Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin looked at Chief Inspector August Wohl (Retired) and then at Inspector Peter Wohl, shrugged, and said, “OK. I’ll call him.”
He leaned forward on Peter Wohl’s white leather couch for the telephone. He stopped.
“I don’t have his home phone,” he said.
“I’ve got it,” Peter Wohl said. “In my bedroom.”
He pushed himself out of one of the two matching white leather armchairs and walked into his bedroom.
“I don’t like this, Augie,” Denny Coughlin said.
“It took place on his watch,” Chief Wohl said. “He was getting the big bucks to make sure things like this didn’t happen.”
“Big bucks!” Coughlin snorted. “I wonder what’s going to happen to him?”
“By one o’clock tomorrow afternoon, he will be transferred to Night Command. Unless the Mayor has one of his Italian tantrums again, in which case I don’t know.”
Peter Wohl came back in his living room with a sheet of paper and handed it to Coughlin.
“How did I wind up having to do this?” Coughlin asked.
“Peter’s not senior enough, and the Mayor likes you,” Chief Wohl said.
“Jesus,” Coughlin said. He ran his finger down the list of private, official, home telephone numbers of the upper hierarchy of the Philadelphia Police Department, found what he was looking for, and dialed the number of Inspector Gregory F. Sawyer, Jr.
Inspector Sawyer was the Commanding Officer of the Central Police Division, which geographically encompasses Center City Philadelphia south of the City Hall. It supervises the Sixth and Ninth police districts, each of which is commanded by a captain. The Sixth District covers the area between Poplar Street on the north and South Street on the south from Broad Street east to the Delaware River, and the Ninth covers the area west of Broad Street between South and Poplar to the Schuylkill River. Its command is generally regarded as a stepping-stone to higher rank; both Chief Wohl and Chief Coughlin had in the past commanded the Central District.
“Barbara, this is Denny Coughlin,” Chief Coughlin said into the telephone. “I hate to bother you at home, but I have to speak to Greg.”
Chief Wohl leaned forward from his white leather armchair, picked up a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey, and generously replenished the glass in front of Denny Coughlin.
“Greg? Denny. Sorry to bother you at home with this, but I didn’t want to take the chance of missing you in the morning. We need you, the Commanding Officer of the Sixth, Sy Meyer, a plainclothesman of his named Palmerston, and a Sixth District uniform named Crater at Peter Wohl’s office at eight tomorrow morning.”
“What’s going on, Denny?” Inspector Sawyer inquired, loudly enough so that Chief Wohl and his son could hear.
“There was an incident,” Coughlin began, visibly uncomfortable with having to lie, “involving somebody who had Jerry Carlucci’s unlisted number. He wants a report from me by noon tomorrow. I figured Wohl’s office was the best place to get everybody together as quietly as possible.”
“An incident? What kind of an incident?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear about it myself until I saw the Mayor tonight. I guess we’ll all find out tomorrow.” He paused. “Greg, I probably don’t have to tell you this, but don’t start your own investigation tonight, OK?”
“Jesus Christ! I haven’t heard a goddamned thing.”
“Don’t feel bad, neither did I. Eight o’clock, Greg.”
“I’ll be there,” Inspector Sawyer said.
“Good night, Greg.”
“Good night, Denny.”
Coughlin put the telephone back in its cradle and picked up his drink.
“Why the hell is my conscience bothering me?” he asked.
“It shouldn’t,” Chief Wohl said. “Not your conscience.”
Officer Charles F. Crater, who lived with his wife Joanne and their two children (Angela, three, and Charles, Jr., eighteen months) in a row house at the 6200 block of Crafton Street in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia, was asleep at 7:15 a.m. when Corporal George T. Peterson of the Sixth District telephoned his home and asked to speak to him.
Mrs. Crater told Corporal Peterson that her husband had worked the four-to-twelve tour and it had been after two when he got home.
“I know, but something has come up, and I have to talk to him,” Corporal Peterson replied. “It’s important, Mrs. Crater.”
