And it had quickly become evident how Arthur J. Nelson intended to wage the war. Two days later, a young plainclothes Narcotics Division cop had caught up with Gerald Vincent Gallagher, the drug addict who had been involved in the shooting death of Captain Dutch Moffitt. It had been a front-page story in all the newspapers in Philadelphia, the stories generally reflecting support for the police, and relief that a drug-addict cop-killer had been run to ground. The Ledger had buried the story, although factually reported, far inside the paper. The Ledger editorial, headlined “Vigilante Justice?” implied that Gerald Vincent Gallagher, who had fallen to his death under the wheels of a subway train as he tried to escape the Narcotics cop, had instead been pushed in front of the train.
The most recent barrage had been the “Jackbooted Gestapo” editorial. Arthur J. Nelson wanted revenge, and apparently reasoned that since Mayor Carlucci had risen to political prominence through the ranks of the Police Department, a shot that wounded the cops also wounded Carlucci.
“What is he doing,” Wohl asked, “putting me between him and the Ledger?”
“Peter, I think what you see is what you get,” Coughlin said.
“What I see is me,” Wohl said, “who hasn’t worn a uniform or worked anywhere but headquarters in ten years being put in charge of Highway, and of something called ACT that I don’t know a damned thing about. I don’t even know what it’s supposed to do.”
“The mayor told the Commissioner he has every confidence that, within a short period of time—I think that means a couple of weeks—he will be able to call a press conference and announce that his Special Operations Division has arrested the sexual deviate who has been raping the decent women of Northwest Philadelphia.”
“Rape is under the Detectives’ Bureau,” Wohl protested.
“So it is,” Coughlin said. “Except that the Northwest Philly rapist is yours.”
“So it is public relations.”
“What it is, Peter, is what the mayor wants,” Coughlin said.
“Matt Lowenstein will blow a blood vessel when he hears I’m working his territory.”
“The Commissioner already told him,” Coughlin said. “Give up, Peter. You can’t fight this.”
“Who’s in ACT? What kind of resources am I going to find there?”
“I’ve sent you three people,” Coughlin said, “to get you started. Officers Martinez and McFadden. They’ve been ordered to report to you at eight tomorrow morning.”
Officer Charley McFadden was the plainclothes Narc the Ledger had as much as accused of pushing Gerald Vincent Gallagher in front of the subway train; Officer Jesus Martinez had been his partner.
Wohl considered that for a moment, then said, “You said three?”
“And Officer Matthew Payne,” Coughlin said. “Dutch’s nephew. You met him.”
After a moment, Wohl said, “Why Payne? Is he through the Academy?”
“I had a hunch, Peter,” Coughlin said, “that Matt Payne will be of more value to you, and thus to the Department, than he would be if we had sent him to one of the districts.”
“I’m surprised he stuck it out at the Academy,” Wohl said.
“I wasn’t,” Coughlin said, flatly.
“What are you talking about? Using him undercover?” Wohl asked.
“Maybe,” Coughlin said. “We don’t get many rookies like him. Something will come up.”
“The only orders I really have are to do something about this rapist?” Wohl asked.
“Your orders are to get the Special Operations Division up and running. That means trying to keep Highway from giving the Ledger an excuse to call them the Gestapo. And it means getting ACT up and running. There’s a Sergeant, a smart young guy named Eddy Frizell, in Staff Services, who’s been handling all the paperwork for ACT. The Federal Grant applications, what kind of money, where it’s supposed to be used, that sort of thing. I called down there just before you came in and told him to move himself and his files out to Highway. He’ll probably be there before you get there. Czernick told Whelan to give you whatever you think you need in terms of equipment and money, from the contingency fund, to be reimbursed when the Federal Grant comes in. Frizell should be able to tell you what you need.”
“The mayor expects me to catch the rapist,” Wohl said, and paused.
“That’s your first priority.”
“Who am I supposed to use to do that? Those kids from Narcotics?” He saw a flash of annoyance, even anger, on Coughlin’s face. “Sorry, Chief,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean for that to sound the way it came out.”
“The initial manning for ACT is forty cops, plus four each Corporals, Sergeants, and Lieutenants; a Captain, four Detectives, and of course, you,” Coughlin said. “I already sent a teletype asking for volunteers to transfer in. You can pick whoever you want.”
“And if nobody volunteers? Or if all the volunteers are guys one step ahead of being assigned to rubber gun squad or being sent to the farm in their districts?”
Coughlin chuckled. “Being sent to the farm” was the euphemism for alcoholic officers being sent off to dry out; the rubber gun squad was for officers whose peers did not think they could be safely entrusted with a real one.
“Then you can pick, within reason, anybody you want,” Coughlin said. “Making this thing work is important to the mayor; therefore to Czernick and me. You’re not going to give me trouble about this, Peter, are you?”
“No, of course not, Chief,” Wohl said. “It just came out of the blue, and it’s taking some getting used to.”
Chief Coughlin stood up and put out his hand.
“You can handle this, Peter,” Coughlin said. “Congratulations and good luck.”
He had, Peter Wohl realized as he put out his hand to take Coughlin’s, not only been dismissed but given all the direction he was going to get.
