Special Operations

by W. E. B Griffin

  And then he told them what they were looking for, and how he wanted them to look for it: “What I’ve come up with is a list of minor sexual offenders, white males who have misdemeanor arrests for any of a long list of weird behavior. I’m still working on coming up with names….”

  He stopped and looked at Wohl.

  “Inspector, I used to work with Bart Cumings in South Detectives,” he said, indicating the Sergeant among the newcomers. “Could I have him to work with me on the files?”

  “You’ve got him,” Wohl said, smiling at Sergeant Cumings. He saw Officer Matt Payne enter the Roll Call Room, look around, and then head for him.

  I’ll bet I know what Payne wants, Wohl thought. And I’ll bet Sergeant Cumings will be out of that uniform by tomorrow morning. If he waits that long to get out of it.

  In the Police Department rank structure, the step up from police officer was either to detective or corporal, who received the same pay. There was no such rank as “detective sergeant,” so a detective who took and passed the sergeant’s examination took the risk of being assigned anywhere in the department where a sergeant was needed, and that most often meant a uniformed assignment. After a detective had been on the job awhile, the prospect of going back in uniform, even as a sergeant, was not attractive. Very few uniformed sergeants got much overtime. Divisional detectives, counting their overtime, always took home more money than captains. Homicide detectives like Tony Harris and Jason Washington, for example, for whom twenty-four hour days were not at all unusual, took as much money home as a Chief Inspector.

  Some detectives, thinking of retirement, which was based on rank, took the Sergeant’s exam hoping that when they were promoted they would get lucky and remain assigned to the Detective Division. Wohl felt sure that Sergeant Cumings was one of those who had taken the gamble, and lost, and wound up as a uniformed sergeant someplace that was nowhere as interesting a job as being a detective had been. That explained his volunteering for Special Operations. If he had been a crony of Harris in South Detectives, that meant he had been a pretty good detective.

  And if he could work here, in civilian clothes, he would be, Wohl knew, very pleased with the arrangement. He wondered if Cumings would ask permission to wear plainclothes, and decided he probably would not. He was an experienced cop who had learned that if you ask permission to do something, the answer was often no. But if you did the same thing, like working in an investigative job in plainclothes without asking, probably no one would question you.

  Wohl decided that whether Cumings asked for permission to work in civilian clothes, or just did it, it would be all right.

  “Anyway, what we need you guys to do,” Tony Harris went on, “is check these people out. Very quietly. I don’t want anybody going where these people work and asking their boss if they think the guy could be the rapist. You work on the presumption of innocence. What you will look for is whether or not he fits the rough description we have—hairy and well spoken. And we look for the van. We’ve already run these people through Harrisburg for a match with a van and come up with zilch. But maybe his neighbor’s got a van, or his brother-in-law, or maybe he gets to bring one home from work. And that’s all you do! You hit on something, you report it to Washington or me, and now Sergeant Cumings. Unless there’s no way you can avoid it, I don’t want you talking to these people. You just thin out the list for us. Anybody got any questions about that?”

  “You mean, we find this guy, we don’t arrest him?” a voice called out.

  “Not unless he’s got the schoolteacher in the van with him,” Harris said, “with her life clearly in danger. Otherwise, you report it, that’s all. We’re dealing with a real sicko here, and there’s no telling what he’ll do if he figures he’s about to get grabbed.”

  “Like what, for example, he hasn’t already done?” a sarcastic voice called.

  Wohl looked quickly to spot the wiseass, but was not successful.

  Harris’s face showed contempt, not anger, but Wohl suspected there was both, and Harris immediately proved it.

  “Okay,” Harris said, “since you apparently can’t figure it out yourself. We bag this guy, a hairy guy who speaks as if he went past the eighth grade, and who has a van. We even get one or more of the victims to identify him. But we don’t have Miss Woodham, all right? So, if he doesn’t figure this out himself, and he’s smart, he gets a lawyer and the lawyer says, ‘Just keep denying it, Ace. Nobody saw you without your mask, and I’ll confuse them when I get them on the stand…make them pick you out of a line of naked hairy men wearing masks, or something!’ That’s how he would beat the first rapes, unless we can get what we professional detectives call ‘evidence.’”

  The identity of the wiseass was now clear. At least four of the newcomers had turned around to glower contemptuously at him.

  “And we seem to have forgotten Miss Woodham, haven’t we?” Harris went on. “Who is the reason we’re all out looking for this scumbag in the first place. Now just for the sake of argument, let’s say he’s got her tied up someplace, like a warehouse or something. Some place we can’t connect him to. So our cowboy says, “Where’s the dame?” and our guy says “What dame?” and our cowboy says, “You know what dame, Miss Woodham,” and our sicko says, “Not only did I not piss all over the one lady, I never heard of anybody named Woodham. You got a witness?” So the latest victim, the one we’re trying to find, cowboy, starves or suffocates or goes insane, wherever this scumbag has her tied up. Because once our sicko knows we’re on to him, he’s not going to go anywhere near the victim. Does that answer your question, smartass?”

  Harris handled that perfectly, Wohl thought.

  “You think she’s still alive?” another newcomer asked, softly.

