Men In Blue

ELEVEN

The building housing the PhiladelphiaLedger and the studios of WGHATV and WGHA-FM was on Market Street, near the Thirtieth Street Station, and built, Wohl recalled as he drove up to it, about the same time. It wasn't quite the marble Greek palace the Thirtieth Street Station was, but it was a large and imposing building.

He had been in it once before, as a freshman at St. Joseph's Prep, on a field trip. As he walked up to the entrance, he remembered that very clearly, a busload of boisterous boys, horsing around, getting whacked with a finger behind the ear by the priests when their decorum didn't meet the standards of Young Catholic Gentlemen.

There was a rent-a-cop standing by the revolving door, a receptionist behind a marble counter in the marble-floored lobby, and two more rent-a-cops standing behind her.

Wohl gave her his business card. It carried the seal of the City of Philadelphia in the upper left-hand corner, the legendPOLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF PHILADELPHIA in the lower left, and in the center his name, and below that, in slightly smaller letters,STAFF INSPECTOR . In the lower right-hand corner, it said :INTERNAL SECURITY DIVISION FRANKLIN SQUARE and listed two telephone numbers.

It was an impressive card, and usually opened doors to wherever he wanted to go very quickly.

It made absolutely no impression on the receptionist in the Ledger Building.

"Do you have an appointment with Mr. Nelson, sir?" she asked, with massive condescension.

"I believe Mr. Nelson expects me," Wohl said.

She smiled thinly at him and dialed a number.

"There's a Mr. Wohl at Reception who says Mr. Nelson expects him."

There was a pause, then a reply, and she hung up the telephone.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you don't seem to be on Mr. Nelson's appointment schedule," the receptionist said. "He's a very busy man, as I'm sure-"

"Call whoever that was back and tell her Inspector Wohl, of the police department," Peter Wohl interrupted her.

She thought that over a moment, and finally shrugged and dialed the phone again.

This time, there was a longer pause before she hung up. She took a clipboard from a drawer, and a plastic-coated "Visitor" badge.

"Sign on the first blank line, please," she said, and turned to one of the rent-a-cops. "Take this gentleman to the tenth floor, please."

There was another entrance foyer when the elevator door was opened, behind a massive mahogany desk, and for a moment, Wohl thought he was going to have to go through the whole routine again, but a door opened, and a well-dressed, slim, gray-haired woman came through it and smiled at him.

"I'm Mr. Nelson's secretary, Inspector," she said. "Will you come this way, please?"

The rent-a-cop slipped into a chair beside the elevator door.

"I'm sorry about that downstairs," the woman said, smiling at him over her shoulder. "I think maybe you should have told her you were from the police."

"No problem," Peter said. It would accomplish nothing to tell her he' d given her his card with that information all over it.

Arthur J. Nelson's outer office, his secretary's office, was furnished with gleaming antiques, a Persian carpet, an oil portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt, and a startlingly lifelike stuffed carcass of a tiger, very skillfully mounted, so that, snarling, it appeared ready to pounce.

"He'll be with you just as soon as he can," his secretary said. "May I offer you a cup of coffee?"

"Thank you, no," Peter said, and then his mouth ran away with him. "I like your pussycat."

"Mr. Nelson took that when he was just out of college," she said, and pointed to a framed photograph on the wall. Wohl went and looked at it. It was of a young man, in sweat-soaked khakis, cradling his rifle in his arm, and resting his foot on a dead tiger, presumably the one now stuffed and mounted.

"Bengal," the secretary said. "That's a Bengal tiger."

"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 classic Greek lines from that angle diluted somewhat by airconditioning 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 asses 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 hell. 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 glass, 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 glass. 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 ship 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, youcertainly 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 youknow 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 asshole 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 balls to sentence him to the electric chair, he'll appeal, for ten years or so, and the odds are some yellow-livered sonofabitch 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 glass. "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 assigned-"

"I thought it had been assigned to you," Nelson interrupted.

"No, sir," Peter said. "Detective Harris of the Homicide Division has been assigned 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 assistance 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 municipal cookie jar. And now you're telling me you're not on the case…"

"Sir, what it means is that Commissioner Czernick assigned the best availableHomicide 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 God, 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. "Youare aware that she found Jerry? That she went into his bedroom, and found him like that?"

"I wasn't aware of a relationship 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 homosexual swept under the rug. For his own ego, or maybe, even more likely, because there's a mother around. What the hell, my father would do the same thing.

"Insofar as theLedger is concerned," Nelson said, meeting Wohl's eyes, "every effort will be made to spare Miss Dutton any embarrassment. I can only hope my competition 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 sexual 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?"

"No."

"So?"

"So?" he parroted.

"So why did you call?"

"I dunno," he said.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I've got to go by my office, and then figure out some way to get my car from where it's parked in front of your house," he said.

"I forgot about that," she said. "Why don't you pick me up here after I do the news at six? I could drive it to your place, or wherever."

