For Frankie Foley, there had been a certain satisfying finality about his meeting with Gerry Atchison in the Yock’s Diner the previous night. He had received his final payment for the hit, and he’d gotten rid of the guns. The job was done.
He presumed that Atchison would safely dispose of the weapons somewhere, probably throw them in the Delaware, or bury them in the woods when he was out playing weekend warrior with the National Guard. It didn’t matter.
Frankie knew that once Atchison had taken the guns, and once he’d gotten out of the diner without anyone seeing them together, everything was going to be fine.
Frankie personally thought that the bullshit Atchison insisted on going through, making him leave the guns in the garbage can in the toilet of the Yock’s Diner, and coming out, and then Atchison going in to get them, was some really silly bullshit. Atchison must have been watching spy movies on the TV or something.
It would have made much more sense for them just to have met someplace, even in the parking lot of the Yock’s Diner, for Christ’s sake, swapped the dough for the guns, and gotten in their cars and driven away.
On the other hand, which was why Frankie had gone along with the swapping-in-the-crapper bullshit, doing it that way had been safer than meeting him in a dark parking lot someplace.
Frankie didn’t trust Atchison. He hadn’t trusted him in the Inferno when he’d done the job, and had taken steps to make sure that Atchison hadn’t hit him after he’d hit the wife and the partner, which would have been smart, which would have made it look like the dead guy on the floor had robbed the place and killed the partner and the wife, and Atchison was the fucking hero who had killed him.
That “dead men tell no tales” wasn’t no bullshit. He was the only guy who could pin the job on Atchison, and Atchison knew it. If he was dead, Atchison could relax. The cops would look for-fucking-ever-or at least until something else came along-for the two robbers Atchison had made up and told the cops about.
Frankie had considered that the reverse was also true, that if Atchison was dead, Atchison couldn’t get weak knees or something and tell the cops, “Frankie Foley is the guy who murdered my wife.” He considered hitting Atchison. It would be no trouble at all. He could have been waiting for him in the parking lot at the Yock’s Diner, put a couple of bullets into his head, and driven off and that would have been the end of it.
Except that maybe it wouldn’t have really been the end of it. The cops would look like even bigger assholes if Atchison got hit and they couldn’t catch who had done him, either. The Ledger was already giving the cops a hard time about that. The cops would get all excited all over again, and maybe they’d get lucky.
Frankie didn’t think Atchison would have the balls to try to kill him himself, otherwise he would have killed his wife and the partner by himself, right? And Atchison didn’t know no other professional hit men, or else he would have hired one of them to do the job, right?
So the smart thing to do-the professional thing-was just stop right where he was. He had been paid to do a job, and he had done it, and got paid for it, and that should be the end of it. Go on to other things, right?
If he did it that way, in a couple of weeks he could go to work in the Inferno, and tell Wanamaker’s what they could do with their fucking warehouse. The word would get out that he had done the job for Atchison, and sooner or later other jobs would come along.
What he would have liked to have done was maybe catch an airplane and go to Las Vegas and see if he would have any luck gambling. Frankie had never been to Vegas, but he had heard there was a lot of pussy that hung around the tables, and that if they thought you were a high roller, they even sent pussy to your room. That would really be nice, go out there, win a lot of money at the crap tables, and get some pussy thrown in for good measure. But that would not have been professional. What he had to do, for a little while anyway, was play it cool.
The cops might be watching him, and they might wonder how come he could afford to quit fucking Wanamaker’s, not to mention where he got the money to go to Vegas. In a couple of weeks, about the time he would go see Atchison and remind him about the maitre d’ job, the cops would lose interest in the Inferno job, and in him. There would be other things for the cops to do.
Neither was he, Frankie decided, going to start to spend the five grand he got right away, get a better car or something, or even some clothes. That would attract attention. When he was working at the Inferno, it would be different. If he turned up with some dough, he could explain it saying he’d won it gambling. Everybody knew that maitre d’s were right in the middle of the action.
Having decided all this, Frankie then concluded that there would be no real harm in going by Meagan’s Bar and having a couple of drinks, and maybe letting Tim McCarthy see that he was walking around with a couple, three, hundred-dollar bills snuggled up in his wallet. Not to mention letting Tim see that he was walking around not giving a tiny fuck that detectives were asking questions about him.
And who knows, there just might be some bored wife in there looking for a little action from some real man. Tim, and if not Tim, then ol’ diarrhea mouth himself, Sonny Boyle, were talking about him to people, telling people not to let it get around, but that cops was asking about Frankie Foley. Tim and Sonny would be passing that word around, that was for damn sure, you could bet on it.
