“Ordinarily, that would be good enough, but sometimes good cops change when it has to do with dirty cops. I don’t pretend to understand that, but that’s the way it is. They start thinking ‘It’s we cops, we brothers, against everybody else’ even when—as in this case—the dirty cops are really slime.”
“Is that what this is about? Dirty cops?”
“ ‘Dirty’—or ‘slime’—doesn’t do these scumbags justice,” Weisbach said. “I really want these bastards, and I don’t want your sergeant to keep me from getting them by running off at the mouth to anybody.”
“Oh,” Roberts said. “Okay. That’s good enough, coming from you, for me. Don’t worry about Michaels.”
“I’ll worry,” Weisbach said. “Prove me wrong.”
“What do you need?”
“I want you to get me the records of everybody the Narcotics Five Squad has brought in here in the last ten days.”
“One of those Narcotics Five Squad hotshots is dirty? But you said ‘these scumbags’, plural ‘scumbags’, didn’t you?”
“I don’t want you even to say ‘Narcotics Five Squad’ out loud, Mitch. And I don’t want your sergeant, or anybody else, to know what records you took out of the files.”
“What am I going to do with the records, once I get them out of the file?”
“I’m going to leave Lockup now, before you come out. I’m going upstairs to Chief Coughlin’s office, where you will bring the records. After we Xerox them, you will bring them back here and put them back in the files.”
“Chief Coughlin’s office? He’s up there?”
“No, but by the time I get there, Frank Hollaran is supposed to be there and have the Xerox machine warmed up,” Weisbach said.
Sergeant Francis Hollaran was Chief Inspector Coughlin’s driver, a somewhat inexact job description that really meant his function was to do whatever possible, whenever possible, to spare his chief from wasting his time.
But it was more than that. Most of the inspectors and chief inspectors of the Philadelphia Police Department had learned what was expected of very senior supervisors by serving as “driver” to a chief inspector earlier in their careers.
“It’ll take me a couple of minutes, Inspector,” Roberts said.
Captain David Pekach pulled into the space reserved for the commanding officer of the Highway Patrol in the parking lot of the Special Operations Division at Castor and Frankford avenues and got out of the car.
A handsome young Irishman in a Highway Patrol sergeant’s uniform stepped out of the shadows and extended a mug of coffee to him.
“I thought you might need this,” he said with a smile.
Sergeant Jerry O’Dowd was on the manning charts as the administrative assistant to the commanding officer, Highway Patrol. He performed essentially the same duties for Captain Pekach as Sergeant Hollaran performed for Chief Inspector Coughlin, and in fact, everybody thought of him as Pekach’s driver. But, as a captain, Pekach, who really needed someone to run intelligent interference for him, was not authorized a driver, and to assign him one would have further antagonized a large number of inspectors and chief inspectors in the department who believed that Highway Patrol and Special Operations White Shirts were already enjoying far too many perquisites.
Naming O’Dowd as Pekach’s administrative assistant had been Wohl’s idea.
Pekach took the coffee mug.
“The question, Jerry, is how did you know I would probably need a cup of coffee at”—he looked at his watch—“ten minutes to four in the morning?”
“Jack Malone called me,” O’Dowd said. “He said he didn’t know what was going on, but that Inspector Wohl had put out the arm for you, and that Inspector Weisbach called in saying he would be unavailable until further notice. I figured you might need me.”
“I probably will, and I appreciate your coming, but until I find out what the hell is going on, I think you better wait in my office—out of sight. Malone meant well, but he really shouldn’t have called you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As soon as I find out what’s going on, I’ll let you know,” Pekach said and, carrying the coffee mug, went into the schoolhouse.
There was no one in the former principal’s office that now served as the office of the Special Operations commander and his deputy. Pekach even had to turn on the lights.
The first person to appear, five minutes later, was Sergeant Jason Washington.
“What the hell is going on, Jason?” Pekach greeted him. When Washington didn’t immediately reply, Pekach added: “The inspector told me to meet him here.”
“I have something delicate to say,” Washington said. “Under the circumstances—which I will explain if Peter Wohl doesn’t arrive in the next few minutes to explain himself—I believe that while Wohl certainly would like to have Captain Sabara here, he may have forgotten—”
“And Mike would be pissed not to be here, right?”
Washington nodded.
Pekach reached for one of the telephones on the desk of Officer Paul T. O’Mara, Wohl’s administrative assistant.
He was not quite through dialing when Wohl walked in the office. He stopped dialing.
“Weisbach here yet?” Wohl asked.
“No, sir,” Washington and Pekach said in chorus.
“Who are you calling?” Wohl asked.
“Mike,” Pekach said.
“Whose idea was that?”
“Mine,” Pekach said, as Washington held up his hand like a guilty child.
Wohl, smiling, shook his head.
“Whichever of you two is really to blame, thank you very much,” he said. “As I was coming up Frankford Avenue, I thought of him, and of Tony Harris, McFadden, Martinez—”
He stopped when Washington held up his hand again.
“Be advised, sir, that my entire command, save, of course, the absent Detective Payne, is at this very moment rushing to the sound of the guns.”
