Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 29

She looked at him in surprise.

"Right in front?" she asked. He nodded.

She started to say something, and then laughed. She had, Peter thought, absolutely perfect teeth.

"I was about to say, 'My G.o.d, the cops will tow your car away,' " she said. "But I guess not, huh?"

"There are fringe benefits in my line of work," he said. "Not many, but some."

"How do they know it's a cop car?"

"Most of the time, they can tell by the kind of car, or they see the radio," he replied. "Or you just have the ticket canceled. But if you have a car like mine, with the radio in the glove compartment, and you don't want it towed away, you put a little sign on the dash. Or sometimes on the seat."

"Can you get me a sign?"

"No."

"Fink," she said, and took his arm and led him out of the building through the lobby.

At Stockton Place, he parked the LTD behind the Jaguar and walked with her into the foyer of Number Six.

There was an eight-by-ten-inch white cardboard sign on the door of Apartment A. Red letters spelled out, police DEPARTMENT, CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. CRIME SCENE. DO NOT ENTER.

Louise looked at Peter but didn't say anything. But when the elevator door opened and he started to follow her in, she put up her hand to stop him.

"You wait down here," she said. "What I have on my mind now is dinner."

"That's all?"

"Dinner first," she said. "No. Car first, then dinner. Then who knows?"

"I'm easy to please," Peter said. "I'll settle for that."

He walked back out onto the street and to the Jaguar, and examined the hood where Tony Harris had sat on it.

Louise came down much sooner than he expected her to. She had removed all her makeup and changed into a sweater and pleated skirt.

"That was quick," he said.

"It was also a mistake," Louise said, and got behind the wheel of the Jaguar.

"What?"

"I'll tell you later," she said. Then she said, "Kind of low to the ground, isn't it?"

"I guess," Peter said.

"Well, first I need the keys," she said, and as he fished for them, added, "and then you can explain how that little stick works, and we'll be off."

"What little stick?"

"That one," she said, pointing to the gears.h.i.+ft, "with all the numbers on it.''

"You do know how to drive a car with a clutch and gears.h.i.+ft?"

"Actually, no," she said. "But I'm willing to learn."

"Oh, G.o.d!"

"Just teasing, Peter," Louise said. "You really love this car, don't you?"

"You're the first person to ever drive it since I rebuilt it," he said.

"I'm flattered," she said. "Want to race to your house?"

"No," he said, smiling and shaking his head.

"Chicken." She started the engine, put it in gear, and made a U-turn.

He quickly got in the LTD and followed her, which proved difficult. She drove fast and skillfully, and the Jaguar was more nimble in traffic than the LTD.

On Lancaster Avenue, just before it was time to turn off, she put her arm up and vigorously signaled for him to pa.s.s her, to lead her. She smiled at him as he did so, and his heart jumped.

At the apartment, as he was taking his uniform from the backseat to carry it upstairs, she came to him, and put her arms around him from the back.

"How would you feel about an indecent proposal?" she asked.

"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," he said.

"What I was thinking was that you would put the uniform back in your car, and go upstairs and pack a few little things in a bag for tomorrow," Louise said.

He freed himself and turned to look at her.

"When I was in my place, alone . . ." Louise said. "Remember what I said about a mistake? I was frightened. I don't want to be alone there, tonight."

"You could stay here," he said.

"I thought about that," she said. "But I have to do the eleven o'clock news, which means I would have to come all the way out here again. Please, Peter." Then she smiled, and offered, "I'll blow in your ear."

"Sure, why not?" Peter said. Sure, why not? Jesus, the most beautiful girl you have ever known asks you to spend the night and you say "Sure, why not?"

"It won't take me a minute," he said. "You want to come up?"

"No," she said. "You're obviously the kind of man who would take advantage of an innocent girl like me."

He went in the apartment, put underwear and a white uniform s.h.i.+rt, his uniform cap, and his toilet things in a bag. Then, as an afterthought, he added his good bathrobe (a gift from his mother, which he seldom wore) and bottle of cologne in with it.

When he went back downstairs, she was behind the wheel of the Jaguar.

"The idea was to leave this car here," he said.

"We'll come back before we go downtown," she said. "What I want to do is go out in the country with the wind blowing my hair and eat in some romantic country inn."

"Where are you going to find one of those?"

"How about a Burger King?" she said. "Get in, Peter."

