Special Operations

THREE

As Mickey O'Hara had walked across the fine carpets laid over the marble floor of the lobby of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, and then onto South Broad Street, 6.3 miles to the north, where Old York Road cuts into Broad Street at an angle, about a mile south of the city line, the line of traffic headed toward downtown Philadelphia from the north suddenly slowed, taking the driver of a 1971 Buick Super sedan by surprise.

He braked sharply and the nose of the Buick dipped, and there was a squeal from the brakes. The driver of the Mercury in front of him looked back first with alarm, and then with annoyance.

I'm probably a little gassed, the driver of the Buick thought. I'll have to watch myself.

His name was David James Pekach, and he was thirty-two years old. He was five feet nine inches tall, and weighed 143 pounds. He was smooth shaven, but he wore his hair long, parted in the middle, and gathered together in the back in a pigtail held in place by a rubber band. He was wearing a white shirt and a necktie. The shirt was mussed and sweat stained. The jacket of his seersucker suit was on the seat beside him.

The Buick Super was not quite three years old, but the odometer had already turned over at 100,000 miles. The shocks were shot, and so were the brakes. The foam rubber cushion under David James Pekach's rear end had long ago lost its resilience, and the front-end suspension was shot, and the right-rear passenger door had to be kicked to get it open. But the air conditioner still worked, and Pekach had been running it full blast against the ninety-eight percent humidity and ninety-three degree temperature of the late June night.

David James Pekach was on his way home from upper Bucks County. His cousin Stanley had been married at eleven o'clock that morning at Saint Stanislaus's Roman Catholic Church in Bethlehem, and there had been a reception following at the bride's home near Riegelsville, on the Delaware River, at the absolute upper end of Bucks County.

The booze had really flowed, and he had had more than he could handle. He was a little guy, at least compared to his brothers and cousins, and he couldn't handle very much, anyway.

There had been the usual cracks about his size, and of course the pigtail, at the reception("You know what Davie is? With that pigtail? One Hung Low. The world's only Polack Chink.") and every time he'd looked at the priest, he'd found the priest looking at him, then suddenly turning on an uneasy smile. He wasn't their priest, he was the bride's family's priest, and what he was obviously thinking was," What's a bum like that doing in the Pekach family?"

He saw the reason for the sudden slowdown, flashing blue lights on two Philadelphia police cars at the corner. A wreck. Probably a bad one, he thought, with two cars at the scene.

He hadn't been paying much attention to where he was. He looked around to see where he was.

When he got to the cop directing traffic, the cop signaled him to stop. Dave Pekach rolled down the window.

"You almost rear-ended the Mercury," the cop accused. From the way the cop looked at him, Dave Pekach knew that he didn't like men who wore long blond hair in a pigtail any more than the priest had.

"I know," Dave Pekach said, politely. "I wasn't paying attention."

"You been drinking?" It was an accusation, not a question.

"I just came from a wedding," Pekach admitted. "But I'm all right."

The cop flashed his light around the inside of the Buick, to see what he could see, let Pekach sweat twenty seconds, then waved him on.

Pekach drove fifty feet, swore, and then braked hard again. The brakes squealed again, and there was a loud, dull groan from the front end as he bounced over a curb and stopped.

He opened the door and got out and started walking toward two men standing by the hood of a five-year-old Ford sedan.

"Hey, buddy!" the cop who had stopped him called. "What do you think you're doing?"

Pekach ignored him.

The cop, trotting over, reached the old Ford just as Pekach did, just in time to hear one of the men greet Pekach: "Hey, Captain," one of the men said. He was a heavy, redheaded Irishman in a T-shirt and blue jeans. "Don't you look spiffy!"

The cop was embarrassed. He had sensed there was something not quite right with the car, or the man driving it. There were some subtle things. The relatively new automobile had obviously not been washed, much less polished, in some time. It looked as if it had been used hard. The driver's side vent window had a thumb-sized piece of glass missing, and was badly cracked. The tires had black walls, and on closer examination were larger than the tires that had come with the car. But until right now, the cop had been looking for something wrong, something that would have given him reasonable cause to see what the clown in the pigtail might have under the seat or in the glove compartment or in the trunk. Now he looked at the car again, and saw that he had missed the real giveaway: On the shelf between the top of the backseat and the window was a thin eight-inch-tall shortwave radio antenna.

