Badge Of Honor: The Victim Part 50

"The side that's wondering if I can find anybody interested in buying a nearly new set of uniforms, size forty regular," Matt said.

"You going to ask me if I want to sit down?" Chief Wohl said.

"Oh! Sorry. Please sit down."

"Thank you," Chief Wohl said. He sat in Matt's chair and put his feet up on the footstool. Matt sat on the window ledge.

"I told Peter that I think he's wrong about you needing the experience you'll get-if you decide to go over there on Monday-at the 12th," Chief Wohl said. "Incidentally, Peter feels lousy about the way that happened. I want you to understand that. It was out of his hands. That's one of the reasons I came here, to make sure you understood that."

"I thought it probably was," Matt said. "I mean the commissioner's decision."

"Reaction, not decision," Chief Wohl said. "There's a difference. When you decide something, you consider the facts and make a choice. When you react, it's different. Reactions are emotional."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"Right or wrong wasn't on Czernick's agenda. What he saw was that Jerry Carlucci was going to be p.i.s.sed off at Peter because of your little escapade with the Detweiler girl. He wanted to get himself out of the line of fire. He reacted. By jumping on you before Carlucci said anything, he was proving, he thinks, to Jerry Carlucci, that he's one of the good guys."

Matt took a pull at his drink.

"You're not going to learn anything," Chief Wohl said, "if you decide to go over there on Monday, hauling fat ladies with broken legs downstairs-"

Matt laughed.

"I say something funny?" Chief Wohl snapped.

"I'm sorry," Matt said. "But I was thinking in exactly those terms-hauling fat ladies-when I was thinking about what I would be doing in the 12th."

"As I was saying, you won't learn anything hauling fat ladies except how to haul fat ladies. The idea of putting rookies on jobs like that is to give them experience. You've already had your experience."

"Do you mean because I shot the serial rapist?" Matt asked.

"No. As a matter of fact, I didn't even think about that," Chief Wohl said. "No, not that. That was something else. What I meant was the price of going off half-c.o.c.ked before you think through what's liable to happen if you do what seems like such a great idea. The price of doing something dumb is what I mean."

"It's obviously expensive," Matt said. "I lose my job. I get my boss in trouble. I get to haul fat ladies. And because I was dumb, the sc.u.mbags who shot the other sc.u.mbag and Penny Detweiler get away with it. That really makes me mad. No, not mad. Ashamed of myself."

He became aware that Chief Wohl was looking at him with an entirely different look on his face.

"Chief, did I say something wrong?" Matt asked.

"No," Chief Wohl replied. "No, not at all. Can I have another one of these?''

"Certainly."

When Matt was at the sink, Chief Wohl got up and followed him.

"They may not get away with it," he said. "I have just decided that if I tell you something, it won't go any further. Am I right?"

"Do you think, after the trouble I've caused, that I am any judge of my reliability?"

"I think you can judge whether or not you can keep your mouth shut, particularly since you have just learned how you can get other people in trouble."

"Yes, sir," Matt said after a moment. "I can keep my mouth shut."

Chief Wohl met his eyes for a moment and then nodded.

"There is a set of rules involving the Mob and the police. n.o.body talks about them, but they're there. I won't tell you how I know this, but Vincenzo Savarese got word to Jerry Carlucci that the Mob-Mobs, there's a couple of them-had nothing to do with the shooting of that Italian cop . . . what was his name?''

"Magnella. Joseph Magnella," Matt furnished.

"We believe him. The reason he told us that is not because he gives a d.a.m.n about a dead cop but because he doesn't want us looking for the doer, doers, in the Mob. We might come across something else he doesn't want us to know. Since we're taking him at his word, that means we can devote the resources to looking elsewhere. You with me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. The DeZego hit is different. Ordinarily we really don't spend a lot of time worrying about the Mob killing each other. If we can catch the doer, fine. But we know that we seldom do catch the doers, so we go through the motions and let it drop. The DeZego hit is different."

"Because of Penny Detweiler?"

"No. Well, maybe a little. But that's not what I'm talking about. The one thing the Mob does not do is point the finger at some other Mob guy and say he's the doer, go lock him up. That violates their Sicilian Code of Honor, telling the police anything about some other mafioso. If a Mob guy is. .h.i.t, it's one of two ways. It was, by their standards, a justified hit, and that's the end of it. Or it was unjustified and they put out a contract on the guy who did it. This was different. They pointed us, with that matchbook Savarese gave Dave Pekach, at the pimp."

"He was black."

"More important," Chief Wohl said, a tone of impatience in his voice, "he didn't do it."

"Yeah," Matt said, chagrined. "Maybe they wanted him-the pimp, I mean-killed for some other reason."

"Could well be, but that's not the point. The point is that Savarese tried to play games with us. Two things with that. One, we wonder why. Two, more important, that breaks the rules. He lied to us. We can't have that."

"So what happens?"

"The first thing we think is that if he lied to us about the pimp, he's probably lying to us about not knowing who killed the Italian cop. So that means we can't trust him."

"So you start looking around the Mob for who killed DeZego and who killed Magnella."

"Yeah," Chief Wohl said. "But before we do that, to make sure that he knows we haven't broken our end of the arrangement, we let him know we know he broke the rules first."

