W.E.B Griffin: The Witness

They stood roll call, and then drew a car, Highway 22, a year-old Chevrolet with 97,000-odd miles on its odometer. If by some miracle the trial went off as scheduled, they could then go on patrol. They drove downtown to City Hall at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets and parked just outside the southeast corner entrance.

Just off the southeast stairwell is Court Attendance, an administrative unit of the Police Department, which tries to keep track of which police officer is to testify at what time in which courtroom. They checked in there, learned where they were supposed to go to testify, and then went to the stairwell itself, where a blind concessionaire brewed what most police agreed was the worst coffee in the Delaware River Basin. They shot the bull with other cops for a while, and then went upstairs to their courtroom to wait for their case to be called.

The day began for Staff Inspector Peter Frederick Wohl at about the same time, a few minutes before six, as it had for Officer Charles McFadden.

Wohl was wakened by the ringing of one of the two telephones on the bedside table in his bedroom in his apartment. His over-a-six-cargarage apartment had once been the chauffeur's quarters of a turn-ofthe-century mansion on the 800 block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill. The mansion itself had been divided into luxury apartments.

"Inspector Wohl," he said, somewhat formally. The phone that had been ringing was the official phone, paid for by the Police Department.

"Six o'clock, sir. Good morning."

It was the voice of the tour lieutenant at Bustleton and Bowler. The voice was familiar, and so was the face he could put to it-that of a lieutenant newly assigned to Special Operations-but he could not come up with a name.

"Good morning," Wohl said, as cheerfully as he could manage. "How goes the never-ending war against crime?"

The lieutenant chuckled.

"I don't know about that, sir. But I can report your car is back from the garage. Shall I have someone run it over to you?"

For the first time, Wohl remembered what had happened to his car, an unmarked nearly brand-new Ford LTD four-door sedan. The sonofabitch had just died on him. He had been stopped by the red light at Mount Airy and Germantown Avenue on the way home from Commissioner Czernick' s soiree, and when the light changed, the Ford had moved fifteen feet forward and lurched to a stop.

When he tried to start it, the only thing that happened was the lights dimmed. The radio still worked, happily. He had called for a police tow truck, and then asked Police Radio to have the nearest Highway or Special Operations car meet him.

By the time the tow truck reached him, a Highway RPC, a Highway sergeant, and the Special Operations/Highway lieutenant were already there. The lieutenant had driven him home.

Wohl sat up and swung his feet out of bed, hoping to clear his brain.

"Let me think," he said.

If they sent somebody over with his car, it would be someone who should be out on the street, or someone who was going off-duty, and thus should not be doing a white shirt a favor.

On the other hand, he was reluctant to drive his personal car over to Bustleton and Bowler for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it might get "accidentally" bumped by a Highway Patrolman who believed Peter Wohl to be the devil reincarnate.

Peter Wohl's personal automobile was a twenty-three-year-old Jaguar XK-120 drophead roadster. He had spent four years and more money than he liked to think about rebuilding it from the frame up.

And even if I did drive it over there, he finally decided, when the day is over I will be back on square one, since I obviously cannot drive both the Jag and the Department's Ford back here at the same time.

"Let me call you if I need a ride, Lieutenant," Wohl said. "If you don't hear from me, just forget it."

"Yes, sir. I'll be here."

Wohl hung up the official telephone and picked up the one he paid for and dialed a number from memory.

"Hello."

"Peter Wohl, Matt. Did I wake you?"

"No, sir. I had to get out of bed to take a shower."

"You sound pretty chipper this morning, Officer Payne."

"We celibates always sleep, sir, with a clear conscience and wake up chipper."

Wohl chuckled, and then asked, "Have you had breakfast?"

"No, sir."

"I'll swap you a breakfast of your choice for a ride to work. The Ford broke last night. They fixed it and took it to Bustleton and Bowler."

"Thirty minutes?"

"Thank you, Matt. I hate to put you out."

"Youdid say, sir,you were buying breakfast?"

"Yes, I did."

"Thirty minutes, sir."

Officer Matthew M. Payne had just about finished dressing when Wohl called. Like Wohl, he was a bachelor. He lived in a very nice, if rather small, apartment on the top floor of a turn-of-the-century mansion on Rittenhouse Square. The lower floors of the building, owned by his father, now housed the Delaware Valley Cancer Society.

A tall, lithely muscled twenty-two-year-old, Payne had graduated the previous June from the University of Pennsylvania and had almost immediately joined the Police Department. He was assigned as " administrative assistant" to Inspector Wohl, who commanded the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department. It was a plainclothes assignment.

He put the telephone back into its cradle and then walked to the fireplace, where he tied his necktie in the mirror over the mantel. He put his jacket on and then went back to the fireplace and took his Smith amp; Wesson "Undercover".38 Special five-shot revolver and its ankle holster from the mantelpiece and strapped it to his ankle.

Then he left the apartment, went down the narrow stairs to the fourth floor, and got on the elevator to the parking garage in the basement.

There he got into a new silver Porsche 911, his graduation present from his father, and drove out of the garage, waving at the Holmes Security Service rent-a-cop as he passed his glassed-in cubicle. For a long time the rent-a-cop, a retired Traffic Division corporal, was the only person in the building who knew that Payne was a policeman.

There had been a lot of guessing by the two dozen young women who worked for the Cancer Society about just who the good-looking young guy who lived in the attic apartment was. He had been reliably reported to be a- stockbroker, a lawyer, in the advertising business, and several other things. No one had suggested that he might be a cop; cops are not expected to dress like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers or to drive new silver Porsche 911s.

But then Officer Payne had shot to death one Warren K. Fletcher, thirty-one, of a Germantown address, whom the newspapers had taken to calling "the Northwest serial rapist" and his photograph, with Mayor Jerry Carlucci's arm around him, had been on the front pages of all the newspapers, and his secret was out.

He was not an overly egotistical young man, but it seemed to him that after the shooting, the looks of invitation in the eyes of the Cancer Society's maidens had seemed to intensify.

There were two or three of them he thought he would like to get to know, in the biblical sense, but he had painful proof when he was at the University of Pennsylvania that"hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" was more than a cleverly turned phrase. A woman scorned who worked where he lived, he had concluded, was too much of a risk to take.

Matt Payne drove to Peter Wohl's apartment via the Schuylkill Expressway, not recklessly, but well over the speed limit. He was aware that he was in little danger of being stopped (much less cited) for speeding. The Schuylkill Expressway was patrolled by officers of the Highway Patrol, all of whom were aware that Inspector Wohl's administrative assistant drove a silver Porsche 911.