The battered Buick was a police car, and the funny-looking little guy with the hippy pigtail was a police officer. More than a cop. One of the Narcotics guys had called him "Captain."

And then the cop put it all together. The little guy with the pigtail was Captain David Pekach, of the Narcotics Division of the Philadelphia Police Department. He remembered now, too, that Pekach had just made captain. Now that he was a captain, the cop thought, Pekach was probably going to have to get rid of the pigtail. Captains don't work undercover; neither do lieutenants, and only rarely a sergeant. The cop remembered a story that had gone around the bar of the Fraternal Order of Police. A Narcotics Lieutenant (obviously, now Pekach) had been jumped on by the Commissioner himself for the pigtail. Pekach had stood up to him. If he was supposed to supervise his undercover men working the streets, the only way he could do that was, from time to time, to go on the streets with them. And a very good way to blow the cover of plainclothes cops working Narcotics dressed like addicts was to have them seen talking to some guy in a business suit and a neat, show-your-ears haircut. No questions were likely to be asked about a guy in a dirty sweatshirt and a pigtail. The story going around the FOP bar was that Commissioner Czernick had backed off.

"What's going on?" Captain Pekach asked the red-haired Narc, whose name was Coogan.

"We were cutting the grass in Wissahickon Park," the other Narcotics officer said. He was a Latin American, wearing a sleeveless denim jacket, his naked chest and stomach sweaty under it. He was a small man, smaller than Captain Pekach. At five feet seven even, he had just made the height requirement for police officers.

"Cutting the grass" was a witticism. Parks have grass.Cannibas sativa, commonly known as marijuana, is known on the street as " grass." But arresting vendors of small quantities of grass is not a high-priority function of plainclothes officers of the Narcotics Division. The Narcotics officers knew that, and they knew that Captain David Pekach knew it. "And?" Pekach asked.

"It was a slow night, Captain," Alexandro Gres-Narino said, uncomfortably.

"Except for the naked lady," Tom Coogan said.

"What naked lady?" Pekach asked.

"Some dame was running around without any clothes in the park by the Wissahickon Bridge," Tom Coogan said. "Every car north of Market Street went in on it."

"Tell me about this," Pekach said, impatiently, gesturing vaguely around him.

"So there was a buy, and they run," Coogan said. "And we chased them. And they run off the road here."

"High-speed pursuit, no doubt?" Pekach asked, dryly.

"Not by us, Captain," Coogan said, firmly and righteously. "We got on the radio and gave a description of the car, and a Thirty-fifth district car spotted it, and they chased them. We only come over here after they wrecked the car."

"So what have you got?" Pekach asked, a tired, disgusted tone in his voice.

Without waiting for a reply, he walked over to one of the Thirtyfifth District patrol cars, and looked through the partially opened rear seat window. There were four white kids crowded in the back, two boys and two girls, all four of them looking scared.

"Anybody hurt?" Pekach asked.

Four heads shook no, but nobody said anything.

"Whose car?" Pekach asked.

There was no reply immediately, but finally one of the boys, mustering what bravado he could, said, "Mine."

"Yours? Or your father's?" Pekach asked. "My father's," the boy said.

"He's going to love you for this," Pekach said, and walked back to the Narcotics Division officers.

"Well, what have you got on them?" he asked Officer Coogan.

"About an ounce and a half," Coogan replied, uncomfortably.

"Anounceandahalf." Pekach said in sarcastic wonderment.

"Failure to heed a flashing light, speeding, reckless driving," Coogan went on, visibly a little uncomfortable.

"You like traffic work, do you, Coogan? Keeping the streets free of reckless drivers? Maybe rolling on a naked lady?"

Officer Coogan did not reply.

There was the growl of a siren, and Pekach looked over his shoulder and saw a Thirty-fifth District wagon pulling up. The two policemen in it got out, spoke to one of the patrol car cops, and then one of them went to the van and opened the rear door while the other went to the patrol car with the patrol car cop. The patrol car cop opened the door and motioned the kids out.

"Wait a minute," Pekach called. He walked over to them. One of the girls, an attractive little thing with long brown hair parted in the middle and large dark eyes, looked as if she was about to cry.

"You got any money?" Pekach asked.

"Who are you?" the van cop asked.

"I'm Captain Pekach," he said. "Narcotics."

