W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

Washington saw in his eyes that he had gotten through to him. He fixed him with an icy glance for another thirty seconds, which seemed much longer.

Then he smiled, just a little.

“It would seem to me, considering the sacrifice it has meant for me to come here at this late hour to offer you my wise counsel, that the least you could do would be to offer me a small libation. Perhaps some of the Famous Grouse scotch?”

“Sure, sorry,” Matt said, smiling. He went into his kitchen. As he opened first one, and then another over-the-sink cabinet, he called, “What are you doing out this late?”

“Our beloved Mayor has been gracious enough to find time to offer me his wise counsel.”

“Really?”

“Specifically, he is of the opinion that we should go to Officers Crater and Palmerston and offer them immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony against Captain Cazerra and Lieutenant Meyer.”

“Jason,” Matt said, “I can’t find a bottle of any kind of scotch. Not even Irish.”

“I am not surprised,” Washington said. “It’s been one of those days. Get your coat. We will pub crawl for a brief period.”

“There’s some rum and gin. And vermouth. I could make you a martini.”

“Get your coat, Matthew,” Washington said. “I accept your kind offer of a drink at the Rittenhouse Club bar.”

“Oh, thank you, kind sir,” Matt said, mockingly, and started shrugging into Chad Nesbitt’s tweed jacket. “I think the Mayor’s idea stinks.”

“Why?”

“Because any lawyer six weeks out of law school could tear them up on the stand, and we know Cazerra and Meyer’s lawyers will be good.”

“Armando C. Giacomo, Esquire,” Washington agreed, citing the name of Philadelphia’s most competent criminal lawyer. “Or someone of his ilk. Perhaps even the legendary Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, Esquire.”

Matt laughed. “No way. My father would go ballistic. I’m ready.”

“I made that point to His Honor,” Washington said as he pushed himself out of one of Matt’s small armchairs.

“And?”

“And as usual got nowhere. Or almost nowhere. We have two weeks to get something on Cazerra and Meyer that will stand up in court. He wants those two in jail.”

“Or what?”

“We work Crater and Palmerston over, figuratively speaking of course, with a rubber hose.”

“What does Wohl say?” Matt asked as he waved Washington ahead of him down the stairs.

“I haven’t told him yet. I figured I would ruin tomorrow for him by doing that first thing in the morning.”

The Rittenhouse Club was closed when they got there.

“What do we do now?” Matt asked.

“Why don’t we take a stroll down Market Street?” Washington replied. “It will both give us a chance to see how the other half lives, and trigger memories of those happy days when Officer Washington was walking his first beat.”

“You walked a beat on Market Street?” Matt asked. It was difficult for him to imagine Washington in a police officer’s uniform, patrolling Market Street.

Officer Friendly Black Buddha, he thought, impeccably tailored and shined, smiling somewhat menacingly as he slapped his palm with his nightstick.

“Indeed I did. Under the able leadership of Lieutenant Dennis V. Coughlin. And on our watch,” Washington announced sonorously, “the thieves and mountebanks plied their trade in someone else’s district.”

“Police Emergency,” David Meach said into his headset.

“This is the Inferno Lounge,” his caller announced. “1908 Market. There’s been a shooting, and somebody may be dead.”

“Your name, sir, please?”

“Shit!” the caller responded and hung up.

David Meach had been on the job six years, long enough to be able to unconsciously make judgments regarding the validity of a call, based on not only what was said, but how it was said. Whether, for example, the caller sounded mature (as opposed to an excited kid wanting to give the cops a little exercise) and whether or not there was excitement or tension or a certain numbness in his voice. This call sounded legitimate; he didn’t think he’d be sending police cars racing through downtown Philadelphia for no purpose.

He checked to see what was available.

RPC Nine Ten seemed closest to the scene. Meach pressed a key to send two short attention beeps across the airways, then activated his microphone:

“All cars stand by. 1908 Market Street, the Inferno Lounge, report of a shooting and a hospital case. Nine Ten, you have the assignment.”

The response was immediate.

“Nine Ten, got it,” Officer Edward Schirmer called into the microphone of Radio Patrol Car Number Ten of the Ninth District, as Officer Lewis Roberts, who was driving the car down Walnut Street, reached down to the dashboard and activated the siren and flashing lights.

“Nine Seven in on that,” another voice reported, that of Officer Frederick E. Rogers, in RPC Nine Seven.

“Highway Thirteen, in on the 1908 Market,” responded Officer David Fowler.

“Nine Oh One, got it,” responded Officer Adolphus Hart, who was riding in one of the two vans assigned to the Ninth District.

Nine Oh One had five minutes before left the Police Administration Building at Eighth and Race streets, after having transferred two prisoners from the holding cells at the Ninth District to Central Lockup.

Officer Thomas Daniels, who was driving Nine Oh One, had for no good reason at all elected to drive up Market Street and was by happenstance able to be the first police vehicle responding to the “Shooting and Hospital Case” call to reach the scene.

There was nothing at all unusual about the location when they pulled to the curb. The Inferno Lounge’s neon-flames sign was not illuminated, and the establishment seemed to be closed for the night.

He stopped just long enough to permit Officer Hart to jump out of the van and walk quickly to the door of the Inferno, and to see if Hart could open the door. He couldn’t. Then he turned left on Ludlow Street, so that he could block the rear entrance.

Two civilians, a very large black man and a tall young white man, both very well dressed, were walking down Nineteenth Street, toward Market. They could have, Officer Daniels reasoned, just come out of the alley behind the Inferno.

Officer Daniels, sounding his horn, drove the van into the alley, blocking it, and jumped out of the van.

“Hold it right there, please!” he called out.

His order proved to be unnecessary. The two civilians had stopped, turned, and were looking at him with curiosity.

While a Pedestrian Stop was of course necessary, Officer Daniels made the snap judgment that it was unlikely that these two had anything to do with whatever-if anything-had happened at the Inferno. They hadn’t run, for one thing, and they didn’t look uncomfortable.

Officer Daniels had an unkind thought: This area was an unusual place to take a stroll after midnight, unless, of course, the two were cruising for women. Or men. Maybe they had just found each other.

“Excuse me, sir,” Daniels said. “May I please see some identification?”

The younger man laughed. Daniels glowered at him.

“We’re police officers,” the black man said. “What have you got?”

The younger one exhibited a detective’s badge.

“What’s going on here, Officer?” the black man asked.

Officer Daniels hesitated just perceptibly before replying: “Shooting and hospital case inside the Inferno.”

“Was the front door open?” the black man asked.

“No.”

“I’ll go block the front,” the black man said. “The rear door to this place is halfway down the alley. There’s usually a garbage can full of beer bottles, and so on.” He turned to the young white man. “You go with him, Matt.”