tolerate that kind of dirty talk from either one of you, I just won't put up with it," Agnes said.

"Agnes, shut up!" Kevin McFadden said. "Charley, you're not going to do anything dumb, are you? I mean, what the h.e.l.l, why take a chance on anything if you don't have to?"

"What I'm going to do, Pop, is find him. If I can. Hang around where I think he might be, or will show up. If I see him, or if he shows up there, I'll get Hay-zus to go with me."

Officer Jesus Martinez, a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican, was Officer Charley McFadden's partner. He p.r.o.nounced his Christian name as it was p.r.o.nounced in Spanish, and Charley McFadden had taken to using that p.r.o.nounciation when discussing him with his mother. Agnes McFadden had made it plain that she was uncomfortable with Jesus as somebody's first name. Hay-zus was all right. It was like Juan or Alberto or some other strange spic name.

"I wish you wore a uniform," Agnes McFadden said.

"Yeah, sure," Charley said. "Maybe be a traffic cop, right? So I can stand in the middle of the street downtown somewhere, and freeze to death in winter and boil my brains in the summer? Breathing diesel exhaust all the time?"

"It would be better than what you're doing," his mother said.

"Mom, you don't get promoted guarding school crossings," Charley said. "Or riding around some district in a car on the last out s.h.i.+ft.''

"I don't see you getting promoted," Agnes McFadden said.

"Leave him alone, Agnes," Kevin McFadden said. "He hasn't been with the cops long enough to get promoted."

"The detective's examination is next month, and I'm going to take it," Charley said. "And for your information, I think I'm going to pa.s.s it. If I can arrest this Gallagher punk, I know I 'd make it.''

"You're getting too big for your britches," Agnes McFadden replied, aware that she was angry and wondering why.

"Yeah? Yeah? My lieutenant, Lieutenant Pekach, you know how old he is? He's thirty years old, that's all how old he is. And he's a lieutenant, and he's eligible to take the captain's examination."

"That's young for a lieutenant," Kevin McFadden said. "I suppose they do all right on payday."

"You can do it," Charley said. "Pop, when I went to identify the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, down to the medical examiner's, where they were autopsying her, Lieutenant Pekach introduced me to Staff Inspector Wohl."

"Who's he? Am I supposed to know what that means?" Kevin McFadden asked.

"A staff inspector is higher than a captain," Charley explained. "All they do is the important investigations."

"So?" Agnes McFadden said.

"So, Mom, so here is this Staff Inspector Wohl, wearing a suit that must have cost him two hundred bucks, and driving this brand-new Ford LTD, and he ain't hardly any older than Lieutenant Pekach, that's what!"

"He must have pull, then," Agnes McFadden said. "He must know somebody."

"Ah, Jesus Christ, Mom!" Charley said, and stormed out of the kitchen.

"You shouldn't have said that, Agnes," Kevin McFadden said. "Charley's ambitious, there's nothing wrong with that."

The front door slammed, and a moment later, they could hear the whine of the Volkswagen starter.

"Talk to me about ambition," Agnes replied, "when they call up and tell you they're sorry, some b.u.m shot him. Or stuck a knife in him."

Peter Wohl started the LTD and looked across the seat at Louise Dutton.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "I have seen faster typists."

He chuckled. The typist who had typed up her statement had been a young black woman, obviously as new to the typewriter as she was determined to do a good, accurate, no strike-over, job.

"Where to now?" he asked.

"I've got to go to work, of course," Louise said. "But I think I had better get my car, first. On the way, you can drop off your uniform.''

"Not that I don't want your company," he said, "but I could drop you at the station, and we could get your car later. For that matter, I could bring it to the station."

"I thought about that," she said. "And decided that since you live in Timbuctoo, I'd rather get it now. On the long way back downtown, I'll have time to think, to come up with a credible reason why I was such a disgrace to journalism last night."

"Huh? Oh, you mean they expected you to come in and-what's the term?-write up what happened to Nelson?"

"Yes, they did," Louise said. "And when I didn't, I confirmed all of Leonard Cohen's male chauvinist theories about the emotional instability of female reporters. Real reporters, men reporters, don't get hysterical."

"You weren't hysterical," Peter said. "You were upset, but you had every right to be."

They were now pa.s.sing City Hall, and heading out John F. Kennedy Boulevard, past the construction sites of what the developers said would be Downtown Philadelphia Reborn.

