The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

She rolled on her back again.

“You’re getting too old for this, Tony,” she said. “It’s not good for you to have to get out of bed at half past three in the morning.”

“I think I have a couple of good years left,” he said.

He pulled down a couple of slats on the venetian blinds and looked out to the street.

A Highway Patrol sergeant, with his cartridge-studded Sam Browne belt and motorcycle boots, was leaning against the fender of an antenna-festooned car, waiting for him.

That was the siren I heard. They turned it—and the flashing lights—off when they got close. And as soon as we’re half a block away from the house, I’ll bet they turn them on again.

The truth of the matter is, I like this. I’d make a hell of a lot more money if I went into private practice, but divorce lawyers don’t often get to ride through town in the middle of the night in a Highway Patrol car with the siren screaming.

And knowing that the cops need me makes me feel like a man.

Or a boy playing at cops and robbers? Is Gertrude right? Am I getting too old for this?

I wonder what the hell this is all about?

There was not much going on at 3:40 A.M. in Central Lockup in the Roundhouse. It had been a relatively slow night (the moon was not full, for one thing) and the usual ten-thirty-to-one-A.M. busy period was over.

Sergeant Keyes J. Michaels, on the desk, had been reading the Philadelphia Daily News when he heard the solenoid that controlled the door from the corridor between the lobby of the Roundhouse and the Lockup room buzz.

What looked to Michaels like one more ambulance-chaser—a rumpled-looking, plump little man wearing eyeglasses and needing a shave—came through the door and walked toward Michaels’s desk.

Michaels wondered how come they had passed him into Lockup—the ambulance-chasers were ordinarily not allowed in Lockup—but really didn’t give much of a damn. It was almost four o’clock, and he was sleepy.

The ambulance-chaser stood patiently in front of Sergeant Michaels until Michaels raised his eyes to him.

“Can I do something for you, sir?”

“Who’s the supervisor on duty? I’d like to speak to him, please?”

The supervisor on duty, Lieutenant Mitchell Roberts, after making sure that nothing further required his attention, had retired to a small room in which there just happened to be a cot.

Michaels, who liked Roberts, was reluctant to have him woken up by an ambulance-chaser who almost certainly wanted special treatment for some scumbag.

“Can I help you, sir? The supervisor’s not here at the moment.”

“I’m afraid not, Sergeant. I need to speak to the supervisor on duty.”

“I just told you, sir, he’s not here at the moment.”

“Where is he?”

“Just wh

o the hell do you think you are?”

“My name is Weisbach,” the ambulance-chaser said. “Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach. Does that change anything, Sergeant?”

“Sorry, sir. The lieutenant has stepped out for a moment. I’ll let him know you’re here, sir?”

“Where is he? In that little room with the cot?”

“I’ll get him for you, sir.”

“Keep your seat, Sergeant,” Weisbach said. “I know where it is. I’ve crapped out there myself more than once.”