“Yes, sir. I just finished reading the Bulletin.”
“A terrible thing to have happened,” Czernick said, “in more ways than one.”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“Anything on the missing woman?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I have full confidence in your ability to handle whatever comes up; otherwise we wouldn’t have sent you over there. But let me know if there’s anything at all that I can do.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The reason I’m calling, Peter—”
“Yes, sir?”
“Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson called me yesterday afternoon. You know who I mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Under the circumstances, if you take my meaning, we can use all the friends we can get.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He has a client, a woman named Martha Peebles. Chestnut Hill. Very wealthy woman. Has been burglarized. Is being burglarized. She is not happy with the level of police service she’s getting from the Fourteenth District and/or Northwest Detectives. She complained to Colonel Mawson, and he called me. Got the picture?”
“I’m not sure,” Peter said.
“I think it would be a very good idea, Peter,” Commissioner Czernick said, “if police officers from the Special Operations Division visited Miss Peebles and managed to convince her that the Police Department—strike that, Special Operations—is taking an avid interest in her problems, and is doing all that can be done to resolve them.”
“Commissioner, right now, Special Operations is me and Mike Sabara and Sergeant Whatsisname—Frizell.”
“I don’t care how you do this, Peter,” Czernick said, coldly. “Just do me a favor and do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I seem to recall that Denny Coughlin got me to authorize the immediate transfer to you of forty volunteers. For openers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, you ought to have some manpower shortly,” Czernick said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me informed about the abducted woman, Peter,” Czernick said. “I have an unpleasant gut feeling about that.”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“Tell your dad I said hello when you see him,” Czernick said, and hung up.
Peter put the handset back in its cradle and turned to Mickey O’Hara.
“What can I do for you, Mickey?”
“Don’t let the doorknob hit me in the ass?” O’Hara said.
“No. What I said was ‘What can I do for you, Mickey?’ When I throw you out, I won’t be subtle. Is there something special, or do you just want to hang around?”
“I’m interested in the abducted woman,” O’Hara said. “I figure when something breaks, this will be the place. So I’ll just hang around, if that’s okay with you.”
“Fine with me,” Wohl said. He turned to Mike Sabara. “Mike, get on the phone to the Captain of Northwest Detectives, and the Fourteenth District Commander. Tell them that Commissioner Czernick just ordered me to stroke a woman named Peebles, and that before I send a couple of our people out to see her, I’m going to send them by to look at the paperwork. She’s—what the commissioner said was—being burglarized, and she’s unhappy with the service she’s been getting, and she has friends in high places.”
“Who are you going to send over?”
“Officers Martinez and McFadden,” Wohl said.
“Who are they?” Sabara asked, confused.
“Two of the three kids sitting on the folding chairs in the foyer,” Wohl said. “I’m doing what I can with what I’ve got. Then, the next item on the priority list: We need people. I would like to have time to screen them carefully, but we don’t have any time. A teletype went out yesterday, asking for volunteers. I don’t know if there have been any responses yet, but find out. If there have not been any, or even, come to think of it, if there have—”
“McFadden and Martinez used to work undercover for me in Narcotics,” Pekach said to Sabara. “They’re the two that found Gerald Vincent Gallagher. They’re here?”
“Chief Coughlin sent them over,” Wohl said. “To Special Operations, David, not Highway.”
“They’re good cops. Not much experience in Chestnut Hill…” Pekach said.
“Like I said, I’m doing what I can with what I have,” Wohl said. “As I was saying, Mike, get us some people. If you, or Dave, can think of anybody you can talk into volunteering, do it. Then call around, see if there have been volunteers. Check them out. Have them sent here today. Go to the Districts if that’s necessary. The only thing: tell them that if they don’t work out, they go back where they came from.”
“You want to talk to them?” Sabara asked. “Before we have them sent over here?”
“After you’ve picked them, I want to talk to them, sure,” Wohl said. “But you know what we need, Mike.”
Peter picked up his telephone and pushed one of the buttons. “Sergeant, would you ask Sergeant Frizell to come in here? And send in the three plainclothes officers waiting in the foyer?” There was a pause, then: “Yeah, all at once.”
“Now, I’ll be polite,” Mickey O’Hara said. “Am I in the way?”
“Not at all,” Peter said. “I’ll let you know when you are, Mickey.”
Sergeant Frizell, trailed by Officers McFadden, Martinez, and Payne, came into the office.
“What do we know about cars?” Wohl asked.
“For the time being,” Frizell replied, “we have authority to draw cars, unmarked, from the lot at the Academy on the ratio of one car per three officers assigned.”
“And then they’ll have to be run by Radio, right, to get the proper radios?”
“Right.”
“I want all our cars to have J-Band, Detective, Highway, and ours, whenever we get our own,” Peter said.
“I’m not sure that’s in the plan, Inspector,” Frizell said.
“I don’t give a damn about the plan,” Peter said. “You call Radio and tell them to be prepared to start installing the radios. And call whoever has the car pool, and tell them we’re going to start to draw cars today. Tell them we have fifty-eight officers assigned; in other words that we want twenty cars.”
