"Carlucci being the mayor?" Wells asked. Dye nodded. "I get the picture," Wells said.
"Well, apparently what happened was that somebody tried to stick up the diner. The cop saw it, and tried to stop it, and there were two robbers, one of them a girl. She let fly at him with a.22 pistol, and hit him. He got his gun out and blew her away. From what I heard, he didn't even know he was shot until he dropped dead."
"I don't understand that," Wells said.
"According to my source-who is a police reporter named Mickey O'Hara-the bullet severed an artery, and he bled to death internally."
"Right in front of my daughter?"
"Yes, sir, she was right there."
"That's awful," Wells said.
"If I didn't mention this, the guy who was doing the stickup got away in the confusion. They're still looking for him."
"Do they know who he is?"
Dye dropped his eyes to his notebook.
"The guy's name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher, white male, twenty-four. The girl who shot the cop was a junkie-so is Gallagher, by the way-named Dorothy Ann Schmeltzer. High-class folks, both of them."
"Go on," Wells said.
"Of course, every cop in Philadelphia was there in two minutes," Dye went on. "One of them was smart enough to figure out who Miss Dutton was-"
"Got a name?"
"Wohl," Dye said. "He's a staff inspector. According to O'Hara he's one of the brighter ones. He's the youngest staff inspector; he just sent the city housing director to the slammer, him and a union big shot-"
Wells made a "go on" gesture with his hands, and then took underwear from a suitcase and pulled a T-shirt over his head.
"So Wohl treated her very well. He sent her home in a police car, and had another cop drive her car," Dye went on. "Half, O'Hara said, because she's on the tube, and half because he's a nice guy. So she went to work, and did the news at six, and again at eleven, and then she went out and had a couple of drinks with the news director, a guy named Leonard Cohen, and a couple of other people. Then she went home. The door to the apartment on the ground floor-I was there, she had to walk past it to get to the elevator-was open, and she went in, and found Jerome Nelson in his bedroom. Party or parties unknown had hacked him up with a Chinese cleaver."
"What's a Chinese cleaver?" Wells asked.
"Looks like a regular cleaver, but it's thinner, and sharper," Dye explained.
Wells, in the act of buttoning a shirt, nodded.
"What was my daughter's relationship with the murdered man?" Wells asked. "I mean, why did she walk into his apartment?"
"They were friends, I guess. He was a nice little guy. Funny."
"There was nothing between them?"
"He was homosexual, Mr. Wells," Dye said.
"I see," Wells said.
"And, Stan," Kurt Kruger said, evenly, "he's-he was-Arthur Nelson's son."
"Poor Arthur," Wells said. "He knew?"
"I don't see how he couldn't know," Dye said.
"And I suppose that's all over the front pages, too?"
"No," Dye said. "Not so far. Professional courtesy, I suppose."
"Interesting question, Kurt," Wells said, thoughtfully. "What would we have done? Shown the same 'professional courtesy'?"
"I don't know," Kruger said. "Was his... sexual inclination... germane to the story?"
"Was it?"
"Nobody knows yet," Kruger said. "Until it comes out, my inclination would be not to mention the homosexuality. If it comes out there is a connection, then I think I'd have to print it. One definition of news is that's it's anything people would be interested to hear."
"Another, some cynics have said," Wells said dryly, "is that news is what the publisher says it is. That's one more argument against having only one newspaper in a town."
"Would you print it, Stan?" Kruger asked.
"That's what I have all those high-priced editors for," Wells said. "To make painful decisions like that." He paused. "I'd go with what you said, Kurt. If it's just a sidebar, don't use it. If it's germane, I think you would have to."
Kruger grunted.
"Go on, Dick," Wells said to Richard Dye.
"Miss We- Miss Dutton-"
"Try 'your daughter,' Dick," Wells said, adding, "if there's some confusion in your mind."
"Your daughter called the cops. They came, including the Homicide lieutenant on duty, a real horse's ass named DelRaye. They had words."
"About what?"
"He told her she had to go to the Roundhouse-the police headquarters, downtown-and she said she had told him everything she knew, and wasn't going anywhere. Then she went upstairs to her apartment. DelRaye told her unless she came out, he was going to knock the door down, and have her taken to the Roundhouse in a paddy wagon."
"Why do I have the feeling you're tactfully leaving something out, Dick? I want all of it."
"Okay," Dye said, meeting his eyes. "She'd had a couple of drinks. Maybe a couple too many. And she used a couple of choice words on DelRaye."
"You have a quote?"
"`Go fuck yourself,'" Dye quoted.
"Did she really?" Wells said. "How to win friends and influence people."
"So she must have called Inspector Wohl, and he showed up, and got her away from the apartment through the basement," Dye said. "In the morning, he brought her to the Roundhouse. There was a lawyer, Colonel Mawson, waiting for her there."