Women like dangerous men. Frankie had read that someplace. He thought it was probably true.
Frankie got home from Wanamaker’s warehouse a couple of minutes after six. He grabbed a quick shower, put on the two-tone jacket and a clean sports shirt, told his mother he’d catch supper some other place, he had business to do, and walked into Meagan’s Bar at ten minutes to seven.
He really would have liked to have had a couple of shooters, maybe a jigger glass of Seagram’s-7 dropped into a draft Ortleib’s, but he thought better of it and ordered just the beer.
Not that he was afraid of running off at the mouth or something, but rather that there maybe just might be some bored wife in there looking for a little action-you never could tell, he thought maybe he was on a roll-and if that happened, he didn’t want to be half shitfaced and ruin the opportunity.
He paid for the Ortleib’s with one of the three hundred-dollar bills he’d put in his wallet, told Tim to have a little something with him, and when Tim made him his change, just left it there on the bar, like he didn’t give a shit about it, there was more where that come from.
He was just about finished with the Ortleib’s, and looking for Tim to order another, when somebody yelled at Tim:
“Hey, Tim, we need a couple of drinks down here. And give Frankie another of whatever he’s having.”
At the end of the bar, where it right-angled to the wall by the door, were two guys. Guineas, they looked like, wearing shirts and ties and suits. That was strange, you didn’t see guineas that often in Meagan’s. The guineas had their bars and the Irish had theirs.
But these guys had apparently been in here before. They knew Tim’s name, and Tim called back, “Johnnie Walker, right?” which meant he knew them well enough to remember what they drank.
“Johnnie Black, if you got it,” one of the guineas called back. “And, what the hell, give Frankie one, too.”
What the hell is this all about? Frankie wondered. What the hell, a couple of guineas playing big shot. They’re always doing that kind of shit. Something in their blood, maybe.
Tim served the drinks, first to the guineas, and then carried another Ortleib’s and the bottle of Johnnie Walker and a shot glass to where Frankie sat.
“You want a chaser with that, or what?” Tim asked as he filled the shot glass with scotch.
“The beer’s fine,” Frankie said.
He raised the shot glass to his lips and took a sip and looked at the guineas and waved his hand.
One of the guineas came down the bar.
“How are you, Frankie?” he said, putting out his hand. “The scotch all right? I didn’t think to ask did you like scotch.”
“Fine. Thanks. Do I know you?”
“I dunno. Do you? My name is Joey Fatalgio.”
“Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” Frankie said.
They shook hands.
“I know who you are, of course,” Joey Fatalgio said, and winked.
What the fuck is with the wink? This guy don’t look like no fag.
“I come in here every once in a while,” Frankie said.
“And maybe I seen you at the Inferno,” Fatalgio said. “Me and my brother-Dominic-that’s him down there, we go in there from time to time.”
“Yeah, maybe I seen you in the Inferno,” Frankie said. “I hang out there sometimes. And I’m thinking of going to work there.”
“Hey, Dominic!” Joey Fatalgio called to his brother. “Bring your glass down here and say hello to Frankie Foley.”
Dominic hoisted himself off his stool and made his way down the bar.
“Frankie, Dominic,” Joey made the introductions, “Dominic, Frankie.”
“How the hell are you, Frankie?” Dominic said. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Frankie said.
“Frankie was just telling me he’s thinking of going to work at the Inferno,” Joey said.
“Going to work? The way I heard it, he already did the job at the Inferno,” Dominic said, and he winked at Frankie.
Frankie felt a little nervous.
There were guineas on the cops. Are these two cops?
“Shut the fuck up, for Christ’s sake, Dominic,” Joey Fatalgio said. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” He turned to Frankie. “You should excuse him, Frankie. Sometimes he gets stupid.”
“Fuck you, Joey,” Dominic said.
“There are places you talk about certain things, asshole,” Joey said, “and places you don’t, and this is one of the places you don’t. Right, Frankie?”
“Right,” Frankie agreed.
“No offense, Frankie,” Dominic said.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Frankie said.
“He don’t mean no harm, but sometimes he’s stupid,” Joey said.
“Fuck you, Joey, who do you think you are, Einstein or somebody?”
“Where do you guys work?” Frankie said, both to change the subject-Dominic looked like he was getting pissed at the way his brother was talking to him-and to see what they would say. He didn’t think they were cops, but you never really could tell.
“We’re drivers,” Joey said.
“Truck drivers?”
“I’m a people driver,” Joey said. “Asshole here is a stiff driver.”
“Huh?”
