Special Operations

ONE

Mary Elizabeth Flannery first came to the attention of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia at 9:21 p.m., June 29, 1973, when an unidentified civilian called the Police Emergency number and reported that as she and her husband had been driving through Fairmount Park, going down Bell's Mill Road toward Chestnut Hill, they had seen a naked woman, just walking around, on the Chestnut Hill side of the bridge over Wissahickon Creek.

The call was taken in the Police Radio Room, which is on the second floor of the Police Building in downtown Philadelphia. The operator who took the call was a civilian, a temporary employee, a twenty-twoyear-old, 227-pound, six-foot-three-inch black man named Foster H. Lewis, Jr.

Foster H. Lewis, Sr., was a sergeant in the Eighteenth District. That hadn't hurt any when Foster H. Lewis, Jr., had appeared three years before in the City Administration Building across from City Hall to apply for a part-time job to help him with his tuition at Temple University, where he was then a premedical sophomore.

Foster H. Lewis, Jr., who was perhaps predictably known as "Tiny," had been at first more than a little awed by the Radio Room, with its rows of operators sitting before control consoles, and made more than a little uncomfortable by the steady stream of calls for help, often from people on the edge of hysteria.

Alone of America's major city police forces, Philadelphia police respond to any call for help, not just to reports of crime. It is deeply imbedded in the subconscious minds of Philadelphia's 2.1 million citizens (there are more than five million people in the Philadelphia metropolitan area) that what you do when Uncle Charley breaks a leg or the kid falls off his bike and is bleeding pretty bad at the mouth or when you see a naked woman just walking around in Fairmount Park is "call the cops."

Tiny Lewis had worked in the Radio Room two, three nights a week, and weekends, and full time during the summers for three years now, and he was no longer awed by either the Radio Room or his responsibilities in dealing with a citizen who was calling for help.

For one thing, he was reasonably sure that this citizen's call was for real, and that the citizen herself was neither hysterical or drunk, or both.

"May I have your name, please, ma'am?" Tiny Lewis asked, politely.

"Never mind about that," the caller snapped. "Just help that poor woman."

"Ma'am, I have to have your name," Tiny Lewis said, reasonably. Sometimes that worked, and sometimes it didn't. It didn't now. The phone went dead.

"Joe!" Tiny Lewis called, just loud enough to catch the attention of the Police Dispatcher, a sworn police officer named Joe Bullock.

Joe Bullock had had sixteen years on the job when he pulled a drunk to the curb on the Baltimore Pike in West Philadelphia. He had him standing outside his car when another drunk had come along and rearended the stopped car. Neither civilian had been seriously injured, but Joe Bullock had spent seven months in University Hospital. The Department had wanted to put him out on a Thirty-Two, a Civil Service Disability Pension for Injuries Received in the Line of Duty, but Bullock had appealed to the Police Commissioner.

The Police Commissioner, then the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, had found time to see Officer Bullock, even though his time was pretty much taken up with his campaign to get himself elected mayor. Commissioner Carlucci only vaguely remembered Officer Bullock, when Bullock politely reminded him that he used to see him when the Commissioner had been a Highway Sergeant, but he shook his hand warmly, and assured him that as long as he was either Police Commissioner or mayor, the expletive-deleted paper pushers on the Civil Service Commission were not going to push out on a Thirty-Two any good cop who wanted to stay on the job and had a contribution to make.

Officer Bullock was assigned to the Radio Division as a Police Dispatcher.

"What have you got, Tiny?" Officer Bullock inquired of Tiny Lewis.

"A naked woman in the park at Bell's Mill and Wissahickon Creek, around the Forbidden Drive," Tiny said. "I think there's something to it."

"It could be some girl changed her mind at the last minute," Joe Bullock said.

Forbidden Drive, despite the ominous name, was an un-paved road running along Wissahickon Creek, used in the daylight hours by respectable citizens for horseback riding, hiking, and at night by young couples seeking a place to park a car in reasonable privacy.

"I don't think so," Tiny said, repeating, "I think there's something to this."