The girl shook her head.

Pekach pointed at one of the boys, the one who had told him it was his father's car. "You got any money, Casanova?"

There was a just perceptible pause before the boy replied, "I got some money."

"You got twenty bucks?" Pekach asked.

The boy dug his wallet out of his hip pocket.

"Give it to her," Pekach ordered. Then he turned to the patrol car cop. "You have the names and addresses?"

"Yes, sir."

"Put the girls in a cab," Pekach said.

He turned to the girl with the large dark eyes.

"Your boyfriends are going to jail," he said. "First, they're going to the District, and then they'll be taken downtown to Central lockup. When they get out, ask them what it was like."

Pekach found Officers Alexandro Gres-Narino and Thomas L. Coogan.

"If you can fit me into your busy schedule, I would like a moment of your time at half-past three tomorrow in my office," he said.

"Yes, sir," they said, almost in unison.

Pekach took one more look at the girl with the large dark eyes. There were tears running down her cheeks.

"Thank you," she said, barely audibly.

Captain Dave Pekach then walked to the worn-out Buick, coaxed the engine to life, and drove home.

At five minutes after nine the next morning, Mickey O'Hara again pulled his battered Chevrolet Impala to the curb in front of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel by the no parking at any time tow away zone sign. He was not worried about a ticket. There was about as much chance a police officer would cite him for illegal parking, much less summon a police tow truck to haul Mickey O'Hara's car away, as there was for a white hat to slap a ticket on his Honor, Mayor Jerry Carlucci's mayoral Cadillac limousine.

There were perhaps a couple of dozen police officers among the eight thousand or so cops on the force who would not recognize the battered, antennae-festooned Chevrolet as belonging to Mr. Mickey O'Hara, of the editorial staff of thePhiladelphia Bulletin. The others, from Commissioner Taddeus Czernick to the most recent graduates of the Police Academy, if they saw Mickey O'Hara climb out of his illegally parked vehicle, would wave cheerfully at him, or, if they were close enough, offer their hands, and more than likely say, "Hey, Mickey, how's it going? What's going on?"

It was generally conceded that Mickey O'Hara knew more of what was going on at any given moment, in the area of interesting crime, than the entire staff of the Police Radio Room on the second floor of the Roundhouse. Equally important, Mickey O'Hara was nearly universally regarded as a good guy, a friend of the cops, someone who understood their problems, someone who would put it in the paper the way it had really gone down. Mickey O'Hara, in other words, was accustomed to ignoring NO PARKING signs.

But today, when he got out of his car, Mickey looked at the sign, and read it, and for a moment actually considered getting back in, and taking the car someplace to park it legally. The cold truth was that right now he was not a police reporter. The Bull could call it" withholding professional services" all day and all night, but the truth of the matter was that Mickey O'Hara was out of work. If you didn't have a job, and nobody was going to hand you a paycheck, you were, ergo sum, out of work.

Mickey decided against moving the car someplace legal. That would have been tantamount to an admission of defeat. He didn't know that theBulletin was going to tell him, more accurately tell his agent, to "go fuck yourselves, we don't need him." That struck Mickey as the most likely probability in the circumstances, but he didn'tknow that forsure.

He had hoped to have the issue resolved, one way or the other, last night. But the Bull's plane had been late, so that hadn't happened. It had been pretty goddamned depressing, and he had woken up, with a minor hangover, rather proud of himself for not, after he'd drained the last bottle of Ortleib's, having gone out and really tied one on.

Mickey straightened his shoulders and marched resolutely toward the revolving door giving access to the lobby of the Bellevue-Stratford. There was nothing to really worry about, he told himself. For one thing, he was the undisputed king of his trade in Philadelphia. There were four daily newspapers in the City of Brotherly Love, and at least a dozen people, including, lately, a couple of females, who covered crime. The best crime coverage was in theBulletin, and the best reporter on theBulletin was Michael J. O'Hara, even if most of the other reporters, including both women, had master's degrees in journalism from places like Columbia and Missouri.

Mickey himself had no college degree. For that matter, he didn't even have a high school diploma. He had begun his career, as a copy boy, in the days when reporters typed their stories on battered typewriters, and then held it over their head, bellowing "copy" until a copy boy came to carry it to the city desk.

