Badge of Honour 06 - The Murderers (34 page)

T
O:
SERGEANT ZACHARY HOBBS

F
ROM:
COMMANDING OFFICER, HOMICIDE UNIT

S
UBJECT:
INFORMANT’S TIP

“It was,” Matt said.

Milham looked at Matt intently for a moment, then suddenly stood up. He took his coat from the back of the chair he had been sitting on and shrugged into it.

“Come on, Payne,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Out,” Milham said, and gestured toward the door.

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you park?” Milham asked.

Matt pointed at the Porsche.

“Nice wheels,” Milham said. “Leave it, we’ll pick it up later.”

“Whatever you say,” Matt replied.

They got in Milham’s unmarked three-year-old Ford, left the parking lot, went south on Eighth Street, crossed Market and turned right on Walnut Street to South Broad, and then left.

“How much have you had to drink?” Milham asked.

“I had a couple.”

“More than a couple, to judge from the smell,” Milham said. “That wasn’t really smart, Payne.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I mean coming into Homicide shitfaced,” Milham said. “Lucky for you, Hobbs and Natali went out on a job—a stabbing, two Schwartzers fighting over a tootsie in the East Falls project—and Logan, who was on the desk, either didn’t smell you or didn’t want to. It could have gone the other way. If it had, Lowenstein would have heard first thing in the morning that you showed up drunk. I get the feeling he would love to tell that to the Mayor.”

“Oh, shit!” Matt said.

“I think you were lucky, so forget it. But don’t do it again.”

“Sorry,” Matt said.

“We’re going to a bar called Meagan’s,” Milham said, changing the subject somewhat, “where you are going to have either coffee or a Coke.”

Milham handed Matt a clipboard, then turned on the large, specially installed light mounted on the headliner. Matt saw that the clipboard held a pad of lined paper and a Xerox of a page from the telephone book. On closer examination, there were two Xerox pages. There was also a pencil-written list of what looked like bars.

“There are ninety-seven Foleys in the phone book,” Milham said. “We may have to check every one of them out. Just because there’s no Frank or Francis listed doesn’t mean there’s nobody at that address named Frank or Francis. In the morning, I’ll check driver’s licenses in Harrisburg, and see if they have a Frank or Francis matching one of these addresses. Right now, I’m working on a hunch.”

“What kind of a hunch?”

“A hunch hunch. There are eleven Foleys in the phone book in a six-block area in South Philly. There are twelve bars in that six-block area. A couple of them will probably still be open. One—Meagan’s—I know stays open late. We will ask, ‘Is this the place where Ol’ Frankie Foley drinks?’”

“What about this tip? Where did it come from? Is it any good?”

“We are probably on a wild-goose chase, but you never know until you know. As to where it came from, I don’t know. Not from someone inside Homicide. Who knows? Lowenstein thinks it’s worth checking out, that’s all that matters.”

The bartender, a heavyset man in his fifties, hoisted himself with visible reluctance from his stool by the cash register and walked to them, putting both hands on the bar and wordlessly asking for their order.

“Ortleib’s,” Milham ordered.

“I think I better have coffee,” Matt said.

“No coffee,” the bartender said.

“One more, and then I’ll drive you home,” Milham said.

“What the hell,” Matt said. “Why not?”

When the bartender served the beer, Milham laid a five-dollar bill on the bar.

“Where are we?” he asked the bartender.

“What do you mean, where are you? This place is called Meagan’s.”

“I mean where, where. What is this, Jackson Street?”

“Jackson and Mole streets.”

“Doesn’t Frank Foley live around here?”

“Frank who?”

“Frankie Foley. My cousin. I thought he lived right around here, on South Mole Street.”

“Short fat guy? Works for Strawbridge’s?”

“No. Ordinary-sized. Maybe a little bigger. And I thought he worked for Wanamaker’s.”

“Right. Yeah. He comes in here every once in a while.”

“He been in tonight?”

“Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Yeah, well, what the hell. Listen, if he does come in, tell him his cousin Marty, from Conshohocken, said hi, will you?”

“Yeah, if I see him, I’ll do that.”

“I’d be obliged.”

“You’re a long way from Conshohocken.”

“Went to a wake. Jack O’Neill. May he rest in peace.”

“Didn’t know him.”

“He retired from Budd Company.”

“Didn’t know him,” the bartender said, made change, and went back to his stool.

Milham looked at Matt and raised his beer glass.

“Good ol’ Jack,” he said.

“May he rest in peace,” Matt said.

“If he made you,” Matt said, “and was cute, he’s going to tell this guy somebody, a cop, was looking for him.”

“Good. If it is our Frankie, it will make him nervous. Unless he’s got a cousin from Conshohocken. Give me the clipboard.”

Milham switched on the light, consulted the Xerox pages of the telephone book, and drew a circle around the name “Foley, Mary” of 2320 South Eighteenth Street.

“Maybe he lives with his mother,” Milham said, handing the clipboard back to Matt. He switched off the overhead light and started the engine.

