The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Mike,” Lowenstein replied, offering his hand. “Follow Harry.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A police officer named Kellog was found an hour or so ago shot in the back of his head.”

  “I heard it on the radio,” Weisbach said as he pulled into the line of traffic.

  “You are going to- observe the investigation. You are going to report to me once a day, more often if necessary, if anything interesting develops.” He looked at Weisbach and continued. “And I will report to the Mayor.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “It seems that Officer Kellog’s wife-he’s been working plainclothes in Narcotics, by the way-moved out of his bed into Detective Milham’s.”

  “Wally Milham’s a suspect?” Weisbach asked disbelievingly.

  “He’s out on the street somewhere. Quaire is looking for him. I want you to sit in on the interview.”

  “Then he is a suspect?”

  “He’s going to be interviewed. The Mayor doesn’t want to be embarrassed by this. He wants to be one step ahead of the Ledger. If a staff inspector is involved, he thinks it won’t be as easy for the Ledger to accuse Homicide, the Department-him-of a cover-up.”

  “Why me?” Weisbach asked.

  “What the Mayor said was, ‘He’s good and he’s a straight arrow,’” Lowenstein replied, and then he met Weisbach’s eyes and smiled. “He knows that about you, but he doesn’t know your name. He referred to you as ‘that mousy-looking staff inspector, Weis-something.’”

  Weisbach chuckled.

  “He knows your name, Mike,” Lowenstein said. “What we both have to keep in mind is that the real name of the game is getting Jerry Carlucci reelected.”

  “Yeah,” Weisbach said, a tone that could have been either resignation or disgust in his voice.

  Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach, who was one of the sixteen staff inspectors in the Philadelphia Police Department, had never really wanted to be a cop until he had almost five years on the job.

  His father operated a small, mostly wholesale, findings store, Weisbach’s Buttons and Zipper World, on South Ninth Street in Center City Philadelphia, and the family lived in a row house on Higbee Street, near Oxford Circle. By the time he had finished high school, Mike had decided, with his parents’ approval, that he wanted to be a lawyer.

  He had obtained, on a partial scholarship, in just over three years, a bachelor of arts degree from Temple University, by going to school year round and supporting himself primarily by working the graveyard shift managing a White Tower hamburger emporium on the northwest corner of Broad and Olney. The job paid just a little more than his father’s business could afford to pay, and there was time in the early-morning hours, when business was practically nonexistent, to study.

  Sometime during this period, Natalie had changed from being the Little Abramowitz Girl Down the Block into the woman with whom Michael knew he wanted to share his life. And starting right then-when he saw her in her bathing suit, he thought of the Song of Solomon-not after he finished law school and took the bar exams and managed to build a practice that would support them.

  The thing for them to do, he and Natalie decided, was for him to get a job. Maybe a day job with the City, or the Gas Company, that would pay more than he was making at White Tower, not require a hell of a lot of work from him, and permit him to go to law school at night. With what she could earn working in her new job as a clerical assistant at the Bursar’s Office of the University of Pennsylvania, there would be enough money for an apartment. That was important, because they didn’t want to live with his family or hers.

  He filed employment applications with just about every branch of city government, and because there didn’t seem to be a reason not to, took both the Police and Fire Department entrance examinations.

  When the postcard came in the mail saying that he had been selected for appointment to the Police Academy, they really hadn’t known what to do. He had never seriously considered becoming a cop, and his mother said he was out of his mind, as big as he was, what was going to happen if he became a cop was that some six foot four Schwartzer was going to cut his throat with a razor; or some guy on drugs would shoot him; or some gangster from the Mafia in South Philly would stand him in a bucket full of concrete until it hardened and then drop him into the Delaware River.

  Michael graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy and was assigned to the Seventh District, in the Far Northeast region of Philadelphia. For the first year, he was assigned as the Recorder in a two-man van, transporting prisoners from the District to Central Lockup in the Roundhouse, and carrying people and bodies to various hospitals.

  The second year he spent operating an RPC, turning off fire hydrants in the summer and working school crossings. He took the examination for promotion to detective primarily because it was announced two weeks after he had become eligible to take it. At the time, he would have been much happier to take the corporal’s exam, because corporals, as a rule of thumb, handled administration inside districts. But there had been no announcement of a corporal’s exam, so he took the detective’s examination.

  If he passed it, he reasoned, there would be the two years of increased pay while he finished law school.

  Detective Michael Weisbach was assigned first to the Central Detective District, which covers Center City. There, almost to his surprise, he not only proved adept at his unchosen profession, but was actually happy to go to work, which had not been the case when he’d been working the van or walking his beat in the Seventh District.

  His performance of duty attracted the attention of Lieutenant Harry Abraham, whose rabbi, it was said, was then Inspector Matt Lowenstein of Internal Affairs. When Abraham was promoted to captain and assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, he arranged for Weisbach to be transferred with him.

  Detective Weisbach was promoted to sergeant three weeks before he passed the bar examination. With it came a transfer to the office of just-promoted Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, who had become Chief of the Detective Division.

