The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Now I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen carefully, because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. You don’t even know shit about the law, so I’m going to educate you. You know what happens when you plead guilty to murder?”

  Mr. Foley looked at Mr. Cassandro in utter confusion.

  “Nine times out of ten, it don’t mean shit,” Mr. Cassandro said, “when you confess and plead guilty, which is what you’re going to do.”

  That penetrated Mr. Foley’s wall of pain.

  “Confess?” he asked.

  “Right. Confess. What happens is your lawyer can usually come up with something that will make the jury feel sorry for you, so they won’t vote for the death penalty. Even if he can’t do that, the judge usually knocks down the chair to life without parole, and what that means is that you have to do maybe twenty years.”

  “Why?” Mr. Foley asked, somewhat piteously.

  “I told you. You dishonored the Italian people of Philadelphia. And if there was a mob, you would have dishonored them too. How would it be if it got around that a stupid Mick asshole like you was associated with the mob? If there was a mob.”

  “I didn’t say any-” Mr. Foley began, only to be interrupted again by Mr. Cassandro striking him a third time in the face with the heavy cast-metal stapler. This blow caught him in the corner of the mouth, causing some rupture of mucous membrane and skin tissue and a certain amount of bleeding.

  “You know what’s worse than going to the slammer for twenty years, Frankie?” Mr. Cassandro asked conversationally after Mr. Foley had again regained his feet. “Even worse, if you think about it, than getting the chair?”

  Frankie shook his head no and then muttered something from his swollen and distorted mouth that might have been “No, sir.”

  “Dying a little bit at a time, is what would be worse,” Mr. Cassandro said. “You know what I mean by that?”

  Again there came a sound from Mr. Foley and a shake of the head that Mr. Cassandro interpreted to mean that Mr. Foley needed an explanation.

  “Show him,” Mr. Cassandro said.

  Mr. Joey Fatalgio went to Mr. Foley, this time grabbing his left hand, which Mr. Foley was holding against his body with his upper right arm, and twisted it behind his back. Then he grabbed Mr. Foley’s right wrist, and forced Mr. Foley to place his right hand, so far undamaged, on the desk at which Mr. Cassandro had been standing.

  Mr. Cassandro moved away from the desk. Mr. Dominic Fatalgio then appeared at the desk, holding a red fire ax in his hand, high up by the blade itself. He flattened Mr. Foley’s hand on the desk, and struck it with the ax, which served to sever Mr. Foley’s little finger between the largest and next largest of its joints.

  Mr. Foley screamed again, looked at his bleeding hand, and the severed little finger, and fainted.

  Mr. Cassandro looked down at him.

  “We don’t want him dead,” he said conversationally. “Wake him up, wrap a rag or something around his hand, and make sure he understands that if I hear anything at all I don’t want to hear, I will cut the rest of his fucking fingers off.”

  Mr. Dominic Fatalgio nodded his understanding of the orders he had received and began to nudge Mr. Foley with the toe of his shoe.

  Mr. Cassandro left the office, and then returned.

  “Make sure you clean this place up,” he said. “I don’t want Mrs. Lucca coming in here in the morning and finding that finger. She’d shit a brick.”

  Both Mr. Dominic and Mr. Joey Fatalgio laughed. Mr. Cassandro then left again, carefully closing the door behind him.

  There were a number of problems connected with the arrests of Mr. Atchison and Mr. Foley for the murders of Mrs. Atchison and Mr. Marcuzzi.

  The first problem came up when Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein telephoned the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, on his unlisted private line in Chestnut Hill to tell him that the Honorable Thomas Callis, District Attorney of Philadelphia County, had been his usual chickenshit self, but had come around when he had told him that he was going to arrest the two of them whether or not Callis thought there was sufficient evidence.

  “He already called me, Matt,” the Mayor said. “To let me know what a big favor he was doing me.”

  “That figures,” Lowenstein said.

  “Would it cause any problems for you,” the Mayor began, which Chief Lowenstein correctly translated to mean, This is what I want done, you figure out how to do it, “to bring Mickey O’Hara along when you arrest Atchison and the shooter, preferably both?”

  Chief Lowenstein hesitated, trying to find the words to tactfully suggest this might not be such an all-around splendid idea as the Mayor obviously thought it to be.

  “When I had Officer Bailey in here this afternoon, to personally congratulate him for his good work in catching that scumbag who shot Officer Kellog, I had the idea Mickey was a little pissed.”

  “Why should Mickey be pissed?”

  “All the other press people were here, too,” the Mayor said. “Now, I’m not saying he did anything wrong, there was no way he could have known I figure I owe O’Hara,” the Mayor said, “but when Captain Quaire put out the word to the press that we had solved the Officer Kellog job, I think Mickey got the idea I wasn’t living up to my word. I’d like to convince him that I take care of my friends.”

  “No problem. I’ll put the arm out for Mickey,” Lowenstein said. “He’ll have that story all to himself.”

  “I was thinking maybe both arrests,” the Mayor said. “You mind if I ask how you plan to handle them?”

  And if I said, “Yeah, Jerry, now that you mention it, I do,” then what?

