Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 25

"Very impressive," Wohl said.

He examined the tiger, idly curious about how they actually mounted and stuffed something like this.

What's inside? A wooden frame? A wire one? A plaster casting? Is that red tongue the real thing, preserved somehow? Or what?

Then he walked across the room and looked through the curtained windows. He could see the roof of Thirtieth Street Station, its cla.s.sic Greek lines from that angle diluted somewhat by air-conditioning machinery and a surprising forest of radio antennae. He could see the Schuylkill River, with the expressway on this side and the boat houses on the far bank.

The left of the paneled double doors to Arthur J. Nelson's office opened, and four men filed out. They all seemed determined to smile, Wohl thought idly, and then he thought they had probably just had their a.s.ses eaten out.

A handsome man wearing a blue blazer and gray trousers appeared in the door. He was much older, of course, than the young man in the tiger photograph, and heavier, and there was now a perfectly trimmed, snow-white mustache on his lip, but Wohl had no doubt that it was Arthur J. Nelson.

Formidable, Wohl thought.

Arthur J. Nelson studied Wohl for a moment, carefully.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Inspector," he said. "Won't you please come in?"

He waited at the door for Wohl and put out his hand. It was firm.

"Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Nelson," Wohl said. "May I offer my condolences?"

"Yes, you can, and that's very kind of you," Nelson said, as he led Wohl into his office. "But frankly, what I would prefer is a report that you found proof positive who the animal was who killed my son, and that he resisted arrest and is no longer among the living."

Wohl was taken momentarily aback.

What the h.e.l.l. Any father would feel that way. This man is accustomed to saying exactly what he's thinking.

"I'm about to have a drink," Nelson said. "Will you join me? Or is that against the rules?"

"I'd like a drink," Peter said. "Thank you."

"I drink single-malt scotch with a touch of water," Nelson said. "But there is, of course, anything else."

"That would be fine, sir," Peter said.

Nelson went to a bar set into the bookcases lining one wall of his office. Peter looked around the room. A second wall was gla.s.s, offering the same view of the Schuylkill he had seen outside. The other walls were covered with mounted animal heads and photographs of Arthur J. Nelson with various distinguished and/or famous people, including the sitting president of the United States. There was one of Nelson with the governor of Pennsylvania, but not, Peter noticed, one of His Honor the Mayor Carlucci.

Nelson crossed the room to where Peter stood and handed him a squat, octagonal crystal gla.s.s. There was no ice.

"Some people don't like it," Nelson said. "Take a sip. If you don't like it, say so."

Wohl sipped. It was heavy, but pleasant.

"Very nice," he said. "I like it. Thank you."

"I was shooting stag in Scotland, what, ten years ago. The gillie drank it. I asked him, and he told me about it. Now I have them s.h.i.+p it to me. All the scotch you get here, you know, is a blend."

"It's nice," Peter said.

"Here's to vigilante justice, Inspector," Nelson said.

"I'm not sure I can drink to that, sir," Peter said.

"You can't, but I can," Nelson said. "I didn't mean to put you on a spot."

"If I wasn't here officially," Peter said, "maybe I would."

"If you had lost your only son, Inspector, like I lost mine, you certainly would. When something like this happens, terms like 'justice' and 'due process' seem abstract. What you want is vengeance."

"I was about to say I know how you feel," Peter said. "But of course, I don't. I can't. All I can say is that we'll do everything humanly possible to find whoever took your son's life."

"If I ask a straight question, will I get a straight answer?"

"I'll try, sir."

"How do you cops handle it psychologically when you do catch somebody you know is guilty of doing something horrible, obscene, unhuman like this, only to see him walk out of a courtroom a free man because of some minor point of law, or some bleeding heart on the bench?"

"The whole thing is a system, sir," Peter said, after a moment. "The police, catching the doer, the perpetrator, are only part of the system. We do the best we can. It's not our fault when another part of the system fails to do what it should."

