"The Afro-American witnesses, you mean?"

"All of them. Jason is a formidable sonofabitch, in addition to being very persuasive."

"You're suggesting, 'Here is this big blackgood guy, who will protect me from thebad black guys'?" Callis asked.

"Why not?" Lowenstein said. "And I'm going to suggest to Peter that when we make the arrests, it might be a good idea to use black Highway guys. A couple of them, anyway, at each site."

"Yeah," Wohl said thoughtfully. "Good idea."

Callis thought about that a moment.

"I presume Commissioner Czernick thinks this is a good idea?" he asked, finally.

"I haven't had the opportunity to discuss this with the commissioner," Lowenstein said.

"What?" Callis asked disbelievingly.

"Commissioner Czernick is a very busy man," Lowenstein said. "And besides, he won't fart unless The Dago tells him to. Or authorize anything that's not in the book. If I went to Tad Czernick, he would check with The Dago before he said anything. And I know, and so do you, Tommy, that the mayor would rather not know about this until it was over."

Callis looked at his watch. "My God, and it's only quarter after eight!"

"The early bird gets the worm," Lowenstein said.

"You haven't said much about this, Peter."

"I haven't had anything to say."

"Well, whatdo you think about this?"

"If Special Operations is called upon by Chief Lowenstein to assist the Detective Division, we would of course do so."

Callis picked up his coffee cup and found that it was empty.

He held it up impatiently and Sergeant Mahoney quickly went to take it from him.

He tapped his fingertips together impatiently for a moment, said " Christ!" and then picked up one of the two telephones on his desk.

"Ask Mr. Stillwell to come in here, please," he said. "Tell him it'sjust ask him to come in right away, please."

Wohl glanced at Lowenstein, whose eyebrows rose in surprise. When he saw Wohl looking at him, he gave a barely perceptible shrug.

Farnsworth Stillwell was an assistant district attorney. Generally speaking, there were three kinds of assistant district attorneys, young ones fresh from law school, who took the job to pay the rent and gain experience, and left after a few years; the mediocre ones who had just stayed on because the hoped-for good offer had not come; and the ones who stayed on because they liked the job and were willing to work for less than they could make in private practice.

Farnsworth Stillwell did not fall into any of the three categories. He came from a wealthy, socially prominent family. He had gone from Princeton into the Navy, become a pilot, and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and some other medals for valor flying off an aircraft carrier off Vietnam. He had been seriously injured when he tried to land his damaged aircraft on returning to his carrier after a mission.

There had been six months in a hospital to consider what he wanted to do with his future now that a permanently stiff knee had eliminated the Navy and flying. He had decided on public service. He'd gone to law school, found and married a suitable wife, and then decided the quickest way to put himself in the public eye was by becoming an assistant district attorney.

He was, in Peter Wohl's judgment, smart-perhaps even brilliant-in addition to being competent. He was tall, thin, getting gray flecks in his hair, superbly tailored, and charming. Wohl had come to know him rather well in the latter stages of the Judge Findermann investigation, and during the prosecution. There had been overtures of friendship from Stillwell. Without coming out and saying so, Stillwell had made it clear that he thought that he and Wohl, as they rose in the system, could be useful to each other.

Obviously, Stillwell was going places, and Wohl was fully aware of the political side of being a cop, particularly in the upper ranks. But he had, as tactfully as he could manage, rejected the offer.

There was something about the sonofabitch that he just didn't like. He couldn't put his finger on it, and vacillated between thinking that he just didn't like politicians, or archetypical WASPs, (and that consequently he was making a mistake) and a gut feeling that there was a mean, or perhaps corrupt, streak in Stillwell somewhere. Whatever it was, he knew that he did not want to get any closer to Farnsworth Stillwell, professionally or personally, than he had to.

He wondered now, as they waited for Stillwell to show up in Callis's office, what Matt Lowenstein thought of him.

"You wanted to see me, boss?" Stillwell called cheerfully as he strode, with an uneven gait, because of his knee, into Callis's office.

Then he saw Lowenstein first, and then Wohl, D'Amata, and Pelosi.

"Chief Lowenstein," he said. "How nice to see you. And Peter!"

He went to each and pumped their hands, and then turned to D'Amata and Pelosi.

"I'm Still Stillwell," he said, putting out his hand.

"Joe D'Amata, of Homicide," Lowenstein offered, "and Jerry Pelosi of Central Detectives."

"Sit down," Callis ordered, tempering it with a smile. "Matt's got a wild idea. I want your reaction to it."

"Chief Lowenstein is not the kind of man who has wild ideas," Stillwell said."Unusual, perhaps. But not wild."

Nice try, Wohl thought, somewhat unkindly, but a waste of effort. Matt Lowenstein wouldn't vote Republican if Moses were heading the ticket.

"Tell the man about yourunusual idea, Matt," Callis said.

Lowenstein laid out, quickly but completely, what he had in mind.

"What do you think of the chief's idea, Peter?" Stillwell asked.

Covering your ass, Still?

"We know what we think about it," Callis said. "What we want to know is whatyou think about it."

Thank you, Mr. District Attorney.

"All right. Gut reaction. Off the top of my head. I love it."

"Why?" Callis asked.

"'District Attorney Thomas J. Callis announced this afternoon that he will bring the six, eight, whatever it is, members of the gang calling themselves the Islamic Liberation Army before the Grand Jury immediately, and that he is confident the Grand Jury will return murder and armed robbery indictments against all of them.'"

"Youwere listening when Lowenstein said they have just the one witness?"

"Yes. And I was also listening when he said he thought other witnesses might experience a miraculous return of memory. "

"You want to put your money where your mouth is?" Callis asked.

"Am I going to be allowed to take part in this?"

"It's yours, if you want it," Callis said.

"I've got a pretty heavy schedule-"

"Meaning you really don't want to get involved, now that you've had ten seconds to think it over?"

"Meaning, I'll have to have some help with my present calendar."

"No problem," Callis said. "That can be arranged."

Callis, Wohl thought unkindly, but with a certain degree of admiration, has just pulled a Carlucci. If this works, he will take, if not all, at least a substantial portion of the credit. And if it goes wrong, that will be Farnsworth Stillwell's fault.

Or Matt Lowenstein's fault. Or mine.

Probably the latter. When you get to the bottom line, Farnsworth Stillwell is smarter than either Lowenstein or me. Or at least less principled. Or both.

"Keep me up-to-date on what's going on," Callis said. "And later today, Still, I'll want to talk to you about the municipal court judge."

"Right, Chief," Stillwell said. "Gentlemen, why don't we go into the conference room and work out some of the details?"

"Thank you, Tommy," Lowenstein said.

Callis grunted. When he gave his hand to Peter Wohl, he said, "You'd better hope your people can protect Mr. Monahan, Peter. For that matter you'd better hope he doesn't have a heart attack."