The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  Detective Payne and Detective McFadden were friends, as were, of course, Detectives Martinez and McFadden. Detective Payne and Detective Martinez were not friends. Privately, Detective Payne thought of Detective Martinez as a mean little man with a chip on his shoulder, and Detective Martinez thought of Detective Payne as a rich kid with a lot of pull from the Main Line who was playing cop.

  Usually-but by no means all the time-Detectives Payne and Martinez kept their dislike for one another under control.

  The fourth Detective Personnel space was filled “temporarily” by Police Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., twenty-three, who had been on the job even less time than Detective Payne. Officer Lewis, who stood well over six feet tall and weighed approximately 230 pounds and was thus inevitably known as “Tiny,” knew more about the workings of the Police Department than either Detective Payne or Detective Martinez. Not only was his father a policeman, but Tiny had, from the time he was eighteen. worked nights and weekends as a police radio operator in the Police Administration Building. He had been in his first year at Temple University Medical School when he decided that what he really wanted to be was a cop, and not a doctor. This decision had pained and greatly annoyed his father, Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Sr.

  Lieutenant Lewis was also displeased, for several reasons, with Officer Lewis’s assignment to the investigations section of the Special Operations Division. He suspected, for one thing, that because of the growing attention being paid to racial discrimination, his son was the token nigger in Special Operations. Jason Washington might have-indeed, almost certainly had-been selected for his professional ability and not because of the color of his skin, but Lieutenant Lewis could think of no reason but his African heritage that had seen his son assigned to Special Operations practically right out of the Police Academy.

  And in plain clothes, with an assigned unmarked car, and what looked like unlimited overtime, which caused his take-home pay (Tiny had somewhat smugly announced) to almost equal that of his father.

  Lieutenant Lewis believed that officers should rise within the Department, both with regard to rank and desirable assignment, only after having touched all the bases. Rookies went to work in a district, most often starting out in a van, and gained experience on the street dealing with routine police matters, before being given greater responsibilities. He himself had done so.

  The fifth personnel space for a detective with the investigations sections of the Special Operations Division was unfilled.

  Detective Payne found a drugstore, purchased a Remington battery-powered electric razor and bottles of Old Spice pre-shave and after-shave lotion, and went back to his car.

  This was, he thought, the fifth electric razor he had bought in so many months. While certainly his fellow law-enforcement officers were not thieves, it was apparently true that when they found an unaccompanied electric razor in the men’s room at the schoolhouse and it was still there two hours later, they those to believe that the Beard Fairy had intended it as a present for them.

  The black Cadillac limousine provided by the taxpayers of Philadelphia to transport their mayor, the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, about in the execution of his official duties came north on South Broad Street, circled City Hall, which sits in the middle of the intersection of Broad and Market streets in the center of America’s fourth-largest city, and turned onto the Parkway, which leads past the Philadelphia Museum of Art to, and then along, the Schuylkill River.

  The Mayor was wearing a dark blue suit, a stiffly starched, bright-white shirt, a dark, finely figured necktie, highly polished black shoes, and a Smith amp; Wesson “Chief’s Special”. 38 Special caliber revolver in a cutaway leather holster attached to his alligator belt.

  He shared the backseat of the limousine with his wife, Angeline, who was wearing a simple black dress with a single strand of pearls and a pillbox hat which she had chosen with great care, knowing that what she chose had to be appropriate for both the events on tonight’s social calendar.

  The evening had begun with the limousine taking them from their home in Chestnut Hill, in the northwest corner of Philadelphia, to the Carto Funeral Home at 2212 South Broad Street in South Philadelphia.

  City Councilman the Hon. Anthony J. Cannatello, a longtime friend and political ally of Mayor Carlucci, had been called to his heavenly home after a long and painful battle with prostate cancer, and an appearance at both the viewing and at the funeral tomorrow was considered a necessary expenditure of the Mayor’s valuable and limited time. He had planned to be at Carto’s for no more than thirty minutes, but it had been well over an hour before he could break free from those who would have felt slighted if there had not been a chance to at least shake his hand.