"She must have called me while she was in the apartment waiting for the good cop to show up," Wells said. "Either my wife couldn't tell Louise was drinking, or didn't want to say anything. She said she was afraid."
"I saw pictures of the murdered guy, Mr. Wells. Enough to make you throw up. She had every reason to be frightened."
"Where was she from the time-what was the time?- the good cop took her away from the apartment, and the time he brought her to the police station?"
"After one in the morning," Dye said. "He probably took her to a girl friend's house, or something."
"Or boyfriend's house?" Wells said. "You are a good leg man, Dick. What did you turn up about a boyfriend?"
"No one in particular," Dye said. "Couple of guys, none of whom seem to have been involved."
"Mr. Wells," Ward V. Fengler said, "if I may interject, Colonel Mawson asked Miss Dutton where she had been all night, and she declined to tell him."
"That spells boyfriend," Wells said. "And, maybe guessing I would show up here, she didn't want me to know she'd spent the night with him. Now my curiosity's aroused. Can you get me some more on that subject, Dick?"
"I'll give it a shot, sir," Dye said.
"Has she gone back to work?" Wells asked, and then, looking at his watch, answered his own question. "The best way to find that out is to look at the tube, isn't it?"
It was six-fifteen. As Stanford Fortner Wells III finished dressing, he watched his daughter do her telecast.
"She's tough," he said, admiringly.
"I'd forgotten how pretty she was," Kurt Kruger said.
"That, too." Wells chuckled. "Okay. I'm going to see her. Mr. Fengler, there's no point that I can see in taking any more of your time. I'd like to keep the car, if I may, and I would be grateful if you would get in touch with Colonel Mawson and tell him I'll be in touch in the morning."
"I'm at your disposal, Mr. Wells, if you think I could be of any assistance," Fengler said.
"I can handle it, I think, from here on in. If I need some help, I've got Mawson's number, office and home. Thank you for all your courtesy."
Fengler knew that he had been dismissed.
"I'd like to have dinner with you, Kurt, but that's not going to be possible. Thank you. Again."
"Aw, hell, Stan."
"You, Dick, I would like you to stick around. I may need a leg man to do more than find out who my daughter has been seeing. You came, I hope, prepared to stay a couple of days?"
"Yes, sir," Dye said.
"Whose suite is this?" Wells asked.
Fengler and Kruger looked at each other and shrugged, and smiled.
"Well, find out. And then see if you can turn the other one in on a room for Dick," Wells said. "Make sure he stays here in the hotel, in any case."
Then he walked quickly among them, shook their hands, and left the suite.
***
There was a Ford pulling away from the front door of WCBL-TV when the limousine arrived. The limousine took that place.
Wells walked up to the receptionist.
"My name is Stanford Wells," he said. "I would like to see Miss Louise Dutton."
The name Stanford Wells meant nothing whatever to the receptionist, but she thought that the nicely dressed man standing before her didn't look like a kook.
"Does Miss Dutton expect you?" she asked with a smile.
"No, but I bet if you tell her her father is out here, she'll come out and get me."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," the receptionist said. "You just missed her! I'm surprised you didn't see her. She just this minute left."
"Do you have any idea where she went?"
"No," the receptionist said. "But she was with Inspector Wohl, if that's any help."
"Thank you very much," Stanford Fortner Wells III said, and went out and got back in the limousine. He fished in his pockets and then swore.
"Something wrong, sir?" the chauffeur asked.
"Take me back to the hotel. I left my daughter's address on the goddamned dresser."
***
Mickey O'Hara sat virtually motionless for three minutes before the computer terminal on his desk in the city room of the Philadelphia Bulletin. The only thing that moved was his tongue behind his lower lip.
Then, all of a sudden, his bushy eyebrows rose, his eyes lit up, his lips reflected satisfaction, and his fingers began to fly over the keys. He had been searching for his lead, and he had found it.
SLUG: Fried Thug
By Michael J. O'Hara
Gerald Vincent Gallagher, 24, was electrocuted and dismembered at 4:28 this afternoon, ending a massive, citywide, twenty-four-hour manhunt by eight thousand Philadelphia policemen.
Gallagher, of a West Lindley Avenue address, had been sought by police on murder charges since he eluded capture following a foiled robbery at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard yesterday afternoon. Highway Patrol Captain Richard C. "Dutch" Moffitt happened to be in the restaurant, in civilian clothes, with WCBL-TV Anchorwoman Louise Dutton. Police say Captain Moffitt was shot to death in a gun battle with Dorothy Ann Schmeltzer, whom police say was Gallagher's accomplice, when he attempted to arrest Gallagher.
At 4:24 p.m. Charles McFadden, a 22-year-old Narcotics plainclothesman, spotted Gallagher, at the Bridge & Pratt Streets Terminal in Northeast Philadelphia. Gallagher attempted escape by running down a narrow workman's platform alongside the elevated tracks toward the Margaret-Orthodox Station. Just as McFadden caught up with him, he slipped, fell to the tracks, touched the third rail; and moments later was run over by four cars of a northbound elevated train.