Joey reached in his wallet and produced a business card, and gave it to Frankie. It was for some company called Classic Livery, Inc., with an address in South Philly, and “Joseph T. Fatalgio, Jr.” printed on the bottom.
“What’s a livery?” Frankie asked.
“It goes back to horses,” Joey explained. “Remember in the cowboy movies where Roy Rogers would park his horse in the livery stables?”
“Yeah,” Frankie said, remembering. “I do.”
“I think it used to mean ‘horses for hire’ or something like that,” Dominic said. “Now it means limousines.”
“Limousines?”
“Yeah. Limousines. Mostly for funerals, but if you want a limousine to get married in, we got white ones. We even got a white Rolls-Royce.”
“No shit?”
“Costs a fucking fortune, but you’d be surprised how often it gets rented,” Dominic went on.
“Most of our business is funeral homes,” Joey said. “Only the bride, usually, gets a limousine ride for a wedding. But if you don’t get to follow the casket to the cemetery in a limousine for a funeral, people will think you’re the family black sheep.”
“I guess that’s so,” Frankie agreed, and then started to hand the Classic Livery business card back to Joey.
Joey held up his hand to stop him.
“Keep it,” he said. “You may need a limousine someday.”
“Yeah,” Dominic said. “And they’ll probably give you a professional discount.”
Joey laughed in delight.
“I told you shut up, asshole,” he said.
“A professional discount for what?” Frankie asked, overwhelmed by curiosity.
“Shit, you know what for. Increasing business,” Dominic said.
Joey laughed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Joey said, and laughed, and winked.
“Yeah, right,” Dominic said.
“Actually, Frankie, that’s sort of the reason we’re here.”
“What is?” Frankie asked.
“What you don’t know we’re talking about,” Joey said softly, moving so close to Frankie that Frankie could smell his cologne. “Frankie, there’s a fellow we know wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me about what?”
Joey winked at Frankie.
“I don’t know,” Joey said. “But what I do know about this fellow is that he admires a job well done.”
“He’s done a job or two himself,” Dominic said. “If you know what I mean.”
“He already told you he don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole,” Joey said.
“Right,” Dominic said.
“What this fellow we know wants to talk to you about, Frankie,” Joey said, “is a job.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Let’s say a job where you could make in an hour about ten times what you make in a month pushing furniture around the Wanamaker’s warehouse.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s say this fellow we know has a sort of professional admiration for the way you did your last job, and we both know I’m not talking about throwing furniture on the back of some truck.”
“Who is this guy?”
“He’s like you, Frankie, he likes to sort of maintain a low profile, you know what I mean. Have a sort of public job, and then have another job, like a part-time job, every once in a while, a job that not a hell of a lot of other people can do, you know what I mean.”
“Why does he want to talk to me?” Frankie asked.
“Sometimes, what I understand, with his full-time job, he can handle a part-time job, too, when one comes along. But sometimes, you know what I mean, more than one part-time job comes along. Actually, in this case, what I understand is that there’s three, four part-time jobs come along, and this fellow can’t handle all of them himself. I mean, you’d have to keep your mouth shut-you can keep your mouth shut, can’t you, Frankie?”
“Like a fucking clam,” Frankie said.
“I figured you could, a fellow in the part-time job business like you would have to keep his mouth shut. What I’m saying here, Frankie, is that you would be like a subcontractor. I mean, you come to some financial understanding with this fellow, you do the job, and the whole thing would be between you two. I mean, the people who hired him for the particular part-time job I think this fellow has in mind wouldn’t ever find out that this fellow subcontracted it. They might not like that. I mean, they pay this fellow the kind of money they pay, they expect him to do the job himself, not subcontract it. But what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?”
“Right,” Frankie said.
“So maybe you would be willing to talk to this fellow, Frankie?” Dominic asked. “I mean, he’d appreciate it. And if you can’t come to some sort of mutually satisfactory arrangement, then you walk away, right? No hard feelings. You’d lose nothing, and it might be in your mutual interest to get to know this fellow. You never know what will happen next week.”
“What the hell,” Frankie said. “Why not?”
Frankie had never seen so many Cadillacs in one place in his life as there were lined up in the garage of Classic Livery, Inc.
He thought there must be maybe a hundred of them, most of them black limousines. There were also a dozen Cadillac hearses, and that many or more flower cars. Plus a whole line of regular Cadillacs and Lincolns, and he saw the white Rolls-Royce Dominic had told him they had.
The floor of the garage was all wet. Frankie decided that they washed the limousines every day, and had probably just finished washing the cars that had been used.
He had never really thought about where the limousines at weddings and funerals had come from, but now he could understand that it must be a pretty good business to be in.
