The Assassin

ENTER.

It opened on a flight of stairs, which took him down to the level of the ramp. He walked to the office from which the Eastern baggage handling operation was directed, and asked the man in charge if it would be all right if he borrowed one of the baggage train tractors for a couple of minutes.

"Help yourself," the Eastern supervisor told him.

Vito drove slowly among the airplanes parked at the lines of airways, watching as baggage handlers loaded luggage into, and offloaded it from, the bellies of the airplanes. Twice, he stopped the tractor and got off, for a closer examination. Once he actually went inside the fuselage of a Lockheed 10-11.

No one questioned his presence. Cops are expected to be in strange places.

The way to get a particular piece of luggage off a particular airplane, Vito decided, was to stand by the conveyor belt and watch for it as it was off-loaded from the airplane, seeing on which of the carts of the baggage train it had been placed.

Once he knew that, he would drive his tractor to the door where luggage was taken from the baggage carts and loaded on the conveyor belt that would transport it, beneath the terminal, to the baggage carousel.

Taking it from the airplane or the baggage carts at the airplane would look suspicious. But with the baggage handlers busy throwing bags on the conveyor belt under the terminal, no one would notice if he removed a bag from the other side of the cart.

And if they did notice him, and someone actually asked him what he was doing, he would say that it was his mother's, or his sister's, and he was just saving her a trip to the baggage carousel.

Nobody questioned what a cop did. And he was only going to do this once. If he did it all the time, somebody might say something about it.

Vito told himself that there were laws and laws. Everybody broke some kind of law, except maybe the pope. And screwing the IRS was something everybody did. And that's all he was going to be doing, was keeping the IRS from making a pain in the ass of itself. It wasn't like he was smuggling drugs or jewels. He wouldn't be able to do that.

What he was doing, Vito convinced himself, was helping a friend, repaying a favor.

It wasn't anything worse than some chief inspector fixing a speeding ticket for his next-door neighbor.

The reason Gian-Carlo Rosselli, or really the people who own the Oaks and Pines, are willing to come up with ten big ones, the four I owe them on the markers, and six besides, is like them buying insurance. It's the cost of them doing business. It's not like they're bribing me or anything. They want all that money to arrive safely so they can pay that coal-mine guy-that lucky sonofabitch, he probably doesn't even need it-what he won.

It was just lucky. They knew me, and I needed the money. That fucking plumber is going to want his money, and with my luck lately, I just don't have it. So this way, everybody is happy. The plumbers, the people who own Oaks and Pines, and especially that fucker with the coal mines who hit his number four times in a row.

And my run of bad luck can't keep on for fucking ever!

Vito drove around the aircraft parking area a few minutes more, trying to figure the best way to get the suitcase, once he had taken it from the baggage cart, out to his car. That turned out to be simplicity itself.

There was a gate leading from the work area under the terminal to the outside. There was a rent-a-cop working it. No rent-a-cop was going to stop a real cop and ask him what he was doing.

I'll just drive one of these goddamned tractors out the gate, go to the parking lot, put the suitcase in the trunk of the Caddy, and drive back in and give them their tractor back.

He decided to try it. It worked like a jewel. He went out of the gate, drove to the parking lot, went in the trunk of the Caddy, got back on the tractor, and drove back through the gate. The rent-a-cop didn't look at him twice.

Why should he? I'm a police corporal. If I'm riding around on an Eastern Airlines tractor, so what? What business was that of a rent-acop?

Vito drove the tractor back to the Eastern office and told the guy he'd returned it.

"Anytime," the Eastern guy said. "Support your local sheriff, right?"

Starting at fifteen minutes to midnight, within minutes of each other, automobiles carrying Chief Inspectors Matt Lowenstein and Denny Coughlin, Supervisory Special Agent H. Charles Larkin of the Secret Service, and A-S AC (Criminal) Frank F. Young of the FBI arrived at the headquarters of the Special Operations Division.

The building, and especially the corridor outside Peter Wohl'swhat had been the principal's-office, and the office itself were crowded with senior police officers. All the participants in the earlier meeting in the commissioner's office, except Mayor Carlucci, were present. In addition, the commanding officers of Central, North Central, and Northwest Detective Divisions; the commanding officers of Ordnance Disposal and Stakeout; and Captain Jack Duffy, the special assistant to the commissioner for inter-agency liaison, had either been summoned or had naturally migrated to the Schoolhouse as the center of the operation.

Three inspectors, who had been neither summoned nor invited, were also in Peter Wohl's office when Chief Lowenstein marched in. They were the commanding officers of the South and North Detective Divisions and the Tactical Division. Their subordinates had made known to them the orders they had received from Chiefs Lowenstein and Coughlin, and they wanted to know what was going on.

