Men In Blue

EIGHTEEN

One of their own had died in the line of duty, and police officers from virtually every police department in a one-hundred-mile circle around Philadelphia had come to honor him. They had come in uniform, and driving their patrol cars, and the result was a monumental traffic jam, despite the best efforts of more than twenty Philadelphia Traffic Division officers to maintain order.

When Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl made their careful way down the brownstone steps of Saint Dominic's Church (Dutch Moffitt's casket was surprisingly heavy) toward the hearse waiting at the curb, there were three lines of cars, parked bumper to bumper, prepared to escort Captain Moffitt to his last resting place.

Their path to the curb was lined with Highway Patrol officers, saluting. There was an additional formation of policemen on the street, and the police band, and the color guard. To the right, behind barriers, was the press. Peter looked for, but did not see, Louise Dutton.

Both Peter and Dennis Coughlin grunted with the effort as they raised the end of the casket to the level of the hearse bed, and set it gently on the chrome-plated rollers in the floor. They pushed it inside, and a man from Marshutz amp; Sons flipped levers that would keep it from moving on the way to the cemetery.

The hearse would be preceded now by the limousine of the archbishop of Philadelphia and his entourage of lesser clerics, including Dutch's parish priest, the rector of Saint Dominic's, and the police chaplain. Ahead of the hearse was a police car carrying a captain of the Traffic Division, sort of an en route command car. And out in front were twenty Highway Patrol motorcycles.

Next came Dennis V. Coughlin's Oldsmobile, with the limousine carrying the rest of the pallbearers behind it. Then came the flower cars. There had been so many flowers that the available supply of flower cars in Philadelphia and Camden had been exhausted. It had been decided that half a dozen vans would be loaded with flowers and sent to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery ahead of the procession, both to cut down the length of the line of flower cars, and so that there would be flowers in place when the procession got there.

The flower vans would travel with other vehicles, mostly buses, preceding the funeral procession, the band, the honor guard, the firing squad, and the police officers who would line the path the pallbearers would take from the cemetery road to the grave site.

Behind the flower cars in the funeral procession were the limousines carrying the family, followed by the mayor's Cadillac, two cars full of official dignitaries, and then the police commissioner's car, and those of chief inspectors. Next came the cars of "official" friends (those on the invitation list), then the cars of other friends, and finally the cars of the police officers who had come to pay their respects.

It would take a long time just to load the family, dignitaries, and official friends. As soon as the last official-friends car had been loaded, the procession would start to move away from the church.

"Tom," Chief Inspector Coughlin ordered from the backseat of the Oldsmobile, "anything on the radio?"

"I'll check, sir," Sergeant Lenihan said. He took the microphone from the glove compartment.

"C-Charlie One," he said.

"C-Charlie One," radio replied.

"We're at Saint Dominic's, about to leave for Holy Sepulchre," Lenihan said. "Anything for us?"

"Nothing, C-Charlie One," radio said.

"Check for me, please, Tom," Wohl said. "Seventeen."

"Anything for Isaac Seventeen?" Lenihan said.

"Yes, wait a minute. They were trying to reach him a couple of minutes ago."

Wohl leaned forward on the seat to better hear the speaker.

"Isaac Seventeen is to contact Homicide," the radio said.

"Thank you," Lenihan said.

"There's a phone over there," Coughlin said, pointing to a pay phone on the wall of a florist's shop across the street. "You've got time."

Peter trotted to the phone, fed it a dime, and called Homicide.

"This is Inspector Wohl," he said, when a Homicide detective answered.

"Oh, yeah, Inspector. Wait just a second." There was a pause, and then the detective, obviously reading a note, went on: "The New Jersey state police have advised us of the discovery of a murder victim meeting the description of Pierre St. Maury, also known as Errol F. Watson. The body was found near the recovered stolen Jaguar automobile. The identification is not confirmed. Photographs and fingerprints of St. Maury are being sent to New Jersey. Got that?"

"Read it again," Wohl asked, and when it had been, said, "If there's anything else in the next hour or so, I'm with C-Charlie One."

He hung up without waiting for a reply and ran back to Chief Inspector Coughlin's Oldsmobile.

"They found-the Jersey state troopers-found a body that's probably St. Maury near Nelson's car," he reported.

"Interesting," Coughlin said.

"The suspect they had in Homicide said there was talk on the street that two guys were going to get the key to Nelson's apartment from his boyfriend," Wohl said. "To see what they could steal."

There was no response from Coughlin except a grunt.

