“Report of a robbery, shooting, and hospital case,” the dispatcher said. “All cars going in on the assist, Harbison and the Boulevard, flash information on a robbery at that location. Be on the lookout for Caucasian male, long blond hair, brown jacket, direction taken unknown, armed with a gun.”
As Sergeant Dannelly reached for the microphone, without waiting for orders, Officer Waldron had dropped the transmission shift lever into D-2, and flipped the switches activating the flashing light assembly and the siren, and then shoved his foot to the floor.
“Highway Two-B in on that,” Sergeant Dannelly said into the microphone.
The Ford, its engine screaming in protest, tires squealing, accelerated the rest of the way around Oxford Circle and back down Roosevelt Boulevard toward the Waikiki Diner.
The second response came on the heels of Highway Two B’s: “Two-Oh-One in on that Waikiki Diner.” It was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Two-Oh-One was not that instant responding to the call.
The Waikiki Diner was in the territory of the Second Police District. Two-Oh-One was a Second Police District patrol wagon, a Ford van.
Philadelphia police, unlike those of every other major city, respond to all calls for any kind of assistance.
If you break a leg, call the cops! If Uncle Harry has a heart attack, call the cops! If you get your fingers in the Waring blender, call the cops!
A paddy wagon will respond, and haul you to the hospital. Not in great comfort, for the back of the van holds only a stretcher, and there is no array of high-tech lifesaving apparatus. But it will cart you to the hospital as fast as humanly possible.
Paddy wagons are police vehicles, driven by armed sworn police officers, normally young muscular officers without much time on the job. Young muscles are often needed to carry large citizens down three flights of stairs, and to restrain bellicose drunks, for the paddy wagon also still performs the function it did when it was pulled by horses, and “paddy” was a pejorative term for those of Irish heritage. Paddy wagon duty is recognized to be a good way to introduce young police officers to what it’s really like on the streets.
When the “assist officer” call came over the radio, Two-Oh-One was parked outside Sid’s Steak Sandwiches & Hamburgers on the corner of Cottman and Summerdale avenues, across from Northeast High School. Officer Francis Mason was at the wheel and Officer Patrick Foley was inside Sid’s, where he had ordered a couple of cheese steaks and two large Cokes to go, and then visited the gentlemen’s rest facility. He and Francis had attended a function of the Fraternal Order of Police the night before, and he had taken advantage of the free beer bar. He’d had the runs all day.
Officer Mason, when he got the call, picked up the microphone and said Two-Oh-One was responding, flicked up the siren and lights, and reached over and pushed open the passenger side door. It was ninety seconds, but seemed much longer, before Officer Foley appeared, on the run, a pained look on his face, fastening his gun belt, and jumped in the van.
Officer Mason made a U-turn on Summerdale Avenue; skidded to a stop at Cottman; waited until there was a break in the traffic; and then turned onto Cottman, running on the left side of the avenue, against oncoming traffic, until he was finally able to force himself into the inside right lane.
“I think I shit my pants,” Officer Foley said.
The broadcast was also received by a vehicle parked in the parking lot of LaSalle College at Twentieth Street and Olney Avenue, where a crew from WCBL-TV had just finished taping yet another student protest over yet another tuition increase. After a moment’s indecision, Miss Penny Bakersfield, the reporter, told the driver that there might be something in the car for “Nine’s News,” if he thought he could get there in a hurry.
Highway Two-B made a wide sweeping U-turn, its tires screeching, from the northbound center lane of Roosevelt Boulevard into the southbound right lane and then into the parking lot of the Waikiki Diner.
There were no police cars evident in the parking lot; that made it almost certain that the “assist officer, shots fired” call had come from Captain Dutch Moffitt, who had either been in his unmarked car, or his own car.
Sergeant Dannelly had the door open before Highway Two-B lurched to a stop in front of the diner. Pistol drawn, he ran into the building, with Waldron on his heels.
A blond woman was on her knees beside Dutch Moffitt, who seemed to be sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Dannelly pushed her out of the way, saw the blank look in Moffitt’s eyes, and then felt for a pulse.
