Men In Blue

SEVENTEEN

Jason Washington was waiting for them at the medical examiner's office. His expressive face showed both surprise and, Peter Wohl thought, just a touch of amusement when he saw that Wohl was in uniform.

"Good morning, Miss Dutton," Washington said. "I'm sorry to have to put you through this."

"It's all right," Louise said.

"They're installing a closed-circuit television system, to make this sort of identification a little easier on people," Washington said. " But it's not working yet."

"I can come back in a month," Louise said.

They chuckled. Washington smiled at Wohl.

"And may I say, Inspector, how spiffy you look today?" he said.

"I'm going to be a pallbearer," Wohl said.

"Can we get on with this?" Louise asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Washington said. "Miss Dutton, I'm going to take you inside, and show you some remains. I will then ask you if you have ever seen that individual, and if so, where, when, and the circumstances."

"All right," Louise said.

"You want me to come with you?" Peter asked.

"Only if you want to," Louise said.

Louise stepped back involuntarily when Jason Washington lifted the sheet covering the remains of Gerald Vincent Gallagher, but she did not faint, nor did she become nauseous. When Peter Wohl tried to steady her by putting his hands on her arms, she shook free impatiently.

"I don't know his name," she said, levelly. "But I have seen that man before. In the Waikiki Diner. He's the man who was holding the diner up when Captain Moffitt tried to stop him."

"There is no question in your mind?" Washington asked.

"For some reason, it stuck in my mind," Louise said, sarcastically, and then turned and walked quickly out of the room.

Wohl caught up with her.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You want a cup of coffee? Something else?"

"No, thank you," she said.

"You want to go get some breakfast?"

"No, thank you."

"You have to eat, Louise," Wohl said.

"He said, ever practical," she said, mockingly.

"You do," he said.

"All right, then," she said.

They went to a small restaurant crowded with office workers on the way to work. They were the subject of a good deal of curiosity. People recognized Louise, Wohl realized. They might not be able to recognize her as the TV lady, but they knew they had seen her someplace.

She ate French toast and bacon, but said very little.

"I have the feeling that I've done something wrong," Peter said.

"Don't be silly," she said.

As they walked back to his car, they passed a Traffic Division cop, who saluted Peter, who, not expecting it, returned it somewhat awkwardly. Then he noticed that the cop was wearing the mourning band over his badge. He had completely forgotten about that. The mourning bands were sliced from the elastic cloth around the bottom of old uniform caps. He didn't have an old uniform cap. He had no idea what had happened to either his old regular patrolman's cap, or the crushed-crown cap he had worn as a Highway Patrol sergeant. And there never had been cause to replace his senior officer's cap; he hadn't worn it twenty times.

He wondered if someone would have one at Marshutz amp; Sons, predicting that someone like him would show up without one. And if that didn't happen, what he would do about it.

He drove Louise back to Stockton Place and pulled to the curb before Number Six.

"What about later?" he asked.

"What about later?" she parroted.

"When am I going to see you?"

"I have to work, and then I have to see my father, and then I have to go back to work. I'll call you."

"Don't call me, I'll call you?"

"Don't press me, Peter," she said, and got out of the car. And then she walked around the front and to his window and motioned for him to lower it. She bent down and kissed him. It started as a quick kiss, but it quickly became intimate.

Not passionate, he thought, intimate.

"That may not have been smart," Louise said, looking into his eyes for a moment, and then walking quickly into the building, not looking back.

Intimate, Peter Wohl thought, and a little sad, as in a farewell kiss.

He looked at her closed door for a moment, and then made a U-turn on the cobblestones, and drove away.

He had headed, without thinking, for Marshutz amp; Sons, but changed his mind and instead drove to the Roundhouse. There might have been another development, something turned up around Jerome Nelson's car, maybe, or something else. If there was something concrete, maybe it would placate Arthur J. Nelson. His orders had been to stroke him, not antagonize him.

And somewhere in the Roundhouse he could probably find someone who could give him a mourning band; he didn't want to take the chance that he could get one at the funeral home.

He went directly to Homicide.