“But we don’t have fifty-eight officers assigned. We don’t have any.”
“We have three at this moment,” Wohl said. “And Captain Sabara is working hard on the others.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Frizell said. “But, Inspector, I really don’t think there will be fifteen unmarked cars available at the Academy.”
“Then take blue-and-whites,” Wohl said. “We can swap them for unmarked Highway cars, if we have to.”
“Inspector,” Frizell said, nervously, “I don’t think you have the authority to do that.”
“Do that right now, please, Sergeant,” Wohl said, evenly, but aware that he was furious and on the edge of losing his temper.
The last goddamned thing I need here is this Roundhouse paper pusher telling me I don’t have the authority to do something.
Frizell, sensing Wohl’s disapproval, and visibly uncomfortable, left the room.
Wohl looked at the three young policemen.
“You fellows know each other, I guess?”
“Yes, sir,” they chorused.
“Okay, this is what I want you to do.” He threw car keys at Matt Payne, who was surprised by the gesture, but managed to snag them. “Take my car, and drive McFadden and Martinez to the motor pool at the Police Academy. There, you two guys pick up two unmarked cars. Take one of them to the radio shop and leave it. You take my car to the radio shop, Payne, and stay with it until they put another radio in it. Then bring it back here. Then you take Captain Sabara’s car and have them install the extra radios in it. Then you bring that back. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Matt Payne said.
“You two bring the other car here. I’ve got a job I want you to do when you get here, and when you finish that, then you’ll start
shuttling cars between the motor pool and the radio garage and here. You understand what I want?”
“Yes, sir.”
Getting cars, and radios for them, and handing out assignments to newly arrived replacements, is a Sergeant’s job, Wohl thought, except when the man in charge doesn’t really know what he’s doing, in which case he is permitted to run in circles, wave and shout, making believe he does. That is known as a prerogative of command.
Lieutenant Teddy Spanner of Northwest Detectives stood up when Peter Wohl walked into his office, and put out his hand.
“How are you, Inspector?” he said. “I guess congratulations are in order.”
“I wonder,” Wohl said, “but thanks anyway.”
“What can Northwest Detectives do for Special Operations?”
“I want a look at the files on the burglary—is it burglaries?—job on a woman named Peebles, in Chestnut Hill,” Wohl said.
“Got them right here,” Spanner said. “Captain Sabara said somebody was coming over. He didn’t say it would be you.”
“The lady,” Wohl said, “the Commissioner told me, has friends in high places.”
Spanner chuckled. “Not much there; it’s just one more burglary.”
“Did Mike say we were also interested in the Flannery sexual assault and abduction?”
“There it is,” Spanner said, pointing to another manila folder.
Wohl sat down in the chair beside Spanner’s desk and read the file on the Peebles burglary.
“Can I borrow this for a couple of hours?” Wohl asked. “I’ll get it back to you today.”
Spanner gave a deprecatory wave, meaning Sure, no problem, and Wohl reached for the Flannery file and read that through.
“Same thing,” he said. “I’d like to take this for a couple of hours.”
“Sure, again.”
“What do you think about this?” Wohl said.
“I think we’re dealing with a real sicko,” Spanner said. “And I’ll lay odds the doer is the same guy who put the woman in the van. Anything on that?”
“Not a damned thing,” Wohl said. “Push me the phone, will you?”
He dialed a number from memory.
“This is Inspector Wohl,” he said. “Would you have the Highway car nearest Northwest Detectives meet me there, please?”
He hung up and pushed the telephone back across the desk.
“I need a ride,” he explained.
“Something wrong with your car? Hell, I’d have given you a ride, Inspector. You want to call and cancel that?”
“Thanks but no thanks,” Wohl said.
“Well, then”—Spanner smiled—“how about a cup of coffee?”
“Thank you,” Wohl said.
A Highway Patrol officer came marching through the Northwest Detectives squad room before Wohl had finished his coffee. Wohl left the unfinished coffee and followed him downstairs to the car.
“I need a ride to the Roundhouse,” Wohl said, as he got in the front beside the driver. “You can drop me there.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said.
They pulled out of the District parking lot and headed downtown on North Broad Street. Wohl noticed, as he looked around at the growing deterioration of the area, that the driver was scrupulously obeying the speed limit.
“If you were God,” Wohl said to the driver, “or me, and you could do anything you wanted to, to catch the guy who’s been assaulting the women in Northwest Philly—and I think we’re talking about the same doer who forced the woman into the van last night—what would you do?”
The driver looked at him in surprise, and took his time before answering, somewhat uneasily. “Sir, I really don’t know.”
Wohl turned in his seat and looked at the Highway Patrol officer in the backseat. “What about you?”
The man in the backseat raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“The way I hear, we’re doing everything we know how.”
“You think he’s going to turn the woman loose?” Wohl asked.
“I dunno,” the driver replied. “This is the first time he’s…kept…one.”