"Where would I meet you?"

"Come on in," Louise said. "I'll tell them at reception."

"Okay," he said. "Thank you."

"Don't be silly," she said, and then added, "Peter, don't forget to pick up your uniform at the cleaners."

"Okay," he said, and chuckled, and the line went dead.

He realized, as he hung the telephone up, that he was smiling. More than that, he was very happy. There was something very touching, very intimate, in her concern that he not forget to pick up his uniform. Then he thought that if he had called Barbara Crowley and she had reminded him of it, he would have been annoyed.

Is this what being in love is like?

He went out of his way to get the uniform before he drove downtown, so that he really would not forget it.

He had not been at his desk in his office three minutes when Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin slipped into the chair beside it.

"Jeannie was asking where you were last night, Peter," Coughlin said. "At the house."

"I wasn't up to it," Peter said. "And you know what happened later."

"You feel up to being a pallbearer?" Coughlin asked, evenly.

"If Jeannie wants me to, sure," Peter said.

"That's what I told her," Coughlin said. "Be at Marshutz amp; Sons about half past nine. The funeral's at eleven."

"I'll be there," Peter said. "Chief, my dad suggested I wear my uniform."

Chief Inspector Coughlin thought that over a moment.

"What did you decide about it?"

"Until I heard about being a pallbearer, I was going to wear it."

"I think it would nice, Peter, if we carried Dutch to his rest in uniform," Chief Inspector Coughlin said. "I'll call the wife and make sure mine's pressed."

Officer Anthony F. Caragiola, who was headed for the job on the fourto-midnight watch, glanced at his wrist-watch, and walked into Gene amp; Jerry's Restaurant amp; Sandwiches across the street from the Bridge Street Terminal. There would be time for a cup of coffee and a sweet roll before he climbed the stairs to catch the elevated and go to work.

Officer Caragiola, who wore the white cap of the Traffic Division, had been a policeman for eleven years, and was now thirty-four years old. He was a large and swarthy man, whose skin showed the ravages of being outside day after day in heat and cold, rain and shine.

He eased his bulk onto one of the round stools at the counter, waved his fingers in greeting at the waitress, a stout, blond woman, and helped himself to a sweet roll from the glass case. He had lived three blocks away, now with his wife and four kids, for most of his life. When there was a problem at Gene amp; Jerry's, if one of the waitresses took sick, or one of the cooks, and his wife, Maria, could get somebody to watch the kids, she came and filled in.

The waitress put a china mug of coffee and three half-and-half containers in front of him.

"So how's it going?"

"Can't complain," Officer Caragiola said. "Yourself?"

She shrugged and smiled and walked away. Tony Caragiola carefully opened the three tubs of half-and-half and carefully poured them into his coffee, and then stirred it.

He heard a hissing noise, and looked at the black swinging doors leading to the kitchen. Gene was standing there, wiggling her fingers at him. Gene was Eugenia Santalvaria, a stout, black-haired woman in her fifties who had six months before buried her husband, Gerimino, after thirty-three years of marriage.

Caragiola slipped off the stool and, carrying his coffee with him, stepped behind the counter and walked to the doors to the kitchen.

"Tony, maybe it's something, maybe it ain't," Gene Santalvaria said, in English, and then switched to Italian. There were two bums outside, a big fat slob and a little guy that looked like a spic, she told him. They had been there for hours, sitting in an old Volkswagen. Maybe they were going to stick up the check-cashing place down the block, or maybe they were selling dope or something; every once in a while, one of them got out of the car and went up the stairs to the elevated, and then a couple of minutes later came back down the stairs and got back in the car. She didn't want to call the district, 'cause maybe it wasn't nothing, but since he had come in, she thought it was better she tell him.

"I'll have a look," Officer Caragiola said.

He left the kitchen and walked to the front of the restaurant and, sipping on his coffee, looked for a Volkswagen. There was two guys in it, one of them, a big fat slob with one of them hippie bands around his forehead, behind the wheel, slumped down in the seat as if he was asleep. And then the passenger door opened, and a little guy-she was right, he looked like a spic-got out and looked for traffic, and then walked across the street to the stairs to the elevated. Looked like a mean little fucker.

Officer Caragiola set his coffee on the counter and walked quickly out of Gene amp; Jerry's, and across the street, and up the stairs after him.

He got to the platform just as a train arrived. Everybody on the platform got on it but the little spic. He acted as if he was waiting for somebody who might have ridden the elevated to the end of the line and just stayed on. If he did that, he would just go back downtown. If somebody like that was either buying or selling dope, that would be the way to do it.

Officer Caragiola ducked behind a stairwell so the little spic couldn't see him, and waited. People started coming up the stairs, filling up the platform, and then a train arrived from downtown and left, and then five minutes later reappeared on the downtown track. Everybody on the platform got on the train but the little spic.

Tony Caragiola came out from behind the stairwell and walked over to the little spic.

