Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

And then he ran down the stairs and put a key to the padlock on one of the garage doors, and pulled them open. He went inside. There came the sound of a starter grinding, and then an engine caught.

A British racing green 1950 Jaguar XK-120 roadster emerged slowly and carefully from the garage. It looked new, rather than twenty-three years old. It had been a mess when Peter bought it, soon after he had been promoted to lieutenant. He’d since put a lot of money and a lot of time into it. Even his mother appreciated what he had done; it was now his “cute little sporty car” rather than “that disgraceful old junky rattletrap.”

He drove at considerably in excess of the speed limit down Lancaster Avenue to Belmont, and then to the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute. Barbara Crowley, R.N., a tall, lithe young woman of, he guessed, twenty-six, twenty-seven, who wore her blond hair in a pageboy, was waiting for him, and smiled when the open convertible pulled up to her.

But she was pissed, he knew, both that he was late, and that he was driving the Jaguar. She contained her annoyance because she was trying as hard as he was to find someone.

“We’re being sporty tonight, I see,” Barbara said as she got in the car.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I will prove that, if you give me a chance.”

“It’s all right,” she said.

Impulsively, and although he knew he wasn’t, in the turtleneck, dressed for it, he decided on the Ristorante Alfredo. He could count, he thought, on having some snotty Wop waiter, six months out of a Neapolitan slum, look haughtily down his nose at him.

It started going bad before he got that far.

An acne-faced punk in the parking garage gave him trouble about parking the Jaguar himself. It had taken him, literally, a year to find an unblemished, rust-free right front fender for the XK-120, and no sooner had he got it on, and had, finally, the whole car lacquered (20 coats) properly than a parking valet who looked like this one’s idiot uncle scraped it along a concrete block wall.

He had since parked his car himself.

The scene annoyed Barbara further, although he resolved it with money, to get it over with.

SEVEN

When she saw that Peter Wohl was leading her to Ristorante Alfredo, Barbara Crowley protested.

“Peter, it’s so expensive!”

She sounds like my mother, Peter thought.

“Well, I’ll just stiff my ex-wife on her alimony,” he said, as he opened the door to Ristorante Alfredo. “Tell her to have the kids get a job, too.”

Barbara, visibly, did not think that was funny. There was no ex-wife and no kids, but it was not the sort of thing Barbara thought you should joke about, particularly when there was someone who could hear and might not understand. She hadn’t thought it was funny the last time he’d made his little joke, and, to judge by her face, it had not improved with age.

The headwaiter was a tall, silver-haired man, who had heard.

“Have you a reservation, sir?” he asked.

“No, but it doesn’t look like you have many, either,”

Peter said, waving in the general direction of the half-empty dining room.

The headwaiter looked toward the bar, where a stout man in his early thirties sat at the bar. He was wearing an expensive suit, and his black hair was expensively cut and arranged, almost successfully, to conceal a rapidly receding hairline.

His name was Ricco Baltazari, and the restaurant and bar licenses had been issued in his name. It was actually owned by a man named Vincenzo Savarese, who; for tax purposes, and because it’s hard for a convicted felon to get a liquor license, had Baltazari stand in for him.

Ricco Baltazari had taken in the whole confrontation. There was nothing he would have liked better than to have the fucking cop thrown the fuck out—what a hell of a nerve, coming to a class joint like this with no tie—but instead, with barely visible moves of his massive head, he signaled that Wohl was to be given a table. It’s always better to back away from a confrontation with a fucking cop, and this

fucking cop was an inspector, and Mr. Savarese was in the back, having dinner with his wife and her sister, and it was better not to risk doing anything that would cause a disturbance.

Besides, he had seen in Gentlemen’s Quarterly where turtlenecks were making a comeback. It wasn’t like the fucking cop was wearing a fucking shirt and no necktie. A turtleneck was different.

“Spaghetti and meatballs?” Peter Wohl asked, when they had been shown to a table covered with crisp linen and an impressive array of crystal and silverware, and handed large menus. “Or maybe some lasagna? Or would you like me to slip the waiter a couple of bucks and have him sing ‘Santa Lucia’ while you make up your mind?”

Barbara didn’t think that was witty, either.

“I don’t know why you come to these places, if you really don’t like them.”