Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

The only thing that Louise could discover that her father had done wrong was, as a married man, impregnate a woman to whom he was not married. He had sown her seed in a forbidden field. But even then, he had done the decent thing. He had not abandoned his wife and children for the greener fields of a much younger woman, and he had not abandoned her. He could very easily have made “appropriate financial arrangements” and never shown his face.

She loved and admired her father, and if people didn’t understand that, fuck ‘em.

Louise found a place to park the yellow convertible, and then walked to the Waikiki Diner. There were no cars in the parking lot that looked like unmarked police cars, which meant that he had either come in his own car, or that he wasn’t here yet.

She pushed open the door to the Waikiki Diner and stepped inside. It was larger inside than it looked to be

from the outside. It was shaped like an L. The shorter leg, which was what she had seen from the street, held a counter, with padded seats on stools, and one row of banquettes against the wall. Beside the door, which was at the juncture of the legs, was the cashier’s glass counter and a bar with a couple of stools, but obviously primarily a service bar. The longer leg was also wider, and was a dining room. There were probably forty tables in there, Louise judged, plus banquettes against the walls.

He wasn’t in there.

She thought: Captain Richard C. “Dutch” Moffitt, commanding officer of the Philadelphia Police Department ‘s Highway Patrol, has not yet found time to grace the Waikiki Diner with his patronage.

“Help you, doll?” a waitress asked. She was slight, had orange hair, too much makeup, and was pushing sixty.

“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” Louise said.

“Why’ncha take a table?” the waitress asked, and led Louise into the dining room. Louise saw that one of the banquettes against the wall, in a position where she could see the door beside the cash register, was empty, and she slipped into it. The waitress went thirty feet farther before she realized that she wasn’t being followed.

Then she turned and, obviously miffed, laid an enormous menu in front of Louise.

“You want a cocktail or something while you’re waiting?” she asked.

“Coffee, please, black,” Louise said.

She didn’t want alcohol to cloud her reasoning any more than it was already clouded.

She looked around the dining room. It was arguably, she decided, the ugliest dining room she had ever been in. Fake Tiffany lamps, with enormous rotating fans hanging from them, in turn hung from plastic replicas of wooden ceiling beams. The banquettes were upholstered in diamond-embossed purple vinyl. The wall across the room was a really awful mural of lasses in flowing dresses and lads in what looked like diapers dancing around what was probably supposed to be the Parthenon.

The coffee was delivered in a thick china mug decorated with a pair of leaning palm trees and the legend, “Waikiki Diner Roosevelt Blvd. Phila Penna.”

Captain Richard C. “Dutch” Moffitt came in as Louise had removed, in shock and surprise, the scalding hot mug from her burned lips.

He had no sooner come through the door by the cashier than a small, slight man with a large mustache, wearing a tight, prominently pin-striped suit, came up to him and offered his hand, his smile revealing a lot of goldwork.

Dutch smiled back at him, revealing his own mouthful of large, white, even teeth. And then he saw Louise, and the smile brightened, and his eyebrows rose and he headed toward the table.

“Hello,” Dutch said to her, sliding into the chair facing her.

“Hi!” Louise said.

“This is our host,” Dutch said, nodding at the mustached man. “Teddy Galanapoulos.”

“A pleasure, I’m sure. Any friend of Captain Moffitt’s . . .”

“Hello,” Louise said. There was a slight Greek accent, and the gowned lasses and the lads in diapers dancing around the Parthenon were now explained.

“You’re beautiful,” Dutch said.

“Thank you,” Louise said, mortified when she felt her face flush. She stood up. “Will you excuse me, please?”

When she came back from the ladies’ room, where she had, furious with herself, checked her hair and her lipstick, Dutch had changed places. He was now sitting on the purple vinyl banquette seat. His left hand, which was enormous, was curled around a squat glass of whiskey. There was a wide gold wedding band on the proper finger.

He started to get up when he saw her.

It was the first time she had ever seen him in civilian clothing. He was wearing a blue blazer over a yellow knit shirt. The shirt was tight against his large chest, and there wasn’t, she thought, a lot of excess room in the shoulders of the blazer either.

“Keep your seat,” Louise said, “since you seem to like that one better.”