The Oldsmobile started to move.

As they passed the cordoned-off area for the press, Wohl saw Louise. She was talking into a microphone, not on camera, but as if she were taking notes.

Or, Peter thought, she didn't 't want to see me.

More than three hundred police cars formed the tail of Captain Richard C. Moffitt's funeral procession. They all had their flashing lights turned on. By the time the last visiting mourner dropped his gearshift lever in "D" and started moving, the head of the procession was well over a mile and a half ahead of him.

The long line of limousines and flower cars and police cars followed the hearse and His Eminence the Archbishop down Torresdale Avenue to Rhawn Street, out Rhawn to Oxford Avenue, turned right onto Hasbrook, right again onto Central Avenue, and then down Central to Tookany Creek Parkway, and then down the parkway to Cheltenham Avenue, and then out Cheltenham to the main entrance to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at Cheltenham and Easton Road.

Each intersection along the route was blocked for the procession, and it stayed blocked until the last car (another Philadelphia Traffic Division car) had passed. Then the officers blocking that intersection jumped in their cars (or later, in Cheltenham Township, on their motorcycles) and raced alongside, and past, the slow-moving procession to block another intersection.

Dennis V. Coughlin lit a cigar in the backseat of the Oldsmobile almost as soon as they started moving, and sat puffing thoughtfully on it, slumped down in the seat.

He didn't say a word until the fence of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery could be seen, in other words for over half an hour. Then he reached forward and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the back of the front seat.

"Peter, as I understand this," he said, "we put Dutch on whatever they call that thing that lowers the casket into the hole. Then we march off" and take up position far enough away from the head of the casket to make room for the archbishop and the other priests."

"Yes, sir," Peter agreed.

"From the time we get there, we don't have anything else to do, right? I mean, when it's all over, we'll walk by and say something to Jeannie and Gertrude Moffitt, but there's nothing else we have to do as pallbearers, right?"

"I think that's right, Chief," Peter said.

"The minute we get there, Peter, I mean when we march away from the gravesite, and are standing there, you take off."

"Sir?"

"You take off. You go to the first patrol car that can move, and you tell them to take you back to Marshutz amp; Sons. Then you get in your car, whose radio is out of service, and you go home and you throw some stuff in a bag, and you go to Jersey in connection with the murder of the suspect in the Nelson killing. And you stay there, Peter, until I tell you to come home."

"Commissioner Czernick sent Sergeant Jankowitz to tell me the commissioner wants me in his office at two this afternoon," Peter said.

"I'll handle Czernick," Coughlin said. "You do what I tell you, Peter. If nothing else, I can buy you some time for him to cool down. Sometimes, Czernick lets his temper get in the way of his common sense. Once he's done something dumb, like swearing to put you in uniform, assigned to Night Command, permanently, on the 'last out' shift-"

"My God, is it that bad?" Peter said.

"If Carlucci loses the election, the new mayor will want a new police commissioner," Coughlin said. "If theLedger doesn't support Carlucci, he may lose the election. You're expendable, Peter. What I was saying was that once Czernick has done something dumb, and then realized it was a mistake, he's got too hard a head to admit he was wrong. And he doesn't have to really worry about the cops lining up behind you for getting screwed. I think you're a good cop. Hell, Iknow you're a good cop. But there are a lot of forty-five- and fifty-year-old lieutenants and captains around who think the reasonthey didn't get promoted when you did is becausetheir father wasn't a chief inspector."

"I won't resign," Peter said. "Night Command, back in uniform… no matter what."

"Come on, Peter," Coughlin said. "You didn't come on the job last week. You know what they can do to somebody-civil service be damnedwhen they want to get rid of him. If you can put up with going back in uniform and Night Command, he'll think of something else."

Peter didn't reply.

"It would probably help some if you could catch whoever hacked up the Nelson boy and shot his boyfriend," Coughlin said.

They were in the cemetery now, winding slowly down access roads. He could see Dutch Moffitt's gravesite. Highway Patrolmen were already lined up on both sides of the path down which they would carry Dutch's casket.

Jesus, Peter thought. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should have just stayed in Highway, and rode around on a motorcycle, and been happy to make Lieutenant at forty-five. That way there wouldn't 't have been any of this goddamned politics.

But then he realized he was wrong.

There's always politics. In Highway, it's who gets a new motorcycle and who doesn't. Who gets to do interesting things, or who rides up and down Interstate 95 in the rain, ticketing speeders. Same crap. Just a different level.

