Tammy Smith was confused. She was now reasonably sure she wanted a romantic relationship with Frank Ryman. That he was the kind of man who could be a keeper provided he was taken in hand by the right woman. Someone like herself.
The problem was that she wasn’t sure that she still trusted him. She had literally trusted Frank Ryman with her life on more than one occasion and never found him wanting. Now he had lied to her about a number of important things.
Well, not lied exactly, but held back on significant details involving their work. Beyond that he had also taken some very serious steps to advance his career, steps that wouldn’t directly hurt her own, but could cause her considerable discomfort within the department.
It was very confusing. The fact that Ron Pinkman would be arrested at Bernie Kahn’s Center City abode, of all places, was something else that rubbed her the wrong way. This arrest was being stage managed to fit into some kind of election game. Frank was definitely letting the department down on this one in order to suck up to a bigwig.
The guided walking tour she was currently getting from Frank just added to her confusion. “Ever check out the galleries in Old City?” he’d asked after telling her about the planned arrest at Kahn’s place. Out of nowhere he’d asked her that. Like this wasn’t a workday. Like they didn’t have good reasons to go back at the Roundhouse to prepare for Pinkman’s arrest. When she admitted she hadn’t checked out the galleries in Old City he’d said, “Let’s take a quick look.”
Now they were walking through the narrow streets of Philadelphia’s oldest section and Frank was spouting off like one of those guys with a megaphone who sits on top of the London-style double-deckers they’ve using these days to cart around Philadelphia tourists. “That’s Elfreth’s Alley over there,” Frank gestured. “Oldest continually inhabited residential street in the country. Over there,” another big gesture. “that’s the Philadelphia Merchants Exchange. Opened 1834.”
Tammy knew the area. She’d driven through it hundreds of times while on the job, usually on the way to somewhere else. It wasn’t that big a crime area. She’d walked through it, too. It was an easy walk from the Roundhouse and from the donut shop where they’d had their just completed confessional coffee clatch.
“Why are we here, Frank?”
“Like I said. I want to show you some things. Won’t take long. We’ll be back in the office in a couple of minutes.
What he wanted to show her were some of the places where he purchased the art that made up his small personal collection. Give her a brief introduction to that other side of himself. He was also showing her, maybe consciously and maybe not, that a guy whose past marriage hadn’t worked out well had filled the time until he hit on her cultivating something other than poor hygiene.
Between the quick stops at galleries where the owners actually seemed to know Frank Ryman as someone other than a cop making local merchant contacts, he chatted away about the neighborhood’s history and future. “Used to be a real
cesspool down here,” he said as they strolled along, looking very much like tourists or business professionals on a long lunch hour, not quite holding hands but appearing as if they should be. “A real cesspool. Medieval almost.”
Tammy was liking this. O.K. She was maybe even impressed. “Medieval how?”
“Fifteen years back,” he said,” when I walked this beat, almost none of these galleries, cafes, bars,” he gestured “were open yet. It was pretty much all shlock clothing wholesalers and boarded up storefronts along with a a few machine shops stinking up the air. Condo developments like these” he gestured again at a building with an obviously improved frontage ”were nowhere to be seen. Heck, a lot of people living here back then didn’t even have indoor plumbing. They’d threw slops out the window. You looked where you stepped and you walked in the roadway, as far from the sidewalks as possible.
“Medieval,” agreed Tammy.
“Dawn of time stuff,” said Frank.
“It was artists who originally brought back this neighborhood,” he continued. “It’s always artists who bring back city neighborhoods, lay the foundations that developers cash in on. I’ve heard that when Bernstein is mayor they’re going to put collars on the city’s artists, the way they do with caribou in the Arctic, with signal senders inside the collars for tracking. When enough artists have found a new neighborhood with promise, developers will be alerted so they can buy in and start upscaling sooner.”
“I like that,” said Tammy. What she really liked was the way Frank said the word ‘artists’ as if he were talking about his own kind. As if by virtue of coming here and buying here he was somehow one of them. With the not so subtle suggestion thrown in that if she took up with Frank Ryman she could join this happy company.
On their ten block walk back to the Roundhouse Frank told her about a couple
of the artists whose work he’d been lucky enough to acquire before their prices took off—Kay Wood, Sandy Hoffman—and the pricier ones he hoped to collect when his captain’s promotion came through.
Tammy didn’t say much in response. Just nodded agreeably. They both
understood that a very large gap between them had narrowed a bit. What still amazed her was why it hadn’t narrowed much sooner.
Frank’s art collecting wasn’t such a wierd thing for a cop to do these days. Tammy knew lots of younger men and women on the force who might not be outright touchy-feely, but were very far from being one-dimensional head-crackers. Some moonlighted as professional musicians. Some were openly gay. She knew one cop who was the part owner of a toy store and kept some of this establishment’s silliest toys in his locker at work so he could play with them when he had some downtime.
Frank, she figured, was just a bit too long on the job to admit his own—she almost laughed aloud at the word—sensitivity. All the time they had worked together he’d played the tit-chaser. What a waste for both of them. They would definitely have a serious talk about that tonight. After the arrest. After they went to her apartment, had a few drinks, made love. It was time.
Arrests always acted as a powereful aphrodisiac for Tammy Smith. That part of this Bernstein’s business, at least, was working out the right way.
Back in the Roundhouse, again well and truly immersed in police business, there was one small detail about the Hamish murder that still puzzled her. It was probably nothing, but seemed worth asking about.
“I’ve got a question,” she said as the two of them were finishing their preparations to head over to Irving Street.”
“I didn’t do it,” Ryman said with a straight face. “It was Pinkman.”
“Are we really sure it was him?”
Ryman glanced down at the arrest warrant on his desk. “Says here that he did it. Kind of late in the day to ask.”
“It’s just...”
“What? What?”
“Well, just suppose that the description we got from that witness in Powelton about the guy she saw skulking around Lisa Sankerson’s place...”
“On the night Sankersen was murdered.”
“Right. On the night she was murdered. Just suppose that description, which is a pretty good fit for Pinkman, is wrong because it was a dark night. Or maybe because the skulker wasn’t our guy anyway.”
“Both possibilities,” said Ryman. “I’m not big on that kind of coincidence myself, but possible. We still have Leo narrowing suspects down to four, and Bernstein’s internal investigation narrowing that number down to one.”
“What’s got me wondering about that one,” Smith said,” is that maybe we narrowed down to only four suspects too soon.”
Ryman looked up from the papers he was rearranging. “Explain.”
“Leo Diamond reconfigured Bernstein’s company intranet so only top executives hit a certain key when sending messages in-house. Right?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been working under the assumption that this group of top executives only included that group of four. The Fab Four. And maybe Myron Hamish as well, who isn’t a suspect because he’s the one who got murdered.”
“Yes.”
“But two other top executives in the company were also sending messages
using this key and unaware it signalled Leo that a bigwig was sending.”
“You’re thinking, maybe, that Mitch Bernstein killed Myron Hamish?”
“No, Frank. Not Bernstein. I’m thinking your contact at the company. Joe Connors. Anybody ever take a real close look at this guy?”
