The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  At this point in similar situations, it was normally Officer Bailey’s practice to first hurt the trash a little, either with a slap in the face or by jabbing them in the abdomen with his stick to get their attention. To further get their attention, he would then put handcuffs about their wrists and search them for weapons and illegal substances. Very often he encountered the latter, if only a few specks of spilled marijuana in their pockets.

  Then he would explain in some detail what crimes they had committed, with special emphasis on the punishments provided by law. If he had found illegal substances on their persons, so much the better.

  By then, the malefactor would be contrite. He did not want to go through the inconvenience he knew would be associated with an arrest: detention in the Thirty-ninth District, followed by transportation way the hell downtown to Central Lockup. And then several hours in Central Lockup before being arraigned before a magistrate.

  The malefactors knew that the magistrate would probably release them on their own recognizance, and that if they actually got to trial they would walk, but it was a fucking pain in the ass to go through all that bullshit.

  Officer Bailey would at some point shortly thereafter inform the trash there was a way to avoid all the inconvenience. They could make their backyard so clean they could eat off it. Get rid of all the garbage, right down to where there once had been grass. Get it all in plastic bags or something, and put it out on the street so the garbageman could take it off.

  And keep it that way from now on, or Officer Bailey, who was going to check, would come down on their trashy asses like a ton of bricks, they could believe that.

  Far more often than not, the malefactors would agree to this alternate solution of the problem at hand.

  Mr. Leslie had, indeed, heard stories about the old black cop who had a hair up his ass about burning garbage, and had heard stories that if he caught you, he’d make you clean up the whole goddamned place or throw your ass in jail.

  He was debating—Jesus Christ, I’m tired—whether it would be better to let the cop lock him up, or clean up the yard. It would take fucking forever to get all this shit out of here.

  Mr. Leslie was not given the opportunity to make a choice.

  Officer Bailey just spun him around and, guiding him with one hand on his arm and the other on his shoulder, led him to the cop car. He opened the door and guided Mr. Leslie to a seat in the rear.

  Then he returned to the backyard, and the pile of garbage. He took a mechanical pencil from his pocket, squatted beside the garbage, and began to shove things aside. The first item he uncovered was a wedding picture.

  He looked at it carefully.

  “Lord almighty!” he said wonderingly.

  He stirred the garbage a bit more. He was looking for the frame it was logical to assume would be with a photograph of what was supposed to be the happiest moment of a man’s life. He could not find one.

  He stopped stirring, and, still squatting, was motionless in thought for about thirty seconds.

  Then he stood up and walked to Leslie’s house. He rapped on the door with his nightstick until the brown-trash Puerto Rican woman appeared.

  She stared at him with contempt.

  “Teléfono?” Officer Bailey inquired.

  The brown-trash woman just looked at him.

  He looked over her shoulder, saw a telephone sitting on top of the refrigerator, pointed to it and repeated, “Teléfono.”

  Her expression didn’t change, but she shrugged, which Officer Bailey decided could be interpreted to mean that she had given him permission to enter her home.

  And now the phone won’t work. They won’t have paid that bill either.

  There was a dial tone.

  “Homicide, Detective Kramer.”

  “Detective, this is Officer Woodrow W. Bailey, of the Thirty-ninth District.”

  “What can I do for you, Bailey?”

  “I’d like to talk to somebody working the job of that police officer, Kellog, who was murdered.”

  “What have you got, Bailey?”

  “You working the job, Detective?”

  “The assigned detective’s not here. But I’m working it.”

  “What I got may not be anything, but I thought it was worth telling you.”

  “What have you got, Bailey?”

  “A fellow named James Howard Leslie—he’s a junkie, done some time for burglary—was burning garbage in his backyard.”

  “And?” Detective Kramer asked, somewhat impatiently.

  “I put the fire out, and then I got a good look at what he was burning. I don’t know…”

  “What, Bailey?”