I wonder what they charge for a limousine at a funeral. Probably at least a hundred dollars. And they could probably use the same limousine for more than one funeral in a day. Maybe even more than two. Say a funeral at nine o’clock, and another at eleven, and then at say half past one, and one at say four o’clock.
That’s four hundred bucks a day per limousine!
Jesus Christ, somebody around here must be getting rich, even if they had to pay whatever the fuck it costs, thirty thousand bucks or whatever for a limousine. Four hundred bucks a day times five days is two fucking grand a fucking week! After fifteen weeks, you got your money for the limousine back, and all you have to do after that is pay the driver and the gas. How long will a limousine last? Two, three years at least…
Joey Fatalgio stopped the regular Cadillac he had parked around the corner from Meagan’s Bar, and pointed out the window.
“Through that door, Frankie, the one what says ‘No Admittance.’ You’ll understand that this fellow wants to talk to you alone.”
“Yeah, sure,” Frankie said.
“I’ll go park this and get a cup of coffee or something, and when you’re finished, I’ll take you back to Meagan’s. OK?”
“Fine,” Frankie said.
He got out of the car and walked to the door and knocked on it.
“Come in!” a voice said.
Frankie opened the door.
A large, olive-skinned man in a really classy suit was inside, leaning up against what looked like the garage manager’s desk.
He looked at Frankie, looked good, up and down, for a good fifteen seconds.
“No names, right?” he said. “You’re Mr. Smith and I’m Mr. Jones, right?”
“Right, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.
Jones, my ass. This is Paulo Cassandro. I seen his picture in the papers just a couple of days ago. The cops arrested him for running some big-time whore ring, and bribing some fucking cop captain.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Smith,” Cassandro said.
“Don’t mention it, Mr. Jones.”
“Look, you’ll understand, Mr. Smith, that what you hear about something isn’t always what really happened,” Cassandro said. “I mean, I understand that you would be reluctant to talk about a job. But on the other hand, for one thing, nobody’s going to hear a thing that’s said in here but you and me, and from what I hear we’re in the same line of business, and for another, you’ll understand that, with what I’ve got riding on this, I have to be damned sure I’m not dealing with no amateur.”
“I know what you mean, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.
“You want to check me, or the room, for a wire, I’ll understand, Mr. Smith. I’ll take no offense.”
Jesus Christ, I didn’t even think about some sonofabitch recording this!
“No need to do that,” Frankie said, feeling quite sophisticated about it. “I trust you.”
“That’s good. I appreciate that trust. In our line of work, trust is important. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“So tell me about the job you did on Atchison and Marcuzzi.”
And Frankie Foley did, in great detail. From time to time, Mr. Cassandro asked a question to clarify a point, but most of the time during Frankie’s recitation he just nodded his head in what Frankie chose to think was professional approval.
“In other words, you think it was a good, clean job, with no problems?”
“Yeah, I’d say that, Mr. Jones.”
“You wouldn’t take offense if I pointed out a couple of things to you? A couple of mistakes I think you made?”
“Not at all,” Frankie said.
“Well, the first mistake you made, you fucking slimeball, was thinking you’re a tough guy,” Paulo Cassandro said.
He pushed himself off the desk and walked to the door and opened it.
Joey and Dominic Fatalgio came into the office.
“Break the fingers on his left hand,” Paulo Cassandro ordered.
“What?” Frankie asked.
Joey wrapped his arms around Frankie, pinning his arms to his sides. Dominic pulled the fingers of Joey’s left hand back. Frankie screamed, and then a moment later screamed much louder as the joints and knuckles were either separated from their joints or the finger bones broken or both.
“Oh, please, Mr. Cassandro,” Frankie howled. “For Christ’s sake!”
“That was another mistake,” Paulo said, and punched Frankie in the face while holding a heavy cast-metal stapler in his hand.
“You never seen me in your life, you understand that, asshole?” Mr. Cassandro said.
Frankie now had his left hand under his right arm. When he opened his mouth to reply, he spit out two teeth. His whole arm seemed to be on fire. He wondered if he was going to faint.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“One of the mistakes you made, you pasty-faced Irish cocksucker, was going around saying untrue things, letting people think, telling people, that you were working for some Italian mob. For one thing, there is no mob, and if there was, there wouldn’t be no stupid fucking Irish shit-asses in it. The Italians in Philadelphia are law-abiding businessmen like me. You insulted me. Worse, you insulted my mother and my father when you started spreading bullshit like that around. You understand that, you fucking Mick?”
Frankie nodded his head to indicate that he was willing to grant the point Mr. Cassandro had just made.