"Speak to you a minute, buddy?" he said.

"What about?"

Tony saw that the little spic was pissed. He probably knew all the civil rights laws about cops not being supposed to ask questions without reasonable cause.

"You want to tell me what you and your friend in the Volkswagen are doing?"

"Narcotics," the little spic said. "I'd rather not show you my I.D. Not here."

"Who's your lieutenant?" Tony asked.

"Lieutenant Pekach."

It was a name Officer Caragiola did not recognize.

"I think you better show me your ID," he said.

"Shit," the little spic said. He reached in his back pocket and came out with a plastic identity card. "Okay?" he said.

"The lady in the restaurant said you were acting suspicious," Tony Caragiola said.

"Yeah, I'll bet."

Officer Jesus Martinez put his ID back in his pocket and walked down the stairs. Officer Anthony Caragiola walked twenty feet behind him. He went back in Gene amp; Jerry's and told Gene everything was all right, not to worry about it. Then he went back across the street and climbed the stairs to catch the elevated to go to work.

Officer Martinez got back into the Volkswagen. He glowered for a full minute at Officer Charley McFadden, who was asleep and snoring. Then he jabbed him, hard, with his fingers, in his ribs. McFadden sat up, a look of confusion on his face.

"What's up?"

"I thought you would like to know, asshole, that the lady in the restaurant called the cops on us. Said we look suspicious."

At quarter to five, Peter Wohl drove to Marshutz amp; Sons. As he walked up the wide steps to the Victorian-style building, the Moffitts-Jean, the kids, and Dutch's mother-came out.

Jean Moffitt was wearing a black dress and a hat with a veil. The kids were in suits. Gertrude Moffitt was in a black dress and hat, but no veil.

"Hello, Peter," Jean Moffitt said, and offered a gloved hand.

"Jeannie," Peter said.

"You know Mother Moffitt, don't you?"

"Yes, of course," Peter said. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Moffitt."

"We're going out for a bite to eat," Gertrude Moffitt said. "Before people start coming after work."

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Moffitt, about Dick," Peter said.

"His close personal friends, some of who I didn't even know," Gertrude Moffitt went on, "were at the house last night."

It was a rebuke.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come by last night, Jeannie," Peter said.

"Your mother explained," Jeannie Moffitt said. "Did Denny Coughlin ask you?"

"About being a pallbearer?" Peter asked, and when she nodded, went on: "Yes, and I'm honored."

"Dennis Coughlin was a sergeant when he carried my John, God rest his soul, to his grave," Gertrude Moffitt said. "And now, as a chief inspector, he'll be doing the same for my Richard."

"Mother, would you please put the kids in the car?" Jean Moffitt said. "I want a word with Inspector Wohl."

That earned Jeannie a dirty look from Mother Moffitt, but it didn't seem to faze her. She returned the older woman's look, staring her down until she led the boys down the stairs.

"Tell me about the TV lady, Peter," Jeannie Moffitt said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Isn't that why you didn't come by the house last night? You were afraid I'd ask you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Jeannie," Wohl said.

"I'm talking about Louise Dutton of Channel Nine," she said. "Was there something between her and Dutch? I have to know."

"Where did you hear that?"

"It's going around," she said. "I heard it."

"Well, you heard wrong," Peter said.

"You sound pretty sure," Jeannie Moffitt accused sarcastically.

"I know for sure," Peter said.

"Peter, don't lie to me," Jeannie said.

"Louise Dutton and me, as my mother would put it, if she knew, and doesn't, are 'keeping company,' " Wohl said. "That's how I know."

Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Really?" she said, and he knew she believed him.

"Not for public consumption," Peter said. "The gossips got their facts wrong. Wrong cop."

"I thought you were seeing that nurse, what's her name, Barbara-"

"Crowley," Peter furnished. "I was."

"Your mother doesn't know?"

"And, for the time being, I would like to keep it that way," Peter said.

She looked in his eyes, and then stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.

"Oh, I'm glad I ran into you," she said.

"Dutch liked being married to you, Jeannie," Wohl said.

"Oh, God, I hope so," she said.

She turned and ran down the stairs.

Wohl entered the funeral home. The corridors were crowded with people, a third of the men in uniform. And, Peter thought, two-thirds of the men in civilian clothing were cops, too.

He waited in line, signed the guest book, and then made his way to the Green Room.

Dutch's casket was nearly hidden by flowers, and there was a uniformed Highway Patrolman standing at parade rest at each end of the coffin. Wohl waited in line again, until it was his turn to drop to his knees at the prie-dieu in front of the casket.

Without thinking about it, he crossed himself. Dutch was in uniform. He looks, Wohl thought,as if he just came from the barber's.

And then he had another irreverent thought: I just covered your ass again, Dutch. One last time.

And then, surprising him, his throat grew very tight, and he felt his eyes start to tear.

He stayed there, with his head bent, until he was sure he was in control of himself, and then got up.