“Thank you, again,” Wohl said.
“And Jerry O’Dowd got here before I did,” Pekach said. “What’s going on?”
“Just as soon as you get Mike out of bed, I’ll tell you,” Wohl said.
A very large, very black woman, attired in a flowered housecoat, opened her front door and examined her caller with mingled annoyance and curiosity.
“This better be something important, Dennis,” the Hon. Harriet M. “Hanging Harriet” McCandless, judge of the Superior Court, announced. “I’m an old woman and need my sleep.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Your Honor,” Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said. “I think you’ll agree with me that this is important.”
“It had better be,” Judge McCandless announced. “Come in. I made a pot of coffee.”
“Tony Callis is in my car, Your Honor,” Coughlin said.
“Are you hinting that you would like to have him come in?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Judge McCandless considered that for a full thirty seconds.
“Well, we can’t have our distinguished district attorney sitting outside in the dark, can we?” she said finally. “You may fetch him, Dennis.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“Now, just to make sure I have everything straight in my mind,” Judge McCandless said, leaning back in her armchair as if she expected the back to move as her judge’s chair did. “You, Tony, are going to come to me to appeal the decision of the magistrate to permit these people bail.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” District Attorney Callis said.
“Then, their bail having been revoked, you are going to return them to custody. Once in custody, in exchange for their testimony against the police officers in question, you are going to drop the charges on which they were arrested.”
“If it gets to that, Your Honor. Only as a last resort will we agree to drop the charges.”
“Come on, Tony,” Judge McCandless said. “These people aren’t stupid. They’re going to want a deal, and yo
u’re going to give it to them. Your priority is to get the Five Squad.”
“Jason Washington, Your Honor,” Coughlin said, coming to Callis’s assistance, “can often work miracles.”
“I am second to no one in my appreciation of the Black Buddha’s skill as an interrogator,” Judge McCandless said. “But I repeat, these people aren’t stupid. They are going to want to do a deal, and Tony is going to have to make one.”
“We’ll try, Your Honor,” Tony Callis replied, “if it comes to that, to make the best deal possible.”
“Several things occur to me,” she replied flatly. “The second being that you’ll make whatever deal you have to.”
“And the first?” Tony Callis asked, as ingratiatingly as he could manage.
“If you get away with this,” she said, “I will have to disqualify myself.”
There was no reply.
“And while neither one of you is a nuclear scientist, I feel sure you considered that before you decided to wake me up at four o’clock in the morning.”
And again there was no reply.
“Which suggests to me that this is very important to you,” she finished. “So important that you are willing to take the risk that when these vermin are brought to trial, it might very well be before a brother or sister of mine on the bench who will desperately search the law for an excuse to let them walk.”
Coughlin and Callis looked uncomfortable.
“But that’s moot,” Judge McCandless went on. “You in effect disqualified me by simply coming here and asking me about what you want me to do. If these vermin walk, it will be on your shoulders, not mine.”
“I don’t think they’ll walk, Your Honor,” Callis said.
She ignored the reply.
“Finally, on what grounds are you asking me to reverse the magistrate’s decision to grant bail?”
“That these people pose a threat to society,” Callis replied. “That there is a strong possibility they will jump bail, that they are continuing to engage in criminal activity . . .”
“How can you possibly know these things, Mr. District Attorney, if you can’t even give me the names of the people we’re talking about?”
“By now, Your Honor,” Coughlin said, “Mike Weisbach should have the names.”
“You don’t know that, Dennis,” she said.
“May I use your phone, Your Honor?”
She waved at the telephone on an end table.
Coughlin went to it and dialed a number from memory.
“Malone, have we got a location on Inspector Weisbach?” he asked.
There was a reply.
Coughlin smiled and hung up.
“Well?” Judge McCandless asked.
“Your Honor, I was just informed that Staff Inspector Weisbach has for the past ten minutes been parked outside.”
Judge McCandless nodded.
“Well, Dennis, why don’t you go out and ask him to come in?” she said. “The more the merrier, so to speak.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
Weisbach came into the comfortably furnished living room two minutes later, carrying a large manila envelope stuffed with Xerox copies of the records from Central Lockup.
“Good morning, Your Honor,” he said.
“If I knew you were coming, Inspector Weisbach, I would have baked a cake,” Judge McCandless replied. “What have you got?”
“The names of all prisoners transported to Central Lockup after their arrest by the Narcotics Five Squad in the last ten days, Your Honor.”
Judge McCandless put out her hand for the envelope. Weisbach gave it to her.
She went through each record carefully. From time to time, her eyebrow rose, or her mouth pursed, or she shook her head from side to side in what could have been contempt or resignation.
Then she handed the stack of paper back to Weisbach.
“You’ve got twenty-two—give or take a couple—names in there—”
“Twenty-two, Your Honor,” Weisbach said.
“In my opinion, the magistrates erred in granting bail in eleven cases, on various grounds, such as the individual has in the past violated the bail privilege; and/or in my judgment poses a threat to society; and/or based on past criminal behavior with which I am personally familiar is probably continuing to engage in criminal activity.”