  “We’re going to pick up Foley first thing in the morning,” Lowenstein said. “He’s not too smart, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we could get him to confess before we arrest Atchison.”

  “At his house?”

  “As soon as he walks out the door, I don’t like taking doors, and we found out when he goes to work. We’ll be waiting.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “We is Lieutenant Natali and Detective Milham, backed up by a couple of district uniforms in case we need them. I don’t think we will.”

  “And Atchison?”

  “I thought-actually Peter Wohl thought, and I agree with him-that it would avoid all sorts of jurisdictional problems if we could get him into Philadelphia, rather than arresting him at his house in Media. So Jason Washington called his lawyer-”

  “Who’s his lawyer?”

  “Sid Margolis.”

  The Mayor snorted. “That figures.”

  “And Washington said he has a couple of questions for him, and he thought Margolis might want to be there when he asked him, and could he ask him at Margolis’s office. Margolis called back and set it up for twelve o’clock.”

  “Good thinking. You open to a couple of suggestions?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I think Tom Callis would like to get his picture in the newspapers too, and if I could tell him I had set it up for him and O’Hara to be there when you arrest Atchison…”

  “No problem. You want to call him, or do you want me to?”

  “I’ll call him,” the Mayor said. “And tell him to call you. And I think it would be a nice gesture if you allowed Detective Payne to go to both arrests. It would show the cooperation between Homicide and Special Operations. And what the hell, the kid deserves a little pat on the back. He did work overtime to catch Atchison with the guns.”

  “He’ll be there. I’ll call Peter Wohl and set it up.”

  “And then, so the rest of the press isn’t pissed because Mickey got the exclusive on the arrests, I thought I’d have a little photo opportunity in my office, like the one this afternoon when I congratulated Officer Bailey, and personally thank everybody, everybody including you and Peter, of course.”

  “And including Detective Milham?”

  “Of course including Detective Milham. He’s
a fine police officer and an outstanding detective who did first-class work on this job.”

  They call that elective memory, Chief Lowenstein thought. Our beloved mayor has elected not to recall that the last time we discussed Detective Milham, he was my Homicide detective who can’t keep his pecker in his pocket.

  “Good idea,” Lowenstein said.

  “I’ll have Czernich set it up,” the Mayor said. “Thanks for the call, Matt, and keep me posted.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chief Lowenstein said.

  It was necessary for Chief Lowenstein to telephone Mayor Carlucci at his office at ten-thirty the next morning to report that a small glitch had developed in the well-laid plans to effect the arrest of Mr. John Francis Foley.

  His whereabouts, the Chief was forced to inform the Mayor, were unknown. When he had not come out of his house to go to work when he was supposed to, Detectives Milham and Payne had gone to his door and rung the bell.

  His mother had told him that she was worried about John Francis. He had gone out the night before and not returned. He rarely did that. If he decided to spend the night with a friend, Mrs. Foley reported, he always telephoned his mother to tell her. John Francis was a good boy, his mother said.

  “You’re telling me you don’t know where this scumbag is?” the Mayor asked.

  “Well, we know he’s not at the Wanamaker’s warehouse,” Lowenstein, more than a little embarrassed, reported. “We’re working on known associates.”

  “Speaking of known associates, you do have an idea where Mr. Atchison is right now, don’t you?”

  “The Media police are watching his house. He’s there.”

  “Find Foley, Matt,” the Mayor ordered. “Soon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why don’t you call the police?” the Mayor said, his sarcasm having been ignited. “Maybe he got himself arrested. Or check the hospitals. Maybe he got run over with a truck. Just find him, Matt!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chief Lowenstein replaced the pay telephone in Meagan’s Bar into its cradle. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then asked himself a question, aloud.

  “Why the hell not?”

  He dropped another coin in the slot, dialed a number, and told the lieutenant who answered to call the hospitals and see if they had a patient, maybe an auto accident or something, named John Francis Foley. And while he was at it, check the districts and see if anybody by that name had been arrested.

  Philadelphia District Attorney Thomas J. Callis was in something of a quandary regarding the prosecution of James Howard Leslie, a.k.a. “Speed,” for the murder of Police Officer Jerome H. Kellog.

  Option one, of course, was that he would personally assume the responsibility for prosecuting the case. He knew that if he did that, in addition to the satisfaction he knew he would feel if he was able to cause the full weight of the law to come crashing down on the miserable little sonofabitch, there would be certain political advantages.

  The trial was certain to attract a good deal of attention from the news media, print, radio, and television. The good people of Philadelphia could not avoid being made aware time and time again that their district attorney was in the front lines of the criminal justice system, personally bringing a terrible person, a cop killer, to the bar of justice.

  The problem there was that there was a real possibility that he might not be able to get a conviction. The fact that there was no question Leslie had brutally shot Kellog to death was almost beside the point here. What was necessary was to get twelve people to agree that not only had he done it, but that he knew what he was doing when he did.

  Leslie had asked for, and had been provided with, an attorney from the public defender’s office immediately after being advised of his rights under the Miranda decision.

  That fellow practitioner of the law had turned out to be a somewhat motherly-appearing woman, who had spent seven years as a nun before being released from her vows and going to law school.