Two minutes later, sleepy-eyed, dressed in a cotton bathrobe under which it could be seen that he had been sleeping in his underwear, Officer Crater picked up the telephone.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Charley, do you know where Special Operations Headquarters is?”
“Frankford and Castor?”
“Right. Be there at eight o’clock. See the Sergeant.”
“Jesus,” Crater said, looking at his watch. “It’s quarter after seven. What’s going on?”
“Wait a minute,” Corporal Peterson said. “Charley, the Sergeant says to send a car for you. Be waiting when it gets there.”
“What’s going on?”
“Hold it a minute, Charley,” Corporal Peterson said.
Sergeant Mario Delacroce came on the line.
“Crater, you didn’t get this from me,” he said. “All I know is that we got a call from Central Division saying to have you at Special Operations at eight this morning. What I hear is that Special Operations has got some operation coming off on your beat, and they want to talk to you.”
“What kind of an operation?”
“Charley, Central Division don’t confide in me, they just tell me what they want done. There’ll be a car at your house in fifteen minutes. Be waiting for it. You want a little advice, put on a clean uniform and have a fresh shave.”
“Right,” Charley Crater said.
He put the telephone back in its cradle.
“What was that all about?” Joanne Crater asked, concern in her voice.
“Ah, those goddamned Special Operations hotshots are running some kind of operation on my beat, and they want to talk to me,” Charley said.
“Talk to you about what?”
“Who knows?” Charley said. “They think their shit don’t stink.”
“I really wish you’d clean up your language, Charley.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Honey, I got to catch a quick shave and get dressed. Have I got a fresh uniform?”
“Yeah, there’s one I picked up yesterday.”
As he went up the stairs to his bedroom, Officer Crater had a very unpleasant thought: Maybe it has something to do with…Nah, if it was something like that, I’d have been told, before I went off last night, to report to Internal Affairs.
But what the hell does Special Operations want to ask me about?
Nine months before, a building contractor from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, had telephoned the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service, saying the service had been recommended to him by a client of the service. After first ascertaining that the building contractor did indeed know the client, and that he understood the price structure, Mrs. Osadchy dispatched to Room 517 of the Benjamin Franklin Hotel one of her associates, who happened to be an employee of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, whose husband had deserted her and their two children, and who worked on an irregular basis for the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service to augment her income.
When she reached the building contractor’s room, it was evident to her that he was very drunk, and when his behavior was unacceptably crude, she attempted to leave. The building contractor thereupon punched her in the face. She screamed, attracting the attention of the occupants of the adjacent room, who called hotel security.
The on-duty hotel security officer, a former police officer, was contacted as he stood on the sidewalk, chatting with Officer Charles F. Crater, of the Sixth District, who was walking his beat.
Officer Crater, ignoring the hotel security officer’s argument that he could deal with the situation alone, accompanied him to the building contractor’s room, where they found the building contractor somewhat aghast at the damage he had done to the face of the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service, and the lady herself in the bathroom, trying to stanch the flow of blood from her mouth and nose, so that she could leave the premises without attracting horrified attention to herself.
The lady did not look like what Officer Crater believed hookers should look like. She was weeping. She told Officer Crater that her name was Marianne Connelly, and that her husband had deserted her and their two children, and that she had to do this to put food in their mouths. He believed her. She told him that if anyone at the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society heard about this, she would be fired, and then she didn’t know what she would do. He believed her.
The building contractor said that he didn’t know what had come over him, that he was a family man with children, and if this ever got back to McKeesport, he would lose his family and probably his business.
The hotel security officer suggested to Officer Crater that no real good would come from arresting the building contractor, since there were no witnesses to the assault, and the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service wouldn’t humiliate herself, and set herself up to surely get fired, by going to court to testify against him.
What harm would there be, the hotel security officer argued, if they settled this bad situation right here and now? The building contractor would give the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service money, enough not only to pay for her medical bills and the damage to her clothing, but to compensate her for what the sonofabitch had done to her.
