Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

“The mob serves the best food in Philadelphia,” Peter said. “I thought everybody knew that.”

Barbara decided to let it drop.

“Well, everything on here looks good,” she said, with a determined smile.

Wohl looked at her, rather than at the menu. He knew what he was going to eat: First some cherrystone clams, and then veal Marsala.

She is a good-looking girl. She’s intelligent. She’s got a good job. She even tolerates me, which means she probably understands me. On a scale of one to ten, she’s an eight in bed. What I should do is marry her, and buy a house somewhere and start raising babies. But I don’t want to.

She asked him what he was going to have, and he told her, and she said that sounded fine, she would have the same thing.

“Let’s have a bottle of wine,” Peter said, and opened the wine list and selected an Italian wine whose name he remembered. He pointed out the label to Barbara and asked if that was all right with her. It was fine with her.

Maybe what she needs to turn me on is a little streak of bitchiness, a little streak of not-so-tolerant-and-under-standing.

He was nearly through the bottle of wine, and halfway through the veal Marsala, when he looked up and saw Vincenzo Savarese approaching the table.

Vincenzo Savarese was sixty-three years old. What was left of his hair was silver and combed straight back over his ears. His face bore marks of childhood acne. He was wearing a double-breasted brown pin-striped suit, and there was a diamond stickpin in his necktie. He was trailed by two almost identical women in black dresses, his wife and her sister.

Vincenzo Savarese’s photo was mounted, very near the top, on the wall chart of known organized crime members the Philadelphia Police Department maintained in the Organized Crime unit.

“I don’t mean to disturb your dinner, Inspector,” Vincenzo Savarese said. “Keep your seat.”

Wohl stood up, but said nothing.

“I just wanted to tell you we heard about what happened to Captain Moffitt, and we’re sorry,” Vincenzo Savarese said.

“My heart goes out to his mother,” one of the women said.

Wohl wasn’t absolutely sure whether it was Savarese’s wife, or his sister-in-law. Looking at the woman, he said, “Thank you.”

“I was on a retreat with Mrs. Moffitt, the mother,” the woman went on. “At Blessed Sacrament.”

Wohl nodded.

Savarese nodded, and took the woman’s arm and led them out of the dining room.

“Who was that?” Barbara Crowley asked.

“His name is Vincenzo Savarese,” Wohl said, evenly. “He owns this place.”

“I thought you said the mob owns it.”

“It does,” Wohl said.

“Then why? Why did he do that?”

“He probably meant it, in his own perverse way,” Wohl said. “He probably thought Dutch was a fellow man of honor. The mob is big on honor.”

“I saw that on TV,” Barbara said.

He looked at her.

“About Captain Moffitt. I wasn’t going to bring it up unless you did,” Barbara said. “But I suppose that’s what’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know anything was wrong,” Wohl said.

“Have it your way, Peter,” Barbara said.