The Assassin

FOURTEEN

"There are some other things I think we can safely say about this guy," Larkin said after Matt had gone. "For one thing, he's intelligent, and he's well educated. The two don't always go together. You'll notice that he correctly capitalizes all references to the deity. 'His instrument,' for example, has a capital 'H.'"

Sabara grunted.

"And there are no typos on either the letter or the envelope, which were typed on an IBM typewriter. One of those with the ball. So he both knows how to type and has access to an IBM typewriter. Which means probably in an office. Which would mean that he would also have access to a blank sheet of paper, and probably an envelope. He used instead a sheet of typing paper from one of those pads you buy in Woolworth's or McCrory's. There are traces of an animal-based adhesive on the top edge. Actually the bottom, which just means that after he ripped the sheet free, he put it in the typewriter upside down. And he used an envelope from the Post Office. Which probably means that he knows somebody was going to take a good close look at both the letter and the envelope and didn't want us to be able to find him by tracing the paper or envelope."

"Then why write the letter in the first place? Take that risk?" Sabara asked.

"Because he believes that he is a Christian, and is worried about the Vice President's soul," Larkin said. "Which brings us back to someone who thinks he's doing the Lord's work being a very dangerous character, indeed."

"We keep saying 'he,'" Wohl said, but it was a question.

'Two things. Both unscientific," Larkin replied. "Women don't normally do this sort of thing. And there is, in my judgment, a masculine character to the tone of the letter. It doesn't sound as if it's written by a female. But I could be wrong."

"Yeah," Wohl said thoughtfully.

"One more speculation," Larkin said. "'High explosives.' Technically, there are low-yield explosives and high-yield explosives. Maybe he knows the difference. That could suggest that this guy has some experience with explosives. It could just as easily mean, of course, that he doesn't know the difference, but just heard the term."

"But the whole letter suggests that he isn't thinking of taking a shot at the Vice President," Wohl said.

"Presuming, for the sake of argument, that you're right, that's a mixed blessing. Getting close enough to the Vice President to take a shot at him wouldn't be easy. Using explosives-and I don't think we can dismiss military ordnance, hand grenades, mines, that sort of thing-is something else. And since this guy is doing God's work, I don't think he's worrying about how many other people might have to be 'disintegrated.'"

"I don't suppose there's any chance of having the Vice President put off his visit until we can get our hands on this guy?" Wohl asked.

"No," Larkin said. "Not a chance."

"Has he seen this letter?"

Larkin shook his head, no.

"Well, you tell us, Charley," Wohl said. "How can we help?"

"That's a little delicate…"

"You'd rather discuss that in private, is that what you mean?"

Larkin nodded.

"Charley, anything that you want to say to me, you can say in front of these people," Wohl said.

Larkin hesitated, and then said, "You are like your dad, Peter. He once told me he never had anyone working for him he couldn't trust."

"There are some I trust less than others," Wohl said. "These I trust, period."

"Okay," Larkin said. "The word that gets back to me is that there is some bad feeling between the Police Department and the feds, the FBI in particular, but the feds generally."

"I can't imagine why anyone would think that," Wohl said, lightly sarcastic.

Larkin snorted.

"There's a story going around that both you, the Department, I mean, and the FBI were going after a big-time car thief. And the first time that either of you knew the other guys were working the job was when your cars ran into each other when you were picking him up."

"Not true," Wohl said.

Larkin looked at him in surprise.

'The real story is that nobody in the Department, except one hardnosed Irishman, believed that the car thief could possibly be a car thief. We were wrong, and the FBI was right."

"One of your guys, the hard-nosed Irishman?"

Wohl pointed at Jack Malone.

"And I didn't believe him, either," Wohl said. "Walter Davis and I had a long talk to see if we couldn't keep something like that from happening again."

Walter Davis was the SAC, the special agent in charge, of the Philadelphia office of the FBI.

"You get along with Davis all right, Peter?"

"As well as any simple local cop can get along with the FBI," Wohl said.

"Did you almost say 'the feds'?"

"No."

"Out of school," Larkin said. "I hear that part of the problem is a Captain Jack Duffy."

"Out of school, did you hear what Captain Duffy is supposed to have done?"

"What he doesn't do is the problem, is what I hear. Phrased delicately, both Walter Davis and our SAC here…Joe Toner, you know him, our supervisory agent in charge?"

Wohl shook his head, no.

