The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  The hackneyed phrase “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it!” no longer brought a smile to Washington’s face.

  Washington got out of his car and entered the building. He first stopped at the office of the Commanding Officer, which looked very much as it had when it had been the Principal’s Office of the Frankford Grammar School.

  Officer Paul Thomas O’Mara, Inspector Wohl’s administrative assistant, attired in a shiny, light blue suit Washington suspected had been acquired from the Bargain Basement at J. C. Penney’s, told him that Captain Mike Sabara, Wohl’s deputy, had not yet come in.

  “Give me a call when he does come in, will you, Tommy?” Washington asked, left the Principal’s Office, and climbed stone stairs worn deeply by seventy-odd years of children’s shoes to the second floor, where he entered what had been a classroom, over the door of which hung a sign: INVESTIGATION SECTION.

  There he found Detective Matthew M. Payne on duty. Payne was attired in a sports coat Jason knew that Detective Payne had acquired at a Preferred Customer 30% Off Sale at Brooks Brothers, a button-down-collar light blue shirt, the necktie of the Goodwill Rowing Club, and well-shined loafers.

  He looked like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers, Jason thought. It was a compliment.

  “Good morning, Detective Payne,” Jason said. “You need a shave.”

  “I woke late,” Payne said, touching his chin. “And took a chance you wouldn’t get here until I could shave.”

  “What happened? Did Milham keep you at Homicide?”

  “I was there. But he didn’t keep me. He let me sit in on interviewing Atchison.”

  Washington’s face showed that he found that interesting, but he didn’t reply.

  “We can’t have you disgracing yourself and our unit with a slovenly appearance when you meet the Mayor,” Washington said.

  “Am I going to meet the Mayor?” Payne asked.

  “I think so,” Jason replied, already dialing a number.

  There was a brief conversation with someone named Jack, whom Detective Payne correctly guessed to be Lieutenant J. K. Fellows, the Mayor’s bodyguard and confidante, and then Washington hung up.

  “Get in your car,” he ordered, handing Matt Payne the large envelope. “Head for the Schuylkill Expressway. When you get there, call M-Mary One and get a location. Then either wait for them or catch up with them, and give Lieutenant Fellows this.”

  “What is it?”

  “When I got home last night, Officer Kellog’s widow was waiting for me. There is no question in her mind that her husband’s death has something to do with Narcotics. She also made a blanket indictment of Five Squad Narcotics. She says they’re all dirty. That’s a transcript, almost a verbatim one, of what she said.”

  “You believe her?”

  Washington shrugged. “I believe she believes what she told me. Wohl said to get it to the Mayor as soon as we can.”

  Washington dialed the unlisted private number of the Commanding Officer, Highway Patrol from memory. It was answered on the second ring.“Captain Pekach.”

  “Sergeant Washington, sir.”

  “Honest to God, Jason, I was just thinking about you.”

  “I was hoping you could spare a few minutes for me, sir.”

  “That sounds somehow official.”

  “Yes, sir. Inspector Wohl asked me to talk to you.”

  “You’re in the building?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on, then. You’ve got me worried.”

  When Washington walked into Captain Pekach’s office, Pekach was in the special uniform worn only by the Highway Patrol, breeches and boots and a Sam Browne belt going back to the days when the Highway Patrol’s primary function had been to patrol major thoroughfares on motorcycles.Washington thought about that as he walked to Pekach’s desk to somewhat formally shake Pekach’s offered hand: They used to be called “the bandit chasers”; now they call them “Carlucci’s Commandos.” Worse, “The Gestapo.”

  “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

  “Curiosity overwhelms me, Sergeant,” Pekach said. “Coffee, Jason’?”

  “Thank you,” Washington said.

  Pekach walked around his desk to a small table holding a coffee machine, poured two mugs, handed one to Washington, and then, waving Washington into one of the two upholstered armchairs, sat down in the other and stretched his booted legs out in front of him.

