The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

“You don’t want to stick around, Jason?” D’Amata said. “I’ll probably need your help.”

  Washington looked at Lieutenant Natali.

  “Does Joe know who Mrs. Kellog believed was responsible for her husband’s death?”

  “You mean Narcotics Five Squad?” D’Amata asked.

  “I thought he should know,” Natali said. “I told him to keep it under his hat.”

  “That’s what I was doing, Joe, when they sent me here. But to coin a phrase, ‘Duty calls.’ Or how about, ‘It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it’? Do I have to tell you I’d much rather stay here?”

  Both Natali and D’Amata shook their heads. Natali touched Washington’s arm, and then Washington walked out of Homicide.

  The Honorable Thomas J. “Tony” Callis, the District Attorney of the County of Philadelphia, had decided he would personally deal with the case of Messrs. Francis Foley and Gerald North Atchison rather than entrust it to one of the Assistant District Attorneys subordinate to him.

  This was less because of his judgment of the professional skill levels involved (although Mr. Callis, like most lawyers, in his heart of hearts, believed he was as competent an attorney as he had ever met) than because of the political implications involved.

  He was very much aware that the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, was taking a personal interest in this case, a personal interest heavily flavored with political implications. The Ledger, which was after Carlucci’s scalp, had been running scathing editorials bringing to the public’s attention the Police Department’s inability to arrest whoever had blown Atchison’s wife and partner away. (Alternating the “Outrageous Massacre of Center City Restaurateur’s Wife and Partner” editorials, Tony Callis had noted, with equally scathing editorials bringing to the public’s attention that a cop had been brutally murdered in his kitchen, and the cops didn’t seem to know anything about that, either.)

  Mr. Callis, a large, silver-haired, ruddy-faced, well-tailored man in his early fifties, had a somewhat tenuous political alliance with Mayor Carlucci. It was understood between the parties that either would abandon the other the moment it appeared that the alliance threatened the reelection chances of either.

  As a politician possessed of skills approaching the political skills of the Mayor, the District Attorney had considered the possibility that Mayor Carlucci would be happy to drop the ball, the Inferno ball, into his lap. That he would, in other words, be able to get the Ledger off his back by making an arrest in the case on information that might not hold up either before a grand jury or in court.

  “My Police Department,” the Mayor might well say, “with its usual brilliance, nabbed those villains. If they walked out of court free men, that speaks to the competence of Mr. Callis.”

  Proof-not that any was needed-that this case had heavy political ramifications came when the police officers sent to the District Attorney’s office to present their evidence gathered turned out to be Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein and Inspector Peter Wohl, Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Division. Mr. Callis-who normally disagreed with anything written in the Ledger, which had opposed him in the last election-was forced to admit that there was indeed more than a grain of truth in the Ledger ’s editorial assertion that the Special Operations Division had become Carlucci’s private police force.

  And with Chief Lowenstein’s opening comment. when he was shown into Callis’s office:

  “Mr. District Attorney, I bring you the best regards of our mayor, whose office Inspector Wohl and I just left.”

  “How gracious of our beloved mayor! Please be so kind, Chief Inspector, to pass on my warmest regards to His Honor when you next see him, which no doubt will be shortly after we conclude our little chat.”

  “It will be my pleasure, Mr. District Attorney.”

  “How the hell are you, Matt?” Callis asked, chuckling. “We don’t see enough of each other these days.”

  “Can’t complain, Tom. How’s the wife?”

  “Compared to what? How are you, Peter?”

  “Mr. Callis,” Wohl said.

  “You’re a big boy now, Peter. A full inspector. You don’t have to call me ‘Mister.’”

  Wohl smiled and shrugged, and raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “My saintly father always told me, when you’re with a lawyer, be respectful and keep one hand on your wallet,’ Wohl said.

  Callis chuckled. “Give my regards to the saintly old gentleman, Peter. And your mother.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “OK. Now what have we got?”

  “We have the guns used in the Inferno murders. We have-” Lowenstein began.