“Thank you, Chief,” he said.
Wohl went to the parking lot, opened the door of his car, and rolled down the windows, standing outside a moment until some of the heat could escape. Then he got in and started the engine, and turned on the air conditioner. He cranked up the window and shifted into reverse.
Then he changed his mind. He reached over to the glove compartment and took out the microphone.
“Radio, S-Sam One Oh One,” he said.
“S-Sam One Oh One, Radio,” Police Radio replied. They didn’t seem at all surprised to hear the new call sign, Wohl thought.
“Have you got a location on Highway One?” Wohl asked.
The reply was almost immediate: “Out of service at Highway.”
“What about N-Two?” Wohl asked, guessing that Dave Pekach, who was, now that he had been promoted, the second-ranking man in Narcotics, would be using that call sign.
“Also out of service at Highway, S-Sam One Oh One,” Police Radio replied.
“If either of them come back on the air, ask them to meet me at Highway. Thank you, Radio,” Wohl said, and put the microphone back in the glove compartment. Then he backed out of the parking space and headed for Highway Patrol headquarters.
NINE
Elizabeth Joan Woodham did not like to be called “Woody” as most of her friends did. She thought of herself as too tall, and skinny, and somewhat awkward, and thus “wooden.”
She was, in fact, five feet ten and one-half inches tall. She weighed 135 pounds, which her doctor had told her was just about right for her. She thought she had the choice between weighing 135, which she was convinced made her look skinny, and putting on weight, which would, she thought, make her a large woman.
She thought she had a better chance of attracting the right kind of man as a skinny woman. Large women, she believed, sort of intimidated men. Elizabeth J. Woodham, who was thirty-three, had not completely given up the hope that she would finally meet some decent man with whom she could develop a relationship. But she had read a story in Time that gave statistics suggesting that the odds were against her. Apparently someone had taken the time t
o develop statistics showing that, starting at age thirty, a woman’s chances of ever marrying began to sharply decline. By age thirty-five, a woman’s chances were remote indeed, and by forty practically negligible.
She had come to accept lately that what she wanted, really, was a child, rather than a man. She wondered if she really wanted to share her life with a man. Sometimes, in her apartment, she conjured up a man living there with her, making demands on her time, on her body, confiscating her space.
The man was a composite of the three lovers she had had in her life, and she sometimes conjured him up in two ways. One was a man who had all the attractive attributes of her three lovers, including the physical aspects, rolled into one. The other man had all the unpleasant attributes of her lovers, which had ultimately caused her to break off the relationships.
The conjured-up good man was most often the lover she had had for two and a half years, a kind, gentle man with whom the physical aspects of the relationship had been really very nice, but who had had one major flaw: he was married, and she had gradually come to understand that he was never going to leave his wife and children; and that in fact his wife was not the unfeeling and greedy bitch he had painted, but rather someone like herself, who must have known he was playing around when he came home regularly so late, and suffered through it in the belief that it was her wifely duty; or because of the children; or because she believed practically any man was better than no man at all.
Elizabeth had decided, at the time she broke off the relationship, that it was better to have no man at all than one who was sleeping around.
Elizabeth Woodham, during the winters, taught the sixth grade at the Olney Elementary School at Taber Road and Water Street. This summer, more for something to do than for the money, she had taken a job as a storyteller with the Philadelphia Public Library system, the idea being that the way to get the kids to read was to convince them that something interesting was between the covers of a book; and the way to do that was by gathering them together and telling them stories.
If it also served to keep them off the streets at night, so much the better. Mayor Carlucci had gotten a Federal Grant for the program, and Elizabeth Woodham, the Project Administrator had told her when she applied for the job, was just the sort of person she had hoped to attract.
The hours were from three to nine, with an hour off for dinner. Elizabeth usually got to the playground at two, to set things up and attract a crowd for the three-thirty story hour for the smaller children. The story “hour” almost always ran more than an hour, usually two. She kept it up until she sensed her charges were growing restless. And she took a sort of professional pride in keeping their attention up as long as she could, scrupulously stopping when they showed the first signs of boredom, but taking pride in keeping it longer than you were supposed to be able to keep it.
The playground was on East Godfrey Avenue in Olney. West Godfrey Avenue becomes East Godfrey when it crosses Front Street. It is close to the city line, Cheltenham Avenue. East Godfrey is a dead-end street. A playground runs for two blocks off it to the south, down to where Champlost Avenue turns north and becomes Crescentville Avenue, which forms the western boundary of Tacony Creek Park.
The evening story hour was at seven-thirty, and was thus supposed to be over at eight-thirty, to give Elizabeth time to close things up before the park was locked for the night at nine.
But she’d managed to prolong the expected attention span and it was close to nine before she had told the kids the story of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and sown, she hoped, the idea that there were more stories by A. Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson available in the public library.
It was thus a few minutes after nine when she left the park and walked down East Godfrey Avenue toward where she had parked her car, a two-year-old Plymouth coupe.
“If you scream, I’ll cut off your boobies right here,” the man with the black mask covering his face said as he pulled Elizabeth J. Woodham through the side door of a van.
