Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

as the Second District car he had sent with Louise Dutton.

He had to wait a moment before Two-Eleven called him.

“Two-Eleven to Isaac Twenty-Three.”

“What’s your location, Two-Eleven?”

“We just dropped the lady at Six Stockton Place.”

Where the hell is that? The only Stockton Place I can think of is a slum down by the river.

“Where?”

“Isaac Twenty-Three, that’s Apartment A, Six Stockton Place.”

“Two-Eleven, where does that come in?”

“It’s off Arch Street in the one-hundred block.”

“Okay. Two-Eleven, thank you,” he said, and put the microphone back in the glove box.

He was surprised. That was really a crummy address, not one where you would expect a classy blonde like Louise Dutton to live. Then he remembered that there had been conversion, renovation, whatever it was called, of the old buildings in that area.

When Lieutenant David Pekach came out of the medical examiner’s office, he found a white-cap Traffic Division officer standing next to the battered van, writing out a ticket.

“Is there some trouble, Officer?” Pekach asked, innocently.

The Traffic Division officer, who had intended to ticket the van only for a missing headlight, took a look at the legend on Pekach’s T-shirt, and with an effort, restrained himself from commenting.

What he would have liked to have done is kick the fucking hippie queer junkie’s ass from there to the river, and there drown the sonofabitch, and in the old days, when he’d first come on the job, he could have done just that. But things had changed, and he was coming up on his twenty years for retirement, and it wasn’t worth risking his pension, even if somebody walking around with something insulting to the police like that—Support Your Local Sheriff my ass, that wasn’t what it meant—printed on his sweatshirt and walking around on the streets really deserved to get his ass kicked.

Instead, he cited the vehicle for a number of additional offenses against the Motor Vehicle Code: cracked windshield, smooth tires, non-functioning turn indicators, and illegible license plate, which was all he could think of. He was disappointed when the fucking hippy had a valid driver’s license.

Half a block from the medical examiner’s office, Lieutenant Pekach put his copy of the citation between his teeth, ripped it in half, and then threw both halves out the van’s window.

****

When Wohl got to the Roundhouse, he parked in the space reserved for Chief Inspector Coughlin. Coughlin was very close to the Moffitt family; more than likely he would be at the Moffitt house for a while. As he walked into the building, he saw Hobbs’s car turn into the parking lot.

He was not surprised to find Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein in Homicide. Lowenstein was in the main room, sitting on a desk, a fresh, very large cigar in the corner of his mouth.

“Well, Inspector Wohl,” Lowenstein greeted him with mock cordiality, “I was hoping I’d run into you. How are you, Peter?”

“Good afternoon, Chief,” Wohl said.

“Do you think you could find a moment for me?” Lowenstein asked. “I’ve got a little something on my mind.”

“My time is your time, Chief,” Wohl said.

“Why don’t we just go in here a moment?” Lowenstein said, gesturing toward the door of an office on whose door was lettered captain HENRY C. QUAIRE COMMANDING OFFICER.

Chief Inspector Lowenstein opened the door without knocking. Captain Quaire, a stocky, balding man in his late forties, was sitting in his shirtsleeves at his desk, talking on the telephone. When he saw Lowenstein, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand.

“Henry, why don’t you get a cup of coffee or something?” Lowenstein suggested.

Captain Quaire, as he rose to his feet, said “I’ll call you right back” to the telephone and hung it up. When he passed Peter Wohl, he shook his head. Wohl wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of sympathy, or whether it meant that Quaire too was shocked, and pissed, by what he had done.

“Peter,” Lowenstein said, as he closed the door after Quaire, “it’s not that I don’t think that you are one of the brightest young officers in the department, a credit to the department and your father, but when I want your assistance, the way I would prefer to do that is to call Denny Coughlin and ask for it. Not have you shoved down my throat by the Polack.”