“You wait in the car. I know what you’re thinking.”
Sergeant Payne had in fact been thinking, all the way from Rittenhouse Square, that there was something wonderfully erotic having Olivia sitting beside him, with nothing beneath her dress but Olivia, and that with just a little bit of luck he might get lucky when they got to her apartment and they went inside while she changed clothing.
“What am I going to do out here?” he asked.
“That’s up to you. You’re not coming in,” Detective Lassiter said, and got out of the car.
He watched her enter the apartment, shrugged, and then reached for the Philadelphia Bulletin, which had his picture on the front page, and which he had dropped onto the floor.
When he saw the picture, he smiled, remembering what Stan Colt had said when he got out of the car to pose for Eddie the photographer: “Look serious, but think of pussy!”
Then he started looking through the rest of the Bulletin. Ten minutes later, on page 4 of Section Three, “Living Today,” he saw a picture of an old geezer with an over-and-under crooked over his arm standing with a bunch of cops and with half a dozen patrol cars of various law enforcement agencies in the background.
Then he read the caption, and then looked very carefully at the picture again, at the handcuffed man in black coveralls on the ground.
“Jesus Christ!” he said aloud, and reached for his cellular.
“Police department,” a female voice with a thick southern accent announced.
“I’d like to speak to whoever’s handling the case of that Peeping Tom you bagged last night.”
“So would everybody else from New Orleans to Destin,” the woman replied.
“My name is Matthew Payne. I’m a sergeant in Homicide in Philadelphia…”
“Yeah, I bet you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“How do I know that?”
“Because I just told you. Now get me some supervisor on the phone, and right now.”
“You don’t have to bite my head off!”
A male voice with an equally heavy accent next came on the line.
“Can I help you?”
“With whom am I speaking. Please?”
“I’m Sergeant Kenny.”
“Sergeant, I’m Sergeant Payne. Philadelphia Homicide.”
“So Barbara-Anne said. How can I help you?”
“That Peeping Tom you bagged last night? Was there a knife involved? A great big knife?”
There was no response.
“Hello?” Matt asked after what seemed like a long time.
“What can I do for you?” a new southern-accented male voice inquired.
“Was I just talking to you?”
“No. You were talking to Sergeant Kenny. I’m the chief. How can I help you?”
“Chief, my name is Payne. I’m a Philadelphia Homicide sergeant.”
“So Sergeant Kenny said. What can we do for you, Sergeant?”
“This a long shot, Chief, but that Peeping Tom you bagged last night may be a man we’re looking for in connection with a homicide here.”
“You don’t say?”
“Can you tell me if there was a knife involved? Did your guy have a great big knife?”
“Sergeant, I don’t know for sure you’re who you say you are, and even if I did, I’m not sure if I could answer that question. This is an ongoing investigation, and there’s some things we don’t want to get out, you understand.”
Which means, of course, that he did have a knife, otherwise you would have said “no.”
“How about a camera? A digital camera? Could you tell me that?”
“What part of I’m-Not-Going-To-Answer-Any-Questions-About — This-Investigation don’t you understand, Sergeant?” the chief asked.
“Certainly, Chief, I understand. But if you don’t think it would interfere with your investigation, could you tell me if the window he was peeping through was that of a young woman? And was he just looking, or maybe trying to open the window?”
There was a long pause.
“No, I don’t think I’d better get into that,” the chief said, finally.
This sonofabitch isn’t going to tell me a goddamn thing!
“Chief, I’ll probably be in touch with you again,” Matt said, politely. “In the meantime, if you’ll give me your police teletype address, I’ll have the department confirm who I am.”
“That sounds like a good idea, Sergeant,” the chief said, and gave it to him.
“I’ll get that out as soon as I get to the Round… police headquarters,” Matt said. “And thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Chief. I can imagine how busy you are.”
“My pleasure,” the chief said, and hung up.
“You don’t look so happy, boss,” Captain Frank Hollaran said as Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin slipped beside him into the front seat of the car.
“Have you seen the Bulletin?” Coughlin asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Matty’s picture on the front page with Stan Colt?” Coughlin asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply. “I don’t like it, Frank. I understand why Matty’s showing that guy around, and from the perspective of Mariani and the mayor, it may be a great idea, but I don’t think it belongs in the newspapers.”
“I guess you haven’t seen the Ledger?” Hollaran asked.
“Same picture?”
“And worse,” Hollaran said, and indicated the newspaper on the seat between them. “The editorial page, Commissioner. ”
' ’Commissioner’? The editorial page? That sounds ominous, ” Coughlin said, as he flipped through the paper looking for the editorial page.
Ten seconds later, he said, “Oh, shit!”
And ten seconds after that, “Those bastards!”
NO WONDER MURDERERS REMAIN FREE
This newspaper received a publicity photo (below) of movie star Stan Colt and Homicide Sergeant M. M. Payne, getting out of a police car at the Mayor’s Reception for Colt at the Bellvue-Stratford last night. The press release went on to say that while Colt is in town raising money for West Catholic High School, his alma mater, Sergeant Payne is showing him how things really are in the Philadelphia police department.
The way things really are in the police department are that there are two open unsolved recent cases of brutal murder, and one can only guess how many “old” unsolved murders on the books.
One of the new open cases is that of a young woman who very probably was raped and murdered in her apartment while police officers chatted with her neighbors.
The second is that of a single mother of three who was murdered in a fast-food restaurant during a robbery. When the police finally responded to that call for help, the murderers killed the responding officer.
At last report the Philadelphia police department doesn’t have a clue as to the identity of the murderers.
Perhaps they would if Sergeant Payne were spending his time doing what the taxpayers hired him to do, investigate homicides, rather than spending it showing a movie star how things really are.
And it’s not only Sergeant Payne. Earlier yesterday, Payne was seen taking into Colt’s hotel an attractive young woman later identified as Detective Olivia Lassiter. Presumably, she was showing Colt how things really are in the Philadelphia police department.
And it’s not only the junior officers. At midnight, Inspector Peter Wohl, Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Division, who is supposed to be heading up the Mayor’s Task Force to solve the murders at the fast-food
