Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

“Go on,” Wells said.

“Of course, every cop in Philadelphia was there in two minutes,” Dye went on. “One of them was smart enough to figure out who Miss Dutton was—”

“Got a name?”

“Wohl,” Dye said. “He’s a staff inspector. According to O’Hara he’s one of the brighter ones. He’s the youngest staff inspector; he just sent the city housing director to the slammer, him and a union big shot—”

Wells made a “go on” gesture with his hands, and then took underwear from a suitcase and pulled a T-shirt over his head.

“So Wohl treated her very well. He sent her home in a police car, and had another cop drive her car,” Dye went on. “Half, O’Hara said, because she’s on the tube, and half because he’s a nice guy. So she went to work, and did the news at six, and again at eleven, and then she went out and had a couple of drinks with the news director, a guy named Leonard Cohen, and a couple of other people. Then she went home. The door to the apartment on the ground floor—I was there, she had to walk past it to get to the elevator—was open, and she went in, and found Jerome Nelson in his bedroom. Party or parties unknown had hacked him up with a Chinese cleaver.”

“What’s a Chinese cleaver?” Wells asked.

“Looks like a regular cleaver, but it’s thinner, and sharper,” Dye explained.

Wells, in the act of buttoning a shirt, nodded.

“What was my daughter’s relationship with the murdered man?” Wells asked. “I mean, why did she walk into his apartment?”

“They were friends, I guess. He was a nice little guy. Funny.”

“There was nothing between them?”

“He was homosexual, Mr. Wells,” Dye said.

“I see,” Wells said.

“And, Stan,” Kurt Kruger said, evenly, “he’s—he was—Arthur Nelson’s son.”

“Poor Arthur,” Wells said. “He knew?”

“I don’t see how he couldn’t know,” Dye said.

“And I suppose that’s all over the front pages, too?”

“No,” Dye said. “Not so far. Professional courtesy, I suppose.”

“Interesting question, Kurt,” Wells said, thoughtfully. “What would we have done? Shown the same ‘professional courtesy’?”

“I don’t know,” Kruger said. “Was his ... sexual inclination . . . germane to the story?”

“Was it?”

“Nobody knows yet,” Kruger said. “Until it comes out, my inclination would be not to mention the homosexuality. If it comes out there is a connection, then I think I’d have to print it. One definition of news is that’s it’s anything people would be interested to hear.”

“Another, some cynics have said,” Wells said dryly, “is that news is what the publisher says it is. That’s one more argument against having only one newspaper in a town.”

“Would you print it, Stan?” Kruger asked.

“That’s what I have all those high-priced editors for,” Wells said. “To make painful decisions like that.” He paused. “I’d go with what you said, Kurt. If it’s just a sidebar, don’t use it. If it’s germane, I think you would have to.”

Kruger grunted.

“Go on, Dick,” Wells said to Richard Dye.

“Miss We— Miss Dutton—”

“Try ‘your daughter,’ Dick,” Wells said, adding, “if there’s some confusion in your mind.”