Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 30

"Wohl," Dye said. "He's a staff inspector. According to O'Hara he's one of the brighter ones. He's the youngest staff inspector; he just sent the city housing director to the slammer, him and a union big shot-"

Wells made a "go on" gesture with his hands, and then took underwear from a suitcase and pulled a T-s.h.i.+rt over his head.

"So Wohl treated her very well. He sent her home in a police car, and had another cop drive her car," Dye went on. "Half, O'Hara said, because she's on the tube, and half because he's a nice guy. So she went to work, and did the news at six, and again at eleven, and then she went out and had a couple of drinks with the news director, a guy named Leonard Cohen, and a couple of other people. Then she went home. The door to the apartment on the ground floor-I was there, she had to walk past it to get to the elevator-was open, and she went in, and found Jerome Nelson in his bedroom. Party or parties unknown had hacked him up with a Chinese cleaver."

"What's a Chinese cleaver?" Wells asked.

"Looks like a regular cleaver, but it's thinner, and sharper," Dye explained.

Wells, in the act of b.u.t.toning a s.h.i.+rt, nodded.

"What was my daughter's relations.h.i.+p with the murdered man?" Wells asked. "I mean, why did she walk into his apartment?"

"They were friends, I guess. He was a nice little guy. Funny."

"There was nothing between them?"

"He was h.o.m.os.e.xual, Mr. Wells," Dye said.

"I see," Wells said.

"And, Stan," Kurt Kruger said, evenly, "he's-he was-Arthur Nelson's son."

"Poor Arthur," Wells said. "He knew?"

"I don't see how he couldn't know," Dye said.

"And I suppose that's all over the front pages, too?"

"No," Dye said. "Not so far. Professional courtesy, I suppose."

"Interesting question, Kurt," Wells said, thoughtfully. "What would we have done? Shown the same 'professional courtesy'?"

"I don't know," Kruger said. "Was his ... s.e.xual inclination . . . germane to the story?"

"Was it?"

"n.o.body knows yet," Kruger said. "Until it comes out, my inclination would be not to mention the h.o.m.os.e.xuality. If it comes out there is a connection, then I think I'd have to print it. One definition of news is that's it's anything people would be interested to hear."

"Another, some cynics have said," Wells said dryly, "is that news is what the publisher says it is. That's one more argument against having only one newspaper in a town."

"Would you print it, Stan?" Kruger asked.

"That's what I have all those high-priced editors for," Wells said. "To make painful decisions like that." He paused. "I'd go with what you said, Kurt. If it's just a sidebar, don't use it. If it's germane, I think you would have to."

Kruger grunted.

"Go on, d.i.c.k," Wells said to Richard Dye.

"Miss We- Miss Dutton-"

"Try 'your daughter,' d.i.c.k," Wells said, adding, "if there's some confusion in your mind."

"Your daughter called the cops. They came, including the Homicide lieutenant on duty, a real horse's a.s.s named DelRaye. They had words."

"About what?"

"He told her she had to go to the Roundhouse-the police headquarters, downtown-and she said she had told him everything she knew, and wasn't going anywhere. Then she went upstairs to her apartment. DelRaye told her unless she came out, he was going to knock the door down, and have her taken to the Roundhouse in a paddy wagon."

"Why do I have the feeling you're tactfully leaving something out, d.i.c.k? I want all of it."

"Okay," Dye said, meeting his eyes. "She'd had a couple of drinks. Maybe a couple too many. And she used a couple of choice words on DelRaye."

"You have a quote?"

"aGo f.u.c.k yourself,'" Dye quoted.

"Did she really?" Wells said. "How to win friends and influence people."

"So she must have called Inspector Wohl, and he showed up, and got her away from the apartment through the bas.e.m.e.nt," Dye said. "In the morning, he brought her to the Roundhouse. There was a lawyer, Colonel Mawson, waiting for her there."

"She must have called me while she was in the apartment waiting for the good cop to show up," Wells said. "Either my wife couldn't tell Louise was drinking, or didn't want to say anything. She said she was afraid."

"I saw pictures of the murdered guy, Mr. Wells. Enough to make you throw up. She had every reason to be frightened."

"Where was she from the time-what was the time?- the good cop took her away from the apartment, and the time he brought her to the police station?"

"After one in the morning," Dye said. "He probably took her to a girl friend's house, or something."

"Or boyfriend's house?" Wells said. "You are a good leg man, d.i.c.k. What did you turn up about a boyfriend?"

"No one in particular," Dye said. "Couple of guys, none of whom seem to have been involved."

"Mr. Wells," Ward V. Fengler said, "if I may interject, Colonel Mawson asked Miss Dutton where she had been all night, and she declined to tell him."

"That spells boyfriend," Wells said. "And, maybe guessing I would show up here, she didn't want me to know she'd spent the night with him. Now my curiosity's aroused. Can you get me some more on that subject, d.i.c.k?"

"I'll give it a shot, sir," Dye said.

"Has she gone back to work?" Wells asked, and then, looking at his watch, answered his own question. "The best way to find that out is to look at the tube, isn't it?"

It was six-fifteen. As Stanford Fortner Wells III finished dressing, he watched his daughter do her telecast.

"She's tough," he said, admiringly.

"I'd forgotten how pretty she was," Kurt Kruger said.

"That, too." Wells chuckled. "Okay. I'm going to see her. Mr. Fengler, there's no point that I can see in taking any more of your time. I'd like to keep the car, if I may, and I would be grateful if you would get in touch with Colonel Mawson and tell him I'll be in touch in the morning."