“He ran out the back,” the woman said, very softly.
“Go after him!” Dannelly ordered Waldron. “I’ll go around outside.”
He pushed himself to his feet and ran back out of the diner. He recognized the signs of fury in himself—some miserable fucking pissant shit had shot Dutch, the best goddamn captain in the department—and told himself to take it easy.
He stopped and took two deep breaths and then started to run around the diner building. Then he changed his mind. He ran to the car, whose doors were still open, switched the radio to the J-Band, and picked up the microphone.
“Highway Two-B to radio. Will you have all Highway cars switch to J-Band, please.”
He waited a moment, to give radio time to relay the message, and to give everybody time to switch frequencies, and then put the mike to his lips again.
“Highway Two-B to all Highway cars. We have a police shooting at Boulevard and Harbison involving Highway One. All Highway units respond and survey the area for suspect. Radio, will you rebroadcast the description of the suspect?”
He threw the microphone on the seat and started to run to the rear of the Waikiki Diner. He knew that all over the city, every Highway Patrol car had turned on its siren and flashing lights and was heading for the Waikiki Diner.
“Highway takes care of its own,” Sergeant Dannelly said firmly, although there was nobody around to hear him.
The third response to the “assist officer, shots fired” call came from a new, light tan 1973 Ford LTD Brougham, which was proceeding northward on Roosevelt Boulevard, just past Adams Avenue and the huge, red brick regional offices of Sears, Roebuck & Company.
There was nothing to indicate the LTD was a police vehicle. It even had whitewall tires. When the driver, Peter F. Wohl, a tall man in his very early thirties, wearing a well-cut glen-plaid suit, decided to respond, he had to lean over and open the glove compartment to take the microphone out.
“Isaac Twenty-three,” he said to the microphone, “put me in on that assist.”
He pushed in the button on the steering wheel that caused all the lights on the LTD to flash on and off (what Ford called “the emergency flasher system”) and started methodically sounding his horn. The LTD had neither a siren nor a flashing light.
“Isaac” was the call sign for “Inspector.” Peter F. Wohl was a Staff Inspector. On those very rare occasions when he wore a uniform, it carried a gold leaf insignia, identical to the U.S. military’s insignia for a major.
A Staff Inspector ranked immediately above a captain, and immediately below an inspector, who wore the rank insignia of a lieutenant colonel. There were eighteen of them, and Peter F. Wohl was the youngest. Staff inspectors thought of themselves as, and were generally regarded, by those who knew what they really did, to be, some of the best cops around.
They were charged with investigating police corruption, but that was not all they did, and they didn’t even do that the way most people thought they did. They were not interested in some cop taking an Easter ham from a butcher, but their ears did pick up when the word started going around that a captain somewhere had taken a blonde not his wife to Jersey to play the horses in a new Buick.
As they thought of it, they investigated corruption in the city administration; fraud against the city; bribery and extortion; crimes with a political connection; the more interesting endeavors of organized crime; a number of other interesting things; and only w
ay down at the bottom of the list, crooked cops.
Peter (no one had ever called him “Pete,” not even as a kid; even then he had had a quiet dignity) Wohl did not look much the popular image of a cop. People would guess that he was a stockbroker, or maybe an engineer or lawyer. A professional, in other words. But he was a cop. He’d done his time walking a beat, and he’d even been a corporal in the Highway Patrol. But when he’d made sergeant, young, not quite six years on the force, they’d assigned him to the Civil Disobedience Squad, in plain clothes, and he’d been in plain clothes ever since.
It was said that Peter Wohl would certainly make it up toward the top, maybe all the way. He had the smarts and he worked hard, and he seldom made mistakes. Equally important, he came from a long line of cops. His father had retired as a Chief Inspector, and the line went back far behind him.
The roots of the Wohl family were in Hesse. Friedrich Wohl had been a farmer from a small village near Kassel, pressed into service as a Grenadier in the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel’s Regiment of Light Foot. Primarily to finance a university he had founded (and named after himself) in buildings he confiscated from the Roman Catholic Church at Marburg an der Lahn, Landgrave Philip had rented out his soldiers to His Most Britannic Majesty, George III of England, who had a rebellion on his hands in his North American colonies.
