Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Right.”

  “Fuck you, Peter. It will always be ‘this is an exception to the rule.’ ”

  “That was Matt on the phone,” he said.

  “Oh, God!” she said, her anger instantly replaced with an almost maternal concern. “Oh, God, not again!”

  “It looks that way, I’m afraid,” Wohl said.

  “What happened?”

  “Matt said—right after the Colt party—he was in the parking lot next to La Famiglia Restaurant?”

  She nodded. She knew the restaurant well.

  “And he walked up on an armed robbery. They shot at him, and he shot back, and put both of them down—one for good.”

  “Why the hell couldn’t he have just, for once, for once, looked the other way?”

  “He’s a cop, honey,” Wohl said.

  “Is he all right?”

  “He sounded all right to me.”

  She jumped off the bed and looked around the room.

  “Where the hell is my damned bra?” she asked softly, more of herself than of him.

  “It’s probably in the living room,” Wohl said.

  She looked at him, then picked up her skirt and stepped into it.

  “I gather you won’t be here when I get back?” Wohl asked.

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” he said.

  “Don’t think you know what I want to do, please,” she said. “What it is, is that you don’t want me to go with you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I don’t. And I don’t think Matt will want to see you right now, either.”

  She slipped her feet into her shoes, then went out of the room, returning in a moment in the act of putting her brassiere on.

  She backed up to him.

  “Fasten it, will you, please?”

  “Funny,” he said after fussing with the catch for a moment. “I didn’t have this much trouble opening it.”

  She didn’t reply until she was sure he had fastened the catch, and then she turned and faced him.

  “I can’t believe that you’re as unaffected by this as you’re trying to make out,” she said. “You know what this is going to do to him.”

  “I’m really unhappy about it, if that’s what you mean,” he replied. “But no, I don’t know what this is going to do to him. I hope that it was a good shooting, and I’d like to think he’s already worked his way through the questions something like this brings up.”

  “You mean, after the first couple of good shootings it gets easier?” she asked, more than a little sarcastically.

  He didn’t reply for a moment.

  “I hope, for Matt’s sake, it does,” he said, finally.

  She looked at him for a long moment, then walked out of the room again and came back pulling a sweater over her head.

  “Your call,” she said. “We can take two cars, or I can go with you.”

  He looked at her in the mirror—he was tying his tie—but didn’t say anything until he was finished.

  Then he turned around and looked directly at her. “Thank you,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “You know what for,” he said.

  He took a tweed sports coat from his closet, then followed her out of the bedroom, and through the living room to the door.

  His apartment had once been the servants’ quarters above what had once been the stables, and then the five-car garage of the turn-of-the-century mansion now divided into “luxury apartments.”

  They went down the outside stairs and to his unmarked Crown Victoria. He unlocked her door for her, and she reached up and kissed him.

  “Sorry to have been such a bitch,” Amy said.

  “Hey, I understand.”

  He closed the door after her and went around the front and got in the car, and drove up to the drive, past the mansion to Norwood Street, and turned right.

  “No flashing blue lights and screaming siren?” Amy asked.

  “We’ll probably get to Internal Affairs before he does,” Wohl said.

  He reached under the dash and came up with a microphone.

  "S-1,” he said.

  “Go ahead, S-1,” Police Radio—this time a masculine voice—replied.

  “On my way from my home to Internal Affairs,” Wohl said.

  “Got it.”

  He dropped the microphone on the seat.

  “Can you get Denny Coughlin on that?” Amy asked.

  He picked up the microphone.

  “Radio, S-1. Have you got a location on Commissioner Coughlin?”

  "S-1, he’s at Methodist Hospital.”

  “What’s going on there?”

  “An officer was shot answering a robbery in progress on South Broad. And be advised, there’s a new assist officer, shots fired on Front Street. Just a couple of minutes ago.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  He put the microphone down.

  “If the root of your question was ‘Does he know?’, the answer is if he doesn’t, he will in a matter of minutes.”

  “He does a much better job of telling Mother and Dad about things like this than I do.”

  “They’re almost certainly asleep at this hour. You really want to wake them up?”

  “No,” she said after a moment. “But they’ll be hurt and angry if someone doesn’t tell them.”

  “You really want to wake them up?” he asked again, and went on. “All you’re going to do is upset them. You—or Coughlin—can do it in the morning, when things have settled down.”

  “Good morning, Mom!” she said, sarcastically. “Guess what happened, again, last night?”

  He chuckled.

  “Was it a good shooting, Peter?” she asked, almost plaintively.

  “From the way Matt talked, it was,” he said. “We’ll soon find out.”

  [FOUR]

  Mickey O’Hara beat the first police unit—a marked Sixth District car—and the second—Lieutenant Gerry McGuire’s unmarked Dignitary Protection Crown Victoria—to the parking lot by a good thirty seconds.

  He was well into the parking lot, camera at the ready, before the uniformed officer, McGuire, and Nevins got of their cars, drew their weapons, and cautiously entered the lot.

  O’Hara saw Matt Payne long before Matt Payne saw him—or, perhaps more accurately, acknowledged O’Hara’s presence.

