The Witness boh-4

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Why haven't you done that already?" Lowenstein demanded.

  "Because I think I will get more out of them after they have been locked up, all alone, all day," Washington explained. "The adrenaline will have worn off. They may even be a little worried about their futures by half past six. That's the way I called it, but I could go down there right now, Chief, if you or Inspector Wohl think I should."

  "You're a sergeant now, Jason, a supervisor, but since you don't have anybody but Tony Harris to supervise, I guess it's your job." Wohl said. "I won't tell you how to do it."

  Washington met his eyes.

  "Are you going to tell Matt about this?" he asked.

  "The question we wanted to ask you," Wohl said, "for quotation, I think I should tell you, at a five o'clock meeting with the commissioner, was, do we take this thing seriously? Are they really going to try to kill Matt, and/or the witnesses, which right now is Monahan, period?"

  "So you askedus if we thought it should be taken seriously," Lowenstein said. "Why the hell are we letting these scumbags get to us, the three of us, this way?"

  "And the next question was going to be," Wohl went on, "did Monahan go ahead and make a positive ID of these people after the threat was made? Obviously, since you're not going to run the lineup until half past six, that can't be answered."

  "The reason the three of us are upset by this," Washington said thoughtfully, "is that as much as we don't want to believe it, as incredible as this whole Islamic Liberation Army thing sounds, we have a gut feeling that these people are perfectly serious. Theyare just crazy enough, or dumb enough, to try to kill Matt and Monahan."

  Lowenstein took a fresh cigar, as thick as his thumb and six inches long, from his pocket. He bit off the end, and then took a long time lighting it properly.

  "Harry will be back in a minute," he said finally. "I sent him to have a talk with Hospital Security. He's a retired Internal Affairs sergeant. I want whatever he can give us to keep this under control."

  Detective Harry McElroy was Chief Inspector Lowenstein's driver.

  "I want to get plainclothes people to guard Matt," Wohl said. "A lot of uniforms are going to signal these idiots-and the public-that we're taking them seriously."

  "You mean you don't want us to look scared," Lowenstein said. "OK. Good point. But protecting Monahan is something else. You did intend, Peter, to put Highway on him and his wife twenty-four hours a day?"

  "Special Operations will continue to provide two police officers to guard Mr. Monahan and his wife around the clock," Wohl said, and then when he saw the look on Lowenstein's face went on: "To take the ACT people off that job-theyare police officers, Chief-as a result of this 'press release' would both signal the Liberation Army that we're afraid of them, and send the message to the ACT cops that I don't have any faith in them."

  "I hope your touching faith is justified, Peter," Lowenstein said. " If they get to Monahan, either kill him, or scare him so that he won't testify, this whole thing goes down the tube, the scumbags go free, and the whole police department, not just you, will have egg all over its face."

  "I intend to protect Mr. Monahan," Wohl said, a little sharply. "I'm even thinking about shotguns."

  "You have enough ex-Stakeout people who are shotgun qualified?" Lowenstein asked.

  Unlike most major city police departments, which routinely equip police officers with shotguns, Philadelphia does not. Only the specially armed Stakeout unit is issued shotguns.

  "I've got people finding out," Wohl said.

  "I'll call the range at the Police Academy, Peter," Lowenstein said. "Have ten of your people there in an hour. The Range Training Officers will be set up to train and certify them in no more than two hours."

  "Thank you," Wohl said, simply.

  "I hope Harry gets something from hospital security," Washington said. "How long is Matt going to be in here, anyway?"

  "Not long," Wohl said. "They'll probably let him go tomorrow."

  "That soon?" Washington asked, surprised.

  "The new theory is that the more he moves around, the quicker he'll heal," Lowenstein said.

  The door to Matt's room opened.

  "Matt's awake," Martha Washington announced.

  "Jason," Lowenstein said quickly, softly, "when somebody asks, as somebody surely will, how you're coming with the ones we have locked up, could I say that I don't know, the last I heard you were off to see Arthur X?"

