Bringing Adam Home (29 page)

He’d left his locker on “day-lock,” he explained to Sergeant, meaning he’d closed his locker, spun the dial, then clicked in the first number of the combination and the second, leaving the dial a few spots shy of the third. It was the sort of thing many cadets did, for there was little time allotted between training sessions, and being late for roll call too often could mean washing out of the program. You’d hurry back to your locker, move the dial a few notches, grab what you needed, and hurry off.

His supervisor might have been aware of the practice, but it didn’t mean he condoned it. “You lost your fucking firearm?” the sergeant bellowed. “Do you know who cleans those locker rooms? The fucking jailhouse trusties. If you don’t come up with that pistol, we’re going to have to empty every cell and strip-search every inmate.” With that, he snatched up the phone and asked for Major Sandstrom, chief of the Dade County Corrections Department, to explain the situation. “Yes, that’s M-a-t-t-h-e-w-s,” he told Sandstrom. “No, not from Dade County. From Miami Beach.”

After a bit more consultation with his colleague, Grant hung up the phone and turned back. “Do you know what a colossal pain in the ass this is going to be? We’ll wait a few hours. Go find your goddamn gun. If you come up with it, we’ll save a hell of a lot of trouble. And if you don’t—” The sergeant broke off, shaking his head. Matthews had little doubt as to what the consequences would be.

Following lunch, the forty-man cadet class was once again assembled before the training sergeant, who wanted to make an announcement before they got back to their regularly scheduled business for the afternoon. Grant proceeded then to give the cadre a detailed account of Matthews’s profound screwup, and called for him to stand. Matthews rose, ramrod-straight, ready for the worst. “Have you found your firearm yet?” the sergeant demanded.

Matthews felt every eye in the room upon him. Many of his fellow cadets were squirming, well aware that there but for the grace of God they might be. “No sir,” Matthews responded, “but I have identified a suspect, sir.”

Grant shared a sadist’s smile with the others in the room. “Oh yeah?” he said. “And who might that be?”

“It’s
you
, sir,” Matthews responded.

There was a momentary silence, then a murmur swept the room. The sergeant’s face contorted. “Me? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I went to Major Sandstrom’s office during our lunch hour, sir. He told me he hadn’t received any call from you regarding any missing pistol. He didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Grant said, rising from his seat.

“I’d like permission to interview you, sir. You’ve been instructing us on interviewing suspects, and I think you took my pistol to teach me a lesson. I’d like to ask if you, or anyone at your direction, might have gone to the locker room this morning and removed my pistol from my locker.”

By this point the sergeant’s face was an apoplectic mask. “Shut the fuck up and sit down, Matthews,” he said.

If he had harbored any suspicion that all of this had been something of a training exercise, the spittle flying from Grant’s lips convinced Matthews otherwise. Sometimes discretion was the better part of valor, he decided.

On the way out of the room after class was dismissed, one of his fellow cadets gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder. “You’ve done it this time, Matthews,” he said. “You’re out of here for sure.”

Matthews shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But I do know one thing. That bastard took my gun.”

His fellow cadet could only shake his head, and the two hurried off to class. Later that afternoon, Matthews returned to open his locker. Sure enough, his pistol had been replaced.

It is one of many stories reflecting Matthews’s refusal to be cowed by blowhards, but it is surely not the only one. Shortly after he’d graduated from the academy and joined the ranks of beat cops at Miami Beach PD, Matthews turned up at morning roll call to hear a pronouncement: there had been too many complaints from high rollers in big cars and the owners of delivery companies with drivers trying to navigate the clogged streets of the densely populated island. Every officer was to make the ticketing of double-parked cars a priority.

Not a problem, Matthews thought, and set out upon his rounds for the day. He had scarcely turned the corner of Lincoln Road onto Alton when he saw a big Buick pull up beside a car parked in front of Alfie’s, a mega-sized Miami version of a New York City candy store
cum
newsstand. The driver got out of the Buick, gave Matthews an uninterested glance, and then strolled casually into the store. It might have been a brazen enough action, parking your barge of a sedan in a busy traffic lane while a cop approached—but on top of everything else, there were empty parking places both in front of and behind the car the guy had parked beside.

Matthews shook his head and made his own way into the store. There he found the guy from the sedan at the counter, engaged in earnest conversation with the owner. “Excuse me, sir,” Matthews called. “You’re double-parked outside. You’ll have to move your car.”

The guy kept on talking, ignoring him.

Matthews joined him at the counter, holding up his ticket book. “You’re double-parked,” he repeated. “If you don’t move, I’ll have to write you a ticket.”

Alfie the proprietor gave Matthews a doubtful look from behind the counter, but said nothing. The guy at the counter turned, gave Matthews a snicker, then turned back and resumed his conversation with Alfie.

“Okay by me,” Matthews said. “I’ll be outside writing tickets,” he went on. “And I’ll still be writing them until you come out there and move your car.”

He left the store and walked to the back of the car to check the plate number. Having never issued a citation for double parking, he had to consult his statute book to find the proper code, and that took him a few moments. He had completed that citation and was at work on a second—for obstructing traffic—when the door to Alfie’s finally opened and the guy came out, a look of disbelief on his face.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the guy said.

“Exactly what I told you I’d be doing,” Matthews said. He finished the second citation and tore a copy out of his book. He thrust the two tickets at the guy, who rolled his eyes and brushed past him.

As the guy got into his car and slammed the door, Matthews approached, lifted the wiper on the driver’s side of the windshield, and snapped the two tickets under the rubber blade. The driver’s-side window rolled down, and the guy thrust his face through the opening. “You don’t know who you’re screwing with, do you?” he demanded.

By the point Matthews had had enough. He bent close enough to smell the guy’s boozer breath. “You don’t know who
you’re
screwing with, do you?”