  “Tell me about the guns, Matt,” Callis interrupted.

  Lowenstein opened his briefcase. He took a sheaf of Xerox copies from it and laid it on Callis’s desk.

  “The lab reports, Tom,” he said. “They’re pretty conclusive.”

  “Would you mind if I asked Harry Hormel to come in here?” Callis asked. “If I can’t find the time to prosecute, it’ll almost certainly be Harry.”

  “By all means,” Lowenstein said smoothly. “I’d like to get Harry’s opinion.”

  District Attorney Callis punched his intercom button and very politely asked his secretary to see if she could determine if Mr. Hormel was in the building, and if so, if he could spare a few minutes to come to his office.

  A faint smile flickered across Peter Wohl’s face. He was perfectly sure that Hormel had been ordered, probably far less courteously, to make himself available.

  “Harry,” Callis had almost certainly said, “don’t leave the office until you check with me. Lowenstein and Wohl are coming over with something on the Inferno murders. I’ll need you.”

  Or words to that effect: Mr. Harrison J. Hormel was an assistant district attorney. He had come to the District Attorney’s Office right after passing the bar examination twenty-odd years before and had stayed.

  Only a small number of bright young lawyers fresh from law school stayed on. Many of those who did were those who felt the need of a steady paycheck and were not at all sure they could earn a living in private practice. Hormel, in Peter’s opinion, was the exception to that rule of thumb. He was a very good lawyer, and a splendid courtroom performer. Juries trusted him. He could have had a far more lucrative legal career as a defense counsel.

  Peter had decided, years before, that Hormel had stayed on, rising to be (at least de facto) the best prosecutor in the DA’s Office because he took pride and satisfaction in putting evil people where they could do no more harm.

  And Peter knew that whether District Attorney Callis or Assistant District Attorney Hormel prosecuted Foley and Atchison would not be based on professional qualifications-Callis was not a fool, and was honest enough to admit that Hormel was the better prosecutor-but on Callis’s weighing of the odds on whether the case could be won or lost. If conviction looked certain, he would prosecute, and take the glory. If there was some doubt, Hormel would be assigned. It was to be hoped that his superior skill would triumph. If Foley and/or Atchison walked, the embarrassment would be Hormel’s, not Callis’s.

  Callis took his glasses, which, suspended around his neck on an elastic cord, had been resting on his chest, and adjusted them on his nose. Then he leaned forward on his desk and began to read, carefully, the report Lowenstein had given him.

  Assistant District Attorney Hormel entered Callis’s office while Callis was reading the report. He quietly greeted Lowenstein and Wohl, then stretched himself out in a leather armchair to the side of Callis’s desk.

  Wordlessly, Callis handed him the report, page by page, as he finished reading it. When he himself had finished reading it, he looked at Chief Inspector Lowenstein and made a gesture clearly indicating he was not awed by the report.

  Lowenstein handed him another sheaf of Xerox copies.

  “The 75-49s on the recovery of the murder weapons,” he said.
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  Callis again placed his glasses on his nose and read the 75-49s carefully, again handing the pages as he finished them to Assistant District Attorney Hormel.

  As he read page four, he said: “Denny Coughlin was a witness to the recovery? What was he doing there?”

  “Chief Coughlin did not see fit to inform me of his reasons,” Lowenstein said. “Inspector Wohl suspects that he thought it would be nice to go yachting at that hour of the morning.”

  “Oh, shit, Matt.” Callis laughed.

  Callis finished reading the 75-49s, and then everybody waited for Hormel to finish.

  “There are some problems with this,” Hormel said.

  “Such as?”

  “What was this Special Operations detective doing surveilling Mr. Atchison?”

  “At the direction of the Commissioner, Detective Payne was detailed to Homicide to assist in the investigation,” Lowenstein said.

  “I’d love to know what that was all about,” Callis said, looking at Lowenstein. “Was that before or after you threatened to retire?”

