“This is Mr. Fengler,” Wells said, “of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester. Are we going to need all of them? Or just one or two?”
Kruger chuckled. “We probably won’t need any of them,” he said. “No offense, Mr. Fengler, but it’s not nearly as bad—a legal problem, anyway—as I was afraid it would be when you called.”
“My wife said she sounded very frightened on the telephone,” Wells challenged.
“There’s a reason for that,” Kruger said. “But I think you can relax. Why don’t we get out of the lobby? I got a suite for you.”
“So did Mr. Fengler,” Wells said. “I guess that means I have two. Let’s hope there’s whiskey in one of them.”
When they got to the suite, Stanford Fortner Wells III disappeared into the bathroom and emerged ten minutes later pink from a shower and wearing only a towel.
“I now feel a lot better,” he said, as he poured whiskey into a glass and added a very little water. “I offer the philosophical observation that not only did God not intend man to fly, but that whoever designed the crappers on airplanes should be forced to use them himself through all eternity.”
There were polite “the boss is always witty” chuckles, and then Wells turned to Richard Dye.
“Okay, Dick, what have you come up with?”
Dye took a small notebook from his pocket, and glanced at it.
“Miss Dutton ... or should I call her ‘Miss Wells’?”
“Her name is Dutton,” Wells said, matter-of-factly. “I already had a wife when I met Louise’s mother.”
Ward V. Fengler hoped that his surprise at that announcement didn’t register on his face.
&
nbsp; “Miss Dutton was interviewing a cop, a captain named Richard Moffitt, in a diner on Roosevelt Boulevard. Are you familiar with the diners in Philly, Mr. Wells?”
“Yeah.”
“This was a big one, with a bigger restaurant than a counter, if you follow me.” Wells nodded. “They were in the restaurant. The cop, who was the commanding officer of the Highway Patrol . . . you know about them?”
Wells thought that over and shook his head no.
“They patrol the highways, but there’s more. They’re sort of an elite force, and they use them in high-crime areas. They wear uniforms like they were still riding motorcycles. Some people call them ‘Carlucci’s Commandos.’ “
“Carlucci being the mayor?” Wells asked. Dye nodded. “I get the picture,” Wells said.
“Well, apparently what happened was that somebody tried to stick up the diner. The cop saw it, and tried to stop it, and there were two robbers, one of them a girl. She let fly at him with a .22 pistol, and hit him. He got his gun out and blew her away. From what I heard, he didn’t even know he was shot until he dropped dead.”
“I don’t understand that,” Wells said.
“According to my source—who is a police reporter named Mickey O’Hara—the bullet severed an artery, and he bled to death internally.”
“Right in front of my daughter?”
“Yes, sir, she was right there.”
“That’s awful,” Wells said.
“If I didn’t mention this, the guy who was doing the stickup got away in the confusion. They’re still looking for him.”
“Do they know who he is?”
Dye dropped his eyes to his notebook.
“The guy’s name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher, white male, twenty-four. The girl who shot the cop was a junkie—so is Gallagher, by the way—named Dorothy Ann Schmeltzer. High-class folks, both of them.”