Mr. Cassandro struck Mr. Foley again with the heavy cast-metal stapler, this time higher on the face, so that the skin above Mr. Foley’s eye was cut open, and he could no longer see out of his left eye.
“Say ‘Yes, sir,’ you fucking Mick scumbag!”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Foley said.
Mr. Cassandro, with surprising grace of movement, then kicked Mr. Foley in the genital area.
Mr. Foley fell to the floor screaming faintly, but in obvious agony.
Mr. Cassandro watched him contemptuously for a full minute.
“Stop whining, you Irish motherfucker,” he said conversationally, “and stand up, or I’ll really give you something to cry about.”
With some difficulty, Mr. Foley regained his feet. He had great difficulty becoming erect, because of the pain in his groin, and because his entire right side now seemed to be shuddering with pain.
“Now I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen carefully, because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. You don’t even know shit about the law, so I’m going to educate you. You know what happens when you plead guilty to murder?”
Mr. Foley looked at Mr. Cassandro in utter confusion.
“Nine times out of ten, it don’t mean shit,” Mr. Cassandro said, “when you confess and plead guilty, which is what you’re going to do.”
That penetrated Mr. Foley’s wall of pain.
“Confess?” he asked.
“Right. Confess. What happens is your lawyer can usually come up with something that will make the jury feel sorry for you, so they won’t vote for the death penalty. Even if he can’t do that, the judge usually knocks down the chair to life without parole, and what that means is that you have to do maybe twenty years.”
“Why?” Mr. Foley asked, somewhat piteously.
“I told you. You dishonored the Italian people of Philadelphia. And if there was a mob, you would have dishonored them too. How would it be if it got around that a stupid Mick asshole like you was associated with the mob? If there was a mob.”
“I didn’t say any-” Mr. Foley began, only to be interrupted again by Mr. Cassandro striking him a third time in the face with the heavy cast-metal stapler. This blow caught him in the corner of the mouth, causing some rupture of mucous membrane and skin tissue and a certain amount of bleeding.
“You know what’s worse than going to the slammer for twenty years, Frankie?” Mr. Cassandro asked conversationally after Mr. Foley had again regained his feet. “Even worse, if you think about it, than getting the chair?”
Frankie shook his head no and then muttered something from his swollen and distorted mouth that might have been “No, sir.”
“Dying a little bit at a time, is what would be worse,” Mr. Cassandro said. “You know what I mean by that?”
Again there came a sound from Mr. Foley and a shake of the head that Mr. Cassandro interpreted to mean that Mr. Foley needed an explanation.
“Show him,” Mr. Cassandro said.
Mr. Joey Fatalgio went to Mr. Foley, this time grabbing his left hand, which Mr. Foley was holding against his body with his upper right arm, and twisted it behind his back. Then he grabbed Mr. Foley’s right wrist, and forced Mr. Foley to place his right hand, so far undamaged, on the desk at which Mr. Cassandro had been standing.
Mr. Cassandro moved away from the desk. Mr. Dominic Fatalgio then appeared at the desk, holding a red fire ax in his hand, high up by the blade itself. He flattened Mr. Foley’s hand on the desk, and struck it with the ax, which served to sever Mr. Foley’s little finger between the largest and next largest of its joints.
Mr. Foley screamed again, looked at his bleeding hand, and the severed little finger, and fainted.
Mr. Cassandro looked down at him.
“We don’t want him dead,” he said conversationally. “Wake him up, wrap a rag or something around his hand, and make sure he understands that if I hear anything at all I don’t want to hear, I will cut the rest of his fucking fingers off.”
Mr. Dominic Fatalgio nodded his understanding of the orders he had received and began to nudge Mr. Foley with the toe of his shoe.
Mr. Cassandro left the office, and then returned.
“Make sure you clean this place up,” he said. “I don’t want Mrs. Lucca coming in here in the morning and finding that finger. She’d shit a brick.”
Both Mr. Dominic and Mr. Joey Fatalgio laughed. Mr. Cassandro then left again, carefully closing the door behind him.
There were a number of problems connected with the arrests of Mr. Atchison and Mr. Foley for the murders of Mrs. Atchison and Mr. Marcuzzi.
The first problem came up when Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein telephoned the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, on his unlisted private line in Chestnut Hill to tell him that the Honorable Thomas Callis, District Attorney of Philadelphia County, had been his usual chickenshit self, but had come around when he had told him that he was going to arrest the two of them whether or not Callis thought there was sufficient evidence.
“He already called me, Matt,” the Mayor said. “To let me know what a big favor he was doing me.”
“That figures,” Lowenstein said.
