More importantly, she told him her first name was Mary, and that she would love to have dinner with him, but it would probably be hard to arrange it, because she was stuck on the seven-to-three-in-the-morning shift—it was determined by seniority—and that made any kind of a normal social life nearly impossible.
“I know,” Mickey said. “The Bulletin goes to bed at half-past two.”
“You mean that’s when you quit for the day?”
He nodded and she smiled at him, and he thought, We already have something in common.
Forty minutes later, when he steered the battered Chevrolet Impala off North Broad Street and into the parking lot behind the Thirty-fifth District Station, where he stopped in a space marked INSPECTOR PARKING ONLY, Mickey still wasn’t sure he really believed what had happened.
I’ve got a date with Mary Travis. Tonight. Tomorrow morning. At five minutes after three, at the front door of the Bellevue-Stratford.
And that wasn’t all that had happened.
I’m making as much dough as the fucking Police Commissioner, for Christ’s sake!
He sat there for a moment, then lit a cigarette. Then he got out of the car, entered the building through a door marked POLICE USE ONLY and went inside. He waved at the uniformed cops in the ground-floor squad room, then climbed the stairs to the second floor, which housed the Northwest Detectives Division.
On the landing at the top of the stairs were several vending machines, a garbage can, and two battered chairs. A concrete block wall with a wide open window counter and a door separated the landing from the squad room of Northwest Detectives. A sign beneath the window counter read POLICE PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT, and just inside the door the desk man, a detective, sat at a battered desk.
Mickey walked through the door, waved at the desk man, and exchanged casual greetings, a nod of the head, or a smile, with the half dozen detectives working at their own battered desks, then took a quick, practiced glance at the large, yellow legal pad on the desk man’s desk. On it, the desk man would have written the names of any citizens brought into the squad room for “interviews” on the shift. It was an informal record, intended primarily to remind the desk man who had hauled in who, and was responsible for the critter. If a citizen got as far as the detective squad room, the odds were the “interview” would be followed by an arrest.
Mickey found nothing that looked particularly interesting, so he walked across the squad room to a small alcove at the rear, which held a coffee machine. He helped himself to a cup, black, then tucked a dollar bill in the coffee kitty can.
When he came out of the alcove, he looked into the window of the small office used by the Lieutenants of Northwest Detectives. Lieutenant Teddy Spanner, who had the watch, and Lieutenant Louis Natali of Homicide were inside. That was unusual; you rarely saw a Homicide Lieutenant in one of the Detective District Squad Rooms, unless something important was going down.
Lou Natali, a slight, olive-skinned man who was losing his hair, was leaning on the glass wall. Behind the desk, Spanner, a very large fair-skinned man in his shirtsleeves, waved at Mickey, calling him inside.
“How goes it, Mickey?” Spanner said, as Mickey leaned over the desk to shake his hand.
“Can’t complain,” Mickey said, and turned to Lou Natali. “What do you say, Lou?”
“Haven’t seen you around lately, Mick,” Natali said. “You been sick or something?”
“I took a couple of weeks off,” Mickey said.
“You go down to the shore?” Spanner asked.
“The shore?” Mickey asked.
“You told me, Mick, the last time I saw you, that what you needed was to go lay on the beach.”
“I just hung around the house and watched the wallpaper peel,” Mickey said.
“So what’s new, Mick?” Natali asked, chuckling.
What’s new? I’m now making a thousand bucks a week, less a hundred for the Bull, plus a Buick Super, Mercury Monterey, or equivalent automobile. And I just met a really interesting girl. That’s what’s new.
“Nothing much,” Mickey said. “You tell me.”
Both police officers shrugged their shoulders.
Mickey was disappointed. He had had a gut feeling when he saw Lou Natali that something was up. Mickey knew both of them well enough not to press the question. Probably nothing was. If there was, either Spanner or Natali would have told him, maybe prefacing it with “Off the record, Mick” but they would have told him.