Joe Bullock nodded. He knew that Tiny Lewis had a feel for his job, and very rarely got excited. He knew too that the location was in Chestnut Hill. It was said that ninety-five percent of Philadelphia was owned by people who lived in Chestnut Hill, very often in very large houses on very large pieces of property; the sort of people who were accustomed to the very best of police protection and who could get through to the mayor immediately if they didn't think they were getting it.

Bullock went to his console, and checked the display for the Fourteenth Police District, which was charged with maintaining the peace in the area of Northwest Philadelphia including Chestnut Hill. He was not surprised to find that an indicator with "1423" on it was lit up. The "14" made reference to the district; "23" was the Radio Patrol Car (RPC) assigned to cover Chestnut Hill. He would have been surprised if 1423 was not lit up, signifying that it was on a job, and not available. Chestnut Hill was not a high-crime area, or even an area with a traffic problem.

"Fourteen Twenty-Three," Joe Bullock said into the microphone.

There was an immediate response: "Fourteen Twenty-Three."

"Fourteen Twenty-Three," Joe Bullock said to his microphone, "report of a naked female on Forbidden Drive, in the vicinity of Bell's Mill Road and the bridge. Civilian by phone."

"Fourteen Twenty-Three, okay," Police Officer William Dohner, who was cruising his district on Germantown Avenue, near Springfield Street, said into his microphone. He then put the microphone down, flipped on the siren and the flashing lights, and turned his 1972 Ford around and headed for Forbidden Drive.

As this was going on, Tiny Lewis was writing the pertinent information on a three-by-eight card. At this stage, the incident was officially an "Investigation, Person." He then put the card between electrical contacts on a shelf above his console. Doing so interrupted the current lighting the small bulb behind the "1423" block on the display console. The block went dark, signifying that Fourteen TwentyThree had a job.

Joe Bullock's Police Radio call vis-a-vis the naked woman in Fairmount Park was received as well over the radios installed in other police vehicles. Almost immediately, a 1971 Ford van, EPW 1405, one of the two-man Emergency Patrol Wagons assigned to the Fourteenth District to transport the injured, prisoners, and otherwise assist in law enforcement, turned on its flashing lights and siren and headed for Forbidden Drive. So did Highway Nineteen, which happened to be in the area. So did D-209, an unmarked car assigned to the Northwest Detective District. And others.

It had been a relatively quiet night, and a naked female on Forbidden Drive certainly required all the assistance an otherwise unoccupied police officer could render.

Joe Bullock's call was also received over the police-bands shortwave radio installed in a battered, four-year-old Chevrolet Impala coupe registered to one Michael J. O'Hara of the 2100 block of South Shields Street in West Philadelphia.

Mr. O'Hara had spent Sunday evening having dinner with his widowed mother, who resided in the Cobbs Creek Nursing Center, in the Mr. and Mrs. J. K. McNair Memorial Dining Facility. Mickey was a dutiful son and loved his mother, and made a valiant effort to have dinner with her twice a week. It was always a depressing experience. Mrs. O'Hara's mind was failing, and she talked a good deal about people who were long dead, or whom he had never known. And about fellow residents in the Cobbs Creek Nursing Center, who, if she was to be believed, carried on sinful sexual relations that would have worn out twentyyear-olds when they were not engaged in stealing things from Mrs. O' Hara. The food was also lousy; it reminded Mickey of what they used to feed him in basic training in the army.

After pushing his mother's wheelchair down the polished, slippery corridors of the Cobbs Creek Nursing Center to her room, Mickey O'Hara usually went directly to Brannigan's Bar amp; Grill, two blocks away at Seventieth and Kingessing, where he had a couple of quick belts of John Jamison's with a beer chaser.

Tonight, however, he had gone directly home, not because he didn't need a drink-quite the contrary-but because there was a recent development in his life that left him feeling more uneasy than he could ever remember having felt before. And Mickey knew himself well enough to know that the one thing he should not do in the circumstances was tie one on.

