Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 38

"Looks fine, Mr. Amarazzo," Charley said. "Thank you."

" 'Mister Amarazzo'?" Big Tony replied. "You sore at me or what? We haven't been friends since G.o.d only knows how long?"

Charley, who could not think of a response, smiled at Big Tony's reflection in the mirror.

"And now we're gonna give you a shave that'll turn your chin into a baby's bottom," Big Tony said.

"Oh, I don't want a shave," Charley protested.

"You can't go to Saint Dominic's needing a shave," Big Tony said, as he pushed Charley back in the chair and draped his face in a hot towel, "and don't worry, it's on the house. My privilege."

Ninety seconds later, as Charley wondered how long (he had never had a barbershop shave before) Big Tony was going to keep the towels on his face, someone else came into the barbershop.

"You know who's in the chair, under the towels?" Charley heard Big Tony say. "Charley McFadden, that's who. You seen the Bulletin?"

"I seen it," an unfamiliar voice said. "I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned."

Charley had folded his hands over his stomach. He was startled when his right hand was picked up, and vigorously shaken by two hands.

"Good for you, Charley," the voice said. "I was just telling the wife, when we seen the paper, that if there was more cops like you, and more s.h.i.+ta.s.ses killed like the one you killed, Philly'd be a h.e.l.l of a lot better off. We're all proud of you, boy."

"I knew all along," Charley heard Big Tony say, "that Charley was a cop. I couldn't say anything, of course."

When Big Tony pulled the hot towel off, and started to lather Charley's face, there were three other men from the neighborhood standing behind the chair, waiting to shake his hand.

It was a pleasant spring morning, and the Payne family was having breakfast outside, on a flagstone patio. The whole family, for the first time in a long time, was all home at once. Foster J. Payne, twenty-five, who looked very much like his father, had come home from Cambridge, where he had just completed his second year at Harvard Law; and Amelia Alice "Amy" Payne, twenty-seven, who had three years before-the youngest in her Johns Hopkins cla.s.s-earned the right to append "M.D." after her name, had just completed her residency in psychiatry at the Louisiana State University Medical Center, and had come home to find a place for herself in Philadelphia. Brewster C. Payne III, eighteen, who had just graduated from Episcopal Academy, had commuted to school; but he was, after spending the summer in Europe (his graduation present), going to Dartmouth; and Patricia Payne was very aware that the nest would then be forever empty.

Amy was pet.i.te and intense, not a pretty girl, but an attractive, natural one. In judging his children intellectually (and of course, privately) Brewster Payne had rated his daughter first, then Matt, then Foster, and finally Brewster, who was known as "B.C." Just as privately, Patricia Payne had done the same thing, with the same result, except that she had rated B.C. ahead of Foster.

Amy was very smart, perhaps even brilliant. She had been astonis.h.i.+ngly precocious, and as astonis.h.i.+ngly determined from the time she had been a little girl. Patricia worried that it might cause her trouble when she married, until she learned to adapt to her husband, or perhaps to the more general principle that it is sometimes far wiser to keep your mouth shut than to persist in trying to correct someone else's erroneous notions.

Matt was bright. He had never had any trouble in school, and there had been at least a dozen letters from teachers and headmasters saying essentially the same thing, that if he applied himself, he could be an A student. He never applied himself (Patricia was convinced he had never done an hour's honest homework in his life) and he had never been an A student.

Foster was, but Foster had to work at it. By definition, Foster was the only student among the three of them. Amy rarely had to crack a book, Matt was never willing to, and Foster seldom had his nose out of one. B.C. had been a 3.5 average student at Episcopal without ever having brought a book home from school.

The patio was furnished with a long, wrought-iron, mottled-gla.s.s-topped table, with eight cus.h.i.+oned wrought-iron chairs. Two smaller matching tables sat against the fieldstone, slate-topped patio wall. Two electric frying pans had been set up on one of them, and it also held a bowl of eggs and a plate with bacon and Taylor ham. The other held an electric percolator, a pitcher of milk, a toaster, bread and m.u.f.fins, and a pitcher of orange juice.

Patricia Payne had decided, when the kids were growing up, that the solution to everybody's sauntering down to breakfast in their own good time was, rather than shouted entreaties and threats up the kitchen stairwell, a cafeteria-style buffet. The kids came down when they wanted, and cooked their own eggs. In the old days, too, there had been two newspapers, which at least partially solved the question of who got what section when.

There was something bittersweet about today's breakfast, Patricia thought: fond memories of breakfasts past, pleasure that everyone was once again having breakfast together again, and a disquieting fear that today, or at least the next week or so, might be the very last time it would happen.

"That's absolute bulls.h.i.+t!" Matthew Payne said, furiously.

Everybody looked at him. He was on the right side of the far end of the table, bent over a folded copy of the Ledger.

"Matt!" Patricia Payne said.

"Did you see this?" Matt asked, rhetorically.

"Actually, no," Brewster Payne said, dryly. "When I came down, all that was left of the paper was the real estate ads."

"Tell us what the G.o.dd.a.m.n liberals have done this time, Matty," Amy said.

"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 bulls.h.i.+t," Matt said. "It's . . . vicious. I saw that cop. He was d.a.m.ned 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't say 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual lover?" Amy asked. "His Negro h.o.m.os.e.xual 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.

SEVENTEEN.

Jason Was.h.i.+ngton was waiting for them at the medical examiner's office. His expressive face showed both surprise and, Peter Wohl thought, just a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt when he saw that Wohl was in uniform.

"Good morning, Miss Dutton," Was.h.i.+ngton 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," Was.h.i.+ngton said. "But it's not working yet."

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

They chuckled. Was.h.i.+ngton 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," Was.h.i.+ngton 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 circ.u.mstances."

"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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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?" Was.h.i.+ngton 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 pa.s.sed 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 & 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 pa.s.sionate, 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.