  She had promptly advised Mr. Leslie to answer no questions, and he had not. Tony Callis had often watched the attorney in question (whom he very privately thought of as That Goddamned Nun) in action, and had come to have a genuine professional admiration for both her mind and her skill. He also believed that she had a personal agenda: She truly believed that murder was a sin, and that the taking of life by the state, as in a sentence to the electric chair, was morally no different from what Leslie had done to Kellog.

  Her strategy, Callis thought, would be obvious. She would first attempt to plea-bargain the charge against Leslie down to something which would not result in the death penalty.

  Callis could not agree to that, either, from rather deep personal feelings that a cop-killing under any circumstances undermined the very foundations of society and had to be prosecuted vigorously to the full extent of the law. And also because he did not want to see headlines in the Bulletin, the Daily News, and elsewhere telling the voters he had agreed to permitting a cop killer to get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

  When the case then came to trial, That Goddamned Nun, oozing Christian, motherly charity from every pore, would with great skill try to convince the jury that he hadn’t done it in the first place-and Callis knew his case was mostly circumstantial-and if he had, he was a poor societal victim of poverty, ignorance, and neglect, which had caused him to seek solace in drugs, and he hadn’t known what he was doing, and consequently could not be held responsible.

  The headlines in the Bulletin, the Daily News, and elsewhere would read, “DA Fails in Cop Killer Case; Leslie Acquitted.”

  Option two was to have one of the assistant DAs take the case to court. In that case it was entirely possible that the Assistant DA would get lucky with a jury, who after ten minutes of deliberation would recommend Leslie be drawn and quartered, and the Assistant DA would get his picture in the papers and on the TV, and people would wonder why Callis hadn’t done the job he was being paid for.

  Inasmuch as he had yet to weigh all the factors involved and come to a decision, Tony Callis was more than a little annoyed when his secretary reported that Inspector Peter Wohl, Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach, and Detective Matthew Payne were in his outer office and sought an immediate audience in re evidence in the Leslie case.

  On general principle, Callis had them cool their heels for five minutes during which he wondered what the hell Wohl wanted-the Leslie case was a Homicide case-before walking to his door and opening it for them.

  “Peter,” he said. “Good to see you. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Thank you for seeing us.”

  “Mike,” Callis went on, shaking Weisbach’s hand, and then turned to Payne. “Nice to see you, too. Give my best to your dad.”

  “Thank you, sir, I will.”

  “Now what can I do for you?”

  “This is confidential, Mr. Callis,” Wohl said. “We would appreciate it if what we say doesn’t get out of your office.”

  “I understand.”

  “Mike, show Mr. Callis the pictures,” Wohl ordered.

  Weisbach handed Callis a thick manila envelope.

  “The first ones are the photographs Homicide had taken in Leslie’s backyard,” Weisbach said. “They show the photo of Officer Kellog and the tape cassettes in the garbage pile.”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  “Next are individual photographs of each cassette, taken this morning in the Forensics Lab.”

  Callis flipped quickly through the 8-by-10-inch photographs of the individual cassettes. Each bore a legend stating what was portrayed, and when the photographs were taken.

  “OK,” Callis said. “So tell me?”

  “We have an interesting thing here,” Weisbach said. “The cassettes are evidence in the Leslie case. They may also, down the line, be evidence in other cases.”

  What the hell is he talking about?

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mike.”

  “This is what is confidential,�
� Wohl said. “The Widow Kellog appeared at Jason Washington’s apartment and announced that the entire Narcotics Five Squad is dirty. She went so far as to suggest they were responsible for her husband’s murder.”

  “We know now, don’t we, Peter, that’s not the case?”

  “We know that Leslie murdered Officer Kellog. We don’t know if anyone in Narcotics Five Squad is dirty.”

  “Peter, the gossip going around is that Mrs. Kellog…how should I put it?”

  “Mrs. Kellog was estranged from her husband,” Wohl said.

  “…and-how shall I put it-‘ involved ’ with Detective Milham. I’m sure that you have considered the possibility that she just might have been…how shall I put it?”

  “‘Diverting attention from Milham’?” Wohl suggested. “She received a death threat. A telephone call telling her to keep her mouth shut, or she’d get the same thing her husband did.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “And she told Washington that her husband bought a condo at the shore, and a boat, both for cash. Very few police officers are in a position to do that. Mike has already checked that out. They own a house and a boat.”

  It was obvious that Callis was not pleased to hear of this new complication.

  “Isn’t this sort of thing in Internal Affairs’ basket? And what’s it got to do with the tapes, in any event?”

  “I wish it was in Internal Affairs’ basket,” Wohl said. “But I had a call this morning from the Commissioner, who gave it to Special Operations.”

  “You really are the Mayor’s private detective bureau, aren’t you?” Callis observed. When Wohl did not reply but Callis saw his face tighten, Callis added: “No offense, Peter. I know you didn’t ask for it.”

  “We have reason to suspect,” Weisbach said, “that these tapes are recordings made by Officer Kellog of telephone calls to his home. If that’s the case, they may contain information bearing on our investigation.”

  “They may have contained anything,” Callis said. “Past tense. They’re burned up.”