Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

She had stormed furiously away. She first decided that he was arrogant enough to call her, even if her sarcasm had flown six feet over his head. She took what she later recognized was childish solace in the telephone arrangements at the studios. With all the kooks and nuts out there in TV Land, you just couldn’t call Channel 9 and get put through to Louise Dutton. But they might put a police captain through, and then what?

When she went back to the studio, she went to the head telephone operator and told her that for reasons she couldn’t go into, if a police captain named Moffitt called, she didn’t want to talk to him; tell him she was out.

The arrogant bastard would sooner or later get the message.

And there was no way he could call her at home. The studio wouldn’t tell him where she lived, and the number was unlisted.

Today, three hours before, the telephone had rung in her apartment, just as she had stepped into the shower.

She knew it wasn’t her father; he had called at ten, waking her up, asking her how it was going. Anybody else could wait. If they’d dropped the atomic bomb, she would have heard it go off.

The phone had not stopped ringing, and finally, torn between gross annoyance and a growing concern that some big story had developed, she walked, dripping water, to the telephone beside her bed.

“Hello?”

“Are you all right?”

There was genuine concern in Captain Dutch Moffitt’s voice, but she realized this only after she had snapped at him.

“Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

“People have been robbed, and worse, in there before,” he said.

“How did you get this number?” Louise demanded, and then thought of another question. “How did you know I was home?”

“I sent a car by,” he said. “They told me the yellow convertible was in the garage.”

She raised her eyes and saw the reflection of her starkers body in the mirror doors of her closet. She wondered what Captain Dutch Moffitt would think if he could see her.

She shook her head, and felt her face flush.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to see you,” he said.

“That’s absurd,” she said.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I can take off early at four. There’s a diner on Roosevelt Boulevard, at Harbison, called the Waikiki. Meet me there, say four-fifteen.”

“Impossible,” she said.

“Why impossible?”

“I have to work,” she said.

“No, you don’t. Don’t lie to me, Louise.”

“Oh, hell, Dutch!”

“Four-fifteen,” he said, and hung up.

And she had looked at her naked body in the mirror again and known that at four o’clock, she would be in the Waikiki Diner.

And here she was, looking into this married man’s eyes and suddenly aware that the last thing she wanted in the world was to get involved with him, in bed, or in any other way.

What the hell was I thinking of? I was absolutely out of my mind to come here!

“I’m a cop,” he said. “Finding out where you lived and getting your phone number wasn’t hard,”