Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [48]
Matt and his father picked up the champagne stems.
"To Sergeant Payne," Patricia Payne said, and they all touched glasses.
Matt took a sip and set it down.
"I've got something for you," she said. "I wanted the family to be together when I gave it to you."
She picked up the handkerchief and handed it to him. Even before he unwrapped it, Matt knew what it was. It was a police badge, and he knew whose.
"Your father's," she said.
Matt looked at the sergeant's badge, Number 471, of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia.
"When Denny called," Patricia Payne went on, "he said that he could arrange for you to be assigned your father's number if I wanted. I told him I thought you would like that. And he asked me if I happened to still have it, and I told him I'd have to look. I found it. It was in the attic. And your father's off-duty gun, the snub-nosed .38."
He looked at his mother but didn't say anything.
"Your father was a good man, Matt," his mother said. "A good police officer."
"I have two fathers," Matt said, his voice breaking. "My other father is a good man, too."
Brewster Payne looked at him.
"Write this down, Matt. Never reply to a heartfelt compliment. You never can come up with something worth saying."
He put his arm around Matt's shoulder, and then embraced him.
"Give that to Denny before the ceremony tomorrow," Patricia Payne said. "He'll know how to handle it."
Matt nodded, and slipped the badge into his pocket.
"Under the circumstances," Brewster Payne said, picking up his whiskey glass, "barring objections, I think I'll have another of these."
"Me, too," Matt said.
"First, we'll finish the champagne," Patricia Payne said. "And then we'll all have a drink."
Matt had just turned onto I-476 in Swarthmore to return to Philadelphia when the S-Band radio in the Crown Victoria went off: "S-Twelve."
He pulled the microphone from under the center armrest.
"Twelve."
"Meet the inspector in the 700 block of North Second."
"Got it. En route. Thank you," he said.
It was entirely possible that a crime had been committed in the 700 block of North Second Street, requiring his professional attention. But it was far more likely that he was going to find Inspector Wohl inside the premises at 705 North Second, which was known as Liberties Bar, and was the preferred watering hole of the Homicide Bureau.
I wonder what that's all about?
I wonder why he didn't call me on the cell phone?
Tomorrow, I will no longer be S-Twelve.
There was a somewhat battered, three-year-old Crown Victoria parked on Second Street in front of Liberties Bar. And a last year's Crown Victoria, three brand-new Crown Victorias, and a Buick Rendezvous.
When Matt walked into Liberties, the drivers of these vehicles were sitting around two tables pushed together along the wall, across from the ornately carved, century-old bar. They were Deputy Commissioner Coughlin, Chief Inspector Lowenstein, Inspector Wohl, Lieutenant Washington, Detective Harris, and Michael J. O'Hara, Esq.
There was a bottle of Old Bushmills Irish whiskey, a bottle of Chivas Regal, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and two bowls, one with cashews, the other with stick pretzels, on the table.
"What's going on?" Matt asked, slipping into a chair at the table beside Harris.
"I am interrogating a witness to the Roy Rogers job," Harris said, nodding at O'Hara. "And getting nothing out of him."
"Jesus, Tony," Mickey said. "The bastards took a shot at me!"
Matt poured scotch into a glass.
"It would behoove you to go easy on that tonight, Detective Payne," Wohl said. "Which is the reason we put the arm out for you. We didn't want you to go off somewhere and get smashed by yourself."
"Yes, sir," Matt said, and picked up the drink and took a sip. Then he took his father's badge from his apartment and slipped it to Denny Coughlin.
"Mom found that, and said to give it to you," he said.
Coughlin looked at