Home was the house in which he had grown up, the fourth row house on the right from the end of the 2100 block of South Shields Street. He had been living here alone now for two and a half years, since Father Delahanty of the Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church had managed to convince Mrs. O'Hara that moving "temporarily" to the Cobbs Creek Nursing Center was the best thing for her to do until she got her health back.

She was never going to leave Cobbs Creek, and everybody but Mrs. O' Hara knew that, but she kept talking about when she'd be going home, and Mickey didn't feel it would be right to go and see her and lie about selling the goddamned house and taking an apartment somewhere.

He went into the house and put the photo album back on the shelf where it had been kept since he was in short pants. He had carried the damned thing back and forth to Cobbs Creek two dozen times. She would ask him to bring it, and he would take it to her, and a week later, she would tell him to take it home and put it on the shelf; Cobbs Creek was full of thieves who were always stealing anything that wasn' t chained down, and she didn't want to lose it.

Then he went into the kitchen and decided that one lousy glass of beer wasn't going to get him in trouble, and filled a Pabst Blue Ribbon glass from a quart bottle of Ortleib's, which was a dime less a quart than Pabst, and so far as Mickey was concerned, a better beer to boot. He went into the living room, turned the TV on, and watched a rerun ofI Love Lucy until it was time to go downtown.

Bull Bolinski, who was probably his oldest friend, said his plane would arrive at half-past eight, and that Mickey should give him an hour or so to get to his hotel, and make a couple of phone calls. Mickey had offered to meet Bull at the airport, but Bull said there was no sense doing that, he would catch a cab.

When it was time to go meet the Bull, Mickey turned the TV off, rinsed out the Pabst Blue Ribbon glass in the sink, then went out and got in the car. He turned on the police-band radio without thinking about it. The "naked lady in Fairmount Park" call from Police Radio came before he had pulled away from the curb.

He had two reactions to the call: First, that what he had heard was all there was to it, that some broad-drunk, stoned, or crazy-was running around Fairmount Park in her birthday suit. If she was a goodlooking broad, there might be a funny piece in it for him, providing she was drunk or stoned or maybe mad at her husband or her boyfriend. Every cop in Northwest Philly would go in on a "naked lady" call; it would look like a meeting of the FOP, the Fraternal Order of Police.

But not if she was a looney. Mickey had his principles, among them that looney people aren't funny. Unless, of course, they thought they were the King of Pennsylvania or something. Mickey never wrote about loonies who were pitiful.

The second thought he had was more of a hunch than anything else. Itcould have something to do with a real looney, a dangerous one, a white male scumbag who had been running around lately raping women. Not just any women, but nice, young, middle-class white women, and not just raping them, either, but making them do all kinds of dirty things, weird things. Or doing the same to them. Jack Fisher, one of the Northwest detectives, had told Mickey that the looney had tied one girl down on her bed, taken off his own clothes, and then pissed all over her.

Then Mickey had a third thought: Whatever was going on was not, at the moment, of professional interest to Michael J. O'Hara. There would probably be a story in thePhiladelphia Bulletin, either a two-graph piece buried with the girdle ads in section C, or maybe even a bylined piece on the front page, but it would not be written by Michael J. O' Hara.

Michael J. O'Hara waswithholding his professional services from theBulletin, pending resolution of contractual differences between the parties. Bull Bolinski had told him,"No, you're not on strike. Bus drivers strike, steelworkers strike. You're a fucking professional. Get that through your thick head. "

Mickey O'Hara had beenwithholding his professional services for three weeks now. He had never been out of work that long in his life, and he was getting more than a little worried. If theBulletin didn't give in, he thought it entirely possible that he was through. Not only with theBulletin, but with the other newspapers in Philadelphia, too. The bastards in management all knew each other, they all had lunch at the Union League together, and there was no question in Mickey's mind that if theBulletin management decided to tell him or the Bull to go fuck himself, they wouldn't stop there, they would spread the word around that Mickey O'Hara, always a troublemaker, had really gone off the deep end this time.