  "You're reading my mind again, Chief," Washington said.

  "And there's one more thing you could do that would help, Jason," Wohl said.

  "What's that?"

  "Find Tony Harris and sober him up. I'd like him in on this,"

  Washington's face registered momentary surprise, then he met Wohl's eyes.

  "I've found him. I'm working on sobering him up."

  "Are you going to come in here or not?" Martha asked.

  The three men filed into Matt's room. He was sitting up in bed.

  "I'll be running along now," the Reverend Coyle said. "The hospital doesn't like to have a patient have too many visitors at once."

  "Thank you for coming to see me," Matt said politely.

  "Don't be silly," the Reverend Coyle said. "You feel free to call me, Matt, whenever you want to talk this over."

  "I will, thank you very much," Matt said.

  Jason Washington caught Martha's eye and made a barely perceptible gesture.

  "I'll be outside," she said.

  Matt looked from one to the other.

  Lowenstein finally broke the silence. "How much dope are you on?"

  "One tiny little pill of Demerol whenever they feel I should have one."

  "Could you do without it?"

  "Why?"

  "Your judgment is impaired when you're on Demerol."

  "Am I going to need my judgment in here?"

  Lowenstein handed him the press release.

  Matt read it, and looked at Lowenstein.

  "Jesus, are they serious?" he asked.

  Lowenstein shrugged.

  "I think we should err on the side of caution," Wohl said. "In this case meaning having a pistol in your bedside table might be a good idea."

  Matt felt a cramp in his stomach.

  Jesus, is that fear?

  "The sergeant from the Mobile Crime Lab took my pistol," Matt said, desperately hoping his voice did not betray him, that he sounded like a matter-of-fact cop explaining something.

  Simultaneously, Chief Inspector Lowenstein and Staff Inspector Wohl reached into the pockets of their topcoats and came out with identical Smith amp; Wesson Chief's Special snub-nosed.38 Special caliber revolvers.

  Matt took the one Wohl had extended to him, butt first. He laid it on the sheet and covered it with his hand.

  "One should be enough, don't you think?" he said. "You just happened to have spares with you, right?"

  He's frightened, Wohl thought. He's cracking wise, but he's frightened. Then he grew angry. Those dirty sonsofbitches!

  "Harry McElroy is arranging with hospital security to make sure nobody even knows where you are in here, much less gets close to you," Lowenstein said. "I think that threat is pure bullshit. But better safe than sorry."

  "Yes, of course," Matt said.

  "Just make sure no one knows you have a weapon," Wohl said. "The hospital would throw a fit."

  "You'll be out of here tomorrow, or the day after," Washington said. "Even if this is not fantasy on the part of these people, they won't look for you in Wallingford. You are going to Wallingford, right?"

  "I was, but not now," Matt said. "Christ, I don't want my family to hear about this!"

  "It'll be in the papers," Wohl said. "They'll hear about it."

  "I'll go to my apartment," Matt said, "not Wallingford."

  "You in the phone book?" Lowenstein asked.

  "No, sir."

  "What I think this is intended to do, Payne," Lowenstein went on, "is frighten Mr. Monahan. I think they're trying to get
him to think that if they can threaten a cop-You take my meaning?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I can't believe they'd come after you. If they were serious about revenge, they wouldn't have given a warning."

  "Yes, sir."

  On the other hand, Matt thought, if they did kill me, that would really send Mr. Monahan a message.

  The pain in his stomach had gone as quickly as it had come.

  Jesus, that Demerol must be working. I'm not even afraid anymore. This is more like watching a cops-and-robbers show on TV. You know it' s not real.

  And then he had a sudden, very clear image of the orange muzzle blasts in the alley, and heard again the crack of Abu Ben Mohammed's pistol, and felt again getting slammed in the calf and forehead, and the fear, and the cramp in his stomach, came back.

  "I'll have a talk with your father, Matt," Wohl said. "And put this in perspective. If you'd like me to."