"Thank you, Chief," Peter said. "I appreciate the vote of confidence."

"I owe your father one," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said, matter-of-factly. "He saved my ass, one time."

"Hello?"

Peter's heart jumped at the sound of her voice.

"Hi," he said.

"I thought it might be you," she said. "You don't seem thrilled to hear my voice," Peter said.

"I don't get very many calls at midnight," she said, ignoring his reply.

"It took me that long to get up my courage to call," he said.

"Where are you, home? Or out on the streets, protecting the public?"

"I'm in Atlantic City," he said.

"What are you doing there?"

"Working on the Nelson job," he said.

"At two o'clock this afternoon, I had a call from WCTS-TV, Channel Four, Chicago," Louise said. "They want me to co-anchor their evening news show."

"Oh?"

"They want me so bad that they will give me twenty thousand a year more than I 'm making now, and they will buy out my contract here," Louise said. "That may be because I am very good, and have the proper experience, and it may be because my father owns WCTS-TV."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'd like to talk to you about that," she said. "Preferably in a public place. I don't want to be prone to argue." He didn't reply.

"That was a joke," she said. "A clever double entendre on the word ' prone.' "

"I've heard it before," Peter said.

"But if you promise to just talk, you could come here. How long will it take you to drive from Atlantic City?"

"I can't come," Peter said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I just can't, Louise."

"Your girl friend down there with you? Taking the sea air? I saw her kiss you this morning."

"No," he said. "I told you I'm working."

"At midnight?"

"I can't come back to Philadelphia right now," he said.

"Somebody told your girl friend about me? She's looking for you with a meat cleaver?" She heard what she said. "That was really first-class lousy taste, wasn't it? I'm upset, Peter."

"Why?"

"My father is a very persuasive man," she said. "And then he topped his hour and a half of damned-near-irrefutable arguments why you and I could never build anything permanent with that lovely WCTS-TV carrot. And seeing good ol' whatsername kiss you didn't help much, either. I think it would be a very good idea if you came here, as soon as you could, and offered some very convincing counter arguments."

"Would you be happy with the carrot? Knowing it was a carrot?"

"I think the news director at WCTS-TV will be very pleasantly surprised to find out how good I am. Since I have been shoved down his throat, he expects some simpering moron. And I'm not, Peter. I'm good. And Chicago is one step from New York, and the networks."

"Is that what you want? New York and the networks?"

"I don't know right now what I want, except that I want to talk to you," she said.

"I can't come tonight, Louise," Peter said.

"Why not? I can't seem to get an answer to that question."

"I'm in trouble with the department," Peter said.

"What kind of trouble?"

"Political trouble."

"Any chance they'll fire you, I hope, I hope?"

"Thanks a lot," he said.

"Sorry, I forgot how important being a policeman is to you," she said, sarcastically.

There was a long pause.

"We're fighting, and saying things we won't be able to take back," she said. "That's not what I wanted."

"I love you," Peter said.

"One of the interesting thoughts my father offered was that people tend to confuse love with lust. Lust comes quickly and eventually burns itself out. Love has to be built, slowly."

"Okay," Peter said. "I lust you, and I'm willing to work on the other thing."

She laughed, but stopped abruptly.

"I don't know why I'm laughing," she said. "I'm not sure whether I should cry or break things, but I know I shouldn't be laughing. I want you to come here, Peter. I want to look at you when we're talking."

"I can't come," he said. "I'm sorry."

"When can you come?"

"I don't know," he said. "Three, four days, maybe."

"Why not now?" Louise demanded plaintively.

"Because I'm liable to lose my job if I come back right now."

There was a long pause. When Louise finally spoke, her voice was calm.

"You know what you just said, of course? That your goddamned job is more important in your life than me."

"Don't be silly, Louise," Peter said.

"No, I won't," she said. "Not anymore."

The phone went dead in his ear.

When he dialed again, he got her answering device. He tried it three more times and then gave up.

When he tried to call her at WCBL-TV the next day, she was either not in, or could not be called to the telephone, and would he care to leave a message?

Staff Inspector Peter Wohl paid lip service to the notion that he was in Atlantic City working on the Nelson homicide job. He went to the hospital where the autopsy on Errol F. Watson, also known as Pierre St. Maury, was performed, and looked at the corpse, and read the coroner's report. Errol F. Watson had died of destruction of brain tissue caused by three projectiles, believed to be.32 caliber, of the type commonly associated with caliber.32 Colt semiautomatic pistols.

