The Witness boh-4

by W. E. B Griffin

  "All I can do is tell you what I know so far, sir."

  Carlucci sat down on the edge of Czernick's desk and made a "come on" gesture with both hands.

  "A few minutes before six this morning, an unmarked car pulled up behind the unmarked car on protection duty outside Mr. Malone's home. In the belief their relief had arrived, the officers on duty drove away-"

  "If you had used Highway Patrol as I told you to," Commissioner Czernick said, "none of this would have happened!"

  "We believe that as soon as the RPC going off duty turned the corner, an individual in police uniform-"

  "Answer the commissioner's question, Peter," the mayor said.

  "I wasn't aware that it was a question, sir."

  "Don't add insolence to everything else, Peter," the mayor said.

  "I didn't use Highway because I thought using Special Operations officers was a more efficient utilization of manpower. And because I didn't want a Highway car parked there all night, every night."

  "But you do now admit that was faulty judgment?" Czernick said.

  "No, sir. I do not. I would do the same thing again. And I don't think it would have made a bit of difference if a Highway car had been given the job. The same thing would have happened."

  "Now, that's bullsh-"

  "He answered your question, Tad," the mayor interrupted. "Now let me ask one: What, if it was still your responsibility, would you do to the cops who took off before they were properly relieved?"

  The question took Wohl by surprise. He tried to shift mental gears to consider it.

  "They took off without checking to see that the cops who were relieving them were really cops. That got Monahan killed, and makes the entire Department look ridiculous," the mayor said.

  "I don't think I'd do anything to them, sir. I hope you don't. If I had been in that car and saw another car with uniformed cops in it show up when I expected a car with uniformed cops in it to show up, I would have presumed I had been relieved."

  "And you would have been wrong."

  "Malone's plan was pretty thorough. I reviewed it. There was nothing in it about having the cops on the job check the IDs of the cops relieving them. That's my fault. Not Malone's and certainly not theirs."

  The mayor shrugged, but said nothing. He made another "come on" gesture with his hands.

  "We believe," Wohl continued, "that as soon as the RPC, the one going off the job, turned the corner, an individual wearing a police uniform rang Mr. Monahan's doorbell, and when Mr. Monahan answered the doorbell, he shot him, if that's the correct word, with a stun gun."

  "What?" Chief Lowenstein asked incredulously. "What did you say, ' stun gun'?"

  "What the hell is a stun gun?" the mayor asked.

  "What it is, Jerry," Chief Coughlin said, "is a thing that throws little darts at you. There's wires, and when it hits you, you get shocked. It's supposed to be nonlethal."

  "You know what this thing is?" Carlucci asked him incredulously.

  "They had a booth at the IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police) Convention," Chief Coughlin said. "They demonstrated them. They're supposed to be used places where you don't want to fire a gun."

  "And Monahan was shot with one of these things?" the mayor asked.

  "That's what the medical examiner believes, sir," Wohl said. "Mr. Monahan died of a heart attack. The ME thinks it was caused by getting hit with a stun gun. There are two small bruises on his chest."

  "How come the ME knows about these things?" the mayor asked.

  "They've been trying to sell them to us," Coughlin said.

  "We buy any of these things, Tad?" the mayor asked.

  "I would have to check, Mr. Mayor."

  "There are three at the range at the Academy," Wohl said. "On loan from the dealer, or the manufacturer, I'm not sure which."

  "Let me get this straight: You're telling me Monahan was shot by a cop with a Mickey Mouse Buck Rogers stun gun we borrowed from somebody?"

  "No, sir. I checked with the Academy. The ones out there are inoperative; they're waiting for the manufacturer, or the dealer, to come fix them.

  "So where did the one who shot Monahan come from?" the mayor asked, and then, before Wohl could frame a reply, thought of something else: "I thought Coughlin just said they're nonlethal?"

  "They're supposed to be, Jerry," Coughlin replied. "That's what they said at the convention. They're supposed to knock you on your ass for a couple of minutes, but they're not supposed to kill you."

