[THREE]
The city editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, Roscoe G. Kennedy, responded to a computer message from Michael J. O’Hara—
Kennedy—
Hold space page one section one for three
column pic, plus jump for 350-400 words, + 3, 4 more pics
Ohara
—in several ways, the first being annoyance. O’Hara’s message was very much in the form of an order, rather than a request or suggestion.
No matter how much money and perquisites O’Hara’s pal Casimir Bolinski, the football-jock-turned-sports-attorney, had beat the people upstairs out of in exchange for the services of Michael O’Hara, Roscoe G. Kennedy felt that this in no way changed the fact that Michael J. O’Hara was a staff writer, no more, and Roscoe G. Kennedy was the city editor, and thus entitled to tell the staff writer what to do, and when, not the reverse.
The second cause of annoyance was that in order to see what immortal prose Michael J. O’Hara believed was worthy of a three-column photograph on page one of section one—plus a jump with more pictures—before O’Hara saw fit in his own sweet time to send it to him, he would have to go to O’Hara’s office.
This was actually a double irritant. Mr. Kennedy did not think a lowly staff writer was entitled to an expensively furnished private office—O’Hara’s $2,100 exotic wood and calfskin-upholstered Charles Eames chair was more salt in the wound here—in the first place, and to get to it, he was going to have to get up from his desk and walk across the city room, which meant past a large number of other staff writers, all of whom would see that he was calling on O’Hara rather than the other way around.
The third irritant was that Roscoe G. Kennedy knew that if O’Hara thought he had something worthy of space on page one of section one, and with a large jump to be placed elsewhere, the sonofabitch probably did.
Roscoe G. Kennedy was honest enough to admit—if sometimes through clenched teeth—that Mickey O’Hara was really a hell of a good writer, and had earned his Pulitzer Prize.
So Mr. Kennedy resisted the urge to summon Mr. O’Hara to his presence to discuss his latest contribution to the Bulletin, and instead got up and walked across the city room and knocked politely at the door.
He saw that Mr. O’Hara had guests in his office, Casimir “The Bull” Bolinski and presumably Mrs. Bolinski, and he smiled at them.
“What have you got for me, Mickey?” Mr. Kennedy asked.
O’Hara raised one hand from the keyboard of his computer terminal, on which he was typing with great rapidity, and pointed to the screen of his personal (as opposed to the Bulletin’s) computer.
There was a very clear photograph of a well-known Philadelphia police officer on it, this one showing him in a dinner jacket, with a cellular phone in one hand and a .45 Colt in the other, standing just a little triumphantly over a man lying on the ground.
“There’s more,” O’Hara said.
The city editor looked at the other images from the parking lot, then read Mickey’s story on the computer screen. He didn’t speak until O’Hara had finished and pushed the Transmit key. Then he said, “Great stuff, Mickey! Really great! The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Does It Again.”
Mickey stood up.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“For a head, how about ‘Main Line Wyatt Earp 2, Bad Guys 0 in Shootout at the La Famiglia Corral’?”
“You sonofabitch,” Mickey said. “That’s a cop doing his job.”
“Watch your mouth, Michael,” Casimir said. “Antoinette . . .”
“A goddamn cop in a tuxedo who obviously likes to shoot people.”
“You sonofabitch, you’re no better than the goddamn Ledger!”
“Don’t call me a sonofabitch, O’Hara. I won’t stand for it.”
“Then don’t make wiseass remarks about a cop liking what he has to do to do his job, you arrogant, elitist, bleeding-heart . . .” Mickey paused, searching his memory for the most scalding insult he could think of, and then, triumphantly, concluded, “. . . Missouri School of Journalism sonofabitch!”
“Michael, I’m not going to tell you again,” Casimir said.
“You can’t talk to me like that, O’Hara!”
“I just did. What are you going to do about it?”
Mr. Michael J. O’Hara assumed a fighting crouch and cocked his fists.
Mr. Roscoe G. Kennedy rose to the challenge.