"I'm at your disposal, Mr. Wells, if you think I could be of any a.s.sistance," Fengler said.

"I can handle it, I think, from here on in. If I need some help, I've got Mawson's number, office and home. Thank you for all your courtesy."

Fengler knew that he had been dismissed.

"I'd like to have dinner with you, Kurt, but that's not going to be possible. Thank you. Again."

"Aw, h.e.l.l, Stan."

"You, d.i.c.k, I would like you to stick around. I may need a leg man to do more than find out who my daughter has been seeing. You came, I hope, prepared to stay a couple of days?"

"Yes, sir," Dye said.

"Whose suite is this?" Wells asked.

Fengler and Kruger looked at each other and shrugged, and smiled.

"Well, find out. And then see if you can turn the other one in on a room for d.i.c.k," Wells said. "Make sure he stays here in the hotel, in any case."

Then he walked quickly among them, shook their hands, and left the suite.

There was a Ford pulling away from the front door of WCBL-TV when the limousine arrived. The limousine took that place.

Wells walked up to the receptionist.

"My name is Stanford Wells," he said. "I would like to see Miss Louise Dutton."

The name Stanford Wells meant nothing whatever to the receptionist, but she thought that the nicely dressed man standing before her didn't look like a kook.

"Does Miss Dutton expect you?" she asked with a smile.

"No, but I bet if you tell her her father is out here, she'll come out and get me."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," the receptionist said. "You just missed her! I'm surprised you didn't see her. She just this minute left."

"Do you have any idea where she went?"

"No," the receptionist said. "But she was with Inspector Wohl, if that's any help."

"Thank you very much," Stanford Fortner Wells III said, and went out and got back in the limousine. He fished in his pockets and then swore.

"Something wrong, sir?" the chauffeur asked.

"Take me back to the hotel. I left my daughter's address on the G.o.dd.a.m.ned dresser."

Mickey O'Hara sat virtually motionless for three minutes before the computer terminal on his desk in the city room of the Philadelphia Bulletin. The only thing that moved was his tongue behind his lower lip.

Then, all of a sudden, his bushy eyebrows rose, his eyes lit up, his lips reflected satisfaction, and his fingers began to fly over the keys. He had been searching for his lead, and he had found it.

SLUG: Fried Thug By Michael J. O'Hara Gerald Vincent Gallagher, 24, was electrocuted and dismembered at 4:28 this afternoon, ending a ma.s.sive, citywide, twenty-four-hour manhunt by eight thousand Philadelphia policemen.

Gallagher, of a West Lindley Avenue address, had been sought by police on murder charges since he eluded capture following a foiled robbery at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard yesterday afternoon. Highway Patrol Captain Richard C. "Dutch" Moffitt happened to be in the restaurant, in civilian clothes, with WCBL-TV Anchorwoman Louise Dutton. Police say Captain Moffitt was shot to death in a gun battle with Dorothy Ann Schmeltzer, whom police say was Gallagher's accomplice, when he attempted to arrest Gallagher.

At 4:24 p.m. Charles McFadden, a 22-year-old Narcotics plainclothesman, spotted Gallagher, at the Bridge & Pratt Streets Terminal in Northeast Philadelphia. Gallagher attempted escape by running down a narrow workman's platform alongside the elevated tracks toward the Margaret-Orthodox Station. Just as McFadden caught up with him, he slipped, fell to the tracks, touched the third rail; and moments later was run over by four cars of a northbound elevated train.

Mickey O'Hara stopped typing, looked at the screen, and read what he had written. The thoughtful look came back on his face. He typed MORETOCOME MORETOCOME, then punched the send key.

Then he stood up and walked across the city room to the city editor's desk, and then stepped behind it. When the city editor was finished with what he was doing, he looked up and over his shoulder at Mickey O'Hara.

"Punch up 'fried thug,' " Mickey said.

The city editor did so, by pressing keys on one of his terminals that called up the story from the central computer memory and displayed it on his monitor.

As the city editor read Mickey's first 'graphs, O'Hara leaned over and dialed the number of the photo lab.

"Bobby, this is Mickey. Did they come out?"

"Nice," the city editor said. "How much more is there?"

"How much s.p.a.ce can I have?"

"Pictures?"

"Two good ones for sure," Mickey said. "I got a lovely shot of the severed head."

"I mean ones we can print, Mickey," the city editor said. He pointed to the telephone in Mickey's hand. "That the lab?" Mickey nodded, and the city editor gestured for the phone. "Print one of each, right away," he said, and hung up.

"I asked how much s.p.a.ce I can have," Mickey O'Hara said.

"Everybody else was there, I guess?"

"n.o.body else has pictures of the cop," Mickey said. "For that matter, of the tracks when anything was still going on."

"And you're sure this is the guy?"

"One of the Fifteenth District cops recognized the head," Mickey said.

"Give me a thousand, twelve hundred words," the city editor said. "Things are a little slow. Nothing but wars."

Mickey O'Hara nodded and walked back to his desk and sat down before the computer terminal. He pushed the COMPOSE key, and typed, SLUG: Fried Thug By Michael J. O'Hara Add One ***

Sergeant Tom Lenihan stepped into the doorway of the office of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, who commanded the Special Investigations Bureau, and stood waiting until he had Coughlin's attention.

"What is it, Tom?"