Mickey had been expelled from West Catholic High School in midterm of his junior year. The offenses alleged involved intoxicants, tobacco, and so far as Monsignor John F. Dooley, the principal, was concerned, incontrovertible proof that Michael J. O'Hara had been running numbers to the janitorial staff and student body on behalf of one Francisco Guttermo, who, it was correctly alleged, operated one of the most successful numbers routes in Southwest Philly.

It had been Monsignor Dooley's intention to teach Mickey something about the wages of sin by banishing him in shame from the company of his classmates for, say, three weeks, and then permitting him to return, chastened, to the halls of academe.

The day after he was expelled, Mickey spotted a sign, crudely lettered, thumbtacked to the door of thePhiladelphia Daily News, which in those days occupied a run-down building on Arch Street, way up by the Schuylkill River. The sign read, simply, COPY BOY WANTED.

Mickey had no idea what a copy boy was expected to do, but in the belief that it couldn't be any worse than his other options, becoming a stock boy in an Acme Supermarket, or an office boy somewhere, he went inside and upstairs to the second floor and applied for the position.

James T. "Spike" Dolan, the City Editor of the Daily News, saw in young Mickey O'Hara a kindred soul and hired him. Within hours Mickey realized that he had found his niche in life. He never went back to West Catholic High School, although many years later, in a reversal of roles in which he found himself the interviewee for a reporter forPhiladelphia Magazine, he gave West Catholic High, specifically the nearly three years of Latin he had been force-fed there, credit for his skill with words. The interview came after Mickey had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The series of stories had dealt with chicanery involving the bail bond system then in effect.

He told himself too that not only was he the best police reporter in town, but that his agent was one of the best agents there was, period. He didn't do too well with this, because there were a couple of things wrong with it, and he knew it. For one thing, newspaper reporters don' t have agents. Movie stars have agents, and television personalities have agents, and sports figures have agents, but not newspaper police beat reporters.

Police reporters don't have contracts for their professional services. Police reporters are employed at the pleasure of the city editor, and subject to getting canned whenever it pleases the city editor, or whenever they displease the city editor. Mickey, who had been fired at least once from every newspaper in Philadelphia, plus theBaltimore Sun and theWashington Post during his journalistic career, knew that from experience. And police reporters don't make the kind of money his agent had assured him he would get him, or kiss his ass at Broad and Market at high noon.

What had happened was that Casimir "the Bull" Bolinski had come to town a month before, and Mickey had gone to see him at the Warwick. Mickey and the Bull went way back, all the way to the third grade at Saint Stephen's Parochial School, at Tenth and Butler Streets where Roosevelt Boulevard turns into the Northeast Extension. So far back that he still called the Bull "Casimir" and the Bull called him " Michael."

Sister Mary Magdalene, principal of Saint Stephen's, had had this thing about nicknames. Your name was what they had given you when you were baptized, and since baptism was a sacrament, sacred before God, you used that name, not one you had made up yourself. Sister Mary Magdalene had enforced her theologic views among her charges with her eighteen-inch, steel-reinforced ruler, which she had carried around with her, and used either like a cattle prod, jabbing it in young sinners' ribs, or like a riding crop, cracked smartly across young bottoms.

Casimir Bolinski had gone on to graduate from West Catholic High School, largely because when Monsignor Dooley had caught Michael J. O' Hara with a pocketful of Frankie the Gut Guttermo's numbers slips, Mickey had refused to name his accomplice in that illegal and immoral enterprise.

Casimir Bolinski had gone on to Notre Dame, where he was an ailAmerican tackle, and then on to a sixteen-year career with the Green Bay Packers. His professional football career ended only when the chief of orthopedic surgical services at the University of Illinois Medical College informed Mrs. Bolinski that unless she could dissuade her husband from returning to the gridiron she should start looking for a wheelchair in which she could roll him around for the rest of his life.

It was then, shortly after Bull Bolinski's tearful farewell-toprofessional-football news conference, that his secret, carefully kept from his teammates, coaches and the management of the Green Bay Packers came out. Bull Bolinski was also Casimir J. Bolinski, D. Juris (Cum Laude), the University of Southern California, admitted to the California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New York bars, and admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

He had not, as was popularly believed, spent his off seasons on the West Coast drinking beer on the beach and making babies with Mrs. Bolinski. And neither was Mrs. Antoinette Bolinski quite what most people on the Packers thought her to be, that is just a pretty, good li'l old broad with a spectacular set of knockers who kept the Bull on a pretty short leash.

