Men In Blue

by W. E. B Griffin

  But Gallagher had spotted him, and there was no way he could run back toward the station, because there were no people on that platform, and the goddamned narc would feel free to shoot at him. He turned, instead, and ran down the platform in the other direction, to the end, and jumped over a yellow painted barrier with a sign on it reading DANGER! KEEP OFF!

  Beyond the barrier was a narrow workman’s walkway. It ran as far as the next station, but Gerald Vincent Gallagher wasn’t planning on running that far, just maybe two, three, blocks where he knew there was a stairway, more of a ladder, really, he could climb down to Frankford Avenue.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw that the fucking narc was doing what he had done, crossing the tracks and then boosting himself up onto the passenger platform. The big fat sonofabitch had trouble hauling all that lard onto the platform, and for a moment, the way the fucking narc was flailing around with his legs trying to get up on the platform, Gerald Vincent Gallagher thought he might get lucky and the narc’s legs would touch the third rail, and the cocksucker would fry himself.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Officer McFadden got first to his knees, and then stood up. Holding his pistol in both hands, he took aim at Gerald Vincent Gallagher.

  But he didn’t pull the trigger. Heaving and panting the way he was, there was little chance that he could hit the little sonofabitch as far away as he was, and Christ only knew where the bullet would go after he fired. Probably get some nun between the eyes.

  “You little sonofabitch! I’m going to get your ass!” he screamed in fury, and started racing after him again.

  Officer Jesus Martinez reached the center platform at this time. He knew from the direction people were looking where the action was, and ran down the center platform to the end.

  He saw Officer McFadden first, and then, fifty, sixty yards ahead of him, a slight white male that almost certainly had to be Gerald Vincent Gallagher. They were running, carefully, along the walkway next to the rail.

  The reason they were running carefully was that the walkway was over the third rail. The walkway was built of short lengths, about five feet long, of prefabricated pieces. Some of them, the real old ones, were heavy wooden planking. Some of the newer ones were pierced steel, and the most modern were of exposed aggregate cement. They provided a precarious perch in any event, and they were not designed to be foot-racing paths.

  Officer Martinez made another snap decision. There was no way he could catch up with them, and even to try would mean that he would have to jump down and cross the tracks, and risk electrocuting himself on the third rail. But he could catch the departing train, ride to the next station, and then start walking back. That would put Gerald Vincent Gallagher between them.

  He ran for the train and jumped inside, just as the doors closed.

  He scared hell, with his pistol drawn, out of the people on the car, and they backed away from him as if he was on fire.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said, not very loudly because he was out of breath. “Nothing to worry about.”

  When the train passed Charley McFadden and Gerald Vincent Gallagher, they were both still running very carefully, watching their feet.

  Jesus Christ, Charley, shoot the sonofabitch!

  The same thought had occurred to Charley McFadden at just about that moment, and even as he ran, he wondered why he didn’t stop running, drop to his knees, and, using a two-handed hold, try to put Gerald Vincent Gallagher down.

  There were several reasons, and they all came to him. For one thing, he wasn’t at all sure that he could hit him. For another, he was worried about where the bullet, the bullets, plural, would go if he missed. People lived close to the tracks here. He didn’t want to kill one of them.

  And then he realized the real reason. He didn’t want to kill Gerald Vincent Gallagher. The little shit might deserve it, and it might mean that Officer Charley McFadden didn’t have the balls to be a cop, but the facts were that Gerald Vincent Gallagher didn’t have a gun—if he had, the little shit would have used it, he had nothing to lose from a second charge of murder—and wasn’t posing, right now, any real threat to anybody but himself, running down the tracks like this.

  Hay-zus must have figured out what was going on by now, and got on the radio and called for help. In a couple of minutes, there would be cops responding from all over. All he had to do was keep Gerald Vincent Gallagher in sight, and keep him from hurting himself or somebody else, and everything would be all right.

