Brewster Cortland Payne II had stopped in a service station on City Line Avenue and called his home. Mrs. Newman had told him there had been no call from Violet, the Detweiler maid, telling him to which hospital Penny had been taken.
If she hadn’t been taken to a hospital, he reasoned, there was a chance that the situation wasn’t as bad as initially reported; that Penny might have been unconscious-that sometimes happened when drugs were involved-rather than, as Violet had reported, “gone,” and had regained consciousness.
If that had happened, Dick Detweiler would have been reluctant to have her taken to a hospital; she could be cared for at home by Dr. Dotson, the family physician, or Amy Payne, M.D., and the incident could be kept quiet.
He got back behind the wheel of the Buick station wagon and drove to West Chestnut Hill Avenue.
He realized the moment he drove through the open gates of the estate that the hope that things weren’t as bad as reported had been wishful thinking. There was an ambulance and two police cars parked in front of the house, and a third car, unmarked, but from its black-walled tires and battered appearance almost certainly a police car, pulled in behind him as he was getting out of the station wagon.
The driver got out. Payne saw that he was a police captain.
“Excuse me, sir,” the Captain called to him as Payne started up the stairs to the patio.
Payne stopped and turned.
“I’m Captain O’Connor. Northwest Detectives. May I ask who you are, sir?”
“My name is Payne. I am Mr. Detweiler’s attorney.”
“We’ve got a pretty unpleasant situation here, Mr. Payne,” O’Connor said, offering Payne his hand.
“Just how bad is it?”
“About as bad as it can get, I’m afraid,” O’Connor said, and tilted his head toward the patio.
Payne looked and for the first time saw the blanket-covered body on the stretcher.
“Oh, God!”
“Mr. Payne, Chief Inspector Coughlin is on his way here. Do you happen to know…?”
“I know the Chief,” Payne said softly.
“I don’t have any of the details myself,” O’Connor said. “But I’d like to suggest that you…”
“I’m going to see my client, Captain,” Payne said, softly but firmly. “Unless there is some reason…?”
“I’d guess he’s in the house, sir,” O’Connor said.
“Thank you,” Payne said, and turned and walked onto the patio. The door was closed but unlocked. Payne walked through it and started to cross the foyer. Then he stopped and picked up a telephone mounted in a small alcove beside the door.
He dialed a number from memory.
“Nesfoods International. Good morning.”
“Let me have the Chief of Security, please,” he said.
“Mr. Schraeder’s office.”
“My name is Brewster C. Payne. I’m calling for Mr. Richard Detweiler. Mr. Schraeder, please.”
“Good morning, Mr. Payne. How can I help you?”
“Mr. Schraeder, just as soon as you can, will you please send some security officers to Mr. Detweiler’s home? Six, or eight. I think their services will be required, day and night, for the next four or five days, so I suggest you plan for that.”
“I’ll have someone there in half an hour, Mr. Payne,” Schraeder said. “Would you care to tell me the nature of the problem? Or should I come out there myself?”
“I think it would be helpful if you came here, Mr. Schraeder,” Payne said.
“I’m on my way, sir,” Schraeder said.
Payne put the telephone back in its cradle and turned from the alcove in the wall.
Captain O’Connor was standing there.
“Dr. Amelia Payne is on her way here,” Payne said. “As is my wife. They will wish to be with the Detweilers.”
“I understand, sir. No problem.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Payne said.
“Mr. Detweiler is in there,” O’Connor said, pointing toward the downstairs sitting room. “I believe Mrs. Detweiler is upstairs.”
“Thank you,” Payne said, and walked to the downstairs sitting room and pushed the door open.
H. Richard Detweiler was sitting in a red leather chair-his chair-with his hands folded in his lap, looking at the floor. He raised his eyes.
“Brew,” he said, and smiled.
“Dick.”
“Everything was going just fine, Brew. The night before last, Penny and Matt had dinner with Chad and Daffy to celebrate Chad’s promotion. And last night, they were at Martha Peebles’s. And one day, three, four days ago, Matt came out and the two of them made cheese dogs for us. You know, you slit the hot dog and put cheese inside and then wrap it in bacon. They made them for us on the charcoal thing. And then they went to the movies. She seemed so happy, Brew. And now this.”
“I’m very sorry, Dick.”