That didn't mean he had been shot with a Colt. There were a hundred kinds of pistols that fired the.32 ACP cartridge. No fired cartridge cases had been found, despite what Wohl believed had been a very thorough search of the area where the body had been found. They had found blood and bone and brain tissue.

Very probably, whoever had shot Errol F. Watson also known as Pierre St. Maury had marched him away from the Jaguar, and then shot him in the back of the head. And then twice more, at closer range. God only knew what had happened to the ejected cartridge cases. If they had been ejected. There were some revolvers (which do not eject fired cases), chambered for.32 ACP. Whatever the pistol was, it was almost certainly already sinking into the sandy ocean floor off Atlantic City, or into the muck of a New Jersey swamp, and the chances of recovering it were practically nil.

He also spent most of a day at the state trooper garage, watching, with professional admiration, the lab technicians working on the Jaguar. They knew their business, and they lifted fingerprints and took soil samples and did all the clever things citizens have grown to expect by watching cop stories on television.

Lieutenant Bob McGrory, who had taken him to the garage, picked him up after work there and then insisted he come home with him for supper. He had been at first reluctant and uncomfortable, but McGrory' s wife, Mary-Ellen, made him feel welcome, and McGrory produced a bottle of really good scotch, and they sat around killing that, and telling Dutch Moffitt stories, and Peter's mouth finally loosened, and he told McGrory why he really had been sent to Atlantic City.

He left then, aware that he was a little drunk, and not wanting to confide in Bob McGrory the painful details of his romance with Miss Louise Dutton.

On his arrival in Atlantic City, in a fey mood, he had taken a room in the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, a thousand-room landmark on the boardwalk, rather than in a smaller hotel or a motel. He had told himself that he would endure his time in purgatory at least in luxury.

It was, he decided,faded grandeur rather thanluxury. But it did have a bar, and he stopped there for a nightcap before he went to his room. He had just had another one-way conversation with Louise Dutton's answering machine, the machine doing all the talking, when there was a knock at his door.

"Hi," she said. "I saw you downstairs in the bar, and thought you might like a little company."

He laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"I'm a cop," he said.

"Oh,shit!"

He watched her flee down the corridor, and then, smiling, closed the door and walked across the room to his bed.

The phone rang.

Please, God, let that be Louise! Virtue is supposed to be its own reward.

"Did I wake you up?" Lieutenant Bob McGrory asked.

"No problem, I had to answer the phone anyway," Wohl said, pleased with his wit.

"I just had a call from a friend of mine on the Atlantic City vice squad," McGrory said. "Two gentlemen were in an establishment called the Black Banana earlier this evening. They paid for their drinks with a Visa credit card issued to Jerome Nelson. The manager called it in. I understand he needs a friend-several friends-in the police department right now."

"The Black Banana?" Wohl asked. "If it's what it sounds like, we've got one of those in Philly."

"Maybe it's a franchise," McGrory said, chuckling.

"They still there?"

"No. The cops are checking the hotels and motels. They have what may be a name from the manager of the Black Banana, and they're also checking to see if anyone is registered as Jerome Nelson. They have a stakeout at the Banana, too."

"Interesting," Peter said.

"I told my friend I'd call him back and tell him if you wanted to be waked up if they find them."

"Oh, yes," Peter Wohl said. "Thank you, Bob."

On his fifth day in Atlantic City, when Peter Wohl walked into the state trooper barracks, Lieutenant Robert McGrory told him that he had just that moment hung up from talking with Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin.

" 'Almost all is forgiven, come home' is the message, Peter," Lieutenant McGrory said.

"Thank you," Peter said. "Thanks for everything."

"Any time. You going right back?"

"Yeah," Peter said. "My girl friend's probably finally given up on me."

"The one at the church? Very nice."

"Her, too," Peter said.

There was a Mayflower moving van parked on the cobblestone street before Six Stockton Place.

It is altogether fitting and proper, Peter Wohl thought, that I should arrive here at the exact moment they are carrying out Louise's bed.

But he got out of the LTD anyway, and walked into the building and rode up in the elevator. The door to Louise's apartment was open, and he walked in.

There were two men standing with a packing list.

"Where are you taking this stuff?" Peter asked.

"What's it to you?"

"I'm a police officer," Peter said, and took out his ID.

The man handed him a clipboard with forms on it. The household furnishings listed below were to be shipped to 2710 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, Apartment 1705.

"Thank you," Peter said.

"Something wrong?"

"Nothing at all," Peter said, and left the apartment and got in the LTD and drove to the Roundhouse.