Some predecessor of William Casey (some say it was Baron von Steuben, others think it was the Marquis de Lafayette) pointed out to the founding fathers that the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel’s Regiment of Light Foot (known, because of their uniforms, as “the Redcoats”) were first-class soldiers, sure to cause the Continental Army a good deal of trouble. But they also pointed out that many of them were conscripted, and not very fond of the Landgrave for conscripting them. And, further, that a number of them were Roman Catholic, who considered the Landgrave’s expulsion of the Church and his confiscation of Church property an unspeakable outrage against Holy Mother Church.
It was theorized that an offer of 160 acres of land, a small amount of gold, and a horse might induce a number of the Redcoats to desert. The theory was put into practice and at least one hundred Redcoats took advantage of the offer. Among them, although he was not a Roman Catholic and had entered the service of the Landgrave voluntarily, was Grenadier Friedrich Wohl.
Friedrich Wohl’s farm, near what is now Media, prospered. When the War of 1812 came along, he borrowed heavily against it, and used the money to invest in a privateer, which would prey upon British shipping and make him a fortune. The Determination sailed down the Delaware with all flags flying and was never heard from again.
Wohl lost his farm and was reduced to hiring himself and his sons out as farm laborers.
The sons moved to Philadelphia, where they practiced, without notable success, various trades and opened several small businesses, all of which failed. In 1854, following the Act of Consolidation, which saw the area of Philadelphia grow from 360 acres to 83,000 by the consolidation of all the tiny political entities in the area into a city, Karl-Heinz Wohl, Friedrich Wohl’s youngest grandson, managed to have himself appointed to the new police department.
There had been at least one Wohl on the rolls of the Philadelphia Police Department ever since. When Peter Wohl graduated from the police academy, a captain, two lieutenants, and a detective who were either his uncles or cousins sat with Chief Inspector August Wohl on folding chairs in the auditorium watching Peter take the oath.
There was a long line of cars slowing to enter Oxford Circle ahead of him, a line that was not likely to make room for him, no matter how his lights flashed, or he sounded the horn. He fumed until his path was cleared, then floored the accelerator, racing through the circle, and leaving in his wake a half dozen citizens wondering where the cops were when they were needed to protect people from idiots like the one in the tan Ford.
He reached the intersection on Roosevelt Boulevard, at the 6600 block, where Harbison and Magee come together to cross it, and then separate again on the other side. The light was orange and then red, but he thought he could beat the first car starting up, and floored it and got across to the far lane, and then had to brake hard to keep from getting broadsided by a paddy wagon that had come down Bustleton Avenue.
The cop at the wheel of the wagon gave him a look of absolute contempt and fury as it raced past him.
Wohl followed it into the Waikiki Diner parking lot, and stopped behind it.
There was a Highway Patrol car, both doors open, nose against the entrance; and Wohl caught a glimpse of a Highway Patrolman running like hell, pistol pointing to the sky next to his ear, obviously headed for the rear of the building.
Wohl got out of his car and started toward the diner.
“Hey, you!” a voice called.
It was the driver of the wagon. He had his pistol out, too, with the muzzle pointed to the sky.
“Police officer,” Wohl said, and then, when he saw a faint glimmer of disbelief on the young cop’s face, added, “Inspector Wohl.”
The cop nodded.
Wohl started again toward the diner entrance and almost stepped on the body of a young person lying in a growing pool of blood. Wohl quickly felt for a pulse, and as he decided there was none, became aware that the body was that of a young woman.
He stood up and took his pistol, a Smith & Wesson “Chiefs Special” snub-nosed .38 Special, from its shoulder holster. There was no question now that shots had been fired.
“In here, Officer!” a voice called, and when Wohl saw that it was Teddy Galanapoulos, who owned the Waikiki, he pushed his jacket out of the way, and reholstered his pistol. Whatever had happened here was over..