  It just made sense, he told Natalie, to stick around the Department for a little longer. If he was going to go into private practice, they would need a nest egg to furnish an office, pay the rent, and to keep afloat until his practice reached the point where it would support them.

  By then, although he was really afraid to tell even Natalie, much less his mother, he was honest enough to admit to himself that the idea of practicing law, handling people’s messy divorces, trying to keep some scumbag from going to prison, that sort of thing, did not have half the appeal for him that being a cop did.

  When he passed the lieutenant’s examination, Chief Lowenstein actually took him out and bought him lunch and told him that if he kept up the good work, there was no telling how high he could rise in the Department. Natalie said that Chief Lowenstein was probably just being polite. But when the promotion list came out, and he was assigned to the Intelligence Unit, instead of in uniform in one of the districts, he told Natalie he knew Lowenstein had arranged it, and that he had meant what he said.

  There had been a shake-up in the Department, massive retirements in connection with a scandal, and he had made captain much sooner than he had expected to. With that promotion came an assignment in uniform, to the Nineteenth District, as commanding officer. The truth was that he rather liked the reflection he saw in the mirror of Captain Mike Weisbach in a crisp white shirt, and captain’s bars glistening on his shoulders, but Natalie said she liked him better in plain clothes.

  More vacancies were created two years later in the upper echelons of the Department, as sort of an aftershock to the scandal and the retirements the original upheaval had caused. Three staff inspectors, two of whom told Mike they had never planned to leave the Internal Affairs Division, were encouraged to take the inspector’s examination. That of course meant there were now three vacancies for staff inspectors, and Mike had already decided to take the exam even before Chief Lowenstein cal
led him up and said that it would be a good idea for him to do so.

  And like the men he had replaced, Mike Weisbach thought he had found his final home in the Department. He had some vague notion that, a couple of years before his retirement rolled around, if there was an inspector’s exam, he would take it. There would be a larger retirement check if he went out as an inspector, but he preferred to do what he was doing now to doing what the Department might have him do-he didn’t want to wind up in some office in the Roundhouse, for example-if he became an inspector now.

  Staff inspectors, who were sometimes called-not pejoratively-“supercops,” or “superdetectives,” had, Weisbach believed, the most interesting, most satisfying jobs in the Department. They handled complicated investigations, often involving prominent government officials. It was the sort of work Mike Weisbach liked to do, and which he knew he was good at.

  He still went to work in the morning looking forward to what the day would bring. It was only rarely that he was handed a job he would rather not do.

  This “observation” of a Homicide investigation fell into that category. It was the worst kind of job. The moment he showed up on the scene, whichever Homicide detective had the job-for that matter, the whole Homicide Unit-would immediately and correctly deduce that they were not being trusted to do their job the way it should be done.

  And he would feel their justified resentment, not Lowenstein or Mayor Carlucci.

  As he followed Harry McElroy, crossing over Old York Road and onto Hunting Park Avenue, then onto Ninth Street, he tried to be philosophical about it. There was no sense moaning over something he couldn’t control.

  The street in front of Officer Kellog’s home was now crowded with police vehicles of all descriptions, and Mike was not surprised to see Mickey O’Hara’s antenna-festooned Buick among them.

  “I don’t have to tell you what to do,” Chief Lowenstein said as he got out of the car. “Call me after the Milham interview.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mike said, and walked toward the District cop standing at the door of the row house.

  The cop looked uncomfortable. He recognized the unmarked Plymouth as a police vehicle, and was wise enough in the ways of the Department to know that a nearly new unmarked car was almost certain to have been assigned to a senior white-shirt, but this rumpled little man was a stranger to him.

  “I’m Staff Inspector Weisbach. I know your orders are to keep everybody out, but Chief Lowenstein wants me to go in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Henry Quaire and Lieutenant Lou Natali were in the kitchen, trying to stand out of the way of the crew of laboratory technicians.

  They don’t have any more business here than I do. You don’t get to be a Homicide detective unless you know just about everything there is to know about working a crime scene. Homicide detectives don’t need to be supervised.

  “Good morning, Henry, Lou.”

  “Hello, Mike,” Quaire replied. His face registered his surprise, and a moment later his annoyance, at seeing Weisbach.

  “Inspector,” Natali said.

  Weisbach looked at the body and the pool of blood and quickly turned away. He was beyond the point of becoming nauseous at the sight of a violated body, but it was very unpleasant for him. His brief glance would stay a painfully clear memory for a long time.

  “Shot twice, it looks, at close range,” Quaire offered.

  “I don’t suppose you know who did it?” a voice behind Mike asked.

  Mike turned to face Mr. Michael J. O’Hara of the Bulletin.

  “Not yet, Mickey,” Quaire said. “The uniform was told to keep people out of here.”

  “I have friends in high places, Henry,” O’Hara said. “Not only do I know Staff Inspector Weisbach here well enough to ask him what the hell he’s doing here, but I know the legendary Chief Lowenstein himself. Lowenstein told the uniform to let me in, Henry. He wouldn’t have, otherwise.”

  “He’s out there?” Quaire asked.

  O’Hara nodded.