  “OK, what’s on your mind?”

  “Officer Kellog. The Narcotics Five Squad,” Washington said. “The boss suggested I talk to you about both.”

  “What’s our interest in that?”

  “This is all out of school,” Washington said.

  Pekach held up the hand holding his mug in a gesture that meant, understood.

  “The Widow Kellog came to my apartment last night,” Washington said. “She is convinced that her husband’s death is Narcotics-related.”

  “She came to your apartment?” Pekach asked, visibly surprised, and without waiting for a reply, went on: “I think that’s a good possibility. Actually, when I said I was thinking about you just before you called, I was going to ask you if Homicide had come up with something along that line. I figured you would know if they had come up with something.”

  “She is also convinced that Officer Kellog was, and the entire Narcotics Five Squad is, dirty,” Washington went on.

  This produced, as Washington feared it would, an indignant reaction. Pekach’s face tightened, and his eyes turned cold.

  “Bullshit,” he said. “Jerry Kellog worked for me before he went on the Five Squad. A good, smart, hardworking, honest cop. Which is how he got onto the Five Squad. I recommended him.”

  “How much do you know about the Five Squad?”

  “Enough. Before I got promoted, I was the senior lieutenant in Narcotics…no I wasn’t, Lieutenant Mikkles was. But I filled in for Captain Talley enough to know all about the Five Squad. Same thing—good, smart, hardworking, honest cops.”

  Washington didn’t reply.

  “Christ, Jason, the Narcotics Five Squad is—” He looked for a comparison, and found one: “—the Highway Patrol of Narcotics. The best, most experienced, hardworking people. A lot of pride, esprit de corps. They’re the ones who make the raids, take the doors, stick their necks out. Where did Wohl get the idea they’re dirty?”

  “From me, I’m afraid,” Washington said.

  Pekach looked at him in first surprise and then anger.

  “I’m not saying they’re dirty,” Washington said. “I don’t know—”

  “Take my word for it, Jason,” Pekach interrupted.

  “What I told the Boss was that I believed Mrs. Kellog believed what she was saying.”

  “She’s got an accusation to make, tell her to take it to Internal Affairs.”

  “She’s not willing to do that. She doesn’t trust Internal Affairs.”

  “I suppose both you and Wohl have considered that she might be trying to take the heat off her boyfriend?” Pekach challenged. “What’s his name? Milham?”

  “That, of course, is a possibility.”

  “What I think you should do—and if you don’t want to tell Wohl, by God, I will—is turn this over to Internal Affairs and mind our own business.”

  Washington didn’t reply.

  Pekach’s temper was now aroused.

  “You know what Internal Affairs would find? Presuming that they didn’t see these wild accusations for what they are—a desperate woman trying to turn the heat off her boyfriend—and conducted an investigation, they’d find a record of good busts, busts that stood up in court, put people away, took God only knows how much drugs off the street.”

  “We can’t go to Internal Affairs with this right now,” Washington said.

  “Why not?” Pekach demanded, looking at him sharply. “Oh, is that what you’ve all been up to, that nobody’s talking about? Investigating Internal Affairs? Is that why you can’t take this to them?”
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br />   “You’re putting me on a spot, Captain,” Washington said. “I can’t answer that.”

  “No, of course you can’t,” Pekach said sarcastically. “But let me tell you this, Jason: If anybody just happened to be investigating Internal Affairs, say, for example, the Mayor’s personal detective bureau, I’d say they have a much better chance of finding dirty cops there than anyone investigating the Narcotics Five Squad would find there.”

  Washington was aware that his own temper was beginning to flare. He waited a moment.

  “Captain, I do what the Boss tells me. He told me to have a long talk with you about the Narcotics Five Squad. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Oh, Christ, Jason, I know that. It just burns me up, is all, that the questions would be asked. I know those guys. I didn’t, I really didn’t, mean to jump on you.”