Captain Henry C. Quaire was sitting on one of the desks, talking on the telephone, and seemed to expect him; when he saw Wohl he pointed to one of the rooms adjacent to one of the interrogation rooms. Then he covered the phone with his hand and said, "Be right with you."

Wohl nodded and went into the room. Through the one-way mirror, he could see three people in the interrogation room. One was Detective Tony Harris. There was another man, a tall, rather aesthetic-looking black man in his twenties or thirties whom Wohl didn't recognize but who, to judge by the handcuffs hanging over his belt in the small of his back, was a detective. The third man was a very large, very black, visibly uncomfortable man handcuffed to the interrogation chair. He fit the description of Pierre St. Maury.

As Peter reached for the switch that would activate the microphone hidden in the light fixture, and permit him to hear what was being said, Captain Quaire came into the room. Peter took his hand away from the switch.

"What's going on?" Peter asked. "Is that Pierre St. Maury?"

"No," Quaire said. "His name is Kostmayer. But Porterfield thought he was, and brought him in."

"Porterfield is the other guy?"

Quaire nodded and grunted. "Narcotics. Good cop. He's high on the detective's list and wants to come over here when he gets promoted."

"So what's going on?"

"This guy was so upset that Porterfield thought he was Maury that Porterfield thinks he knows something about the Nelson job."

"Does he?" Wohl asked.

"We are about to find out," Quaire said, throwing the microphone switch. "He already gave us Mr. Pierre St. Maury's real name-Errol F. Watson-and address. I already sent people to see if they can pick him up at home."

Wohl watched the interrogation for fifteen minutes. Admiringly. Tony Harris and Porterfield worked well together, as if they had done so before. He wondered if they had. They pulled one little thing at a time from Kostmayer, sometimes sternly calling him by his last name, sometimes, kindly, calling him "Peter," one picking up the questioning when the other stopped.

It was slow. Kostmayer was reluctant to talk. It was obvious he was more afraid of other people than his own troubles with the law.

"What have you got on him?" Wohl asked.

"Couple of minor arrests," Quaire said. "He's a male prostitute. The usual stuff. Possession of controlled substances. Rolling people."

Kostmayer finally said something interesting.

"Well, I heardthis," he said, seemingly on the edge of tears. "I onlyheard it; I don't know if it'strue or not."

"We understand, Peter," Tony Harris said, kindly. "What did you hear?"

"Well, there was talk, and you know people just talk, that a certain two men who knew Pierre, and knew that he was, you know,friends, with Jerome Nelson, were going to get the key to the apartment-you know, the Nelson apartment-from him."

"Why were they going to do that, Peter?" Tony Harris asked.

"What certain two people, Kostmayer?" Detective Porterfield demanded.

"Well, they were, you know, going to take things," Kostmayer said.

"What were their names, Kostmayer?" Porterfield said, walking to him and lowering his face to his. "I'm losing my patience with you."

"I don't know their names," Kostmayer said.

He's lying,Peter Wohl thought, at the exact moment Porterfield put that thought in words: "Bullshit!"

Wohl looked at Quaire, who had his lower lip protruding thoughtfully.

Then Wohl looked at his watch.

"Hell, I have to get out of here," he said. "I'm due at Marshutz amp; Sons in fifteen minutes."

"You going to be a pallbearer? Is that why you're wearing your uniform?"

"Yeah. And Henry, I need a mourning strip for my badge. Where can I get one?"

"I've got one," Quaire said, taking Wohl's arm and leading him to. his office. There, he took a small piece of black elastic hatband material from an envelope and stretched it over Wohl's badge.

"I appreciate it, Henry. I'll get it back to you."

"Why don't you?" Quaire said. "Then the next time, God forbid, we need one, you'll know where to find one."

Wohl nodded.

"I'll let you know whatever else they find out, Peter," Quaire said.

"As soon as you get it, please. Even at Dutch's funeral."

"Sure," Quaire said.

Wohl shook Quaire's hand and left.

Brewster Cortland Payne II had had some difficulty persuading Amy, Foster, and B.C. to attend the funeral of Captain Richard C. Moffitt.

Amy had caved in more quickly, when her father told her that her mother felt the loss more than she was showing, and that while she wouldn't ask, would really appreciate having another female along.