"…tell me that in the best of all possible worlds, Captain Duffy would be a bit more enthusiastically cooperative than he is."

"That's delicately phrased," Wohl said. "But I don't think it's Duffy personally. He takes his guidance from the commissioner."

"Okay. Confession time," Larkin said. "Joe Toner found out somehow that Dignitary Protection had been given to something called Special Operations, which was under an Inspector Wall. So, when I began to suspect that this vice presidential visit was going to present serious problems, I decided I was going to bypass Captain Duffy. I called the Dignitary Protection sergeant…you know who I mean, the caretaker sergeant?"

"Henkels," Wohl furnished.

"Sergeant Henkels. And I told him that I wanted to see the supervisor in charge in our office. There, I was going to make sure he found out that Denny Coughlin and I are old pals. The logic being that Henkels and the lieutenant were going to be more impressed with, and more worried about annoying, Chief Coughlin than they would about Duffy. In other words, they would enthusiastically cooperate."

"You think the danger this guy poses is worth really pissing off Duffy and the commissioner?"

"I would rather have both love me, but yes, I do."

"And if getting Henkels and Malone to circumvent normal channels incidentally got them in deep trouble, too bad?"

"My job is to keep the Vice President alive, Peter. If I have to step on some toes…"

"You can't simply cut Duffy out of the picture, even if you wanted to," Wohl said.

"Joe Toner's deputy has an appointment with Duffy at eight o'clock Monday morning. We will go through the motions. But what I hoped to get first from Malone, and then from you, was more cooperation than I' m liable to get from Duffy. This is not one of those times when it would be all right for you to say, 'Fuck the feds.' We've got to find this guy before he has a chance to 'disintegrate' the Vice President, and in the process probably a bunch of civilians."

Wohl's face was expressionless, but obviously, Mike Sabara decided, he was giving his response a good deal of thought. Finally, Wohl reached for his coffee cup, picked it up, and then looked directly at Larkin.

"How, specifically, do you think we could help?"

"Some cop in this town has a line on this guy. Either somebody in Intelligence, Sex Crimes, Civil Affairs, something else esoteric, or a detective somewhere, or a beat cop. He's done something suspicious. If we're lucky, done something really out of the ordinary, like buying explosives, maybe. Had some kind of trouble with his neighbors. Done something that would make a good cop suspicious of him, but nothing he would make official."

"If you gave Jack Duffy," Wohl replied, "or, better yet, the commissioner himself what you've just given us, it would be brought up at the very next roll call."

"And laughed at," Larkin said. "But that's what Toner's deputy is going to do tomorrow morning, tell Duffy everything. I told you, we're going to go through the motions. And maybe we'll get lucky. But maybe lucky won't cut it."

"So what do you want from us?" Wohl asked.

"I thought maybe you could tell me what you could do," Larkin said.

The question surprised Wohl; it was evident on his face.

"My dad was not a fan of police vehicles," he said after a moment. "He always said the beat cop, who knew everybody on his beat, could usually stop trouble before it happened. Unfortunately, we don't have many beat cops these days. But that strikes me as the way to go."

"Excuse me?" Larkin said.

"We'll need a good profile, written in simple English, not like a psychiatrist's case record, of this guy. We spread that around the Department, into every district, every unit. 'Does anybody think they know this guy?' And I'll have Dave distribute it, using the Highway Patrol. They're in and out of districts all over the city; they have friends everywhere, in other words. Make it look like a job, not like the brass in the Roundhouse are smoking funny cigarettes,"

"Could you do that?" Larkin asked.

"Not without stepping on Duffy's toes, and a lot of other people' s," Wohl said. "Do you know Chief Lowenstein?"

"Only that he runs the Detective Division."

"As a fiefdom," Wohl said. "How soon are you going to have the psychological profile you mentioned?"

"Ours, probably tomorrow, the day after. And the FBI's a day or two after that."

"Can that be speeded up?"

"I can have them in your hands, hand carried, within an hour of their delivery to my office in Washington," Larkin said. "Sooner, if you want it read over the phone. But I can't rush our shrink, and certainly not the FBI's."

"Okay. Then we'll have to go with Amy," Wohl said.

"Who?" Larkin asked.

"Dr. Payne. Detective Payne's sister."

"Oh, yeah."

"She'll give us a profile. I'll translate it into English."

The doorman of the large, luxurious apartment building in the 2600 block of the Parkway in which Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., lived paid only casual attention to the blue Ford as it dropped a passenger, a nicely dressed young man, outside his heavy plate-glass doors.

