The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

"And I think what we have there is the pot calling the kettle black," Chief Wohl said. "Denny was an inspector before he stopped turning off fire hydrants in the summer."

"Go to hell, Augie!"

"What's in the suitcase?" Larkin asked. "Drugs?"

"What else?" Coughlin said.

"I didn't know you handled drugs, Peter," Larkin said.

"Normally, I don't," Peter replied. "Drugs or dirty cops. Thank God. This was Commissioner Marshall's answer to the feds wanting to send their people out there masquerading as cops. He gave the job to me."

"Because you get along so well with we feds, right?" Larkin asked, chuckling.

"There's an exception to every rule, Charley," Coughlin said. " Just be grateful it's you."

"Are we going to play cards or what?" Chief Wohl asked.

****

Peter Wohl was surprised to find Detective Matthew M. Payne in the Special Investigations office at Special Operations

when he walked in at quarter past midnight. He said nothing, however.

Maybe Jack Malone called him in.

"How are we doing?" he asked.

"Well," Lieutenant Malone said tiredly, "Mr. Wheatley is not registered in any of Philadelphia's many hotels, motels, or flop houses," Malone said. "Nor did anybody in the aforementioned remember seeing anyone who looked like either of the two artists' representations of Mr. Wheatley."

The Philadelphia Police Department had an artist whose ability to make a sketch of an individual from a description was uncanny. The Secret Service had an artist who Mr. H. Charles Larkin announced was the best he had ever seen. In the interest of getting a picture of Mr. Wheatley out on the street as quickly as possible, the Department artist had made a sketch of Wheatley based on his neighbor's, Mr. Crowne's, description of him, while the Secret Service artist had drawn a sketch of Mr. Wheatley based on Mr. Wheatley's boss, Mr. H. Logan Hammersmith's, description of him.

There was only a very vague similarity between the two sketches. Rather than try to come up with a third sketch that would be a compromise, Wohl had ordered that both sketches be distributed.

"Too bad," Wohl said.

"The sonofabitch apparently doesn't have any friends," Malone said. "The neighbor, two houses down, lived there fifteen years, couldn't ever remember seeing him."

"He's got to be somewhere, Jack," Wohl said.

"I sent Tony Harris to Vice," Malone said. "They went to all the fag bars with the pictures."

"We don't know he's homosexual."

"I thought maybe he's a closet queen, who has an apartment somewhere," Malone said.

"Good thought, Jack, I didn't think about that."

'They struck out too," Malone said.

"And how's your batting record, Detective Payne?"

It was intended as a joke. Payne looked very uncomfortable.

"I just thought maybe I could make myself useful, so I came in," Payne said.

That's bullshit.

The telephone rang. Malone grabbed it and handed it to Wohl.