“Oh, goddamn it all to hell, Brew,” H. Richard Detweiler said. He started to sob. “When I went in there, her eyes were open, but I knew.”
He started to weep.
Brewster Cortland Payne went to him and put his arms around him.
“Steady, lad,” he said, somewhat brokenly as tears ran down his own cheeks. “Steady.”
The Buick station wagon in which Amelia Payne, M.D., drove through the gates of the Detweiler estate was identical in model, color, and even the Rose Tree Hunt and Merion Cricket Club parking decalcomanias on the rear window to the one her father had driven through the gates five minutes before, except that it was two years older, had a large number of dings and dents on the body, a badly damaged right front fender, and was sorely in need of a passage through a car wash.
The car had, in fact, been Dr. Payne’s father’s car. He had made it available to his daughter at a very good price because, he said, the trade-in allowance on his new car had been grossly inadequate. That was not the whole truth. While Brewster Payne had been quietly incensed at the trade-in price offered for a two-year-old car with less that 15,000 miles on the odometer and in showroom condition, the real reason was that the skillful chauffeuring of an automobile was not among his daughter’s many skills and accomplishments.
“She needs something substantial, like the Buick, something that will survive a crash,” he confided to his wife. “If I could, I’d get her a tank or an armored car. When Amy gets behind the wheel, she reminds me of that comic-strip character with the black cloud of inevitable disaster floating over his head.”
It was not that she was reckless, or had a heavy foot on the accelerator, but rather that she simply didn’t seem to care. Her father had decided that this was because Amy had-always had had-things on her mind far more important than the possibility of a dented fender, hers or someone else’s.
In the third grade when Amy had been sent to see a psychiatrist for her behavior in class (when she wasn’t causing all sorts of trouble, she was in the habit of taking a nap) the psychiatrist quickly determined the cause. She was, according to the three different tests to which he subjected her, a genius. She was bored with the third grade.
At ten, she was admitted to a high school for the intellectually gifted operated by the University of Pennsylvania, and matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen, because of her extraordinary mathematical ability.
“Theoretical mathematics, of course,” her father joked to intimate friends. “Double Doctor Payne is absolutely unable to balance a checkbook.”
That was a reference to her two doctoral degrees, the first a Ph. D. earned at twenty with a dissertation on probability, the second an M.D. earned at twenty-three after she had gone through what her father thought of as a dangerous dalliance with a handsome Jesuit priest nearly twice her age. She emerged from this (so far as he knew platonic) relationship with a need to serve God by serving mankind. Her original intention was to become a surgeon, specializing in trauma injuries, but during her internship at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, she decided to become a psychiatrist. She trained at the Menninger Clinic, then returned to Philadelphia, where she had a private practice and taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
She was now twenty-nine and had never married, although a steady stream of young men had passed through her life. Her father privately thought she scared them off with her brainpower. He could think of no other reason she was still single. She was attractive, he thought, and charming, and had a sense of humor much like his own.
Amelia Payne, Ph. D., M.D., stopped the Buick in front of the Detweiler mansion, effectively denying the use of the drive to anyone else who wished to use it, and got out. She was wearing a pleated tweed skirt and a sweater, and looked like a typical Main Line Young Matron.
The EMT firemen standing near the blanket-covered body were therefore surprised when she knelt beside the stretcher and started to remove the blanket.
“Hey, lady!”
“I’m Dr. Payne,” Amy said, and examined the body very quickly. Then she pulled the blanket back in place and stood up.
“Let’s get this into the house,” she said. “Out of sight.”
“We’re waiting for the M.E.”
“And while we’re waiting, we’re going to move the body into the house,” Dr. Payne said. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
The EMT firemen picked up the stretcher and followed her into the house.
She crossed the foyer and opened the door to the sitting room and saw her father and H. Richard Detweiler talking softly.
“Are you all right, Uncle Dick?” she asked.
“Ginger-peachy, honey,” Detweiler replied.
“Grace is upstairs, Amy,” her father said.
“I’ll look in on her,” Amy said, and pulled the door closed. She turned to the firemen. “Over there,” she said. “In the dining room.”
She crossed the foyer, opened the door to the dining room, and waited inside until the firemen had carried the stretcher inside. Then she issued other orders:
“One of you stay here, the other wait outside for the M.E. When he gets here, send for me. I’ll be upstairs with Mrs. Detweiler, the mother.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the larger of the two EMTs-whose body weight was approximately twice that of Amy’s-said docilely.