The guy’s eyes widened in surprise momentarily. “Fuck you,” he said finally, then floored the Buick’s accelerator and sped away.

“Fuck
you
,” Matthews called after him. He noted that Alfie had come out onto the sidewalk to witness the scene. The proprietor gave Matthews a baleful look, then went back inside. Matthews shrugged and went on about his day.

Before dismissal at the following morning’s roll call, the patrol sergeant reiterated the need for them all to be vigilant about ticketing double-parkers, and then, as everyone was filing out, called Matthews to his desk. “Captain Webb wants to see you,” the sergeant said.

When Matthews asked the sergeant if he knew what it was about, the sergeant gave him a look. “I think I’ll let the captain explain. Just get your ass down there.”

Accordingly, Matthews made his way to the patrol commander’s office. As Matthews stood nervously at attention, Webb gave him the once-over, then tented his fingers and finally began.

“Since when did you start issuing parking tickets to police officers?” Webb inquired.

Matthews was genuinely perplexed. “I don’t know what you mean, sir. I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“Then why did you write Captain Henry Dworkin, who happens to be commander of the detective bureau, two parking tickets yesterday? One for double-parking and another for obstructing traffic?”

Matthews stared at the tickets Captain Webb had produced, a feeling of dread washing over him. “Uh . . . I had no idea he was a police officer, sir.”

His supervisor stared at him. “Well, you made one hell of a mistake, Matthews.”

“Yes sir,” Matthews said.

“And you need to take care of these tickets,” his supervisor added.

Matthews nodded. “I’ll do that, sir.”

“Good,” his supervisor said, giving him a weary look. “Go to it. And try to keep your head out of your ass from now on, will you?”

By the time he made his way down the hallway from the squad room, Matthews’s shock had abated, and resentment had begun to take its place. Why hadn’t Dworkin just said he was a cop in the first place? Why be such a dick about it?

Anyway, he thought, his supervisor had told him to take care of the matter, and so he would. He’d go right to Captain Dworkin’s office and do whatever it took.

At his knock on Dworkin’s door, a voice issued, inviting him in. Matthews entered to find the guy he’d given the tickets sitting behind a desk. “What are you doing here?” Dworkin said, the instant he saw who it was.

“I just wanted to talk to you about those tickets—,” Matthews began.

Dworkin stared as if a leper was about to climb into his lap. “Get the fuck out of my office and don’t you ever come back,” he said.

“Yes sir,” Matthews said, and turned on his heel.

As he was making his way down the hallway in the aftermath, he heard a voice calling after him. “Hey, Matthews.”

What now?
he thought, as he turned to see Detective Walter Philbin stepping out of a doorway, beckoning toward him. Philbin was a lieutenant of detectives, a tall, muscular guy with plenty of swagger and the look of a ladies’ man. He was a big drinker and a high-stakes gambler, but he had connections inside the department and on the streets as well. His was a legendary presence in the department’s detective bureau.

“I just wanted to say you got some balls, kid. Telling Dworkin he doesn’t know who he’s fucking with. That’s classic.” Philbin laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

Matthews stared back in some concern. “How’d you hear about that?” He glanced down the hall toward the office he’d just left. “Did Dworkin tell you?”

“Hell, no,” Philbin said, waving his hand. “The guy’s a total asshole. Nobody talks to him. Alfie told me what happened. He said he never saw anything like it.”

Philbin was about to duck back into his office, then stopped. “By the way, go see Esther down in the traffic division. She’ll tell you how to make those tickets go away.”

It might have been the end of the matter, and just one more story about Joe Matthews and how his penchant for doing the right thing seemed always to land him in trouble, except for one thing. It was not long after that encounter that Chief Pomerance asked Walter Philbin to put together a task force that would do whatever was necessary to bring down the crime rate on Miami Beach.

Pomerance and Philbin were in agreement as to the kind of officers needed for such an assignment. There’d be some ticklish situations dealing with hardened criminals who’d prefer to take their chances on justice in a shootout as opposed to a courtroom, and you’d need to be able to trust your partners to stand up, during and after tough situations like those.

Accordingly, Philbin primarily chose men whom he’d known for years. Experienced and able cops, those savvy enough to understand when justice had to be dispensed with on the spot, and how to keep their mouths shut afterward. Given his dictum that you couldn’t trust a man you couldn’t drink with, Philbin would probably have added incipient alcoholism to his list of qualifications as well. But there was rigor in such work, and the need for a certain amount of young blood too.

It was in that way, then, that Joe Matthews found himself plucked from the ranks of the beat cops to become part of a task force that one day would be dispatched to a stakeout at the Shoreham Hotel and from there to any number of other incidents that would propel him upward through the ranks. From task force, to detective bureau, to sergeant. From homicide investigator, to polygraph expert, to Dade County Cop of the Year, and ultimately to involvement with the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh. Flap, flap, flap.

Hollywood, Florida—August 16, 1994

D
espite his “reservations” about the motives of Joe Matthews, Detective Smith proceeded with his work on the Adam Walsh case, albeit at a deliberate pace. He met with Harry O’Reilly, the retired NYPD homicide detective who had put the department back in touch with Matthews, and Smith and O’Reilly traveled to the spot off Florida’s Turnpike where Toole originally said he’d disposed of Adam’s head and body, to determine whether or not O’Reilly thought it might be worth conducting a second concerted search for remains. O’Reilly doubted that there was anything to be accomplished by such an undertaking, but he did return from the trip with a real concern: he called Joe Matthews to tell him about the foray, wondering why Smith had not asked Matthews to join them, a point at which Matthews realized that whatever might eventuate from his collaboration with Smith, the two were certainly not functioning as true partners.