Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

He waited until she had driven out of the underground garage and then walked through the tunnel to the elevators. The call button for the elevator required a key to function, and he had to work his way through half a dozen before he found the right one. And then he had trouble getting into the apartment itself.

He felt strange, once he was inside and had snapped on the lights, and wasn’t sure if he was uncomfortable or excited. There was something very personal, very intimate, in being here alone. He took off his jacket and threw it on an overstuffed chair, and then changed his mind and hung it in a closet by the door. There were two fur coats in there, a long one, and one so short it was almost a cape.

That reminded him that his uniform and other things were still in the LTD, so he retraced his steps and carried them up. He carried everything into the bedroom. The bedroom smelled of Louise. There was a display of perfume bottles on her dressing table and he walked to them and squirted a bulb, and then it really smelled like her.

He found the bathroom, voided his bladder, and then took a good look around. The bathtub looked like a small black marble swimming pool. He wondered if it contained a Jacuzzi, and looked for controls, but found none.

What he needed, he decided, was a drink. He went back in the living room and opened doors and found her liquor supply. He carried a bottle of scotch into the kitchen and found ice cubes and made himself a drink. Then he said aloud, “You goddamned voyeur, Wohl,” and went back in the bedroom and opened the drawers of her dresser, one at a time. He found the array of underwear erotic; but a rather diligent—one might say professional—search of the premises failed to come up with a photograph or any other evidence, of any other male, young, old, handsome, ugly, or otherwise.

He was pleased. He went to make himself another drink, and then changed his mind. This was a momentous occasion; the most beautiful girl in the world, the love, finally, of his life, was going to welcome him into her bed, and the worst thing he could arrange would be for him to be shit-faced when she came home. No more booze.

Christ! Washington!

Five minutes later, he had relayed the information to Detective Jason Washington that he would have Miss Louise Dutton at the medical examiner’s office at eight o’clock the following morning.

Champagne! Why didn’t ‘t I think of that before? I’ll have a couple of bottles on ice when she walks in the door.

He put his coat back on and went out in search of champagne. He bought three bottles, instead of two, and two plastic bags of ice, and returned to the apartment. He couldn’t find a champagne bucket, so he put the champagne and the ice in the kitchen sink and covered it with a dishcloth. That raised the question of champagne glasses, and a further diligent search came up with some, which apparently had not been washed for years. He washed and rinsed two of them and then polished them with a paper towel.

He was ready. But she would not be here for an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes.

An idea, so ridiculous and absurd on its face that he laughed out loud, popped into his mind.

What the hell, why not?

He went into the bathroom and turned the taps on to fill the marble swimming pool. He saw a glass container with BUBBLE BATH printed on it. If half a cupful of detergent was the proper amount to use for a washerful of dirty clothes, that measure would probably work for a bubble bath. He poured what he estimated to be a half cupful into the tub.

Next, he looked for and found a razor. He examined it carefully. It was a ladies’ razor, with a gold-plated head, and a long, pink, curved handle. But the working part of it, the gold-plated device, seemed to be identical to a regular razor. He decided it would do.

He took the cover from the bed, folded it neatly, and then turned a corner of the sheet and blanket down, and finally returned to the bathroom. The swimming pool was now overflowing with bubbles. There were more bubbles than he would have imagined possible.

There was nothing to do about it now, obviously, so he slipped into the water. There were so many bubbles that he had to push them away from his mouth with his hand.

There’s room in here for both of us. I wonder how she would read to that suggestion?

There came the sound of a door opening against a lock chain.

Oh, Christ, she came home early! And I put the goddamned chain on the goddamned door!

He erupted from the swimming pool, called “Wait a minute, I’ll be right there!” and dried himself hastily. He grabbed his bathrobe from where he had left it on the bed, and ran through the apartment to the door.

“Sorry,” he said, as he pushed the door closed so that he could unfasten the chain lock. “I was taking a goddamned bath.”

He pulled the door open.

He found himself looking at a smallish, dapper, intense, middle-aged man.

“I’ll just bet,” Stanford Fortner Wells III said, “that your name is Peter Wohl.”

****

Louise Dutton let herself into her apartment, and then turned to fasten the dead-bolt lock and door chain.

“Peter, don’t tell me you’re asleep,” she called, and then walked into her living room, where she found her father and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl standing by the couches and coffee table. There were glasses; a bottle of scotch; a cheap glass bowl half-full of ice; and an open box of Ritz crackers on the table. They were both smoking cigars.

“Hello, baby,” her father said.

“Oh, God!” Louise said.