  “We won’t know that until we find her,” Harris said. “That’s all I’ve got, Captain.”

  Sabara turned to Wohl.

  “Have you got anything, Inspector?”

  “Going along with what Harris said, Captain,” Wohl said. “About not making the man we’re looking for any more disturbed than he is, what would you think about putting as many of these officers as it takes in plainclothes? And in unmarked cars?”

  “I’ll find out how many unmarked cars there are and set it up, sir,” Sabara said.

  “If necessary, Mike, take unmarked cars from Highway.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”

  Wohl shook his head and turned to face Matt Payne, who was now standing beside him.

  “Inspector, Chief Coughlin called,” Matt said, surprising Peter Wohl not at all. “He wants you to call him right away.”

  “Okay,” Wohl said, and walked out of the Roll Call Room toward his office.

  As he passed Sergeant Frizell’s desk, Wohl told him, “Call Chief Coughlin for me, please.”

  “Inspector, the Commissioner just called, too, wanting you to get right back to him.”

  “Get me Chief Coughlin first,” Wohl ordered. He walked into his office, sat down, and watched the telephones until one of the buttons began to flash. He picked it up.

  “Inspector Wohl,” he said.

  “Hold one for the Chief,” Sergeant Tom Lenihan’s voice replied.

  “Have you seen the papers, Peter?” Coughlin began, without any preliminaries.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s this about you refusing to talk to the press?”

  “I wasn’t here,” Wohl said. “Somebody must have told him I was unavailable.”

  “That’s not what it sounded like in the Ledger,” Coughlin said.

  “It also said you and I are cronies,” Wohl said.

  “The Commissioner’s upset,” Coughlin said.

  “He just called here,” Wohl said. “As soon as you’re through with me, I’m going to return his call.”

  “What about assigning officers to find witnesses to clear the Highway cop?”

  “Guilty,” Peter said. “Except that I didn’t assign them. They volunteered. Off duty, in c
ivilian clothes. If they turn up a witness, there will be an anonymous telephone call from a public-spirited citizen to AID. It was actually Dave Pekach’s idea, I want you to understand that I’m doing the opposite of laying it off on Pekach. If I had thought of it first, I would have done it first. And I’ll take full responsibility for doing it.”

  He heard Coughlin grunt, and there was a pause before Coughlin asked, “Was that smart, under the circumstances?”

  “If I could have sent them to find the Woodham woman, I would have,” Wohl said.

  Matt Payne appeared at his office door. Wohl made a gesture for him to go away, together with a mental note to tell him to learn to knock before he came through a closed door.

  “How’s that going?” Chief Coughlin asked.

  “The first fifteen, maybe sixteen, volunteers just showed up for duty. I turned them all over to Washington and Harris to ring doorbells. That’s where I was when you called.”

  “Maybe, until you get the Woodham woman back, you better put the people who were looking for witnesses to the car wreck to work ringing doorbells, too.”

  “I will if you tell me to, Chief,” Wohl said, “but I’d rather not.”

  “You want to explain that?”

  “Well, for one thing, I think they did all they could, and drew a blank, about finding anyone who saw Mr. McAvoy run the red light.”

  “Damn,” Coughlin said.

  “And for another, I don’t think having Highway cops going around ringing doorbells is such a good idea. The guy we’re looking for is already over the edge. I don’t want to spook him.”

  “You want to go over that again?” Coughlin asked.

  Wohl covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and demanded, “What the hell do you want, Payne?”

  “Sir, the Commissioner’s on Two Six, holding for you,” Matt replied.

  “Okay,” Wohl said, and Matt backed out of the office, closing the door after him.

  “Chief, the Commissioner’s on the other line. Can I get back to you?”

  “Call me when you get something,” Coughlin said, impatiently, and then added, “Peter, frankly, I would have a hell of a lot more confidence in the way you’re doing things if you had at least been able to keep that Peebles woman from being burgled again.”

  “I was just talking to Charley Emerson about that—” Wohl said, and then stopped, because Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin had hung up.

  He pushed the flashing button on the telephone.

  “Good morning, Commissioner,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I was talking to Chief Coughlin.”

  “Hold on for Commissioner Czernick, please, Inspector Wohl,” a female voice Peter did not recognize replied.

  “Czernick,” the Commissioner snarled a moment later.

  “I have Inspector Wohl for you, Commissioner,” the woman said.

  “It’s about time,” Czernick said. “Peter?”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. I was talking to Chief Coughlin.”

  “You’ve seen the papers? What’s this about you refusing to talk to the press?”

  “Sir,” Wohl said, “it wasn’t quite that way. I wasn’t here, and—”

  “Lemme have that,” a voice said, faintly in the background, and then came over the line full volume. “This is Jerry Carlucci, Peter.”

  “Good morning, sir,” Peter said.

  “I know and you know that sonofabitch is after us, Peter,” the mayor of the City of Brotherly Love said, “and we both know why, and we both know that no matter what we do, he’ll still be trying to cut our throats. But we can’t afford to give the sonofabitch any ammunition. You just can’t tell the press to go fuck themselves. I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “Sir, that’s not the way it happened,” Peter said.

