The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  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-à-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.

  ELEVEN

  At 7:40 A.M. Miss Penelope Detweiler was sitting up in her canopied four-poster bed in her three-room apartment on the second floor of the Detweiler mansion when Mrs. Violet Rogers, who had been employed as a domestic servant by the Detweilers since Miss Detweiler was in diapers, entered carrying a tray with coffee, toast, and orange juice.

  Miss Detweiler was wearing a thin, pale blue, sleeveless nightgown. Her eyes were open, and there was a look of surprise on her face.There was a length of rubber medical tubing tied around Miss Detweiler’s left arm between the elbow and the shoulder. A plastic, throwaway hypodermic injection syringe hung from Miss Detweiler’s lower left arm.

  “Oh, Penny!” Mrs. Rogers moaned. “Oh, Penny!”

  She put the tray on the dully gleaming cherrywood hope chest at the foot of the bed, then stood erect, her arms folded disapprovingly against her rather massive breast, her full, very black face showing mingled compassion, sorrow, and anger.

  And then she met Miss Detweiler’s eyes.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” Mrs. Rogers said, moaned, and walked quickly to the bed.

  She waved a large, plump hand before Miss Detweiler’s eyes. There was no reaction.

  She put her hand to Miss Detweiler’s forehead, then withdrew it as if the contact had burned.

  She put her hands on Miss Detweiler’s shoulders and shook her.

  “Penny! Penny, honey!”

  There was no response.

  When Mrs. Rogers removed her hands from Miss Detweiler’s shoulders and let her rest again on the pillows against the headboard, Miss Detweiler started to slowly slide to the right.

  Mrs. Rogers tried to stop the movement but could not. She watched in horror as Miss Detweiler came to rest on her side. Her head tilted back, and she seemed to be staring at the canopy of her bed.

  Mrs. Rogers turned from the bed and walked to the door. In the corridor, the walk became a trot, and then she was running to the end of the corridor, past an oil portrait of Miss Detweiler in her pink debutante gown, past the wide stairway leading down to the entrance foyer of the mansion, into the corridor of the other wing of the mansion, to the door of the apartment of Miss Detweiler’s parents.

  She opened and went through the door leading to the apartment sitting room without knocking, and through it to the closed double doors of the bedroom. She knocked at the left of the double doors, then went through it without waiting for a response.

  H. Richard Detweiler, a tall, thin man in his late forties, was sleeping in the oversize bed, on his side, his back to his wife Grace, who was curled up in the bed, one lower leg outside the sheets and blankets, facing away from her husband.

  Mr. Detweiler, who slept lightly, opened his eyes as Mrs. Rogers approached the bed.

  “Mr. D,” Violet said. “You better come.”

  “What is it, Violet?” Mr. Detweiler asked in mingled concern and annoyance.

  “It’s Miss Penny.”

  H. Richard Detweiler sat up abruptly. He was wearing only pajama bottoms.

  “Jesus, now what?”

  “You’d better come,” Mrs. Rogers repeated.

  He swung his feet out of the bed and reached for the dressing gown he had discarded on the floor before turning out the lights. As he put it on, his feet found a pair of slippers.

  Mrs. Detweiler, a finely featured, rather thin woman of forty-six, who looked younger, woke, raised her head, and looked around and then sat up. Her breasts were exposed; she had been sleeping wearing only her underpants.

  “What is it, Violet?” she asked as she pulled the sheet over her breasts.

  “Miss Penny.”

  “What about Miss Penny?”

  H. Richard Detweiler was headed for the door, followed by Violet.

  “Dick?” Mrs. Detweiler asked, and then, angrily, “Dick!”

  He did not reply.

  Grace Detweiler got out of bed and retrieved a thick terry-cloth bathrobe from the floor. It was too large for her, it was her husband’s, but she often wore it between the shower and the bed. She put it on, and fumbling with the belt, followed her husband and Violet out of her bedroom.

  H. Richard Detweiler entered his daughter’s bedroom.

  He saw her lying on her side and muttered something unintelligible, then walked toward the canopied bed.

  “Penny?”

  “I think she’s gone, Mr. D,” Violet said softly.

  He flashed her an almost violently angry glare, then bent over the bed and, grunting, pushed his daughter erect. Her head now lolled to one side.

  Detweiler sat on the bed and exhaled audibly.

  “Call Jensen,” he ordered. “Tell him we have a medical emergency, and to bring the Cadillac to the front door.”

  Violet went to the bedside and punched the button that would ring the telephone in the chauffeur’s apartment over the five-car garage.

  H. Richard Detweiler stood up, then squatted and grunted as he picked his daughter up in his arms.

  “Call Chestnut Hill Hospital, tell them we’re on the way, and then call Dr. Dotson and tell him to meet us there,” Detweiler said as he started to carry his daughter across the room.

  Mrs. Arne—Beatrice—Jensen answered the telephone on the second ring and told Mrs. Rogers her husband had just left in the
Cadillac to take it to Merion Cadillac-Olds for service.

  “Mr. D,” Mrs. Rogers said, “Jensen took the limousine in for service.”

  “Go get the Rolls, please, Violet,” Detweiler said, as calmly as he could manage.

  “Oh, my God!” Mrs. Grace Detweiler wailed as she came into the room and saw her husband with their daughter in his arms. “What’s happened?”

  “Goddamn it, Grace, don’t go to pieces on me,” Detweiler said. He turned to Violet.

  “Not the Rolls, the station wagon,” he said, remembering.

  There wasn’t enough room in the goddamned Rolls Royce Corniche for two people and a large-sized cat, but Grace had to have a goddamned convertible.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Grace Detweiler asked.

  “God only knows what she took this time,” Detweiler said, as much to himself as in reply to his wife.

  “Beatrice,” Violet said, “get the keys to the station wagon. I’ll meet you by the door.”

  “Oh, my God!” Grace Detweiler said, putting her balled fist to her mouth. “She’s unconscious!”

  “Baxley has the station wagon,” Mrs. Jensen reported. “He’s gone shopping.”

  Baxley was the Detweiler butler. He prided himself that not one bite of food entered the house that he had not personally selected. H. Richard Detweiler suspected that Baxley had a cozy arrangement with the grocer’s and the butcher’s and so on, but he didn’t press the issue. The food was a good deal better than he had expected it would be when Grace had hired the Englishman.

  “Baxley’s gone with the station wagon,” Violet reported.

  Goddamn it all to hell! Both of them gone at the same time! And no car, of five, large enough to hold him with Penny in his arms. And nobody to drive the car if there was one.

  “Call the police,” H. Richard Detweiler ordered. “Tell them we have a medical emergency, and to send an ambulance immediately.”