“We’re working on dirty cops elsewhere in the Department.”
“I thought Internal Affairs was supposed to police the Police Department.”
“They are.”
She considered that a moment.
“Oh, which explains why you and Peter are involved.”
He nodded.
“And now this. I think Mrs. Kellog was telling the truth. It will not make the Mayor’s day.”
Martha shook her head.
“Am I going to be honored with your company later today?” Martha asked. “At any time later today? Or maybe sometime this week?”
“I know what you should do. You should go back to bed and try this again. This time, get up with a smile, and with nothing in your heart but compassion for your overworked and underappreciated husband.”
“We haven’t had any time together for weeks. And even when you’re here, you’re not. You’re working.”
“I know. This will be over soon, Martha. And we’ll go to the shore for a couple of days.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she said, but she went to him and kissed his cheek. “Get that stuff off my table. Put the damned typewriter back where you found it.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Jason said. He put the typewriter back where he had found it, in a small closet in the kitchen, and then, carrying the tape recorder, left the apartment, pausing only long enough to pat his wife on her rump.
“Good morning, Jason,” Wohl said as Washington got into the front seat of Wohl’s car.
“I’m sorry about this, but I really thought I should get this to you as soon as I could.”
“What’s up?”
“About midnight last night, Matt and I walked up on a double homicide on Market Street.”
“Really? What in the world were you two doing walking on Market Street at midnight?”
“For a quick answer, the bar at the Rittenhouse Club was closed.”
“Tell me about the homicide.”
“Two victims. What looks like large-caliber-bullet wounds to the cranium. One victim was the wife of one of the owners of the Inferno Lounge…”
“I know where it is.”
“And the other the partner. It was called in by the other partner, who suffered a small-caliber-bullet wound in what he says was an encounter with the doers, two vaguely described white males.”
He didn’t call me here to tell me this. Why? Because he thinks that it wasn’t an armed robbery, that the husband was the doer? And the Homicide detective is accepting the husband’s story?
“We got there right after a Ninth District wagon responded to the call. Chief Lowenstein also came to the scene, and then got me alone. He knows what’s going on.”
I knew that he wouldn’t have bothered me if it wasn’t important!
“His finding out was inevitable. How much did you have to tell him?”
“Not much. He knows the names. Most of them. I told him I couldn’t talk about it. The only time he really leaned on me was to ask how much time he had.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Quote, not much, unquote.”
“That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Peter, I told him that we didn’t have the conversation, that if we had it, I would have to report it.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“That’s up to you, Peter. I’ll play it any way you want me to.”
“I like Matt Lowenstein. There has been absolutely nothing to suggest he’s done anything wrong. What purpose would it serve to go to Carlucci with this?”
“You heard what the Mayor said, Peter. If anyone came to you or me asking-asking anything -about the investigation, he wanted to know about it.”
“The call is yours, Jason. Was Chief Lowenstein-what word am I looking for?- pissed that you wouldn’t tell him anything?”
“No. He seemed to understand he was putting me on a spot.”
“My gut reaction, repeating the call is yours, is that you didn’t talk to Chief Lowenstein about anything but the double homicide.”
“OK. That’s it. We didn’t have this conversation, either.”
“What conversation?” Wohl asked, with exaggerated innocence.
“I’m not through, I’m afraid,” Washington said.
“What else?” Wohl asked tiredly as he pulled the door shut again.
“Chief Lowenstein got rid of Matt, so that he could talk to me, by sending him to the crime scene-the victims were in a downstairs office-with Henry Quaire when Quaire came to the scene. I don’t know what happened between Matt and Milham, but Milham pulled the rule book on him and insisted on getting Matt’s statement that night-God, that’s something else I have to do this morning, get my statement to Homicide-so Matt went to the Roundhouse, and I went home, and when I got there the Widow Kellog was there.”
“The widow of the undercover Narcotics guy?”
Washington nodded.
“Who was found with two bullets in his head in his house. Detective Milham’s close friend’s estranged husband.”
“She was at your place?” Wohl asked, surprised.
“Right. And she is convicted that her husband’s death is connected with drugs…”
“You don’t think Milham had anything to do with it, do you?”
“No. I don’t think so. But the Widow Kellog thinks it was done by somebody in Narcotics, because they-they being the Five Squad-are all dirty.”
“The Narcotics Five Squad, according to Dave Pekach, are knights in shining armor, waging the good war against controlled substances. A lot of esprit de corps, which I gather means they think they’re better than other cops, including the other four Narcotics squads. In other words, a bunch of hotshots who do big buys, make raids, take doors, that sort of thing. They’re supposed to be pretty effective. It’s hard to believe that any of them would be dirty, much less kill one of their own.”
“That’s what the lady is saying.”
“You believe her?”
“She said there’s all kinds of money floating around. She said she, she and her husband, bought a house at the shore and paid cash for it.”
“That could be checked out, it would seem to me, without much trouble. Did she tell Homicide about this? Or anybody else?”
“No. She thinks everybody’s dirty.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her I knew a staff inspector I knew was honest, and she should go to him; that I would set it up.”
“And she doesn’t want to go to him?”
“No,” Washington said. “Absolutely out of the question.”
“You believe her?”
“I think she’s telling the truth. My question is, what do we do with this?”
“If you take it to Internal Affairs…” Wohl said.
“Yeah.”
“Let me read this,” Wohl said, opening the envelope.
Wohl grunted twice while reading the three sheets of paper the envelope contained, then stuffed them back into the envelope.
“This has to go to the Mayor,” he said. “As soon as you can get it to him. And then I think you had better have a long talk with Captain Pekach about the Narcotics Five Squad.”
Washington nodded.
“Can I tell him I’m doing so at your orders?”
“Everything you do is at my orders. Dave Pekach knows that. Are you getting paranoid, Jason?”
“Simply because one is paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t really saying terrible things about one behind one’s back,” Washington said sonorously.
Wohl laughed.
“No cop likes the guy who asks the wrong questions about other cops. Me included. I especially hate being the guy who asks the questions,” Washington said.
“I know,” Wohl said sympathetically. “Please don’t tell me there’s more, Jason.”
“That’s enough for one morning, wouldn’t you say?”
At five minutes to eight, Sergeant Jason Washington drove into the parking lot of what had been built in 1892 at Frankford and Castor avenues as the Frankford Grammar School, and was now the headquarters of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department.
He pulled into a parking spot near the front entrance of the building marked with a sign reading INSPECTORS. He regarded this as his personal parking space. While he was sure that there were a number of sergeants and lieutenants annoyed that he parked his car where it should not be, and who almost certainly had complained, officially or unofficially about it, nothing had been said to him.