The Victim (Badge of Honor 3)

"Just minutes before I came in here," Mawson said, "I was speaking with Commissioner Czernick on the telephone. I was speaking on behalf of one of our clients, a public-spirited citizeness who wishes to remain anonymous."

"The point?" Payne said, and now there was ice in his voice.

"The lady feels the entire thread of our society is threatened by the unsolved murder of Officer Whatsisname, the young Italian cop who was shot out by Temple. So she is providing, through me, anonymously, a reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the perpetrators. Commissioner Czernick seemed overwhelmed by her public-spirited generosity. I really think I'm in a position to ask him for a little favor in return."

"Well, that's splendid," H. Richard Detweiler said. "That would take an enormous burden from my shoulders."

"What do we do about the newspapers?" Grace Detweiler asked. "Have you any influence with them, Colonel?"

"Very little, I'm afraid."

"Arthur Nelson will do what he can, I'm sure, and that should take care of that," H. Richard Detweiler said.

"I don't trust Arthur J. Nelson," Grace said.

"Don't be absurd, Grace," H. Richard Detweiler said. "He seemed to understand the problem, and was obviously sympathetic."

"Brewster, will you please tell this horse's ass I'm married to that even if Nelson never printed the name Detweiler again in theLedger, there are three other newspapers in Philadelphia that will?"

"He implied that he would have a word with the others," H. Richard Detweiler said. "We take a lot of advertising in those newspapers. We' re entitled to a little consideration."

"Oh, Richard," Grace said, disgusted, "you can be such an ass! If Nelson has influence with the other newspapers, how is it that he couldn't keep them from printing every last sordid detail of his son's homosexual love life?"

Detweiler looked at Payne.

"I'm afraid Grace is right," Payne said.

"You can't talk to them? Mentioning idly in passing how much money Nesfoods spends with them every year?"

"I'd be wasting my breath," Payne said. "The only way to deal with the press is to stay away from it."

"You're a lot of help," Detweiler said. "I just can't believe there is nothing that can be done."

"Unfortunately thereis nothing that can be done. Except, of course, to reiterate, to stay away from the press. Say nothing."

"Just a moment, Brewster," Colonel Mawson said. "If I might say something?"

"Go ahead," Grace said.

"The way to counter bad publicity is with good publicity," Mawson said. "Don't you agree?"

"Get to the point," Grace Detweiler said.

He did.

TWENTY

Matt Payne was watching television determinedly. PBS was showing a British-made documentary of the plight of Australian aborigines in contemporary society, a subject in which he had little or no genuine interest. But if he did not watch television, he had reasoned, he would get drunk, which did not at the moment have the appeal it sometimes did, and which, moreover, he suspected was precisely the thing he should not do at the moment, under the circumstances.

He had disconnected his telephone. He did not want to talk to either his father, Officer Charles McFadden, Amanda Spencer, Captain Michael J. Sabara, or Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, all of whom had called and left messages that they would try again later.

All he wanted to do was sit there and watch the aborigines jumping around Boy Scout campfires in their loincloths and bitching, sounding like brown, fuzzy-haired Oxford dons, about the way they were treated.

His uniform was hanging from the fireplace mantelpiece. He had taken it from the plastic mothproof bag and hung it there so he could look at it. He had considered actually putting it on and examining himself in the mirror, and decided against that as unnecessary. He could imagine what he would look like in it as Officer Payne of the 12^th Police District.

If there was one thing that could be said about the uniform specified for officers of the Philadelphia Police Department, it did not have quite the class or the elan of the uniform prescribed for second lieutenants of the United States Marine Corps.