“These officers will take you to the studio and then home, Miss Dutton,” Wohl said. “Please don’t go anywhere else until we’ve taken care of your interview with Homicide. Thank you very much for your cooperation.”
He offered his hand, and she took it.
The first thing Wohl thought was professional. Her hand was a little clammy, often a symptom of stress. Getting a cop to drive her had been a good idea, beyond hoping that it would make her think well of the police department. Then he thought that it was a very nice hand, indeed. Soft and smooth skinned.
There was little question what Dutch saw in her, he thought. But what did she see in him? This was a tough, well-educated young woman, not some secretary likely to be awed by a big, strong policeman.
A black Oldsmobile with red lights flashing from behind the grille pulled into the parking lot as Louise Dutton’s yellow convertible, following a blue-and-white, turned onto Roosevelt Boulevard.
Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein, a large, florid-faced, silver-haired man in his fifties, got out the passenger side and walked purposefully over to McGovern and Wohl.
“Goddamned shame,” he said. “Goddamned shame. They pick up the one that got away?”
“Not yet, sir,” McGovern said. “But we will.”
“Every male east of Broad Street with a zipper jacket and blond hair has been stopped for questioning,” Wohl said, dryly. Lowenstein looked at him, waiting for an explanation. “A Highway Patrol sergeant went on the J-Band and ordered every Highway vehicle to respond.”
Lowenstein shook his head. He agreed with Wohl that had been unnecessary, even unwise. But the Highway Patrol was the Highway Patrol, and when one of their own was involved in a police shooting, they could be expected to act that way. And, anyway, it was too late now, water under the dam, to change anything.
“I understand we got an eyewitness,” he said.
“I just sent her home,” Wohl said.
“They interviewed her here? Already?”
“No. I told her that someone would pick her up for the interview at her home in about an hour,” Wohl said.
Captain McGovern’s eyes grew wide. Wohl had overstepped his authority, and it was clear to him that he was about to get his ass eaten out by Chief Inspector Lowenstein.
But Chief Inspector Lowenstein didn’t even comment.
“Jank Jankowitz tried to reach you on the radio, Peter,” he said. “When he couldn’t, he got on the horn to me. The commissioner thinks it would be a good idea for you to go by the hospital. . . . Where did they take him?”
“I don’t know, Chief. I can find out,” Wohl replied.
Lowenstein nodded. “If you miss him there, he’s going by the Moffitt house. Meet him there.”
“Yes, sir,” Peter said.
THREE
Leonard Cohen, before he had become the news director of WCBL-TV, had been what he thought of as a bona fide journalist. That is, he had worked for newspapers before they were somewhat condescendingly referred to as “the print media.”
He privately thought that the trouble with most of the people he knew in “electronic journalism” was that few of them had started out working for a newspaper, and consequently were incapable of recognizing the iceberg tip of a genuine story, unless they happened to fall over it on their way to the mirror to touch up their makeup, and sometimes not then.
The phone wasn’t even back in its cradle after Louise Dutton had called to make sure they wouldn’t put the name of the cop who got himself shot on the air before the cops could inform his widow when he sensed there was more to what was going on than Louise Dutton had told him.
He was a little embarrassed that he hadn’t picked up on it while he had her on the telephone.
He went quickly to the engineering room.
“Are we in touch with the van at the Waikiki Diner?” he asked.
“I dunno,” the technician said. “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it don’t.”
“Find out, Goddamn it!”
Penny Bakersfield’s voice, clipped and metallic because of the shortwave radio’s modulation limitations, came clearly over the loudspeaker.