  Washington didn’t reply.

  “And I’ll tell you something else, just between us,” Pekach said. “I guess my nose is already a little out of joint. I’m supposed to be the Number Three man in Special Operations, and I don’t like not knowing what you and your people are up to. I know that’s not your doing, but…”

  “Just between you and me, Captain Sabara doesn’t know either,” Washington said. “And also, just between you and me, I know that the decision to keep you and Sahara in the dark wasn’t made by Inspector Wohl, and he doesn’t like it any more than you do.”

  “I figured it was probably something like that,” Pekach said. “But thank you for telling me.”

  Washington shrugged.

  “What else can I do for you, Jason?”

  “I’m a little afraid to ask.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about how the Narcotics Five Squad operates. You do. Would you give some thought to how they could be dirty, and tell me?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Pekach said bitterly, and then: “OK, Jason, I will.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Washington said, and stood up.

  “Jason, I hope you understand why I’m sore. And that I’m not sore at you.”

  “I hope you understand, Captain, that I don’t like asking the questions.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Pekach said. “We’re still friends, right? Despite my nasty Polish temper?”

  “I really hope you still think of me as a friend,” Washington said.

  When Matt Payne went out the rear door into the parking lot, he saw that it was shift-change time. The lot was jammed with antenna-festooned Highway Patrol cars, somewhat less spectacularly marked Anti-Crime Team (ACT) cars, and a row of unmarked cars. Almost all of the cars were new.There was more than a little resentment throughout the Department about Special Operations’ fleet of new cars. In the districts, radio patrol car odometers were commonly on their second hundred thousand miles, seat cushions sagged, windows were cracked, heaters worked intermittently, and breakdowns of one kind or another were the rule, not the exception.

  The general belief held by most District police officers was that Inspector Wohl was the fair-haired boy of the Department, and thus was able to get new cars at the expense of others who did not enjoy his status. Others felt that Special Operations had acquired so many new vehicles because it was the pet of Mayor Carlucci, and was given a more or less blank check on the Department’s assets.

  The truth, to which Matt Payne was privy—he had been then Staff Inspector Wohl’s administrative assistant before becoming a detective—had nothing to do with Inspector Wohl or the fact that Special Operations had been dreamed up by the Mayor, but rather with the Congress of the United States.

  Doing something about crime-in-the-streets had, about the time the Mayor had come up with his idea for Special Operations, been a popular subject in Congress. It was a legitimate—that is to say, one the voters were getting noisily concerned about—problem, and Congress had reacted in its usual way by throwing the taxpayers’ money at it.

  Cash grants were made available to local police departments to experiment with a new concept of law enforcement, This was called the Anti-Crime Team concept, which carried with it the acronym ACT. It meant the flooding of high-crime areas with well-trained policemen, equipped with the very latest equipment and technology, and teamed with special assigned prosecutors within the District Attorney’s Office who would push the arrested quickly through the criminal justice system.

  The grants were based on need. Philadelphia qualified on a need basis on two accounts. Crime was indeed a major problem in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia needed help. Equally important, the Hon. Jerry Carlucci was a political force whose influence extended far beyond the Mayor’s office. Two Senators and a dozen or more Congressmen seeking continued employment needed Jerry Carlucci’s influence.

  Some of the very first, and most generous, grants were given to the City of Philadelphia. There was a small caveat. Grant money was to be used solely for new, innovative, experimental police operations, not for routine police expenditures. So far as Mayor Carlucci was concerned, the Special Operations Division was new, innovative and experimental. The federal grants could thus legally be, and were, expended on the pay of police officers transferred to Special Operations for duty as Anti-Crime Team police, and for their new and innovative equipment, which of course included new, specially equipped police cars. Since it was, of course, necessary to incorporate the new and innovative ACT personnel and equipment into the old and non-innovative Police Department, federal grant funds could be used for this purpose.