Amy went quickly up the stairs to the second floor.
A black Ford Falcon with the seal of the City of Philadelphia and those words in small white letters on its doors passed through the gates of the Detweiler estate and drove to the door of the mansion.
Bernard C. Potter, a middle-aged, balding black man, tie-less, wearing a sports coat and carrying a 35mm camera and a small black bag, got out and walked toward the door. Bernie Potter was an investigator for the Office of the Medical Examiner, City of Philadelphia.
This job, Potter thought, judging from the number of police cars-and especially the Fire Department rescue vehicle that normally would have been long gone from the scene-parked in front of the house, is going to be a little unusual.
And then Captain O’Connor, who Bernie Potter knew was Commanding Officer of Northwest Detectives, came out the door. This was another indication that something special was going on. Captains of Detectives did not normally go out on routine Five Two Nine Two jobs.
“What do you say, Bernie?”
“What have we got?” Bernie asked as they shook hands.
“Looks like a simple OD, Bernie. Caucasian female, early twenties, whose father happens to own Nesfoods.”
“Nice house,” Bernie said. “I didn’t think these people were on public assistance. Where the body?”
“In the dining room.”
“What are you guys still doing here?” Bernie asked the Fire Department EMT on the patio. It was simple curiosity, not a reprimand.
The EMT looked uncomfortable.
“Like I told you,” Captain O’Connor answered for him, “the father owns Nesfoods International.” And then he looked down the drive at a new Ford coming up. “And here comes, I think, Chief Coughlin.”
“Equal justice under the law, right?” Bernie asked.
“There’s a doctor, a lady doctor, in there,” the EMT said, “said she wanted to be called when you came.”
“What does she want?” Bernie asked.
The EMT shrugged.
Chief Coughlin got out of his car and walked up.
“Good morning, Chief,” Tom O’Connor said.
Coughlin shook his hand and then Bernie Potter’s.
“Long time no see, Bernie,” he said. “You pronounce yet?”
“Haven’t seen the body.”
“The quicker we can get this over, the better. You call for a wagon, Tom?”
“I didn’t. I don’t like to get in the way of my people.”
“Check and see. If he hasn’t called for one, get one here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s the body?”
“In the dining room,” the EMT said.
“I heard it was on the patio here.”
“The lady doctor made us move it,” the EMT said.
“Let’s go have a look at it,” Coughlin said. “I know where the dining room is. Tom, you make sure about the wagon.”
“Yes, sir.”
Coughlin led the way to the dining room.
“How did it get on the stretcher?” Bernie asked.
“What I hear is that the father carried it downstairs,” the EMT said. “When we got here, he was sitting outside on one of them metal chairs, couches, holding it in his arms. We took it from him.”
A look of pain, or compassion, flashed briefly over Chief Coughlin’s face.
“Where did they find it?” Bernie asked.
Dr. Amelia Payne entered the dining room.
“In her bedroom,” she answered the question. “In an erect position, with a syringe in her left arm.”
“Dr. Payne, this is Mr. Potter, an investigator of the Medical Examiner’s Office.”
“How do you do?” Amy said. “Death was apparently instantaneous, or nearly so,” she went on. “There is a frothy liquid in the nostrils, often encountered in cases of heroin poisoning. The decedent was a known narcotic-substance abuser. In my opinion-”
“Doctor,” Bernie interrupted her uncomfortably, “I don’t mean to sound hard-nosed, but you don’t have any status here. This is the M.E.’s business.”
“I am a licensed physician, Mr. Potter,” Amy said. “The decedent was my patient, and she died in her home in not-unexpected circumstances. Under those circumstances, I am authorized to pronounce, and to conduct, if in my judgment it is necessary, any postmortem examination.”
“Amy, honey,” Chief Coughlin said gently.
“Yes?” She turned to him.
“I know where you’re coming from, Amy. But let me tell you how it is. You may be right. You probably are. But while you’re fighting the M.E. taking Penny’s body, think what’s going to happen: It’s going to take time, maybe a couple of days, before even your father can get an injunction. Until he gets a judge to issue an order to release it to you, the M.E.’ll hold the body. Let’s get it over with, as quickly and painlessly as possible. I already talked to the M.E. He’s going to do the autopsy himself, as soon as the body gets there. It can be in the hands of the funeral home in two, three hours.”
