W.E.B Griffin: Men In Blue

As Peter reached for the switch that would activate the microphone hidden in the light fixture, and permit him to hear what was being said, Captain Quaire came into the room. Peter took his hand away from the switch.

"What's going on?" Peter asked. "Is that Pierre St. Maury?"

"No," Quaire said. "His name is Kostmayer. But Porterfield thought he was, and brought him in."

"Porterfield is the other guy?"

Quaire nodded and grunted. "Narcotics. Good cop. He's high on the detective's list and wants to come over here when he gets promoted."

"So what's going on?"

"This guy was so upset that Porterfield thought he was Maury that Porterfield thinks he knows something about the Nelson job."

"Does he?" Wohl asked.

"We are about to find out," Quaire said, throwing the microphone switch. "He already gave us Mr. Pierre St. Maury's real name-Errol F. Watson-and address. I already sent people to see if they can pick him up at home."

Wohl watched the interrogation for fifteen minutes. Admiringly. Tony Harris and Porterfield worked well together, as if they had done so before. He wondered if they had. They pulled one little thing at a time from Kostmayer, sometimes sternly calling him by his last name, sometimes, kindly, calling him "Peter," one picking up the questioning when the other stopped.

It was slow. Kostmayer was reluctant to talk. It was obvious he was more afraid of other people than his own troubles with the law.

"What have you got on him?" Wohl asked.

"Couple of minor arrests," Quaire said. "He's a male prostitute. The usual stuff. Possession of controlled substances. Rolling people."

Kostmayer finally said something interesting.

"Well, I heardthis," he said, seemingly on the edge of tears. "I onlyheard it; I don't know if it'strue or not."

"We understand, Peter," Tony Harris said, kindly. "What did you hear?"

"Well, there was talk, and you know people just talk, that a certain two men who knew Pierre, and knew that he was, you know,friends, with Jerome Nelson, were going to get the key to the apartment-you know, the Nelson apartment-from him."

"Why were they going to do that, Peter?" Tony Harris asked.

"What certain two people, Kostmayer?" Detective Porterfield demanded.

"Well, they were, you know, going to take things," Kostmayer said.

"What were their names, Kostmayer?" Porterfield said, walking to him and lowering his face to his. "I'm losing my patience with you."

"I don't know their names," Kostmayer said.

He's lying,Peter Wohl thought, at the exact moment Porterfield put that thought in words: "Bullshit!"

Wohl looked at Quaire, who had his lower lip protruding thoughtfully.

Then Wohl looked at his watch.

"Hell, I have to get out of here," he said. "I'm due at Marshutz amp; Sons in fifteen minutes."

"You going to be a pallbearer? Is that why you're wearing your uniform?"

"Yeah. And Henry, I need a mourning strip for my badge. Where can I get one?"

"I've got one," Quaire said, taking Wohl's arm and leading him to. his office. There, he took a small piece of black elastic hatband material from an envelope and stretched it over Wohl's badge.

"I appreciate it, Henry. I'll get it back to you."

"Why don't you?" Quaire said. "Then the next time, God forbid, we need one, you'll know where to find one."

Wohl nodded.

"I'll let you know whatever else they find out, Peter," Quaire said.

"As soon as you get it, please. Even at Dutch's funeral."

"Sure," Quaire said.

Wohl shook Quaire's hand and left.

Brewster Cortland Payne II had had some difficulty persuading Amy, Foster, and B.C. to attend the funeral of Captain Richard C. Moffitt.

Amy had caved in more quickly, when her father told her that her mother felt the loss more than she was showing, and that while she wouldn't ask, would really appreciate having another female along.

Foster and B.C. were a little more difficult. When Brewster Payne raised the subject, he saw his sons were desperately searching for a reason not to go.

Finally, B.C. protested, truthfully, that he had "seen the man only once or twice in my life."

"He was your brother's uncle, Brew," Brewster Payne said, "and your mother's brother-in-law."

"You know," Foster said, thoughtfully, "the only time I ever think that Mother isn't my-what's the word?-natural mother is when something like this comes up."

"I'm sure she would accept that as a compliment," Brewster Payne said.

"Or that Matt isn't really my brother," Foster went on. "I presume you did try to talk him out of this becoming-a-policeman nonsense?"

"First things first," Brewster Payne said. "Matt is your brother, de facto and de jure, and I'm sure you won't say anything about something like that to him."

"Of course not," Foster said.

"I already told him," B.C. said, "that I thought he was nuts."

Out of the mouth of the babe,Brewster C. Payne thought. He said: "To answer your second question, no, I didn't really try to talk Matt out of becoming a policeman. For one thing, I learned of it after the fact, and for another, he's your mother's son, and as you have learned there are times when neither of them can be dissuaded from what they want to do. And, finally, son, I don't agree that it's nonsense. I told him, and I believe, that it can be a very valuable learning experience for him."

"Amy says that he was psychologically castrated when he failed the marine corps physical, and is becoming a policeman to prove his manhood," B.C. said.

"She talks to you like that? When I was a boy-"

"All the girls you knew were virgins who didn't even know what ' castrated' meant," Foster said, laughing. "But Amy has a point, and she's really concerned."

"I don't think I quite understand," Brewster Payne said.

"What if Matt can't make it as a policeman? He really doesn't know what he's letting himself in for. What if he fails? Double castration, so to speak."

"I have confidence that Matt can do anything he sets his mind to do," Brewster Payne said. "And I'm beginning to wonder if sending your sister to medical school was such a good idea. I'm afraid that we can expect henceforth that she will ascribe a Freudian motive to everything any one of us does, from entering a tennis tournament to getting married."

Patricia and Amelia Payne came down the wide staircase from the second floor. They were dressed almost identically, in simple black dresses, strings of pearls, black hats, and gloves.

Brewster Payne had what he thought a moment later was an unkind thought. He wondered how many men were lucky enough to have wives who were better looking than their daughters.

"Where's Matt?" Patricia Payne asked.

The two men shrugged.

Amelia Payne turned and shouted up the stairs.

"Matty, for God's sake, will you come?"

"Keep your goddamned pants on, Amy," Matt's voice replied.

"It is such a joy for a father to see what refined and well-mannered children he has raised," Brewster C. Payne II said.

Matt came down the stairs two at a time, a moment later, shrugging into a jacket; his tie, untied, hanging loosely around his neck. He looked, Brewster Payne thought, about eighteen years old. And he wondered if Matt really understood what he was getting into with the police, if he could indeed cope with it.

"Since there's so many of us," Patricia said, "I guess we had better go in the station wagon."

"I asked Newt to get the black car out," Brewster Payne said, meeting his wife's eyes. "And to drive us."

"Oh, Brew!" she said.

"I considered the station wagon," Brewster Payne said. "And finally decided the black car was the best solution to the problem."

"What problem?" Matt asked.