"I have every confidence that you.'11 find whoever it was who hacked my son to death," Nelson said. "And then we both know what will happen. It will, after a long while, get into a courtroom, where some a.s.shole of a lawyer will try every trick in the business to get him off. And if he doesn't, if the jury finds him guilty, and the judge has the b.a.l.l.s to sentence him to the electric chair, he'll appeal, for ten years or so, and the odds are some yellow-livered sonofab.i.t.c.h of a governor will commute his sentence to life. I'm sure you know what it costs to keep a man in jail. About twice what it costs to send a kid to an Ivy League college. The taxpayers will provide this animal with three meals a day, and a warm place to sleep for the rest of his life."

Wohl didn't reply. Nelson drained his drink and walked to the bar to make another, then returned.

"Have you ever been involved in the arrest of someone who did something really terrible, something like what happened to my son?"

"Yes, sir."

"And were you tempted to put a .38 between his eyes right then and there, to save the taxpayers the cost of a trial, and/or lifelong imprisonment?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"Straight answer?" Peter asked. Nelson nodded. "I could say because you realize that you would lower yourself to his level," Peter said, "but the truth is that you don't do it because it would cost you. They investigate all shootings, and-"

"Vigilante justice," Nelson interrupted, raising his gla.s.s. "Right now, it seems like a splendid idea to me."

He is not suggesting that I go out and shoot whoever killed his son. He is in shock, as well as grief, and as a newspaperman, he knows the way the system works, and now that he !$ going to be involved with the system himself, doesn't like it at all.

"It gets out of hand almost immediately," Peter said.

"Yes, of course," Nelson said. "Please excuse me, Inspector, for subjecting you to this. I probably should not have come to work, in my mental condition. But the alternative was sitting at home, looking out the window ..."

"I understand perfectly, sir," Peter said.

"Have there been any developments?" Nelson asked.

"I came here directly from Stockton Place," Peter said, "where I spoke to the detective to whom the case has been a.s.signed-"

"I thought it had been a.s.signed to you," Nelson interrupted.

"No, sir," Peter said. "Detective Harris of the Homicide Division has been a.s.signed to the case."

"Then what's your role in this? Ted Czernick led me to believe that you would be in charge."

"Commissioner Czernick has asked me to keep him advised, to keep you advised, and to make sure that Detective Harris has all the a.s.sistance he asks for," Wohl said.

"I was pleased," Nelson interrupted again. "I checked you out. You're in Internal Security, that sounds important whatever it means, and you're the man who caught the Honorable Mr. Housing Director Weaver and that Friend of Labor, J. Francis Donleavy, with both of their hands in the munic.i.p.al cookie jar. And now you're telling me you're not on the case . . ."

"Sir, what it means is that Commissioner Czernick a.s.signed the best available Homicide detective to the case. That's a special skill, sir. Harris is better equipped than I am to conduct the investigation-"

"That's why he's a detective, right, and you're an inspector?"

"And then the commissioner called me in and told me to drop whatever else I was doing, so that I could keep both you and him advised of developments, and so that I could provide Detective Harris with whatever help he needs," Wohl plunged on doggedly.

Arthur J. Nelson looked at Wohl suspiciously for a moment.

"I had the other idea," he said, finally. "All right, so what has Mr. Harris come up with so far?"

"Harris believes that a number of valuables have been stolen from the apartment, Mr. Nelson."

"He figured that out himself, did he?" Nelson said, angrily sarcastic. "What other reason could there possibly be than a robbery? My son came home and found his apartment being burglarized, and the burglar killed him. All I can say is that, thank G.o.d, his girl friend wasn't with him. Or she would be dead, too."

Girlfriend? Jesus!

"Detective Harris, who will want to talk to you himself, Mr. Nelson, asked me if you could come up with a list of valuables, jewelry, that sort of thing, that were in the apartment."

"I'll have my secretary get in touch with the insurance company," Nelson said. "There must be an inventory around someplace."

