Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  “We’ve identified one of the doers in the Roy Rogers job,” he said. “Tony Harris went to the State Police fingerprint guy, Lieutenant Stecker, who worked some kind of magic with their new AFIS machine and was able to get enough points to let us run them, and . . .”

  He stopped in midsentence, and forestalled any other questions by punching his way through the stored numbers on the cellular until he found what he wanted, and then pressing Call.

  “Ben, Denny Coughlin. I apologize for calling you at home....”

  He stopped and laughed.

  “What, Denny?” Chief Wohl asked.

  “Ben Solomon told me to take two aspirin and call him in the morning,” Coughlin said, and then his voice suddenly grew serious, as Mrs. Solomon, aka the district attorney of Philadelphia, came on the line.

  “Eileen, we’ve identified one of the doers in the Roy Rogers homicide and now have a pretty good idea who the other one is,” he said. “I thought I’d better let you know.”

  There was a pause, and then he continued.

  “Tony Harris got the State Police, using some kind of a new machine they have, to get enough prints—points—from a hat, a visor, one of them left at the scene.”

  Pause.

  “Yeah, that’s it, Eileen. But, once we arrest them, I’m pretty sure some of the witnesses will be able to pick them out of a lineup. . . .”

  Pause.

  “No. Henry Quaire’s getting the warrant as we speak. . . .”

  Pause.

  “Whatever you say, Eileen. Is Unger there? You want me to send a car?”

  Pause.

  “Okay. Thirty minutes, in my office.”

  Pause.

  “Matt’s here. We’re at Augie Wohl’s house.”

  Pause.

  “Thirty minutes. Thanks, Eileen.”

  He took the phone from his ear and pushed End.

  “The district attorney says she wants to make sure this is done right. She’s going to meet us in my office in thirty minutes.”

  “Just you two?” Peter Wohl asked.

  “That’s what she said. What are you driving at?”

  “The last I heard, this job was given to a Special Operations task force.”

  “Jesus, I forgot about that,” Coughlin said. “Peter, why don’t you just happen to be in Homicide in case Eileen wants to see you?”

  Peter Wohl nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Mickey, you didn’t hear any of this,” Coughlin said.

  “When do I hear any of this?”

  “I’ll let you know what happens when we meet with Eileen, but that’ll probably still be off the record.”

  “If you’ve identified these crumbs, what’s all this about?”

  “In the words of our beloved district attorney, we want to make goddamn sure these critters don’t walk out of the courtroom because we did something stupid now that we finally know who they are,” Coughlin said.

  He rose to his feet.

  “Eat Barbara’s cake and drink your coffee first,” Olga Wohl ordered firmly. “Five minutes one way or the other’s not going to matter.”

  Five minutes later, the first radio call was made when Frank Hollaran took the microphone from beneath the dash and spoke into it: “Radio, C-2 en route to the Roundhouse from Chief Wohl’s residence.”

  Immediately after that, there were two more calls, as D-l (Chief Inspector of Detectives Lowenstein) and S-l Inspector Wohl (Special Operations) reported that they, too, were on their way from Chief Wohl’s house to the Roundhouse.

  [TWO]

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Eileen,” Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani said, as he walked into Deputy Commissioner Coughlin’s conference room.

  “You’re the police commissioner, Ralph,” the Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon replied, matter-of-factly. “I thought you ought to be on this, so I asked Al Unger to call you.”

  There were several shadings to their relationship. The most important was that Commissioner Mariani served at the pleasure of the Hon. Alvin W. Martin, mayor of the City of Philadelphia. The mayor is one of the two senior officials in Philadelphia who have no one to answer to but the law and the voters. The other is the district attorney.

  Almost as important, both the police commissioner and the district attorney felt—even if they never articulated this belief—that the burden of protecting the citizens of the City of Brotherly Love from the barbarians hung primarily from his/her shoulders alone, and that the function of the other was to assist them in this noble pursuit.