  "Please," Matt said.

  "I'm sure McElroy has arranged with the switchboard to put through only calls from your family and friends," Lowenstein said. "But some calls may get through-"

  "Calls from whom?" Matt interrupted.

  "I was thinking of the press, those bastards are not above saying they're somebody's brother, but now that I think of it, these people may try to call you too."

  "In either case, hang up," Wohl said. "No matter what you would say, it would be the wrong thing."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And above all," Wohl said, "as the hangman said as he led the condemned man up the scaffold steps, try not to worry about this."

  "Oh, God!" Washington groaned, and then they all laughed.

  A little too heartily, Matt thought. That wasn't that funny.

  SIXTEEN

  The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadelphia, sat in the commissioner's chair at the head of the commissioner's conference table in the commissioner's conference room on the third floor of the Roundhouse rolling one of Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein's big black cigars in his fingers. His Honor was visibly not in a good mood.

  One indication of this was the manner in which he had come by the cigar.

  "Matt, I don't suppose you have a spare cigar you could let me have, do you?" the mayor had politely asked.

  Lowenstein knew from long experience that when The Dago was carefully watching his manners, it was a sure sign that he was no more than a millimeter or two away from throwing a fit.

  "Thank you very much, Matt," the mayor said very politely.

  Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick, a large, florid-faced man sitting to the mayor's immediate left, next to Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, produced a gas-flame cigarette lighter, turned it on, and offered it to the mayor.

  "No, thank you, Commissioner," the mayor said, very politely, "I'm sure Matt will offer me a match."

  He turned to Lowenstein, sitting beside Peter Wohl on the other side of the table. Lowenstein handed him a large kitchen match and the mayor then took a good thirty seconds to get the cigar going. Finally, exhaling cigar smoke as he approvingly examined the coal on the cigar, he said, very politely, "Well, since we are all here, do you think we should get going? Why don't you just rough me in on this, Commissioner, and then I can ask specific questions of the others, if there's something I don't quite understand."

  "Yes, sir," Commissioner Czernick said. "ShouldI start, sir, with the Goldblatt robbery and murder?"

  "No, start with what happened at five o'clock this morning. I know what happened at Goldblatt's."

  "Chief Lowenstein asked the assistance of Inspector Wohl, that is, Special Operations, in arresting eight men identified by a witness as the doers of the Goldblatt job. They obtained warrants through the district attorney. The idea was to make the arrests simultaneously, and at a time when there would be the least risk to the public and the officers involved, that is at five o'clock in the morning."

  "And the operation presumably had your blessing, Commissioner? "

  "I didn't know about it until it was over, Mr. Mayor."

  "You and Lowenstein had a falling out?" Carlucci demanded, looking from one to the other. "You're not talking to each other? What?"

  "It was a routine arrest, arrests, Jerry," Lowenstein said. "There was no reason to bring the commissioner in on it."

  "Just for the record, Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time we've arrested the Islamic Liberation Army, right? Or any other kind of army, right? So how is that routine?"

  "Just because eightschwartzers call themselves an army doesn't make them an army," Lowenstein said. "So far as I'm concerned, these guys are thieves and murderers, period."

  "Yeah, well, tell that to the newspapers," Carlucci said. "The newspapers think they're an army."

  "Then the newspapers are wrong," Lowenstein said.

  "And it never entered your mind, Peter," Carlucci asked, turning to Wohl, "to run this past the commissioner and get his approval?"

  "Mr. Mayor, I thought of it like Chief Lowenstein did. It was a routine arrest."

  "If it was a routine arrest-don't hand me any of your bullshit, Peter, I was commanding Highway when you were in high school-Homicide detectives backed up by district cops would have picked these people up, one at a time. Did you see what theDaily News said?"

  "No, sir."