“Just eleven of them, Your Honor?”
She ignored the question. “If presented by an appeal to override the magistrates’ decision to grant bail by competent authority—such as the district attorney—I would be inclined to override.”
“Just half of them, Your Honor?” Coughlin pursued.
“How clever of you, Dennis. Despite allegations to the contrary, you can divide by two, can’t you? Don’t push your luck. Just pick your eleven.”
“I’ll have the appeals in your chambers by ten o’clock,” Callis said. “I presume we may act now on Your Honor’s verbal authority?”
“You may not,” Judge McCandless said. “You put a duly executed appeal in my hands, and I’ll sign it. You don’t move until then.”
“That’ll take hours!” Coughlin thought aloud.
“Unless you type them yourself,” the judge said. “I have a typewriter. Can anybody type?”
“I can, Your Honor,” Weisbach said.
“And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tony remembers what to say in an appeal,” she said. “May I suggest you pick your eleven and get started?”
Detective Kenneth J. Summers, a portly forty-year-old, looked around the Homicide Unit and saw there was no one else immediately available to answer the telephone, muttered an obscenity, and punched the flashing button on his telephone.
“Homicide, Detective Summers.”
“This is Chief Coughlin,” his caller announced. “Who’s the lieutenant?”
“Lieutenant Natali, sir.”
“No one answers that phone.”
“The lieutenant must have stepped out for a minute, sir.”
What the hell does Coughlin want this time of the morning?
“Who’s the sergeant?”
“Sergeant Hobbs, sir.”
“Get him on the horn, will you?”
“He’s with Lieutenant Natali, sir. Is there anything I can do?”
“What I’m trying to do, Summers, is avoid having to wake up Captain Quaire. Or, for that matter, Chief Lowenstein.”
Captain Henry C. Quaire was the commanding officer of the Homicide Unit. Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein was commanding officer of the detective division, which includes the Homicide Unit.
“What do you need, Chief?”
“I need—specifically, Sergeant Washington needs—the use of your interview room.”
“I’m sure there’ll be no problem about that, sir.”
“I don’t want anybody asking questions about it, or talking about it.”
“No problem there, either, sir. When does Jason want to use it?”
“Right now. As soon as he can get there.”
“It’s his, sir.”
“Highway is about to bring you the man he wants to interview. What I want you to do, Summers, is handcuff him to the chair and leave him there until Washington shows up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When Lieutenant Natali returns, you tell him I’ll explain this to him later, and in the meantime, I want him to sit on it. Same thing if Captain Quaire shows up there. If Chief Lowenstein does, ask him to call me.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line went dead in Detective Summers’s ear.
Five minutes later, a Highway Patrol sergeant and a Highway Patrol officer appeared in the anteroom of the Homicide Unit, which is on the second floor of the Roundhouse. With them they had a very large, angry-appearing black man wearing a gray sweatshirt, baggy blue athletic trousers, bedroom slippers, a golden chain with a three-inch gold medallion, and handcuffs.
“What the fuck am I doing in here?” Mr. Marcus C. (aka Baby) Brownlee inquired.
<
br /> “Put him in there,” Detective Summers said, pointing to the interview room.
“I want my fucking lawyer!” Brownlee announced.
The Highway Patrol sergeant, a slight, very intense black man, guided Mr. Brownlee into the interview room, indicated that he should take a seat in a metal captain’s chair bolted to the floor, and turned to Detective Summers.
“One wrist, or both?”
“Did you hear what I said?” Brownlee indignantly demanded.
The Highway Patrol sergeant put his index finger before his mouth and said, “Sssshhh!”
“He’s big, but one should hold him,” Detective Summers decided and announced.
Brownlee’s right wrist was placed in a handcuff, the other end of which passed through a hole in the seat of the steel captain’s chair.
The Highway Patrol sergeant left the interview room and closed the door after him.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me what the hell this is all about?” Detective Summers said.
“I can, if I want to go back to Traffic on the Last Out,” the Highway Patrol sergeant said. “The Black Buddha’s on his way. Maybe he’ll tell you.”
“You just going to take off?”
“We got three more to pick up,” the Highway Patrol sergeant announced, gestured to his partner—a Highway patrolman of Polish extraction even larger than Brownlee—to follow him, and walked out of the Homicide Unit.
Detective Summers went into the room adjacent to the interview room and looked through the one-way mirror at Brownlee.
Brownlee was testing the security of the handcuffs restraining him to the chair. Detective Summers wondered if he should have suggested to the Highway sergeant that both Brownlee’s wrists be manacled.
Five minutes later, Sergeant Jason Washington walked into the Homicide Unit. Despite the hour, he was the picture of sartorial elegance. He was wearing a double-breasted dark blue silk suit, a crisp white shirt with a flower-pattern silk necktie that matched the handkerchief in his breast pocket, and a gleaming pair of black Amos Archer wing-tip shoes.
“Welcome home, Jason,” Summers said.
“You would be ill-advised, Kenneth, to rub salt in my open wound at this hour of the morning.”
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