Badge Of Honor: The Victim Part 40

"Didn't you, Inspector? Or were you thinking, maybe, 'He's a nice kid and I'll keep him out of the line of fire'?"

"I didn't know you wanted to see him, Mr. Mayor," Peter said.

"But now that you do, do you have any idea what I would have liked to have said to him, if given the opportunity?"

"I think he already heard that, Mr. Mayor, from me. Last night," Peter said.

"So you know he has diarrhea of the mouth?"

"I used those very words, Mr. Mayor, when I counseled him last night," Peter said.

Carlucci glowered at Wohl for a moment and then laughed. "You counseled him, did you, Peter?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't know why the h.e.l.l I'm laughing," the mayor said. "That was pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n embarra.s.sing at the Browne place. d.i.c.k Detweiler was G.o.dd.a.m.n near hysterical. Christ, he was hysterical."

"Mr. Mayor," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said, "I think any father naturally would be upset to learn that his daughter was involved with narcotics."

"Particularly if he heard it third hand, the way Detweiler did," the mayor said icily, "instead of, for example, from a senior police official directly."

"Yes, sir," Coughlin said.

His Honor the Mayor was not through.

"Maybe an Irish police official," Carlucci said. "The Irish are supposed to be good at politics. An Irishman could have told Detweiler about his daughter with a little Irish-what is it you call your bulls.h.i.+t, Denny, the kind you just tried to lay on me?-blarney."

"Sir," Wohl said, "it could have been worse."

"How the h.e.l.l could it have been worse?" the mayor snapped. "Do you have any idea how much Detweiler contributed to my last campaign? Or phrased another way, how little he, and his friends, will contribute to my next campaign unless we put away, for a long time-and more importantly, soon-whoever popped his daughter?''

"We have information that Miss Detweiler was involved with Tony the Zee, Mr. Mayor. He may not know that. Payne didn't tell him."

The mayor looked him, his eyebrows raised in incredulity.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t!" he said. "How good is your information?"

"My source is Payne. He got it from the Nesbitt boy-the Marine?-who got it from the Browne girl," Wohl said.

"Then it's just a matter of time until Detweiler learns that too," the mayor said.

"Even if that's true, Mr. Mayor," Dennis Coughlin said, "I don't see how he could hold that against you."

The mayor snapped his head toward Coughlin and glowered at him a moment. "I hope that's more of your f.u.c.king blarney, Denny. I would hate to think that I have a chief inspector who is so f.u.c.king dumb, he believes what he just said."

"Jerry, for chrissake," Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein said. It was the first time he had spoken. "Denny's on your side. We all are."

Carlucci glared at him, then looked as if he were going to say something but didn't.

"I really don't see, Jerry," Coughlin said reasonably, "how he could hold his daughter's problems against you."

"Okay," Carlucci said, his tone as reasonable, "I'll tell you how. We have a man who has just learned his daughter is into hard drugs. And, according to Peter, here, is about to learn that she has been running around with a guinea gangster. What's your information, Peter? What does 'involved with' mean? That she's been f.u.c.king him?"

"Yes, sir. Payne seemed pretty sure it was more than a casual acquaintance."

"Okay. So what we have here is a guy who is a pillar of the community. His wife is a pillar of the community. They have done everything they could for their precious daughter. They have sent her to the right schools and the right churches and seen that she a.s.sociates with the right kind of people- like young Payne, for example. And all of a sudden she gets herself popped with a shotgun, and then it comes out that she's a junkie and f.u.c.king a guinea gangster. How can that be? It's certainly not her fault, and it's certainly not their fault. So it has to be society's fault. And who is responsible for society? Who is supposed to put gangsters and drug dealers in jail? Why, the police are. That's why we have police. If the police had done their job, there would be no drugs on the street, and if the police had done their job, that low-life guinea gangster would have been put in jail and would not have been getting in precious Penny's pants. That's what Detweiler called his daughter last night, by the way: 'precious Penny.' Is any of this getting through to you, Denny?"

"Yeah, sure," Coughlin said resignedly. "It's not fair, but that's the way it is."

"Nothing personal, Denny, but that's the first intelligent thing you've said so far this morning," the mayor said. He let that sink in a moment, then turned to Peter Wohl. "What I told Detweiler last night-not knowing, of course, that his precious Penny was f.u.c.king DeZego-was that we were close to finding the man who had shot her. How much more of an a.s.shole is that going to make me look like, Peter?"

"We may be on to something," Wohl said carefully.

"Christ, I hope so. What?"

"Dave Pekach had dinner with his girlfriend-"

"The Peebles woman? That one?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going off on a tangent," the mayor said. "What about that? Is that going to embarra.s.s the Department?"

"No. I don't think so," Wohl said. "Unless a police captain acting like a teenager in love for the first time is embarra.s.sing."

The mayor was not amused. "She has friends in very high places," he said coldly. "Do you think maybe you should drop a hint that he had better treat her right?"

"I don't think that's necessary, Mr. Mayor," Wohl said. "Dave Pekach is really a decent guy. And they're really in love."

The mayor considered that dubiously for a moment but finally said, "If you say so, Peter, okay. But what we don't need is any more rich people p.i.s.sed off at the Department than we already have. Arthur J. Nelson and d.i.c.k Detweiler is enough already. So he had dinner with her ..."

"At Ristorante Alfredo," Wohl went on. "He had made reservations. When he got there, Vincenzo Savarese was there. He gave him- I'm cutting corners here."

"You're doing fine," the mayor said.

"A little speech about being grateful for a favor Dave had done for him-nothing dirty there, just Dave being nice to a girl he didn't know was Savarese's granddaughter. You want to hear about that?''

"Not unless it's important."

