"And Kallanan said the guy driving the relief car was black?"

"Right."

"And he said it was a couple of minutesbefore six when the relief car got there? And Wilhite says he was five, six minuteslate getting there? Which means we have ten minutes that needs explaining."

"Scenario, Peter: The doers show up at five minutes to six, pretending to be the relief RPC. The guys on the job, who are expecting relief, see an RPC and think they're relieved and drive off. When they are around the corner, somebody gets out of the RPC, rings Monahan's doorbell, shoots him, gets back in the car, and they drive off. A couple of minutes after that, the real relief RPC shows up."

"W-William Seven," the radio went off.

Washington looked at Wohl, who gestured for him to reply.

"William Seven," Washington said to his microphone.

"William Seven, have you a location on William One?"

Washington again looked at Wohl for instruction. Wohl nodded yes.

"I'm at the medical examiner's. William One is en route to this location."

"William Seven, advise William One to contact C-Charlie One by telephone as soon as possible."

"Will do," Washington said. "I expect him here in about ten minutes."

"W-William One. W-William One," the radio said. Washington reached to the controls and turned it off.

"Was it an RPC?" Wohl asked. "Or did Kallanan just presume it was an RPC because it was a four-door Ford or whatever?"

"He says there was no question in his mind that it was an RPC," Washington said. "A new one. One of ours. I think, consciously or subconsciously, he would have picked up on it if it wasn't a bona fide

RPC."

"Jesus, you know what we're saying, Jason?" Wohl said.

"I'm not saying anything yet," Washington said.

"Mrs. Monahan said she saw acop shoot her husband," Wohl said.

"Yeah, but the doctor said she could find no puncture wounds. Let's find out about that first, before we start saying anything."

He opened his door.

"What's going on here?"

"The ME called me. He's an old pal. He said I wasn't going to believe what he had to show me."

"Did you ask him if he found an entrance wound?"

"Just before he told me I wasn't going to believe what he had to show me," Washington said as he got out of the car.

Chief Inspectors Dennis V. Coughlin and Matt Lowenstein were in the office of Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick when Staff Inspector Peter Wohl came into it. The mayor was not. Wohl wondered where he was.

The odds are that in the next five or ten minutes, either Lowenstein or Coughlin will be ordered to temporarily assume command of Special Operations, pending the naming of a permanent new commanding officer.

"Good morning, sir," Wohl said.

"You're a hard man to locate, Wohl," Czernick said.

"I'm sorry about that, sir."

"Sorry won't cut it, Wohl," Czernick said. "You know that someone with your responsibilities can't simply vanish from the face of the earth for three hours."

"Yes, sir."

"You're not going to try to tell me you weren't aware I had sent out a call for you?

"I am now, sir."

The door opened and Mayor Carlucci walked in, drying his hands on a paper towel.

Everybody stood up.

The mayor finished wiping his hands, looking around for a wastebasket, and, finding none, carefully laid the towel in Czernick's OUT basket and turned to Wohl.

"My mother used to tell me if you looked hard enough, you could always find something nice about anybody," he said. "I can find a few nice things about you, Peter. For one thing, you're here. That took some balls; I wouldn't have been surprised if you had just mailed in your resignation. And you look remarkably crisp and well turned out for someone who, I am reliably informed, arrived at the scene of the Monahan shooting looking and smelling as if he had spent the night on a saloon floor."

Wohl forced himself to meet the mayor's eyes. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then the mayor looked away.

"No denial?" he asked softly.

"I drank too much last night, sir."

"The third nice thing I have to say about you is that you seemed to be able to instill a high, hell, incredibly high, level of loyalty in people who work for you. It took a lot of balls from Jack Malone, especially considering the trouble he's in already, to march into my office and tell me that if anyone was to blame for this colossal fuckup, it was him, not you."

"He did what?" Czernick asked indignantly.

"You heard what I said," the mayor said. "And if you're thinking about doing anything to him for coming to see me, forget it."

"The responsibility is mine, Mr. Mayor," Wohl said, "not Lieutenant Malone's."

"Yeah, that's what I told him," Carlucci said. "Okay, Peter, you're here. Tell me what the fuck happened."

"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."