The Witness

TWENTY-SIX

Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., sat, as quietly and as inconspicuously as possible, on a folding steel chair in the small office that housed the Special Investigations Section of the Special Operations Division. He was very much afraid that he would, at any moment, be ordered out of the room on some minor errand or other, and he very much wanted to hear what was being said in the room.

The entire staff of the Special Investigations Section, that is to say Sergeant Jason Washington, Detective Anthony Harris, and himself, was in the room.

The night before, Officer Lewis had spent just about an hour making up an organizational chart for the Special Investigations Section using a drafting set he had last used in high school. There were three boxes on the chart, one on top of the other. The uppermost enclosed Sergeant Washington's name. The one in the middle read, Det. Harris, and the one on the bottom, PO Lewis. Black lines indicated the chain of authority.

It was sort of, but not entirely, a joke. Every other bureaucratic subdivision of the Special Operations Division had an organizational chart. It had been Tiny's intention, when Sergeant Washington saw the new organizational chart thumb-tacked to the corkboard and, as he almost certainly would, asked,"What the hell is that?" to reply,"We may be small, but we're bureaucratically up to standards.

Tiny Lewis had come to believe there was a small but credible hope that he could manage to stay assigned to the Special Investigations Section rather than find himself back in uniform and riding around in one of the Special Operations RPCs, which was the most likely scenario.

For one thing, the Officer Magnella murder job was no closer to a solution than it had ever been, and since it was the murder of a cop, it would continue to be worked. Tony Harris would continue to need his services as an errand runner. For another, now that they were officially caught up in the bureaucracy, there would be paperwork, that which was now being done by Inspector Wohl's administrative sergeant. He could take that over. Certainly the Black Buddha wouldn't want to do it, nor Tony Harris. If he could make himself useful, his temporary assignment just might become permanent.

And my God, what a way to see how detectives worked! Even Pop says Tony is nearly as good as Washington, and everybody knows Washington is as good as they come.

It hadn't gone exactly as planned. The Black Buddha had come into the office to find Tiny waiting for him, nodded at him idly, and then looked at the corkboard.

"What the hell is that?"

"That's our organizational chart."

"Jesus Christ!" Washington had offered contemptuously before asking, "Is there any coffee?"

"Yes, sir."

That was, of course, because of what had happened to Monahan. Washington, almost visibly, was thinking of nothing but that. The only other thing he had said before Harris came into the office was, as he pointed to the phone, "Wohl, Sabara, Pekach, and nobody else. Lowenstein and Coughlin too."

"Yes, sir."

Running telephone interference had provided the excuse to stay in the office and watch them brainstorm the job. It had been absolutely fascinating to Tiny, as much for the way the two of them worked together as for the various scenarios they came up with.

They seemed to have a telepathic, or at least a shorthand, means of communication. They exchanged ideas with very few words, as if both knew the way the other one's brain worked.

And Tiny got to listen.

"From the beginning," Washington had begun. "The firebomb."

"Somebody knew the Highway car was sent there."

"And why."

"Off the air?"

"No."

"Payne's car bothers me."

"Could have been anybody."

"Anybody who knew (1) Porsche (2) where he lived."

"Oh."

"Back to somebody with access."

"They could have been watching Monahan's house."

"Different people driving by."

"Too many drive bys."

"Back to somebody with access."

"Somebody pretty sure of his own smarts."

"The stun gun?"

"Why didn't they just pop him?"

"Hold that one a minute."

"No noise?"

"They could have hit him with an ax."

"They didn't want to kill him?"

"Hold that one too."

"They didn't give a shit when they blew the watchman away.

"Maintenance man. Not watchman."

"Did they think the firebomb would not be lethal?"

"Are they?"

"Hold that one too."

"Why don't burglars go armed?"

"Because breaking and entering isn't murder one."

"Christ, they already committed murder."

"Define 'they.' "

"The ones who hit Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc."

"What if we had caught the guy with the firebomb."

"Huh?"

"What would it be? Not more than assault. Maybe even creating a public nuisance."

"Holdthat one."

"Defining 'they' again. Are those clowns in the bathrobes smart enough to stage what happened this morning?"

"Not getting their hands on an unmarked car."

"Back to someone with access."

"That means someone here."

"Someone here would be too smart to rob Goldblatt's: no money."

"Back to the burglar. What happened at Goldblatt's was potentially murder caused in connection with another felony. What the hell?"

"Where did the money come from for Giacomo?

"What the hell are they after?"

