W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

“Maybe you’re right, Augie,” Carlucci said. “Maybe that wasn’t clear. I thought it was. Ethical Affairs Unit is under Special Operations. Weisbach reports directly to me, but he works for Peter. You understand that, Peter?”

“Yes, sir.”

Carlucci looked around the room.

“Ah, there’s Angie,” he said. “I better go join her. She doesn’t like it when I stay away too long.”

He walked away from them.

“Jesus Christ!” Chief Lowenstein said when he was out of earshot.

“My sentiments exactly, Chief,” Peter Wohl said.

“That crap about sending Payne to Homicide was a last-minute inspiration of his,” Lowenstein said.

“That was to remind you who runs the Department,” Chief Wohl said. “He thought maybe you’d forgotten.”

“I know who runs the Department,” Lowenstein said.

“You shouldn’t have argued with him,” Chief Wohl said. “First about Seymour Meyer, and then about Wally Milham. He knows that Meyer is dirty, and thinks Milham is. And he’s never wrong, especially when he’s hot under the collar. You know that, Matt.”

“Christ,” Lowenstein said.

“That’s what the whole business of sending Payne to Homicide is all about,” Chief Wohl went on. “He couldn’t think of anything, right then, that would piss you off more, and remind you who runs the Department.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the stocky man in a dinner jacket said with a smile, as he saw two young formally dressed couples coming down the second-floor corridor of the Peebles mansion, “this part of the house has been closed off for the evening.”

“It’s all right,” Matt Payne replied, “I’m a police officer, checking on the firearms collection.”

The reply was clearly not expected by the stocky man.

“I’ll have to see some identification, please,” he said.

“Certainly,” Matt said, showing his badge. “You’re Wachenhut?”

Daffy (Mrs. Chadwick T.) Nesbitt IV giggled.

“Pinkerton,” the stocky man said, stepping out of the way.

“Thank you,” Matt said, putting his badge holder away and reclaiming the hand of Miss Penelope Detweiler. He led her and the Nesbitts almost to the end of the long corridor, and then opened a door to the right.

“You could fight a war with the guns in here,” Matt said as he switched on the lights and signaled for Penny to walk in.

“Jesus,” Chad said. “Look at them!”

“That was disgusting,” Penny said.

“What was disgusting, love of my life?” Matt asked. There was a strain in his voice.

“We’re not supposed to be in here,” Penny said.

“Look,” he said. “Chad wanted to see the guns. If we had gone to Martha-if we had been able to find Martha in that mob downstairs-and asked her if we could look at the guns, she would have said ‘sure,’ and we would have come up here, and the Pinkerton guy wouldn’t have let us in without written authorization, whereupon I would have showed him my badge. OK?”

“You think that damned badge makes you something special,” Penny said.

“Penny, sometimes you’re a pain in the ass,” Matt said.

“Hey!” Daffy said. “Stop it, you two!”

“The cabinets are locked,” Chad said in disappointment.

“They lock up the crown jewels of England, too,” Matt said. “Something about them being valuable.”

“Are these things valuable?” Penny asked.

“Some of the antiques are really worth money,” Matt said. “Museum stuff.”

“But what did he do with all of them?” Penny asked.

“Looked at them,” Matt said. “Just…took pleasure in having them.”

“What the hell is this?” Chad asked, looking down into a glass-topped, felt-lined display case. “It looks like a sniper rifle, without a scope.”

Matt went and looked.

“That one I know,” he said. “The Great White Hunter showed me that one himself. It’s a. 30 caliber-note that I did not say. 30-06-Springfield, Model of 1900. When Roosevelt, the first Roosevelt, came back from Cuba and got himself elected President-”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Penny demanded.

“Turn your mouth off automatic, all right? I’m talking to Chad.”

“Screw you!”

“Before I was so rudely interrupted, Chad: When Roosevelt made the Ordnance Corps pay Mauser for a license to manufacture bolt actions based on the Spanish 7mm they used in Cuba, the Springfield Arsenal made a trial run. Twenty rifles, I think he said. One of them they gave to Roosevelt, who was then President. That’s it. Christ only knows how much it’s worth. Martha’s father told me it took him three years to talk Roosevelt’s daughter into selling it to him once he found out she had it.”

“Are we finished here?” Penny asked.

“Penny!” Daffy said.

“We are not finished here, love of my life,” Matt said, not at all pleasantly. “You may be, but I have just begun to give Chad the tour.”

“I want to go back downstairs. I’m bored up here.”

“And I’m bored down there.”

“You didn’t seem to be bored when you were sucking up to the Mayor.”

“Have a nice time downstairs, Penelope,” Matt said. “Don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass on your way out.”

Penny extended her right hand, with the center finger in an extended upward position, the others folded, and walked out of the arms room.

“You’re right, Matthew my boy,” Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV said. “On occasion, and this is obviously one of them, our beloved Penny can be a flaming pain in the ass.”

“I suspect it may be that time of the month,” Matt said.

Chad laughed.

“The both of you are disgusting!” Daffy said. “I’m going with Penny.”

“Mind what Matt said about the doorknob, darling,” Chad said.

“You bastard!” Mrs. Nesbitt said, and marched out.

“I am tempted,” Matt said, “to repeat the old saw that there would be a bounty on them, if they didn’t have-”

“Don’t!” Chad interrupted, laughing. “I’m too tired to have to fight to defend the honor of the mother-to-be of my children.”

Ten minutes later, as Matt, having successfully gotten through the lock on one of the pistol cabinets, was showing Chad a mint-condition, low-serial-numbered Colt Model 1911 self-loader, Inspector Peter Wohl came into the gun room, trailed by Mrs. C. T. Nesbitt IV and Miss Penelope Detweiler.

“My God, she called the cops!” Matt said, the wit of which remark getting through only to Mr. Nesbitt.

“I asked Penny if she knew where you were,” Wohl said. “Got a minute, Matt?”

“Yes, sir. Sure. You know Chad, don’t you?”

“Hello, Nesbitt. How are you?”

“Inspector.”

“Could you give us a minute?”

“Certainly,” Chad said. “I’ll be outside.”

Wohl waited until they had gone and had closed the door behind them.

“You ever see one of these?” Matt asked, holding the Model 1911 out to Wohl.

“I just heard about you climbing out on the ledge at the Bellvue, you damned fool,” Wohl said.

After a just-perceptible hesitation, Matt asked, “Who told you? Harris?”

“Actually, it was the Mayor. Harris told the Mayor and the Mayor told me.”

“The Mayor?”

“The Mayor thinks it makes you a cop with great big balls,” Wohl said. “I wanted to make sure you understand that in my book it makes you a goddamned fool.”

Matt didn’t reply for a moment.

“Inspector-”

“Just when I start to think that maybe you’ve started to grow up, you do something like that. Jesus H. Christ, Matt!”

“Are you willing to listen to me telling you that ledge was eighteen inches wide?”

“Be in my office at quarter to seven in the morning,” Wohl said.