  "Monahan's dead," the mayor said.

  "They're not classified as firearms, Mr. Mayor," Wohl said. "So they' re available on the open market. I called Colosimo's. They said they didn't have any, never had, but they had heard that a place in Camden had them, and some store in Bucks County. I've got people checking that out."

  "How do we know Monahan was shot by a cop?" the mayor asked.

  "We don't. Mrs. Monahan said that she saw a police officer take a gun from his coat-"

  "These things look like guns?"

  "I don't know, sir. I've never seen one."

  "In dim light, or if you don't know all that much about guns," Coughlin said, "it would look, maybe, to Mrs. Monahan, like a gun."

  "Do they make any noise? Where do they get the electricity to shock you?"

  "They go 'splat,' " Coughlin said. "Or like that. Not like a.38."

  "Like a.22, Chief?" Wohl asked.

  "Something. Sure. It could be mistaken for a.22."

  "Mrs. Monahan said it sounded like a.22," Wohl said.

  "Why would they use something like this?"

  "So there wouldn't be the sound of a gun going off," Lowenstein said.

  "If it makes as much noise as a.22, then why not use a.22?" the mayor asked. He did not wait for a reply, but asked another question: "What is it, Peter? The guy who shot Monahan with this thing, the people in the car, were they cops or not?"

  "They had an RPC, Mr. Mayor. An unmarked RPC."

  "How do we know that? And if so, where did they get it?"

  "Wedon't know. But Washington said, and I think he's right, that if it wasn't an RPC, I mean if it was just a similar Ford, the cop who walked past it would have picked up on that, either consciously or subconsciously: The tires would have been wrong, it wouldn't have had an antenna, or the right antenna-"

  "So if it was a bona fide car, that makes it look as if a cop, cops, were the doers, doesn't it?" Carlucci interrupted.

  "That sounds entirely credible," Wohl said. "As to where it came from, it probably came out of the parking lot at Bustleton and Bowler."

  The mayor turned to Lowenstein and pointed a finger at him.

  "I want those bastards, Matt!"

  "Yes, sir," Lowenstein said softly, coldly, "so do I."

  Carlucci turned back to Wohl. "What I'm thinking now is that it would be best, until he can give some real thought to your replacement, that we have Mike Sabara fill in for you. Is there something wrong with that?"

  "No, sir. Sabara is a good man."

  "Is there some way you can put off going to Harrisburg for a day or two? I'd like you to be available to Lowenstein."

  "I'm not going to Harrisburg," Wohl said.

  Carlucci looked at him in surprise, and then the look seemed to turn to anger.

  "That's strange, Peter," he said. "Not half an hour ago, your pal Farnsworth Stillwell was on the phone. He wanted to be sure there would be no hard feelings about you going with him. He said you really didn't want to go, and that to get you he had to offer you a hell of a lot of money.

  "I saw him last night. He offered me a job as his chief investigator. I told him I'd have to think it over, and I'd get back to him before he had his press conference this morning."

  "He told me you had accepted. Period."

  "I never thought of accepting. The reason I didn't call him this morning to tell him was that I was busy.

  "Look at me, Peter," Carlucci said. Wohl met his eyes. "Now tell me again, when did you dec
ide?"

  "When he made the offer," Wohl said evenly. "I was afraid I would say something I would regret if I said anything last night."

  Carlucci looked at him intently for a full thirty seconds before he spoke again.

  "Okay. That obviously changes things," he said, finally, and then looked around the table. "Since Inspector Wohl is not resigning from the Department, there is no need to name a replacement for him at Special Operations at this time-"

  "Mr. Mayor!" Czernick said.

  "-temporary or otherwise," Carlucci went on coldly. Then he looked at Wohl. "There will be, Peter, unless you get this mess straightened out.Capisce?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Keep me informed," the mayor said, and got up and walked out of the room.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., sat, as quietly and as inconspicuously as possible, on a folding steel chair in the small office that housed the Special Investigations Section of the Special Operations Division. He was very much afraid that he would, at any moment, be ordered out of the room on some minor errand or other, and he very much wanted to hear what was being said in the room.