Mickey O'Hara stopped typing, looked at the screen, and read what he had written. The thoughtful look came back on his face. He typed MORETOCOME MORETOCOME, then punched the send key.
Then he stood up and walked across the city room to the city editor's desk, and then stepped behind it. When the city editor was finished with what he was doing, he looked up and over his shoulder at Mickey O'Hara.
"Punch up 'fried thug,' " Mickey said.
The city editor did so, by pressing keys on one of his terminals that called up the story from the central computer memory and displayed it on his monitor.
As the city editor read Mickey's first 'graphs, O'Hara leaned over and dialed the number of the photo lab.
"Bobby, this is Mickey. Did they come out?"
"Nice," the city editor said. "How much more is there?"
"How much space can I have?"
"Pictures?"
"Two good ones for sure," Mickey said. "I got a lovely shot of the severed head."
"I mean ones we can print, Mickey," the city editor said. He pointed to the telephone in Mickey's hand. "That the lab?" Mickey nodded, and the city editor gestured for the phone. "Print one of each, right away," he said, and hung up.
"I asked how much space I can have," Mickey O'Hara said.
"Everybody else was there, I guess?"
"Nobody else has pictures of the cop," Mickey said. "For that matter, of the tracks when anything was still going on."
"And you're sure this is the guy?"
"One of the Fifteenth District cops recognized the head," Mickey said.
"Give me a thousand, twelve hundred words," the city editor said. "Things are a little slow. Nothing but wars."
Mickey O'Hara nodded and walked back to his desk and sat down before the computer terminal. He pushed the COMPOSE key, and typed,
SLUG: Fried Thug
By Michael J. O'Hara
Add One
***
Sergeant Tom Lenihan stepped into the doorway of the office of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, who commanded the Special Investigations Bureau, and stood waiting until he had Coughlin's attention.
"What is it, Tom?"
"They just got Gerald Vincent Gallagher, Chief,'' Lenihan said.
"Good," Coughlin said. "Where? How?"
"Lieutenant Pekach just phoned," Lenihan said. "Two of his guys-one of them that young plainclothes guy who identified the girl-went looking for him on their own. They spotted him at the Bridge Street Terminal. He ran. Officer McFadden chased him down the elevated tracks. Gallagher slipped, fell onto the third rail, and then a train ran over him."
Denny Coughlin's face froze. His eyes were on Lenihan, but Lenihan knew that he wasn't seeing him, that he was thinking.
Dennis V. Coughlin was only one of eleven chief inspectors of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia. But it could be argued that he was first among equals. Under his command (among others) were the Narcotics Unit; the Vice Unit; the Internal Affairs Division; the Staff Investigation Unit; and the Organized Crime Intelligence Unit.
The other ten chief inspectors reported to either the deputy commissioner (Operations) or the deputy commissioner (Administration), who reported to the first deputy commissioner, who reported to the commissioner. Denny Coughlin reported directly to the first deputy commissioner.
Phrased very simply, there were only two people in the department who could tell Denny Coughlin what to do, or ask him what he was doing: the first deputy commissioner and the commissioner himself. On the other hand, without any arrogance at all, Denny Coughlin believed that what happened anywhere in the police department was his business.
"Tom, is Inspector Kegley out there?"
"Yes, sir, I think so."
"Would you tell him, please, unless there is a good reason he can't, I would like him to find out exactly what happened?"
"Yes, sir."
"I mean right now, Tom," Coughlin said. "He doesn't have to give me a white paper, just get the information to me." Coughlin looked at his watch. "I'll be at Dutch's wake, say from six o'clock until it's over. Are you going over there with me?"
"Yes, sir," Lenihan said, and departed.
Two minutes later, Lenihan was back.
"Inspector Kegley's on his way, sir. He said he'd see you at Marshutz & Sons," he reported.
"Good, Tom. Thank you," Coughlin said. Staff Inspector George Kegley had come up through the Detective Bureau, and had done some time in Homicide. He was a quiet, phlegmatic, soft-eyed man who missed very little once he turned his attention to something. If there was something not quite right about the pursuit and death of Gerald Vincent Gallagher, Kegley would soon sniff it out.
Coughlin returned his attention to the file on his desk. It was a report from Internal Affairs involving two officers of the Northwest Police Division. There had been a party. Officer A had paid uncalled-for personal attention to Mrs. B. Mrs. B had not, in Officer B's (her husband's) judgment, de
clined the attention with the proper outraged indignation. She had, in fact, seemed to like it. Whereupon Officer B had belted his wife in the chops, and taken off after Officer A, pistol drawn, threatening to kill the sonofabitch. No real harm had been done, but the whole matter was now official, and something would have to be done.
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