  The mayor jammed his cigar in his mouth, opened his briefcase, took out a sheet of Xerox paper, and read, "They said, 'A small army of heavily armed police had their first battle with the Islamic Liberation Army early this morning. When it was over, Abu Ben Mohammed was fatally wounded and Police Officer Matthew M. Payne, who two months ago shot to death the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist, was in Frankford Hospital suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The police took seven members of the ILA prisoner.'"

  He looked at Wohl.

  "I didn't see that," Wohl said.

  "Maybe you should start reading the newspapers, Peter."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Just don't give me any more bullshit about a routine arrest. If this thing had been handled like a routine arrest none of this would have happened."

  "You're right," Lowenstein said angrily. "Absolutely right. If I had tried to pick up these scumbags one at a time, using district cops, we'd have three, four, a half dozen cops in Frankford Hospital, or maybe the morgue. And probably that many civilians."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. We took a goddamn arsenal full of guns away from these people. The only reason they didn't get to use them was because we hit them all at once. If we had taken them one at a time, by the time we got to the second or third one, they would either have been long gone, in Kansas City or someplace, if we were lucky. Or, if we were unlucky, they would have done what this scumbag Stevens did, come out shooting."

  There were very few people in the Police Department, for that matter in city government, who would have dared to tell the mayor in scornful sarcasm that he was right, absolutely right, and then explain in detail to him why he was wrong. Matt Lowenstein was one of them. But there was doubt in the minds of everyone else in the conference room that he was going to get away with it this time.

  He and the mayor glared at each other for a full fifteen seconds.

  "Is that his name? Stevens? The dead one?" the mayor finally asked, almost conversationally.

  "Charles David Stevens," Lowenstein furnished. The mayor turned his attention to Staff Inspector Wohl again: "Presumably you were aware of this 'arsenal of weapons'? That being the case, how come you didn't use Highway?"

  "I didn't want theLedger complaining about excessive force by ' Carlucci's Jackbooted Gestapo,'" Wohl replied evenly. "Highway was alerted, in case they would be needed, and there were also stakeout units available. Neither was needed, which was fine with me; I didn't want an early morning gun battle."

  Carlucci thought that over for a long moment before replying: "I'm not sure I would have taken that kind of a chance, Peter."

  "We also have to submit quarterly reports to
the Justice Department on how we're spending the ACT Grant funds. I thought that reporting that ACT-funded cops had assisted Homicide in the arrest of eight individuals charged with murder and armed robbery would look good."

  "I still think I would have used Highway," the mayor said. "Youdid have a gun battle."

  "I haven't had a chance to figure that out yet," Wohl said. "I don't think Stevens spotted the Homicide detective. Possibilities are that he got up to take a leak, and looked out his window, just as the units were moving into place."

  "You said possibilities."

  "Or somebody saw all the activity at the school playground, or as they were moving from the playground, and called Stevens."

  "Somebody who?"

  "Maybe the same somebody who issued the second press release."

  "So you don't have all of them?"

  "No. What Jason Washington is doing, right now, is trying to find out how many there are. He hopes Arthur X will tell him."

  "What does Intelligence have to say about these people? Or Organized Crime?" Carlucci asked.

  "Intelligence has nothing on the Islamic Liberation Army, period," Lowenstein answered. "And until they pulled this job, none of these people did anything that would make them of interest to Organized Crime. They had their names, or some of them, but with no ties to anyone serious. They're-or they were-small-time thieves."

  "Czernick," the mayor said, "maybe you'd better have a talk with Intelligence. I find it hard to believe that one day last week, out of the clear blue sky, these bastards said, 'Okay, we're now the Islamic Liberation Army.' Intelligence should have something on them."

  "Yes, sir," Commissioner Czernick said.

  "But you are," the mayor said, looking at Lowenstein, "taking this second so-called press release seriously?"

  "I don't think we should ignore it," Lowenstein replied.

  "The newspapers aren't going to ignore it, you can bet your ass on that," Carlucci said.

  "There's almost certainly at least one more of them," Wohl said. " Somebody was driving the van. Washington maybe can get a lead on him after he runs the seven of them through lineups."