  Councilman Cannatello’s many mourners, the Mayor was fully aware, all voted, and all had relatives who voted, and the way things looked-especially considering what was going to be a front-page story in the Monday editions of Philadelphia’s four newspapers-the Bulletin, the Ledger, the Inquirer, and the Daily News — he was going to need every last one of their votes.

  They were now headed back to Chestnut Hill for an entirely different kind of social gathering, this one a festive occasion at which, the Mayor had been informed, the engagement of Miss Martha Peebles to Mr. David R. Pekach would be announced.

  It was going from one end of Philadelphia to the other in both geographical and social terms. The invitations, engraved by Bailey, Banks amp; Biddle, the city’s most prominent jewelers and social printers, requesting “The Pleasure of the Company of The Honorable The Mayor of Philadelphia and Mrs. Jerome H. Carlucci at dinner at 606 Glengarry Lane at half past eight o’clock” had been issued in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II.

  Mr. Payne, a founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, arguably Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm, had been a lifelong friend of Miss Peebles’s father, the late Alexander F. Peebles. He had been Alex Peebles’s personal attorney, and Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester served as corporate counsel to Tamaqua Mining, Inc. In Mr. Peebles’s obituary in the Wall Street Journal, it was said Mr. Peebles’s wholly-owned Tamaqua Mining, Inc., not only owned approximately 11.5 percent of the known anthracite coal reserves in the United States, but had other substantial holdings in petrochemical assets and real estate.

  A year after Mr. Peebles’s death, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that a suit filed by Mr. Peebles’s only son, Stephen, challenging his father’s last will and testament, in which he had left his entire estate to his daughter, had been discharged with prejudice by the Third United States Court of Appeals, sitting en banc.

  As was the case in the Mayor’s visit to the viewing of the late City Councilman Cannatello at Carto’s, the Mayor had both a personal and a political purpose in attending Martha Peebles’s dinner. There would certainly be a larger than ordinary gathering of Philadelphia’s social and financial elite there, who not only voted, and had friends and relatives who voted, but who were also in a position to contribute to the Mayor’s reelection campaign.

  Considering what was going to be in Monday’s newspapers, it was important that he appear to Martha Peebles’s friends to be aware of the situation, and prepared-more important, competent-to deal with it.

  Personally, while he did not have the privilege of a close personal friendship with Miss Peebles, he was acquainted with the groom-to-be, Dave Pekach, and privately accorded him about the highest compliment in his repertoire: Dave Pekach was a hell of a good cop.

  The Mayor had a thought.

  I think Mickey O’Hara’s going to be at the Peebles place, but I don’t know. And Mickey’s just about as good as I am, getting his hands on things he’s not supposed to have. I want him to get this straight from me, not from somebody else, and then have him call me and ask about it. And the time to get it to him is now.

  He pushed the switch that lowered the sliding glass partition between the passenger’s and chauffeur’s sections of the limous
ine, and slid forward off the seat to get close to the opening.

  There was a passenger-to-chauffeur telephone in the limousine, but after trying it once to see if it worked, the Mayor had never used it again. He believed that when you can face somebody when you’re talking to them, that’s the best way.

  The very large black man on the passenger side in the chauffeur’s compartment, who carried a photo-identification card and badge in a leather folder stating he was Lieutenant J. K. Fellows of the Philadelphia Police Department, had turned when he heard the dividing glass whoosh downward.

  “Mayor?”

  “Get on the radio and see if you can get a location on Mickey O’Hara,” the Mayor ordered.

  Lieutenant Fellows nodded, and reached for one of the two microphones mounted just under the dashboard.

  As the Mayor slid back against the cushions, his jacket caught on the butt of his revolver. With an easy gesture, as automatic as checking to see that his tie was in place, he knocked the offending garment out of the way.

  Jerry Carlucci rarely went anywhere without his pistol.