  “There was a photograph of Officer Kellog and his wife, on their wedding day, in his garbage.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Detective Kramer asked, very carefully: “How do you know it was Officer Kellog?”

  “There’s a sign on the wall behind him. ‘Good Luck Officer Kellog From the Seventeenth District.’ And I remembered his picture in the newspapers.”

  “Where’s the picture now?”

  “I left it there.”

  “Where’s the guy…Leslie, you said?”

  “In my car. I arrested him for setting an unlawful fire.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Behind his house. In the alley. The 1900 block of Sedgwick Street.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t let him out of your sight, don’t let anybody near where you found the picture, and don’t touch nothing you don’t have to.”

  Bailey hung up the telephone, then called the Thirty-ninth District and asked for a supervisor to meet him at the scene.

  “What have you got, Bailey?” the Corporal inquired.

  “A garbage burner,” Bailey said, and hung up.

  He nodded at Leslie’s Puerto Rican woman, then walked back through the yard to his car and got behind the wheel.

  “Hey, Officer, what’s happening?” Mr. Leslie inquired, sliding forward with some difficulty on the seat to get closer to the fucking cop.

  “You under arrest, Speed,” Officer Bailey replied. “For setting a fire in your backyard.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, man! For burning some fucking garbage?”

  “If I was you, I’d just sit there and close my mouth,” Officer Bailey replied.

  As a general rule of thumb, unless the visitor to the Mayor’s office was someone really important (“really important” being defined as someone of the ilk of a United States Senator, the Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, or the Cardinal Archbishop of the Diocese of Philadelphia) Mrs. Annette Cossino, the Mayor’s secretary, would escort the visitor to the door of the Mayor’s office, push it open, and say, “The Mayor will see you now.”The visitor would then be able to see the Mayor deep in concentration, dealing with some document of great importance laid out on his massive desk. After a moment or two, the Mayor would glance toward the door, look surprised and apologetic, and rise to his feet.

  “Please excuse me,” he would say. “Sometimes…”

  Visitors would rarely fail to be impressed with the fact that the Mayor was tearing himself from Something Important to receive them.

  This afternoon, however, on learning that Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein had asked for an appointment for himself and Inspector Peter Wohl, His Honor had decided to deviate from the normal routine.

  While he could not be fairly accused of being paranoid, the threatened resignation of Chief Lowenstein had caused the Mayor to consider that he really had few friends, people he could really trust, and that Matt Lowenstein was just about at the head of that short list.

  “When he comes in, Annette,” the Mayor ordered, “you let me know he’s here, and I’ll come out and get him.”

  Such a gesture would, the Mayor believed, permit Chief Lowenstein to understand the high personal regard in which he was held. And Peter Wohl would certainly report the manner in which Lowenstein had been welcomed to the Mayor’s office to hi
s father. The Mayor was perfectly willing to admit—at least to himself—that his rise through every rank to Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department—which, of course, had led to his seeking the mayoralty—would not have been possible had not Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl covered his ass in at least half a dozen really bad situations.

  And when he thought about that, he realized that Inspector Peter Wohl was no longer a nice young cop, but getting to be a power in his own right. And that he could safely add him to the short list of people he could trust.

  He was pleased with his decision to greet Lowenstein and Wohl in a special manner.

  And was thus somewhat annoyed when he pulled the door to his office open, a warm smile on his face, his hand extended, and found that Chief Lowenstein was at Annette’s desk talking on the telephone.

  Finally, Chief Lowenstein hung up and turned around.

  “Sorry,” Lowenstein said.

  “What the hell was that?” Carlucci asked, somewhat sharply.

  “Henry Quaire,” Lowenstein said. “There may be a break in the Kellog murder.”

  “What?” the Mayor asked.

  He’s not being charming, Peter Wohl thought. When Lowenstein told him that, he went right back on the job. He’s a cop, and if there is one thing a cop hates worse than a murdered cop it’s a murdered cop with no doers in sight.