She didn’t respond.
“Grace Detweiler’s going to need you,” Coughlin went on. “And Matt. That’s what’s important.”
Amy looked at Bernie.
“There’s no need for a postmortem,” she said. “Everybody in this room knows how this girl killed herself.”
“It’s the law, Doctor,” Bernie said sympathetically.
Amy turned to Dennis Coughlin.
“What about Matt? Does he know?”
“Peter Wohl’s waiting for him on North Broad Street. He’ll tell him. Unless…”
“No,” Amy said. “I think Peter’s the best one. They have a sibling relationship. And Peter obviously has more experience than my father. You think Matt will come here?”
“I would suppose so.”
She turned to Bernie Potter.
“OK, Mr. Potter,” she said. “She is pronounced at nine twenty-five A.M. ” She turned back to Chief Coughlin. “Thank you, Uncle Denny.”
She walked out of the dining room.
Chief Coughlin turned to the EMT.
“The wagon’s on the way. Wait in here until it gets here.”
The EMT nodded.
“I’m going to have to see the bedroom, Chief,” Bernie Potter said.
“I’ll show you where it is,” Chief Coughlin said. “You through here?”
“I haven’t seen the body,” Potter said.
He squatted beside the stretcher and pulled the blanket off. He looked closely at the eyes and then closed them. He examined the nostrils.
“Yeah,” he said, as if to himself. Then, “Give me a hand rolling her over.”
The EMT helped him turn the body on its stomach. Bernie Potter tugged and pulled at Penelope Alice Detweiler’s nightdress until it was up around her neck.
There was evidence of livor. The lower back and buttocks and the back of her legs were a dark purple color. Gravity drains blood in a corpse to the body’s lowest point.
“OK,” he said. “No signs of trauma on the back. Now let’s turn her the other way.”
There was more evidence of livor when the body was again on its back. The abdominal area and groin were a deep purple color.
“No trauma here, either,” Bernie Potter said. He picked up the left arm.
“It looks like a needle could have been in here,” he said. “It’s discolored.”
“The maid said there was a syringe in her arm,” Captain O’Connor said. “And the district sergeant saw one, and some rubber tubing, on the floor in the corridor upstairs. He put chairs over them.”
Bernie Potter nodded. Then he put Penelope’s arm back beside her body, tugged at the nightgown so that it covered the body again, replaced the blanket, and stood up.
“OK,” he said. “Now let’s go see the bedroom. And the needle.”
Chief Coughlin led the procession upstairs.
“There it is,” Tom O’Connor said when they came to the chairs in the middle of the upstairs corridor. He carefully picked up the chairs Officer Wells had placed over the plastic hypodermic syringe and the surgical rubber tubing and put them against the wall.
Bernie Potter went into his bag and took two plastic bags from it. Then, using a forceps, he picked up the syringe and the tubing from the carpet and carefully placed them into the plastic bags.
Coughlin then led him to Penelope’s bedroom. Potter first took several photographs of the bed and the bedside tables, then took another, larger plastic bag from his bag and, using the forceps, moved the spoon, the candle, the cotton ball, and the glassine bag containing a white crystalline substance from Penelope’s bedside table into it.
“OK,” he said. “I’ve got everything I need. Let me use a telephone and I’m on my way.”
“I’ll show you, Bernie,” Chief Coughlin said. “There’s one by the door downstairs.”
As they went down the stairs, the door to the dining room opened and two uniformed police officers came through it, carrying Penelope’s body on a stretcher. It was covered with a blanket, but her arm hung down from the side.
“The arm!” Chief Coughlin said.
One of the Fire Department EMTs, who was holding the door open, went quickly and put the arm onto the stretcher.
The policemen carried the stretcher outside and down the stairs from the patio and slid it through the already open doors of a Police Department wagon.
Chief Coughlin pointed to the telephone, then walked out onto the patio.
“Just don’t give it to anybody,” he called. “It’s for Dr. Greene. He expects it.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the police officers said.
Coughlin went back into the foyer.
Bernie Potter was just hanging up the telephone.
“Thanks, Bernie,” Coughlin said, and put out his hand.
“Christ, what a way to begin a day,” Bernie said.