The sonofabitch produced a wallet stuffed with large-denomination bills to demonstrate his willingness to go along with this solution to the problem.
“Give it all to her,” Officer Crater ordered.
“I got to keep out a few bucks, for Christ’s sake!”
“Give it all to her, you sonofabitch!” Officer Crater ordered angrily, and watched as the building contractor gave the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service all the money in his wallet. Then he turned to the hotel security officer. “You’ll see that she gets out of here and home all right, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Officer Crater then turned and left the room.
The lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service went home and telephoned Mrs. Osadchy to report what had happened.
“How much did he give you, Marianne?”
“Six hundred bucks.”
“You keep it, and I promise you, this will never happen again.”
Mrs. Osadchy also reported the incident to Mr. Cassandro, who considered the situation a moment and then said, “I think, since the cop was so nice, that we ought to show our appreciation. Give the broad a couple of hundred and tell her to give it to the cop.”
“I already told Marianne she could keep the dough she got from the john.”
“Then you give her the money for the cop, Harriet. Consider it an investment. Trust me. Do it.”
Two days later, while Officer Crater was walking his beat, the lady from the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society who moonlighted at the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service approached him.
“I want to thank you for the other night,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Aaaaaah,” Officer Crater said, somewhat embarrassed.
“No, I really mean it,” she said. “I really appreciate what you did for me.”
“Forget it,” Officer Crater said.
The lady handed him what looked like a greeting card.
“What’s this?” Officer Crater asked.
“It’s a thank-you card. I got it at Hallmark.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Officer Crater said. “All I was trying to do was make the best of a bad situation.”
“You’re sweet,” the lady said. “What did you say your name was?”
“Crater.”
“I mean your first name.”
“Charley,” Officer Crater replied.
“Mine’s Marianne,” she said. “Thanks again, Charley.” She kissed Officer Crater on the cheek and walked away.
Officer Crater stuffed the Hallmark thank-you card in his pocket and resumed walking his beat. When he got home, he took another look at it. Inside the card were four crisp fifty-dollar bills.
“Jesus Christ!” Officer Crater said. He went to the bathroom and tore the thank-you card in little pieces and flushed the pieces down the toilet. His wife, he knew, would never understand. The two hundred he folded up and put in the little pocket in his wallet which, before he got married, he had used to hold a condom.
The next time he saw her, he told himself, he would give the money back to her. There was no point in making a big deal of the money; telling his sergeant about it would mean having to tell him what he had done in the first place.
A week after that, before he saw the lady again, he had a couple of drinks too many after work in Dave’s Bar, at Third Street and Fairmount Avenue, with Officer William C. Palmerston, whom he had worked with in the Sixth District before Palmerston had been transferred to Vice.
He told him, out of school, about the thank-you card with the two hundred bucks in it, and that he intended to return it to the hooker the next time he saw her.
“Don’t be a goddamned fool,” Palmerston said. “Keep it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“It’s not like she bribed you, is it? All you did was what you thought was the right thing to do in that situation, right? I mean, you didn’t catch her doing something wrong, right? You didn’t say, ‘For two hundred bucks, I’ll let you go,’ did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“You did her a favor, she appreciated it. Keep the money.”
“You’d keep it?”
Officer Palmerston, in reply, extended his hand, palm upward, to Officer Crater.
“Try me.”
“All right, goddamn you, Bill, I will,” Officer Crater said, and took two of the fifties from the condom pocket in his wallet and laid them in Officer Palmerston’s palm. Officer Palmerston stuffed the bills in his shirt pocket, then called for another round.
“I’ll pay,” Officer Palmerston said, and laid one of the fifties on the bar.
The next time, several days later, Officer Crater saw the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service he could not, of course, give her the two hundred back, since he’d given half of it to Officer Palmerston.
She came up to him right after he started walking his beat, where he was standing on the corner of Ninth and Chestnut streets.
“Hi, Charley,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hi,” he replied, thinking again that Marianne didn’t really look like a hooker.
“You ever get a break?” she asked. “For a cup of coffee or something?”
