W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

What the hell am I doing? Bargaining with the mob? Making a deal to have the mob do something the Police Department should be doing itself? Cassandro bribed some dirty cops. We caught them. They should all go to jail, not just the cops. Paulo Cassandro should not walk because it will increase Jerry Carlucci’s chances of getting re-elected.

Wohl stood up.

“Is something wrong?” Giacomo asked.

“I’m not sure I want to eat lunch,” he said. “And I know I have enough of this conversation.”

Weisbach stood up. Giacomo looked up at them, and then stood up himself.

“I thank you for your indulgence,” he said. “I would be deeply pained if this conversation affected our friendship.”

Oddly enough, I believe him. Which probably proves I was right about getting in over my head.

“Please, let’s not let this ruin a lunch with friends. Come and break bread with me, please,” Giacomo said.

Wohl didn’t reply for a moment.

“I was about to say, only if I can pay. But I can’t pay in here, can I?”

“No. And it is an expulsable offense for a member to let a guest reimburse him. If that’s important to you, Peter, would you like to go somewhere else?”

Wohl met his eyes for a moment.

“No,” he said finally. “I think we understand each other, Armando. We can eat here.”

South Rittenhouse Square-on the south side of Rittenhouse Square in Center City Philadelphia-is no wider than it was when it was laid out at the time of the American Revolution. There are a half-dozen NO PARKING AT ANY TIME-TOW AWAY ZONE signs, warning citizens that if they park there at any time, it is virtually certain that to reclaim their car, it will be necessary for them to somehow make their way halfway across Philadelphia to the Parking Authority impoundment lot at Delaware Avenue and Spring Garden Street and there both pay a hefty fine for illegal parking and generously compensate the City of Brotherly Love for the services of the Parking Authority tow truck that hauled their car away.

Despite this, when Amelia Payne, M.D., drove past the building housing the Delaware Valley Cancer Society, there were seven automobiles parked in front of it, all of them with their right-side wheels on the sidewalk. There was a new Oldsmobile sedan, a battered Volkswagen, a ten-year-old, gleaming Jaguar XK 120, a new Mercedes convertible, a new Buick sedan, and two new sedans, a Ford and a Chevrolet.

There’s not even room enough for me, Dr. Payne thought somewhat indignantly. Like most of her fellow practitioners of the healing arts, she was in the habit of interpreting rather loosely the privilege granted to physicians of ignoring NO PARKING AT ANY TIME signs when making emergency calls.

And she had intended to do so now, by placing her official PHYSICIAN MAKING CALL card on the dashboard of the Buick station wagon, because the basement garage of the Cancer Society Building, to which she had access, had a very narrow entrance passage that she had difficulty negotiating.

She continued past the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building, noticing with annoyance the beat cop on the corner, his arms folded on his chest, calmly surveying his domain and oblivious to the multiple violations of parking laws.

Professional courtesy, she thought. Damn the cops!

She had recognized four of the cars-the Oldsmobile, the Volkswagen, the Jaguar, and the Mercedes-as belonging respectively to Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Detective Charles McFadden, Inspector Peter Wohl, and Captain David Pekach, and had drawn, as the cop obviously had, the natural and correct conclusion that the rest of the cars were also the official or personal automobiles of other policemen (or in the case of Pekach, belonged to his fiancee, Miss Martha Peebles, which was just about the same thing) who regarded parking regulations as applying only to civilians.

She drove to South Nineteenth Street, where she turned right, and then made the next right, and ultimately reached the entrance of the underground garage, which, surprising her not at all, she failed to maneuver through unscathed. This time she scraped the right fender against a wall.

This served to further lower her morale. In addition to the early-morning horror at the Detweilers’, she had just come from University Hospital, where a patient of hers, an attractive young woman whom she had originally diagnosed as suffering from routine postpartum depression, was manifesting symptoms of more serious mental illness that Amy simply could not fathom, nor could anyone else she had consulted.

She was not surprised, either, to find both of the reserved parking places she intended to use already occupied. One of them held a silver Porsche 911, and the other a Buick wagon identical to hers, save it was two years younger and unscratched and undented.

The Buick belonged to her father, who could be expected to offer some clever witticism about the dents in her Buick, and the Porsche to her brother. The Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building was owned by her father, and her brother occupied a tiny apartment in what had been the garret before the 1850s building had been gutted and converted into offices behind the original facade.

She parked the Buick-neatly straddling a marking line between spaces-and got out of the car. The elevator did not respond to her summons, and only after a while did she remember that it was late-she consulted her watch and saw that it was well after midnight-and remembered that at this hour, the elevator was locked. It would be necessary to call Matt’s apartment by telephone, whereupon he could push a button activating the elevator.

And he took his damned sweet time answering the telephone, and when he did, it wasn’t him, but a clipped, metallic voice she did not at first recognize.

“Yes?”

“This is Dr. Payne. Would you please push the elevator button?”

There was the sound of male laughter in the background.

“Just a moment, darlin’,” the voice said. “I’ll ask Matty how to work it.”

She now recognized the voice to be that of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin. Normally, she did not mind his addressing her as “darlin’,” but now it annoyed her.

The line went dead, and she stood there for a full minute, waiting for the sound of a buzzer, or whatever, which would bring the elevator to life. It gave her time to consider that what was going on upstairs was really an Irish wake, the males of the clan gathering to console one of their number who had suffered a loss.

She reached for the telephone again, then changed her mind and pushed the elevator button again. This time she was rewarded with the sound of the elevator moving.

It took her to the third floor. A closed door led to the narrow flight of stairs to Matt’s apartment. She pushed the button, and in a moment, a solenoid buzzed and she was able to push the door open.

She was greeted again with the sound of male laughter, which for some reason annoyed her, although another part of her mind said that it was probably therapeutic.

She walked up the stairs.

The tiny apartment was jammed. In the living room, she saw Martha Peebles sitting on a small couch with Mary-Margaret McCarthy-Detective Charley McFadden’s girlfriend-and a tall young man she recognized as Matt’s friend Jack Matthews, an FBI agent. The small table in front of the couch was covered with jackets. It was hot in the apartment, and most of the men had taken off their jackets and pulled down their ties and rolled up their sleeves.

Which also served to reveal that most of them were armed. There were shoulder holsters and waist holsters, most of them carrying snub-nosed. 38-caliber revolvers.

The tribal insignia, Amy thought, like that little purse or whatever Scots wear hanging down over their kilts.