“Yeah,” Coughlin said.
It would have been reasonable for anyone seeing Inspector Peter Wohl leaning on the trunk of his car, its right wheels off the pavement on the sidewalk, his arms folded on his chest, a look of annoyance on his face, to assume that he was an up-and-coming stockbroker, or lawyer, about to be late for an early-morning appointment because his new car had broken down and the Keystone Automobile Club was taking their own damned sweet time coming to his rescue.
The look of displeasure on his face was in fact not even because he was going to have to tell Matt Payne, of whom he was extraordinarily fond-his mother had once said that Matt was like the little brother she had never been able to give him, and she was, he had realized, right-that the love of his life was dead, but rather because it had just occurred to him that he was really a cold-blooded sonofabitch.
He would, he had realized, be as sympathetic as he could possibly be when Matt showed up, expressing his own personal sense of loss. But the truth of the matter was, he had just been honest enough with himself to admit that he felt Matt was going to be a hell of a lot better off with Penelope Detweiler dead.
It had been his experience, and as a cop, there had been a lot of experience, that a junkie is a junkie is a junkie. And in the case of Penelope Detweiler, if after the best medical and psychiatric treatment that money could, quite literally, buy, she was still sticking needles in herself, for whatever reason, that seemed to be absolutely true.
There would have been no decent future for them. If she hadn’t OD’d this morning, she would have OD’d next week, or next month, or next year, or two years from now. There would have been other incidents, sordid beyond the comprehension of people who didn’t know the horrors of narcotics addiction firsthand, and each of them would have killed Matt a little.
It was better for Matt that this had happened now, rather than after they had married, after they had children.
The fact that he felt sorry for Penelope Detweiler did not alter the fact that he was glad she had died before she could cause Matt more pain.
But by definition, Peter Wohl thought, anyone who is glad a twenty-three-year-old woman is dead is a cold-blooded sonofabitch.
He looked up as a car nearly identical to his flashed its headlights at him and then bounced up on the curb. Detective Jesus Martinez was driving. Detective Matt Payne, smiling, opened the passenger door and got out.
Martinez, annoyance on his face, hurried to follow him.
Why do those two hate each other?
The answer, obviously, is that opposites do not attract.
What do I say to Matt?
When all else fails, try the unvarnished truth.
“Don’t tell me, you’re broken down again?” Matt Payne said.
Gremlins-or the effects of John Barleycorn over the weekend affecting Monday-morning Ford assembly lines-had been at work on Inspector Wohl’s automobiles. His generators failed, the radiators leaked their coolant, the transmissions ground themselves into pieces, usually leaving him stranded in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Most of his subordinates were highly amused. He was now on his third brand-new car in six months.
“Let’s get in the car,” Wohl said. “Jesus, give us a minute, please?”
Matt looked curious but obeyed the order wordlessly. He closed the door after him and looked at Wohl.
Wohl met Matt’s eyes.
“Matt, Penny OD’d,” he said.
Matt’s face tightened. His eyebrows rose in question, as if seeking a denial of what he had just heard.
Wohl shrugged, and threw his hands up in a gesture of helplessness.
“Matt…”
“Oh, shit!” Matt said.
“The maid found her in her bed with a needle in her arm. Death was apparently instantaneous.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Tom O’Connor-he commands Northwest Detectives-called Denny Coughlin when they called it in. I happened to be in Denny’s office when he got the call. He went out to the house to see how he could help. By now the M.E. has the body.”
“Instantaneous?”
Wohl nodded. “So I’m told.”
“Oh, shit, Peter!”
“I’m sorry, Matt,” Wohl said, and put his arm around Matt’s shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”
“We had a goddamned fight last night.”
“This is not your fault, Matt. Don’t start thinking that.”
“Same goddamned subject. Our future. Me being a cop.”
“If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. They find an excuse.”
“Addicts, you mean?”
Wohl nodded.
“Has Amy been notified?” Matt asked. “This is going to wipe out Mrs. Detweiler.”
His reaction is not what I expected. But what did I expect?
“I don’t know,” Wohl said, and then had a thought. He reached under the dash for a microphone.
“Isaac Three, William One.”
“Isaac Three.” It was the voice of Sergeant Francis Holloran, Chief Inspector Coughlin’s driver.
“Tom, check with the Chief and see if Dr. Payne has been notified.”
