And then Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, for whom Lieutenant Lewis had previously had a great deal of respect, had compounded the idiocy. Instead of sending Tiny out to work with experienced Special Operations uniformed officers, from whom he could have learned at least some of what he would have to know, he had put him in plain clothes and given him to Detective Tony Harris for use as a go-fer.
At the time, Harris had been working on two important jobs, the Northwest Philadelphia Serial Rapist, and the murder of Officer Magnella near Temple University. It could be argued that Harris needed someone to run errands, and to relieve him of time-consuming chores, thus freeing his time for investigation. And certainly, working under a really first class homicide detective would give Tiny experience he could get nowhere else.
But only as a temporary thing. It now looked as if it was becoming permanent. The serial rapist had been shot to death by another young, college-educated, Special Operations plainclothesman. Harris was now devoting his full time to the Officer Magnella job.
And in Lieutenant Lewis’s judgment, that was becoming a dead end. In his opinion, if those responsible for Magnella’s murder were ever apprehended, it would not be because of brilliant police work, or even dull and plodding police work, but either because of the reward offered, or simple dumb luck: Someone would come forward and point a finger.
Tiny Lewis rang the door buzzer, as he had been doing to his father’s undiminished annoyance since he was fourteen, to the rhythm of Shave-And-A-Haircut-Two Bits, and Lieutenant Lewis walked from the window to the door to let him in.
“Hi ya, Pop.”
“Come in.”
“Hi ya, Mom?” Tony said, considerably louder.
The men shook hands.
“I’m in the kitchen, honey.”
“Nice blazer,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “New?”
“Yeah. It is nice, isn’t it?”
Tiny walked past his father into the kitchen, put his arms around his mother, who weighed almost exactly one-half as much as he did, and lifted her off the floor.
“Put me down!” she said, and turned to face him. “Don’t you look nice!”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “It’s new.”
She fingered the material. “Very nice.”
“What are we eating?”
“Roast pork.”
“Pork goes nicely, he said, apropos of nothing whatever, with beer.”
“Help yourself,” she laughed. “You know where it is.”
“You’re driving a department car,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Yes, I am.”
“You know what it would do to your record if you had an accident and had been drinking,” Lieutenant Lewis said, and immediately regretted it.
“Well, then, I guess I better not have an accident. You want a beer, Dad?”
“Yes, please.”
“I saw your boss earlier this evening,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Sergeant Washington?”
“I meant Inspector Wohl,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Do you consider Jason Washington your boss?”
“They formed a Special Investigations Section. He’s in charge. I’m in it.”
“Doing what?”
“Baby-sitting honkies,” Tiny said, with a smile.
“And what does that mean?” Lieutenant Lewis snapped.
“You know a Highway sergeant named Carter?”
Lieutenant Lewis nodded.
“That’s what he said, that I was ‘baby-sitting honkies.’”
“Foster, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You heard about these screwballs calling themselves the Islamic Liberation Army threatening to get Matt Payne for blowing away one of them?”
Lewis nodded.
“Well, Wohl’s got some people sitting on him—”
“You might well form the habit, Foster, of referring to Inspector Wohl as Inspector Wohl,” Lewis said.
He received a look of tolerance from his son, who went on, “—and I was supposed to be one of them. But then Sergeant Washington went to Inspector Wohl and said he’d rather I stick with Detective Harris, and Inspector Wohl said okay, he’d get somebody else, and Sergeant Carter—”
“Your sarcasm is becoming offensive.”
“—heard about it, apparently. Anyway, he struck up a conversation with me, said he’d heard I was going to be one of the guys—the other two are McFadden and Martinez, the ex-Narcs who ran down the junkie who shot Captain Moffitt?”
He waited to see understanding on his father’s face, and then went on:
“—sitting on Payne, and then that I wasn’t, and how come? And I said, mine not reason why, mine but to do what the Great Black Buddha orders—”
“Is that what you call Jason Washington?” Mrs. Lewis interrupted. “That’s terrible! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“Think about it, Mom,” Tiny said, unrepentant.
She did, and laughed, but repeated, “That’s terrible.”
“And?” Lieutenant Lewis prompted.
“And Carter said, ‘I don’t suppose it matters, in either case, what you’re doing is baby-sitting a honky.’”
“Which means what?”
“How the hell do I know, Pop?”
“Watch your tone of voice, please.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“I don’t ordinarily listen to gossip—”
“Watch your father’s nose grow, honey.”
“—but the word is that Harris is having a problem with liquor. Is that what Carter meant about baby-sitting?”
“I guess so. He’s been on a bender. Washington’s taking care of him.”
“How, taking care of him?”
“I keep him out of bars during the day, and at night he’s staying with the Washingtons.”
“Martha must love that,” Mrs. Lewis said.
“Jason and Tony Harris have been close for years,” Lieutenant Foster said, thoughtfully. “Is that how you feel about it, Foster? That you’re baby-sitting a honky?”
“Hey, Pop. Tony Harris has been good to me. And Matt Payne is sort of a friend of mine.”
“‘Sort of a friend’?” Mrs. Lewis asked.
