The Investigators Part 18

When he left the tiny office, Sandow's civilian was asleep in his chair, and when wakened, not in what could be called a charming frame of mind.

Matt rode the curved elevator down to the lobby and left the building. As he walked up to his car, a scruffy-looking character got out of a beat-up car, took a good look, without smiling, at Matt, then walked toward the Roundhouse.

I know that face, Matt thought. Matt thought. From where? From where?

He unlocked the unmarked car and got in.

I've seen that face somewhere, recently.

Like an hour ago!

Officer Timothy J. Calhoun's photograph in his records was a mug shot of a freshly scrubbed, cleanly shaven, crew-cutted inmate of the Police Academy.

He looks like a b.u.m, because undercover guys in Narcotics have to look like b.u.ms. When Captain Pekach was a lieutenant in Narcotics, he wore his hair in a pigtail.

I wonder what Calhoun's doing at the Roundhouse at midnight?

Matt pulled the key from the ignition switch and got out of the car in time to see Officer Calhoun enter the Roundhouse.

He walked quickly after him, and had his identification folder in his hand when he entered the building.

He showed it to the corporal on duty.

"The guy who just came in here?" Matt asked.

The corporal jerked his thumb to Matt's right, to the door leading to Central Lockup.

Matt went through the door. It led into sort of a corridor. To his left, on the other side of a gla.s.s wall, was the magistrate's court. Here, after being transported to Central Lockup and being booked, prisoners were brought before the magistrate to determine if they could be freed on their own recognizance, on bail, or at all. To his right were several rows of chairs where the prisoner's family, friends, or, for that matter, the general public could watch the magistrate in action.

At the end of the corridor was a locked door with a gla.s.s panel leading to the Central Lockup and the booking sergeant's desk.

Matt went and looked through the panel.

A uniform came to the window and indicated with a jerked thumb that he would prefer that Matt go away. Matt showed him his detective's identification, which visibly surprised the uniform, who then moved to open the door.

Matt shook his head, "no."

The uniform shrugged and walked away.

Matt looked into the booking area. Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of the Narcotics Five Squad, now in the company of another scruffy-looking character, whom Matt recognized from the photograph on his records but could not put a name to, was watching the process by which two district uniforms were relieved of responsibility for four prisoners.

Two of the latter were black, and dressed in flashy clothing. The other two were white, and dressed in a manner that suggested to Matt that they had white-collar jobs of some sort; had been out on the town; had decided that acquiring and ingesting one controlled substance or another would add a little excitement to the evening; had been in the process of acquiring same from the black gentlemen, whereupon all four had been busted by members of the Five Squad.

There was nothing else to see.

Matt turned and walked back out of the corridor, then changed direction. He motioned for the corporal behind the plate gla.s.s to open the door to the lobby of the Roundhouse. Once inside, he availed himself of the facilities of the gentlemen's rest room, and then finally left the building.

He got back in the unmarked car and backed it out of its parking slot.

As he drove out of the parking lot, Officer Timothy J. Calhoun and the other male Caucasian suspected of also being a police officer attached to the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit, walked toward him.

He didn't have the headlights on, so there was no blinding light to interfere with Officer Calhoun's view of the driver of the unmarked car. Confirmation that Officer Calhoun recognized him as the man who had been in the parking lot a few minutes earlier seemed to come when Matt glanced in his rearview mirror and saw that Officer Calhoun had stopped en route to his car, turned, and was looking curiously at Matt's car.

On what is that curiosity based? Simply that he remembered seeing me before, and a policeman's mind picks up on things like that? Or because his sensitivity to things like that has been increased because he's a dirty cop?

He almost certainly made this thing as an unmarked car. So what is a young guy doing driving a new unmarked car? Is he going to put that together and decide it's a Special Operations unmarked car? And come up with a suspicion that Special Operations is watching him?

That would be illogical. There are a hundred other reasons why somebody from Special Operations would be at the Roundhouse at this hour having nothing to do with the Five Squad.

But if I were a dirty cop, I would be a little paranoid.

Did I do something stupid, following him into the Roundhouse? Did he see me looking through the window?

Well, to h.e.l.l with it. It's done.

Matt turned the headlights on as he left the parking lot, and headed for Rittenhouse Square.

"Who was that in the unmarked car?" Officer Tom Coogan inquired of Officer Timothy Calhoun as soon as they were inside the well-worn Buick Special.

"I just made him," Calhoun said. "Remember the guy that popped the sicko, the serial rapist? Blew his brains out?"

"John Wayne, something like that?"

"Payne. His name is Payne."

"That was him?"

"That was him, I'm sure. That f.u.c.king new unmarked car makes me sure. He's one of them hotshots in Special Operations. Every one of them f.u.c.kers gets a new car, did you know that?"

"I heard it," Coogan said. "I ran into Charley McFadden-remember him?-at the FOP."

"I remember him, sure. He made detective, didn't he?"

"Him and the spic. Martinez. Mutt and Jeff both made detective, and both of them are in Special Operations, and both run around in brand-new unmarked cars."

