W.E.B Griffin - Men In Blue

And Lieutenant Louis Natali had called:

"Inspector, this is Lou Natali. Jason Washington said he called and left a message on your machine about an hour ago. It's now quarter to seven. Anyway, it's now official. Captain Quaire requests that you get in touch with Miss Dutton, and bring her by the M.E.'s to identify Gallagher as the guy she saw in the diner. You better warn her he's in pieces. The wheels cut his head off, intact, I mean. I'll try to have them cover the rest of him with a sheet, but it's pretty rough. And would you call me, please, when you get this? Thank you."

And Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein had called:

"Peter, what the hell is going on? I need that woman to identify Gallagher. Nobody seems to know where you are, so I called the TV station. I was going to very politely ask her if I could take her to the M.E.'s myself, and they tell me they don't know where she is, only that she left there with you. Jesus, it's half past eight, and I've got to get over to Marshutz amp; Sons for the damned wake."

That message ended abruptly. Peter was quite sure that Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein had glanced at his watch toward the end, seen the time, thought out loud, and then slammed the phone down.

The machine reached the end of the recorded messages and started to rewind.

"What was that all about?" Louise asked.

"Well, apparently an undercover cop spotted-"

"Who was she?" Louise interrupted.

It took him a moment to frame his reply.

"Three days ago, I would have said she was my girl friend," he said.

"Nice girl?"

"Very nice," he said. "Her name is Barbara Crowley, and she's a psychiatric nurse."

"That must come in handy," Louise said.

"Everybody who knows us, except one, thinks that Barbara and I make a lovely couple and should get married," Peter said.

"Who's the dissenter? Her father?"

"Me," Peter said. "She's a nice girl, but I don't love her."

"As of when?"

"As of always," Peter said. "I never felt that way about her."

"What way is that?"

"The way I feel about you," Peter said.

"I suppose it has occurred to you that about the only thing we have going for us is that we screw good?"

"That's a good starting place," Peter said. "We can build on that."

She met his eyes for a long moment, then said: "I'm not going to go look at a headless corpse tonight."

"Okay," he said. "But you will have to eventually."

"What if I just refuse?"

"You don't want to do that," Peter said.

"What if I do?"

"They'll get a court order. If you refuse the order, they'll hold you in contempt, put you in the House of Correction until you change your mind. You wouldn't like it in the House of Correction. They're really not your kind of people."

She just looked at him.

"I'll call Jason Washington and tell him to meet us at the medical examiner's tomorrow morning. Say, eight o'clock," Peter said.

"I've got to work in the morning," she said.

"We'll go there before you go to work," Peter said, and then added: " I thought you told me you went to work at two o'clock?"

"I usually do," she said. "But tomorrow, I've got to cover a funeral."

"You didn't tell me that," he said.

"It's my story," she said. "I was there when it started, remember?"

He nodded. They looked at each other without speaking for a moment.

"Why are you looking at me that way?" Louise asked. "What are you thinking?"

"That you are incredibly beautiful, and that I love you," Peter said.

"I know," she said. "I mean, that you love me. And I think that scares me more than going to go look at a headless body… or a bodyless head."

"Why does it scare you?"

"I'm afraid I'll wake up," she said. "Or, maybe, that I won't."

"I don't think I follow that," he said.

"I think we better get out of here," she said. "Before we wind up in the playroom again."

"Let me call Washington," Peter said.

"Call him from my apartment," she said. "What we're going to do is go there, whereupon I will pick up my car and go to work. You will go to my apartment."

"Is that what Iwill do?" he asked, smiling.

"Uh-huh," she said. "Where you will do the dishes, and dust, and then make yourself pretty for me when I come home tired from work."

"If you're going to be tired, you can do your own dishes."

"I won't be that tired, Peter, if that's what you're thinking, and I' m sure you are."

"I don't mind waiting around the studio for you," he said.

"But I do. I saw you looking at Sharon's boobs. And, although I know I shouldn't tell you this, I saw the way she was looking at you."

"That sounds jealous, I hope."

"Let's go, Peter," she said, and walked to the door.

Mickey O'Hara sat at the bar in the Holiday Inn at Fourth and Arch streets, sipping on his third John Jamison's.

It had happened to him often enough for him to recognize what was happening. He was doing something a reporter should not do any more than a doctor or a lawyer, letting the troubles of people he was dealing with professionally get to him personally. And it had happened to him often enough for him to know that he was dealing with it in exactly the worst possible way, with a double John Jamison's straight up and a beer on the side.

He had started out feeling sorry for the young undercover Narcotics cop, Charley McFadden. The McFadden kid had gone out to play the Lone Ranger, even to the faithful brown companion Hay-zus whateverthefuck his name was, at his side. He was going to bring the bad man to justice. Then he would kiss his horse and ride off into the sunset.

But it hadn't happened that way. He had not been able to get the bad man to repent and come quietly by shooting a pistol out of his hand with a silver bullet.

The bad man had first been fried and then chopped into pieces, and at that point he had stopped being a bad man and become another guy from Philadelphia, one of the kids down the block, another Charley McFadden. Gerald Vincent Gallagher had died with his eyes open, and when his head had finished rolling around between the tracks it had come to rest against a tie, looking upward. When Charley McFadden looked down at the tracks, Gerald Vincent Gallagher had looked right back at him.

There hadn't been much blood. The stainless steel wheels of subway cars get so hot that as they roll over throats and limbs, severing them neatly, they also cauterize them. What Charley McFadden saw was Gerald Vincent Gallagher's head, and parts of his arms and legs and his torso, as if they were parts of some enormous plastic doll somebody had pulled apart and then had thrown down between the tracks.

And then as Charley McFadden was shamed before God, his parish priests, and all the good priests at Bishop Newman High School, and his mother, of course, for violating the "thou shalt not kill" commandment, the cavalry came riding up, late as usual, and he was shamed before them.

Big strong tough 225-pound plainclothes Narc tossing his cookies like a fucking fourteen-year-old because he did what all the other cops would have loved to do, fry the fucking cop killer, and saving the city the expense of a trial in the process.

By the time he ordered his third double John Jamison's with a beer on the side, Mickey O'Hara had begun to consider the tragedy of the life of Gerald Vincent Gallagher, deceased. How did a nice Irish Catholic boy wind up a junkie, on the run after a bungled stickup? What abouthis poor, heartbroken, good, mass-every-morning mother? What had she done to deserve, or produce, a miserable shit like Gerald Vincent Gallagher?

Mickey O'Hara was deep in his fourth double John Jamison's with a beer on the side and even deeper into a philosophical exploration of the injustice of life and man's inhumanity to man when he sensed someone slipping onto the stool beside him at the bar, and turned to look, and found himself faced with Lieutenant Edward M. DelRaye of the Homicide Division of the Philadelphia Police Department.