“Sure.”
“I was about to have a cup of coffee. I’ll buy,” the lady said.
He seemed hesitant, and she saw this.
“Charley, all I’m offering is a cup of coffee,” she said. “Come on.”
Why not? Officer Crater reasoned. I mean, what the hell is wrong with drinking a cup of coffee with her?
They had coffee and a couple of doughnuts in a luncheonette. He never could remember afterward what they had talked about until Marianne suddenly looked at her watch and said she had to go. And offered her hand for him to shake, and he took it, and there was something in her hand.
“The lady I work for says thank you, too,” Marianne said, and was gone before he could say anything else, or even look at what she had left in his hand.
When he finally looked, it was a neatly folded, crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Jesus Christ!” he said aloud, before quickly putting the bill in his trousers pocket.
When he got off work that night, he went to Dave’s Bar before going home, in the hope that he would run into Bill Palmerston.
Palmerston was already in Dave’s Bar when he got there, and when he bought Palmerston a drink, he paid for it with the hundred-dollar bill.
Palmerston looked at the bill and then at Crater.
“Where’d you get that?”
“The same place I got the fifties,” Crater said.
“Lucky you.”
Palmerston watched as the bartender made change, and when he had gone, looked at Crater and asked, “Don’t tell me your conscience is bothering you again?”
“A little,” Officer Crater confessed.
Officer Palmerston reached toward the stack of bills on the bar and carefully pulled two twenties and a ten from it.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Jesus, Bill, I don’t like this.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Palmerston said. “It’s not like you’re doing something wrong.” Then Palmerston had a second thought. “Anybody see her give this to you?”
Crater shook his head.
“Then don’t worry about it,” Palmerston said. “Nobody’s getting hurt. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask around.”
“Ask around about what?”
“I wonder why this lady is being so nice to you. It sure isn’t because of the size of your cock. If I come up with something, I’ll let you know.”
Two weeks later, as Officer Crater was walking his beat, an unmarked car pulled to the curb beside him.
“Get in the back, Charley,” Officer Palmerston, who was in the front passenger seat beside the driver, said.
Charley got in the backseat.
“This is Lieutenant Meyer,” Palmerston said.
“How are you, Crater?”
“How do you do, sir?”
“I work for the Lieutenant, Charley,” Palmerston said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Bill tells me you’re an all-right guy, Crater. Not too smart, but the kind of a guy you can trust.”
Palmerston laughed.
“He also told me about your lady friend, the one you helped out, the one who’s been showing her gratitude to you.”
For a fleeting moment, Charley was very afraid that Bill Palmerston had turned him in for taking the hundred dollars from Marianne every week. But that passed. The Lieutenant wouldn’t be talking the way he was if he was going to arrest him or anything like that.
“That’s what I meant about you not being too smart, Charley,” Lieutenant Meyer said.
“Sir?”
“You really don’t know much about your lady friend’s business, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you what I found out after Bill came to me. What Bill and I found out. Your friend works for a woman named Harriet Osadchy. Her sheet shows three busts for prostitution here, and she has a sheet in Hazleton-you know where Hazleton is, Charley?”
“Out west someplace, in the coal regions.”
“Right. Anyway, this Osadchy woman has a sheet as long as you are tall in Hazleton, mostly prostitution, some controlled-substance busts, all nol-prossed, even a couple of drunk and disorderlies. But she’s smart. You got to give her that, right, Bill?”
“Yes, sir,” Officer Palmerston said.
“We didn’t even have a line on this Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service until you brought it to Bill’s attention.”
“The what?”
“The Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service. That’s what she calls her operation.”
“Oh.”
“But like I was saying, now we have a line on her. She’s got maybe twenty, twenty-five, maybe more hookers working for her. It’s a high-class operation. The minimum price is a hundred dollars. That’s for one hour.”
“Damn!”
“Bill had a talk with your friend Marianne. She said the split is sixty-forty. For her forty percent, Harriet makes the appointments for the girls, and takes care of what has to be taken care of.”