  Matt was standing at the far end of the lot, pistol drawn, looking down at what after another second or two O’Hara saw was a man writhing on the ground.

  “Matt! Matty! You all right?”

  O’Hara decided that the crescendo of sirens was so loud Matt couldn’t hear him.

  But finally, just when O’Hara was close enough to be able to hear the anguished moans of the man on the ground, Matt turned and looked at him.

  O’Hara instantly—and certainly not intentionally—turned from concerned friend to journalist.

  Jesus, that’s a good picture! A good-looking young cop in a tuxedo, tie pulled down, gun in hand, looking down at the bad guy! Justice fucking triumphant!

  He put the digital camera to his eye and made the shot. And three others, to make sure he got it.

  “What took you so long, Mickey?” Matt asked.

  “What the hell happened, Matt?”

  “These two guys . . .” He raised the pistol and indicated the second body. Then he waited patiently while Mickey took images of the dead man before going on:

  “These two guys mugged a nice middle-class black couple out for dinner. The guy gave him his wallet, and one of these bastards knocked his teeth out with a gun anyway. I walked up on it, tried to grab them, and they let fly with a sawed-off shotgun and what looks like a .380 Browning—”

  “Jesus, Payne,” Lieutenant McGuire asked. “What went down here?”

  “—and shot the shit out of my car and almost killed my girlfriend, and I put them down,” Matt finished, almost conversationally.

  O’Hara, Nevins, and McGuire looked at
him curiously.

  “Are you all right?” McGuire asked in concern.

  “I’m fine. They missed,” Matt replied. “The victims are over here.”

  Sergeant Nevins squatted beside the man on the ground, who glared hatefully at him.

  “It looks like you’re off the ballet team,” he said. “But you’ll live. Fire Rescue’s on the way.”

  He stood up.

  “They had guns?” he asked. “Where are they?”

  Matt carefully took the Browning from his hip pocket and held it out. McGuire took it.

  “I put the shotgun on the roof of my car,” Matt said.

  “Mickey, get the hell out of here!” McGuire ordered.

  O’Hara ignored him.

  “Around here, Matt?” he asked.

  “Just around the corner,” Matt said. “Two angry females. The victim’s wife, who wanted to know where I was when I was needed, and my girlfriend—perhaps ex-girlfriend would be more accurate—who just described me as a cold-blooded sonofabitch for shooting these two.”

  "O’Hara, I told you to get the hell out of here!” McGuire shouted after him.

  “I presume the firemen are on their way?” Matt said to McGuire. “In addition to the other damage, they apparently shot out a fuel line. There’s gas all over the ground. Or maybe they got the tank.”

  McGuire approached him warily.

  “Why don’t you let me have your weapon, Payne?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course. I forgot.”

  He handed the Colt to McGuire butt-first as three uniforms and two men who were dressed much like those they hoped to arrest for illegal trafficking in controlled substances ran up to them, pistols in hand.

  McGuire removed the clip, counted the rounds it held, then worked the action and ejected the round in the chamber.

  Matt reached into the breast pocket of the dinner jacket, came out with another magazine, and handed it to McGuire.

  “This is the magazine, now empty, that was in my weapon,” he said. “And somewhere over there is a live round I inadvertently ejected when this started.”

  “The crime scene people will find it,” McGuire said.

  Holding Matt’s pistol carefully by the checkering on the wooden grips, he started to put it in the pocket of his suit coat.

  “I think you’re supposed to give that back to me,” Matt said.

  “What?”

  “Regulations state that the first supervisor to reach the scene of an incident like this is to take the weapon used from the officer who used it, remove the magazine, count the remaining rounds, take possession of that magazine, then return the weapon to the officer, who will then load a fresh magazine into his weapon and return it to his holster.”

  “Sergeant, this is evidence,” McGuire said.

  “With all respect, sir, that is not what the regulations say.”

  “Shut up, Sergeant,” McGuire said.

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Payne said.

  A Fire Rescue ambulance began backing into the parking lot.

  A Sixth District lieutenant, a very large man, came running up.

  “My name is McGuire,” McGuire said. “Dignitary Protection Unit. I’m the first supervisor on the scene.”

  “I’ve seen you around,” the Sixth District lieutenant said.

  “I have relieved Sergeant Payne of his weapon, and am now going to transport him to Internal Affairs.”

  “You’re the shooter, Sergeant?” the lieutenant asked.

  “I think all the questions to him are supposed to be asked by Internal Affairs,” McGuire said. “Nevins will tell you what we know. Will you come with me, please, Sergeant Payne?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant McGuire put his hand on Sergeant Payne’s arm and walked with him through the parking lot to where the unmarked Dignitary Protection Crown Victoria sat, its engine running and its headlights and concealed blue flashers still on.

  He put Matt in the backseat but didn’t close the door.

  Nevins came to the car a moment later.

  “You drive, Al,” McGuire said. “I’ll ride in the back with Payne.”

  They exchanged questioning glances, then shrugged, and then Nevins got behind the wheel, and McGuire got in the backseat with Matt.