"Your son's car, one of them, the Jaguar, is missing from the garage."

"Well, by now, it's either on a boat to Mexico, or gone through a dismantler's," Nelson snapped. "All you're going to find is the license plate, if you find that."

"Sometimes we get lucky," Peter said. "We're looking for it, of course, here and all up and down the Eastern Seaboard."

"I suppose you've asked his girl friend? It's unlikely, but possible that she might have it. Or for that matter, that it might be in the dealer's garage."

"You mentioned his girl friend a moment ago, Mr. Nelson," Wohl said, carefully, suspecting he was on thin ice. "Can you give me her name?"

"Dutton, Louise Dutton," Nelson said. "You are aware that she found Jerry? That she went into his bedroom, and found him like that?"

"I wasn't aware of a relations.h.i.+p between them, Mr. Nelson," Peter said. "But I do know that Miss Dutton does not have Mr. Nelson's car."

"Miss Dutton is a prominent television personality," Nelson said. "It would not be good for her public image were it to become widely know that she and her gentleman friend lived in the same apartment building. I would have thought, however, that you would have been able to put two and two together."

Jesus Christ! Does he expect me to believe that? Does he believe it himself?

He looked at Nelson's face, and then understood: He knows what his son was, and he probably knows that I know. I have just been given the official cover story. Arthur J. Nelson wants the fact that his son was h.o.m.os.e.xual swept under the rug. For his own ego, or maybe, even more likely, because there's a mother around. What the h.e.l.l, my father would do the same thing.

"Insofar as the Ledger is concerned," Nelson said, meeting Wohl's eyes, "every effort will be made to spare Miss Dutton any embarra.s.sment. I can only hope my compet.i.tion will be as understanding."

He obviously feels he can get to Louise, somehow, and get her to stand still for being identified as Jerome's girl friend. Well, why not? "Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours'' works at all echelons.

"I understand, sir," Peter said.

"Thank you for coming to see me, Inspector," Arthur J. Nelson said, putting out his hand. "When I see Ted Czernick, I will tell him how much I appreciate your courtesy and understanding."

The translation of which is "Do what you 're told, or I'll lower the boom on you."

Peter Wohl called Detective Tony Harris from a pay phone in the lobby of the Ledger Building and told him that Arthur J. Nelson's secretary was going to come up with a list of jewelry and other valuables that probably had been in the apartment, and that it would probably be ready by the time Harris could come to the Ledger Building.

And then he told Harris what Nelson had said about Louise Dutton being Jerome Nelson's girl friend, and warned him not to get into Jerome's s.e.xual preference if there was any way it could be avoided. Somewhat surprising Wohl, Harris didn't seem surprised.

"Thanks for the warning," he said. "I can handle that."

"He also suggested that by now the Jaguar has been stripped," Wohl said.

"Could well be. They haven't found it yet, and Jaguars are pretty easy to spot; there aren't that many of them. Either stripped, or on a dock in New York or Baltimore waiting to get loaded on a boat for South America. I think we should keep looking."

Wohl did not mention to Harris Nelson's toast to vigilante justice, or his remark about what he really wanted to hear was that the doer had been killed resisting arrest. It was, more than likely, just talk.

When he hung up, he considered, and decided against, reporting to Commissioner Czernick about his meeting with Nelson. He really didn't have anything important to say.

Instead, he found the number in the phone book, dropped a dime in the slot, and called WCBL-TV.

He had nearly as much trouble getting Louise on the line as he had getting in to see Arthur J. Nelson, but finally her voice came over the line.

"Dutton."

Peter could hear voices and sounds in the background. Wherever she was, it wasn't a private office.

"Hi," Peter said.

"Hi," she breathed happily. "I hoped you would call!"

"You all right?"

"Ginger-peachy, now," she said. "What are you doing?"

"I just left Arthur J. Nelson," he said.

"Rough?"

"He told me you were Jerome's girl friend," Peter said.

"Oh, the poor man!" she said. "You didn't say anything?"