“Would it cause any problems for you,” the Mayor began, which Chief Lowenstein correctly translated to mean, This is what I want done, you figure out how to do it, “to bring Mickey O’Hara along when you arrest Atchison and the shooter, preferably both?”
Chief Lowenstein hesitated, trying to find the words to tactfully suggest this might not be such an all-around splendid idea as the Mayor obviously thought it to be.
“When I had Officer Bailey in here this afternoon, to personally congratulate him for his good work in catching that scumbag who shot Officer Kellog, I had the idea Mickey was a little pissed.”
“Why should Mickey be pissed?”
“All the other press people were here, too,” the Mayor said. “Now, I’m not saying he did anything wrong, there was no way he could have known I figure I owe O’Hara,” the Mayor said, “but when Captain Quaire put out the word to the press that we had solved the Officer Kellog job, I think Mickey got the idea I wasn’t living up to my word. I’d like to convince him that I take care of my friends.”
“No problem. I’ll put the arm out for Mickey,” Lowenstein said. “He’ll have that story all to himself.”
“I was thinking maybe both arrests,” the Mayor said. “You mind if I ask how you plan to handle them?”
And if I said, “Yeah, Jerry, now that you mention it, I do,” then what?
“We’re going to pick up Foley first thing in the morning,” Lowenstein said. “He’s not too smart, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we could get him to confess before we arrest Atchison.”
“At his house?”
“As soon as he walks out the door, I don’t like taking doors, and we found out when he goes to work. We’ll be waiting.”
“Who’s we?”
“We is Lieutenant Natali and Detective Milham, backed up by a couple of district uniforms in case we need them. I don’t think we will.”
“And Atchison?”
“I thought-actually Peter Wohl thought, and I agree with him-that it would avoid all sorts of jurisdictional problems if we could get him into Philadelphia, rather than arresting him at his house in Media. So Jason Washington called his lawyer-”
“Who’s his lawyer?”
“Sid Margolis.”
The Mayor snorted. “That figures.”
“And Washington said he has a couple of questions for him, and he thought Margolis might want to be there when he asked him, and could he ask him at Margolis’s office. Margolis called back and set it up for twelve o’clock.”
“Good thinking. You open to a couple of suggestions?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I think Tom Callis would like to get his picture in the newspapers too, and if I could tell him I had set it up for him and O’Hara to be there when you arrest Atchison…”
“No problem. You want to call him, or do you want me to?”
“I’ll call him,” the Mayor said. “And tell him to call you. And I think it would be a nice gesture if you allowed Detective Payne to go to both arrests. It would show the cooperation between Homicide and Special Operations. And what the hell, the kid deserves a little pat on the back. He did work overtime to catch Atchison with the guns.”
“He’ll be there. I’ll call Peter Wohl and set it up.”
“And then, so the rest of the press isn’t pissed because Mickey got the exclusive on the arrests, I thought I’d have a little photo opportunity in my office, like the one this afternoon when I congratulated Officer Bailey, and personally thank everybody, everybody including you and Peter, of course.”
“And including Detective Milham?”
“Of course including Detective Milham. He’s a fine police officer and an outstanding detective who did first-class work on this job.”
They call that elective memory, Chief Lowenstein thought. Our beloved mayor has elected not to recall that the last time we discussed Detective Milham, he was my Homicide detective who can’t keep his pecker in his pocket.
“Good idea,” Lowenstein said.
“I’ll have Czernich set it up,” the Mayor said. “Thanks for the call, Matt, and keep me posted.”
“Yes, sir,” Chief Lowenstein said.
It was necessary for Chief Lowenstein to telephone Mayor Carlucci at his office at ten-thirty the next morning to report that a small glitch had developed in the well-laid plans to effect the arrest of Mr. John Francis Foley.
His whereabouts, the Chief was forced to inform the Mayor, were unknown. When he had not come out of his house to go to work when he was supposed to, Detectives Milham and Payne had gone to his door and rung the bell.
His mother had told him that she was worried about John Francis. He had gone out the night before and not returned. He rarely did that. If he decided to spend the night with a friend, Mrs. Foley reported, he always telephoned his mother to tell her. John Francis was a good boy, his mother said.
“You’re telling me you don’t know where this scumbag is?” the Mayor asked.
“Well, we know he’s not at the Wanamaker’s warehouse,” Lowenstein, more than a little embarrassed, reported. “We’re working on known associates.”
“Speaking of known associates, you do have an idea where Mr. Atchison is right now, don’t you?”
“The Media police are watching his house. He’s there.”