"There's a moral in there, Coogan. Shoot a bad guy, and get yourself promoted."

"Mutt and Jeff didn't shoot shoot a bad guy, they tossed him under an elevated train," Coogan replied. a bad guy, they tossed him under an elevated train," Coogan replied.

Calhoun laughed.

"What the f.u.c.k do they do out there in Special Operations?" he asked.

"Who the f.u.c.k knows? They're Carlucci's fair-haired boys. They caught that loony tune who wanted to blow up the vice president. s.h.i.+t like that."

"How do you get in Special Operations?"

"Shoot a bad guy, I told you. Get your picture on TV."

"If we shoot one of our bad guys, we'd wind up on charges for violating the f.u.c.ker's civil rights," Calhoun said.

"Speaking of our bad guys, what did we get?"

"Nothing. Zip," Calhoun said.

"Nothing?"

"The two johns had eighty-five bucks between them," Calhoun explained. "The dinges had a half-dozen bags and three hundred bucks and change. I figured it wasn't worth the risk to take any of it."

"Three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks. A little bit here, a little bit there . . ." Coogan made a little joke.

It went over Calhoun's head.

"Somebody might have thought it strange that the dinges had only a hundred or so," he replied seriously. "And we don't take it all, remember? Don't be so f.u.c.king greedy, Coogan."

"Up yours, Calhoun!"

They drove to the Narcotics Unit's office at 22nd Street and Hunting Park Avenue, decided finis.h.i.+ng the paperwork could wait until they had a beer, and walked across the street to the Allgood Bar.

It was late, and not s.h.i.+ft-change time, and there was hardly anybody in the place. Except, sitting at a table in the rear, a stocky, swarthy man in his late thirties, who raised his bottle of Ortlieb's beer in greeting when he saw them.

Coogan and Calhoun stopped at the bar only long enough to get beers of their own and then walked to his table carrying them.

"What did you do to your face, Calhoun?" a.s.sistant District Attorney Anton C. Phebus asked.

Calhoun touched his face gingerly. Under three days' growth of beard on his right cheek was an angry red bruise.

"There was this guy, six feet six, one of them Zulus," Calhoun said. "Skinny as a rail. I don't think he weighed 130 pounds," Officer Calhoun explained. "I started to put cuffs on him, got one on him, and then he decided he didn't want to be arrested . . ."

He mimed the action, spilling a little beer in the process, of someone suddenly spreading his arms to avoid being handcuffed.

". . . and the loose cuff got me," he finished.

"And what did you do to him?" Phebus asked, chuckling.

"He's gonna sing soprano for a while. You wouldn't believe how strong that skinny f.u.c.ker was!"

"Maybe he was on something," Phebus suggested.

"Maybe," Calhoun said, considering this. "But I don't think so. He was just strong, is all. And he took me by surprise."

"Aside from that," Phebus chuckled, "how was the arrest?"

"Zip," Coogan offered.

"Zip?" Phebus asked, surprised, and then looked at Calhoun. "Zip, like in zero?"

"You told me to think, I thought," Calhoun said. "What they had wasn't worth the risk."

"Good boy," Phebus said. "There's always another day."

"So you keep saying," Calhoun said.

Phebus looked as if he intended to reply, but changed his mind.

"Two things," he said. "They're going to let me prosecute Leslie, which means I can get-"

"Who's Leslie?" Coogan interrupted.

"The junkie s.h.i.+t who popped Kellog," Calhoun furnished, contemptuously.

"Sorry," Coogan said, flus.h.i.+ng, aware he had just said something stupid.

"Which means," Phebus went on, "that I can finally get to listen to what's on Kellog's f.u.c.king tapes."

"There's probably nothing on them," Calhoun said. "Kellog wasn't stupid."

"He was covering his a.s.s," Phebus said. "Which means he was scared. People who are scared do stupid things."

"Where are the tapes now?" Coogan asked.

"We have them," Phebus said. "But I just couldn't go to the evidence room and ask for them. Before. Now that I'm prosecuting Leslie, I'll be expected to look at them, listen to them."

Coogan nodded, then said, "You said 'two things.' "

Phebus did not reply directly. He looked at Calhoun and asked, "Calhoun, you planning to go to Harrisburg anytime soon?"

"Should I?"

"Get the wife and kid out of the city, why don't you? Get them a little fresh air out in the country. See your wife's family."

"Right."> "What's going to happen to Leslie?" Coogan asked.

"Probably, I can get him convicted of first-degree murder. He's going away for a while."

"Christ, we ought to give him a medal. He done us a favor," Coogan said.

"Like what?" Phebus asked sarcastically. "Calling all the attention he did to the Five Squad? Letting people listen to those tapes?"

"Kellog won't be making any more tapes," Coogan said. "Will he?"

"Who else is going to listen to those tapes?" Calhoun asked.

"n.o.body now, I don't think. Special Operations made copies of them when they were looking for Kellog's shooter."