Mrs. Bolinski had been a schoolteacher when she met her husband. She had been somewhat reluctantly escorting a group of sixth-graders on a field trip to watch the Packers in spring training. She held the view at the time that professional football was sort of a reincarnation of the Roman games, a blood sport with few if any redeeming societal benefits.

The first time she saw Casimir, he had tackled a fellow player with such skill and enthusiasm that there were three people kneeling over the ball carrier, trying to restore him to consciousness and feeling for broken bones. Casimir, who had taken off his helmet, was standing there, chewing what she later learned was Old Mule rough cut mentholated chewing tobacco, watching.

Antoinette had never before in her entire (twenty-three-year) life seen such tender compassion in a man's eyes, or experienced an emotional reaction such as that she felt when Casimir glanced over at her, spat, smiled shyly, winked, and said, "Hiya, honey!"

By the time, two months later, Mr. and Mrs. Casimir Bolinski returned from their three-day honeymoon in the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago, she had him off Old Mule rough cut mentholated chewing tobacco and onto mint Life Savers, and already thinking about his-now theirfuture, which, pre-Antoinette, had been a vague notion that when he couldn't play anymore, he would get a job as a coach or maybe get a bar and grill or something.

Two days after the management of the Green Bay Packers had stood before the lights of the television cameras of all three networks and given Bull Bolinski a solid gold Rolex diver's watch, a set of golf clubs, a Buick convertible and announced that the number he had worn so proudly on his jersey for sixteen years would be retired, they received a letter on the engraved crisp bond stationery of Heidenheimer amp; Bolinski, Counselors At Law, advising them that the firm now represented Messrs. J. Stanley Wozniski; Franklin D. R. Marshall; and Ezra J. Houghton, and would do so in the upcoming renegotiation of the contracts for their professional services, and to please communicate in the future directly with Mr. Bolinski in any and all matters thereto pertaining.

This was shortly followed by that legendary television interview with linebacker F. D. R. Marshall and quarterback E. J. Houghton, during which Mr. Marshall had said, "If thebleep ing Packers don't want to deal with the Bull, so far's I'm concerned, they can shove thatbleep ing football up theirbleep," only to be chastised by Mr. Houghton, who said, "Shut up, FDR, you can't talk dirty like that on thebleep ing TV."

So Mickey O'Hara was aware from the very beginning that the Bull had not only succeeded in getting a fair deal for his former teammates from the Packers, but had also, within a matter of a couple of years, become the most successful sports agent in the business, and grown rich in the process.

But it wasn't until the Bull had come to town and Mickey had picked him up at the Warwick and they had driven into South Philadelphia for some real homemade Italian sausage and some really good lasagna that he even dreamed that it could have anything to do, however remotely, with him.

"Turn the fucking air conditioner on, Michael, why don't you?" the Bull said to Mickey when they were no more than fifty yards from the Warwick.

"It's broke," Mickey had replied.

"What are you riding around in this piece of shit for anyway?" The Bull then looked around the car and warmed to the subject. "Jesus, this is really a goddamned junker, Michael."

"Fuck you, Casimir. It's reliable. And it's paid for."

"You always were a cheapskate," the Bull said. "Life ain't no rehearsal, Michael. Go buy yourself some decent wheels. You can afford it, for Christ's sake. You ain't even married."

"Huh!" Mickey snorted. "That's what you think."

"Whatdo they pay you, Michael?"

Mickey told him and the Bull laughed and said, "Bullshit," and Mickey said, "That's it. No crap, Casimir."

"I'll be goddamned, you mean it," the Bull had said, genuinely surprised. Then he grew angry: "Why those cheap sonsofbitches!"

Three days later, the publisher of theBulletin had received a letter on Heidenheimer amp; Bolinski stationery stating that since preliminary negotiations had failed to reach agreement on a satisfactory interim compensation schedule for Mr. Michael J. O'Hara's professional services, to be in effect while a final contract could be agreed upon between the parties, Mr. O'Hara was forced, effective immediately, to withhold his professional services.