  As a practical matter, both realized there had to be sort of a partnership arrangement to effectively keep the barbarians at the gate, since neither could issue orders to the other.

  In the relationship between district attorneys and police commissioners there were also the factors of respect, trust, and admiration. In the past, district attorneys and police commissioners had sometimes not respected, trusted, or admired each other at all. Eileen Solomon and Ralph Mariani not only held each other in high professional regard, but were also friends.

  But in this case, the truth was that Eileen hadn’t even thought of Ralph when she asked Denny to meet her in the Roundhouse until she had called Al Unger to tell him she needed a ride, and he had brought the subject up.

  Detective Albert Unger was the senior of the two members of the District Attorney’s Squad who served as driver/bodyguard for the D.A. So far as he—and others—were concerned, the D.A. needed round-the-clock protection. Threats against her life had been made by a number of people he thought were perfectly capable of trying to whack her.

  The D.A., however, firmly said she didn’t want a cop in the lobby of her apartment building twenty-four hours a day, much less hanging around in her apartment.

  So a deal was struck. A word was spoken into the ear of Wachenhut Security, who provided the unarmed doorman/ concierge/security guard in the lobby of the luxury apartment building on the Parkway in which Dr. and Mrs. Solomon resided. Four new employees, all of them retired Philadelphia police officers, were shortly afterward engaged to work the lobby of the apartment building. All of them were licensed to carry firearms, and all of them shared Al Unger’s belief that there were critters who would like to whack the D.A., whom all of the retired police officers held in very high regard.

  The second part of the deal was a solemn promise by the D.A.—“What would you like me to do, Al, put one hand on a Bible and swear to God?” she had asked in exasperation— that she would never leave the apartment unless he knew where she was going and why.

  This meant that Unger—or somebody else from the squad—would either drive the D.A. or follow her in an unmarked car, whether she was riding in the doctor’s Caddy, or jogging along the Parkway on her thrice-weekly hour-long jaunts to keep her hips and thighs under control.

  When the D.A. had called Al Unger to say that she was sorry, but she had to go to the Roundhouse and right now, he had naturally asked why, and she had told him.

  “I didn’t hear Mariani’s name mentioned, boss.”

  “You think he should be there?”

  “I think he ought to be asked.”

  If I don’t ask him, Eileen had decided, when he hears about it, Ralph will get his macho Italian ego bruised, and maybe decide Denny went behind his back.

  “Okay. Ask him,” she said. “I’ll be waiting downstairs in ten minutes.”

  Detective Unger had, en route to the apartment, made a radio call.

  “DA-1 to C-1.”

  “Go.”

  “Can you tell the commissioner that DA-1 is en route to the Roundhouse, and would like him to be there if he has the time?”

  There was a thirty-second delay, which Detective Unger had correctly presumed was how long it took to relay the message to the commissioner in the backseat and get a response.

  “DA-1, the commissioner will be there in thirty minutes.”

  Commissioner Mariani nodded at Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and Chief of Detectives
Lowenstein, and sat down in Coughlin’s chair, left vacant for him at the head of the table.

  “I didn’t hear anything on the radio,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve positively identified one of the doers in the Roy Rogers job,” Coughlin said. “And have a pretty good idea who the other one is. He fits the description, he’s the other guy’s cousin, and he’s been in trouble with the doer before.”

  “Good. You could have told me that on the telephone. Who are they?”

  “Two young guys from the Paschall Homes Housing Project, ” Coughlin said. “You know, Seventy-second and Elm-wood in southwest Philly?”

  Mariani nodded.

  “Lawrence John Porter, twenty, the doer, the one we’ve been calling the ‘fat guy,’ and Ralph David Williams, nineteen, ” Coughlin went on. “Neither has ever been in bad trouble before.”

  “How’d you find them?”

  “Tony Harris went to Harrisburg. The State Police’ve got a new machine, and they could lift more points from the print than Candelle could here,” Lowenstein said.

  “Good points?”