“She’s here, Inspector.”
“Thank you,” Wohl said, and replaced the microphone. He looked over at Matt.
“I guess I’d better go out there,” Matt said.
“Take the car and as much time as you need,” Wohl said. “I’ll take Martinez with me. Or why don’t you give me the keys to your car, and I’ll have Martinez or somebody bring it out there and swap.”
“I’ll go to the schoolhouse and get my car,” Matt said. “I’m a coward, Peter. I don’t want to go out there at all. With a little bit of luck, maybe I can get myself run over by a bus on my way.”
“Matt, this isn’t your fault.”
Matt shrugged.
“I think I will take the car out there,” he said. “Get it over with. I’ll have it back at the schoolhouse in an hour or so.”
“Take what time you need,” Wohl said. “Is there anything else I can do, Matt?”
“No. But thank you.”
“See me when you come to the schoolhouse.”
Matt nodded.
“I’m really sorry, Matt.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
They got out of the car and walked to Martinez.
“Are the keys in that?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, why?”
Without replying, Matt walked to the car, got behind the wheel, and started the engine.
Martinez looked at Wohl.
Matt bounced off the curb and, tires chirping, entered the stream of traffic.
“I should have sent you with him,” Wohl thought aloud.
“Sir?”
“Penelope Detweiler overdosed about an hour ago.”
“ Madre de Dios! ” Martinez said, and crossed himself.
“Yeah,” Wohl said bitterly, then walked back to his car.
Martinez walked to the car but didn’t get in.
“Get in, for Christ’s sake,” Wohl snapped, and was immediately sorry. “Sorry, Jesus. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
Martinez shrugged, signaling that he understood.
“That poor sonofabitch,” he said.
“Yeah,” Wohl agreed.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Inspector Peter Wohl said to Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach as he walked in his office. “Something came up.”
“The Detweiler girl?” Weisbach asked, and when Wohl nodded, added: “Sabara told me. Awful. For her-what was she, twenty-three, her whole life ahead of her-and for Payne. He was really up when you put out the call for him.”
“Up? What for, for having put the cuffs on a crooked cop? He liked that?”
“No. I think he felt sorry for Captain Cazerra. I think he felt vindicated. He told me that you, and Washington and Denny Coughlin, had really eaten his ass out for going out on that ledge.”
“I wasn’t going to let it drop, either-it was damned stupid-until this…this goddamned overdose came along.”
“I imagine he’s pretty broken up?”
“I don’t know. No outward emotion, which may mean he really has one of those well-bred stiff upper lips we hear about, or that he’s in shock.”
“Where is he?”
“Out at the estate. He’s coming here. I’m going to see that he’s not alone.”
“There was a kid in here, McFadden, from Northwest Detectives, looking for him.”
“Good. I was going to put the arm out for him. They’re pals. You think he knows what happened?”
“I’m sure he does. When O’Mara told him Payne wasn’t here, he said something about him probably being in Chestnut Hill, and that he would go there.”
Wohl picked up his telephone and was eventually connected with O’Connor.
“Captain O’Connor. Inspector Wohl calling,” he said, and then: “Peter Wohl, Tom. Need a favor.”
Weisbach faintly heard O’Connor say, “Name it.”
“If you could see your way clear to give your Detective McFadden a little time off, I’d appreciate it. He and my Detective Payne are friends, and for the next couple of days, Payne, I’m sure you know why, is going to need all the friends he has.”
Weisbach heard O’Connor say, “I already told him to take whatever time he needed, Inspector.”
“I owe you one, Tom.”
“I owe you a lot more than one, Inspector. Glad to help. Christ, what a terrible waste!”
“Isn’t it?” Wohl said, added, “Thanks, Tom,” and hung up.
He had a second thought, and pushed a button on the telephone that connected him with Officer O’Mara, his administrative assistant.
“Yes, sir?”
“Two things, Paul. Inspector Weisbach and I need some coffee, and while that’s brewing, I want you to call Special Agent Jack Matthews at the FBI. Tell him I asked you to tell him what happened in Chestnut Hill this morning, and politely suggest that Detective Payne would probably be grateful for some company. That latter applies to you, too. Why don’t you stop by Payne’s apartment on your way home?”
Weisbach heard O’Mara say, “Yes, sir.”