“Tell me about the naked lady in Fairmount Park,” Mickey said. “I heard the call last night.”
“Every car in the District, plus half the Highway Patrol, went in on that, Mick,” Spanner said. “But aside from that, it’s not very funny. Lou and I were just talking about it.”
“Tell me,” Mickey said.
“Off the record?”
Goddamn, I knew there was something!
“Sure.”
“You heard, I suppose, about the guy who’s been raping women in Manayunk and Roxborough?”
Mickey nodded.
“From what I understand, he’s the same guy who dumped the woman in Fairmount Park.”
“Raped her first, you mean?”
“Not quite,” Spanner said. “This is a real sick guy. Getting sicker, too.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Mickey said.
“He’s not even screwing them anymore,” Spanner said. “What he’s doing now is getting his rocks off humiliating them. Pissing on them, and worse.”
“Jesus!” Mickey said. “Worse?”
“What he did last night was put a knife to her throat and make her take it in the mouth. Then when he couldn’t get his rocks off, he pissed all over her. Then he tied her hands behind her back and dumped her out on Forbidden Drive.”
“Nice fella,” Mickey said.
“Sure as Christ made little apples,” Natali said, “unless they bag this scumbag, he’s going to kill somebody. Cut ’em up, probably. I’m afraid he’s going to start going after young girls.”
“Jesus,” Mickey said. He felt a little sick to his stomach when he thought of some slimeball doing something like that to a nice girl like Mary Travis. “You got anything going?”
“Not much. No good description. All we know is that he’s a white guy with a van. And likes to wear a mask,” Spanner said.
“You didn’t get that here, Mickey,” Natali said. “What I’m worried about is that I don’t want to give the sonofabitch any ideas.”
Mickey made a gesture signifying that he wouldn’t violate the confidence.
“Who’s got this job?” Mickey asked.
“Dick Hemmings,” Spanner said. Mickey knew Dick Hemmings to be a brighter than usual Northwest Detective, which was saying something because, with a couple of exceptions, Northwest Division had some really good detectives.
“Who was the cop who answered the call?” Mickey asked.
“Bill Dohner,” Spanner said. “I don’t know where you can find him until he comes in tonight, but Dick Hemmings is in court. I got the feeling he’ll be in there all day.”
“Well, then I guess I’d better get down there,” Mickey said. “And start earning my living.”
He returned to the coffee machine alcove and washed out his cup, then put it in the rack. Then he picked up a telephone on one of the unoccupied desks in the detective squad room and dialed a number from memory.
“City desk,” a male voice came on the line.
“This is O’Hara,” he said.
“Mr. Michael J. O’Hara?” Gerald F. Kennedy, the city editor of the Bulletin replied, in mock awe. “Might one dare to hope, Mr. O’Hara, that there is a small germ of truth in the rumor going around that you are no longer withholding your professional services?”
“Fuck you, Kennedy.”
“Then to what do I owe the honor of this telephone call, Mr. O’Hara?”
“Who’s been covering the Northwest Philly rapes?”
“Why do you want
to know, Mickey?”
“I think I’m onto something.”
“Are you?” Gerry Kennedy asked.
“Yeah, I am,” Mickey said.
“Odd, but I don’t seem to recall assigning this story to you.”
“Are we going to play games? In which case, Kennedy, go fuck yourself. I get paid whether or not I work.”
“I assigned the story to Cheryl Davies,” Kennedy said. “She’s not going to like it if I take it away from her and give it to you.”
“Fuck her.”
“I would love to,” Gerry Kennedy said. “But I don’t think it’s likely. What do you want with her, Mickey?”
“Not a goddamned thing,” Mickey said. “What I’m going to do, Kennedy, is cover this myself. And you decide whose stuff you want to run.”
“How about working together with her, Mick?” Gerry Kennedy asked. “I mean, she’s been on it for three weeks—”
He broke off in midsentence when he realized that Mickey O’Hara had hung up.