Teddy hadn’t been calling to him, and when he ran up looked at him curiously, even suspiciously, until he recognized him.
“Lieutenant Wohl,” he said. It was not the right place or time to correct him. “Hello, Mr. Galanapoulos,” Wohl said. “What’s going on?”
“Fucking kid killed Captain Moffitt,” Teddy said, and pointed.
Dutch Moffitt, in civilian clothes, was slumped against the wall. A woman was kneeling beside him. She was sobbing, and as Wohl watched, she put a hand out very gingerly and very tenderly and pulled Dutch’s eyelids closed.
Wohl turned to the door. The cop from the paddy wagon was coming in, and the parking lot was filling with police cars, which screeched to a halt and from which uniformed police erupted.
“Put your gun away,” Wohl ordered, “and go get your stretcher. The woman in the parking lot is dead.”
A look of disappointment on his face, the young cop did as he was ordered.
A Highway Patrol sergeant, one Wohl didn’t recognize, walked quickly through the restaurant, holstering his pistol. He looked curiously at Wohl.
“I’m Inspector Wohl,” Wohl said.
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Alex Dannelly said. “There was two of them, sir. Dutch got the one that shot him. The other one, a white male twenty to twenty-five years old, blond hair, ran through the restaurant and out the kitchen.”
“You get it on the air?”
“No, sir,” Dannelly said.
“Do it, then,” Wohl ordered. “And then seal this place up, make sure nobody leaves, keep the people in their seats, make sure nothing gets disturbed ...”
“Got it,” the Highway Patrol sergeant said, and went to the door and waved three policemen inside.
Wohl dropped to his knees beside the woman, and laid a gentle hand on her back.
“My name is Wohl,” he said. “I’m a police officer.”
She turned to look at him. There was horror in her eyes, and tears running down her cheeks had left a path through her face powder. She looked familiar. And she was not Mrs. Richard C. Moffitt.
“Let me help you to your feet,” Wohl said, gently.
“Get a blanket or something,” Louise Dutton said, in nearly a whisper. “Cover him up, Goddamn it!”
“Teddy,” Wohl ordered. “Get a tablecloth or something.”
; He helped the woman to her feet.
Officer Francis Mason and Officer Patrick Foley ran in, with the stretcher from the back of Two-Oh-One. They quickly snapped the stretcher open and unceremoniously heaved Dutch Moffitt onto it. Wohl started for the door to open it for them, but a uniform beat him to it.
The sound of sirens outside was now deafening. He looked through the plate-glass door of the diner and saw there were police cars all over it. As he watched, a white van with WCBL-TC CHANNEL 9 painted on its side pulled to the curb, a sliding door opened, and a man with a camera resting on his shoulders jumped out.
Wohl turned to the blonde. “You were a friend of Captain Moffitt’s?”
She nodded.
Where the hell do I know her from? What was she up to with Dutch ?
“Why are they doing that?” she asked. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
I don’t know why they’re doing that, Wohl thought. The dead are left where they have fallen, for the convenience of the Homicide Detectives. But, I guess maybe no one wants to admit that a fellow cop is really dead.
“Yes, I’m afraid he is,” Wohl said. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“He was trying to stop a holdup,” Louise said. “And somebody shot him. A girl, he said.”
A portly, red-faced policeman in a white shirt with captain’s bars pinned to the epaulets of his white shirt came into the Waikiki.
His name was Jack McGovern, and he was the commanding officer of the Second District. He had been a lieutenant in Highway Patrol when Peter Wohl had been a corporal. He had made captain on the promotion list before Peter Wohl had made captain, and they had sat across the room from each other when they’d sat for the Staff Inspector’s examination. Peter Wohl had been first on the list; Jack McGovern hadn’t made it.
McGovern’s eyebrows rose when he saw Wohl.
“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Was that Dutch Moffitt they just carried out of here?” he asked.
“That was Dutch,” Wohl confirmed. “He walked in on a holdup.”
McGovern’s eyebrows rose in question.
Men In Blue Page 3