Louise turned and looked at him.

"You're a really nice guy, Peter Wohl," she said. "Anyone ever tell you that?"

"All the time," he said.

She laughed, and changed the subject: "When we get to your place, I have to go inside."

"Why?"

"Because my underwear was still wet, and I couldn't put it on," she said.

The logical conclusion to be drawn from that statement, Peter thought, is that she is at this moment, underwear-less. Phrased another way, she is naked under her dress.

"You should have seen your face just now," Louise said.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Your eyes grew wide," she said. "Does that turn you on, Peter Wohl? A woman not wearing underwear?"

"Get off my back," he flared.

"It does!" she said, delighted. "It does!"

He turned and glared at her. She wasn't fazed. She smiled at him.

He returned his attention to the road. Louise noticed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.

They said nothing else to each other until they reached his apartment. He pulled the nose of the Ford against the garage door, turned off the ignition, handed her the apartment key, and laid his arm on the back of the seat.

"I would just run along," he said. "But I'm going to need my key back. I'll wait here."

"I'll throw it out the window," she said.

"Fine," he said.

She went up the stairs and he leaned on the fender of the Ford LTD. A minute or so later, he heard the window in his bathroom grate open. He turned and looked up at the window. All he could see was her head; she had to be kneeling on the toilet seat.

"Can you come up here a minute?" she said. "I've got a little trouble."

He went up the stairs and into the apartment.

Louise's head peered at him around his nearly closed bedroom door.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.

"I don't want to go to work," Louise said. "Not right now."

"Then don't go," he said. "Stay here as long as you like."

"You really are a very sweet guy, Peter," Louise said.

"You seem to be a little ambiguous about that," Peter said.

"You're sore about the way I teased you in the car, aren't you?"

"You enjoy humiliating people, go ahead," he said.

"I was just teasing, " she said. "If I didn't like you, I wouldn't tease you."

"I understand," he said. "I don't think you're half as clever, or as sophisticated as you do, but I understand you."

"Oh, d.a.m.n you," she said, and opened the door all the way. "You don't understand me at all."

She walked within six feet of him and stopped, and looked into his eyes.

"Come on, Peter," she said. "Loosen up."

"Is there anything else I can get you?" Peter asked.

Louise unb.u.t.toned her jacket, and then shrugged out of it.

She raised her eyes to his.

"What do I have to do, Peter?" she asked, very softly. "Throw you on the white couch and rip your clothes off?"

Officer Charley McFadden pulled into a gas station and called Jesus Martinez and told him what he had in mind. Hay-zus's mother answered the phone and with obvious reluctance, after she told him Hay-zus was asleep, got him on the phone.

"You want to help me catch Gerald Vincent Gallagher?"

"I thought you were working with Homicide," Hay-zus said.

"The detective with the job let me very politely know that he didn't need my help, thank you very much."

There was a long pause.

"Where do you think he is?" Hay-zus asked.

"I want to look for him at the Bridge Street Terminal," McFadden said.

The Bridge Street Terminal, which is the end of the line for the Market Street Elevated, a major transfer point for people traveling to and from Center City and West Philadelphia.

"In other words, you don't have the first f.u.c.king idea where he is," Martinez said.

"I got a feeling, Hay-zus," Charley McFadden said.

Gerald Vincent Gallagher, Charley McFadden had reasoned, would have hidden someplace for a while. Then he would want to get out of the Northeast. He didn't have a car-few junkies did-but he would have the price of bus or subway fare, if he had to panhandle for it.

There was a long pause.

"Ah, s.h.i.+t," Jesus Martinez said. "I'll meet you there."

And then he hung up.

McFadden parked his Volkswagen fifty feet from the intersection of Frankford and Bridge Streets. He went to a candy store across the street and bought two large 7-Ups to go (lots of ice); two Hershey bars; two Mounds bars; two bags of Planter's peanuts; and a pack of Chesterfields.

He carried everything back to the Volkswagen, and arranged it and himself on and around the front seat. He slumped down on the seat, and lit a cigarette.

It was liable to be a long wait for Gerald Vincent Gallagher. And, of course, he might not show.

If he didn't show, McFadden decided, he would not put in for overtime. n.o.body had told him to stake out the terminal.

But he might. And he would really like to catch the despicable s.h.i.+t, so he would wait.