  TWENTY-ONE

  [ONE]

  In Philadelphia, any discharge—even accidental— of a police officer’s weapon is investigated by the Internal Affairs Unit. Even if the discharge of the police officer’s weapon results in a death, Internal Affairs still retains the weapon results in a death, Internal Affairs still retains the responsibility for, and authority to, conduct the investigation. The Homicide Division “assists.”

  This policy came into being when various civil rights organizations charged that police shootings—fatal and nonfatal—were being covered up when investigated by Homicide or Detective Divisions, and that only Internal Affairs, an elite unit already charged with the investigation of police malfeasance, could be trusted to investigate shootings fully and fairly.

  When the first “assist officer, shots fired” call was broadcast to every police vehicle in Philadelphia, it was received in the Crown Victoria assigned to Inspector Michael Weisbach, of the Internal Affairs Division, who was at the time returning to his home from a social event at Temple Beth Emmanuel.

  He did not respond to the call, primarily because he was a considerable distance from South Front Street, and realized that by the time he could get there, at least twenty, and probably more, other units would be on the scene.

  But he did turn to his wife and say, “I really hope no one was hit. I’m really beat.”

  By the time he got to his home, however, other radio traffic had made it clear that he wasn’t going to be able to go to bed anytime soon. And after he’d dropped his wife off and headed for the Internal Affairs office on Dungan Road in northeast Philadelphia, there came, several times, official confirmation.

  “I-2, Radio.”

  “I-2, go.”

  “We have two suspects down, one dead, at the assist officer, shots fired, unit block South Front Street.”

  “Okay. I’m on my way to IAD.”

  Then his cellular telephone chirped the first bars of “Rule Britannia.”

  “Weisbach.”

  “Inspector, this is Captain Fein, Sixth District.”

  “Hello, Jake.”

  “Two suspects down, one dead, at the assist officer, shots fired on South Front.”

  “I’m on my way to IAD. Thanks for the heads up.”

  “Out of school, Mike, it looks righteous.”

  “I sure hope so. Thanks again, Jake.”

  He had just laid the telephone down on the seat when it played “Rule Britannia” again.

  “Weisbach.”

  “Kimberly, boss. I just got a call from Lieutenant McGuire of Dignitary Protection. He was the first supervisor on the scene in the shots fired on South Front, and he’s transporting the shooter here.”

  “I’m en route.”

  “You’re not going to like this, boss. The shooter’s Sergeant Matt Payne.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “You want me to call the FOP?”

  “Yes, please. And put Payne in an interview room and don’t do anything else until I get there.”

  “Yes, sir. There’s more, boss.”

  “Let me have it.”

  “Stan Colt and his entourage were there. The press has hold of it and they’re all over the scene. I’m watching it on the television here in the office. They broke into the prime-time shows to cover it live. It’s a real cluster fuck out there.”

  [TWO]

  Under the contract between the City of Philadelphia and Lodge #5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, it is agreed that whenever any police officer, regardless of rank, is detained for any reason that might result in criminal prosecution, the detaining unit will, at the same time it notifies senior police officials, notify the Fraternal Order of Police.

 
The Fraternal Order of Police will then dispatch an attorney to ensure that the rights of the police officer being detained are not violated in any way, and to assist him in any way deemed necessary.

  There are lawyers under contract to Lodge #5 to provide counsel on call. There are other lawyers in Philadelphia who provide their professional services, pro bono publico, to Lodge #5.

  Perhaps the most distinguished of this latter group is Armando C. Giacomo, Esq., a slight, lithe, dapper Italian who once served his country as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, then came home to become either the best and most successful criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, or the second best. The other contender for that unofficial title being Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, Esq., of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester.

  The difference between the two was essentially in their clientele. Colonel Mawson, who often defended individuals accused of stealing, misappropriating, embezzling, taking by fraud or deception, or otherwise illegally acquiring huge sums of money—and was compensated accordingly—declined to offer his professional services to anyone with any connection, however remote, to organized crime, or the illegal trade in controlled substances.

  Arguing that even the most despicable scoundrels were entitled under the United States Constitution to the best defense possible, Armando C. Giacomo defended, very often successfully, the most despicable scoundrels alleged to be connected with organized crime and/or the illegal traffic in controlled substances, and was compensated accordingly.

  Mr. Giacomo’s understanding with Lodge #5, Fraternal Order of Police, was that he wished to offer his services only in cases worthy of his talent. As the ordinary thug could not afford to avail himself of his services, neither should the cop charged with, say, drunken driving, or slapping the wife around, have his professional services made available to him, pro bono publico. He preferred to defend officers charged with violating the civil rights of citizens, and—above all— officers alleged to have illegally taken life in the execution of their official duties.

  When the official of Lodge #5, Fraternal Order of Police, was informed by Captain Daniel Kimberly of Internal Affairs that a sergeant was being detained for investigation of a shooting of two suspects, one of them fatal, he immediately began searching for Mr. Giacomo’s unlisted home number in his Rolodex. And he was not at all surprised, despite the hour, that Mr. Giacomo said he would go directly to IAD, and that the FOP representative should meet him there.