  The entire staff of the Special Investigations Section, that is to say Sergeant Jason Washington, Detective Anthony Harris, and himself, was in the room.

  The night before, Officer Lewis had spent just about an hour making up an organizational chart for the Special Investigations Section using a drafting set he had last used in high school. There were three boxes on the chart, one on top of the other. The uppermost enclosed Sergeant Washington's name. The one in the middle read, Det. Harris, and the one on the bottom, PO Lewis. Black lines indicated the chain of authority.

  It was sort of, but not entirely, a joke. Every other bureaucratic subdivision of the Special Operations Division had an organizational chart. It had been Tiny's intention, when Sergeant Washington saw the new organizational chart thumb-tacked to the corkboard and, as he almost certainly would, asked,"What the hell is that?" to reply,"We may be small, but we're bureaucratically up to standards.

  Tiny Lewis had come to believe there was a small but credible hope that he could manage to stay assigned to the Special Investigations Section rather than find himself back in uniform and riding around in one of the Special Operations RPCs, which was the most likely scenario.

  For one thing, the Officer Magnella murder job was no closer to a solution than it had ever been, and since it was the murder of a cop, it would continue to be worked. Tony Harris would continue to need his services as an errand runner. For another, now that they were officially caught up in the bureaucracy, there would be paperwork, that which was now being done by Inspector Wohl's administrative sergeant. He could take that over. Certainly the Black Buddha wouldn't want to do it, nor Tony Harris. If he could make himself useful, his temporary assignment just might become permanent.

  And my God, what a way to see how detectives worked! Even Pop says Tony is nearly as good as Washington, and everybody knows Washington is as good as they come.

  It hadn't gone exactly as planned. The Black Buddha had come into the office to find Tiny waiting for him, nodded at him idly, and then looked at the corkboard.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "That's our organizational chart."

  "Jesus Christ!" Washington had offered contemptuously before asking, "Is there any coffee?"

  "Yes, sir."

  That was, of course, because of what had happened to Monahan. Washington, almost visibly, was thinking of nothing but that. The only other thing he had said before Harris came into the office was, as he pointed to the phone, "Wohl, Sabara, Pekach, and nobody else. Lowenstein and Coughlin too."

  "Yes, sir."

  Running telephone interference had provided the excuse to stay in the office and watch them brainstorm the job. It had been absolutely fascinating to Tiny, as much for the way the two of them worked together as for the various scenarios they came up with.

  They seemed to have a telepathic, or at least a shorthand, means of communication. They exchanged ideas with very few words, as if both knew the way the other one's brain worked.

  And Tiny got to listen.

  "From the beginning," Washington had begun. "The firebomb."

  "Somebody knew the Highway car was sent there."

  "And why."

  "Off the air?"

  "No."

  "Payne's car bothers me."

  "Could have been anybody."

  "Anybody who knew (1) Porsche (2) where he lived."

  "Oh."

  "Back to somebody with access."

  "They could have been watching Monahan's house."

  "Different people driving by."

  "Too many drive bys."

  "Back to somebody with access."

  "Somebody pretty sure of his own smarts."

  "The stun gun?"

  "Why didn't they just pop him?"

  "Hold that one a minute."

  "No noise?"

  "They could have hit him with an ax."

  "They didn't want to kill him?"

  "Hold that one too."

  "They didn't give a shit when they blew the watchman away.

  "Maintenance man. Not watchman."

  "Did they think the firebomb would not be lethal?"

  "Are they?"

  "Hold that one too."

  "Why don't burglars go armed?"

  "Because breaking and entering isn't murder one."

  "Christ, they already committed murder."

  "Define 'they.' "

  "The ones who hit Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc."

  "What if we had caught the guy with the firebomb."

