Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

“I’m going home,” Washington said. “It’s been a long day.”

“Good night, Jason,” Wohl said. “Thanks.”

“For what, Peter?” Washington said, and walked out of his office.

Wohl felt a pang of resentment that Washington was going home. So long as Elizabeth J. Woodham, white female, aged thirty-three, of 300 East Mermaid Lane in Roxborough, was missing and presumed to have been abducted by a known sexual offender, it seemed logical that they should be doing something to find her, to get her back alive.

And then he realized that was unfair. If Jason Washington could think of anything else that could be done, he would be doing it.

There was nothing to be done, except wait to see what happened.

And then Wohl thought of something, and reached for the telephone book.

FOURTEEN

The apartment under the eaves of what was now the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building was an afterthought, conceived after most of the building had been renovated.

C. Kenneth Warble, A.I.A, the architect, had met with Brewster C. Payne II of Rittenhouse Properties over luncheon at the Union League on South Broad Street to bring him up to date on the project’s progress, and also to explain why a few little things—in particular the installation of an elevator—were going a little over budget.

Almost incidentally, C. Kenneth Warble had mentioned that he felt a little bad, vis-à-vis space utilization, about the “garret space,” which on his plans, he had appropriated to “storage.”

“I was there just before I came here, Brewster,” he said. “It’s a shame.”

“Why a shame?”

“You’ve heard the story about the man with thinning hair who said he had too much hair to shave, and too little to comb? It’s something like that. The garret space is really unsuitable for an apartment, a decent apartment—by which I mean expensive—and too nice for storage.”

“Why unsuitable?”

“Well, the ceilings are very low, with no way to raise them, for one thing; by the time I put a kitchen in there, and a bath, which it would obviously have to have, there wouldn’t be much room left. A small bedroom, and, I’ve been thinking, a rather nice, if long and narrow living room, with those nice dormer windows overlooking Rittenhouse Square, would be possible.”

“But you think it could be rented?”

“If you could find a short bachelor,” Warble said.

“That bad?” Brewster Payne chuckled.

“Not really. The ceilings are seven foot nine; three inches shorter than the Code now calls for. But we could get around that because it’s a historical renovation.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“Then, there’s the question of access,” Warble said, having just decided that if he was going to turn the garret into an apartment, it would be Brewster C. Payne’s wish, rather than his own recommendation. “I’d have to provide some means for the short bachelor to get from the third-floor landing, which is as high as the elevator goes, to the apartment, and I’d have to put in some more soundproofing around the elevator motors—which are in the garret, you see, taking up space.”

“How much are we talking about?” Payne repeated.

“The flooring up there is original,” Warble went on. “Heart pine, fifteen-eighteen-inch random planks. That would refinish nicely, and could be done with this new urethane varnish, which is really incredibly tough.”

“How much, Kenneth?” Payne had asked, mildly annoyed.

“For twelve, fifteen thousand, I could turn it into something really rather nice,” Warble said. “You think that would be the way to go?”

“How much could we rent it for?”

“You could probably get three-fifty, four hundred a month for it,” Warble said. “There are a lot of people who would be willing to pay for the privilege of being able to drop casually into conversation that they live on Rittenhouse Square.”

“I see a number of well-dressed short men walking around town,” Brewster C. Payne II said, after a moment. “Statistically, a number of them are bound to be bachelors. Go ahead, Kenneth.”

Rental of the apartment had been turned over to a realtor, with final approval of the tenant assumed by Mrs. Irene Craig. There had been a number of applicants, male and female, whom Irene Craig had rejected. The sensitivities of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society had to be considered, and while Irene Craig felt sure they were as broad-minded as anybody, she didn’t feel they would take kindly to sharing the building with gentlemen of exquisite grace, or with ladies who were rather vague about their place of employment and who she suspected were practitioners of the oldest profession.