Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

“I heard that, sir.” And then, delicately, he added: “Commissioner, the witness, a woman, was with Dutch.”

There was a perceptible pause.

“So?” Commissioner Czernick asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Wohl said.

“That was the other phone, Peter. We just got notification from radio,” Commissioner Czernick said. “Who’s the woman?”

“I don’t know. She looks familiar. Young, blond, good-looking.”

“Goddamn!”

“I thought I had better call, sir.”

“You stay there, Peter,” the commissioner ordered. “I’ll call the mayor, and get out there as soon as I can. Do what you think has to be done about the woman.”

“Yes, sir,” Wohl said.

The commissioner hung up without saying anything else.

Wohl put the phone back in its cradle, and without thinking about it, ran his fingers in the coin return slot. He was surprised when his fingers touched coins. He took them out and looked at them, and then went to Louise Dutton.

“Are you all right?”

Louise shrugged.

“A real tragedy,” Wohl said. “He has three young children. “

“I know he was married,” Louise said, coldly.

“Would you mind telling me how you happened to be here with him?” Wohl asked.

“I’m with WCBL-TV,” she said.

“I knew your face was familiar,” Wohl said.

“He was going to tell me what he thinks about people calling the Highway Patrol ‘Carlucci’s Commandos,’” Louise said, carefully.

That’s bullshit, Wohl decided. There was something between them.

As if that was a cue, the Channel 9 cameraman appeared at the door. A policeman blocked his way.

“Christ, if she’s in there, why can’t I go in?” the cameraman protested.

Wohl stepped to the door, spotted McGovern, and raised his voice. “Jack, would you get up some barricades, please? And keep people out of our way?”

He saw from the look on McGovern’s face that the television cameraman had slipped around the policemen McGovern had already put in place.

“Get that guy out of there,” McGovern said, sharply, to a sergeant. “The TV guy.”

Wohl turned back to Louise.

“It would be very unpleasant for Mrs. Moffitt, or the children,” he said, “if they heard about this over the television, or the radio.”

Louise looked at him without real comprehension for a minute.

“I don’t know about Philadelphia,” she said. “But most places, there’s an unwritten rule that nothing, no names anyway, about something like this gets on the air until the next of kin are notified.”