Foster and B.C. were a little more difficult. When Brewster Payne raised the subject, he saw his sons were desperately searching for a reason not to go.

Finally, B.C. protested, truthfully, that he had "seen the man only once or twice in my life."

"He was your brother's uncle, Brew," Brewster Payne said, "and your mother's brother-in-law."

"You know," Foster said, thoughtfully, "the only time I ever think that Mother isn't my-what's the word?-natural mother is when something like this comes up."

"I'm sure she would accept that as a compliment," Brewster Payne said.

"Or that Matt isn't really my brother," Foster went on. "I presume you did try to talk him out of this becoming-a-policeman nonsense?"

"First things first," Brewster Payne said. "Matt is your brother, de facto and de jure, and I'm sure you won't say anything about something like that to him."

"Of course not," Foster said.

"I already told him," B.C. said, "that I thought he was nuts."

Out of the mouth of the babe,Brewster C. Payne thought. He said: "To answer your second question, no, I didn't really try to talk Matt out of becoming a policeman. For one thing, I learned of it after the fact, and for another, he's your mother's son, and as you have learned there are times when neither of them can be dissuaded from what they want to do. And, finally, son, I don't agree that it's nonsense. I told him, and I believe, that it can be a very valuable learning experience for him."

"Amy says that he was psychologically castrated when he failed the marine corps physical, and is becoming a policeman to prove his manhood," B.C. said.

"She talks to you like that? When I was a boy-"

"All the girls you knew were virgins who didn't even know what ' castrated' meant," Foster said, laughing. "But Amy has a point, and she's really concerned."

"I don't think I quite understand," Brewster Payne said.

"What if Matt can't make it as a policeman? He really doesn't know what he's letting himself in for. What if he fails? Double castration, so to speak."

"I have confidence that Matt can do anything he sets his mind to do," Brewster Payne said. "And I'm beginning to wonder if sending your sister to medical school was such a good idea. I'm afraid that we can expect henceforth that she will ascribe a Freudian motive to everything any one of us does, from entering a tennis tournament to getting married."

Patricia and Amelia Payne came down the wide staircase from the second floor. They were dressed almost identically, in simple black dresses, strings of pearls, black hats, and gloves.

Brewster Payne had what he thought a moment later was an unkind thought. He wondered how many men were lucky enough to have wives who were better looking than their daughters.

"Where's Matt?" Patricia Payne asked.

The two men shrugged.

Amelia Payne turned and shouted up the stairs.

"Matty, for God's sake, will you come?"

"Keep your goddamned pants on, Amy," Matt's voice replied.

"It is such a joy for a father to see what refined and well-mannered children he has raised," Brewster C. Payne II said.

Matt came down the stairs two at a time, a moment later, shrugging into a jacket; his tie, untied, hanging loosely around his neck. He looked, Brewster Payne thought, about eighteen years old. And he wondered if Matt really understood what he was getting into with the police, if he could indeed cope with it.

"Since there's so many of us," Patricia said, "I guess we had better go in the station wagon."

"I asked Newt to get the black car out," Brewster Payne said, meeting his wife's eyes. "And to drive us."

"Oh, Brew!" she said.

"I considered the station wagon," Brewster Payne said. "And finally decided the black car was the best solution to the problem."

"What problem?" Matt asked.

"How to avoid anything that could possibly upset your grandmother," Patricia Payne said. "All right, Brew. If you think so, then let's go."

They collected Foster and B.C. from the patio, and then filed outside. Newt, the handyman, who was rarely seen in anything but ancient paint-splattered clothing, was standing, freshly shaved and dressed in a suit, and holding a gray chauffeur's cap in his hand by the open rear door of a black Cadillac Fleetwood.

When Peter Wohl reached the Marshutz amp; Sons Funeral Home, there were six Highway Patrol motorcycles in the driveway, their riders standing together. Behind them was Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin's Oldsmobile. Behind that was a Cadillac limousine with a "FUNERAL" flag on its right fender, then a Cadillac hearse, then finally two Ford Highway Patrol cars.

When Peter drove in, Sergeant Tom Lenihan, Denny Coughlin's aide, got out of the Olds and held up his hand for Peter to stop.

"They're waiting for you inside, Inspector," he said. "Park your car. After the funeral, there will be cars to bring you all back here."