But then, as the young man stepped inside the lobby, the doorman saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the Ford, instead of driving onto the road leading to the parking lot and/or the Parkway had moved into an area close to the door where parking was prohibited to all but the management of the building and those tenants whose generosity to the doorman deserved a little reward.

"Hey!" the doorman called after the nicely dressed young man. " Your friend can't park there."

Matt Payne's childhood and youth had been punctuated frequently by the parental folklore that hay was for horses, and was not a suitable form of address for fellow human beings, the result of which being that he did not like to be addressed as "Hey!"

He turned to the doorman.

"Oh, I think he can," he said.

"Hey, he either moves the car, or I call the cops."

"There's a cop," Matt said helpfully as Jerry O'Dowd, in the full regalia of a sergeant of the Highway Patrol, got out of the car and strode purposefully toward the door.

"What's going on here?" the doorman asked.

"We're finally going to close the floating craps game on the tenth floor," Matt said. "Gambling is illegal, you know."

Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd, who was by nature a very cordial person, at that moment came through the plate-glass door, smiled at the doorman, and said, "Good morning. Nice day, isn't it?"

He then followed Matt to the bank of elevators and into one of them.

The doorman went to the elevator the moment the door closed and watched in some fascination as the indicator needle over the door moved in an arc and finally stopped at ten.

There were four apartments on the tenth floor. The two larger ones were occupied by a dentist and his family, and a lawyer and his family. The two smaller apartments were occupied by single people. One was a male, who, now that the doorman thought of it, did walk a little strangely, but was not the sort of guy who acted like a gambler.

The other was a female, a medical doctor, who he seemed to recall hearing was a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, even if she didn't look old enough to be a doctor, much less a teacher. The only suspicious thing about her was that ten minutes before the cops showed up a really good looking blonde had been dropped off by a chauffeurdriven Buick station wagon, asked for the doctor by name, and gone up.

The blonde didn't look like a hooker, but you weren't supposed to be able to tell anymore just by looks. Two young women and two young guys seemed to add up. Mr. Whatsisname in 10D didn't look like he even liked women.

The doorman decided he would just have to wait and see who got off the elevator, later. And then he decided that the young guy was probably pulling his chain. The cop might be a cop, but he was off duty, and the two of them were just going to see their girlfriends.

Just to be sure, he went out and looked at the blue Ford. It looked like a regular car, except that there was at least one extra radio antenna, and when he looked close, he saw a microphone lying on the seat, its cord disappearing into the glove compartment, and when he looked even closer, he could see a speaker mounted under the dashboard.

So it was a cop car. So what itprobably really was that the sergeant was on duty, and it was Sunday morning, and nothing was going on, so he picked up his buddy and they came to see the girls. And parked wherever the hell they wanted to!

Goddamned cops!

Amy Payne, a slight, just this side of pretty, brown-haired twenty-seven-year-old, peered through the peephole in her door, and then, somewhat reluctantly, opened it just wide enough to look out.

"You are really the last person I expected to see here this morning, Matt," she said.

There was absolutely no suggestion that she intended to open the door.

"I've got to talk to you, Amy," Matt said.

"You've heard of the telephone? People get on the telephone and say, 'Would it be convenient for me to drop by?'"

"This is important," Matt said.

"How did you get past the doorman, come to think of it? Flash your badge at him?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact. I'm on business, Amy. May we come in?"

She shrugged, and stepped out of the way.

"Amy, Jerry O'Dowd."

"How do you do, Doctor?"

"Why do I suspect you've been talking about me?" Amy said. "I hope you have a sister of your own, Sergeant, so that you will understand that despite the way I talk to him, I really loathe and detest him."

Jerry O'Dowd laughed. "He said you were feisty," O'Dowd said.

Amy realized that she was smiling back at him.

"I'll be with you in a minute," she said. "Go in the living room, Matt, you know where it is. I've got a little surprise for you too."

The surprise was Miss Penelope Detweiler, who was standing by the expanse of glass opening onto the Parkway and the Museum of Art.

"I thought that was your voice!" she said, seemingly torn between surprise and pleasure.

"What are you doing here?"

"That's none of your damned business, Matt!" Amy called from her bedroom. "Who do you think you are, asking a question like that?"

"Oh, I just dropped in to see Amy," Penny said, somewhat lamely.