  “So tell me,” Mayor Carlucci said.

  “Sir, I was not in the office. I was ‘unavailable.’ That’s it.”

  “Shit,” the mayor said. “What about using Highway to look for witnesses to clear our guy? Is that true?”

  “Yes, sir, I did that. But in sports coats and ties. Off-duty volunteers.”

  “I think I know why you did it,” Mayor Carlucci said, “but under the circumstances, was it smart?”

  “Sir, I considered it to be the proper thing to do at the time. There was nothing that wasn’t already being done to locate Miss Woodham, and I hoped to clear the officers involved of what I considered—consider—to be an unjust accusation.”

  “You’re saying you’d do the same thing again?” Carlucci asked, coldly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They find any witnesses for our side?”

  “No, sir.”

  “They still looking?”

  “Sir, I have no intention, without orders to the contrary, to tell my men what they can’t do when they’re off duty and in civilian clothes.”

  “In other words, fuck Arthur Nelson and his goddamned Ledger?”

  “No, sir. I frankly think that if we were going to find a witness, they’d have found one by now. But I think, for the morale of Highway, that it’s important we keep looking. Or maybe I mean that I don’t want Highway to think I threw Officer Hawkins to the wolves because of the Ledger editorial.”

  “Hawkins was the guy driving?”

  “Yes, sir. And he says Mr. McAvoy ran the stoplight, and I believe him.”

  “Goddamn it, I was right,” Mayor Carlucci said.

  “Sir?”

  “When I sent you out there, gave you Special Operations,” Mayor Carlucci said.

  Peter Wohl could think of no appropriate response to make to that, and so made none.

  “I was about to ask where you are with the Woodham job,” Mayor Carlucci said.

  “Sir, I have turned over all—”

  “I said ‘was about to ask,’” the mayor said. “Don’t interrupt me, Peter.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “I’ve been there,” the mayor said. “And I know the one thing a commanding officer on the spot does not need is people looking over his shoulder and telling him what they think he should have done. So I won’t do that. I’ll tell you what I am going to do, Peter. I’m going to issue a statement saying that I have complete faith in the way you’re handling things.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said.

  “But you better catch this sonofabitch, Peter. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This sonofabitch is making the Police Department look like the Keystone Cops. The Department can’t afford that. I can’t afford that. And you, in particular, can’t afford that.”

  “I understand, sir,” Peter said.

  “I don’t want to find myself in the position of having to tell Tad Czernick to relieve you, and making it look like Arthur Nelson and his goddamned Ledger were right all the time,” Mayor Carlucci said.

  “I hope that won’t be necessary, sir.”

  “You need anything, Peter, anything at all?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think so.”

  “If you need something, you speak up. Tad Czernick will get it for you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Tell your dad, when you see him, I said hello,” the mayor said. “Hang on, Tad wants to say something.”

  “Peter,” Commissioner Czernick said. “I understand Miss Peebles was burgled again last night.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said. “I’m working on it.”

  “Good,” Commissioner Czernick said. “Keep me advised.”

  Then he hung up.

  Wohl took the telephone from his ear, looked at the handset, wondered for perhaps the three hundredth time why he did that, and then put it in its cradle. He got up and walked to his office door and pulled it open.

  Matt Payne had been put to work collating some kinds of forms.

  “Payne?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You look like death warmed over,” Wohl said. “Are you sick?”

 
Payne looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Sir, I guess I had a little too much to drink last night.”

  That figures, Wohl thought, McFadden and Martinez took him to the FOP and initiated him.

  “Where are they?”

  “Sir?”

  “Where’s Sherlock Holmes and the faithful Dr. Watson?”

  Matt finally understood that Wohl meant McFadden and Martinez.

  “Sir, I don’t know,” he said.

  “Find them,” Wohl said. “Tell them as soon as they can fit me into their busy schedule, I want to see them. And find Captain Pekach, too, please, and ask him to come see me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  David Pekach was still in the Seventh District Building. Two minutes later, he was standing in Wohl’s doorway waiting for Wohl to raise his eyes from the papers on his desk. Finally, he did.

  “Come in, please, David,” he said. “You want some coffee?”

  Pekach shook his head no, then asked with raised eyebrows if Wohl wanted him to close the door. Wohl nodded that he did.

  “I just finished talking to Chief Coughlin and the Commissioner,” Wohl said, deciding in that moment not to mention Mayor Jerry Carlucci.

  “I thought maybe they would call,” David Pekach said, dryly.

  “In addition to everything else,” Wohl said, “they both seem personally concerned and very upset with me about whatever the hell is going on with this Peebles woman. She was burgled again last night.”

  “I heard.”

  “I put your two hotshots, McFadden and Martinez, on the job. They’re looking for—”

  Pekach’s nod of understanding told Wohl that Pekach knew about that, so he stopped. “The way they tackled the job, unless I am very wrong, was to take young Payne out there down to the FOP and get him falling-down drunk.”

  “I don’t know,” Pekach said, loyally. “They were always pretty reliable.”

  “They didn’t find the guy—the actor, the boyfriend of the Peebles woman’s brother—that I know,” Wohl said.

  “You want me to talk to them?”