And it was already past the point where he could tuck his tail between his legs and just show up in the City Room and go back to work. The only thing he could do was put his faith in the Bull. And sweat blood.

Mickey reached over and turned off the police-bands shortwave radio, then headed downtown, via the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension to North Broad Street, then down Broad toward City Hall.

Bill Dohner, a wiry, graying, forty-two-year-old cop who had been on the job for exactly half his life, turned off his lights and siren when he was four blocks away from Forbidden Drive, although he didn't slow down. Sometimes, flashing lights and a howling siren were the wrong way to handle a job.

He reached over on the front seat and found his flashlight, and had it in his hand as he braked sharply at the entrance to Forbidden Drive. The unpaved road looked deserted to him, so he continued down Bell's Mill Road and crossed the bridge over Wissahickon Creek. He didn't see anything there, either, so he turned around, quickly, but without squealing his tires, and returned to Forbidden Drive and turned right into it.

His headlights illuminated the road for a hundred yards or so, and there was nothing on it. Dohner drove very slowly down it, looking from side to side, down into Wissahickon Creek on his right, and into the woods on his left.

And then Dohner saw Mary Elizabeth Flannery. She was on her feet, just at the end of the area illuminated by his headlights, on the edge of the road. She had her head down and her hands behind her, as if they were tied, and she was naked.

Dohner accelerated quickly, reaching for his microphone.

"Fourteen Twenty-Three. I got a naked woman on Forbidden Drive. Can you send me backup?"

He braked sharply when he reached Mary Elizabeth Flannery, then reached onto the passenger side floorboard, coming up with a folded blanket. Then he jumped out of the car.

Dohner saw the blank look in Mary Elizabeth Flannery's eyes when she saw him, and saw that his guess had been right; her hands were tied behind her.

"It's going to be all right, miss," Bill Dohner said, gently, as he draped the blanket around her shoulders. "Can you tell me what happened?"

At that moment, every radio in every police car in the city of Philadelphia wentbeep beep beep, and then they heard Joe Bullock's voice. "Assist Officer, Forbidden Drive at Bell's Mill Road. Police by radio. Assist Officer. Forbidden Drive at Bell's Mill Road. Police by radio."

Flashing lights and sirens on all the cars that had previously been headed toward Bell's Mill Road went on, and feet pressed more heavily on accelerator pedals: flashing lights and sirens went on in cars driven by Bill Dohner's Sergeant (14A); Bill Dohner's Lieutenant (14DC); two of Dohner's peers, patrolling elsewhere in the Fourteenth District (1421 and 1415); on Highway Twenty-Six, D-Dan 209, and others.

Bill Dohner took a well-worn but very sharp penknife from his pocket and cut the white lamp cord binding Mary Elizabeth Flannery's hands behind her. He did not attempt to untie the lamp cord. Sometimes a knot could be used as evidence; the critters who did things like this sometimes used unusual knots. He dropped the cord in his trousers pocket, and gently led Mary Elizabeth Flannery to his car.

"Can you tell me what he looked like?" Bill Dohner asked. "The man who did this to you?"

"He came in the apartment, and I didn't hear him, and he had a knife."

"Was he a white man?" Dohner opened the rear door of the car.

"I don't know… Yes, he was white. He had a mask."

"What kind of a mask?"

"A kid's mask, like the Lone Ranger."

"And was he a big man, a little man, or what?" Dohner felt Mary Elizabeth Flannery's back stiffen under his hand. "What's the matter?" he asked, very gently.

"I don't want to get in the back," she said.

"Well, then, I'll put you in the front," he said. "Miss, what did this man do to you?"

"Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Mary Elizabeth Flannery said, sucking in her breath, and then sobbing.

"Did he do anything to you?"

"Oh, Jesus!" she wailed.

"I have to ask, miss, what did he do to you?"

"He made me-heurinated on me!"

"Is that all?" Dohner asked softly.

"Oh, Jesus," Mary Elizabeth Flannery wailed. "He made me… he put his thing in my mouth. He had a knife-"

"What kind of a knife?"

