Sabara was pleased. Obviously, Harris and Chason were friends. That spoke well for Chason, who had spent twenty-six years on the job, but whom Sabara could not remember ever having seen before he walked into his office.
“Mr. Chason was just telling me that he was engaged just a few days ago to investigate Mr. Ronald R. Ketcham,” Sabara said.
“No shit?” Tony asked, looking at Phil.
Phil nodded.
“How did you know we’re looking for him?”
“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised. He’s a sleazeball.”
“You didn’t see the Locate, Do Not Detain?” Sabara asked, just to be sure.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Who hired you to check Ketcham out?” Tony asked.
“Joey Fiorello,” Phil said.
Tony grunted.
“You don’t happen to know where he is, do you, Phil?”
“Sorry.”
“The other interesting thing Mr. Chason had to say, Tony, was that Fiorello is also interested in learning the names of some other narcotics officers.”
“Narcotics Five Squad officers?” Tony asked quietly.
“I don’t know about that, but there was a drug bust at the Howard Johnson motel last Thursday. . . .”
“That’s interesting,” Sabara said.
“Can I ask what’s going on?” Phil asked.
“That’s a tough one,” Sabara began. “Mr. Chason, we’re working on something—I can’t answer that question. You understand.”
“Horseshit,” Tony Harris said. “Mike, I’ve known Phil for twenty years. If there are two honest cops in the whole department, Phil’s the other one. The more he knows about what we’re trying to do, the more useful he’s going to be.”
That was a clear case of insubordination. Not to mention using disrespectful language to a superior officer. And, for that matter, Harris was clearly guilty of being on duty needing a shave and a haircut.
But on the other hand . . .
“The other honest cup? You mean you and him?”
“Well, maybe Washington and Wohl, too,” Harris said. “That would make four, but I’m not so sure about Wohl. . . .”
“For the record, Tony, I told you not to tell him . . .”
“So report me.”
“. . . so I will tell him,” Sabara finished. “With the understanding none of this leaves this room, Mr. Chason?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Vincenzo Savarese’s granddaughter is in the psychiatric ward of University Hospital, in pretty bad condition,” Sabara began. “Somebody called up there and said she had been orally raped.”
“I don’t get the connection,” Phil said.
“Ronald R. Ketcham is the girl’s boyfriend,” Tony said. “And no one seems to know where he is.”
“Ketcham must be a ladies’ man,” Chason said. “What I heard was he was carrying on hot and heavy with a Main Line—Bala Cynwyd—princess named Longwood.”
“Same girl, Phil,” Tony Harris said.
“And she’s Savarese’s granddaughter? And this guy raped her? Don’t hold your breath until you find him, Tony,” Phil said and then had a chilling thought.
“Oh, shit! And I told Joey Fiorello, who told Savarese . . .”
“How were you to know?” Tony Harris said. “Phil, let’s start at the beginning again. Maybe there’s something there.”
“About a year ago,” Phil began.
Despite his intention to rise at noon, Detective Harry Cronin had woken a little after three P.M. to the sound of cooking utensils banging in the kitchen. He rose from the couch and went into his kitchen.
“Hi, baby!” he said to Mrs. Cronin.
She gave him a sadly contemptuous look but did not reply.
“I’m sorry about last night, honey. What happened was I went by the Red Rooster—”
“And got plastered,” Patty finished for him.
He accepted the accusation with a chagrined nod.
“Just because you’re back on nights, Harry,” Patricia said, “does not mean you’re going to start going to the Red Rooster and—”
“It was a one-time thing, baby.”
“It better have been, Harry,” Patty said, then closed the conversation by adding, “You better take a shower and a shave. It’s time for you to go to work.”
“Right,” Harry agreed.
When he came back downstairs, shaved, showered, and ready both to go to work and apologize, sincerely, to Patty for his lapse, she wasn’t in the house.
So there had been nothing to do but go to work, and he had done so.
It turned out to be a slow night, and there had been a chance for him about ten o’clock to go into a drugstore and buy Patty a large box of assorted Whitman’s chocolates as sort of a let’s-be-friends-again peace offering.
Patty was always pleased when he bought her a box of Whitman’s. She might forgive him. On the other hand, for the next two weeks or whatever, until the chocolates were gone, whenever she ate one, she would be reminded of why he had given them to her.