“Find Foley, Matt,” the Mayor ordered. “Soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you call the police?” the Mayor said, his sarcasm having been ignited. “Maybe he got himself arrested. Or check the hospitals. Maybe he got run over with a truck. Just find him, Matt!”
“Yes, sir.”
Chief Lowenstein replaced the pay telephone in Meagan’s Bar into its cradle. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then asked himself a question, aloud.
“Why the hell not?”
He dropped another coin in the slot, dialed a number, and told the lieutenant who answered to call the hospitals and see if they had a patient, maybe an auto accident or something, named John Francis Foley. And while he was at it, check the districts and see if anybody by that name had been arrested.
Philadelphia District Attorney Thomas J. Callis was in something of a quandary regarding the prosecution of James Howard Leslie, a.k.a. “Speed,” for the murder of Police Officer Jerome H. Kellog.
Option one, of course, was that he would personally assume the responsibility for prosecuting the case. He knew that if he did that, in addition to the satisfaction he knew he would feel if he was able to cause the full weight of the law to come crashing down on the miserable little sonofabitch, there would be certain political advantages.
The trial was certain to attract a good deal of attention from the news media, print, radio, and television. The good people of Philadelphia could not avoid being made aware time and time again that their district attorney was in the front lines of the criminal justice system, personally bringing a terrible person, a cop killer, to the bar of justice.
The problem there was that there was a real possibility that he might not be able to get a conviction. The fact that there was no question Leslie had brutally shot Kellog to death was almost beside the point here. What was necessary was to get twelve people to agree that not only had he done it, but that he knew what he was doing when he did.
Leslie had asked for, and had been provided with, an attorney from the public defender’s office immediately after being advised of his rights under the Miranda decision.
That fellow practitioner of the law had turned out to be a somewhat motherly-appearing woman, who had spent seven years as a nun before being released from her vows and going to law school.
She had promptly advised Mr. Leslie to answer no questions, and he had not. Tony Callis had often watched the attorney in question (whom he very privately thought of as That Goddamned Nun) in action, and had come to have a genuine professional admiration for both her mind and her skill. He also believed that she had a personal agenda: She truly believed that murder was a sin, and that the taking of life by the state, as in a sentence to the electric chair, was morally no different from what Leslie had done to Kellog.
Her strategy, Callis thought, would be obvious. She would first attempt to plea-bargain the charge against Leslie down to something which would not result in the death penalty.
Callis could not agree to that, either, from rather deep personal feelings that a cop-killing under any circumstances undermined the very foundations of society and had to be prosecuted vigorously to the full extent of the law. And also because he did not want to see headlines in the Bulletin, the Daily News, and elsewhere telling the voters he had agreed to permitting a cop killer to get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
When the case then came to trial, That Goddamned Nun, oozing Christian, motherly charity from every pore, would with great skill try to convince the jury that he hadn’t done it in the first place-and Callis knew his case was mostly circumstantial-and if he had, he was a poor societal victim of poverty, ignorance, and neglect, which had caused him to seek solace in drugs, and he hadn’t known what he was doing, and consequently could not be held responsible.
The headlines in the Bulletin, the Daily News, and elsewhere would read, “DA Fails in Cop Killer Case; Leslie Acquitted.”
Option two was to have one of the assistant DAs take the case to court. In that case it was entirely possible that the Assistant DA would get lucky with a jury, who after ten minutes of deliberation would recommend Leslie be drawn and quartered, and the Assistant DA would get his picture in the papers and on the TV, and people would wonder why Callis hadn’t done the job he was being paid for.
Inasmuch as he had yet to weigh all the factors involved and come to a decision, Tony Callis was more than a little annoyed when his secretary reported that Inspector Peter Wohl, Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach, and Detective Matthew Payne were in his outer office and sought an immediate audience in re evidence in the Leslie case.
On general principle, Callis had them cool their heels for five minutes during which he wondered what the hell Wohl wanted-the Leslie case was a Homicide case-before walking to his door and opening it for them.
“Peter,” he said. “Good to see you. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Thank you for seeing us.”
“Mike,” Callis went on, shaking Weisbach’s hand, and then turned to Payne. “Nice to see you, too. Give my best to your dad.”
“Thank you, sir, I will.”
“Now what can I do for you?”
“This is confidential, Mr. Callis,” Wohl said. “We would appreciate it if what we say doesn’t get out of your office.”
“I understand.”
“Mike, show Mr. Callis the pictures,” Wohl ordered.
Weisbach handed Callis a thick manila envelope.
“The first ones are the photographs Homicide had taken in Leslie’s backyard,” Weisbach said. “They show the photo of Officer Kellog and the tape cassettes in the garbage pile.”