“Excuse me?”
“Her girls know that when they knock on some hotel door, they’re not going to find some weirdo inside, or a cop, and that they’ll get their money. They even take one of those credit card machines with them, in case-and you’d be surprised how often this happens-the john can put the girl on his expense account as secretarial services, or a rental car, or something like that.”
“I didn’t know they could use credit cards,” Officer Crater confessed.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Lieutenant Meyer said. “You got any idea how much money is involved here?”
“Not really. You said a hundred an hour.”
“Right. Sometimes they stay more than an hour. Sometimes the john wants something more than a straight fuck. That costs more, of course. But the low side would be that a girl would work three johns a night. Let’s say Harriet has twenty girls working. That’s three times a hundred bucks times twenty girls.”
“Six thousand dollars,” Officer Crater said wonderingly.
“Right. Times seven nights a week. That’s forty-two thousand gross. Harriet’s share of that would come to almost seventeen thousand a week. It’s a money machine. Now out of that, she has to pay her expenses. Three, four telephones. The rent on a little apartment she has on Cherry Street where the phones are. She has a couple of lawyers on retainer, and a couple of doctors who make sure the girls are clean, and she takes care of the people in the hotels who could make trouble for her. And then I’m sure she has some arrangement with the mob. Usually that’s ten percent.”
“With the mob? What for?”
“To be left alone. Years ago, the mob ran whorehouses. The Chinese still have a couple running. We keep shutting them down and they keep opening them up, but the mob found out that whorehouses are really more trouble than they’re worth, so they went out of that business. Why the hell not, if they can take, like I said, ten percent of Harriet’s forty-two thousand a week for doing nothing more than putting the word out on the street that Harriet is a friend of theirs? A freelance hooker can almost expect to get robbed, but even a really dumb sleazeball thug knows better than to mess with anyone who is a friend of the mob.”
Officer Crater grunted.
“OK. So let’s talk about where we fit in here,” Meyer said. “The first thing you have to understand is that prostitution has been around a long time-they don’t call it ‘the oldest profession’ for nothing-and there’s absolutely no way to stop it. All we can do is control it. What the citizens don’t want is hookers approaching people on the street, or in a bar. The citizens don’t want disease. They don’t want to see young girls-or, for that matter, young boys-involved. For the obvious reasons. And I think we do a pretty job of giving the citizens what they want.
“What the citizens also want, and I don’t think most people understand this, or if they do, don’t want to admit it, is somebody like Harriet Osadchy. The johns pay their money, they get what they want, they don’t get a disease, they don’t get robbed, nobody gets hurt, and nobody finds out that they’re not getting what they should be getting at home.”
“Yeah,” Officer Crater said. “I see what you mean.”
“And the Harriet Osadchys of this world don’t give the police any trouble, either. They do their thing, and they do it clean, and we have the time to do what we’re hired to do, protect the people. We close down the whorehouses, we keep the hookers from working the streets and the bars, we keep the people from getting a disease or robbed, or black-mailed, all those things.”
“I see what you mean.”
“So now we get back to you, and your friend Marianne. You did the right thing by her and the guy who beat her up. I mean, what good would it have done if you had run him in? Your friend Marianne would not have testified against him anyway, and he made it right by her by giving her a lot of money, right?”
“I think she would have really lost her job if the PSFS heard about that,” Officer Crater said.
“Sure she would have,” Lieutenant Meyer agreed. “And her john would have gotten in trouble with his wife, a lot of people would have been hurt, and you solved the problem all around. I would have done exactly the same thing myself.”
“I thought it was the right thing to do,” Officer Crater said.
“OK. So what happened next? Marianne told Harriet what happened, and Harriet knew that it would have been a real pain in the ass, really hurt her business, if you had gone strictly by the book and hauled either one of them in. So she was grateful, right, and she told Marianne to slip you a couple of hundred bucks right off, and a hundred a week regular after that. A little two-hundred-dollar present to say thank you for not running Marianne in, and a regular little hundred-dollar-a-week present just to remind you that being a good guy, doing what’s right, sometimes gets you a little extra money. Nothing wrong with that, right?”
