Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

“Who called?”

“Who else? Mother Moffitt. She called out here and asked for Mrs. Moffitt, and told me Dutch is dead, and then she said I would be welcome at the funeral.”

“I’m sorry, Patty,” Dennis V. Coughlin said. “I’m not surprised, but I’m sorry.”

She was trying not to cry and didn’t reply.

“Patty, people would understand if you didn’t go to the funeral,” he said.

“Of course, I’ll go to the funeral,” Patricia Payne said, furiously. “And the wake. Dutch didn’t think I’m a godless whore, and I don’t think Jeannie does either.”

“Nobody thinks that of you,” he said, comfortingly. “Come on, Patty!”

“That old bitch does, and she lets me know it whenever she has the chance,” she said.

Now Dennis V. Coughlin couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I’m sorry, Denny,” Patricia Payne said, contritely. “I shouldn’t have said that. The poor woman has just lost her second, her remaining son.”

Dennis V. Coughlin and John X. Moffitt had gone through the police academy together. Patricia Payne still had the photograph somewhere, of all those bright young men in their brand-new uniforms, intending to give it to Matt someday.

There was another photograph of John X. Moffitt around. It and his badge hung on a wall in the Roundhouse lobby. Under the photograph there was a now somewhat faded typewritten line that said “Sergeant John X. Moffitt, Killed in the Line of Duty, November 10, 1952.”

Staff Sergeant John Moffitt, USMCR, had survived Inchon and the Yalu and come home only to be shot down in a West Philadelphia gas station, answering a silent burglar alarm.

They’d buried him in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, following a high ma

ss of requiem celebrated by the cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia at Saint Dominic’s. Sergeant Dennis V. Coughlin had been one of the pallbearers. Three months later, John Xavier Moffitt’s first, and only, child had been born, a son, christened Matthew Mark after his father’s wishes, in Saint Dominic’s.

“Patty?” Chief Inspector Coughlin asked. “You all right, dear?”

“I was thinking,” she said, “of Johnny.”

“It’ll be on the TV at six,” Denny Coughlin said. “Worst luck, there was a Channel 9 woman in the Waikiki Diner.”

“Is that where it happened? A diner?”

“On Roosevelt Boulevard. He walked up on a stick-up. There was two of them. Dutch got one of them, the one that shot him, a woman. Patty, what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t like Matt to hear it over the TV. You say the word, and I’ll go up there and tell him for you.”

“You’re a good man, Denny,” Patricia said. “But no, I’ll tell him.”

“Whatever you say, dear.”

“But would you do something else for me? If you don’t want to, just say so.”

“You tell me,” he said.

“Meet me at Matt’s fraternity house—”

“And be with you, sure,” he interrupted.

“And go with me when I, when Matt and I, go see Jeannie.”

“Sure,” he said.

“I’ll leave right now,” she said. “It’ll take me twenty-five, thirty minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Chief Inspector Coughlin said.