Lowenstein ordered everyone out of Wohl's office but Coughlin, Wohl, and the three inspectors and the federal agents.

"Peter and I decided to hold this here, rather than in the Roundhouse," Lowenstein began, "for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's on my way home…"

He paused for the expected chuckle.

"Peter and I decided"? Wohl thought. Inspector Peter Wohl is not only outranked by you, but, until very recently, by everybody else in this room. Despite his reputation within the Department as a real hard-ass, Lowenstein sometimes can be very gracious and kind.

"…and for another, all these white shirts showing up at the Roundhouse at midnight might give the gentlemen of the press the idea that something's going on. Charley Larkin thinks, and I agree, that the less the press is involved until we catch this guy, the better."

"The less the press is involved, the better, period," Inspector Wally Jenks said.

There were chuckles and grunts of approval.

"There's a real nasty copycat aspect to something like this," Charley Larkin said. "A lunatic who has been sitting around harmlessly studying his navel sees another lunatic is getting a lot of attention in the papers and on TV, and promptly decides the thing for him to do to get some attention is also blow something up. If I had my druthers, not a word of this would appear in the papers."

"Sometimes, Charley," Frank F. Young of the FBI said, "it's a good idea to let the taxpayers know where their money is going."

"Let me bring everybody up-to-date on where we stand," Lowenstein said, cutting off what could have been an argument about dealing with the press.

He went on: "We had ninety-six Wheatleys on the list. Eighty-nine of them have been contacted, and are off the list, which means we are down to seven. These are Wheatleys who were not at home when we rang doorbells. Or didn't answer the doorbell.

"We have detectives in unmarked cars sitting on the seven, backed up by Highway RPCs. If anyone leaves those seven houses, we will talk to them.

"Of the seven, two look more promising than the others. One is listed under the name of Wheatley, Stephen J., in the 5600 block of Frazier Avenue, and the other is Wheatley, M. C, in the 120 block of Farragut. Both these houses are in middle class neighborhoods, which fits in both with somebody owning property in the sticks in Jersey and with the psychological profile we have of this guy. He's well educated, and it would figure he's making a decent living.

"Inspector Wohl believes, and Chief Coughlin and I agree, that taking either of these doors tonight would probably be counterproductive."

"Can I ask why?" Inspector Jenks asked.

"Worst case scenario, Inspector," Wohl said. "He's in there. He's got explosives. He sets them off, and takes half the neighborhood with him."

"Next worse case scenario, Wally," Chief Coughlin said. "He's not in there. He's the editor of theCatholic Messenger. On his way to complain to the cardinal archbishop that while he and wife were having a retreat at Sacred Heart Monastery, the cops took his front and back doors and scared hell out of his cat, he stops by the PhiladelphiaLedger to tell Arthur Nelson what Carlucci's Commandos have done to him."

That produced more outright laughter than chuckles.

"And Jerry Carlucci, Wally," Lowenstein added, "said he wants to be there if we take anybody's door."

"I agree with Inspector Wohl too," H. Charles Larkin said. "I don' t think, if our man is in one of these houses, that he's liable to do anything tonight. Unless, of course, we panic him. Then all bets are off."

"So what Peter has come up with is this," Lowenstein went on. "At half past seven tomorrow morning, it gets light at six-fifty, we are going to send detectives to the houses adjacent to the houses in question and see what the neighbors know about Wheatley, Stephen J., and Wheatley, M. C. If it looks at all that there's a chance he's our guy, we evacuate the houses in the area, and then we take the door. Stakeout will take the door, backed up by Highway and Ordnance Disposal."

"And what if he's not our man?" Inspector Jenks asked.

"Then we take a look at the other five houses where nobody was home. There will be people still on them, of course."

And if we shoot blanks there too, Wohl thought, we're back to square one.

"So what happens now?" Inspector Jenks asked.

"I don't know about you, Wally," Coughlin said, "but I'm going to go home and go to bed."

"You each, you and Chief Lowenstein, are going to take one of these houses?" Jenks asked.

"That's up to Inspector Wohl," Lowenstein said. "Peter?"

"I'm going to be between the two houses," Wohl said. "Which door we take first, if we take any at all, will depend on what the detectives come up with when they talk to the neighbors. We'll do them one at a time."

"And the mayor's going to be there?"

"Yes, sir. That's what he said."

"And we'll be with Peter and the mayor," Lowenstein said. "Denny's going to pick him up at his house in Chestnut Hill at seven."

Lowenstein put a match to a large black cigar, then turned to Wohl.

"Is that about it, Peter?"

"Yes, sir. All that remains to be done is to pass the word."

"Then I'm going home," Lowenstein said, and walked out of the room.

The meeting was over.