  “It wouldn’t matter if they were, Ralph,” Eileen said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “A federal judge refused to admit fingerprints in a trial—a trial here—a couple of months back.”

  “I heard something about that.”

  “I’m not saying it’ll happen, but we do have judges here who like to make law by following federal precedent. If the prints are inadmissible, all you’ve got is witnesses. . . .”

  “Something wrong with that, Eileen?”

  “All the defense has to do is create reasonable doubt in the mind of one juror,” she said. “And we all know the jury pool always contains a number of people who are simply unable to believe that any black kid ever did anything wrong.”

  “You’re not trying to tell me you think these two cop-killers are going to walk?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, Ralph, that it’s a possibility, which will become a certainty if we make any mistakes from here on in.”

  “God damn it!”

  “That’s the bad news, Ralph,” Coughlin said. “The good news might, I say might, be that we can find the murder weapon. . . . It’s a revolver and we have a bullet—”

  “And can tie the weapon to either one of these two,” Eileen interjected. “Credibly tie it to either one of them.”

  “Or really get lucky, and once they’re arrested, they confess. They’re just a couple of young punks,” Coughlin went on.

  “Which any public defender six months out of law school will contend was obtained by mental duress . . .” Eileen said.

  “Jesus,” Lowenstein said.

  “. . . or worse. And I don’t think we can count on these two being defended by an incompetent from the Public Defender’s Office. This is Murder Two, and they will assign the best man they’ve got. Or, worse than that, some really competent defense lawyer will take it pro bono because this trial’s going to be all over the papers and TV.”

  “You’ve got their sheets?” Mariani asked.

  Lowenstein shoved a folder across the conference table to him.

  “There’s not much,” he said. “A couple of shoplifting charges, car burglaries, that sort of thing.”

  Mariani read the records of previous encounters with the law of the two suspects, shrugged, and then looked at Eileen Solomon.

  “Okay, Eileen. What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t think we should rush to arrest these two until we have a better case.”

  “Matt told me he was concerned that these two, having gotten away so far with the Roy Rogers job, and knowing you can only be executed once, might do the same sort of thing again, just as soon as they spend what they took from the Roy Rogers,” Mariani said, but it was a question.

  “That’s a valid concern, and I share it,” Eileen said.

  “So you’re suggesting we just sit on these two until we can make a really tight case?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Now that we know who they are, maybe we can get something from snitches,” Lowenstein said. “For example, whether or not they still have the .38.”

  Mariani nodded.

  “And we could run their mug shots before some of the witnesses and see if it jogs their memory,” Coughlin said.

  “Taking great care with that, so the defense can’t claim we suggested whom the witnesses should pick out,” Eileen said.

  “How soon could you start surveillance of these two?” Mariani asked.

  “I can have detectives from Southwest outside their door in however long it takes them to get there. I’d rather use undercover cars, which means I would have to have your permission to take a couple—five or six would be better—undercover cars away from the Impact Unit or Internal Affairs. With a little luck, I could have them in place in probably under an hour,” Lowenstein said.

  “You’ve got my permission, of course,” Mariani said, then had a second thought. “No, you don’t. Because you don’t need it. Peter Wohl’s already got the authority. The mayor ordered the formation of a Special Operations task force for this job, remember?”

  “I remember,” Lowenstein said.

  “That’s right,” Coughlin said.

  “He’s already got authority to request support from everybody, right?” Mariani asked.

  Coughlin and Lowenstein nodded.

  “The mayor gave Wohl the job,” Mariani said. “Let him do it. You better put the arm out for him.”

  “He’s downstairs in Homicide with Quaire and Washington, ” Lowenstein said.

  “You already called him?” Mariani asked.

  “I didn’t have to. We were all having dinner at Augie Wohl’s house when Quaire called me,” Coughlin said.

  “Okay, then, Denny,” Mariani said, and then his voice changed as he added, formally, “Under your supervision, Commissioner Coughlin, the Special Operations task force, paying cognizance to the suggestions of the district attorney, will proceed with the investigation. So inform Inspector Wohl.”

