The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

Matt rode the curved elevator down to the lobby and left the building. As he walked up to his car, a scruffy-looking character got out of a beat-up car, took a good look, without smiling, at Matt, then walked toward the Roundhouse.

I know that face, Matt thought. From where?

He unlocked the unmarked car and got in.

I’ve seen that face somewhere, recently.

Like an hour ago!

Officer Timothy J. Calhoun’s photograph in his records was a mug shot of a freshly scrubbed, cleanly shaven, crew-cutted inmate of the Police Academy.

He looks like a bum, because undercover guys in Narcotics have to look like bums. When Captain Pekach was a lieutenant in Narcotics, he wore his hair in a pigtail.

I wonder what Calhoun’s doing at the Roundhouse at midnight?

Matt pulled the key from the ignition switch and got out of the car in time to see Officer Calhoun enter the Roundhouse.

He walked quickly after him, and had his identification folder in his hand when he entered the building.

He showed it to the corporal on duty.

“The guy who just came in here?” Matt asked.

The corporal jerked his thumb to Matt’s right, to the door leading to Central Lockup.

Matt went through the door. It led into sort of a corridor. To his left, on the other side of a glass wall, was the magistrate’s court. Here, after being transported to Central Lockup and being booked, prisoners were brought before the magistrate to determine if they could be freed on their own recognizance, on bail, or at all. To his right were several rows of chairs where the prisoner’s family, friends, or, for that matter, the general public could watch the magistrate in action.

At the end of the corridor was a locked door with a glass panel leading to the Central Lockup and the booking sergeant’s desk.

Matt went and looked through the panel.

A uniform came to the window and indicated with a jerked thumb that he would prefer that Matt go away. Matt showed him his detective’s identification, which visibly surprised the uniform, who then moved to open the door.

Matt shook his head, “no.”

The uniform shrugged and walked away.

Matt looked into the booking area. Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of the Narcotics Five Squad, now in the company of another scruffy-looking character, whom Matt recognized from the photograph on his records but could not put a name to, was watching the process by which two district uniforms were relieved of responsibility for four prisoners.

Two of the latter were black, and dressed in flashy clothing. The other two were white, and dressed in a manner that suggested to Matt that they had white-collar jobs of some sort; had been out on the town; had decided that acquiring and ingesting one controlled substance or another would add a little excitement to the evening; had been in the process of acquiring same from the black gentlemen, whereupon all four had been busted by members of the Five Squad.

There was nothing else to see.

Matt turned and walked back out of the corridor, then changed direction. He motioned for the corporal behind the plate glass to open the door to the lobby of the Roundhouse. Once inside, he availed himself of the facilities of the gentlemen’s rest room, and then finally left the building.

He got back in the unmarked car and backed it out of its parking slot.

As he drove out of the parking lot, Officer Timothy J. Calhoun and the other male Caucasian suspected of also being a police officer attached to the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit, walked toward him.

He didn’t have the headlights on, so there was no blinding light to interfere with Officer Calhoun’s view of the driver of the unmarked car. Confirmation that Officer Calhoun recognized him as the man who had been in the parking lot a few minutes earlier seemed to come when Matt glanced in his rearview mirror and saw that Officer Calhoun had stopped en route to his car, turned, and was looking curiously at Matt’s car.

On what is that curiosity based? Simply that he remembered seeing me before, and a policeman’s mind picks up on things like that? Or because his sensitivity to things like that has been increased because he’s a dirty cop?

He almost certainly made this thing as an unmarked car. So what is a young guy doing driving a new unmarked car? Is he going to put that together and decide it’s a Special Operations unmarked car? And come up with a suspicion that Special Operations is watching him?

That would be illogical. There are a hundred other reasons why somebody from Special Operations would be at the Roundhouse at this hour having nothing to do with the Five Squad.

But if I were a dirty cop, I would be a little paranoid.