This revelation produced a plethora of editorials in the French press, on the theme that it was a gross violation of French sovereignty to have American secret policemen operating under diplomatic cover on the sacred soil of La Belle France. What was next, some editorials demanded, the CIA operating in France?
When the case—actually the appeal—was finally heard, the French lawyers representing the United States very politely made the following points:1. Trials in absentia are permitted under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the immediate jurisdiction, when the accused has not shown up as promised after being released on bail, and his whereabouts are unknown and undeterminable.
2. In the case of Mr. Festung, there was no sentence of death by electrocution. At the time of his trial, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had no provision in its laws to execute anyone, by electrocution or any other means. Mr. Festung had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
3. The government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on learning that Mr. Festung had been located in France, and understanding the French distaste for trials in absentia, had passed special legislation applying specifically to Mr. Festung, guaranteeing his right to a new trial if he should wish one.
4. Inasmuch as Mr. Festung had entered France illegally, on a false passport, in a false name, he was not entitled, under French law, to the protection of French law, and furthermore, French law stated that someone apprehended in France who had entered the country illegally would be immediately deported.
The three-judge bank of appeals justices considered the case for almost three-quarters of an hour before deciding to deny the request of the United States government for the extradition of Isaac David Festung, now known as Walter Stillman, resident of Cognac-Boeuf.
Isaac David Festung was free to go.
A cheering crowd greeted the Festungs both outside the court building and when they returned to their home in Cognac-Boeuf.
The United States ambassador to the French Republic decided to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeals. It was whispered that he did so somewhat reluctantly, and only at the insistence of the secretary of state personally. The story went that the secretary had been approached by the Hon. Carl Feldman, the senior senator from the state of Pennsylvania, at the urging of the Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon, the Philadelphia district attorney.
The story whispered about went on to say that Mrs. Solomon had told Senator Feldman that she could see no way to keep out of the newspapers the fact that Senator Feldman had been this slimy sonofabitch’s lawyer and had gotten him released on $40,000 bail—a ridiculous figure for someone facing a Murder Two charge—which he had then jumped, and offered the suggestion that if the senator hoped to get reelected, it might well behoove him to also get it into the papers that, having recognized the error of his ways, he was doing everything in his power to have the murdering sonofabitch extradited.
Neither Senator Feldman nor District Attorney Solomon would comment on this story, but it was soon announced by the French Ministry of Justice that what the Court of Appeals had really meant to say when it had released Mr. Festung was that he was to be released only to Cognac-Boeuf, and there he would be under the surveillance of the Gendarmerie National, pending the results of the appeal of the U.S. Embassy of their decision to the Supreme Court of France.
When Isaac Festung woke in his bed at just about the time Officers Cubellis and Hyde were reporting themselves back in service in Philadelphia—and six months after the Ministry of Justice’s announcement—he was not at all worried about what the French Supreme Court would decide best served the interests of justice.
Not only had his lawyers told him he had nothing to be worried about, but based on his own analysis of the situation— by which he meant his analysis of France and the French mentality, intellectual and political—he did not see much— indeed, any—cause for concern.
The French, Fort Festung had concluded, had an identity problem, and an enormous capacity for self-deception. At the same time, they professed France to be a world power equal to any. They knew this wasn’t true.
They were about as important in the world, Fort Festung had concluded, as the Italians, perhaps even less important. The difference was, the Italians knew what they were, and acted accordingly, and the French refused to admit what they were, and acted accordingly.
The most important factor in the equation was that the French really hated America and Americans. The Italians were grateful that the Americans had run the Germans, and the native fascists, out of Italy in the Second World War, and grateful again for the American relief effort after the war, and for American help in keeping the Communists from taking any real power in Italy.
The French were privately shamed that the Americans had twice been responsible for chasing the Boche from French soil. American aid to France after the war had made France resentful, not grateful, and France had been relieved when the Americans took a whipping in what had been French Indochina. It would have been almost too much for the French to bear if the Yankees had beaten the Vietnamese into submission after they had failed.
Dien Bien Phu was just one more name on a very long list of battles that the proud French Army had lost, something one would never suspect watching them strut down the Champs Elysées on Bastille Day with flags flying.
Fort saw proof of his theory in French automobiles. Most of them, he thought, in addition to being notoriously unreliable, were spectacularly ugly. And they had yellow headlights. No other country in Europe put yellow headlights on their cars. So far as Fort could tell, the only advantage of the yellow headlights was that they immediately identified a car as having been made in France.
They couldn’t even sell French cars in the United States. They didn’t meet American safety standards. Automobiles made, for example, in Korea did. And that was not even getting into the comparisons that could be made between Peugeots and Citroëns and the Mercedes-Benzes and Porsches made by the hated Boche on the other side of the Rhine and which were highly regarded around the world.
There were, when he had time to think about it, literally hundreds of other proofs of France’s general inferiority and the French unwillingness—perhaps inability—to accept it.