Barbara Crowley, a tall, lithe woman of twenty-six, entered Bookbinder’s Restaurant at Second and Walbut Streets and looked around the main dining room until she spotted Peter Wohl, who was sitting at a table with an older couple. Then she walked quickly across the room to the table.
Peter Wohl saw her coming and got up.
“Sorry I’m late,” Barbara Crowley said.
“We understand, dear,” the older woman said, extending her cheek to be kissed. She was a thin, tall woman with silver gray hair simply cut, wearing a flower-print dress. She was Mrs. Olga Wohl, Peter Wohl’s mother. It was her birthday. The older man, larger and heavier than Peter, with a florid face, was his father, Chief Inspector (Retired) August Wohl.
“How are you, Barbara?” Chief Wohl said, getting half out of his chair to smile at her and offer his hand.
“Bushed,” Barbara Crowley said. As she sat down, she put her purse in her lap, opened it, and removed a small tissue-wrapped package. She handed it to Olga Wohl. “Happy birthday!”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” Olga Wohl said, beaming, as she tore off the tissue. Underneath was a small box bearing the Bailey, Banks & Biddle, Jewelers, Philadelphia logotype. Olga Wohl opened it and took out a silver compact.
“Oh, this is too much,” Olga Wohl said, repeating, “You shouldn’t have, dear.”
“If you mean that, Mother,” Peter said, “she can probably get her money back.”
His father chuckled; his mother gave him a withering look.
“It’s just beautiful,” she said, and leaned across to Barbara Crowley and kissed her cheek. “Thank you very much.”
“She doesn’t look seventy, does she?” Peter asked, innocently.
“I’m fifty-seven,” Olga Wohl said, “still young enough to slap a fresh mouth if I have to.”
August Wohl laughed.
“Watch it, Peter,” he said.
“So how was your day?” Barbara asked, looking at Peter.
“You mean aside from getting my picture in the papers?” Peter asked.
“What?” Barbara asked, confused.
A waiter appeared, carrying a wine cooler on a three-legged stand.
“Peter was promoted,” Olga Wohl said. “You didn’t see the paper?”
“I don’t think ‘promoted,’” Peter said. “‘Reassigned.’”
The waiter, with what Peter thought was an excessive amount of theatrics, unwrapped the towel around the bottle, showed Peter the label, uncorked the bottle, and poured a little in a glass for his approval.
“I didn’t see the paper,” Barbara said.
“Mother just happens to have one with her,” Peter said, and then, after sipping the wine, said to the waiter, “That’s fine, thank you.”
The waiter poured wine in everyone’s glass and then rewrapped the bottle in its towel as Olga Wohl took a folded newspaper from her purse, a large leather affair beside her chair, and handed it to Barbara Crowley. The story was on the front page, on the lower right-hand side, beside an old photograph of Peter Wohl. The caption line below the photograph said, simply, “P. Wohl.”
* * *
POLICE ORGANIZATION RESHUFFLED
By Cheryl Davies
Bulletin Staff Writer
Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick today announced the formation of a new division, to be called Special Operations, within the Philadelphia Police Department. Although Czernick denied the reshuffling has anything to do with recent press criticism of some police operations, knowledgeable observers believe this to be the case.
Highway Patrol, the elite police unit sometimes known as “Carlucci’s Commandos,” which has been the subject of much recent criticism, has been placed under the new Special Operations Division, which will be commanded by Inspector Peter Wohl. Captain Michael J. Sabara, who had been in temporary command of the Highway Patrol since Captain Richard C. Moffitt was shot and killed, was named as Wohl’s deputy. Captain David J. Pekach, who had been assigned to t
he Narcotics Bureau, was named to command the Highway Patrol.
Inspector Wohl, who was previously assigned to the Special Investigations Division, and Pekach are little known outside the police department, but are regarded by insiders as “straight arrows,” officers who go by the book, lending further credence to the theory that the reorganization is intended to tame the Highway Patrol, and lessen press criticism of its alleged excesses. One Philadelphia newspaper recently editorialized that the Highway Patrol was acting like the Gestapo.
The new Special Operations Division will also have under its wing a special, federally funded, yet-to-be-formed unit called Anti-Crime Teams (ACT). According to Commissioner Czernick, specially trained and equipped ACT teams will be sent to high-crime areas in Philadelphia as needed to augment existing Police resources.
* * *
“That’s very nice,” Barbara said. Peter Wohl snorted derisively. “Congratulations, Peter.” Peter snorted again. “Am I missing something?” Barbara asked, confused. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I’m a Staff Inspector, for one thing,” Peter said. “Not an Inspector.”
“Well, so what? That’s a simple mistake. She didn’t know any better.”
“For another, there’s a pretty clear implication in there that Highway has been doing something wrong, and they haven’t, and that Mike Sabara, who is a really good cop, didn’t get Highway because he’s involved with what’s wrong with it.”
“Why didn’t he get it?”
“Because the mayor thinks he looks like a concentration camp guard,” Peter said.
“Really?” Barbara said.
“Really,” Peter said. “And I wasn’t sent over there to ‘tame’ Highway, either.”
Special Operations Page 14