They visited three more bars. Two of them had coffee. None of their bartenders had ever heard of Frank, or Frankie, Foley.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” Milham said. “On one hand, you still smell like a brewery. On the other hand, so do I. You want to take a chance on going back to the Roundhouse with me, to see what everybody else has come up with?”

“Whatever you think is best,” Matt said, chagrined.

“What the hell, we have to get your car anyway,” Milham said. “Just try not to breathe on anybody.”

Hobbs offered his hand, and looked at Matt closely.

“We didn’t expect you for a couple of days,” he said.

“You weren’t here,” Milham replied for him, “when he came in. Your memo was in my box, so I took him with me.”

“You find this Foley guy?”

“I think we know where he lives, and that he works for Wanamaker’s.”

“The bartender at the Inferno says there was a guy named Foley in there that night,” Hobbs said. “That’s in your box, too.”

Milham nodded.

“Payne, Captain Quaire knows about your, uh, personal problem. You don’t have to come to work, is what I’m saying, until you feel up to it,” Hobbs said.

“I think I’d rather work than not,” Matt said. “But thank you.”

“You need anything, you let me know. Did Wally show you the memo?”

“Yes, he did.”

“OK. You work with Wally.”

Matt nodded.

“I think you’d better see Lieutenant Natali,” Hobbs said. “Let him know you’re here.” He gestured across the room. Matt saw Lieutenant Natali in a small office.

Jesus, I hope he’s got a cold or something, and can’t smell the booze
.

He had met Lieutenant Natali once before. The circumstances flooded his mind.

He had been escorting Miss Amanda Spencer to a prewedding dinner honoring Miss Daphne Soames Brown and Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, at the Union League Club.

No wonder Amanda said I hadn’t seen her at Martha Peebles’s party; she hadn’t wanted me to. I’m trouble, dangerous. If I were her, I wouldn’t have wanted to see me either
.

When he had pulled the Porsche onto the top floor of the Penn Center Parking Garage, there had been a body lying in a pool of blood, that of a second-rate gangster named Tony the Zee Dezito, who had been taken out with a shotgun blast in what was almost certainly a contract hit by party or parties unknown for reasons unknown.

Nearby was Miss Penelope Detweiler, a lifelong acquaintance, also lying in a pool of blood. Matt’s original conclusion that Penny, like him and Amanda en route to Daffy and Chad’s party, was an innocent bystander was soon corrected by the facts. She had been in the parking garage to meet Tony the Zee, with whom she was having an affair.

And almost certainly, I know now, to get something from him to stick in her arm, or sniff up her nose. It was that goddamn Dezito who gave Penny her habit
.

Narcotics had had a tail on Tony the Zee, and when Matt had gone to Homicide to give them a statement, a Narcotics sergeant, an asshole named Dolan, and another Narcotics asshole had been waiting for him there. They had taken him into the interview room, sat him down in the steel captain’s chair with the handcuffs, and as much as accused him of being involved with either Tony the Zee or Narcotics, or both. And then taken him to Narcotics, if not under arrest, then the next thing to it, to continue the interrogation and to search the Porsche.

Lieutenant Natali had been the tour lieutenant in Homicide that night, hadn’t liked what he had seen, and had called Peter Wohl. Wohl had come to Narcotics like the Cavalry to the rescue and gotten him out.

Natali had bent, if not regulations, then departmental protocol, and thus stuck his neck out, by calling Peter Wohl. He was therefore, by definition, a proven good guy.

Matt walked to the office and stood in the door until Natali looked up and waved him inside. He stood up and put out his hand.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon, Payne,” he said. “I, uh, heard what happened. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Matt said.

It was evident on Natali’s face that he, too, was recalling the circumstances of their first meeting.

“I thought I would rather work than sit around.”

That’s not true. I’m here because I got shitfaced and didn’t want to go to bed. I’m a goddamned hypocrite and a liar
.

“Yeah,” Natali said. “I understand.” He paused and then went on. “Payne, some of the people here are going to resent you being here.”

“I thought they would.”

“But they know—Captain Quaire passed the word—that you had nothing to do with it. So I don’t think it will be a problem. If there is one, you come to me with it.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll be working with Wally Milham. There’s a memo…”

“I saw it.”

“OK. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with Milham. And he’s a good Homicide detective. You can learn a lot from him. Homicide works differently. I don’t know how much experience you had at East Detectives…”

“Not much,” Matt said. “Most of it on recovered stolen vehicles.”

Natali smiled understandingly.

“I did a few of those myself, when I made detective,” he said. “We don’t get as many jobs here,” Natali went on. “And when one comes in, everybody goes to work on it. There’s an assigned detective, of course. Milham, in the case of the Inferno Lounge job. But everybody works on it.”

“I understand. Or I think I do.”

“You’ll catch on in a hurry,” Natali said. “If you have any problems, come see me.”

“Thank you, sir.”