Peter parked the car behind the building beside other police cars, marked and unmarked, and a few privately owned cars, and then walked into the funeral home. The corridor was crowded with uniformed police officers, one of them a New Jersey state trooper lieutenant in a blueand-gray uniform. Wohl wondered who he was.

As he walked toward them, Wohl saw that the Blue Room, where Dutch had been laid out for the wake, and which had been full of flowers, was now virtually empty except for the casket itself, which was now closed, and covered with an American flag.

"We were getting worried about you, Peter," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said to him. "The Moffitts left just a couple of minutes ago. I think Jeannie maybe expected you to be here when they closed the coffin."

"I took Miss Dutton to identify Gallagher," Peter replied. "And I just left Homicide. Vice turned up a suspect who seems to know something about why Nelson was killed."

"I thought maybe you'd run into the commissioner," Coughlin said.

He's pissed that I 'm late. Well, to hell with it. I couldn't 't help it.

"Was the commissioner looking for me?" Peter asked. "I think you could say that, yes," Coughlin said, sarcastically.

"Chief, I'm missing something here," Wohl said. "If I've held things up here, I'm really sorry."

Coughlin looked at him for a long moment. "You really don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No, sir."

"You haven't seen theLedger? Nobody's shown it to you? Said anything about it?"

"TheLedger? No, sir."

"When was the last time you saw Mickey O'Hara? Or talked to him?"

"I saw him a week, ten days ago," Peter said, after some thought. "I ran into him in Wanamaker's."

"Not in the last two, three days? You haven't seen him, or talked to him?"

"No, sir," Peter said, and then started to ask, "Chief-"

"Now that we're all here," an impeccably suited representative of Marshutz amp; Sons interrupted him, "I'd like to say a few words about what we're all going to do taking our part in the ceremonies."

"You ride from here to Saint Dominic's with me," Chief Inspector Coughlin ordered, earning himself a look of annoyance from the funeral director.

"With one exception," the man from Marshutz began, "pallbearer positions will reflect the rank of the pallbearer. Chief Inspector Coughlin will be at the right front of the casket, with Staff Inspector Wohl on the left. Immediately behind Chief Inspector Coughlin, the one exception I mentioned, will be Lieutenant McGrory of the New Jersey State Police. From then on, left, right, left, right, positions are assigned by rank. I have had a list typed up…"

Patrol cars from the Seventh District were on hand to block intersections between Marshutz amp; Sons and Saint Dominic's Roman Catholic Church.

When Dutch Moffitt's flag-draped casket had been rolled into the hearse, Dennis Coughlin and Peter Wohl walked forward to Coughlin's Oldsmobile. The Highway Patrol motorcycle men kicked their machines into life and turned on the flashing lights. Then, very slowly, the small convoy pulled away from the funeral home.

The officers from the Seventh District cars saluted as the hearse rolled past them.

"Tom, have you got theLedger up there with you?" Denny Coughlin asked, from the backseat of the Oldsmobile.

"Yes, sir. And theBulletin. "

"Pass them back to Inspector Wohl, would you please, Tom? He hasn't seen them."

When Sergeant Lenihan held the papers up, Wohl leaned forward and took them.

"You never saw any of that before, Peter?" Coughlin asked, when Wohl had read Mickey O'Hara's story in theBulletin and the editorial in theLedger.

"No, sir," Peter said. "Is there anything to it? Did Gallagher get pushed in front of the train?"

"No, and there are witnesses who saw the whole thing," Coughlin said. "Unfortunately, they are one cop-Martinez, McFadden's partner-and the engineer of the elevated train. Both of whom could be expected to lie to protect a cop."

"Then what the hell is theLedger printing crap like that for?"

"Commissioner Czernick believes it is because Staff Inspector Peter Wohl first had diarrhea of the mouth-that's a direct quote, Peter-when speaking with Mr. Michael J. O'Hara-"

"I haven't spoken to Mickey O'Hara-"

"Let me finish, Peter," Coughlin interrupted. "First you had diarrhea of the mouth with Mr. O'Hara, and then you compounded your-another direct quote-incredible stupidity-by antagonizing Arthur J. Nelson, when you were under orders to charm him. Anything to that?"