  “A uniform in the Thirty-ninth working his beat came across a critter, junkie, petty criminal with a record six feet long, including burglaries, burning garbage in his backyard. In the garbage was Officer Kellog’s wedding picture. The uniform called Homicide.”

  “There was mention of a wedding picture in the 49s,” Carlucci said. “In a silver frame.”

  “Right,” Lowenstein said.

  “Where else would he get a picture of Kellog?” Carlucci asked, thoughtfully rhetoric. “Have you got the frame?”

  “Yeah. That’s why Quaire called me. We got a search warrant. They found not only a silver frame, but a dozen—thirteen, actually—tape cassettes. They were in the fire, but maybe Forensics can do something with them. If Mrs. Kellog can identify the frame, or there’s something on the tapes…”

  “Where’s the critter?”

  “Right now, he’s on his way from the Thirty-ninth to Homicide,” Lowenstein said.

  “Who’s going to interview him?”

  Lowenstein shrugged. “Detective D’Amata is the assigned detective.”

  “Peter, do you have Jason Washington doing anything he can’t put off for a couple of hours?” the Mayor asked, innocently.

  That is, Wohl noted mentally, the first time the Mayor has acknowledged my presence.

  “You want to take it away from D’Amata?” Lowenstein asked.

  “I’d like an arrest in that case,” Carlucci said. “If you think it would be a good idea to have Washington talk to this critter, Matt, I’d go along with that.”

  “Shit,” Lowenstein said. “You find Washington, Peter,” he ordered. “I’ll call Quaire.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said.

  “Only if you think it’s a good idea, Matt,” the Mayor said. “It was only a suggestion.”

  “Yeah, right,” Lowenstein said, and walked back to Mrs. Annette Cossino’s desk and reached for one of the telephones.

  “D’Amata will understand, Peter,” the Mayor said.

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said. “I’m sure he will.”

  “Annette,” the Mayor called. “Call the Thirty-ninth. Tell the Commanding Officer I want him and this uniform standing by to come here if I need them.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mayor,” Mrs. Cossino said.

  “Henry,” Lowenstein said into the telephone. “When they bring in the critter from the Thirty-ninth, handcuff him to a chair in an interview room and leave him there until Washington shows up. Wohl’s putting the arm out for him now. I think that’s the way to handle the interview, and the Mayor agrees.”

  He hung the phone up and turned to face Carlucci.

  “Are you pissed at me, Matt?” Carlucci, sounding genuinely concerned, asked.

  “When am I not pissed at you?” Lowenstein said. “It goes with the territory.”

  “You don’t think it was a good idea?”

  “That’s the trouble. I think it was a very good idea,” Lowenstein said.

  “Sergeant Washington is en route to the Roundhouse, Mr. Mayor,” Wohl repeated.

  “Great!” Carlucci said enthusiastically. Then he smiled broadly. “Let’s do this all over.”

  “What?” Lowenstein asked in confusion.

  “Well, Chief Lowenstein,” Carlucci said, and grabbed Lowenstein’s hand and pumped it. “And Inspector Wohl! How good of you both to come see me! It’s always a pleasure to see two of the most valuable members of the Police Department here in my office. Come in and have a cup of coffee and tell me how I may be of assistance!”

  Lowenstein shook his head in resignation.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “What can I do for you, Chief?”

  “Stop the bullshit, Jerry,” Lowenstein said, chuckling.

  “OK,” Carlucci said agreeably. “What’s up?”

  “Last night, a couple of South detectives saw one John Francis Foley pass a package to one Gerald North Atchison. Shortly thereafter, Detective Payne of Special Operations saw Mr. Atchison throw said package off a pier in Chester—”

  “How did South detectives get involved in this?” Carlucci asked, and Wohl saw that he had slipped back into being a cop.

  “Payne was surveilling Atchison. He ran into the South detectives and asked for their assistance.”

  “OK,” Carlucci said thoughtfully. “Go on.”