He threw a roundhouse right at Mr. O’Hara. Mr. O’Hara nimbly dodged the punch, feinted with his right, then punched Mr. Kennedy in the nose with his left, and then in the abdomen with his right.
Mr. Kennedy fell, doubled over, to the floor, taking with him the Bulletin’s computer terminal.
Casimir J. Bolinski, Esq., erupted from Mr. O’Hara’s $2,100 Charles Eames chair, rushed across the office, wrapped his arms around Mr. O’Hara, and without much apparent effort carried him across the city room—past many members of the Bulletin staff—and into an elevator. Mrs. Bolinski followed them.
Mr. Kennedy regained his feet and sort of staggered to the door.
“You’re fired, you insane shanty Irish sonofabitch! Fired!” he shouted. “When I’m through with you, you won’t be able to get a job on the National Enquirer.”
Mrs. Bolinski stuck her tongue out at Mr. Kennedy.
Ten minutes later, after an application of ice had stopped his nosebleed, Mr. Kennedy gave Mr. O’Hara’s latest—and as far as he was concerned, certainly last—contribution to the Bulletin some serious thought.
And then he called his assistant and told him to save space on page one, section one, copy to come, for a three-column pic, plus a four-hundred-word jump inside with three or four pics.
[FOUR]
When Inspector Weisbach came into the Internal Affairs Unit Captain Daniel Kimberly was talking with Lieutenant McGuire and another man he sensed was a police officer. He didn’t see Payne.
Kimberly anticipated his question.
“I put Sergeant Payne in an interview room and asked him to wait,” Kimberly said. “Nothing else. And I called the FOP.”
“Good,” Weisbach said.
“Who called back just a moment ago to inform me that Mr. Armando C. Giacomo is en route here to represent Sergeant Payne.”
“How fortunate for Sergeant Payne,” Weisbach said.
“Inspector, this is Lieutenant McGuire. . . .”
“How are you, Lieutenant?”
“Good evening, sir. Or good morning, sir.”
“And this is Sergeant Al Nevins, Inspector,” McGuire said.
“You were the first supervisor on the scene?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A uniform got there ahead of you?”
“No, sir. Mickey O’Hara got there first—by about thirty seconds. When Nevins and I got there, he had already taken Payne’s picture, standing over the man Payne put down.”
“I understood there were two men shot?”
“Yes, sir. One fatally. Payne blew his brains out.”
“How do you know that, Lieutenant?”
“Well, sir, Payne told us. And we saw the body. The bullet struck right about here.”
He pointed at his own face.
“Did Payne also tell you what happened?”
“He said there had been an armed robbery of a couple picking up their car in the lot; that he’d walked up on it right afterward, told the robbers to stop. They ran, he went after them. They fired at him with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, and he put both of them down.”
“Did they hit him?” Weisbach asked.
“No, sir,” McGuire said, and hesitated.
“Go on, Lieutenant,” Weisbach said.
“He was a little shaken up, sir.”
“How shaken up?”
“Acted odd, you know,” McGuire said.
“No, I don’t know.”
“Well, there was the business about his weapon,” McGuire said.
“What about his weapon?”
/> “I took it from him, of course,” McGuire said, and pointed to one of the desks in the room. There were two Ziploc bags on it. One of them held Matt’s Officer’s Model Colt .45 pistol, and the other a magazine.
“Of course?” Weisbach asked.
“Yes, sir, and he gave me some lip that I was supposed to give it back to him. He didn’t give me any trouble, but he told me I was supposed to give it back to him after I counted the rounds left in the magazine.”
“At that time, Lieutenant, did you believe that Sergeant Payne (a) posed a danger to others or himself, and/or (b) that he had committed a crime of any kind?”
“No, sir. From what I saw it was a good shooting.”
“Two things, Lieutenant. There is no such thing as a good shooting. They are all lamentable. Some of them are unfortunately necessary, but there is no such thing as a ‘good’ shooting.”