"Once again, I haven't seen Mickey O'Hara, or talked to him, in ten days, maybe more."

"But maybe you did piss off Arthur J. Nelson?"

"I called him late last night to tell him the Jaguar had been found. He asked me where, and I told him- truthfully-that I didn't know. He was a little sore about that, but I don't thinkantagonize is the word."

"You didn't-and for God's sake tell me if you did- make any cracks about homosexuality, 'your son the fag,' something like that?"

"Sir, I don't deserve that," Peter said.

"That's how it looks to the commissioner, Peter," Coughlin said. "And to the mayor, which is worse. He's going to run again, of course, and when he does, he wants theLedger to support him."

Peter looked out the window. They were still some distance from Saint Dominic's but the street was lined with parked police cars.

Dutch, Peter thought, is going to be buried in style.

"Chief," Peter said, "all I can do is repeat what I said. I haven't seen, or spoken to, Mickey O'Hara for more than a week. And I didn't say anything to Arthur Nelson that I shouldn't have."

Coughlin grunted.

"For Christ's sake, I even kept my mouth shut when he tried to tell me his son was Louise's boyfriend."

" 'Louise's boyfriend'?" Coughlin parroted. "When did you get on a first-name basis with her?"

Peter turned and met Coughlin's eyes.

"We've become friends, Chief," he said. "Maybe a little more."

"You didn't say anything to her about the Nelson boy being queer, did you? Could that have got back to Nelson?"

"She knew about him," Peter said. "I met him in her apartment."

"When was that?"

"When I went there to bring her to the Roundhouse," Peter said. "The day Dutch was killed."

Out the side window, Peter saw that the lines of police cars were now double-parked. When he looked through the windshield, he could see they were approaching Saint Dominic's. There was a lot of activity there, although the funeral mass wouldn't start for nearly an hour.

"All I know, Peter," Coughlin said, "is that right now, you're in the deep shit. You may be-and I think you are- lily white, but the problem is going to be to convince Czernick and the mayor. Right now, you're at the top of their shit list."

The small convoy drove past the church, and then into the church cemetery, and through the cemetery back to the church, finally stopping beside a side door. The pallbearers got out of the limousine and went to the hearse. Coughlin and Wohl joined them, and took Dutch Moffitt's casket from the hearse and carried it through the side door into the church. Under the direction of the man from Marshutz amp; Sons, they set it up in the aisle.

The ornate, Victorian-style church already held a number of people. Peter saw Jeannie Moffitt and Dutch's kids and Dutch's mother, and three rows behind them his own mother and father. Ushers-policemenwere escorting more people down the aisles.

"About-face," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin ordered softly, and the pallbearers standing beside the casket turned around. "For-ward, march," Coughlin said, and they marched back toward the altar, and then turned left, leaving Saint Dominic's as they had entered it. They would reenter the church as the mass started, as part of the processional, and take places in the first row of pews on the left.

The nave of the church was full of flowers.

Peter wondered how much they had all cost, and whether there wasn't something really sinful in all that money being spent on flowers.

Newt Gladstone pulled the Payne Cadillac to the curb in front of Saint Dominic's. A young police officer with a mourning band crossing his badge opened the door, and Brewster, Patricia, and Foster Payne got out of the backseat as Amy and Matt got out of the front.

The young policeman leaned in the open front door. "Take the first right," he ordered Newt. "Someone there will assign you a place in the procession."

Patricia Payne took Matt's arm and they walked up the short walk to the church door. Both sides of the flagstone walk were lined with policemen.

A lieutenant standing near the door with a clipboard in his hands approached them.

"May I have your invitations, please?" he asked.

"We don't have any invitations," Matt said.

"Our name is Payne," Patricia said. "This is my son, Matthew. He is Captain Moffitt's nephew."

"Yes, ma'am," the lieutenant said. "Family."

He flipped sheets of paper on his clipboard, and ran his fingers down a list of typewritten names. His face grew troubled.

"Ma'am," he said, uncomfortably, "I've only got one Payne on my list."

"Then your list is wrong," Matt said, bluntly.