  Eighteen hundred and fifty-three feet (as was later measured with great care) south of the Bridge & Pratt Streets Terminal, Gerald Vincent Gallagher realized that he could not run another ten feet. His chest hurt so much he wanted to cry from the pain. And that big, fat, fucking narc was still on his tail.

  Gerald Vincent Gallagher stopped running, and turned around and grabbed the railing beside the walkway, and dropped to his knees.

  “I give up,” he said. “For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot me!”

  Officer Charley McFadden could understand what he said, even the way he said it puffing and out of breath.

  Unable to speak himself, he walked up the walkway, heaving with the exertion.

  And then he raised his arm, the left one, without the pistol, and pointed down the track, and tried to find his voice. What he wanted to say was “Watch out, there’s a train coming!”

  He couldn’t find his voice, but Gerald Vincent Gallagher took his meaning. He looked over his shoulder at the approaching train. And tried to get to his feet, so that he would be able to hold on to the railing good and tight as the train passed.

  And he slipped.

  And he fell onto the tracks.

  And he put his hand out as a reflex motion, to break his fall, and his wrist found the third rail and Gerald Vincent Gallagher fried.

  And then the train came, and all four cars rolled over him.

  When Officer Jesus Martinez came down the walkway, he found Officer Charley McFadden bent over the railing, sick white in the face, and covered with vomitus.

  ****

  Michael J. “Mickey” O’Hara had worked, at one time or another, for all the newspapers in Philadelphia, and had ventured as far afield as New York City and Washington, DC.

  He was an “old-time” reporter, and even something of a legend, although he was just past forty. He looked older than forty. Mickey liked a drop of the grape whenever he could get his hands on one, and that was the usual reason his employment had been terminated; for in his cups Mickey O’Hara was prone not only to describing the character flaws and ancestry of his superiors in picaresque profanity worthy of a cavalry sergeant, but also, depending on the imagined level of provocation and the amount of alcohol in his system, to punch them out.

  But on the other hand, Mickey O’Hara was, when off the sauce, one hell of a reporter. He had what some believe to be the genetic Irish talent for storytelling. He could breathe life into a story that otherwise really wouldn’t deserve repeating. He was also a master practitioner of his craft, which was journalism generally and the police beat specifically. His car was equipped with a very elaborate shortwave receiver permitting Mickey to listen in to police communications.

  Mickey had come to know a lot of cops in twenty years, and although he was technically not a member of either organization, if there was an affair of the Emerald Society or the Fraternal Order of Police and Mickey O’Hara was not there, people wondered, with concern, if he was sick or something.

  Mickey liked most cops and most cops liked Mickey. Mickey, however, considered few cops above the grade of sergeant as cops. The cant of the law-enforcement community gets in the way here. All policemen are police officers, which means they are executing an office for the government.

  There is a rank structure in the police department, paralleling that of the army, even to the insignia of rank. So far as Mickey was concerned, anybody in the rank of lieutenant or higher (a white-shirt) was not really a cop, but a brass hat, a memb
er of the establishment. There were exceptions to this, of course. Mickey was very fond of Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, for example, and had used his considerable influence with the managing editor to see that when Lowenstein’s boys were bar mitzvahed, those socioreligious events had been prominently featured in the paper.

  And he had liked Dutch Moffitt. There were a few others, a captain here, a lieutenant there, whom Mickey liked, even including Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, but by and large he considered anyone who wore a white shirt with his uniform to be much like the officers he had known and actively disliked in the army.

  He liked the guys—the ordinary patrolmen and the corporals and detectives and sergeants—on the street, and they liked him. He got their pictures in the paper, with their names spelled right, and he never violated a confidence.

  Mickey O’Hara had just gone to work when he heard the call, “man with a gun at the El terminal at Frankford and Pratt.” That is to say, he had just left Mulvaney’s Tap Room at Tabor and Rising Sun avenues, where he had had two beers and nobly refused the offer of a third, and gotten in his car to drive downtown, where he planned to begin the day by dropping by the Ninth District police station.