What this all added up to was that when a Frenchman found himself in a position where he could tell the United States to go fuck itself, he could count on hearty cheers from the great majority of his countrymen.
The issue, in other words, no longer had anything to do with what happened in Philadelphia so many years ago, or with Fort Festung.
It had become a question of the French Republic proving its sovereignty and independence before the world. France, the world’s center of culture and civilization, was not about to bow to the will of the goddamned uncultured, uncivilized, and despicable United States of America.
Vive La France!
In the meantime, living in Cognac-Boeuf wasn’t at all bad. He admitted he missed the excitement of Philadelphia, and obviously, he could never go back there. But with this business all out in the open, when the Supreme Court issued its decision, he would be able to travel all over France, which meant Paris.
And in the meantime, Fort Festung thought, as he got out of bed and put on a loosely fitting shirt and baggy cotton trousers, and slipped his sockless feet into thong sandals, life here in Cognac-Boeuf wasn’t at all bad.
He could, for example, get on his bicycle, ride into Cognac-Boeuf, take a table at La Relais, have rolls fresh from the oven, locally made butter, coffee, and a hooker of cognac placed before him, and consume them while he explained to the locals what the stories in Time and the Trib really meant.
And that was exactly what Isaac David Festung did, while Officers Hyde and Cubellis remained on patrol in Philadelphia, maintaining as well as they could peace and domestic tranquillity in the City of Brotherly Love.
[THREE]
When Captain Henry C. Quaire walked into Homicide a few minutes after eight the same morning, he saw Sergeant Matthe
w M. Payne sitting on a chair outside the chief of Homicide’s office. Sergeant Payne rose when he saw Captain Quaire.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” Quaire said, smiling, and then waved his hand toward the door of his office. “Come on in.”
Matt Payne followed him into the office.
“One of your major responsibilities, Sergeant,” Quaire said, pointing to his coffee machine, “is to make sure that one of your subordinates makes sure that machine is tended and ready for service by the time I walk in here.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said.
Quaire poured an Emerald Society cup full, and turned to Payne.
“Help yourself, Matt, and then pull up a chair.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Privately, Henry Quaire was not overjoyed at the assignment of Sergeant Payne to Homicide. For one thing, he’d had nothing to do with it. Almost traditionally, the chief of Homicide had been able to select his men, and there were a number of sergeants—three, in particular, who wanted the assignment—whom Quaire considered to be far better qualified to be a sergeant in Homicide than Sergeant Payne.
But the commissioner had had his off-the-wall idea of giving the top five guys on the sergeant’s list their choice of assignment, so Payne’s assignment was a done deal, and there was no way he could fight it.
Not that he really wanted to, he decided. For one thing, he was off the hook about picking one of the other sergeants. If he had had to make a choice between them, two of them would not have gotten the assignment, and they—and their rabbis— would have been disappointed, and their rabbis probably pissed.
Now they could be pissed at the commissioner.
And it wasn’t as if Payne was an absolute incompetent getting shoved down his throat. He was, in fact, a pretty good cop, who would probably do a good job in Homicide before moving onward and upward in the police hierarchy. Like his rabbi, Inspector Peter Wohl, he was one of those people who seemed predestined for ever-greater responsibility and the rank that went with it.
Nor was there going to be, so far as Quaire sensed, much—if any—resentment from the Homicide guys about having a brand-new sergeant with just over five years on the job as a Homicide supervisor.
For one thing, Payne was close to the two most respected people in Homicide, Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Tony Harris. Washington had no problem with Payne’s assignment, and when Quaire had asked Tony Harris, Harris had been almost enthusiastic.
“I’ve worked with him, Captain,” Harris said. “He’s smart as hell. And this place can use a little class. Unless I’m wrong, he’s going to be dynamite on the witness stand.”
Smart as hell and being dynamite on the witness stand were two desirable characteristics for anybody in Homicide.
And then there was the fact that everybody in Homicide knew that Payne had had two good shootings. The first had been the serial rapist in Northwest Philadelphia who’d tried to run Payne down in his van. That bastard had already had his next intended victim trussed up like a Christmas turkey in the back of his van when Payne had interrupted his plans with a bullet in his head.
The second was when they were rounding up the doers in the Goldblatt & Sons Furniture job, and Wohl had put Payne and Mickey O’Hara in an alley to keep them out of the line of fire, while Highway and Special Operations uniforms went in the front. One of the doers had appeared in the alley with a .45 semiautomatic. Payne had taken a hit in the leg, but he’d downed the bad guy anyway.
And then there was the third incident, just six months ago. Payne had run down—good detective work—a lunatic terrorist they wanted. The FBI had been looking for him without coming close for years. Payne knew the critter was going to be in the parking lot of a diner in Doylestown. He had no authority in Doylestown, and didn’t think the Doylestown cops would know how to handle the terrorist, so he’d called an FBI guy he knew—one of the good ones, for a change— and the FBI guy had gone to Doylestown.