"Let me see," Patricia said, and looked at the clipboard. Her name was not on the list headed "FAMILY- Pews 2 through 6, Right Side." Nor were Brewster's, or Foster's, or B.C.'s, or Amy's. Just Matt's.

"Well, no problem," Patricia said. "Matt, you go sit with your Aunt Jean and your grandmother, and we'll sit somewhere else."

"You're as much family as I am," Matt said.

"No, Matt, not really," Patricia Payne said.

"Is there some problem?" Brewster Payne asked, as he stepped closer.

"No," Patricia said. "They just have Matt sitting with the Moffitts. We'll sit somewhere else."

The lieutenant looked even more uncomfortable.

"Ma'am, I'm afraid that all the seats are reserved."

"What does that mean?" Patricia asked, calmly.

"Ma'am, they're reserved for people with invitations," he said.

"Mother," Amy said. "Let's just go!"

"Perhaps that would be best, Pat," Brewster Payne said.

"Be quiet, the both of you," Patricia snapped. "Lieutenant, is Chief Inspector Coughlin around here somewhere?"

"Yes, ma'am," the lieutenant said. "He's a pallbearer. I'm sure he's here somewhere."

"Get him," Patricia said, flatly.

"Ma'am?"

"I said, go get him, tell him I'm here and I want to see him," Patricia said, her voice raised just a little.

"Pat…" Brewster said.

"Brewster, shut up!" Patricia said. "Do what I say, Lieutenant. Matt, I told you to go inside and sit with your Aunt Jean."

"Do what she says, Matt," Brewster Payne ordered.

Matt looked at him, then shrugged, and went inside.

"Would you please stand to the side?" the lieutenant said. "I'm afraid we're holding things up."

"This is humiliating," Amy said, softly.

The lieutenant caught the eye of a sergeant, and motioned him over.

"See if you can find Chief Coughlin," the lieutenant ordered. "Tell him that a Mrs. Payne wants to see him, here."

Four other mourners filed into Saint Dominic's after giving their invitations to the lieutenant.

Then two stout, gray-haired women, dressed completely in black, with black lace shawls over their heads, walked slowly up the flagstones, accompanied by an expensively dressed muscular young man with long, elaborately combed hair.

"May I have your invitations, please?" the lieutenant asked politely.

"No invitations," the muscular young man said. "Friends of the family. This is Mrs. Turpino, and this is Mrs. Savarese."

The lieutenant now took a good look at the expensively dressed young man.

"And you're Angelo Turpino, right?"

"That's right, Lieutenant," Turpino said. "I saw Captain Moffitt just minutes before this terrible thing happened, and I've come to pay my last respects."

The lieutenant, with an almost visible effort to keep control of himself, went through the sheets on his clipboard.

"You're on here," he said. "Won't you please go inside? Tell the usher 'friends of the family.' "

"Thank you very much," Angelo Turpino said. He took the women's arms. "Come on, Mama," he said. He led them into Saint Dominic's.

The sergeant whom the lieutenant had sent after Chief Inspector Coughlin came back. "He'll be right here, Lieutenant," he said. "He's on the phone."

The lieutenant nodded.

"Was that who I thought it was just going in?" the sergeant asked.

"That was Angelo Turpino," the lieutenant said. "And his mother. And a Mrs. Savarese. 'Friends of the family.' "

"Probably Vincenzo's wife," the sergeant said. "They was on the list?"

"Yes, they were," the lieutenant said.

"I'll be damned," the sergeant said.

"Mother," Amy Payne, who had heard all this, and who was fully aware that Vincenzo Savarese was almost universally recognized to be the head of the mob in Philadelphia, exploded, "I refuse to stand here and see you humiliated like this…"

Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin came around the corner of the church. He kissed Patricia as he offered his hand to Brewster Payne.

"What can I do for you, darling?" he asked.

"You can get us into the church," Patricia Payne said. "I am not on the family list, nor do we have invitations."

"My God!" Coughlin said, and turned to the lieutenant, who handed him his clipboard.

"You keep that," Coughlin said. "And you personally usher the Paynes inside and seat them wherever they want to sit."

"Yes, sir. Chief…"

"Just do it, Lieutenant," Coughlin said. "Brewster, I'm sorry…"

"We know what happened, Dennis," Brewster Payne said. "Thank you for your courtesy."