“Not the way you put it,” Officer Crater said. “It bothered-”
“Wrong, you stupid shit!” Lieutenant Meyer snarled.
“Excuse me?”
“I explained to you, Crater, that Harriet Osadchy is personally pocketing at least seventeen thousand, seventeen thousand tax-free, by the way, each and every week, and you really pull her fucking chestnuts out of the fire, really save her ass, really save her big bucks, and she throws a lousy two hundred bucks at you? And figures she’s buying you for a hundred a week? That’s fucking insulting, Crater, can’t you see that?”
Officer Crater did not reply.
“She’s paying, as her cost of doing business, and happy to do it, some lawyer maybe a thousand a week, and some doctor another thousand, and slipping the mob probably ten percent of however the fuck much she takes in, and she slips you a lousy, what, a total of maybe five hundred, and you’re not insulted?”
“I guess I never really thought about it,” Officer Crater confessed.
“Right. You’re goddamned right you didn’t think about it,” Meyer said.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Lieutenant,” Crater said.
“You don’t say anything, that’s what I want you to say. We’ll all be better off if you never open your mouth again. I will tell you what’s going to happen, Crater. Your friend Marianne, the next time you see her, is going to give you another envelope. This one will have a thousand dollars in it. You will take two hundred for your trouble and give the rest to Bill. And every week the same goddamned thing. Am I getting through to you?”
“What do I have to do?”
“I already told you. Keep your mouth shut. That’s all. And remember, if you’re as stupid as I’m beginning to think you are, that if you start thinking about maybe going to Internal Affairs or something, it’d be your word against mine and Bill’s. Not only would we deny this conversation ever took place, but Internal Affairs would have your ass for not coming to them the first time your friend Marianne gave you money.”
Lieutenant Meyer took his arm off the back of the seat and faced forward and turned the ignition.
“Tell whatsisname he’d better get out of the car now, Bill,” he said. “Unless he wants to go with us.”
Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach turned off Frankford Avenue onto Castor and then drove into the parking lot of the Special Operations Division. He saw a parking slot against the wall of the turn-of-the-century school building marked RESERVED FOR INSPECTORS and steered his unmarked Plymouth into it.
I usually go on the job looking forward to what the day will bring, he thought as he got out of the car, but today is different; today, I suspect, I am not going to like at all what the day will bring, and I don’t mean because I’m not used to getting up before seven o’clock to go to work.
He entered the building through the nearest door, above which “BOYS” had been carved in the granite, and found himself in what had been, and was now, a locker room. The difference was that the boys were now all uniformed officers, mostly Highway Patrolmen, and the room was liberally decorated with photographs of young women torn from Playboy, Hustler, and other literary magazines.
“How do I find Inspector Wohl’s office?” Mike addressed a burly Highway Patrolman sitting on a wooden bench in his undershirt, scrubbing at a spot on his uniform shirt.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here, sir,” the Highway Patrolman said, using the word as he would use it to a civilian he had just stopped for driving twenty-five miles over the speed limit the wrong way down a one-way street. “Visitors is supposed to use the front door.”
The Highway Patrolman examined him carefully.
“I know you?”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. My name is Mike Weisbach.”
The Highway Patrolman stood up.
“Sorry, Inspector,” he said. “I didn’t recognize you. There’s stairs over there. First floor. Used to be the principal’s office.”
“Thank you,” Mike said, and then smiled and said, “Your face is familiar, too. What did you say your name was?”
“Lomax, sir. Charley Lomax.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mike said, and put out his hand. “Good to see you, Charley. It’s been a while.”
“Yes, sir. It has,” Lomax said.
When he reached the outer office of the Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Division, Weisbach identified himself as Staff Inspector Weisbach to the young officer in plain clothes behind the desk.
“I know he’s expecting you, Inspector. I’ll see if he’s free,” the young officer said, and got up and walked to a door marked INSPECTOR WOHL, knocked, and went inside.