“Sir, I meant—”
“Secondly, Lieutenant, you might find it valuable to refresh your memory regarding the regulations dealing with taking a weapon from an officer in a situation like this.”
“Sir?”
“The sergeant was right, Lieutenant. Absent any reason to believe that the shooting officer poses a danger to himself or others, or belief that the officer has committed a felony, the regulations state that his weapon will be returned to him by the supervisor after he counts the rounds remaining in the magazine, and takes possession of that.”
“Inspector, I thought it was evidence. . . .”
“So you implied. The point here is that a clever lawyer, such as Mr. Giacomo, may make the point that your disarming of Sergeant Payne against regulations is proof of bias.”
“Jesus, I didn’t know.”
“Obviously. Now, was there any other indication of what you considered odd behavior in Sergeant Payne?”
“He was . . . sort of out of it, sir. Distant, maybe, is the word.”
The telephone on one of the desks rang, and Captain Kimberly went to answer it, and the door opened and Inspector Peter Wohl and Amelia A. Payne, M.D., came into the room.
“Hello, Mike,” Wohl said. He nodded at the others.
“Where is he?” Amy asked.
“Honey!” Wohl said, warningly.
“Peter, as I understand it, Sergeant Payne is no longer assigned to Special Operations,” Weisbach said.
“That’s right.”
“That makes me ask, you’ll understand, what you’re doing here?”
“What we’re doing here?” Amy flared. “Jesus H. Christ! I want to see my brother, is what we’re doing here.”
“And what Dr. Payne is doing here?” Weisbach continued.
“Inspector,” Captain Kimberly said. “That was Captain Hollaran on the phone. He and Commissioner Coughlin are en route here. He asked who was the supervisor. I told him you were.”
Weisbach nodded his understanding.
“Unless you can tell me you have official business here, Peter,” Weisbach said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you and the lady to leave.”
“I’m not a lady, goddamn it, I’m a physician. And I demand to see my brother.”
“Take it easy, honey,” Wohl said. “Mike’s just going by the book. He has to.”
“Screw his book. Screw him. I demand to see my brother.”
“Peter . . . ” Weisbach said.
“Inspector Weisbach, with your permission,” Peter said, “I’d like to stay here with the lady until the arrival of Commissioner Coughlin.”
The door opened again.
Armando C. Giacomo strode in. He was wearing a tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, a pajama top, and bedroom slippers.
“Sorry it took me so long to get here,” he said. “Hello, Mike. Amelia. Peter. What brings you two here?”
“They won’t let me see my brother,” Amy said. “Tell them they have to.”
“Do I correctly infer that it is Sergeant Payne who was allegedly involved in this unfortunate incident?”
Weisbach nodded.
“I’m not sure if they have to give you access to your brother, Amy,” Giacomo said, “but I am absolutely sure that I have the right to see the detainee, accompanied by the physician of my choice. Isn’t that correct, Inspector Weisbach?”
“I think you can have a police physician, Counselor,” Weisbach said. “I’ll have to check about Dr. Payne.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Inspector. If the police department can seek, as they have on several occasions that come readily to both our minds, the consultation of Dr. Payne in the investigation of crimes, the only reason I can see why you refuse her, as my consultant in this matter, access to the detainee is that you are personally biased against my client, determined to deprive him of his full rights under the Constitution, or, perhaps . . .”
“He’s in there, Counselor,” Weisbach said, pointing to the closed door of the interview room.
Amy walked quickly to the door and pulled it open.
Sergeant Payne was sitting at a table.
Tears were running down his cheeks.
He smiled like a child when he saw Amy.
“I guess I did it again, huh, Amy?”
He suddenly slammed his left hand on top of his right and stared at it angrily. After a moment, he took the left hand away and looked at the right. The right hand rose, trembling, from the table. He slapped it down again.
“I have no idea what’s the matter with it,” he explained with a shy smile. “It just keeps doing that.”