He parked the car and went in and headed for the elevators, then turned and went to the receptionist's desk.

"Let me have that phone, will you please?" Peter asked.

He knew the number of WCBL-TV by memory now.

They told him they were sorry, Miss Louise Dutton was no longer connected with WCBL-TV.

He pushed the phone back to the officer on duty and walked toward the elevators.

When the door opened, Commissioner Taddeus Czernick and Sergeant Jankowitz got out. Jankowitz's eyes widened when he saw Wohl.

"Good afternoon, Commissioner," Peter said.

"Got a minute, Peter?" Czernick said, and took Wohl's arm and led him to one side.

"I think I owe you an apology," Czernick said.

"Sir?"

"I should have known you weren't the one with diarrhea of the mouth," Czernick said.

"No apology is necessary, Commissioner," Peter said.

Czernick met his eyes for a moment, and nodded.

"Well, I suppose you're ready to go back to your regular duties, aren't you, Peter?"

"Yes, sir."

"Give my regards to your dad, when you see him," Czernick said. He smiled at Peter, patted his shoulder, and walked away.

Peter got on the elevator and rode up to Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin's office.

"Well, good afternoon, Inspector," Sergeant Tom Lenihan said, smiling broadly at him. "How nice to see you. I'll tell the chief you're here."

Dennis V. Coughlin greeted him by saying, "I was hoping you would walk in here about now. You can buy me lunch. You owe me one, I figure."

"Yes, sir. No argument about that."

They went, with Tom Lenihan, to Bookbinder's Restaurant. Coughlin ate a dozen cherrystone clams and drank a bottle of beer before he got into the meat of what he wanted to say.

"Commissioner Czernick happened to run into Mickey O'Hara," Coughlin said. "And the subject somehow turned to the story Mickey wrote quoting an unnamed senior police officer to the effect that we were looking for a Negro homosexual in connection with the Nelson murder."

"You set that up, didn't you, Chief?" Peter said.

"Mickey wouldn't tell him who the unnamed police officer was, but he did tell him, swearing by all that's holy, that it wasn't you."

"And the commissioner believed him?"

"I think so. I'd stay out of his way for a while, if I were you."

"I ran into him getting on the elevator in the Roundhouse," Peter said.

"And?"

"He apologized, I said none was necessary, and then he said he thought I would be happy to be getting back to my regular duties, and that I should give his regards to my dad."

"Okay," Coughlin said. "Even better than I would have hoped."

"I'm off the hook, then?"

"You weren't listening. I said that if I were you, I'd stay out of his sight for a while."

"Yes, sir."

"Since it wasn't you, who had the big mouth? That wasn't hard to figure out. DelRaye. So DelRaye has been transferred from Homicide to the Twenty-Second District-in uniform-and he can kiss away, for good, his chances, not that there were many, to make captain. And then, I understand, Hizzoner the Mayor called Mr. Nelson, and told him what had happened, that he had found out who had the big mouth, and taken care of him, and that, proving our dedication to finding the murderers of his son, we sent you to Atlantic City where you did in fact assist the local police in apprehending the men we are sure are the murderers of his son, and couldn't we be friends again? Whereupon, Mr. Nelson let the mayor have it. I have it on reliable information that they said some very unpleasant things to each other."

"Oh, Christ!"

"I don't know what that will do to the mayor in the election, but right now he thinks that Nelson is crazy. I mean, really. He thinks Nelson is out of his mind, which gets you off the hook with him. I mean, it's you and him against the crazy man at theLedger."

Wohl's eyebrows rose thoughtfully, but he didn't say anything.

Coughlin looked around for the waitress, found her, and ordered another beer and broiled swordfish.

"Same for me, please," Wohl said.

"I think I'll have some steamers," Lenihan said. "I'm trying to lose a little weight."

"That little bowl of melted butter will sure help, Tom," Coughlin said, and then turned to Peter. "Your friend Miss Dutton has left town."

"I know."

"That going to bother you, Peter?" Coughlin asked.

"Yeah," Peter said. "Yeah, it will. How did you know about that?"

Coughlin chuckled, but didn't answer.

"You'll get over it," Coughlin said. "It happens to everybody, and everybody gets over it, sooner or later."

"How late is later?" Peter asked.

"Find some nice girl, a nurse, for example, and take her out. You'd be surprised how quickly some things pass when there's a nice girl around."

Staff Inspector Peter Wohl didn't reply. But he picked up his beer glass and raised it to Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin. He smiled, and then took a deep sip.