  There were several theories why he did so. One held that he carried it for self-protection; there was always some nut running loose who wanted to get in the history books by shooting some public servant. The Department had just sent off to Byberry State Hospital a looney-tune who thought God had ordered him to blow up the Vice President of the United States. A perfectly ordinary-looking guy who was a Swarthmore graduate and a financial analyst for a bank, for God’s sake, who had a couple of hundred pounds of high explosive in his basement and thought God talked to him!

  The Mayor did not like to think how much it had cost the Department in just overtime to put that fruitcake in the bag.

  A second theory held that he carried it primarily for public relations purposes. This theory was generally advanced by the Mayor’s critics, of whom he had a substantial number. “He’s never without at least one cop-bodyguard with-a-gun, so what does he need a gun for? Except to get his picture in the papers, ‘protecting us,’ waving his gun around as if he thinks he’s Wyatt Earp or somebody.”

  The only person who knew the real reason the Mayor elected to go about armed was his wife.

  “Do you need that thing?” Angeline Carlucci had asked several years before, in their bedroom, as she watched him deal with the problem, Where does one wear one’s revolver when wearing a cummerbund?

  “Honey,” the Mayor had replied, “I carried a gun for twenty-six years. I feel kind of funny, sort of half-naked, when I don’t have it with me.”

  Mayor Carlucci had begun his career of public service as a police officer, and had held every rank in the Philadelphia Police Department except policewoman before seeking elective office.

  Mrs. Carlucci accepted his explanation. So far as she knew, her husband had never lied to her. If she thought that there were perhaps other reasons-she knew it did not hurt him with the voters when his picture, with pistol visible, at some crime site, was published in the papers-she kept her opinion to herself.

  “Mary One,” Lieutenant Fellows said into the microphone of the Command Band radio.

  The response from Police Radio was immediate.

  “Mary One,” a pleasant, female-sounding voice replied.

  “We need a location on Mickey O’Hara,” Lieutenant Fellows said.

  “Stand by,” Police Radio said, and Lieutenant Fellows hung the microphone up as the dividing glass whooshed back into place.

  Police Radio, in the person of thirty-seven-year-old Janet Grosse, a civilian with thirteen years on the job, was very familiar with Mr. O’Hara, as well as with what the Mayor’s bodyguard-she had recognized Lieutenant Fellows’s voice-wanted. He wanted a location on Mickey O’Hara, that and nothing more. He expected her to be smart enough not to go on the air and inquire of every radio-equipped police vehicle in Philadelphia if they had seen Mickey, and if so, where.

  Janet had the capability of doing just that, and if it got down to that, she would have to, the result of which would be that the police frequencies would be full with at least a dozen reports of the last time anyone had seen Mickey’s antenna-festooned Buick. While he didn’t know every cop in Philadelphia, every cop knew him.

  And Mickey would be monitoring his police band radios and would learn that they were looking for him. Fellows had said the Mayor wanted a location on him, not that he wanted Mickey to know he wanted to know where he was.

  Janet thought a moment and then threw a switch on her console which caused her voice to be transmitted over the Highway Band. Only those vehicles assigned to Highway Patrol, plus a very few in the vehicles of the most senior white shirts, were equipped with Highway Band radios.

  “William One,” she said.

  William One was the call sign of Inspector Peter Wohl. Janet knew that his official vehicle-an unmarked new Ford, which he customarily drove himself-was equipped with an H-Band radio.

  There was no answer, which did not surprise Janet, as she had a good hunch where he was, and what he was doing, and consequently that he would not be listening to his radio. Neither was she surprised when a voice came over the H-Band:

  “Radio, this is Highway One. William One is out of service. I can get a message to him.”

  Highway One was the call sign of the vehicle assigned to the Commanding Officer of the Highway Patrol, which was a subordinate unit of the Special Operations Division.

  I thought that would happen. William One, Highway One, and just about every senior white-shirt not on duty is in Chestnut Hill tonight. Wohl is having Highway One take his calls.