“Jesus Christ,” Armando C. Giacomo said.
He turned to Inspector Weisbach, who looked almost as horrified and unhappy as he felt.
“Inspector, I believe that Dr. Payne is about to advise me that in her professional medical opinion, Sergeant Payne, having suffered understandable pain, fear, and anguish as the result of tonight’s events, not only is not able to intelligently respond to any questions posed by anybody, but is in urgent need of medical attention. Would you have problems with that?”
“No, sir,” Weisbach said. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No, goddamn it!” Amy called from the interview room. “He’s had enough sirens and flashing lights for tonight.”
The men looked away in embarrassment.
Doctor Payne was holding Sergeant Payne in her arms, stroking his head. He was sobbing uncontrollably.
After a moment, Peter Wohl entered the room.
“Take him,” Amy ordered.
Very gently, Wohl pulled Matt from Amy’s arms and took him into his own.
She went to Kimberly’s telephone and dialed a number from memory.
“This is Dr. Payne. I will require a private room immediately, anywhere but in psychiatric. I will be there shortly with the patient.”
She hung up, but stood there with her hand on the telephone in thought.
Captain Frank Hollaran and First Deputy Commissioner Coughlin walked into the room.
“Amy, honey!” he said when he saw her. “I’m not sure you should be here. . . .”
“Just shut up, Uncle Denny,” she said, levelly. “Now I’m taking care of him.”
Then she raised her voice.
“Get him on his feet, Peter. We’re going to take him out of here.”
In a moment, Wohl appeared in the interview room door, his arm around Matt.
Matt smiled shyly at everybody as Wohl led him across the room and out the door, but no one spoke or moved.
[FIVE]
Sergeant Matthew Payne was lying on his side in the hospital bed, his arm over his face, when the door opened.
He first looked annoyed, and then curious. His hand reached out and found the bed control. As the back of the bed rose, he rolled onto his back, then folded his arms over his chest and looked somewhat defensively at the two physicians who entered the room. One was his sister, the other a short, plump, somewhat jowly man in his fifties.
He was Aaron Stein, M.D., the Moses and Rebecca Wertheimer Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical
School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Stein had surprised many of his peers—and annoyed as many more—when he selected Amelia Payne, M.D., for a psychiatric residency under his mentorship. She had then just turned twenty-two years old.
She had worked under him—he always insisted on saying “with him”—ever since, and it was widely believed that Dr. Stein had been responsible for Dr. Payne’s current position as the Joseph L. Otterby Professor of Psychiatry.
“I must really be off my rocker if Amy called in the heavy-duty reinforcements,” Matt said.
“How do you feel, Matt?” Dr. Stein asked.
“I feel as if I was drugged,” Matt said. “I can’t imagine why.”
“All I gave you was a sleeping pill,” Amy said.
“Did it say ‘for elephants’ on the bottle?”
Dr. Stein chuckled.
“How long have I been here?” Matt asked.
“You slept through yesterday,” Amy said.
“Let me guess,” Matt said. “Light began to come through the windows a couple of hours ago. This is the morning of the second day?”
“Yes, it is,” Stein said, smiling.
“I normally tell time by looking at my watch,” Matt said. “But that seems to be missing. And both the telephone and the TV seem not to be working.”
“You needed rest, Matt,” Dr. Stein said.
“Is that a polite way of telling the lunatic that he was really bouncing off the walls?”
“It’s just what I said,” Stein said. “You needed rest, Matt. And not only don’t we heavy-duty psychiatrists use that word anymore—actually it means ‘affected by the moon’—but you’re not loony, bonkers, gaga, or whatever else you’re thinking.”
Matt had to smile. He remembered what his father said about Dr. Stein: “He looks, and acts, like a beardless Santa Claus.”
“Then what is wrong with me?” he asked.
“In layman’s terms,” Dr. Stein said, “do you know what thoroughbred racehorses and overachiever workaholics like yourself have in common?”
Final Justice Page 52
