“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.”
“Going out on that ledge was dumb,” Harris said.
“The Lieutenant’s inamorata knocked the microphone off,” Payne replied. “No ledge, no tape.”
“The Lieutenant’s what?” Tiny asked.
“I believe the word is defined as ‘doxy, paramour, lover,’” Payne said.
“In other words, ‘hooker’?”
“A hooker, by definition, does it for money,” Payne said. “We can’t even bust this one for that. No money has changed hands. The last I heard, accepting free samples of available merchandise is not against the law. When you think about it, for all we know, it was true love at first sight between the Lieutenant and the inamorata.”
Harris laughed.
“Get out of here, Payne,” Harris said. “You want to take off, Tiny, I’ll stick around until the other guy-what the hell is his name?-gets here.”
“Pederson,” Martinez furnished. “Pederson with a d.”
“I’ll wait. I find this all fascinating.”
“You’re a dirty young man, Tiny,” Payne said. “I’m off.”
FOUR
At just about the same time-9:35 P.M. -Detective Matthew M. Payne left the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel by the rear service entrance and walked quickly, almost trotted, up Walnut Street toward his apartment on Rittenhouse Square, Mr. John Francis “Frankie” Foley walked, almost swaggered, into the Reading Terminal Market four blocks away at Twelfth and Market streets.
Mr. Foley was also twenty-five years of age, but at six feet one inch tall and 189 pounds, was perceptibly larger than Detective Payne. Mr. Foley was wearing a two-toned jacket (reddish plaid body, dark blue sleeves and collar) and a blue sports shirt with the collar open and neatly arranged over the collar of his jacket.
Mr. Foley walked purposefully through the Market, appreciatively sniffing the smells from the various food counters, until he reached the counter of Max’s Cheese Steaks. Waiting for him there, sitting on a high, backless stool, facing a draft beer, a plate of french-fried potatoes, and one of Max’s almost-famous cheese steak sandwiches, was Mr. Gerald North “Gerry” Atchison, who was forty-two, five feet eight inches tall, and weighed 187 pounds.
Mr. Atchison, who thought of himself as a businessman and restaurateur-he owned and operated the Inferno Lounge in the 1900 block of Market Street-and believed that appearances were important, was wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit, a crisp white shirt, a finely figured silk necktie, and well-polished black wing-tip shoes.
Both gentlemen were armed, Mr. Atchison with a Colt Cobra. 38 Special caliber revolver, carried in a belt holster, and Mr. Foley with a. 45 ACP caliber Colt Model 1911A1 semiautomatic pistol that he carried in the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back. Mr. Atchison was legally armed, having obtained from the Sheriff of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where he maintained his home, a license to carry a concealed weapon for the purpose of personal protection.
Mr. Atchison had told the Chief of Police that he often left his place of business late at night carrying large sums of cash and was concerned with the possibility of being robbed. The Chief of Police knew that the 1900 block of Market Street was an unsavory neighborhood and that Mr. Atchison was not only a law-abiding citizen, but a captain in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, in which he was himself an officer, and granted the license to carry.
It is extremely difficult in Philadelphia for any private citizen to get a license to carry a concealed weapon, but Philadelphia honors concealed-weapons permits issued by other police jurisdictions. Mr. Atchison, therefore, was in violation of no law for having his pistol.
Mr. Foley, on the other hand, did not have a license to carry a concealed weapon. He had applied for one, with the notion that all the cops could say was “no,” in which case he would be no worse off than he already was. And for a while, it looked as if he might actually get the detective to give him one. The detective he had talked to when he went to fill out the application forms had a USMC Semper Fi! decalcomania affixed to his desk and Frankie had told him he’d been in the Crotch himself, and they talked about Parris Island and Quantico and 29 Palms, and the detective said he wasn’t promising anything because permits were goddamned hard to get approved-but maybe something could be worked out. He told Frankie to bring in his DD-214, showing his weapons qualifications, so a copy of that could be attached to the application; that might help.
Frankie explained that while he would be happy to bring in his Form DD-214, which showed that he had qualified as Expert with the. 45, there was a small problem. A fag had come on to him in a slop chute at 29 Palms, and he had kicked the shit out of him, and what his Form DD-214 said about the character of his release from service was “Bad Conduct,” which was not as bad as “Dishonorable,” but wasn’t like “Honorable” either.