  “Highway One, are you in Chestnut Hill?”

  “Right.”

  “Is Mickey O’Hara there, too?”

  “Right.”

  Bingo! I am a clever girl. Look for a gathering of white-shirts where the free booze is flowing, and there will be Mickey O’Hara.

  “That will be all, Highway One. Thank you,” Janet said. She switched to the Command Band.

  “Mary One.”

  “Mary One.”

  “The gentleman is in Chestnut Hill at a party,” Janet reported. “Do you need an address?”

  “That was quick,” Fellows said, laughter in his voice. “No, thanks, I’m sure we can find him with that. Thank you.”

  “Have a good time,” Janet said, and sat back and waited for another call.

  “Mayor, Mickey’s already at the party.”

  Mayor Carlucci nodded.

  “When we get there, find him. Give me a couple of minutes to circulate, and then ask Mickey if he has a moment for me,” the Mayor said, “and bring him over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were uniforms-white hats from the Traffic Division, not policemen from the Fourteenth District, which included Chestnut Hill-directing traffic on Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill. The mayoral limousine was quickly waved to the head of the line of cars waiting to pass through the ornate gates of the five-acre estate. As the Cadillac rolled past, each uniform saluted and got a wave from the Mayor in return.

  The long, curving drive to the turn-of-the-century Peebles mansion was lined with parked cars, and there a cluster of chauffeurs gathered around a dozen limousines-including three Rolls Royces, Jerry Carlucci noticed-parked near the mansion itself.

  If is wasn’t for what’s going to be on the front page of every newspaper in town tomorrow, the Mayor thought, tonight would be a real opportunity. Now all I can hope for is to minimize the damage, keep these people from wondering whether they’re betting on the wrong horse.

  There was a man in a dinner jacket collecting invitations just outside the door. He didn’t ask for the Mayor’s, confirming the Mayor’s suspicion that he looked familiar, and was probably a retired police officer, now working as a rent-a-cop for Wachenhut Security, or something like that.

  The reception line consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II, Miss Martha Peebles, and Mr.-Captain-David Pekach.

  “Mrs. Carlucci,
Mr. Mayor,” Payne said. “How nice to see you.”

  Payne and Pekach were wearing dinner jackets.

  Probably most everybody here will be wearing a monkey suit but me, the Mayor thought. But it couldn’t be helped. I couldn’t have shown up at Tony Cannatello’s viewing wearing a monkey suit and looking like I was headed right from the funeral home to a fancy party.

  “We’re happy to be here, Mr. Payne.”

  “You know my wife, don’t you? And Miss Peebles?”

  “How are you, Angeline?” Mrs. Patricia Payne said. “I like your dress.”

  Patricia Payne and Martha Peebles were dressed similarly, in black, off-the-shoulder cocktail dresses. The Peebles woman had a double string of large pearls reaching to the valley of her breasts, and Mrs. Payne a single strand of pearls.

  Nice chest, the Mayor thought, vis-a-vis Miss Peebles. Nice-looking woman. She’d be a real catch for Dave Pekach even without all that money.

  And then, slightly piqued: Yeah, of course I know your wife. I’ve known her longer than you have. I carried her first husband’s casket out of St. Dominic’s when we buried him. And as long as we’ve known each other, isn’t it about time you started calling me “Jerry”?

  “How is it, Patricia,” Angeline Carlucci spoke truthfully, “that you still look like a girl?”

  The Mayor had a sudden clear mental image of the white, grief-stricken face of the young widow of Sergeant John X. Moffitt, blown away by a scumbag when answering a silent alarm at a gas station, as they lowered his casket into the ground in St. Dominic’s cemetery.

  A long time ago. Twenty-five years ago. I was Captain of Highway when Jack Moffitt got killed.

  Angie’s right. She does look good. Real good. She’s a Main Line lady now, a long way from being a cop’s widow living with her family off Roosevelt Boulevard.

  “I’m so glad you could come,” Martha Peebles said to Angeline Carlucci.