W.E.B Griffin: Men In Blue

"You watch your language, too,Doctor," Patricia Payne said.

Matt got up and walked down the table to Brewster Payne and laid the editorial page on the table before him. He pointed.

" 'No Room In Philadelphia For Vigilante Justice'," Matt quoted. " Just read that garbage!"

Brewster Payne read the editorial, then pushed the paper to his wife.

"Maybe they know something you don't, Matt," he said.

"I met that cop yesterday," Matt said.

"You met him?" Amy said.

"Denny Coughlin took me to meet him," Matt said. "First he took me to the medical examiner's and showed me the body, and then he took me to South Philadelphia to meet the cop."

"Why did he do that?" Amy asked.

"He shares your opinion,Doctor, that I shouldn't join the police," Matt said. "He was trying to scare me off."

"I suppose even a policeman can spot obvious insanity when he sees it," Amy said.

"Amy!" Patricia Payne said.

Foster Payne got up and stood behind Patricia Payne and read the editorial.

"Whoever wrote this," he said, "is one careful step the safe side of libel," he said.

"It's bullshit," Matt said. "It's… vicious. I saw that cop. He was damned near in shock. He was so shook up he didn't even know who Denny Coughlin was. He's a nice, simple Irish Catholic guy who could no more throw somebody in front of an elevated train than Mom could."

"But it doesn't say that, Matthew," Foster Payne explained patiently. "It doesn'tsay he pushed that man onto the tracks. What it says is that that allegation has been raised, and that having been raised, the city has a clear duty to investigate. Historically, police have overreacted when one of their own has been harmed."

Matthew glared at him; said, with infinite disgust, "Oh, Jesus!" and then looked at Brewster Payne. "Now that Harvard Law has been heard from, Dad, what do you say?"

"I don't really know enough about what really happened to make a judgment," Brewster Payne said. "But I think it reasonable to suggest that Arthur J. Nelson, having lost his son the way he did, is not very happy with the police."

"Daddy, you saw where the police are looking for the Nelson boy's homosexual lover?" Amy asked. "HisNegro homosexual lover?"

"Oh, no!" Patricia Payne said. "How awful!"

"No, I didn't," Brewster Payne said. "But if that's true, that would lend a little weight to my argument, wouldn't it?"

"You're not suggesting, Brew, that Mr. Nelson would allow something like that to be published; something untrue, as Matt says it is, simply to… get back at the police."

"Welcome to the real world, Mother," Amy said.

Jason Washington was waiting for them at the medical examiner's office. His expressive face showed both surprise and, Peter Wohl thought, just a touch of amusement when he saw that Wohl was in uniform.

"Good morning, Miss Dutton," Washington said. "I'm sorry to have to put you through this."

"It's all right," Louise said.

"They're installing a closed-circuit television system, to make this sort of identification a little easier on people," Washington said. " But it's not working yet."

"I can come back in a month," Louise said.

They chuckled. Washington smiled at Wohl.

"And may I say, Inspector, how spiffy you look today?" he said.

"I'm going to be a pallbearer," Wohl said.

"Can we get on with this?" Louise asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Washington said. "Miss Dutton, I'm going to take you inside, and show you some remains. I will then ask you if you have ever seen that individual, and if so, where, when, and the circumstances."

"All right," Louise said.

"You want me to come with you?" Peter asked.

"Only if you want to," Louise said.

Louise stepped back involuntarily when Jason Washington lifted the sheet covering the remains of Gerald Vincent Gallagher, but she did not faint, nor did she become nauseous. When Peter Wohl tried to steady her by putting his hands on her arms, she shook free impatiently.

"I don't know his name," she said, levelly. "But I have seen that man before. In the Waikiki Diner. He's the man who was holding the diner up when Captain Moffitt tried to stop him."

"There is no question in your mind?" Washington asked.

"For some reason, it stuck in my mind," Louise said, sarcastically, and then turned and walked quickly out of the room.

Wohl caught up with her.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You want a cup of coffee? Something else?"

"No, thank you," she said.

"You want to go get some breakfast?"

"No, thank you."

"You have to eat, Louise," Wohl said.

"He said, ever practical," she said, mockingly.

"You do," he said.

"All right, then," she said.

They went to a small restaurant crowded with office workers on the way to work. They were the subject of a good deal of curiosity. People recognized Louise, Wohl realized. They might not be able to recognize her as the TV lady, but they knew they had seen her someplace.

She ate French toast and bacon, but said very little.

"I have the feeling that I've done something wrong," Peter said.

"Don't be silly," she said.

As they walked back to his car, they passed a Traffic Division cop, who saluted Peter, who, not expecting it, returned it somewhat awkwardly. Then he noticed that the cop was wearing the mourning band over his badge. He had completely forgotten about that. The mourning bands were sliced from the elastic cloth around the bottom of old uniform caps. He didn't have an old uniform cap. He had no idea what had happened to either his old regular patrolman's cap, or the crushed-crown cap he had worn as a Highway Patrol sergeant. And there never had been cause to replace his senior officer's cap; he hadn't worn it twenty times.

He wondered if someone would have one at Marshutz amp; Sons, predicting that someone like him would show up without one. And if that didn't happen, what he would do about it.

He drove Louise back to Stockton Place and pulled to the curb before Number Six.

"What about later?" he asked.

"What about later?" she parroted.

"When am I going to see you?"

"I have to work, and then I have to see my father, and then I have to go back to work. I'll call you."

"Don't call me, I'll call you?"

"Don't press me, Peter," she said, and got out of the car. And then she walked around the front and to his window and motioned for him to lower it. She bent down and kissed him. It started as a quick kiss, but it quickly became intimate.

Not passionate, he thought, intimate.

"That may not have been smart," Louise said, looking into his eyes for a moment, and then walking quickly into the building, not looking back.

Intimate, Peter Wohl thought, and a little sad, as in a farewell kiss.

He looked at her closed door for a moment, and then made a U-turn on the cobblestones, and drove away.

He had headed, without thinking, for Marshutz amp; Sons, but changed his mind and instead drove to the Roundhouse. There might have been another development, something turned up around Jerome Nelson's car, maybe, or something else. If there was something concrete, maybe it would placate Arthur J. Nelson. His orders had been to stroke him, not antagonize him.

And somewhere in the Roundhouse he could probably find someone who could give him a mourning band; he didn't want to take the chance that he could get one at the funeral home.

He went directly to Homicide.

Captain Henry C. Quaire was sitting on one of the desks, talking on the telephone, and seemed to expect him; when he saw Wohl he pointed to one of the rooms adjacent to one of the interrogation rooms. Then he covered the phone with his hand and said, "Be right with you."

Wohl nodded and went into the room. Through the one-way mirror, he could see three people in the interrogation room. One was Detective Tony Harris. There was another man, a tall, rather aesthetic-looking black man in his twenties or thirties whom Wohl didn't recognize but who, to judge by the handcuffs hanging over his belt in the small of his back, was a detective. The third man was a very large, very black, visibly uncomfortable man handcuffed to the interrogation chair. He fit the description of Pierre St. Maury.