When Mickey heard that what the Bull meant by "interim compensation schedule" was $750 a week, plus all reasonable and necessary expenses, he began to suspect that, despite the Bull's reputation in dealing with professional sports management, he didn't know his ass from second base vis-a-vis the newspaper business. Mickey had been getting $312.50 a week, plus a dime a mile for the use of his car.

"Trust me, Michael," the Bull had said. "I know what I'm doing."

That was damned near a month ago, and there hadn't been a peep from theBulletin in all that time.

The good-looking dame, from last night, her hair now done up in sort of a bun, was behind the marble reception desk in the lobby of the Bellevue-Stratford.

What the hell is that all about? How many hours do these bastards make her work, for Christ's sake?

This time there was no line, and she saw Mickey walking across the lobby, and Mickey smiled at her, and she smiled back.

"Good morning, Mr. O'Hara," she said.

"Mickey, please."

"Mr. and Mrs. Bolinski are in the house, Mr. O'Hara. If you'll just pick up a house phone, the operator will connect you."

"If I wanted to talk to him on the telephone," Mickey replied, "I could have done that from home. I want to see him."

"You'll have to be announced," the good-looking dame said, her delicate lips curling in a reluctant smile.

"You got your hair in a bun," Mickey said.

"I've been here all night," she said.

"How come?"

"My relief just never showed up," she said.

"Jesus! She didn't phone or anything?"

"Not a word," she said.

"You didn't get any sleep at all?"

She shook her head.

"You sure don't look like it," Mickey blurted.

Her face flushed, and she smiled shyly.

Then she picked up a telephone. She spoke the Bull's room number so softly he couldn't hear it.

The phone rang a long time before the Bull's wife answered it.

"Good morning, Mrs. Bolinski," she said. "This is Miss Travis at the front desk. I hope I haven't disturbed you. Mr. O'Hara is here."

Travis, huh? It figures she would have a nice name like that.

"May I send him up?" Miss Travis said, glancing at Mickey. Then she said, "Thank you, madam," and hung up. "Mr. Bolinski is in the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, Mr. O'Hara. That's on ten. Turn to your right when you exit the elevator."

"Thanks."

"My pleasure."

Mickey turned and started to walk to the bank of elevators. Then he turned again.

"You get yourself some sleep," he commanded.

The remark startled her for long enough to give Mickey the opportunity to conclude that whenever it came to saying exactly the right thing to a woman he really liked, he ranked right along with Jackie Gleason playing the bus driver on TV. Or maybe the Marquis de Sade.

But she smiled. "Thank you. I'll try," she said. "I should be relieved any minute now."

Mickey nodded at her, and walked to the elevator. When he got inside and turned around and looked at her, she was looking at him. She waved as the elevator door closed.

It doesn't mean a fucking thing. She was smiling at the old bluehaired broad last night, too.

Mickey had no trouble finding the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, and when he did the door was open, and he could hear Antoinette's voice. He rapped on the door, and pushed it open.

Antoinette was sitting on one of the two couches in front of a fireplace, in a fancy bathrobe, her legs tucked under her, talking on the telephone. She waved him inside, covered the mouthpiece with her hand, and said, "Come in, Michael. Casimir's in the shower."

Then she resumed her conversation. Mickey picked up that she was talking to her mother and at least one of the kids.

Casimir Bolinski entered the room. He was wearing a towel around his waist. It was an average-sized towel around an enormous waist, which did little to preserve Mr. Bolinski's modesty.

"I can't find my teeth, sweetie," he mumbled.

Mrs. Bolinski covered the mouthpiece again.

"They're in that blue jar I bought you in Vegas," Mrs. Bolinski said.

"Be with you in a jiff, Michael," the Bull mumbled, adding, "You're early."

He walked out of the sitting room. Mickey saw that his back, and the backs of his legs, especially behind the knees, were laced with surgical scars.

"Kiss, kiss," Antoinette said to the telephone and hung up. "We left the kids with my mother," she said. "Casimir and I have to really work at getting a little time alone together. So I came with him."

"Good for you," Mickey said.

"I didn't know we were coming here," Antoinette said, "until we got to the airport."

Mickey wondered if he was getting some kind of complaint, so he just smiled, instead of saying anything.

"How's your mother, Michael?" Antoinette asked.

"I had dinner with her yesterday."

"That's nice," Antoinette said. Then she picked up the telephone again, dialed a number, identified herself as Mrs. Casimir Bolinski, and said they could serve breakfast now.