SIX
“Good afternoon, sir,” Jesus Martinez, who was of Puerto Rican ancestry, and who was five feet eight inches tall and weighed just over 140 pounds, said to the man who had reached into the rear seat of a 1972 Buick sedan in the parking lot of the Penrose Plaza Mall at Lindbergh Avenue and Island Road in West Philadelphia, and taken out two shopping bags, one of them emblazoned John Wanamaker & Sons.
“What the fuck?” the man replied. His name was Clarence Sims, and he was six feet three and weighed 180 pounds.
“Been doing a little shopping, have you, sir?”
“Get out of my face, motherfucker,” Clarence Sims replied.
“I’m a police officer,” Jesus Martinez said, pulling up his T-shirt, which he wore outside his blue jeans, so that his badge, through which his belt was laced, came into sight. “May I see your driver’s license and vehicle registration, please?”
Clarence Sims considered, briefly, the difference in size between them, and his options, and then threw the John Wanamaker & Sons shopping bag at Jesus Martinez and started running.
He got as far as the Buick’s bumper when he stumbled over something. The next thing Clarence Sims knew he was flat on the ground, with an enormous honky sitting on him, and painfully twisting his arms behind him. He felt a steel handcuff snap shut around one wrist, and then around the other.
And the little spick was in his face, the spick and a gun, shoved hard against his nostrils.
“Don’t you ever call me motherfucker, you motherfucker!” Officer Jesus Martinez said, furiously. “I ought to blow your fucking brains out, cocksucker!”
“Hay-zus,” the enormous honky said, “cool it!”
“I don’t like that shit!” Officer Martinez replied, still angry. But the revolver barrel withdrew from Clarence Sims’s nostril.
Clarence Sims felt hands running over his body. From one hip pocket a switchblade was removed, from the other his wallet. His side pockets were emptied, spilling a collection of coins and chewing gum wrappers onto the macadam of the parking lot. His groin was probed dispassionately, and then he felt the hands moving down his legs. From his right sock, fingers removed a joint of marijuana, a small plasticine bag of marijuana—known on the street as a “nickel bag,” because they sold for five dollars—and a book of matches.
“Oh, my God!” a female voice said, in shock.
“It’s all right, ma’am,” Clarence heard the spick say, “we’re police officers. Is this your car, ma’am?”
“Yes, it is,” the female voice said, and then she spotted the shopping bags, and a tone of indignation came into her voice. “Those are my things!”
“Somehow, I didn’t think they were his,” Martinez said.
Clarence felt the weight of the man kneeling on his back go away.
“Your name Clarence Sims?” Martinez asked.
“Go fuck yourself!”
Clarence Sims’s face, which he had raised off the macadam of the parking lot, suddenly encountered it again, as if something—a foot, say—had pushed the back of his head.
“You’re under arrest, Clarence,” the honky said.
“What happened here?” the female voice asked.
“I saw him taking those bags out of the backseat,” Martinez said. “Ma’am, can you tell me how much the stuff in them is worth?”
The victim thought about that a moment. “Two hundred dollars,” she said, finally. “Maybe a little more.”
“It would help if you could tell us if it’s for sure worth more than two hundred dollars,” Martinez pursued.
The victim considered that for a moment, then said, “Now that I’ve had a chance to think, it’s all worth closer to three hundred dollars than two.”
“Bingo,” Charley McFadden said. “M-1.”
The victim looked at him strangely.
The crime of which Clarence Sims now stood accused, theft from auto, was a misdemeanor. There were three sub-categories: M-3, where the stolen property is worth less than fifty dollars; M-2, where the property is worth between fifty and two hundred dollars; and M-1, where the property is worth more than two hundred dollars.
Like most police officers, Charley McFadden was pleased that the critter he had arrested was not as unimportant as he might have been. An M-1 thief was a better arrest than an M-3.
