The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

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McFadden understood he was being dismissed.

“Yes, sir. Good night, Captain.” He faced Sabara and repeated, “Captain.”

Sabara nodded and smiled.

When McFadden had closed the door behind him, Sabara said, “There are three hundred young cops out there with five, six years on the job who would give their left nut to be in Highway, and that one says, ‘It’s all right, I guess.’”

“But your three hundred young cops never had the opportunity to work for me in Narcotics,” Pekach said.

“Oh, go to hell,” Sabara chuckled. “You’re no better than he is.”

“He wasn’t much help, was he?”

“No, he wasn’t. Did you think he would be?”

“Wohl said he thought we should find out what we could about Goldblatt’s. I was trying.”

“You really think Special Operations is going to wind up with that job?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Carlucci probably sees a story in the newspapers, ‘Mayor Carlucci announced this afternoon that the Special Operations Division arrested the Islamic Liberation Army—’”

“All eight of them,” Sabara interrupted. “That’s if there is an Islamic Liberation Army. And anyway, Highway could handle it without the bullshit.”

“That’s my line, Mike. Write this on your forehead: ‘Pekach is Highway, I’m Special Operations.’”

Sabara chuckled again. “What the hell is Wohl up to?”

“I guess he’s just trying to cover his ass,” Pekach replied. “In case he does—in other words, we do—get that job.”

Charley McFadden drove home, took a bottle of Schlitz from the refrigerator, carried it into the living room, sat on the couch, and dialed Matt Payne’s apartment. It rang twice.

“Matthew Payne profoundly regrets, knowing what devastating disappointment it will cause you, that he is not available for conversation at this time. If you would be so kind as to leave your number at the beep, he will know that you have called.”

“Shit!” Charley said, laughing, and hung up.

“Watch your mouth, Charley!” his mother called from the kitchen.

Charley hoisted himself out of the couch and went up the stairs, two at a time, to his bedroom. He took his pistol from its holster, put it in the sock drawer of his dresser, and took his snub-nosed Colt .38 Special and its holster out of the drawer. Then he took off his uniform. He rubbed the Sam Browne belt and its accoutrements with a polishing cloth, took a brush to his boots, and then arranged everything neatly in his closet, where, with the addition of a clean shirt, it would be ready for tomorrow.

Then he dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt that had WILDWOOD BY THE SEA and a representation of a fish jumping out of the water painted on it. He slipped his feet into loafers and completed dressing by unpinning his badge from his leather jacket and pinning it to a leather badge and ID case and putting that in his left hip pocket, and by slipping the spring clip of the Colt holster inside his trousers just in front of his right hip.

He went down the stairs three at a time, grabbed a quilted nylon zipper jacket from a hook by the front door, and, quickly, so there would be no opportunity for challenge, called out, “I’m going down to Flo & Danny’s for a beer, Ma. And then out for supper.”

Flo & Danny’s Bar & Grill was on the corner. He slid onto a bar stool and Danny, without a word, drew a beer and set it before him.

“How they hanging, kid?”

“One lower than the other.”

Charley looked at his watch. It was quarter to six. He had to meet Margaret at the FOP at seven. It would take fifteen minutes to drive there. There was plenty of time.

Maybe too much. She doesn’t like it when I smell like a beer tap.

“Danny, give me an egg and a sausage,” he said.

Harry fished a purple pickled egg and a piece of pickled sausage from two glass jars beside the cash register and delivered them on a paper napkin. Charley took a bite of the egg, and walked to the telephone and put the rest of his egg in his mouth as he dropped a dime in the slot and dialed a number.