Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

“I think Dennis Coughlin is about as happy about you being a policeman as I am; that is to say he doesn’t like it one little bit. He’s concerned for your welfare. He doesn’t want to have to get on the telephone and tell your mother that you’ve been hurt, or worse. Theory One is that you are really going to go to Highway. Dennis hopes that you will hate it; realize the error of your decision, and resign. Theory Two; which will stand by itself, or may be a continuation of Theory One, is that if you persist in being a policeman, the best place for you to learn the profession is from its most skilled practitioners, the Highway Patrol generally, and under Inspector Wohl. I found it interesting that Wohl was given command of this new Special Operations Division. Even I know that he’s one of the brightest people in the Police Department, a real comer.”

“I met him the night of Uncle Dutch’s wake,” Matt said. “In a bar. When I told him that I was thinking of joining the Department, he told me I would think better of it in the morning; that it was the booze talking.”

“Theory Three,” Brewster Payne said, “or perhaps Two (a), is that Dennis has sent you to Wohl, with at least an indication on his part that he would be pleased if Wohl could ease you out of the Police Department with your ego intact.”

Matt considered that a moment, then exhaled audibly. “Well, I won’t know will I, until I get there?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Matt wolfed down his Taylor ham on toast, then started to put on his shoulder holster.

“They issue you that holster?” Brewster Payne asked.

“No, I bought it a week or so ago,” Matt said. “When I wear a belt holster under a jacket, it stands out like a sore thumb.”

“What about getting a smaller gun?”

“You can’t do that until you pass some sort of examination, qualify with it,” Matt said. “I wasn’t that far along in the Academy when I was—I suppose the word is ‘graduated.’”

“There’s something menacing about it,” Brewster Payne said.

“It’s also heavy,” Matt said. “I’m told that eventually you get used to it, and feel naked if you don’t have it.” He shrugged into the seersucker jacket. “Now,” he said, smiling. “No longer menacing.”

“Unseen, but still menacing,” his father responded, then changed the subject. “You said you were having headlight trouble with the bug?”

The bug, a Volkswagen, then a year old, had been Matt Payne’s sixteenth-birthday present, an award for making the Headmaster’s List at Episcopal Academy.

“I don’t know what the hell is the matter with it; there’s a short somewhere. More likely a break. Whenever I start out to fix it, it works fine. It only gives me trouble at night.”

“There is, I seem to recall, another car in the garage,” Brewster Payne said. “On which, presumably, both headlights function as they should.”

The other car was a silver, leather-upholstered Porsche 911T, brand new, presented to Matthew Payne on the occasion of his graduation, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Very tactfully phrased,” Matt said. “Said the ungrateful giftee.”

He had not driven the Porsche to Philadelphia, or hardly at all, since he had joined the Police Department.

His father read his mind: “You’re afraid, Matt, that it will…set you apart?”

“Oddly enough, I was thinking about the Porsche just now,” Matt said. “Hung for a sheep as a lion, so to speak.”

“I think you have that wrong; it’s sheep and lamb, not lion,” Brewster Payne replied, “but I take your point.”

“I am being—what was it you said?—being ‘set apart’ as it is,” Matt said. “Why not?”

“I really do understand, Matt.”

“If I am sexually assaulted by one or more sex-crazed females driven into a frenzy when they see me in that car…”

“What?” his father asked, chuckling.

“I’ll tell you how it was,” Matt said, and smiled, and went out of the kitchen, pausing for a moment to throw an affectionate arm around Brewster C. Payne.

Payne, sipping his coffee, went to the kitchen window and watched as Matt opened one of the four garage doors, then emerged a moment later behind the wheel of the Porsche.

He should not be a policeman, he thought. He should be in law school. Or doing almost anything else.

Matt Payne tooted “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits” on the Porsche’s horn, and then headed down the driveway.