Badge Of Honor: The Victim Part 43

Washington didn't wait for Matt to catch up with him. On the stair landing Matt looked down and saw Washington going down the stairs two at a time. He ran after him and caught up with him in the courtyard. By then Washington was in his car, and had taken the microphone from the glove compartment.

"W-William One, W-William Seven," Washington said.

"W-William One."

"Inspector, I'm at City Hall. Can I meet you somewhere?"

"I'm headed for Bustleton and Bowler. Did Payne find you?''

"Yeah. But I would rather talk to you before you get to the office."

"Okay. I'm at Broad and 66th Avenue at the Oak Lane Diner. I'll wait for you there."

"On my way. Thank you," Washington said, and put the microphone away. He looked at Payne. "You ever read Through the Looking Gla.s.s!"

Matt nodded.

"Profound book, although I understand he wrote it stoned on cocaine. Things really are more Curiouser than you would believe. If I lose you in traffic, Wohl's waiting for us in the Oak Lane Diner at Broad and 66th Avenue."

He pulled the door closed and started the engine.

Matt ran across the interior courtyard to the Porsche. There was an illegal parking citation under the windshield wiper.

He didn't see Washington in traffic, but when he got to the Oak Lane Diner, Washington's car was parked beside Wohl's. When he went inside, a waitress was delivering three cups of coffee to a booth table, on which Washington was spreading out the eight-by-ten photographs he had shown Sergeant Dolan.

Wohl looked up.

"Mr. Payne, well-known tracer of lost detectives," he said, "sit." He slid over to make room.

Washington was smiling.

"Okay, I give up," Wohl said. "What am I looking at?"

Matt looked at the photographs. A neatly dressed man carrying an attache case and looking in the window of the c.o.c.ktail lounge of the Warwick Hotel. A bald-headed man driving a Pontiac. The first man getting into the Pontiac. There were a dozen variations.

"Your FBI at work," Washington said.

"What?"

"They were apparently-what's the word they use, surveilling?-surveilling Mr. DeZego."

"Where'd these come from?"

"Sergeant Dolan."

"Why haven't we seen them before?"

"You're not going to believe this," Washington said.

"Try me."

"Sergeant Dolan does not like the FBI."

"So what? I'm not all that in love with them myself," Wohl said.

"So he decided to zing them," Washington said.

"What does that mean?"

"He wanted to make them squirm, to let them know that their surveillance was not as discreet as they like to think it is."

"You've lost me."

"He sent the FBI office pictures of themselves at work," Washington said. "In a plain brown envelope."

"Jesus Christ, that's childish!" Wohl said disgustedly.

"I would tend to agree," Washington said.

"Didn't he know Homicide would want to talk to these guys?" Wohl asked, and then, before there could be a reply, he thought of something else: "And the G.o.dd.a.m.n FBI! They must have known what went down. Why didn't they come forward?''

"Far be it from me to cast aspersions on our federal cousins," Washington said dryly, "but it has sometimes been alleged that the FBI doesn't like to waste its time dealing with the local authorities-unless, of course, they can steal the arrest and get their pictures in the newspapers."

"I'll be a son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Wohl said furiously.

"Can I say something to you as a friend, Inspector?" Washington asked.

"Sure," Wohl said. "I just can't believe this s.h.i.t! G.o.d d.a.m.n those arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! DeZego was murdered! a.s.sa.s.sinated! And the f.u.c.king FBI can't be bothered with it!"

"Peter, go by the book," Washington said.

"Meaning?"

"There is a departmental regulation that says any contact with federal agencies will be conducted through the Office of Extradepartmental Affairs. There's a captain in the Roundhouse-"

"Duffy," Wohl said. "Jack Duffy."

"Right. Go through Duffy."

Wohl looked at Washington for a long moment, his jaws working.

"When you're angry, Peter," Washington said, "you really give the word a whole new meaning. You get angry. And you stay angry."

A faint smile appeared on Wohl's face.

"You remember, huh, Jason?"

"I'm one of the few people who knows that it's not true you have never lost your temper," Washington said.

"Now Sherlock Holmes knows too," Wohl said, nodding at Matt Payne. "He tell you about the pimp?"

"No."

"What pimp?" Matt asked.

"That's right," Wohl said. "You don't know, either, do you?"

"No, sir."

Wohl related the whole sequence of events leading up to the death of Marvin Lanier.

"So what I think you should do, Jason," he concluded, "is get on the radio and get in touch with Tony Harris, and see what, if anything, they-he and D'Amata-have come up with. And then tell Tony I saw the mayor this morning, and he wants the Magnella shooting solved. I wish he'd get back on that."

"You saw the mayor? I saw your car at City Hall."

"Just a friendly little chat, to a.s.sure me of his absolute faith in me," Wohl said dryly.

"Yes, sir," Washington said. "You want me to take Payne with me? Or have you got something for him to do?''