The pallbearers waited to be summoned behind Saint Dominic's, in a small grassy area between the church and the fence of the church cemetery.

Wohl took the opportunity to speak to the Jersey trooper lieutenant.

"I'm Peter Wohl," he said, walking up to him and extending his hand.

"Bob McGrory," the lieutenant said. "I heard Dutch talk about you."

"All bad?"

"He said you had all the makings of a good Highway Patrolman, and then went bad and took the examination for lieutenant."

"Dutch really liked Highway," Wohl said. "And they liked him. One of his sergeants rolled on the 'assist officer' call, found out that Dutch was involved, and called in every Highway Patrol car in the city."

"Dutch was a good guy. Goddamned shame, this," McGrory said.

"Yeah," Wohl agreed. "Mind if I ask you something else?"

"Go ahead."

"We've got a homicide. Son of a very important man. His car, a Jaguar, turned up missing. Then I heard they found it in Jersey. You know anything about that?"

"Major Knotts found it," McGrory said. "On his way over here last night. It was on a dirt road off Three Twenty-two."

"Do you know if they turned up anything? Besides the car?" Wohl asked.

"Knotts told me that when they got the NCIC hit, and then heard from you guys, he ordered the mobile crime lab in. And they were supposed to have people out there this morning, when it was light, to have a look around the area."

"You usually do that when you find a hot car?"

"No, but the word was 'homicide,' " McGrory said. Then he added, " Inspector, if they found anything interesting, I'm sure they would have passed it on to you. And probably to me, too. I mean, they knew Dutch and I were close."

"Yeah, I'm sure they would have," Wohl said, and started to say something else when someone spoke his name.

He turned and saw Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick's aide.

"Hello, Jank," Wohl said. "This is Lieutenant McGrory. Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick's indispensable right-hand man."

The two shook hands.

"Inspector Wohl," Jankowitz said, formally, "Commissioner Czernick would like to see you in his office at two this afternoon."

"Okay," Wohl said. "I'll be there."

Jankowitz started to say something, then changed his mind. He smiled, nodded at McGrory, and walked away.

Watching him go, Wohl's eyes focused on the street. He saw a ropedoff area in which a number of television camera crew trucks were parked. And he saw Louise. She was standing on a truck, and looking at the area through binoculars. When they seemed to be pointed in his direction, he raised his hand to shoulder level and waved. He wondered if she saw him.

A hand touched his shoulder. He turned and saw his father. And then his mother and Barbara Crowley.

"Hello, Dad," Peter said. "Lieutenant McGrory, this is my father, Chief Inspector Wohl, Retired. And my mother, and Miss Crowley."

Barbara surprised him by kissing him.

"When we heard you were going to be a pallbearer," Peter's mother said, "I asked Barbara if she wanted to come. Gertrude Moffitt, before she knew you were going to be a pallbearer, told me she'd given us three family seats, and since you wouldn't need one now, I asked Barbara. I mean she's almost family, you know what I mean."

"That was a good idea," Peter said.

"Got a minute, Peter?" Chief Inspector August Wohl, Retired, said, and took Peter's arm and led him out of hearing.

"You're in trouble," Peter's father said. "You want to tell me about it?"

"I'm not in trouble, Dad," Peter said. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"What's that got to do with being in trouble? The word is around that both the Polack and the mayor are after your scalp."

"They think I talked to Mickey O'Hara and said something I shouldn't. I haven't seen O'Hara in ten days. I don't know who ran off at the mouth, but it wasn't me. And I can't help it if Nelson is pissed at me. I didn't say anything to him, either, that I shouldn't."

"The mayor will throw you to the fish if he thinks he will get theLedger off his back. And so will the Polack. You better get this straightened out, Peter, and quick."

There was a burst of organ music from Saint Dominic's. The man from Marshutz amp; Sons began to collect the pallbearers.

When he was formed in ranks beside Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl glanced at the street again, at the TV trucks. He saw Louise again, and was sure that she was looking at him, and that she had seen Barbara kiss him.

She was waving her hand slowly back and forth, as if she knew he was watching her, and wanted to wave goodbye.