Usually-but by no means all the time-Detectives Payne and Martinez kept their dislike for one another under control.

The fourth Detective Personnel space was filled “temporarily” by Police Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., twenty-three, who had been on the job even less time than Detective Payne. Officer Lewis, who stood well over six feet tall and weighed approximately 230 pounds and was thus inevitably known as “Tiny,” knew more about the workings of the Police Department than either Detective Payne or Detective Martinez. Not only was his father a policeman, but Tiny had, from the time he was eighteen. worked nights and weekends as a police radio operator in the Police Administration Building. He had been in his first year at Temple University Medical School when he decided that what he really wanted to be was a cop, and not a doctor. This decision had pained and greatly annoyed his father, Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Sr.

Lieutenant Lewis was also displeased, for several reasons, with Officer Lewis’s assignment to the investigations section of the Special Operations Division. He suspected, for one thing, that because of the growing attention being paid to racial discrimination, his son was the token nigger in Special Operations. Jason Washington might have-indeed, almost certainly had-been selected for his professional ability and not because of the color of his skin, but Lieutenant Lewis could think of no reason but his African heritage that had seen his son assigned to Special Operations practically right out of the Police Academy.

And in plain clothes, with an assigned unmarked car, and what looked like unlimited overtime, which caused his take-home pay (Tiny had somewhat smugly announced) to almost equal that of his father.

Lieutenant Lewis believed that officers should rise within the Department, both with regard to rank and desirable assignment, only after having touched all the bases. Rookies went to work in a district, most often starting out in a van, and gained experience on the street dealing with routine police matters, before being given greater responsibilities. He himself had done so.

The fifth personnel space for a detective with the investigations sections of the Special Operations Division was unfilled.

Detective Payne found a drugstore, purchased a Remington battery-powered electric razor and bottles of Old Spice pre-shave and after-shave lotion, and went back to his car.

This was, he thought, the fifth electric razor he had bought in so many months. While certainly his fellow law-enforcement officers were not thieves, it was apparently true that when they found an unaccompanied electric razor in the men’s room at the schoolhouse and it was still there two hours later, they those to believe that the Beard Fairy had intended it as a present for them.

The black Cadillac limousine provided by the taxpayers of Philadelphia to transport their mayor, the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, about in the execution of his official duties came north on South Broad Street, circled City Hall, which sits in the middle of the intersection of Broad and Market streets in the center of America’s fourth-largest city, and turned onto the Parkway, which leads past the Philadelphia Museum of Art to, and then along, the Schuylkill River.

The Mayor was wearing a dark blue suit, a stiffly starched, bright-white shirt, a dark, finely figured necktie, highly polished black shoes, and a Smith amp; Wesson “Chief’s Special”. 38 Special caliber revolver in a cutaway leather holster attached to his alligator belt.

He shared the backseat of the limousine with his wife, Angeline, who was wearing a simple black dress with a single strand of pearls and a pillbox hat which she had chosen with great care, knowing that what she chose had to be appropriate for both the events on tonight’s social calendar.

The evening had begun with the limousine taking them from their home in Chestnut Hill, in the northwest corner of Philadelphia, to the Carto Funeral Home at 2212 South Broad Street in South Philadelphia.

City Councilman the Hon. Anthony J. Cannatello, a longtime friend and political ally of Mayor Carlucci, had been called to his heavenly home after a long and painful battle with prostate cancer, and an appearance at both the viewing and at the funeral tomorrow was considered a necessary expenditure of the Mayor’s valuable and limited time. He had planned to be at Carto’s for no more than thirty minutes, but it had been well over an hour before he could break free from those who would have felt slighted if there had not been a chance to at least shake his hand.

Councilman Cannatello’s many mourners, the Mayor was fully aware, all voted, and all had relatives who voted, and the way things looked-especially considering what was going to be a front-page story in the Monday editions of Philadelphia’s four newspapers-the Bulletin , the Ledger, the Inquirer, and the Daily News -he was going to need every last one of their votes.

They were now headed back to Chestnut Hill for an entirely different kind of social gathering, this one a festive occasion at which, the Mayor had been informed, the engagement of Miss Martha Peebles to Mr. David R. Pekach would be announced.

It was going from one end of Philadelphia to the other in both geographical and social terms. The invitations, engraved by Bailey, Banks amp; Biddle, the city’s most prominent jewelers and social printers, requesting “The Pleasure of the Company of The Honorable The Mayor of Philadelphia and Mrs. Jerome H. Carlucci at dinner at 606 Glengarry Lane at half past eight o’clock” had been issued in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II.

Mr. Payne, a founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, arguably Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm, had been a lifelong friend of Miss Peebles’s father, the late Alexander F. Peebles. He had been Alex Peebles’s personal attorney, and Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester served as corporate counsel to Tamaqua Mining, Inc. In Mr. Peebles’s obituary in the Wall Street Journal, it was said Mr. Peebles’s wholly-owned Tamaqua Mining, Inc., not only owned approximately 11.5 percent of the known anthracite coal reserves in the United States, but had other substantial holdings in petrochemical assets and real estate.

A year after Mr. Peebles’s death, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that a suit filed by Mr. Peebles’s only son, Stephen, challenging his father’s last will and testament, in which he had left his entire estate to his daughter, had been discharged with prejudice by the Third United States Court of Appeals, sitting en banc.

As was the case in the Mayor’s visit to the viewing of the late City Councilman Cannatello at Carto’s, the Mayor had both a personal and a political purpose in attending Martha Peebles’s dinner. There would certainly be a larger than ordinary gathering of Philadelphia’s social and financial elite there, who not only voted, and had friends and relatives who voted, but who were also in a position to contribute to the Mayor’s reelection campaign.

Considering what was going to be in Monday’s newspapers, it was important that he appear to Martha Peebles’s friends to be aware of the situation, and prepared-more important, competent-to deal with it.

Personally, while he did not have the privilege of a close personal friendship with Miss Peebles, he was acquainted with the groom-to-be, Dave Pekach, and privately accorded him about the highest compliment in his repertoire: Dave Pekach was a hell of a good cop.

The Mayor had a thought.

I think Mickey O’Hara’s going to be at the Peebles place, but I don’t know. And Mickey’s just about as good as I am, getting his hands on things he’s not supposed to have. I want him to get this straight from me, not from somebody else, and then have him call me and ask about it. And the time to get it to him is now.