speeding.
And the kids he was supervising now were pure too. Payne would never take money because he didn’t have to, he was rich, and Lewis was pure because he’d got that from his father. Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Jr., was so pure and such a straight arrow that they made jokes about it; said that he would turn himself in if he got a goober stuck in his throat and had to spit on the sidewalk.
Tony knew that what he was doing was right, and that it had to be done. He just wished somebody else was doing it.
He entered the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel by the side entrance on Walnut Street, into the cocktail lounge. He stood just inside the door long enough to check for a familiar face at the bar, and then, after walking through it, checked the lobby before walking quickly across to the bank of elevators. He told the operator to take him to twelve.
He tried the key he had to 1204, but it was latched-as it should have been-from inside, and he had to wait until Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., who was an enormous black kid, six three, two hundred twenty, two hundred thirty even, came to it and peered through the cracked door and then closed it to take the latch off and let him in.
When he opened the door, Lewis was walking quickly across the room to the window, a set of earphones on his head still connected by a long coiled cord to one of the two reel-to-reel tape recorders set up on the chest of drawers.
“What’s going on, Tiny?” Harris asked, and then before Lewis could reply, “Where’s Payne?”
Tiny replied by pointing, out the window and up.
Harris crossed the room, noticing as he did a room-service cart with a silver pot of coffee and what looked like the leftovers from a room-service steak dinner.
Payne, of course. It wouldn’t occur to him to take a quick trip to McDonald’s or some other fast-food joint and bring a couple of hamburgers and some paper cups full of coffee to the room. He’s in a hotel room, call room service and order up a couple of steaks, medium rare. Fuck what it costs.
Detective Tony Harris looked out the window and saw Detective Matthew M. Payne.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he exclaimed. “What the fuck does he think he’s doing?”
“The lady opened the window,” Officer Lewis replied, “which dislodged the suction cup.”
“Did she see the wire?” Harris wondered out loud, and was immediately sorry he had.
Dumb question. If she had seen the wire, Payne would not be standing on a twelve-inch ledge thirteen floors up, trying to put the suction cup back on the window.
“I don’t think so,” Tiny said.
“Did we get anything?”
“If we had a movie camera instead of just a microphone, we would have a really blue movie,” Tiny Lewis said.
“Is he crazy or what, to try that?”
“I told him he was. He said he could do it.”
“How did he get out there?”
“There have been no lights in Twelve Sixteen all night. Two doors down from Twelve Eighteen. He said he thought he could get in.”
“You mean pick the lock?” Harris asked, and again without giving Officer Lewis a chance to reply, went on. “What if someone had seen him in the corridor?”
“For one thing, from what was coming over the wire before the lady knocked the mike off, we didn’t think the Lieutenant was quite ready to go home to his wife and kiddies, and for another, Matt’s wearing a hotel-maintenance uniform, and says he doesn’t think the Lieutenant knows him anyway.”
“Yeah, but what if he had?”
“He’s got it!” Lewis said.
He took the earphones from his head and held them out to Tony Harris.
Harris took them and put them on.
The sounds of sexual activity made Harris uncomfortable.
“I’ve been wondering if the fact that I find some of that rather exciting makes me a pervert,” Tiny said.
“We’re trying to catch him with one of the mobsters, not with his cock in some hooker’s mouth.”
“Unfortunately, at the moment, all we have is him and the lady. Maybe Martinez and Whatsisname will get lucky when they relieve us,” Tiny said, and then added: “He’s back inside. I agree with you, that was crazy.”
“Your pal is crazy,” Harris said.
“I think he prefers to think of it as devotion to duty,” Tiny said. “You know, ‘Neither heat, nor rain, nor thirteen stories off the ground will deter this courier…’”
“Oh, shit,” Harris said, chuckling. “I’d never try something like that.”
“Neither would I. But I don’t want to be Police Commissioner before I’m forty.”
Harris looked at him and smiled.
“You think that’s what he wants? Really?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’s just playing cop…”
Harris snorted.
“Other times, I think he takes the job as seriously as my old man. You know, the thin blue line, protecting the citizens from the savages. We know he’s not doing it for the money.”
There was a knock at the door.
“What did he do? Run back?” Harris asked.
“Hay-zus, more likely,” Tiny said, and went to the door.
It was in fact Detective Jesus Martinez, a small-barely above departmental minimums for height and weight-olive-skinned man with a penchant for gold jewelry and sharply tailored suits from Krass Brothers.
“What’s up?” he said by way of greeting.
“X-rated audiotapes,” Tiny said.
“And your buddy’s been playing Supercop.”
There was no love lost between Detectives Payne and Martinez, and Tony Harris knew it.
“Where is he?”
“The last we saw him, he was on a ledge outside the love-nest,” Tony said.
“Doing what?”
“Putting the mike back. The hooker opened the window and knocked the suction cup off.”
Martinez went to the window and looked out.
“No shit? Is it working now?”
“Yeah. The Lieutenant’s having a really good time,” Tiny said, offering Martinez the headset.
Martinez took the headset and held one of the phones to his ear. He listened for nearly a minute, then handed it back.
“Payne really went out on that ledge to put it back?”
“‘Neither heat nor rain…’” Tiny began to recite, stopping when there was another knock at the door.
Martinez opened it.
Detective Matthew M. Payne stood there. He was a tall, lithe twenty-five-year-old with dark, thick hair and intelligent eyes, wearing the gray cotton shirt and trousers work uniform of the hotel-maintenance staff.
“What do you say, Hay-zus?” Payne said. “Strangely enough, I’m delighted to see you.”
Martinez didn’t respond.
“Is it working?” Payne asked Tiny Lewis. Lewis nodded.
“Tony, now that Detective Martinez is here,” Payne said, “and the goddamned microphone is back where it’s supposed to be, can I take off?”
Harris did not respond directly. He looked at Tiny Lewis.
“Anything on what you have so far?”
“You mean in addition to the grunts, wheezes, and other sighs of passion? No. No names were mentioned, and the subject of money never came up.”
“Washington will want to hear them anyway,” Harris said, and turned to Payne. “You take the tapes to Washington, and you can take off. Let Martinez know where you are.”
“OK, it’s a deal.”