  Until investigators from the General Accounting Office had put a stop to it, providing the Highway Patrol, in its new, innovative, and experimental role as a subordinate unit of the new, innovative, and experimental Special Operations Division, with new cars had been, in Mayor Carlucci’s opinion, a justifiable expenditure of federal grant funds.

  More senior police officers, lieutenants and above, usually, the “white shirts,” who understood that money was money, and that if extra money from outside bought Special Operations and Highway cars, then the money which would ordinarily have to eventually be spent for that purpose could be spent elsewhere in the Department, were not as resentful. But this rationale was not very satisfying to a cop in a district whose battered radio patrol car wouldn’t start at three o’clock in the morning.

  Detective Payne went to a row of eight new, unmarked Ford sedans, which so far as the federal government was concerned were involved in new, innovative, and experimental activities under the ACT concept, and got in one of them. It was one of four such cars assigned to the Investigation Section. Sergeant Jason Washington had one, and Detective Tony Harris the second, on an around the-clock basis. The two other cars were shared by the others of the Investigation Section.

  He drove out of the parking lot and headed up Castor Avenue toward Hunting Park Avenue. He turned off Hunting Park Avenue onto Ninth Street and off Ninth Street onto the ramp for the Roosevelt extension of the Schuylkill Express way, and then turned south toward the Schuylkill River.

  At the first traffic light, he took one of the two microphones mounted just about out of sight under the dash.

  “Mary One, William Fourteen.”

  “You have something for me, Fourteen?” Lieutenant Jack Fellows’s voice came back immediately.

  “Right.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Just left Special Operations.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation as Lieutenant Fellows searched his memory for time-and distance.

  “Meet us at the Zoo parking lot,” he said.

  “On the way,” Matt said, and dropped the microphone onto the seat.

  Then he reached down and threw a switch which caused both the brake lights and the blue and white lights concealed behind the grille of the Ford to flash, and stepped hard on the accelerator.

  The Mayor is a busy man. He doesn’t have the time to waste sitting at the Zoo parking lot waiting for a lowly detective. This situation clearly complies with the provisions of paragraph wh
atever the hell it is of Police Administrative Regulations restricting the use of warning lights and sirens to those clearly necessary situations.

  There were a number of small pleasures involved with being a policeman, and one of them, Matt Payne had learned, was being able to turn on warning lights and the siren when you had to get somewhere in a hurry.

  He had thought of this during dinner the previous evening, during a somewhat acrimonious discussion of his—their—future with Miss Penelope Detweiler.

  It was her position (and that of Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, who allied themselves with Miss Detweiler in the Noble Cause of Talking Common Sense to Matt) that it was childish and selfish of him, with his education, potential, and background, to remain a policeman, working for peanuts, when he should be thinking of their future.

  He had known that it would not have been wise to have offered the argument “Yeah, but if I’m not a cop, I won’t be able to race down Roosevelt Boulevard with the lights on.” She would have correctly decided that he was simply being childish again.

  There were other satisfactions in being a policeman, but for some reason, he seemed to become instantly inarticulate whenever he tried to explain them to her. In his own mind, he knew that he had been a policeman long enough so that it was in his blood, and he would never be happy at a routine job.

  He reached the Schuylkill River, crossed it, and turned east toward Center City. Then he reached down and turned off the flashing lights. The traffic wasn’t that heavy, and if Mary One, the mayoral limousine, beat him to the Zoo parking lot, he wasn’t entirely sure if the Mayor would agree with his decision that turning on the lights was justified.

  From what he’d heard of the Mayor’s career as a police man, he’d been a really by-the-book cop.

  When he got to the Zoo parking lot, he stopped and picked up his microphone.

  “Mary One, William Fourteen, at the Zoo.”

  “A couple of minutes,” Lieutenant Fellows’s voice came back.

  Matt picked the envelope off the floor, and got out of the car and waited for the Mayor.