“If you think of something, anything,” Wohl said, “don’t keep it to yourself. Tell Captain Pekach, or Captain Sabara, or me.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said.
“Something wrong with this unit?” Wohl asked.
“Sir?”
“Won’t it go faster than thirty-five?”
The driver looked at him in confusion.
“Officer Hawkins says it was the civilian who ran the stoplight last night,” Wohl said. “I believe him. We’re looking for witnesses to confirm Hawkins’s story.”
The driver didn’t react for a moment. Then he pushed harder on the accelerator and began to move swiftly through the North Broad Street traffic.
With a little luck, Wohl thought, these guys will have a couple of beers with their pals when their tour is over, and with a little more luck, it will have spread through Highway by tomorrow morning that maybe Inspector Wohl ain’t the complete prick people say he is; that he asked for advice; said he believed Hawkins; and even told the guy driving him to the Roundhouse to step on it.
ELEVEN
As they drove down Delaware Avenue Officer Charley McFadden pushed himself off the backseat of Staff Inspector Peter Wohl’s car and rested his elbows on the backrest of the front seat.
“I never been in an Inspector’s car before,” he said, happily. “Nice.”
“It certainly doesn’t look like a police car, does it?” Matt Payne, who was driving, said.
McFadden looked at him curiously.
“It’s not supposed to,” Jesus Martinez said, and then put into words what was in his mind. “Where’d you come from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The Academy,” Matt said.
“You was teaching at the Academy?”
“I was going through the Academy,” Matt said. “I was on the range yesterday when Chief Matdorf came out and told me to report to Highway in plainclothes this morning.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Charley McFadden said, and then added, “we was in Narcotics. Hay-zus and me. We were partners, working undercover.”
“For the last week, we were over in the Twelfth District, catching guys robbing stuff from parked cars,” Jesus said. “I wonder what the hell this is all about?”
Both Matt Payne and Charley McFadden shrugged their shoulders.
“We’re gonna find out, I guess.”
“Where we’re going is to that area behind the fence on the way to the Academy, right?” Matt asked.
“Yeah,” Martinez said.
“I sure like your wheels,” Charley said. “Porsche, huh?”
“Nine Eleven T,” Matt said.
“What did something like that set you back?” Charley asked.
“Christ, Charley!” Martinez said. “You don’t go around asking people how much things cost.”
“I was just curious, Hay-zus, is all,” Charley said. “No offense.”
“I don’t know what it cost,” Matt said. “It was a present. When I graduated from college.”
“Nice present!” Charley said.
“I thought so,” Matt said. “What do you call him? Hay-zus?”
“That’s his name,” Charley said. “It’s spick for Jesus.”
“Spanish, you fucking Mick,” Jesus Martinez said.
“I didn’t get your name,” Charley said, ignoring him.
“Matt Payne,” Matt said.
Charley put his hand down over Matt’s shoulder.
“Nice to meet you,” Charley said as Matt shook it.
“Me, too,” Jesus said, offering his hand.
They were able to draw two cars—both new Plymouths, one blue, and the other a dark maroon—from the Police Motor Pool without trouble, but when they got to the Police Radio Shop in the 800 block of South Delaware Avenue, things did not go at all smoothly.
It even began badly. The
man in coveralls in the garage examined all three cars carefully as they drove in, and then returned his attention to what he was doing, which was reading Popular Electronics.
He did not look up as, one after the other, Matt, Jesus, and Charley walked up to stand in front of his desk.
“Excuse me.” Matt spoke first. “I have Inspector Wohl’s car.”
“Good for you,” the man said without looking up.
“You’re supposed to install some communications equipment in it,” Matt said.
“I ain’t seen nothing on it,” the man said. “You got the paperwork?”
“No,” Matt said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t given any.”
“Well, then,” the man said, returning to Popular Electronics.
“My instructions are to wait while the work is done,” Matt said.
“And my instructions are no paperwork, no work,” the man said. “And we don’t do work while people wait. Who the hell do you guys think you are, anyway?”
“We’re from Special Operations,” Matt said.
“La dee da,” the man said.
“Well, I’m sorry you fell out of bed on the wrong side,” Matt said, “but that doesn’t help me with my problem. Where can I find your supervisor?”
“I’m in charge here,” the man flared.
“Good, then you pick up the telephone and call Inspector Wohl and tell him what you told me.”
“What are you, some kind of a wiseass?”
Matt didn’t reply.
“You can leave the car here, and when the paperwork catches up with it, we’ll see what we can do,” the man said.
“May I use your telephone, please?” Matt asked.
“What for?”
“So I can call Inspector Wohl, and tell him that not only are you refusing to do the work, but refusing, as well, to telephone him to say so.”
The man gave him a dirty look, then reached for the telephone. He dialed a number.
“Sergeant, I got a hotshot here, says he’s from Special Operations, without a sheet of paperwork, and demanding we do something—I don’t know what—to three unmarked cars.”
There was a reply, unintelligible, and then the man handed Matt the telephone.
“This is Sergeant Francis,” the voice said. “What can I do for you?”
Special Operations Page 17
