The Murderers (Badge of Honor 6)

“Maybe he lives with his mother,” Milham said, handing the clipboard back to Matt. He switched off the overhead light and started the engine.

They drove to South Eighteenth Street, and drove slowly by 2320. It was a typical row house, in the center of the block. There were no lights on.They visited three more bars. Two of them had coffee. None of their bartenders had ever heard of Frank, or Frankie, Foley.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” Milham said. “On one hand, you still smell like a brewery. On the other hand, so do I. You want to take a chance on going back to the Roundhouse with me, to see what everybody else has come up with?”

“Whatever you think is best,” Matt said, chagrined.

“What the hell, we have to get your car anyway,” Milham said. “Just try not to breathe on anybody.”

“Sergeant, this is Detective Payne,” Milham said. “Payne, this is Sergeant Zachary Hobbs.”Hobbs offered his hand, and looked at Matt closely.

“We didn’t expect you for a couple of days,” he said.

“You weren’t here,” Milham replied for him, “when he came in. Your memo was in my box, so I took him with me.”

“You find this Foley guy?”

“I think we know where he lives, and that he works for Wanamaker’s.”

“The bartender at the Inferno says there was a guy named Foley in there that night,” Hobbs said. “That’s in your box, too.”

Milham nodded.

“Payne, Captain Quaire knows about your, uh, personal problem. You don’t have to come to work, is what I’m saying, until you feel up to it,” Hobbs said.

“I think I’d rather work than not,” Matt said. “But thank you.”

“You need anything, you let me know. Did Wally show you the memo?”

“Yes, he did.”

“OK. You work with Wally.”

Matt nodded.

“I think you’d better see Lieutenant Natali,” Hobbs said. “Let him know you’re here.” He gestured across the room. Matt saw Lieutenant Natali in a small office.

Jesus, I hope he’s got a cold or something, and can’t smell the booze.

He had met Lieutenant Natali once before. The circumstances flooded his mind.

He had been escorting Miss Amanda Spencer to a prewedding dinner honoring Miss Daphne Soames Brown and Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, at the Union League Club.

No wonder Amanda said I hadn’t seen her at Martha Peebles’s party; she hadn’t wanted me to. I’m trouble, dangerous. If I were her, I wouldn’t have wanted to see me either.

When he had pulled the Porsche onto the top floor of the Penn Center Parking Garage, there had been a body lying in a pool of blood, that of a second-rate gangster named Tony the Zee Dezito, who had been taken out with a shotgun blast in what was almost certainly a contract hit by party or parties unknown for reasons unknown.

Nearby was Miss Penelope Detweiler

, a lifelong acquaintance, also lying in a pool of blood. Matt’s original conclusion that Penny, like him and Amanda en route to Daffy and Chad’s party, was an innocent bystander was soon corrected by the facts. She had been in the parking garage to meet Tony the Zee, with whom she was having an affair.

And almost certainly, I know now, to get something from him to stick in her arm, or sniff up her nose. It was that goddamn Dezito who gave Penny her habit.

Narcotics had had a tail on Tony the Zee, and when Matt had gone to Homicide to give them a statement, a Narcotics sergeant, an asshole named Dolan, and another Narcotics asshole had been waiting for him there. They had taken him into the interview room, sat him down in the steel captain’s chair with the handcuffs, and as much as accused him of being involved with either Tony the Zee or Narcotics, or both. And then taken him to Narcotics, if not under arrest, then the next thing to it, to continue the interrogation and to search the Porsche.

Lieutenant Natali had been the tour lieutenant in Homicide that night, hadn’t liked what he had seen, and had called Peter Wohl. Wohl had come to Narcotics like the Cavalry to the rescue and gotten him out.

Natali had bent, if not regulations, then departmental protocol, and thus stuck his neck out, by calling Peter Wohl. He was therefore, by definition, a proven good guy.