  “Gossip does get around, doesn’t it?” Lowenstein said. “I didn’t threaten to retire. I considered retiring. I changed my mind. If you’re suggesting I in any way was unhappy with the detail of Detective Payne to Homicide, I was not. He is a very bright young man, as those 75-49s indicate.”

  “He was assigned to surveil Atchison?”

  “He was ordered to assist the assigned detective in whatever way the assigned detective felt would be helpful,” Lowenstein replied.

  “Presumably,” Hormel said, “there was coordination with the Media Police Department?”

  “That same afternoon, Detective Payne accompanied Sergeant Washington to interview Mr. Atchison at his home. That was coordinated with the Media Police Department.”

  “Jason’s back working Homicide? I hadn’t heard that,” Callis said.

  “Sergeant Washington and Detective Payne were the first police officers on the scene of the Inferno Lounge murders,” Lowenstein said. “Inspector Wohl was kind enough to make them both available to me to assist in the conduct of Homicide’s investigation of the murders.”

  Callis snorted.

  “‘Detective Payne,’” Hormel said, obviously playing the role of a defense attorney, “‘you look like a very young man. How long have you been a police officer? How long have you been a detective?’”

  “‘How long have you been assigned to Homicide?’” Callis picked up on Hormel’s role playing. “‘Oh, you’re not assigned to Homicide? Then you really had no previous experience in conducting a surveillance of a murder suspect? Is that what you’re telling me?’”

  “And then we get to re-direct,” Wohl said. “Our distinguished Assistant District Attorney-or perhaps the District Attorney himself-approaches the boy detective on the stand and asks, ‘Detective Payne, were you in any way involved in the apprehension of the so-called Northwest Serial Rapist? Oh, was that you who was forced to use deadly force to rescue Mrs. Naomi Schneider from the deadly clutches of that fiend?’”

  Callis chuckled.

  “Very good, Peter.”

  “‘And were you involved in any way, Detective Payne, in the apprehension of the persons subsequently convicted in the murders at Goldblatt’s Furniture Store? Oh, was that you who was in the deadly gun battle with one of the murderers? Mr. Atchison was not, then, the first murderer with whom you have dealt?’”

  “That could be turned against you. It could make him look like a cowboy,” Callis said.

  “The dark and stormy night is what bothers me,” Hormel said. “We have to convince the jury that the package Denny Coughlin saw them take from the river was the same package Atchison tossed in there. That’s a tenuous connection.”

  “The two South detectives saw the package being passed from Foley to Atchison,” Lowenstein said.

  “No, they didn’t,” Hormel argued. “There’s room for reasonable doubt about that. And it was a dark and stormy night. ‘How can you testify under oath, Detective Payne, that the package taken from the river by police divers was the package you saw Mr. Atchison carry out of Yock’s Diner? How can you testify under oath that, if the night was as dark as you have testified it was, and you were as far from Mr. Atchison as you say you were, that what he threw, if indeed he threw anything, into the river was that package? You couldn’t really see him, could you? You’re testifying to what you may honestly believe happened, but, honestly, you didn’t really see anything, did you?’”

  “Ah, come on, Harry!” Lowenstein protested.

  “I’m inclined to go with Harry,” Callis said. “This is weak.”

  Lowenstein stood up.

  “Always a pleasure to see you, Tom,” he said. “And you, too, Harry.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To carry out my orders,” Lowenstein said. “I was instructed to show you what we have. Then I was instructed to arrest the sonsofbitches. Come on, Peter.”

  Wohl stood up and offered his hand to Harry Hormel.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Callis said. “I didn’t say it was no good. I said it was weak.”

  “It is,” Hormel agreed.

  “Harry,” the District Attorney said. “You’ve gone into court with less then this, and won. Peter made a good point. All you have to do is convince the jury that these two were pursued by one of the brightest detectives on the force. A certified hero. If you handle that angle right, you can go for the death penalty and get it.”

  “It’s weak,” Harry Hormel repeated.