  "Huh?"

  "What would it be? Not more than assault. Maybe even creating a public nuisance."

  "Holdthat one."

  "Defining 'they' again. Are those clowns in the bathrobes smart enough to stage what happened this morning?"

  "Not getting their hands on an unmarked car."

  "Back to someone with access."

  "That means someone here."

  "Someone here would be too smart to rob Goldblatt's: no money."

  "Back to the burglar. What happened at Goldblatt's was potentially murder caused in connection with another felony. What the hell?"

  "Where did the money come from for Giacomo?

  "What the hell are they after?"

  "I thought about that. More robberies, banks, maybe, with witnesses scared off by what happened at Goldblatt's."

  "Back to the goddamn Liberation Army."

  "Back to defining 'they.' Are the Goldblatt doers smart enough for the press releases?

  "The organized telephone calls to Payne?"

  "There are now two kinds of 'they.' The ones who are calling the shots-"

  "Including setting up the clowns to rob Goldblatt's."

  "I can't see anybody here doing that."

  "We have somebody here. That's a given."

  "'They' is now three. The sleaze-balls at Goldblatt's; somebody here; and somebody calling the shots for the first two. Somebody with enough money to hire Giacomo."

  "That would be the ILA."

  "The ILA is bullshit. There is no ILA."

  "Hold that too."

  "They knew the firebomb wasn't good for murder; they knew the stun gun-"

  "Theythought the stun gun-"

  "-would be nonlethal. Somebody here would think that."

  "And cover his ass."

  "They would have convinced Monahan that police protection or not they could get to him whenever they wanted to."

  "But if they hadn't killed him, he would have had a face."

  "A face wouldn't do him much good if it wasn't a cop's face."

  "Bingo!"

  "It's an opening. Not 'Bingo.' "

  "We're talking about a white face here, by the way. She said it was a white guy she saw shoot him."

  "Interesting."

  "It could be a light-skinned Cuban or something."<
br />
  "Not Cuban. The white doesn't fit, but not Cuban. Very few Muslims, make-believe or otherwise, among the Cubans. Or for that matter, Latinos."

  Both Washington and Harris fell silent for what seemed like a very long time, but was probably no more than sixty seconds.

  Finally Washington raised his head and looked at Officer Foster H. Lewis.

  "What are you thinking?" Harris asked.

  "I am thinking I have a task for Officer Lewis."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "I want you to check with the corporal. Get his sheets on unmarked cars for yesterday. Check the incoming mileage against the outgoing today."

  Tiny Lewis realized he had absolutely no idea what Washington wanted. As he was trying to frame a reply that might just possibly make him look like less of an ignorant asshole than he felt himself to be, Washington correctly read the expression on his face.

  "What I'm looking for, Foster," he said patiently, "is a discrepancy between the mileage recorded when the driver of the unmarked car turned it in yesterday, and the mileage recorded when the car was taken out today.

  "Unscrew the speedometer cable. Takes ten seconds," Harris said.

  "Do you understand now, Foster?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Tiny, then contact everybody who took an unmarked RPC out of here this morning," Harris said. "Ask them if there was any indication that it hadn't sat out there in the snow and ice all night."

  "Unless somebody here is driving the car he took to Goldblatt's."

  "Sergeant," Tiny said hesitantly.

  "Come on, Foster, pay attention!"

  "I went out to warm up my car when I got here. Did either of you drive it last night?"

  "I gather somebody had?" Jason Washington asked softly.

  "Bingo!" Harris said.

  Washington reached for the telephone.

  "Lieutenant Lomax, please," he said when his party answered. " Sergeant Washington is calling."

  Tiny Lewis understood enough of the one side of the conversation he heard to know that Lieutenant Lomax had told Sergeant Washington that it would be best to leave the car where it was; that if that was going to be impossible, that next best was to have it towed to the nearest police garage; and that in no event should the car be driven or entered again.

  Sergeant Washington returned the phone to its cradle.