Mike’s memory, which had drawn a blank vis-a-vis Officer Lomax, now kicked in about Wohl’s administrative assistant.
His name is O’Mara, Paul Thomas. His father is Captain Aloysious O’Mara, who commands the Seventeenth District. His brother is Sergeant John F. O’Mara of Civil Affairs. His grandfather had retired from the Philadelphia Police Department. His transfer to Special Operations had been arranged because Special Operations was considered a desirable assignment for a young officer with the proper nepotistic connections.
That’s not why I’m here. Lowenstein didn’t arrange this transfer for me to enhance my career. I’m here to help Jerry Carlucci get reelected.
Peter Wohl, without a jacket, his sleeves rolled up and his tie pulled down, appeared at the door.
“Come on in, Mike,” he said. “Can I have Paul get you a cup of coffee?”
“Please,” Mike said.
“Three, Paul, please,” Wohl ordered, and held the door open for Weisbach.
“Morning, Mike,” Mickey O’Hara called as Weisbach entered the office.
He was sitting on a couch. On the coffee table in front of him was a tape recorder and a heavy manila paper envelope.
“What’s good about it, Mick?” Weisbach asked.
“Peter’s been telling me that the forces of virtue are about to triumph over the forces of evil,” O’Hara replied. “I get an exclusive showing a dirty district captain and a dirty lieutenant on their way to the Central Cellroom. I like that, professionally and personally. So far as I’m concerned, that’s not a bad way to start my day.”
“Mick,” Wohl asked, “how would you feel about going with Mike Sabara when he picks up Paulo Cassandro?”
“Instead of staying here, you mean?” O’Hara replied, and then went on without giving Wohl a chance to reply. “For one thing, Peter, the arrest of second- or third-level gangsters is not what gets on the front page. The arrest of a police captain, a district commander, is. And please don’t tell him I said so, but Mike Sabara is not what you could call photogenic.”
“It’s your call, Mickey.”
“I know what you’re trying to do, Peter,” Mickey said. “Keep a picture of a dirty captain getting arrested out of the papers. But it won’t work. That’s news, Peter.”
“And you’re here with Carlucci’s blessing, right?”
“Yeah, I am, Peter. Sorry.”
“OK. Let’s talk about what’s going to happen. Chief Coughlin will be here any minute. Inspector Sawyer and the others no later than eight. Sawyer comes in here. Coughlin plays the tape of Meyer and Cassandro for him-”
Wohl pointed to the tape machine.
“Coughlin’s going to play the tape for him?” Mickey interrupted, sounding surprised.
“That was my father’s idea. He and Coughlin choreographed this for me last night. The tape is damned incriminating. That should, I was told, keep Sawyer from loyally defending his men. And, Mickey, Carlucci’s blessing or not, you are not going to be here when that happens.”
“OK. Do I get to hear the tape?”
“Can you live with taking my word that it’s incriminating?”
“Can I listen to it out of school?”
“OK. Why not?”
“Before?”
“After.”
O’Hara shrugged his acceptance.
“Then we go to the Investigation Section, upstairs, where Cazerra, Meyer, and the two officers will be waiting. Inspector Sawyer will arrest Captain Cazerra. I will arrest Lieutenant Meyer. Their badges, IDs, and guns will be taken from them. Staff Inspector Weisbach, assisted by Detectives Payne and Martinez, will arrest the two officers, and take their guns and badges.”
“Am I going to get to be there?” O’Hara asked.
“When Inspector Sawyer comes in here, you leave,” Wohl said. “Wait outside. When we come out, we will be on our way upstairs. You can come with us.”
“Thank you.”
“The Fraternal Order of Police will be notified immediately after the arrests,” Wohl went on. “It will probably take thirty minutes for them to get an attorney, attorneys, here. When that is over, I will take Captain Cazerra to the Police Administration Building in my car, which will be driven by Sergeant Washington. He will not be placed in a cell. Chief Coughlin has arranged for him to be immediately booked, photographed, fingerprinted, and arraigned. He will almost certainly be released on his own recognizance.”
