The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

THREE

Officer Matthew M. Payne had just about finished dressing when Wohl called. Like Wohl, he was a bachelor. He lived in a very nice, if rather small, apartment on the top floor of a turn-of-the-century mansion on Rittenhouse Square. The lower floors of the building, owned by his father, now housed the Delaware Valley Cancer Society.

A tall, lithely muscled twenty-two-year-old, Payne had graduated the previous June from the University of Pennsylvania and had almost immediately joined the Police Department. He was assigned as “administrative assistant” to Inspector Wohl, who commanded the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department. It was a plainclothes assignment.

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nbsp; He put the telephone back into its cradle and then walked to the fireplace, where he tied his necktie in the mirror over the mantel. He put his jacket on and then went back to the fireplace and took his Smith & Wesson “Undercover” .38 Special five-shot revolver and its ankle holster from the mantelpiece and strapped it to his ankle.

Then he left the apartment, went down the narrow stairs to the fourth floor, and got on the elevator to the parking garage in the basement.

There he got into a new silver Porsche 911, his graduation present from his father, and drove out of the garage, waving at the Holmes Security Service rent-a-cop as he passed his glassed-in cubicle. For a long time the rent-a-cop, a retired Traffic Division corporal, was the only person in the building who knew that Payne was a policeman.

There had been a lot of guessing by the two dozen young women who worked for the Cancer Society about just who the good-looking young guy who lived in the attic apartment was. He had been reliably reported to be a stockbroker, a lawyer, in the advertising business, and several other things. No one had suggested that he might be a cop; cops are not expected to dress like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers or to drive new silver Porsche 911s.

But then Officer Payne had shot to death one Warren K. Fletcher, thirty-one, of a Germantown address, whom the newspapers had taken to calling “the Northwest serial rapist” and his photograph, with Mayor Jerry Carlucci’s arm around him, had been on the front pages of all the newspapers, and his secret was out.

He was not an overly egotistical young man, but it seemed to him that after the shooting, the looks of invitation in the eyes of the Cancer Society’s maidens had seemed to intensify.

There were two or three of them he thought he would like to get to know, in the biblical sense, but he had painful proof when he was at the University of Pennsylvania that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” was more than a cleverly turned phrase. A woman scorned who worked where he lived, he had concluded, was too much of a risk to take.

Matt Payne drove to Peter Wohl’s apartment via the Schuylkill Expressway, not recklessly, but well over the speed limit. He was aware that he was in little danger of being stopped (much less cited) for speeding. The Schuylkill Expressway was patrolled by officers of the Highway Patrol, all of whom were aware that Inspector Wohl’s administrative assistant drove a silver Porsche 911.

Wohl was waiting for him when Payne arrived, leaning against one of the garage doors.

“Funny, you don’t look celibate,” Wohl said as he got in the car.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Let’s go somewhere nice, Matt. I know I’m buying, but the condemned man is entitled to a hearty meal.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Matt replied.

“Not you, me. Condemned, I mean. They want me in the commissioner’s office at ten. I’m sure what he wants to know is how the Magnella job is going.”

Officer Joseph Magnella, twenty-four, had been found lying in the gutter beside his 22nd District RPC (radio patrol car) with seven .22 bullets in his body. Mayor Carlucci had given the job to Special Operations. A massive effort, led by two of the best detectives in the department, to find the doers had so far come up with nothing.

“Nothing came up overnight?” Matt asked softly.

“Not a goddamned clue, to coin a phrase,” Wohl said bitterly. “I told them to call me if anything at all came up. Nobody called.”

Payne braked before turning onto Norwood Street.

“How about The Country Club?” he asked.

The Country Club was a diner with a reputation for good food on Cottman Avenue in the Northeast, along their route to Bustleton and Bowler.

“Fine,” Wohl said.

Wohl bought a copy of the Ledger from a vending machine as they walked into the restaurant, glanced at the headlines, and then flipped through it until he found what he was looking for.

“Somewhat self-righteously,” he said, handing the paper to Matt, “the Ledger comments editorially on the incompetence of the Police Department, vis-à-vis the murder of Officer Magnella.”

The waitress appeared and handed them menus.

“Breakfast steak, pink in the middle, two fried eggs, sunny side up, home fries, an English muffin, orange juice, milk, and coffee,” Payne ordered without looking at the menu.

“If you’re what you say you are, where do you get the appetite?” Wohl said, and added, “Toast and coffee, please.”