  Almost immediately, there were other calls. Another Fifteenth District car was ordered to the Margaret-Orthodox Station, which was the next station, headed downtown, from Bridge and Pratt Streets, and then right after that came an “assist officer” call, and then a warning that plainclothes officers were on the scene. Finally, there was a call for the rescue squad and the fire department.

  Mickey O’Hara decided that whatever was happening between the Pratt & Bridge Streets Terminal and the Margaret-Orthodox Station might be worthy of his professional attention.

  He went down to Roosevelt Boulevard, turned left, and entered the center lane. He drove fast, but not recklessly, weaving skillfully through traffic, cursing and being cursed in turn by the drivers of more slowly moving vehicles. He went around the bend at Friends’ Hospital, slipped into the outside lane, and made a right turn, through a red light, onto Bridge Street.

  When Mickey O’Hara got to the Bridge & Pratt Streets Terminal, he found a crowd of people who were being kept from going up the stairs to the El station by four or five cops under the supervision of a sergeant.

  He caught the eye of the sergeant, winked, and shrugged his shoulders in a “what’s up?” gesture.

  A moment later, the sergeant shouldered his way through the crowd.

  “Undercover Narcotics guy spotted the kid who shot Dutch Moffitt,” the sergeant said instead of a greeting when they shook hands. “He took off down the tracks, with the undercover chasing him, and fell off the walkway, fried himself on the third rail, and then got himself run over by a train.”

  “Jesus!” Mickey O’Hara said.

  “They’re still up there,” the sergeant said.

  “Is there anyway I can get up there?” Mickey asked

  “Watch out for the third rail, Mick,” the sergeant said

  THIRTEEN

  Ward V. Fengler, who had three months before been named a partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester (there were seventeen partners, in addition to the five senior partners), pushed open the glass door from the Butler Aviation waiting room at Philadelphia International Airport and walked onto the tarmac as the Bell Ranger helicopter touched down.

  Fengler was very tall and very thin and, at thirty-two, already evidencing male pattern baldness. He had spent most of the day, from ten o’clock onward, waiting around the airport for Mr. Wells.

  Stanford Fortner Wells III got out of the helicopter, and then turned to reach for his luggage. He was a small man, intense, graying, superbly tailored. The temple piece of a set of horn-rimmed glasses hung outside the pocket of his glen plaid suit.

  “Mr. Wells, I’m Ward Fengler of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester,” Fengler said. “Colonel Mawson asked me to meet you.”

  Wells examined him quickly but carefully and put out his hand.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting like this,” he said. “First, we had to land in Newfoundland, and then when we got to New York, the goddamned airport, I suppose predictably, was stacked to heaven’s basement.”

  “I hope you had a good flight,” Fengler said.

  “I hate airplanes,” Wells said, matter-of-factly.

  “We have a car,” Fengler said. “And Colonel Mawson has put you up in the Warwick. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Fine,” Wells said. “Has Mawson talked to Kruger?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “The reason I asked is that someone is to meet me at the Warwick.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, sir.”

  “Then maybe something is finally breaking right,” Wells said. “The Warwick’s fine.”

  The only thing Stanford Fortner Wells III said on the ride downtown was to make the announcement that he used to come to Philadelphia when he was at Princeton.

  “And I went from Philadelphia to Princeton,” Fengler said.

  Wells grunted, and smiled.

  When they reached the hotel, Wells got quickly out of the limousine and hurried across the sidewalk, up the stairs, and through the door to the lobby. Fengler scurried after him.

  ****

  There was a television monitor mounted on the wall above the receptionist’s desk at WCBL-TV when Peter Wohl walked in. “Nine’s News” at six was on, and Louise Dutton was looking right into the camera.

  My God, she’s good-looking!