"Aknife," she said. "A butcher knife."

"What's your name, miss? Can you tell me that, please?"

He installed her in the front seat of the car, then ran around and got in beside her. She did not look at him as he did.

"What's your name, miss?" Dohner asked again.

"Flannery," she said. "Mary Flannery."

"If we're going to catch this man, you're going to have to tell me what he looks like," Bill Dohner said. "What kind of clothes was he wearing? Can you tell me that?"

"He wasnaked."

"He brought you here from your apartment, right?" Dohner asked, and she nodded.

"How did he bring you here?"

"In a van."

"Was he naked then?"

"Oh, Jesus!"

"Do you remember what kind of a van? Was it dark or light?"

She shook her head from side to side.

"Was it new or old?"

She kept shaking her head.

"Was it like a station wagon, with windows, or was it closed in the back?"

"Closed."

"And was he a small man?" There was no response. "A large man? Did you see the color of his hair? Did he have a beard, or scars or anything like that?"

"He was big," Mary Elizabeth Flannery said. "And he washairy."

"You mean he had long hair, or there was a lot of hair on his body?"

"On his body," she said. "What's going to happen to me?"

"We're going to take care of you," Dohner said. "Everything's going to be all right now. But I need you to tell me what this man looked like, what he was wearing, so we can lock him up. Can you tell what he wore when he brought you over here?"

"Overalls," she said. "Coveralls. You know?"

"Do you remember what color they were?"

"Black," she said. "They were black. I saw him put them on…"

"And what color was the van?"

"I didn't see. Maybe gray."

"And when he left you here, which way did he go? Did he go back out to Bell's Mill Road, or the other way?"

"Bell's Mill Road."

"And which way did he turn when he got there?"

"Right," she said, with certainty.

Dohner reached for the microphone.

"Fourteen Twenty-Three," he said.

"Fourteen Twenty-Three," Police Radio replied.

"Fourteen Twenty-Three," Dohner said. "Resume the Assist."

"Resume the Assist" was pure police cant, verbal shorthand for "Those police officers who are rushing to this location with their sirens screaming and their warning lights flashing to assist me in dealing with the naked lady may now resume their normal duties. I have things in hand here, am in no danger, and expect my supervisor, a wagon, and probably a District detective to appear here momentarily."

As police cars slowed, and sirens and flashing lights died all over the Northwest, Dohner went on: "We have a sexual assault, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon. Be on the lookout for a white male in a gray van, make unknown. He's wearing black coveralls and may be in possession of a black mask and a butcher knife. Last seen heading east on Bell's Mill Road toward Germantown."

As he put the microphone down, a police car turned onto Forbidden Drive, lights flashing, siren screaming. It skidded to a stop beside Bill Dohner's car, and two Highway Patrolmen jumped out of it.

Joe Bullock's voice came over the radio: "Flash information on a kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and rape on Forbidden Drive. Be on the lookout for a white male in black coveralls driving a gray van. Suspect fled east on Bell's Mill Road toward Germantown. May be in possession of a large knife. May have a black mask."

"Mary," Bill Dohner said, kindly. "I'm going to speak to these officers for a moment and tell them what's happened, and then I'm going to take you to the hospital."

As Dohner opened the door, two more police cars, one of them another Fourteenth District RPC and the other an unmarked Northwest Detectives car, came onto Forbidden Drive, one from Bell's Mill Road, and the other from Northwestern Avenue, which is the boundary between Philadelphia and Montgomery counties.

When Bill Dohner got back into the car beside Mary Elizabeth Flannery, she was shaking under the blanket, despite the heat.

He picked up the microphone: "Fourteen Twenty-Three, I'm en route with the victim to Chestnut Hill Hospital."

As he started to drive off. Bill Dohner looked at Mary Elizabeth Flannery again and said, "Shit," under his breath. She was probably going into shock. Shock can be fatal.

"You all right, Mary?"

"Why did he do that to me?" Mary Elizabeth Flannery asked, wonderingly, plaintively.