“I’ve seen them.”
“Next are individual photographs of each cassette, taken this morning in the Forensics Lab.”
Callis flipped quickly through the 8-by-10-inch photographs of the individual cassettes. Each bore a legend stating what was portrayed, and when the photographs were taken.
“OK,” Callis said. “So tell me?”
“We have an interesting thing here,” Weisbach said. “The cassettes are evidence in the Leslie case. They may also, down the line, be evidence in other cases.”
What the hell is he talking about?
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mike.”
“This is what is confidential,” Wohl said. “The Widow Kellog appeared at Jason Washington’s apartment and announced that the entire Narcotics Five Squad is dirty. She went so far as to suggest they were responsible for her husband’s murder.”
“We know now, don’t we, Peter, that’s not the case?”
“We know that Leslie murdered Officer Kellog. We don’t know if anyone in Narcotics Five Squad is dirty.”
“Peter, the gossip going around is that Mrs. Kellog…how should I put it?”
“Mrs. Kellog was estranged from her husband,” Wohl said.
“…and-how shall I put it-‘ involved ’ with Detective Milham. I’m sure that you have considered the possibility that she just might have been…how shall I put it?”
“‘Diverting attention from Milham’?” Wohl suggested. “She received a death threat. A telephone call telling her to keep her mouth shut, or she’d get the same thing her husband did.”
“Oh, really?”
“And she told Washington that her husband bought a condo at the shore, and a boat, both for cash. Very few police officers are in a position to do that. Mike has already checked that out. They own a house and a boat.”
It was obvious that Callis was not pleased to hear of this new complication.
“Isn’t this sort of thing in Internal Affairs’ basket? And what’s it got to do with the tapes, in any event?”
“I wish it was in Internal Affairs’ basket,” Wohl said. “But I had a call this morning from the Commissioner, who gave it to Special Operations.”
“You really are the Mayor’s private detective bureau, aren’t you?” Callis observed. When Wohl did not reply but Callis saw his face tighten, Callis added: “No offense, Peter. I know you didn’t ask for it.”
“We have reason to suspect,” Weisbach said, “that these tapes are recordings made by Officer Kellog of telephone calls to his home. If that’s the case, they may contain information bearing on our investigation.”
“They may have contained anything,” Callis said. “Past tense. They’re burned up.”
“The Forensics Lab thinks maybe they can salvage something,” Weisbach said.
“What we would like from you, to preserve the evidence in both cases,” Wohl said, “is permission to have Forensics work on them. Photographing each step of the process as they’re worked on.”
“Destroyed is what you mean,” Callis said. “If I was going to be in court with the Leslie case, I’d want to show the jury the tapes as they were in the fire, the actual tapes, not what’s left after Forensics takes them apart.”
Wohl didn’t reply, and Callis let his imagination run:
“A good defense attorney could generate a lot of fog with somebody having fooled around with those tapes,” he said, and shifted into a credible mimicry of Bernadette Callahan, Attorney-at-Law, formerly Sister John Anthony:
“‘What were you looking for on these tapes? Oh, you don’t know? Or you won’t tell me? But you can tell me, under oath, can’t you, that you found absolutely nothing on these mysterious tapes that you examined with such care that connected Mr. Leslie in any way with what you’re accusing him of.’
“And then,” Callis went on, “in final arguments, she could make the jury so damned curious about these damned tapes that they would forget everything else they heard.”
“They gave him the Nun to defend him?” Weisbach asked, smiling.
“She probably volunteered,” Callis replied. “She has great compassion for people who kill other people.”
“Tony,” Wohl said. “I need those tapes.”
That’s the first time he called me by my first name. Interesting.
“I know that…”
“If I have to, I’ll get a court order,” Wohl said.
I’ll be damned. He means that. Who the hell does he think he is, threatening the District Attorney with a court order?
The answer to that is that he knows who he is. He’s wrapped in the authority of the Honorable Jerry Carlucci.
“Come on, Peter, we’re friends, we’re just talking. All I’m asking you to do is make sure the chain of evidence remains intact.”
“Detective Payne,” Wohl said. “You are ordered to take the tapes from the case of Officer Kellog from the Evidence Room to the Forensics Laboratory for examination. You will not let the tapes out of your sight. You will see that each step of the examination process is photographed. You will then return the tapes to the Evidence Room. You will then personally deliver to Mr. Callis (a) the photographs you will have taken and (b) the results, no matter what they are, of the forensics examination.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said.
Wohl looked at Callis.
“OK?”
“Fine.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
“Anytime, Peter. You know that.”