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  “My name is Wohl,” Peter said. “I’m here to see Miss Dutton.”

  The receptionist smiled at him, and picked up a light blue telephone.

  “Sharon,” she said. “Inspector Wohl is here.” Then she looked at Wohl. “She’ll be right with you, Inspector.”

  Sharon turned out to be a startlingly good-looking young woman, with dark eyes and long dark hair, and a marvelous set of knockers. Her smile was dazzling.

  “Right this way, Inspector,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Sharon Feldman.”

  She led him into the building, down a corridor, and through a door marked STUDIO C. It was crowded with people and cameras, and what he supposed were sets, one of which was used for “Nine’s News.” He was surprised when Louise saw him and waved happily at him, understanding only after a moment that she was not at the moment being telecast, or televised, or whatever they called it.

  Sharon Feldman led him through another door, and he found himself in a control room.

  “There’s coffee, Inspector,” Sharon Feldman said. “Help yourself. See you!”

  “Roll the Wonder Bread,” an intense young woman in horn-rimmed glasses, sitting in the rear of two rows of chairs behind a control console said; and Peter saw, on one of a dozen monitors, one marked AIR, the beginning of a Wonder Bread commercial.

  “Funny,” a man said to Peter Wohl, “you don’t look like a cop.”

  Peter looked at him icily.

  “Leonard Cohen,” the man said. “I’m the news director.”

  “Good for you,” Peter said.

  “No offense, Wohl,” Cohen said. “But you really don’t, you know, look like what the word ‘cop’ calls to mind.”

  “You don’t look much like Walter Cronkite yourself,” Peter said.

  “I don’t make as much money, either,” Cohen said, disarmingly.

  “Neither, I suppose, does the president of the United States,” Wohl said.

  “At least that we know about,” Cohen said. “Did you catch the guy who got away from the Waikiki Diner?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Peter said.

  “But you will?”

  “I think so,” Peter said. “It’s a question of time.”

  “What about the party or parties unknown who hacked up the fairy?”

  “What fairy is that?”

  “Come on,” Cohen said. “Nelson.”

 
“Was he a fairy?” Peter asked, innocently.

  “Wasn’t he?”

  “I didn’t know him that well,” Peter said. “Did you?”

  Cohen smiled at Wohl approvingly.

  “Maybe the princess has met her match,” he said. “I knew there had to be some kind of an attraction.”

  “Leonard, for Christ’s sake, will you shut up?” the intense young woman snapped, and then, “Two, you’re out of focus, for Christ’s sake!”

  Cohen shrugged.

  “Good night, Louise,” Barton Ellison said to Louise Dutton.

  “See you at eleven, Barton,” Louise said, “when we should have film of the fire at the Navy Yard.”

  “It should be spectacular,” Barton Ellison replied. “A real four-alarm blaze.”

  “Roll the logo,” the intense young woman said.

  Through the plate-glass window, Peter saw a man step behind Louise. She took something from her ear and handed it to him, and then stood up. Then she unclipped what he realized after a moment must be a microphone, and tugged at a cord, pulling it down and out of her sleeve.

  Then she walked across the studio to the control room, entered it, walked up to him, said “Hi!”; stood on her toes, and kissed him quickly on the lips.

  The intense young woman applauded.

  “You’re just jealous, that’s all,” Louise said.

  “You got it, baby,” the intense young woman said. “Has he got a friend?”

  Louise chuckled, and then took Peter’s arm and led him out of the control, through another door, and into a corridor.

  “Since we’ll be at my place,” she said, “and I want to change anyway, I can wipe this crap off there.” She touched the heavy makeup on her face. “Where are you parked?”

  “Out in front,” he said.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “Right in front?” she asked. He nodded.

  She started to say something, and then laughed. She had, Peter thought, absolutely perfect teeth.

  “I was about to say, ‘My God, the cops will tow your car away,’ “ she said. “But I guess not, huh?”