When they’d tried to put the collar on the lunatic, he’d let loose with an automatic carbine, wounding a bystander woman and killing the woman who’d led Payne to the lunatic.
There’d been a hell of an exchange of gunfire, handguns against an automatic carbine. The FBI guy had actually put the critter down, but Payne had been involved up to his eyeballs and hadn’t blinked.
If things were perfect, a cop would never have to take his pistol out of his holster, but things aren’t perfect, and all cops—including Homicide detectives—admire the cops who do it right when they have to take out their weapons.
And then finally Captain Quaire was aware that at Dave Pekach’s wife’s party for Payne last night, Payne had sat at a table with Deputy Commissioner Coughlin, District Attorney Eileen McNamara Solomon, Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein, and Inspector Wohl, making it clear he had friends in high places.
“Welcome aboard, Matt,” Quaire said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Would you have any objection to being assigned to Lieutenant Washington’s squad?”
“No, sir.”
“So be it,” Quaire said. “You’re a bright young man. Do I have to remind you that you’re the new kid on the block, and that most of the people here have been in Homicide longer than you’ve been on the job?”
“I don’t mean to sound flippant, sir, but that’s not the first time that’s been pointed out to me.”
“And in a situation like that, what are you going to do?”
“Keep my eyes open and my mouth shut, sir.”
“Don’t go too far, Matt, with the mouth shut. You’re a sergeant, and you’ll be expected to act like one.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
What I’m doing here is wasting my time, and his. Before he walked in here this morning, he was coached on what to expect and how to behave by Peter Wohl, who was a very young detective here. Or by Denny Coughlin. Or by the Black Buddha. Maybe even by Matt Lowenstein. Or Tony Harris. Or, more likely, all of the above.
“When is this business with Stan Colt going to happen?” Quaire asked.
“I think he’s coming on Friday, sir. I haven’t had the time to check with Lieutenant McGuire.”
“You better check with him soon, for the obvious reasons. ”
“I’ll do it right now, sir.”
“And let me know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Matt. Go to work,” Captain Quaire said. “Glad you’re going to be with us.”
“Thank you, sir.”
[FOUR]
At 9:25 A.M., as Jack Williamson drove his Chrysler 300M northward on I-95 toward Bucks County—coincidentally, just beyond and to the left of the Industrial Correction Center, and just shy of the Philadelphia Police Academy—his cellular telephone buzzed.
Williamson was a tall, rather good-looking, well-dressed twenty-nine-year-old whose business card identified him as Senior Sales Consultant for Overbrook Estates, which offered custom-built executive homes on quarter-acre lots in Overbrook Estates, a new gated community in Beautiful Bucks County starting in the mid-$250Ks.
He cursed—for having forgot to do so earlier—as he reached for the earphone and jammed it in place, and then pushed the button on the microphone, which he was supposed to have clipped to his jacket, but now held somewhat awkwardly in his right hand.
“Jack Williamson,” he said.
“This is your mother.”
Oh, shit. Now what does she want?
“What can I do for you, Mother? On my way to work, where I’m already twenty-five minutes late?”
“I’m worried about Cheryl.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“She doesn’t answer her phone . . .”
Probably because she knows it’s you calling.
“. . . and not even the answering machine answers.”
“Maybe it’s full.”
“And she’s not at work. I called there, too.”
And just possibly, Mother
Dear, she told them to tell you she was out.
“Mother, she probably had car trouble or something.”
“No. She doesn’t answer her cell phone, either. Jack, I’m really worried.”
“Mother, what exactly is it you’d like me to do?”
“I want you to go by her apartment and see if she’s all right.”
“Mother, I’m on my way to work, and I’m already late.”
“Jack, she’s your sister. Your only sister.”
He didn’t reply.
“If only your father were still alive . . .” Mrs. Williamson began.
“Okay, okay. Don’t start that. I’ll go.”
“You’ll call me?” his mother asked.
Jack detected a triumphal tone in her voice.
Score another one for Momma Dear.
“I’ll call.”
He looked for, found, and took the next exit ramp—Exit 23—and a block onto Willets Road pulled to the side, clipped the cellular’s hands-off microphone to his shirt, then picked the phone up and held down the 5 key, which caused the cellular to automatically dial Cheryl’s number.
There was no answer, which meant she wasn’t there. He hung up, then held down the 6 key, which caused the cellular to automatically dial Cheryl’s cellular number. After five rings, a recorded female voice announced that the party he was attempting to reach was either not available at this time or out of the local calling area.
He cursed again, dropped the phone onto the seat, put the 300M in gear, and headed down Willets, deciding the best way to get to Cheryl’s—all the fucking way across North Philly—was to take Roosevelt Boulevard and then Adams Avenue, into the East Oak Lane section of Philadelphia.
When he got to Cheryl’s door, he could hear the chimes inside playing the first few bars of “Be It Ever So Humble,” but there was no answer. Which meant that Cheryl was already probably at work.
He decided that when he got back to the car, he would call her at her office, and turned to leave.
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