Wohl looked at Weisbach as he hung up.
“Busy morning. I feel like it’s two in the afternoon, and it’s only ten to eleven.”
“Busier even than I think you know. Did you hear about Lowenstein turning in his papers?”
“Jesus, no! Are you sure?”
The door opened and Paul O’Mara walked in with a tray holding two somewhat battered mugs of coffee, a can of condensed milk, and a saucer holding a dozen paper packets of sugar bearing advertisements suggesting they were souvenirs from McDonald’s and Roy Rogers and other fast-food emporiums.
“That was quick,” Wohl said. “Thank you, Paul.” He waited until O’Mara had left, and then said, “Tell me about Lowenstein.”
“The first thing this morning, Harry McElroy delivered Lowenstein’s badge and a memorandum announcing his intention to retire to the Commissioner. I got that from McElroy, so that much I know for sure.”
“God knows I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m not surprised that he’s going out-”
Weisbach held up his hand, interrupting him.
“Just before I came out here,” he said, “Lowenstein put out the arm for me. I met him at the Philadelphia Athletic Club on Broad Street. And not only did he not mention going out, but he didn’t act like it, either.”
“Interesting,” Wohl said. “What did he want?”
“I got sort of a pep talk. He told me this Ethical Affairs Unit was a good thing for me, could help my career, and that all I had to do to get anything I wanted from the Detective Division was to ask.”
“Lowenstein and the Mayor got into it at David Pekach’s engagement party. Got into it bad. Did you hear about that?”
“The Mayor had just seen that Charley Whaley story in the Ledger. The ‘more unsolved murders, no arrests, no comment’ story. You see that?”
“Yeah.”
“For some reason, it displeased our mayor,” Wohl said, dryly. “The Mayor then announced he wouldn’t be surprised if Wally Milham was involved in the Kellog murder, primarily because he thinks that Milham’s morals are questionable. You’ve heard that gossip, I suppose?”
“Milham and Kellog’s wife? Yeah, sure.”
“The Mayor asked Lowenstein why he hadn’t spoken to him about his love life. Lowenstein told the Mayor he didn’t think it was any of his business. Then, warming to the subject, defended Milham. And then, really getting sore, Lowenstein made impolitic remarks about, quote, the Mayor’s own private detective squad, unquote.”
“Ouch!”
“Whereupon the Mayor told him if he didn’t like the way things were being run, he should talk it over with the Commissioner. And then-he was really in a lousy mood-to make the point to the Chief who was running the Department, he told him ‘the Commissioner’ was going to send Matt Payne, who knows zilch about Homicide, over to Homicide to (a) help with the double murder at that gin mill on Market Street-”
“The Inferno?”
“Right. And (b) to see what he could learn about other Homicide investigations, meaning, of course, how Homicide is handling the Kellog job.”
“My God!”
“I thought Lowenstein was going to have a heart attack. Or punch out the Mayor. It was that bad. I’m not surprised, now that I hear it, that he turned in his papers.”
“I got it from Harry McElroy that he did. But then he didn’t act like it when he sent for me.”
“OK. How’s this for a scenario? Czernich ran to the Mayor with Lowenstein’s retirement memorandum. The Mayor hadn’t wanted to go that far with Chief Lowenstein. Christ, they’ve been friends for years. He didn’t want him to quit. So they struck a deal. Lowenstein would stay on the job if certain conditions were met. They apparently were. And since they almost certainly involve you and me, we’ll probably hear about them sometime next month.”
Weisbach considered what Wohl had said, then nodded his head, accepting the scenario.
“So what do I do this month? Peter, you can’t be happy with me-the Ethical Affairs Unit-being suddenly dumped on you.”
“I don’t have any problems with it,” Wohl said. “First of all, it, and/or you, haven’t been dumped on me. All I have to do is support you, and I have no problem with that. I think the EAU is a good idea, that you are just the guy to run it, and I think your work is already cut out for you.”
“You really think it’s a good idea?” Weisbach asked, surprised. Wohl nodded. “And what do you mean my work is already cut out for me?”
“The Widow Kellog showed up at Jason Washington’s apartment the night her husband was killed with the announcement that everybody in Five Squad in Narcotics-you know about Five Squad?”