  “Talking to Captain Talley.”

  “I want to talk to Talley too,” Quaire said, and walked toward the front door.

  “So what are you doing here, Mike?” O’Hara asked.

  “‘Observing,’” Weisbach said. He saw the displeased reaction on Lieutenant Lou Natali’s face.

  “Is that between you and me, or for public consumption?” O’Hara asked.

  “Spell my name right, please.”

  “‘Observing’? Or ‘supervising’?”

  “Observing.”

  “Exactly what does that mean?”

  “Why don’t you ask Chief Lowenstein? I’m not sure, myself.”

  “OK. I get the picture. But-this is for both of you, off the record, if you want-do you have any idea who shot Kellog?”

  “No,” Natali said quickly.

  “I just got here, Mike.”

  “Is there anything to the story that the Widow Kellog is-how do I phrase this delicately? — personally involved with Wally Milham?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that delicately,” Natali said.

  “Mike?”

  “I heard that gossip for the first time about fifteen minutes ago,” Weisbach said. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

  His eye fell on something in the open cabinet behind Natali’s head.

  “What’s that?” he asked, and pushed by Natali for a closer look.

  “It’s a tape recorder. With a gadget that turns it on whenever the phone is used,” Weisbach said. “Has that been dusted for prints, Lou?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Weisbach pulled the recorder out of the cabinet and saw that there was no cassette inside.

  “Anything on the tape?” he asked.

  “There was no tape in it when D’Amata found it,” Natali said. “And no tape anywhere around it. There was an empty box for tapes, but no tapes.”

  “That’s strange,” Weisbach thought out loud. “The thing is turned on.” He held it up to show the red On light. “Did the lab guys turn it on?”

  “D’Amata said you can’t turn it off, it’s wired to the light socket.”

  “Strange,” Weisbach said.

  “Yeah,” Mickey O’Hara agreed. “Very strange.”

  A uniformed officer came into the kitchen.

  “Lieutenant, the Captain said that Detective Milham is on his way to the Roundhouse.”

  “Thank you,” Natali said.

  “I want to sit in on the interview,” Weisbach said.

  “You’re going to question Milham?” Mickey O’Hara asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Natali said, not quite succeeding in concealing his displeasure.

  “Routinely, Mick,” Weisbach said. “If there’s anything, I’ll call you. All right?”

  O’Hara thought that over for a second.

  “You have an honest face, Mike, and I am a trusting soul. OK. And in the meantime, I will write that at this point the police have no idea who shot Kellog.”

  “We don’t,” Weisbach said.

  THREE

  Detective Wallace J. Milham, a dapper thirty-five-year-old, who was five feet eleven inches tall, weighed 160 pounds, and adorned his upper lip with a carefully manicured pencil-line mustache, reached over the waist-high wooden barrier to the Homicide Unit’s office and tripped the lock of the door with his fingers.

  He turned to the left and walked toward the office of Captain Henry C. Quaire, the Homicide commander. When he had come out of the First Philadelphia Building, Police Radio had been calling him. When he answered the call, the message had been to see Captain Quaire as soon as possible.

  Quaire wasn’t in his office. But Lieutenant Louis Natali was, and when he saw Milham, waved at him to come in.

  Milham regarded Natali, one of five lieutenants assigned to Homicide, as the one closest to Captain Quaire, and in effect, if not officially, his deputy. He liked him.

  “I got the word the Captain wanted to see me,” Milham said
as he pushed open the door.

  “Where were you, Wally? We’ve been looking for you for an hour.”

  “At the insurance bureau in the First Philadelphia Building,” Milham replied, then when he sensed Natali wanted more information, went on: “On the Grover job.”

  A week before, Mrs. Katherine Grover had hysterically reported to Police Radio that there had been a terrible accident at her home in Mt. Airy. When a radio patrol car of the Fourteenth District had responded, Officer John Sarabello had found Mr. Arthur Grover, her husband, dead against the wall of their garage. Mrs. Grover told Officer Sarabello that her foot had slipped off the brake onto the accelerator, causing their Plymouth station wagon to jump forward.

  Neither Officer Sarabello, his sergeant, or the Northwest Detective Division detective who further investigated the incident were completely satisfied with Mrs. Grover’s explanation of what had transpired, and the job was referred to the Homicide Unit. Detective Milham got the job, as he was next up on the wheel.

  “I know she did it,” Detective Milham went on. “And she knows I know she did it. But she is one tough little cookie.”

  “The insurance turn up anything?”

  “Nothing here in the last eighteen months. They’re going to check Hartford for me.”

  While it might be argued that the interest of the insurance industry in a homicide involving someone whose life they have insured may be more financial than moral-if it turned out, for example, that Mrs. Grover had feloniously taken the life of her husband, they would be relieved of paying her off as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy-the industry for whatever reasons cooperates wholeheartedly with police conducting a homicide investigation.

  “You weren’t listening to the radio?”

  Milham shook his head.

  “You know a cop named Kellog?”

  Milham nodded.

  “They found him, this morning, in the kitchen of his house,” Natali said. “Somebody shot him, twice, in the back of his head.”