  “Yes, sir,” Coughlin said.

  “Then that’s it,” Mariani said. “Eileen, we all appreciate your support.”

  “Let’s do this right,” Eileen said. “We need to get those two off the street permanently.”

  [THREE]

  When the district attorney of Philadelphia started to get off the Roundhouse elevator at the first floor, where the Homicide Division had its headquarters, she saw the surprise on the faces of Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and Chief Inspector Lowenstein.

  “Why not?” she asked. “I’m here. And the last I heard, I was welcome in Homicide.”

  “The last I heard, there was no place in the department where you are not more than welcome at any time,” Coughlin said, and waved her off the elevator. “But I thought I detected a tone of annoyance in Ben’s voice.”

  “We have a deal,” she said. “I keep my mouth shut when the hospital calls Ben, and he keeps his shut when I have to work.” She chuckled.

  “What?” Lowenstein asked.

  “One time when the hospital called, I said, ‘Oh, hell, Ben, not now,’ and he replied, ‘You knew what you were getting into when you married a doctor.’ ”

  Coughlin looked confused.

  “Isn’t that what you cops tell your wives when they complain about the odd hours you have to keep?” the D.A. asked.

  Lowenstein chuckled.

  “I don’t have a wife. I wouldn’t know,” Coughlin said.

  They got off the elevator and walked down the corridor to Homicide.

  Coughlin was not surprised that a lot of people would be in Homicide, but he was surprised at how many were actually there. The suite of offices was crowded with a number of non-Homicide white shirts, detectives, and uniforms.

  In, or standing around the doorway of, Captain Quaire’s office were Quaire, Inspector Peter Wohl; Lieutenant Jason Washington; Detective Tony Harris; Captains
Frank Hollaran and Mike Sabara—Wohl’s deputy—both in plainclothes; Captain Stuart Jenkins, the commanding officer of the Twelfth District, which covered the Paschall Homes Housing Project, where, according to the addresses on their last arrest sheets, both Lawrence John Porter and Ralph David Williams lived; and Captain Dave Pekach, the Highway Patrol commander. Jenkins and Pekach were in uniform.

  In, or standing around the doorway of, the lieutenant’s office—the three Homicide lieutenants, who were rarely on duty at the same time, shared an office—were Lieutenant Robert Natali, who was the tour lieutenant, and Sergeants Zachary Hobbs and Ed McCarthy.

  Scattered around—in some cases, sitting on—the desks in the main area were Detective Al Unger; Sergeant Harry McElroy, Chief Lowenstein’s driver; Sergeant Jerry O’Dowd, Pekach’s driver; Sergeant Charley Lomax, Sabara’s driver; and Sergeant Paul Kittinger, Captain Jenkins’s driver.

  Kittinger and O’Dowd were in uniform.

  The term “driver” is somewhat misleading. Although all of these people did actually drive the cars assigned to their superiors, they were far more than chauffeurs. Their official job was to relieve their bosses of what administrative details they could, in addition to driving them around.

  But it was actually more than that. They had all been recognized as having both the ambition and the ability to rise higher in the police hierarchy, and their assignment as drivers gave them a chance to see how their supervisors recognized and dealt with the problems that came their way. In many ways—except they never passed canapés—drivers were the police version of military aides-de-camp.

  Coughlin marched across the outer office to Quaire’s office and stood for a moment in the doorway.

  “It looks,” he said, smiling, “as if everybody’s here but Homicide’s newest sergeant. Where’s Payne?”

  “He was here, Commissioner,” Captain Quaire said. “With Stan Colt.”

  “Oh, God!” Coughlin said.

  “So I ran him off with the girl from Northwest. She is—I told her to do it thoroughly and slowly—bringing him up to speed on the Williamson job.”

  “Clever,” Coughlin said, approvingly. “Give us a minute alone with Inspector Wohl, will you, please?”