"How?"

Chief Wohl told him. And as he was explaining what was going to happen-in fact, had already happened, thirty minutes before, just after ten p.m., just before Chief Inspector Wohl, retired, had shown up at the apartment-a question arose in Matt's mind that he knew he could never raise: whether the chief had been a spectator or a partic.i.p.ant.

When Mr. Vincenzo Savarese's Lincoln pulled to the curb in front of the Ristorante Alfredo right on time to pick up Mr. Savarese following his dinner and convey him to his residence, a police officer almost immediately came around the corner, walked up to the car, and tapped his knuckles on the window.

When the window came down, Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., politely said, "Excuse me, sir, this is a no-parking, no-standing zone. You'll have to move along."

"We're just picking somebody up," Mr. Pietro Ca.s.sandro, who was driving the Lincoln, said.

"I'm sorry, sir, this is a no-standing zone," Officer Lewis said.

"For chrissake, we'll only be two minutes," Mr. Gian-Carlo Rosselli, who was in the front seat beside Mr. Ca.s.sandro, said.

Officer Lewis removed his booklet of citations from his hip pocket.

"May I see your driver's license and registration, please, sir? I'm afraid that I will have to issue a citation."

"We're moving, we're moving," Mr. Ca.s.sandra said as he rolled up the window and put the car in gear.

"Just drive around the block," Mr. Rosselli said.

"Arrogant f.u.c.king n.i.g.g.e.r-put them in a uniform and they really think they're hot s.h.i.+t."

"That was a big n.i.g.g.e.r. Did you see the size of that son of a b.i.t.c.h?"

"I didn't want to have Mr. S. coming out of the place and finding jumbo Sambo standing there. If there's anything he hates worse than a n.i.g.g.e.r, it's a n.i.g.g.e.r cop."

There was more f.u.c.king trouble with the f.u.c.king cops going around the block. There was something wrong with the sewer or something, and there was a cop standing in the middle of the street with his hand up. And they couldn't back up and go around, either, because another car, an old Jaguar convertible, was behind them. They took five minutes minimum, and the result was that when they went all the way around the block, Mr. S. was standing on the curb looking nervous. He didn't like to wait around on curbs.

"Sorry, Mr. S.," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said. "We had trouble with a cop."

"What kind of trouble with a cop?''

"Fresh n.i.g.g.e.r cop, just proving he had a badge," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"I don't like trouble with cops," Mr. Savarese said.

"It wasn't his fault, Mr. S.," Mr. Rosselli said.

"I don't want to hear about it. I don't like trouble with cops."

Mr. Savarese's Lincoln turned south on South Broad Street.

Mr. Ca.s.sandra became aware that the car behind, the stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d, had his bright lights on. He reached up and flicked the little lever under the mirror, which deflected the beam of light, and he could see the car behind him.

"There's a f.u.c.king cop behind us," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"I don't like trouble with cops," Mr. Savarese said. "Don't give him any excuse for anything."

"Maybe he's just there, like coincidental," Mr. Rosselli said.

"Yeah, probably," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

Six blocks down South Broad Street, the police car was still behind the Lincoln, which was now traveling thirty-two miles per hour in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone.

"Is the cop still back there?" Mr. Savarese asked.

"Yeah, he is, Mr. S.," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"I wonder what the f.u.c.k he wants," Mr. Rosselli asked.

"I don't like trouble with cops," Mr. Savarese said. "Have we got a bad taillight or something?"

"I don't think so, Mr. S.," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

Three blocks farther south, the flas.h.i.+ng lights on the roof of the police car turned on, and there was the whoop of its siren.

"s.h.i.+t," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"You must have done something wrong," Mr. Savarese said.

"I been going thirty-two miles an hour," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"You sure it's a cop?" Mr. Savarese said as they pulled up to the curb.

"It's that gigantic n.i.g.g.e.r that gave us the trouble before," Mr. Rosselli said.

"Jesus," Mr. Savarese said.

Officer Lewis walked up to the car and flashed his flashlight at Mr. Ca.s.sandro, Mr. Rosselli, and Mr. Savarese in turn.

"Is something wrong, Officer?" Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"May I have your driver's license and registration, please?" Tiny Lewis asked.

"Yeah, sure. You gonna tell me what I did wrong?"

"You were weaving as you drove down the street," Officer Lewis said.

"No I wasn't!" Mr. Ca.s.sandro said.

"Have you been drinking, sir?"

"Not a G.o.dd.a.m.n drop," Mr. Ca.s.sandro said. "What is this s.h.i.+t?"

"Shut your mouth," Mr. Savarese said sharply to Mr. Ca.s.sandro.

Officer Lewis flashed his light at Mr. Savarese.

"Oh, you're Mr. Savarese, aren't you?"

After a discernible pause Mr. Savarese said, "Yes, my name is Savarese."

"You left something behind you in the restaurant, Mr. Savarese," Officer Lewis said.

"I did? I don't recall-"

"Here it is, sir," Tiny Lewis said, and handed Mr. Savarese a large manila envelope.

"Please try to drive in a straight line," Tiny Lewis said. "Good night."