“Not much. I’ve heard they’re very effective.” He chuckled, and added: “Sort of an unshaven Highway Patrol, in dirty clothes, beards, and T-shirts-concealing unauthorized weapons-reading ‘Legalize Marijuana,’ who cast fear into the drug culture by making middle-of-the-night raids.”
“Everybody in Five Squad, according to the Widow Kellog, is dirty, and she implied that they did her husband.”
“My God!”
“Washington believes her, at least about the whole Five Squad being dirty. Before all this crap happened, I was going to bring you in on it.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Practically speaking, our priorities are the Mayor’s priorities. I don’t think he wants to be surprised again by dirty Narcotics people the way he was with Cazerra and company. Internal Affairs dropped the ball on that one, and I don’t think we can give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Yeah, it looks to me that you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“What kind of help can I have?”
“Anything you want. Washington and Harris, after getting their hands dirty on the Cazerra job, would love to work on a nice clean Homicide, especially of a police officer. And if there is a tie to Narcotics…Jesus!”
“What?”
“I forgot about the Mayor ordering Payne into Homicide,” Wohl said. He reached for his telephone, pushed a button, and a moment later ordered, “Paul, would you get Chief Lowenstein for me, please?”
He put the telephone down.
“Drink your coffee, Mike,” he said. “The first thing you’re going to have to do is face the fact that your innocent, happy days as a staff inspector are over. You have just moved into the world of police politics, and you’re probably not going to like it at all.”
“That thought had already run through my mind,” Weisbach said. He picked up his mug and, shaking his head, put it to his mouth.
The telephone rang. Wohl picked it up.
“Good morning, Chief,” he said. “I wanted to check with you about sending Detective Payne to Homicide. Is that still on?”
He took the headset from his ear so that Weisbach could hear the Chief’s reply.
“Denny Coughlin just told me what happened to the Detweiler girl,” Lowenstein said. “I presume you’re giving Matt some time off?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, when he comes back, send him over whenever you can spare him. I’ve spoken to Captain Quaire. They’re waiting for him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And please tell him I’m sorry about what happened. That’s really a goddamn shame.”
“I’ll tell him that, sir. Thank you.”
“Nice talking to you, Peter,” Chief Lowenstein said, and hung up.
“He didn’t sound like someone about to retire, did he?” Weisbach said.
“No, he didn’t.”
One of the telephones on Wohl’s desk rang.
“This is what happens when I forget to tell Paul to hold my calls,” he said as he reached for it. “Inspector Wohl.”
“Ah, Peter,” Weisbach overheard. “How is the Beau Brummell of Philadelphia law enforcement this morning?”
“Why is it, Armando, that whenever I hear your voice, I think of King Henry the Sixth?”
“Peter, you are, as you well know, quoting that infamous Shakespearean ‘kill all the lawyers’ line out of context.”
“Well, he had the right idea, anyhow. What can I do for you, Armando?”
“Actually, I was led to believe that Inspector Weisbach could be reached at your office.”
“I’d love to know who told you that,” Wohl said, and then handed the telephone to Weisbach. “Armando C. Giacomo, Esquire, for you, Inspector.”
Giacomo, a slight, lithe, dapper man who wore what was left of his hair plastered to the sides of his tanned skull, was one of the best criminal lawyers in Philadelphia.
Wohl got up from his desk and walked to his window and looked out. He could therefore hear only Weisbach’s side of the brief conversation.
“I’ll call you back in five minutes,” Weisbach concluded, and hung up.
Wohl walked back to his desk.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Giacomo has been asked to represent Mr. Paulo Cassandro.”
“I’ll bet that he has,” Weisbach said. “But he didn’t say so. What he said was that it would give him great pleasure if I would have lunch with him today at the Rittenhouse Club, during which he would like to discuss something which would be to our mutual benefit.”
“I’d go, if I were you,” Wohl said. “They set a very nice table at the Rittenhouse Club.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“I’m not in the mood for lunch, really, even at the Rittenhouse Club.”
“He’s looking for something, which means he’s desperate. I’d like to have you there.”
“Yeah,” Wohl said, thoughtfully. “If he’s looking for a deal, he would have gone to the District Attorney. It might be interesting.”
He pushed the button for Paul O’Mara.
“Paul, call Armando C. Giacomo. Tell him that Inspector Weisbach accepts his kind invitation to lunch at the Rittenhouse Club at one, and that he’s bringing me with him.”