Yeah, like hell. Your relationship is professional. Doctor and patient. The only thing personal about it is that you get to come here to Amy's apartment because you are a friend of the family.

"Penny, this is Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd," Matt said. "Jerry, this is Penny Detweiler, an old buddy of mine and my sister's."

"Hi," Penny said.

"Hello," O'Dowd said. Matt watched his face to see if he made the connection between the pretty blonde and Tony the Zee's junkie girlfriend. There was nothing on his face to suggest that he did.

"We were just having coffee," Penny said. "Real coffee. Amy even grinds the beans just before she makes it. Would you like some?"

"Please," Matt said.

Penny headed for the kitchen, probably, Matt thought, to get cups and saucers. Matt went and looked out the window. O'Dowd followed him.

"Nice view!" he said enthusiastically.

"Yeah, it is."

"Is that who I think it is?"

"Yeah."

"Pretty girl."

And you're a good cop. I was trying to read your face and couldn' t.

"Where were you before you went to work for Pekach?" Matt asked.

"Central Detectives, until I made sergeant, and before that in Narcotics. When Pekach was a lieutenant."

"And now Highway? You like riding a motorcycle?"

"You'll notice I'm not riding one. Pekach told me that if Highway was going to be good for his career, it should be good for mine."

"If I have to go to Wheel School and spend time in Highway, I think I'll stay a detective."

"You haven't been a detective long enough, have you, to make that kind of a judgment?"

"No, I haven't."

Amy came into the room, stopping their conversation.

"Okay, Matt," Amy said, "now what's this all about?" She didn't give him time to reply before she noticed that Penny was not in sight. "Where's Penny?"

"She went to get cups and saucers," Matt said. "What did you think?"

Amy ignored the question.

"What is that you're waving around like a field marshal's baton?" she asked.

O'Dowd chuckled. Amy found herself smiling at him again.

"There's nobody nicer anywhere than someone who thinks you're a wit," Matt said.

"Dad said that, not you," Amy said.

Matt peeled one of the Xeroxes from the roll of them he had been carrying in his hand.

"What's this…" Amy asked as she took a quick glance, and then she broke off in midsentence. Almost absently, she backed away from Matt and Jerry and sat down on the side arm of her couch.

"My God!" she said, finally. "This is a sick man."

"We'd sort of figured that out," Matt said. "What we need from you is a profile."

"Who's 'we,' you and the sergeant?"

"Peter Wohl, for one. The head of the Vice President's Secret Service detail, for another."

"The Secret Service have their own psychiatrists," Amy said. "I met one of them at Menninger one time. Why me?"

"Wohl said to tell you we need a profile yesterday," Matt said. " We won't get one from the Secret Service until tomorrow. If then."

"Secret Service?" Penny said, coming back into the room with cups and saucers. "That sounds interesting!"

"That's right," Amy said, ignoring Penny, "he is coming to town, isn't he? Next week?"

"Right," O'Dowd said.

"I think I have just been more or less politely told that what's going on here is none of my business," Penny said.

Matt looked at her, saw the hurt in her eyes, and surprised himself by handing her one of the Xeroxes.

"Not to be spread around the Merion Cricket Club, okay, Penny?"

"Thank you," Penny said, and Matt understood that it was not simply ritual courtesy for having been handed a piece of paper. He glanced at O'Dowd and saw in his eyes that he did not approve of what he had done.

And you 're right, Sergeant. I should not have passed that official document to a junkie three days out of the funny farm. And I thank you for not saying so, and humiliating me in front of my sister.

"You have no idea who this man is?" Amy asked.

"None. That's why we need the profile."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Circulate it in the Department, 'Do you know someone who fits this description?'"

"Not in public? Not in the newspapers?"

"That didn't come up," Matt said.

"Probably not," O'Dowd said. "That would tend to set off the copycats."

"Yes," Amy said thoughtfully. She looked directly at O'Dowd. "This letter doesn't give me much to go on, you understand?"

"I understand, Doctor," O'Dowd said. "But whatever you could tell us would be helpful."

He sounds like Jason Washington, Matt thought. Stroking the interviewee.

Jason Washington, late of Homicide, now a sergeant heading up Special Operations Division's Special Investigation Section, considered himself to be the best detective in the Philadelphia Police Department. So did Peter Wohl and Matt Payne.