  “The package was retrieved early this morning by a police diver. The lab just came up with a positive ballistics match to the murder weapons.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  Lowenstein shook his head. “Weapons were cleaned. I thought I’d show it to you before I sent someone over to Tom Callis’s office with it.”

  “Let me see,” Carlucci said, holding out his hand.

  Lowenstein handed the Mayor an envelope. Carlucci made a “come in” gesture with his hand, walked ahead of them into his office, sat down at his desk, and opened the envelope.

  Carlucci carefully stuffed the report back into its envelope, then looked at Lowenstein.“It may be enough,” Carlucci said. “It is for an arrest, anyway.”

  “I thought so,” Lowenstein said. “I’ll have it sent to Callis within the hour.”

  “What the hell, Matt,” Carlucci said. “I mean, you’re right here in the neighborhood, right’? Why don’t you, both of you, take this to Tom? See if he has any problems with it? Give him my very best regards when you do.”

  James Howard Leslie had been sitting in the steel captain’s chair in the Homicide Unit interview room, handcuffed to its seat, for almost an hour when the door opened and a very large, important-looking black man walked in.No one had spoken to him during that time, nor had anyone so much as opened the door to look at him. He suspected that he was being watched through the somewhat fuzzy mirror on the wall, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “James Howard Leslie?” the black man asked.

  Leslie didn’t reply.

  “Good afternoon,” Jason Washington said. “If you’d like, I can remove the handcuff.”

  “I don’t give a fuck one way or the other.”

  Washington unlocked the handcuff and stood back. Leslie rubbed his wrist.

  “I don’t even know what the fuck’s going on,” Leslie said.

  “You’ve been in here some time, I understand.” Washington said. “Is there anything I can get for you’? Would you like a Coca-Cola, a cup of coffee, a sandwich?”

  “What I would like is to know what the hell is going on. All I did was try to burn some garbage.”

  “I understand. That’s why I’m here, to explain to you what’s going on. And while we’re talking, would you like a Coca-Cola, or a cigarette?”


  “I could drink a Coke.”

  Washington opened the door. “Sergeant,” he ordered sternly, “would you please get a Coca-Cola for Mr. Leslie?”

  Leslie heard someone reply.

  “Fuck him! Let the fucking cop killer drink water!”

  “I said get him a Coca-Cola.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” the voice said.

  “That wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order,” Washington said sharply.

  Two minutes later, a slight, dapper man with a pencil-thin mustache entered the interview room with a Coca-Cola, thrust it into Leslie’s hand with such violence that liquid erupted from the neck of the bottle and spilled on Leslie’s shirt and trousers.

  The slight, dapper man then left the interview room. Just before the door slammed shut, Leslie heard the man say, “Fuck Special Operations, too.”

  Washington handed Leslie a crisp white handkerchief to clean his shirt and trousers.

  “He and Officer Kellog were friends,” Washington said, in explanation.

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Washington said. He leaned on the wall by the door, waited until Leslie had finished mopping at himself and started to return the handkerchief.

  “Keep it,” Washington said. “You may need it again.”

  “Thanks,” Leslie said.

  “As I understand what’s happened here,” Washington said conversationally, “Officer Bailey of the Thirty-ninth District extinguished a fire in your backyard. In doing so, he found a photograph of Officer Kellog on his wedding day.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Officer who?”

  “The finding of the photograph was, in the opinion of the Honorable Francis X. McGrory, Judge of the Superior Court, sufficient cause for him to issue a search warrant for your home.”

  “I told you, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “A search of your home was then conducted by detectives of the Homicide Bureau. A silver frame was discovered. It has since been positively identified by Mrs. Helene Kellog as her property. Mrs. Kellog previously reported the framed photograph to have been stolen from her home.”

  “So what?”

  “Mrs. Kellog’s husband, Police Officer Jerome H. Kellog, was found dead in his home. Shot to death. Inasmuch as his silver-framed wedding photograph was known to be present in his home prior to the robbery, and missing from his home immediately after the robbery, it is presumed that the framed photograph was stolen during the robbery.”