A faint but growing glimmer of hope that he might be able to extricate himself from his current predicament came into Clarence Sims’s mind: The fucking pigs had not read him his goddamned rights. Like most people in his line of work, Clarence Sims was well aware of what had come to be known as the Miranda Decision. If the fucking pigs didn’t read you the whole goddamned thing, starting with “You have the right to remain silent” and going through the business about them getting you a lawyer if you couldn’t afford one, and could prove it, then you told the judge and the judge let you walk.
Clarence Sims erred. Under the law it is necessary to advise a suspect of his rights under Miranda only when the suspect is to be questioned concerning a crime. Since it was not the intention of the arresting officers to ask him any questions at all about the crime, it was not necessary for them to inform Mr. Sims of his rights under Miranda.
The man Clarence Sims thought of as the big honky, who was a twenty-two-year-old police officer named Charles McFadden, opened the door of a battered old Volkswagen, and picked up a small portable radio.
The battered old Volkswagen was his personal automobile. He had been authorized to use it on duty. Authorized, but not required. Since he had chosen to use it, he had been issued sort of a Police Department credit card, which authorized him to gas up at any Police Department gas pump—there is one at every District Headquarters—up to a limit of one hundred gallons per month, no questions asked. If he had not elected to use his personal vehicle on duty, he could have performed that duty on foot.
“Twelfth District BD,” Charley McFadden said into the radio. (Burglary Detail.)
“Twelfth District BD,” Police Radio promptly responded.
“Twelfth District BD,” Charley McFadden said. “I need a wagon for a prisoner. We’re in the parking lot of the Penrose Plaza at Island Road and Lindbergh.”
Police Radio did not respond to Officer McFadden directly, but instead, after checking the board to see what was available, called the Emergency Patrol Wagon directly:
“Twelve Oh One.”
“Twelve Oh One,” the wagon replied.
“Meet the burglary detail at the parking lot of Penrose Plaza, Island at Lindbergh, with a prisoner.”
“Twelve Oh One, okay,” EPW 1201 replied.
Charley McFadden put the portable radio back on the seat of his Volkswagen.
When the two police officers assigned to 1201, the Twelfth District wagon responding to the call to transport a prisoner, arrived at the scene, they found that the arresting officers were having more trouble with the victim than with the prisoner.
The prisoner was on his feet, his hands cuffed behi
nd him, leaning on the victim’s car and apparently resigned to his fate. Even, to judge by the look on his face, a little smug about it.
The victim, having been informed that her two packages had become evidence, and could not be returned to her until released by proper authority, was engaged in a heated conversation with Officer McFadden, telling him that she had to have the shopping bags, at least the one from John Wanamaker & Sons which contained a formal dress shirt for her husband, a shirt he absolutely had to have for a dinner party that night.
“Ma’am, if you’ll just go the West Detectives, at Fifty-fifth and Pine, and sign the Property Receipt, they’ll give you your stuff right back.”
“What I don’t understand is why I can’t sign whatever it is I have to sign right here,” she said.
“I don’t have the form, lady; you have to do it at West Detectives,” Charley McFadden said. “That’s the rules.”
That was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But it had been Officer McFadden’s experience that if he gave the victim back her property here and now, that would be the last he, or more importantly, the criminal justice system, would ever see of her. It had been his experience that the ordinary citizen’s interest in law enforcement ended when they had to make their own contribution, like showing up in court and swearing under oath that the stuff the critter had stolen belonged to her.
The chances of her showing up in court, and thus perhaps aiding in sending Mr. Sims off to jail, would be aided if she got the idea, by signing a Property Receipt, that she was already involved and had to show up in court.
“And what if I refuse to press charges?” the victim said, finally, in desperate exasperation.
“Lady, I’m pressing charges,” Charley McFadden said, equally exasperated. “Or Hay-zus is. The city is. We caught him stealing that stuff from your car.”
“Well, we’ll see about that, young man,” the victim said. “We’ll just see about that. My brother-in-law just happens to be a very prominent attorney.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Charley McFadden said. He turned to the two wagon cops. “You can take him,” he said.
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