“Nice, smooth operation,” O’Hara said.
“The same thing will happen with the others. Weisbach will take Lieutenant Meyer to the Roundhouse in his car, with Officer Lewis driving. Detectives Payne and Martinez will take the two officers in a Special Operations car.”
“It would be nice if I could get a shot of Cazerra and Meyer in handcuffs,” O’Hara said.
Wohl ignored him.
“It would be a good public relations shot, either one of them in cuffs,” O’Hara pursued.
Wohl looked at him and shook his head.
“Mick,” he said. “I am aware that there are certain public relations aspects to this, otherwise the Prince of the Fourth Estate would not be sitting in my office with egg spots on his tie and his fly open.”
Mickey O’Hara glanced in alarm toward his crotch. His zipper was fastened.
“Screw you, Peter.” He laughed. “Question: Don’t you think the Mayor would be happier if Captain Cazerra were arrested by the new Chief of the Ethical Affairs Unit?”
“Why would that make the Mayor happier?”
“Maybe assisted by Detective Payne?” Mickey went on, not directly answering the question. “Handsome Matthew is always good copy. That picture, I’m almost sure, would make page one. Isn’t that what Carlucci wants? More to the point, why he fixed it for me to be here?”
“I suggested last night that Mike make all the arrests.”
“Thanks a lot, Peter,” Mike Weisbach said sarcastically.
“Coughlin shot me down,” Wohl went on. “There’s apparently a sacred protocol here, and Coughlin wants it followed.”
“Just trying to be helpful,” Mickey said. “For purely selfish reasons. I want to get invited back the next time. I guess the Mayor will have to be happy with a picture of the Black Buddha standing behind Cazerra going into the Roundhouse. That should produce a favorable reaction from the voting segment of the black population, right?”
“Even if it does humiliate every policeman in Philadelphia,” Wohl said bitterly. “Mike, you’ve heard it. See anything wrong with it?”
Weisbach shook his head.
“OK,” Wohl said. “Then that’s the way we’ll do it.”
“OK,” Weisbach parroted.
“Afterward, Mike, you and I are going to have a long talk about the Ethical Affairs Unit.”
“Right,” Weisbach said.
Wohl’s door opened and Chief Inspector Coughlin walked in.
“Morning,” he said.
“Good morning, Chief,” Wohl and Weisbach said, almost in unison.
“How are you, Mickey?” Coughlin said cordially, offering his hand.
“No problems,” O’Hara said.
“Peter fill you in on what’s going to happen?”
“Yep.”
“Mick, just now, as I was driving over here, I wondered if you might not want to go with Captain Sabara when he arrests Cassandro.”
“Nice try, Denny,” O’Hara said. “But like I told Peter, a picture of a third-rate gangster in cuffs isn’t news. A District captain getting arrested is.”
Officer O’Mara put his head in the door.
“Inspector Sawyer is here, sir.”
Wohl looked at Coughlin, who nodded.
“Ask him to come in,” Peter said.
Inspector Gregory Sawyer, a somewhat portly, gray-haired man in his early fifties, came in the room.
He was visibly surprised at seeing Mickey O’Hara.
“I’ll see you guys later,” Mickey said. “How are you, Greg?”
He walked out of the room.
“Greg,” Coughlin said. “I wasn’t exactly truthful with you last night.”
“Excuse me, Chief?”
“That thing ready?” Coughlin asked, pointing at the tape recorder.
“Yes, sir,” Wohl said.
“Sit down, Greg,” Coughlin said.
“Yes, sir.”
“At the orders of the Commissioner, Inspector Wohl has been conducting an investigation of certain allegations involving Captain Cazerra, Lieutenant Meyer, and others in your division. A court order was obtained authorizing electronic surveillance of a room in the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel. What you are about to hear is one of the recordings made,” Coughlin said formally. “Turn it on, please,” he said, and then walked to Wohl’s window and looked out at the lawn in front of the building.