W.E.B Griffin: The Victim

Wohl exhaled audibly.

"One flaw in your analysis," he said finally. Washington looked at him curiously. "You said, 'He almost got away with it,' " Wohl went on. "He did get away with it. What the hell have we got, Jason? We don't know who the professional hit men are, and we're not likely to find out. And if we did find them, we don't have anything on them. The only witness we have is a socialite junkie whose testimony would be useless even if we got her on the stand. And we can't hang the Lanier murder on Rosselli, or Russell, or whatever he calls himself. So the bastard did get away with it. Goddamn, that makes me mad!"

"You win some and you lose some," Washington said, "that being my profound philosophical observation for the day."

"On top of which we look like the Keystone Kops in the newspapers and, for the cherry on top of the cake, have managed to antagonize H. Richard Detweiler, Esquire. Christ only knows what that's going to cost us down the pike.Damn!"

"What I was going to suggest, Peter," Washington said softly, " presuming you agreed with what I thought, is that I have a talk with Mickey O'Hara."

"About what?"

"Mickey doesn't like those guineas any more than I do. He could do one of those 'highly placed police official speaking on condition of anonymity' pieces."

"Saying what?"

"Saying the truth. That Tony the Zee was hit for reasons known only to the mob, and that What's-his-name the pimp, Lanier, didn't do it. That would at least embarrass Savarese."

Wohl sat for a long moment with his lips pursed, tapping the balls of his fingers together.

"No," he said finally. "There are other ways to embarrass Mr. Savarese."

"You want to tell me how?"

"You sure you want to know?"

Washington considered that a moment.

"Yeah, I want to know," he said. "Maybe I can help."

"So what you were telling me before," Martha said to Dave, interrupting herself to reach down on the bed and pull a sheet modestly over her, "is that although it's really not Inspector Wohl's fault, he looks very bad?"

"Goddamn shame. He's a hell of a cop. I really admire him."

"And those gangsters are just going to get away with shooting the other gangster?"

"That happens all the time," Pekach said. "It's not like in the movies." He tucked his shirt in his trousers and pulled up his zipper. "Even if we somehow found those two, they would have alibis. They'll never wind up in court, is what I mean."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Sometimes some things happen," Pekach said.

"Precious, what in the world are you talking about?"

"Nothing," he said. "What makes Wohl look bad is the shot cop. We don't have a damn thing on that. And that's bad. It makes the Department look incompetent, stupid, if we can't get people who murder cops in cold blood. And it makes Peter Wohl look bad, because the mayor gave him the job."

"I understand," she said. "And there's nothing that he can do?"

"There's nothing anybody can do that isn't already being done. Unless we can find somebody who saw something-"

"What about offering a reward? Don't you do that?"

"Rewards come from people who are injured," Dave explained. "I mean, somebody knocks off the manager of an A amp;P supermarket, A amp;P would offer a reward. The Department doesn't have money for something like that, and even if there was a reward, we'd look silly, wouldn't we, offering it? It would be the same thing as admitting that we can't do the job the taxpayers are paying us to do."

"Idon't think so," Martha said.

He finished dressing and examined himself in the mirror.

His pants are baggy in the seat, Martha thought. And that shirt doesn't fit the way it should. I wonder if that Italian tailor Evans has found on Chestnut Street could make him up something a little better? He has a marvelous physique, and it just doesn't show. Daddy always said that clothes make the man. I never really knew what he meant before.

Pekach walked to the bed and leaned down and kissed Martha gently on the lips.

"Gotta go, baby," he said.

"Would you like to ride out to New Hope and have dinner along the canal?" Martha asked. "You always like that. It would cheer you up. Or I could have Evans get some steaks?"

"Uh," Pekach said, "baby, Mike Sabara and I thought that we'd try to get Wohl to go out for a couple of drinks after work."

"I thought Captain Sabara wasn't much of a drinking man," Martha said, and then: "Oh, I see. Of course. Can you come over later?"

"I think I might be able to squeeze that into my busy schedule," Pekach said, and kissed her again.

When he left the bedroom, Martha got out of bed and went to the window and watched the driveway until she saw Pekach 's unmarked car go down it and through the gate.

She leaned against the window frame thoughtfully for a moment, then caught her reflection in the mirrors of her vanity table.

"Well," she said aloud, not sounding entirely displeased, "aren' tyou the naked hussy, Martha Peebles?"

And then walked back to the bed, sat down on it, fished out a leather-bound telephone book, and looked up a number.

Brewster Cortland Payne, Esquire, saw that one of the lights on one of the two telephones on his desk was flashing. He wondered how long it had been flashing. He had been in deep concentration, and lately that had meant that the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, visible from his windows on a high floor of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, could have tumbled into the Delaware without his noticing the splash.

It probably means that when I'm free, Irene has something she thinks I should hear, he thought. Otherwise, she would have made it ring. Well, I'm not free, but I'm curious.

As he reached for the telephone it rang.

"Yes, ma'am?" he asked cheerfully.

"Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler are here, Mr. Payne," his secretary of twenty-odd years, Mrs. Irene Craig, said.

Good God, both of them?

"Ask them to please come in," Payne said immediately. He quickly closed the manila folders on his desk and slid them into a drawer. He had no idea what the Detweilers wanted, but there was no chance whatever that they just happened to be in the neighborhood and had just popped in.

The door opened.

"Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler, Mr. Payne," Irene announced.

Detweiler's face was stiff. His smile was uneasy.

"Unexpected pleasure, Grace," Payne said, kissing her cheek as he offered his hand to Detweiler. "Come on in."

"May I get you some coffee?" Irene asked.

"I'd much rather have a drink, if that's possible," Detweiler said.

"The one thing you don't need is another drink," Grace Detweiler said.

"I could use a little nip myself," Payne lied smoothly. "I'll fix them, Irene. Grace, will you have something?"

"Nothing, thanks."

"We just came from the hospital," Detweiler announced.

"Sit down, Dick," Payne said. "You're obviously upset."

"Jesus H. Christ, am I upset!" Detweiler said. He went to the wall of windows looking down toward the Delaware River and leaned on one of the floor-to-wall panes with both hands.

Payne quickly made him a drink, walked to him, and handed it to him.

"Thank you," Detweiler said idly, and took a pull at the drink. He looked into Payne's face. "I'm not sure if I'm here because you're my friend or because you're my lawyer."

"They are not mutually exclusive," Payne said. "Now what seems to be the problem?"

"If five days ago anyone had asked me if I could think of anything worse than having my daughter turn up as a drug addict, I couldn't have imagined anything worse," Grace Detweiler said.

"Penny is not a drug addict," H. Richard Detweiler said.

"If you persist in that self-deception, Dick," Grace said angrily, "you will be compounding the problem, not trying to solve it."