And then as Matt watched Jerry O'Dowd skillfully draw from his sister a profile of the looney tune who wanted to blow up the Vice President, he had another series of thoughts, which ranged from humbling to humiliating:

Wohl didn't send Pekach 's driver with me so that I could ask him questions. He sent me with Jerry O'Dowd because I could get O'Dowd in to see Amy. My sole role in this was to get him into her presence. She might have, probably would have, told anyone else to call her office and arrange an appointment.

Pekach didn't pick this guy to be his driver for auld lang syne, but rather because Jerry O'Dowd is a very bright guy, an experienced detective, and now a sergeant. Both Pekach, when he volunteered O'Dowd to "drive me," and Wohl, when he accepted the offer, knew damned well O'Dowd would take over this little interview sooner or later, probably sooner, and in any event the instant Rookie Detective Payne started to fuck it up.

Penny handed him a cup of coffee.

"Black, right?"

"Right. Thank you."

"Sergeant?"

"Black is fine with me."

And that's why O'Dowd was at 30^th Street Station when I picked Larkin up. Pekach was not about to tell Wohl that he thought he was making a mistake sending me on an important errand, but he felt obliged to protect his boss by sending O'Dowd there in case I fucked that up.

Matt had a clear mental image of him patronizing O'Dowd outside the station:"How are you, Jerry? What's up?"

Did your reputation precede you, Detective Payne? Did Captain Pekach say a soft word in Sergeant O'Dowd's ear before he sent him to the station, or did he think that was unnecessary, it would only be a matter of a minute or two before O'Dowd would be able to conclude for himself that Matthew M. Payne was a first-class, supercilious horse's ass?

"Sergeant, excuse me," Matt Payne said. "I think I'd better call Chief Coughlin, and then check in with Inspector Wohl."

Sergeant O'Dowd looked at Detective Payne with something in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

"Yeah, Matt, please. Go ahead. Tell the inspector that what we're getting from Dr. Payne is very valuable."

Pekach answered Wohl's private number.

"Captain Pekach."

"Payne, sir. I was told to check in."

"The inspector took Mr. Larkin down to Intelligence," Pekach said. "How's things going?"

"Chief Coughlin will meet us for lunch. And Sergeant O'Dowd said to say that what we're getting from my sister is valuable."

"The reservations are for twelve noon. The inspector wants O'Dowd there. Tell him it would be nice if he could get into civilian clothing by then."

"Yes, sir. I have the feeling we're about finished here. There should be time."

In the elevator, Matt said, "Sergeant, Captain Pekach said that you're to go to Bookbinder's, and that if there's time, he'd like you to get out of uniform."

"The inspector probably wants to hear two versions of what we got from your sister," O'Dowd thought out loud, and looked at his watch. " There will be time. I live in Ashton Acres, right by the entrance to Northeast Airport."

The elevator door whooshed open, and they walked to the main door, past the doorman, who made no effort to rush to the door and open it for them.

"See you again," O'Dowd said cheerfully to the doorman, who snorted and pretended to find something on his little desk to be absolutely fascinating.

"I wonder what's wrong with him? Tight shoes?" O'Dowd asked as they were walking to the car.

"Beats me," Matt said. His brilliant repartee earlier with the doorman now seemed nowhere near as witty as it had.

When they were on the Parkway, headed east, O'Dowd said, "Give them a call, tell them where we're going."

Matt picked up the microphone, and then started to open the glove compartment to make sure he was on the right frequency.

"We're on the J-band," O'Dowd said, reading his mind. "And this is the boss's car."

"Highway One-A to Radio," Matt said.

"Highway One-A," the Highway radio dispatcher came back.

"Have you got anything for us?"

"Nothing, Highway One-A."

Matt laid the microphone back on the seat.

"Predictably, I suppose," O'Dowd said, "the only really interesting thing your sister said was when you were on the phone. She said she thinks this guy is asexual. I asked her if she thought that was the cause of his problems, and she said no, she thought it was something else, but that he was asexual, and we should keep that in mind. Do you have any idea what she meant by that?"

"Sergeant, I rarely have any idea what my sister is talking about."

"Have I pissed you off somehow, Payne?"

"Of course not."

"What happened to Jerry'?"

"It finally dawned on me that I was out of line at 30^th Street Station this morning. A rookie detective should not call a sergeant by his first name."

"I'm not at all shy. If you had been out of line, I would have let you know."

"Thank you."

"So what do you think your sister meant when she said we should keep in mind that this guy is asexual?"

"Beats the shit out of me, Jerry."

O'Dowd laughed. "Better," he said. "Better."