  “Let Harry know when you have them, Matt,” Callis said. “I’m sure he would like to be there when you confront them with the guns.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  For Frankie Foley, there had been a certain satisfying finality about his meeting with Gerry Atchison in the Yock’s Diner the previous night. He had received his final payment for the hit, and he’d gotten rid of the guns. The job was done.

  He presumed that Atchison would safely dispose of the weapons somewhere, probably throw them in the Delaware, or bury them in the woods when he was out playing weekend warrior with the National Guard. It didn’t matter.

  Frankie knew that once Atchison had taken the guns, and once he’d gotten out of the diner without anyone seeing them together, everything was going to be fine.

  Frankie personally thought that the bullshit Atchison insisted on going through, making him leave the guns in the garbage can in the toilet of the Yock’s Diner, and coming out, and then Atchison going in to get them, was some really silly bullshit. Atchison must have been watching spy movies on the TV or something.

  It would have made much more sense for them just to have met someplace, even in the parking lot of the Yock’s Diner, for Christ’s sake, swapped the dough for the guns, and gotten in their cars and driven away.

  On the other hand, which was why Frankie had gone along with the swapping-in-the-crapper bullshit, doing it that way had been safer than meeting him in a dark parking lot someplace.

  Frankie didn’t trust Atchison. He hadn’t trusted him in the Inferno when he’d done the job, and had taken steps to make sure that Atchison hadn’t hit him after he’d hit the wife and the partner, which would have been smart, which would have made it look like the dead guy on the floor had robbed the place and killed the partner and the wife, and Atchison was the fucking hero who had killed him.

  That “dead men tell no tales” wasn’t no bullshit. He was the only guy who could pin the job on Atchison, and Atchison knew it. If he was dead, Atchison could relax. The cops would look for-fucking-ever-or at least until something else came along-for the two robbers Atchison had made up and told the cops about.

  Frankie had considered that the reverse was also true, that if Atchison was dead, Atchison couldn’t get weak knees or something and tell the cops, “Frankie Foley is the guy who murdered my wife.” He considered hitting Atchison. It would be no trouble at all. He could have been waiting for him in the parking lot at the Yock�
�s Diner, put a couple of bullets into his head, and driven off and that would have been the end of it.

  Except that maybe it wouldn’t have really been the end of it. The cops would look like even bigger assholes if Atchison got hit and they couldn’t catch who had done him, either. The Ledger was already giving the cops a hard time about that. The cops would get all excited all over again, and maybe they’d get lucky.

  Frankie didn’t think Atchison would have the balls to try to kill him himself, otherwise he would have killed his wife and the partner by himself, right? And Atchison didn’t know no other professional hit men, or else he would have hired one of them to do the job, right?

  So the smart thing to do-the professional thing-was just stop right where he was. He had been paid to do a job, and he had done it, and got paid for it, and that should be the end of it. Go on to other things, right?

  If he did it that way, in a couple of weeks he could go to work in the Inferno, and tell Wanamaker’s what they could do with their fucking warehouse. The word would get out that he had done the job for Atchison, and sooner or later other jobs would come along.

  What he would have liked to have done was maybe catch an airplane and go to Las Vegas and see if he would have any luck gambling. Frankie had never been to Vegas, but he had heard there was a lot of pussy that hung around the tables, and that if they thought you were a high roller, they even sent pussy to your room. That would really be nice, go out there, win a lot of money at the crap tables, and get some pussy thrown in for good measure. But that would not have been professional. What he had to do, for a little while anyway, was play it cool.

  The cops might be watching him, and they might wonder how come he could afford to quit fucking Wanamaker’s, not to mention where he got the money to go to Vegas. In a couple of weeks, about the time he would go see Atchison and remind him about the maitre d’ job, the cops would lose interest in the Inferno job, and in him. There would be other things for the cops to do.

  Neither was he, Frankie decided, going to start to spend the five grand he got right away, get a better car or something, or even some clothes. That would attract attention. When he was working at the Inferno, it would be different. If he turned up with some dough, he could explain it saying he’d won it gambling. Everybody knew that maitre d’s were right in the middle of the action.