The Bull returned to the room, now wearing a shirt and trousers, in the act of hooking his suspender strap over his shoulder.

"I told them to come at ten," he announced, now, with his teeth in, speaking clearly. "We'll have time to eat breakfast. How's your mother?"

"I had dinner with her yesterday. Who's coming at ten?"

"She still think the other people are robbing her blind?"

"Yeah, when they're not… making whoopee," Mickey said. "Who's coming at ten?"

"Who do you think?" the Bull said. "I told them we were sick of fucking around with them."

"Clean up your language," Antoinette said, "there's a lady present."

"Sorry, sweetie," the Bull said, sounding genuinely contrite. "Ain't there any coffee?"

"On that roll-around cart in the bedroom," Antoinette said.

The Bull went back into the bedroom and came out pushing a cart holding a coffee service. He poured a cupful and handed it to Mickey, then poured one for himself.

"What am I, the family orphan?" Antoinette asked. "I thought you had yours," the Bull said. "I did, but you should have asked."

"You want a cup of coffee, or not?"

"No, thank you, I've got to get dressed," Antoinette said, snippily, and left the sitting room.

"She's a little pissed," the Bull said. "She didn't know I was coming here. She thought I was going to Palm Beach."

"Palm Beach?"

"Lenny Moskowitz is marrying Martha Bethune," the Bull explained. "We got to get the premarital agreement finalized."

Mickey knew Lenny Moskowitz. Or knew of him. He had damned near been the Most Valuable Player in the American League.

"Who's Martha Whateveryousaid?"

"Long-legged blonde with a gorgeous set of knockers," the Bull explained. "She's damned near as tall as Lenny. Her family makes hub caps."

"Makes what?"

"Hub caps. For cars? They have a pisspot full of dough, and they're afraid Lenny's marrying her for her dough. Jesus, I got him five big ones for three years. He don't need any of her goddamned dough."

Mickey smiled uneasily, as he thought again of the enormous difference between negotiating a contract for the professional services of someone who was damned near the Most Valuable Player in the American League and a police reporter for thePhiladelphia Bulletin .

A few minutes later, two waiters rolled into the suite with a cart and a folding table and set up breakfast.

"I told you, I think," the Bull said, as he shoveled food onto his plate, "that you can't get either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?" Scrapple, a mush made with pork by-products, which was probably introduced into Eastern Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually Hessians) was sometimes referred to as "poor people's bacon."

"Yeah, you told me," Mickey said. "How do you think we stand, Casimir?"

"What do you mean, stand? Oh, you mean with those bastards from theBulletin? "

"Yeah," Mickey said, as Antoinette came back into the room, and Casimir stood up and politely held her chair for her.

"Thank you, darling," Antoinette said. "Has Casimir told you, Michael, that they don't have either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?"

"I could mail you some, if you like," Mickey said.

"It would probably go bad before the goddamned post office got it there," the Bull said, "but it's a thought, Michael."

"I never heard of either before I met Casimir," Antoinette said, "but now I'm just about as crazy about it as he is."

"Casimir was just about to tell me how he thinks we stand with theBulletin," Mickey said.

"Maybe you could send it Special Delivery or something," the Bull said. "If we wasn't going from here to Florida, I'd put a couple of rolls of Taylor ham and a couple of pounds of scrapple in the suitcase. But it would probably go bad before we got home."

"Of course it would," Antoinette said. "And it would get warm and greasy and get all over our clothes."

"So how do you think we stand with theBulletin?" Mickey asked, somewhat plaintively.

"You sound as if you don't have an awful lot of faith in Casimir, Michael," Antoinette said.

"Don't be silly," Mickey said.

"It would probably take two days to get to the Coast Air-Mail Special Delivery," the Bull said. "What the hell, it's worth a shot."

He reached into his trousers pocket, took out a stack of bills held together with a gold clip in the shape of a dollar sign, peeled off a fifty-dollar bill, and handed it to Mickey.

"Two of the big rolls of Taylor ham," The Bull ordered thoughtfully, "and what-five pounds?-of scrapple. I wonder if you can freeze it."

"Probably not," Antoinette said. "If they could freeze it, they would probably have it in the freezer department in the supermarket."

"What the hell, we'll give it a shot anyway. You never get anywhere unless you take a chance, ain't that right, Michael?"

"Right."