"I thought about that. More robberies, banks, maybe, with witnesses scared off by what happened at Goldblatt's."

"Back to the goddamn Liberation Army."

"Back to defining 'they.' Are the Goldblatt doers smart enough for the press releases?

"The organized telephone calls to Payne?"

"There are now two kinds of 'they.' The ones who are calling the shots-"

"Including setting up the clowns to rob Goldblatt's."

"I can't see anybody here doing that."

"We have somebody here. That's a given."

"'They' is now three. The sleaze-balls at Goldblatt's; somebody here; and somebody calling the shots for the first two. Somebody with enough money to hire Giacomo."

"That would be the ILA."

"The ILA is bullshit. There is no ILA."

"Hold that too."

"They knew the firebomb wasn't good for murder; they knew the stun gun-"

"Theythought the stun gun-"

"-would be nonlethal. Somebody here would think that."

"And cover his ass."

"They would have convinced Monahan that police protection or not they could get to him whenever they wanted to."

"But if they hadn't killed him, he would have had a face."

"A face wouldn't do him much good if it wasn't a cop's face."

"Bingo!"

"It's an opening. Not 'Bingo.' "

"We're talking about a white face here, by the way. She said it was a white guy she saw shoot him."

"Interesting."

"It could be a light-skinned Cuban or something."

"Not Cuban. The white doesn't fit, but not Cuban. Very few Muslims, make-believe or otherwise, among the Cubans. Or for that matter, Latinos."

Both Washington and Harris fell silent for what seemed like a very long time, but was probably no more than sixty seconds.

Finally Washington raised his head and looked at Officer Foster H. Lewis.

"What are you thinking?" Harris asked.

"I am thinking I have a task for Officer Lewis."

"Yes, sir?"

"I want you to check with the corporal. Get his sheets on unmarked cars for yesterday. Check the incoming mileage against the outgoing today."

Tiny Lewis realized he had absolutely no idea what Washington wanted. As he was trying to frame a reply that might just possibly make him look like less of an ignorant asshole than he felt himself to be, Washington correctly read the expression on his face.

"What I'm looking for, Foster," he said patiently, "is a discrepancy between the mileage recorded when the driver of the unmarked car turned it in yesterday, and the mileage recorded when the car was taken out today.

"Unscrew the speedometer cable. Takes ten seconds," Harris said.

"Do you understand now, Foster?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tiny, then contact everybody who took an unmarked RPC out of here this morning," Harris said. "Ask them if there was any indication that it hadn't sat out there in the snow and ice all night."

"Unless somebody here is driving the car he took to Goldblatt's."

"Sergeant," Tiny said hesitantly.

"Come on, Foster, pay attention!"

"I went out to warm up my car when I got here. Did either of you drive it last night?"

"I gather somebody had?" Jason Washington asked softly.

"Bingo!" Harris said.

Washington reached for the telephone.

"Lieutenant Lomax, please," he said when his party answered. " Sergeant Washington is calling."

Tiny Lewis understood enough of the one side of the conversation he heard to know that Lieutenant Lomax had told Sergeant Washington that it would be best to leave the car where it was; that if that was going to be impossible, that next best was to have it towed to the nearest police garage; and that in no event should the car be driven or entered again.

Sergeant Washington returned the phone to its cradle.

"Officer Lewis," he said, "you will now go stand by the hood of the car until a police wrecker comes to haul it off. If you somehow could convey the impression that it has a mysterious malady, fine. But in no event let anyone touch it, much less get inside."

"Yes, sir."

Assistant Special Agent in Charge (Criminal Affairs) Frank F. Young came into the morning Senior Staff Conference ten minutes late.

"Sorry to be late, Chief," he said as he took a chair at the table that butted against Special Agent in Charge Walter F. Davis's desk and made a vague but unmistakable gesture of dismissal to Special Agent F. Charles Vorhiss, who had been filling in for him.

Davis waited until Vorhiss had left the room before replying, "It's all right, Frank, we know what difficulty you have getting up before noon."

Not quite sure whether Davis was cracking witty or had some other agenda, Young said, "I was just having the most fascinating conversation with Agent Matthews, whowas out carousing until the wee hours."

"With the cops, you mean?"

"In the FOP," Young said.

"We were, just coincidentally, talking about the police," Davis said, and slid a copy of the PhiladelphiaLedger across the desk to him. " Have you seen this?"

"No," Young said, and since he suspected he was expected to, he read the front-page story.