The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

By the time he had gone quickly down the stairs to the third-floor landing and pushed the button to summon the elevator, however, he had had second thoughts about the passkey.

For one thing, the very fact that he had it constituted at least two violations of the law. For one thing, it was stolen. For another, it could be construed to be a “burglar’s tool.” To actually use it would constitute breaking and entering.

He had come into possession of the key while he had been—for four very long weeks—a member of an around-the-clock surveillance detail in the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel. The Investigation Section of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department had been engaged in developing evidence that a Central Division captain and a Vice Squad lieutenant were accepting cash payments from the proprietress of a call girl ring in exchange for permitting her to conduct her business.

During the surveillance, his good friend, Detective Charles Thomas “Charley” McFadden, had arrived to relieve him, not only an hour and five minutes late but wearing a proud and happy smile.

“We won’t have to ask that asshole to let us in anywhere anymore,” Charley had announced, and handed him a freshly cut key. “We now have passkeys of our very own.”

The asshole to whom Detective McFadden referred was the assistant manager assigned by the Bellvue-Stratford management to deal with the police during their investigation, and who had made it clear that he would rather be dealing with lepers.

“Where did you get them?” Matt had asked.

“I lifted one off the maintenance guy’s key rings while he was taking a crap,” Charley announced triumphantly. “I had four copies made—”

“I thought it was illegal to duplicate a passkey,” Matt had interrupted.

“—and dropped the key just where the guy thought he must have dropped it,” Charley had gone on, his face suggesting that Matt’s concern for the legality of the situation was amusing but not worthy of a response. “One for me, one for you, one for Jesus, and one for Tony Harris.”

Matt had decided at that time that what Jesus thought of the purloined passkey was wholly irrelevant. He and Detective Jesus Martinez were not mutual admirers. Detective Martinez often made it clear that he regarded Detective Payne as a Main Line rich kid who was playing at being a cop, and whose promotion to detective, and assignment to Special Operations, had been political and not based on merit.

On his part, Detective Payne thought olive-skinned Detective Martinez—who was barely above departmental minimums for height and weight and had a penchant for gold jewelry and sharply tailored suits from Krass Brothers—was a mean little man who suffered from a monumental Napoleonic complex.

What Tony Harris thought of Charley’s boosting a passkey from a hotel maintenance man—and more important, how he reacted—would, Matt had realized, instantly decide the matter once and for all.

Tony Harris, de jure, just one of the four detectives assigned to the Investigations Section, was de facto far more than just the detective in charge of the surveillance by virtue of his eighteen years’ seniority. He had spent thirteen of those eighteen years as a homicide detective, and earned a department-wide reputation as being among the best of them.

He was consequently regarded with something approaching awe by Detectives Payne, McFadden, and Martinez, who had less than a year’s service as detectives.

Tony’s response when handed the key had surprised Detective Payne.

“Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look, McFadden,” he had said, dropping the key in his pocket.

And they had used the keys during the rest of the surveillance.

The difference, it occurred to Matt as he waited for the elevator, was that they had done so under cover of law. Believing in probable cause, a judge had issued a search warrant authorizing search and electronic surveillance of “appropriate areas within the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel.”

The search warrant had obviously expired when those being surveilled had been arrested and arraigned.

Matt was about to unlock his door, and leave the key inside his door, when the elevator appeared. He shrugged and got on, and it began its slow descent to the basement garage.

The turn-of-the-century brownstone mansion had been gutted several years before by Rittenhouse Properties, Inc., and converted into office space, now wholly occupied by the Delaware Valley Cancer Society. The idea of turning the garret into an apartment had been a last-minute idea of the principal stockholder of Rittenhouse Properties, Inc. He thought there might be, providing a suitable tenant—a widow living on a small pension, for example—could be found, a small additional amount of revenue from the apartment, and failing finding a suitable resident, that it would be useful—as much for parking space in the basement as for the apartment itself—to himself and his family.

At the time, it had never entered the mind of the principal stockholder of Rittenhouse Properties, Inc., Brewster Cortland Payne II, that his son would move into the apartment to comply with the requirement of the Ci

ty of Philadelphia that its police officers live within the city limits.

There were two cars in the parking spots closest to the elevator in the basement of the building set aside for the occupant of the garret apartment. A new Plymouth four-door sedan sat in one, and a silver Porsche 911 in the other. The Plymouth was an unmarked police car assigned to Detective Matthew M. Payne. The Porsche had been a present from his father and mother, on the occasion of his graduation—summa cum laude—from the University of Pennsylvania.

After a moment’s indecision, Matt unlocked the door of the Porsche and got behind the wheel. He was off-duty. He was going to the Bellvue-Stratford to see about Daffy’s missing friend—and afterward to have breakfast with his father—as a private citizen. The taxpayers should not be asked to pay for his gas and wear and tear on the car when he was off-duty. And besides, he liked to drive the Porsche.

Five minutes later, after inching through early-morning inner-city traffic, he pulled to the curb on South Broad Street in an area marked “Tow Away Zone.” He took from under the seat a cardboard sign on which was stamped the gold seal of the City of Philadelphia and the words “POLICE DEPARTMENT—Official Business” and placed it on the dash of the Porsche.

He entered the hotel, went directly to the house phones, and asked the operator to connect him with Miss Susan Reynolds.

There was no answer.

He put the telephone down and started to leave, then picked it up again.