“Well, I haven’t been invited to the Rose Tree Hunt Club yet, but yeah. We’re friends. We get along well. If Harris wasn’t sick, I would have liked to be one of the guys sitting on him.”
“I don’t like the idea of one police officer using the word ‘honky’ to describe another,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Pop, I didn’t use it. Carter did.”
“You repeated it.”
“My mistake,” Tiny said, a hint of anger in his voice. “Where did you see Wohl—Inspector Wohl?”
“You know that your friend Payne is being protected in his apartment?”
Tiny nodded.
“I was supposed to have the midnight to eight tour before—my boss—got me out of it.”
“I was driving by and saw some activity in the garage. A lab van, specifically. So I stopped. Someone, presumably the lowlifes who are calling themselves a Liberation Army, did a job on his car.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Slashed the tires. Scraped the paint.”
“That’s going too far!” Tiny said. “That’s absolutely sacrilegious! That’s not an automobile, it’s a work of art!”
“Now it’s a work of art with flat tires and a scratched paint job,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“And Wohl was there?”
“Inspector Wohl was there. And nearly as offended by the desecration of the work of art as you are.”
“What kind of a car are you talking about?” Mrs. Lewis asked.
“A Porsche 911.”
“Very expensive,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Only rich people can afford them—lawyers, doctors, people like that—”
“Stop, Foster!” Mrs. Lewis said. “Not one more word!”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You
know damned well what’s the matter. You are not going to needle him the rest of his life about not being a doctor! He wants to be a cop. What’s wrong with that? I’m married to a cop. You should be proud that he wants to do what you do!”
Lieutenant Lewis looked at Officer Lewis.
“The lady used profane language, Officer Lewis. Did you pick up on that?”
“Yes, sir. I heard her.”
“I guess that means she’s serious, huh?”
“Yes, sir, I guess it does.”
“Then maybe you and I better get another beer and go in the living room until she calms down, what do you think?”
“I think that’s a fine idea, sir.”
“Don’t try to make a joke of it, Foster. I meant every word I said!”
“I somehow had the feeling you did,” Lieutenant Foster said.
When Chief Inspectors Dennis V. Coughlin and Matthew Lowenstein and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl filed into the Commissioner’s Conference room at eight-ten the next morning, The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, was already there, his back to them, looking out the window, supporting himself on both hands.
Commissioner Taddeus Czernich, holding a cup of coffee in his hands, stood by the open door to his office. Coughlin, Lowenstein and Wohl stood behind chairs at the table, waiting for the Mayor to turn around.
He took his time in doing so, prompting each of them, privately, to conclude that the first psychological warfare salvo had been fired.
Finally, he turned around.
“Good morning,” he said. “I’m aware that all of you have busy schedules, and that in theory, I should be able to get from Commissioner Czernich all the details of whatever I would like to know. But since there seems to be some breakdown in communications, I thought it best to ask you to spare me a few minutes of your valuable time.”
“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” Lowenstein said. “I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I’m sorry you fell out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.”
Carlucci glared at him for a moment.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sit down, all of you,” he said. “I know you’re doing your best.” He looked at Czernich. “Can we get some coffee in here, Tad?”
“Yes, sir. There’s a fresh pot.”
“I was reading the overnights,” the Mayor said. “Did you notice that some wiseass painted ‘Free The Goldblatt’s Six’ on a wall at the University?”
“Those villains we have,” Coughlin said.
“No kidding?”
“The railroad cops caught three of them doing it again on the Pennsy Main Line right of way. You know those great big granite blocks where the tracks go behind the stadium? They had lowered themselves on ropes. Two they caught hanging there. They squealed on the third one.”
“Who were they?”
“College kids. Wiseasses.”
“The judge ought to make them clean it off with a toothbrush,” Carlucci said. “But that’s wishful thinking.”
“Mike Sabara told me when I called him just before I came here that there’s ‘ILA’ painted all over North Philadelphia,” Wohl said. “I don’t think that’s college kids, and I would like to know who did that.”
“What do you mean?”
“How much of it is spontaneous, and how much was painted by the people who issued those press releases.”
“Let’s talk about the ILA,” Carlucci said. “Now that it just happened to come up. What do we know today about them that we didn’t know yesterday?”
“Not a goddamn thing,” Coughlin said. “I was over at Intelligence yesterday. They don’t have a damned thing, and it’s not for want of trying.”
“They’re harassing Monahan. And for that matter, Payne, too. Telephone calls to Goldblatt’s from the time they open the doors until they close.”
“What about at his house?” Carlucci asked.
“Telephone calls. The same kind they’re making to Matt Payne’s apartment.”
“Driving by Monahan’s house? Anything like that?”
“Nothing that we’ve been able to get a handle on. Nobody hanging around, driving by more than once.”
“What have you got on Monahan, at his house?”
“Three uniformed officers in an unmarked car. One of the three is always walking around.”
“Supervised by who?”
“A lieutenant named Jack Malone. He came to Special Operations from Major Crimes.”