He got in beside her, and she drove off, spinning the wheels as she made a sweeping turn.

She headed out of town, driving, he decided, too fast.

"Take it easy," he said.

"If you don't complain about my driving," she said, "I won't say anything about you looking hungrily at my knees."

He felt his face color.

"My G.o.d!" he said.

She pulled her skirt farther up her legs.

"Better?" she asked.

As Stanford F. Wells III crossed the marble-floored, high-ceilinged, tastefully furnished lobby of the Warwick Hotel toward the reception desk, two men rose from a couch and intercepted him.

"How are you, boss?" the older of them said. He was short and stocky, with a very full head of curly pepper-and-salt hair.

"Who's minding the store, Kurt?" Wells asked, smiling, obviously pleased to see Kurt Kruger.

"Well, since I was here, I thought I'd wait and say h.e.l.lo and then go home," Kurt Kruger said. "Stan, this is Richard Dye. He's on the Chronicle. He used to work for the Ledger here. I thought he could be helpful, and he was. He's one h.e.l.l of a leg man."

Wells gave the younger man his hand.

"This is Mr. Fengler," Wells said, "of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester. Are we going to need all of them? Or just one or two?"

Kruger chuckled. "We probably won't need any of them," he said. "No offense, Mr. Fengler, but it's not nearly as bad-a legal problem, anyway-as I was afraid it would be when you called."

"My wife said she sounded very frightened on the telephone," Wells challenged.

"There's a reason for that," Kruger said. "But I think you can relax. Why don't we get out of the lobby? I got a suite for you."

"So did Mr. Fengler," Wells said. "I guess that means I have two. Let's hope there's whiskey in one of them."

When they got to the suite, Stanford Fortner Wells III disappeared into the bathroom and emerged ten minutes later pink from a shower and wearing only a towel.

"I now feel a lot better," he said, as he poured whiskey into a gla.s.s and added a very little water. "I offer the philosophical observation that not only did G.o.d not intend man to fly, but that whoever designed the c.r.a.ppers on airplanes should be forced to use them himself through all eternity."

There were polite "the boss is always witty" chuckles, and then Wells turned to Richard Dye.

"Okay, d.i.c.k, what have you come up with?"

Dye took a small notebook from his pocket, and glanced at it.

"Miss Dutton ... or should I call her 'Miss Wells'?"

"Her name is Dutton," Wells said, matter-of-factly. "I already had a wife when I met Louise's mother."

Ward V. Fengler hoped that his surprise at that announcement didn't register on his face.

"Miss Dutton was interviewing a cop, a captain named Richard Moffitt, in a diner on Roosevelt Boulevard. Are you familiar with the diners in Philly, Mr. Wells?"

"Yeah."

"This was a big one, with a bigger restaurant than a counter, if you follow me." Wells nodded. "They were in the restaurant. The cop, who was the commanding officer of the Highway Patrol . . . you know about them?"

Wells thought that over and shook his head no.

"They patrol the highways, but there's more. They're sort of an elite force, and they use them in high-crime areas. They wear uniforms like they were still riding motorcycles. Some people call them 'Carlucci's Commandos.' "

"Carlucci being the mayor?" Wells asked. Dye nodded. "I get the picture," Wells said.

"Well, apparently what happened was that somebody tried to stick up the diner. The cop saw it, and tried to stop it, and there were two robbers, one of them a girl. She let fly at him with a .22 pistol, and hit him. He got his gun out and blew her away. From what I heard, he didn't even know he was shot until he dropped dead."

"I don't understand that," Wells said.

"According to my source-who is a police reporter named Mickey O'Hara-the bullet severed an artery, and he bled to death internally."

"Right in front of my daughter?"

"Yes, sir, she was right there."

"That's awful," Wells said.

"If I didn't mention this, the guy who was doing the stickup got away in the confusion. They're still looking for him."

"Do they know who he is?"

Dye dropped his eyes to his notebook.

"The guy's name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher, white male, twenty-four. The girl who shot the cop was a junkie-so is Gallagher, by the way-named Dorothy Ann Schmeltzer. High-cla.s.s folks, both of them."

"Go on," Wells said.

"Of course, every cop in Philadelphia was there in two minutes," Dye went on. "One of them was smart enough to figure out who Miss Dutton was-"

"Got a name?"