Wohl gathered the photographs together, stacked them neatly, and put them back in the envelope. "Payne, you go out to Bustleton and Bowler, driving slowly and carefully, obeying all the speed limits. When you get there, telephone Captain John J. Duffy at the Roundhouse and tell him that I would be grateful for an appointment at his earliest convenience."

"Yes, sir."

"And then contact me and tell me when Captain Duffy will be able to see me."

"Where will you be, Inspector?"

"Around," Wohl said. "Around."

"Come on, Peter!" Washington said.

"You made your point, Jason. Leave it," Wohl said. He b.u.mped hips with Matt, signaling he wanted to get up, then picked up the envelope with the photographs. When Matt was standing in the aisle, Wohl dropped money on the table and started to walk away. Then he turned. "Good job, Jason, coming up with the photographs. Thank you."

"Just don't do something with them that will make me regret it," Washington said.

"I told you to leave it, Jason!" Wohl said, icily furious. Then he walked out of the Oak Lane Diner and got in his car. Neither Jason Washington nor Matt Payne was surprised to see him head back downtown rather than toward Bustleton and Bowler. The Philadelphia office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was downtown.

"Until a moment ago," Washington said, "there was an element of humor in this. Now it's not at all funny."

"So he tells the FBI what he thinks of them. So what?"

Washington looked at him, as if surprised that Matt could ask such a stupid question.

"I really don't understand," Matt said.

"The FBI doesn't like criticism," he explained. "Especially in a case like this, where it's justified. So instead of admitting they acted like horses' a.s.ses, they will come up with a good reason why they didn't happen to mention to us that they had men on DeZego. 'A continuing investigation' is one phrase they use; 'cla.s.sified national security matters' is another one. And they go to Commissioner Czernick and say, 'We thought we had an agreement that whenever one of your people wants something from us, he would go through Captain Duffy's Office of Extradepartmental Affairs. Your man Wohl was just in here making all kinds of wild accusations and behaving in a most unprofessional manner."'

"But they were wrong," Matt protested.

"We don't like to admit it, but we need the FBI, use it a lot. The NCIC is an FBI operation. They have the best forensic laboratories in the world. They sometimes tip us off to things. They pa.s.s out s.p.a.ces at the FBI Academy. You get an FBI expert to testify in court, the jury believes him if he announces the moon is made of green cheese. The bottom line is that we need them as much, maybe more, than they need us. For another example, the FBI was 'consulted' before we got the federal grant to set up Special Operations. If they had said-even suggested-that we wouldn't use the money wisely, we wouldn't have gotten it. So we try to maintain the best possible relationship with the FBI."

"And Wohl doesn't know that?"

"Wohl's angry. He has every right to be. He doesn't get that way very often, but when he does-"

"s.h.i.t," Matt said.

"Let's just hope he cools off a little before he storms through the door and tells the SAC what he thinks of him and the other a.s.sholes," Washington said.

"The what?"

"SAC, special agent in charge," Washington explained, translating. "There are also AACs, three of them, which stands for a.s.sistant agent in charge. But as p.i.s.sed as Peter is, he's going to see the head man, not one of the underlings."

He slid off the seat and stood up.

"If you hear anything, let me know, and vice versa," he said.

"If that G.o.dd.a.m.n Dolan hadn't gotten clever-"

"Don't be too hard on him," Washington said. "I think one of the reasons Peter Wohl is so angry is that he knows that if he had a chance to take pictures of a couple of FBI clowns on a surveillance, he would have mailed them to their office too. I've pulled their chain once or twice myself. There's something in their anointed-by-the-Almighty demeanor that brings that sort of thing out in most cops."

He smiled at Matt and then walked out of the diner. Matt got in the Porsche and turned right onto North Broad Street.

A minute or two later he glanced at the pa.s.senger seat and saw that he still had the two envelopes with duplicate sets of photographs Washington had given him in City Hall.

He felt sure that the order to "give one to Chief Lowenstein and the other to Chief Coughlin" Washington had given him was intended only to unnerve Sergeant Dolan.

Since the pictures were of two G.o.dd.a.m.n FBI agents, they really had no value at all.

A moment later he had a second thought: Or did they?

Two blocks farther up North Broad Street, in violation of the Motor Vehicle Code of the City of Philadelphia, Officer Matthew Payne dropped the Porsche 911 into second gear, pushed the accelerator to the floor, and made a U-turn, narrowly averting a collision with a United Parcel truck, whose driver shook his fist at him and made an obscene comment.

"May I help you, sir?" the receptionist in the FBI office asked.

"I'd like to see Mr. Davis, please," Peter Wohl said.

"May I ask in connection with what, sir?"

"I'd rather discuss that with Mr. Davis," Wohl said. "I'm Inspector Wohl of the Philadelphia Police."

"One moment, sir. I'll see if Special Agent Davis is free."

She pushed a b.u.t.ton on her state-of-the-art office telephone switching system, spoke softly into it, and then announced, "I'm sorry, sir, but Special Agent Davis is in conference. Can anyone else help you? Perhaps one of the a.s.sistant special agents in charge?"

"No, I don't think so. Were you speaking with Mr. Davis or his secretary?"