"Savarese said thank you for the favor, and then Ricco Baltazari gave Dave a matchbook, said Dave dropped it. Inside was a name and address. Black guy named Marvin P. Lanier. Small-time. Says he's a gambler. Actually he's a pimp. And according to two of Dave's undercover cops-Martinez and McFadden, the two who caught the junkie who killed Dutch Moffitt-Lanier sometimes transports cocaine from Harlem."

"You've lost me," the mayor said. "What's a n.i.g.g.e.r pimp got to do with precious Penny Detweiler?''

"Last night Martinez and McFadden saw Lanier. They had been using him as a snitch. Lanier told them, quote, a guinea shot Tony the Zee, unquote."

"He had a name?" the mayor asked.

"He was supposed to come up with one by four o'clock this afternoon," Wohl said.

"You think he will?"

"Lanier got popped last night. Five shots with a .38," Wohl said. "Do you know Joe D'Amata of Homicide?"

"Yeah."

"He got the job. Because there was a Highway car seen at the crime scene, he came out to Bustleton and Bowler first thing this morning to see what we had on Lanier."

"Which was?"

"Nothing. Martinez and McFadden were in the car. Working on their own."

"I'm having a little trouble following all this, Peter," the mayor said, almost apologetically.

"When McFadden and Martinez saw Lanier, they took a shotgun away from him. Joe D'Amata said Lanier had a shotgun under his bed. So I thought maybe there was a tie-in-"

"How?"

"Savarese pointed us to this guy. DeZego was popped with a shotgun. Lanier had two. Lanier gets killed."

"What about the shotgun? Shotguns?"

"I sent them to the lab."

"And?"

"I can call. They may not be through yet."

"Call."

Less than a minute later Wohl replaced one of the mayor's three telephones in its cradle.

"Forensics," Wohl announced, "says that the shotgun-sh.e.l.l cases found on the roof of the Penn Services Parking Garage were almost certainly, based on the marks made by the ejector, fired from the Remington Model 1100 shotgun D'Amata found under Lanier's bed."

"Bingo," Dennis V. Coughlin said.

"You're saying the pimp shot DeZego?" the mayor asked.

"I think Savarese wants us to think Lanier shot DeZego," Matt Lowenstein said.

"Why?" the mayor asked.

"Who the h.e.l.l knows?" Lowenstein said.

"Check with Organized Crime," the mayor said. "See if they can come up with any reason the mob would want DeZego dead."

"They're working on that, Jerry," Lowenstein said. "I asked them the day after DeZego got popped; they said they'd already been asked to check by Jason Was.h.i.+ngton.

If there was a rebuke in Lowenstein's reply, the mayor seemed not to have noticed.

"Was.h.i.+ngton working on this dead-pimp angle?" Carlucci asked.

"No, sir," Wohl replied. "Chief Lowenstein loaned me D'Amata. I was going to have him work with Was.h.i.+ngton. But when I couldn't find him, I put Tony Harris on it."

"Why can't you find Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"I don't know where he is," Wohl said, and then heard his words. "I didn't mean that, sir, the way it came out. He's working on the street somewhere, and when I got the word to come here, he hadn't reported in yet. I've got Payne looking for him. For all I know, he's probably already found him.''

"Tony Harris is working on the Officer Magnella job, right?" the mayor asked. "So you turn him off that to put him on this?"

"We're getting nowhere on the Magnella job, Mr. Mayor," Peter Wohl said. "That one's going to take time. I wanted a good Homicide detective at the Lanier scene while it was still hot."

"Meaning you don't think Joe D'Amata is a good Homicide detective?" Lowenstein snapped.

"If I didn't think Joe was as good as he is, I wouldn't have asked you for him, Chief," Wohl replied. "Maybe that was a bad choice of words. What I meant was that I wanted Harris and D'Amata, now that we know we're looking for something beside the doer of a pimp shooting, to take another look at the crime scene as soon as possible."

"I don't like that," the mayor said thoughtfully.

"Sir?" Peter asked.

"s.h.i.+t, I didn't mean that the way it came out. I wouldn't tell you how to do your job, Peter. What I meant was what you said about the Magnella job, that it's going to take time. We can't afford that. You can't let people get away with shooting a cop. You have to catch him-them-quick. And in a good, tight, all-the-i's-dotted, all-the-t's-crossed arrest."

"Yes, sir, I know. But Harris told me all he knows how to do is go back to the beginning. There's nothing new to run down."

"Lowenstein giving you all the help you need?"

"Chief Lowenstein has been very helpful, sir. I couldn't ask for anything more," Wohl said.

"Denny, you paying attention?" the mayor asked.

"Sir?"

"Peter knows what's the right thing to say to make friends and influence people. You ought to watch him, learn from him."

"Oh, f.u.c.k you, Jerry," Coughlin said when he realized that the real target of Carlucci's barb was Wohl, and that he was being teased.

"Make that, 'oh, f.u.c.k you, Mr. Mayor,' sir," Carlucci said, chuckling. Then his voice grew serious. "Okay. Thanks for coming in. If it wasn't for what Peter said about the Magnella job, I'd say I feel a lot better than I felt before. Jesus, I'd like to hang the DeZego job on Savarese, or even on one of his sc.u.mbags."

Coughlin stood up and shook the mayor's hand when it was offered. Lowenstein followed him past the mayor's desk, and then past Wohl.

The mayor hung on to Wohl's hand, signaling that he wanted Wohl to remain behind.

"Yes, sir?"

"I spoke to your dad last night," the mayor said.

"Last night?" Peter asked, surprised.

"This morning. Very early this morning. He told me he had been talking to you and that you led him to believe your salami was on the chopping block with all this, and you thought that was unfair.''