“I didn’t say any-” Mr. Foley began, only to be interrupted again by Mr. Cassandro striking him a third time in the face with the heavy cast-metal stapler. This blow caught him in the corner of the mouth, causing some rupture of mucous membrane and skin tissue and a certain amount of bleeding.

“You know what’s worse than going to the slammer for twenty years, Frankie?” Mr. Cassandro asked conversationally after Mr. Foley had again regained his feet. “Even worse, if you think about it, than getting the chair?”

Frankie shook his head no and then muttered something from his swollen and distorted mouth that might have been “No, sir.”

“Dying a little bit at a time, is what would be worse,” Mr. Cassandro said. “You know what I mean by that?”

Again there came a sound from Mr. Foley and a shake of the head that Mr. Cassandro interpreted to mean that Mr. Foley needed an explanation.

“Show him,” Mr. Cassandro said.

Mr. Joey Fatalgio went to Mr. Foley, this time grabbing his left hand, which Mr. Foley was holding against his body with his upper right arm, and twisted it behind his back. Then he grabbed Mr. Foley’s right wrist, and forced Mr. Foley to place his right hand, so far undamaged, on the desk at which Mr. Cassandro had been standing.

Mr. Cassandro moved away from the desk. Mr. Dominic Fatalgio then appeared at the desk, holding a red fire ax in his hand, high up by the blade itself. He flattened Mr. Foley’s hand on the desk, and struck it with the ax, which served to sever Mr. Foley’s little finger between the largest and next largest of its joints.

Mr. Foley screamed again, looked at his bleeding hand, and the severed little finger, and fainted.

Mr. Cassandro looked down at him.

“We don’t want him dead,” he said conversationally. “Wake him up, wrap a rag or something around his hand, and make sure he understands that if I hear anything at all I don’t want to hear, I will cut the rest of his fucking fingers off.”

Mr. Dominic Fatalgio nodded his understanding of the orders he had received and began to nudge Mr. Foley with the toe of his shoe.

Mr. Cassandro left the office, and then returned.

“Make sure you clean this place up,” he said. “I don’t want Mrs. Lucca coming in here in the morning and finding that finger. She’d shit a brick.”

Both Mr. Dominic and Mr. Joey Fatalgio laughed. Mr. Cassandro then left again, carefully closing the door behind him.

There were a number of problems connected with the arrests of Mr. Atchison and Mr. Foley for the murders of Mrs. Atchison and Mr. Marcuzzi.

The first problem came up when Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein telephoned the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, on his unlisted private line in Chestnut Hill to tell him that the Honorable Thomas Callis, District Attorney of Philadelphia County, had been his usual chickenshit self, but had come around when he had told him that he was going to arrest the two of them whether or not Callis thought there was sufficient evidence.

“He already called me, Matt,” the Mayor said. “To let me know what a big favor he was doing me.”

“That figures,” Lowenstein said.

“Would it cause any problems for you,” the Mayor began, which Chief Lowenstein correctly translated to mean, This is what I want done, you figure out how to do it, “to bring Mickey O’Hara along when you arrest Atchison and the shooter, preferably both?”

Chief Lowenstein hesitated, trying to find the words to tactfully suggest this might not be such an all-around splendid idea as the Mayor obviously thought it to be.

“When I had Officer Bailey in here this afternoon, to personally congratulate him for his good work in catching that scumbag who shot Officer Kellog, I had the idea Mickey was a little pissed.”

“Why should Mickey be pissed?”

“All the other press people were here, too,” the Mayor said. “Now, I’m not saying he did anything wrong, there was no way he could have known I figure I owe O’Hara,” the Mayor said, “but when Captain Quaire put out the word to the press that we had solved the Officer Kellog job, I think Mickey got the idea I wasn’t living up to my word. I’d like to convince him that I take care of my friends.”

“No problem. I’ll put the arm out for Mickey,” Lowenstein said. “He’ll have that story all to himself.”

“I was thinking maybe both arrests,” the Mayor said. “You mind if I ask how you plan to handle them?”

And if I said, “Yeah, Jerry, now that you mention it, I do,” then what?

“We’re going to pick up Foley first thing in the morning,” Lowenstein said. “He’s not too smart, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we could get him to confess before we arrest Atchison.”

“At his house?”

“As soon as he walks out the door, I don’t like taking doors, and we found out when he goes to work. We’ll be waiting.”

“Who’s we?”

“We is Lieutenant Natali and Detective Milham, backed up by a couple of district uniforms in case we need them. I don’t think we will.”

“And Atchison?”

“I thought-actually Peter Wohl thought, and I agree with him-that it would avoid all sorts of jurisdictional problems if we could get him into Philadelphia, rather than arresting him at his house in Media. So Jason Washington called his lawyer-”

“Who’s his lawyer?”

“Sid Margolis.”

The Mayor snorted. “That figures.”

“And Washington said he has a couple of questions for him, and he thought Margolis might want to be there when he asked him, and could he ask him at Margolis’s office. Margolis called back and set it up for twelve o’clock.”

“Good thinking. You open to a couple of suggestions?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I think Tom Callis would like to get his picture in the newspapers too, and if I could tell him I had set it up for him and O’Hara to be there when you arrest Atchison…”

“No problem. You want to call him, or do you want me to?”

“I’ll call him,” the Mayor said. “And tell him to call you. And I think it would be a nice gesture if you allowed Detective Payne to go to both arrests. It would show the cooperation between Homicide and Special Operations. And what the hell, the kid deserves a little pat on the back. He did work overtime to catch Atchison with the guns.”

“He’ll be there. I’ll call Peter Wohl and set it up.”

“And then, so the rest of the press isn’t pissed because Mickey got the exclusive on the arrests, I thought I’d have a little photo opportunity in my office, like the one this afternoon when I congratulated Officer Bailey, and personally thank everybody, everybody including you and Peter, of course.”

“And including Detective Milham?”

“Of course including Detective Milham. He’s a fine police officer and an outstanding detective who did first-class work on this job.”

They call that elective memory, Chief Lowenstein thought. Our beloved mayor has elected not to recall that the last time we discussed Detective Milham, he was my Homicide detective who can’t keep his pecker in his pocket.

“Good idea,” Lowenstein said.

“I’ll have Czernich set it up,” the Mayor said. “Thanks for the call, Matt, and keep me posted.”

“Yes, sir,” Chief Lowenstein said.

It was necessary for Chief Lowenstein to telephone Mayor Carlucci at his office at ten-thirty the next morning to report that a small glitch had developed in the well-laid plans to effect the arrest of Mr. John Francis Foley.

His whereabouts, the Chief was forced to inform the Mayor, were unknown. When he had not come out of his house to go to work when he was supposed to, Detectives Milham and Payne had gone to his door and rung the bell.

His mother had told him that she was worried about John Francis. He had gone out the night before and not returned. He rarely did that. If he decided to spend the night with a friend, Mrs. Foley reported, he always telephoned his mother to tell her. John Francis was a good boy, his mother said.