“Where he got the nutty idea that Bob Holland is a car thief,” the mayor said. “I know all about Malone. Is he the man for the job, Peter? This whole thing would go down the toilet if we lose Monahan as a witness, or lose him, period. Christ, what that bastard Nelson and his Ledger would do to me if that happened.”
“Malone strikes me, Mr. Mayor, as a pretty good cop who unfortunately has had some personal problems.”
The mayor looked at Wohl for a moment and then said. “Okay. If you say so. You say they’re harassing Payne? How? What’s going on with him?”
“He has an apartment on the top floor of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building on Rittenhouse Square. There’s an underground garage with a Holmes rent-a-cop at the entrance, and, during the day, there’s a Holmes rent-a-cop in the lobby. There’s a pretty good burglar alarm system. We have an officer wearing a Holmes uniform, replacing the Holmes guy, in the garage at night.”
“That’s all?”
“And we have somebody with Payne all the time.”
“Two of them are those kids from Narcotics who ran down the punk who shot Dutch Moffitt,” Chief Inspector Coughlin said. “McFadden and Martinez. They’re friends, and in regular clothes. We don’t want to give the impression that we’re—”
“Baby-sitting a cop, huh?” the mayor interrupted. “I get the point.”
“They call him, these sleaze-bags,” Wohl said, “every fifteen minutes or so. Say something dirty, and hang up. No time to trace the call.”
He took a tape cassette from his pocket and held it up.
“What’s that?”
“A recording of the calls,” Wohl said. “I’m going to take it to the lab.”
“That sounds as if we’re chasing our tails,” the mayor said. “What do they hope to find?”
“We’re trying everything we can think of, Mr. Mayor,” Wohl said.
“Sometime yesterday afternoon, they got to his car,” Coughlin said. “Slashed the tires, and did a job with a knife or a key, or something on the paint job.”
“And nobody saw anything?” the mayor said, unpleasantly.
“All we can do is guess,” Wohl said.
“So guess.”
“Somebody came in the front door during business hours, rode the elevator down to the garage, slashed the tires, etcetera—the car is parked right by the elevator, it wouldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds, a minute, tops—got back on the elevator, rode back to the lobby floor and walked out.”
“The rent-a-cop in the garage didn’t see anything?”
“He can’t see where the car is parked.”
“I don’t suppose anybody bothered to check the car for prints, call the lab people?”
“I did, Mr. Mayor,” Wohl said. “They took some pictures, too. Should I have them send you a set?”
“No, Peter, thank you. They would just make me sick to my stomach. I don’t like these people thumbing their noses at the cops.”
They all knew Jerry Carlucci well enough to recognize the signals of an impending eruption, and they all waited for it to come. It was less violent, however, than any of them expected.
“Okay. Now I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” he said, and pointed his finger at Dennis V. Coughlin. “You, Denny—and this should in no way be construed as a suggestion that Wohl isn’t doing the job right, but he’s a Staff Inspector and you’re a Chief—are going to go to Intelligence and Organized Crime and light a fire under them. I said before and I’m saying now that these clowns didn’t
wake up one morning and say, ‘Okay, today we’re the Islamic Liberation Army, we’re going to go out and make fools of the police and incidentally stick up a furniture store.’ They came from somewhere, and I want to know where, and I want to know who the other ones of them are, the ones issuing these goddamned press releases.”
“Yes, sir,” Coughlin said.
The mayor turned to Matt Lowenstein. “You’re the Chief Inspector of Detectives. Get out there and detect. Whatever you’re doing now isn’t working.”
Lowenstein’s face flushed, but he didn’t reply.
“And you, Peter: I won’t start telling you how to run Special Operations. If you’re comfortable having a guy who beats up on his wife and has paranoid ideas about Bob Holland in charge of protecting the only goddamned witness we have, okay. I’m sure you’re smart enough to understand that it’s your ass if this goes wrong.”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“And you will, all three of you, keep Commissioner Czernich up to date on what’s going on. I’m sick and tired of calling him up and having him tell me, ‘I don’t know, Jerry. I haven’t talked to Wohl, or Lowenstein or Coughlin today.’”
“Yes, sir,” the three of them replied almost in unison.
The mayor ground out his cigar in the ashtray in front of him, stood up, and walked out of the room without another word.
“When the police department looks bad,” Commissioner Czernich said, “it makes all of us, but especially the mayor, look bad. I think we should all keep that in mind.”
“You’re right, Tad,” Matt Lowenstein said. “You’re absolutely right.”
He turned his face so Czernich couldn’t see him and winked at Coughlin and Wohl.
At just about the same time, Officer Charles McFadden looked over Officer Matthew Payne’s shoulder at what was being stirred in a small stainless steel pot and offered:
“I always wondered how they made that shit.”
“I gather that creamed beef is not a regular part of your diet?”
“I eat in restaurants all the time, but I never had it in a house before.”
“But then, until you met me, you never knew that people had indoor toilets, did you?”
“Fuck you.”
“What’s his name?” Matt asked, softly, nodding toward the living room, where a large, muscular young man with a crew cut sat facing the television.
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