The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

“Where are you working, Harris?” Wohl asked. There was a pause while Harris told him. Wohl thought a moment, then said, “Okay. Meet me at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard at noon. If you get there before I do, get us a booth.”

He hung up without waiting for a reply.

“Would you think me a racist if I told you I suspect all of these calls were from those of the Afro-American persuasion?” he asked.

“What did you expect?” Lomax replied. “Two kinds, though, I think. Some of these sleaze-balls have gone past the sixth grade.”

“Yeah, I sort of noticed that. A little affectation in the diction.”

“And not all of them are black, I don’t think.”

“No?”

“At least not on the first tape. There was a very sexy lady on tape one. ‘You know who this is,’ she said, in a very sultry voice indeed, ‘call me in the morning,’ or ‘after nine in the morning.’ Something like that.”

“Now you’re a racist. How do you know the sexy lady isn’t black?”

“I doubt it. This was a pure Bala Cynwyd, Rose Tree Hunt Club accent. She talked with her teeth clenched.”

Wohl chuckled. “I think one might reasonably presume that if one is young, good-looking, rich, and drives a Porsche, one might reasonably expect to get one’s wick dipped.”

“Even a Porsche with slashed tires?” Lomax quipped, and then started the tape again.

The fifth message next played was, “Darling, he’s gone out again, thank God, and I’m sitting here with a martini—and you know what they do to me—thinking of all the things I’d like to do to you. So if you get this before eight-thirty, call me, and we can at least talk. Otherwise, call me after nineish in the morning.”

Wohl could see the lady, teeth clenched, talking. He even had a good idea of what she looked like. Blond hair, long, parted in the middle and hanging to her shoulders. She was wearing a sweater and a pleated skirt. From Strawbridge & Clothier in Jenkintown.

“I wonder what she has in mind to do to Officer Payne?” Lomax asked, teeth clenched. “Something frightfully naughty, wouldn’t you say?”

“We gonna stick a .45 down your throat, motherfucker, and blow your fucking brains out your ass!”

“On the whole, I think I prefer the lady’s offer,” Wohl said.

“Yeah,” Lomax said.

“Her voice,” Wohl thought aloud, “sounds vaguely familiar.”

“If he who has gone out again, thank God,” Lomax said, in a credible mimicry, “finds out, Payne is going to have a bullet in both legs.”

“We gonna cut your cock off and shove it down your throat, motherfucker!”

“I think that’s more or less what the lady has in mind,” Wohl said. “Except that she wants to bite it off and shove it down her own throat.”

“Peter, you’re a dirty old man.”

“Shut it off, I’ve heard enough,” Wohl said. “I’m on my way to ‘counsel’ Detective Harris. I shouldn’t have a mind full of lewd images.”

“I don’t think you missed anything. I’ll play the whole thing to be sure. But that’s about what the first one had on it.”

“Why do you think they’re doing this, Warren?”

“I don’t know,” Lomax said thoughtfully. “Just to be a pain in the ass, maybe. Or they get their jollies talking nasty to a cop.”

“Wouldn’t that get dull after a while? How many times can you say ‘fuck you’?”

“I had the feeling too, that it’s organized. Some of them sound like they’re reading it.”

“That brings us back to why?”