He pushed the switch that lowered the sliding glass partition between the passenger’s and chauffeur’s sections of the limousine, and slid forward off the seat to get close to the opening.

There was a passenger-to-chauffeur telephone in the limousine, but after trying it once to see if it worked, the Mayor had never used it again. He believed that when you can face somebody when you’re talking to them, that’s the best way.

The very large black man on the passenger side in the chauffeur’s compartment, who carried a photo-identification card and badge in a leather folder stating he was Lieutenant J. K. Fellows of the Philadelphia Police Department, had turned when he heard the dividing glass whoosh downward.

“Mayor?”

“Get on the radio and see if you can get a location on Mickey O’Hara,” the Mayor ordered.

Lieutenant Fellows nodded, and reached for one of the two microphones mounted just under the dashboard.

As the Mayor slid back against the cushions, his jacket caught on the butt of his revolver. With an easy gesture, as automatic as checking to see that his tie was in place, he knocked the offending garment out of the way.

Jerry Carlucci rarely went anywhere without his pistol.

There were several theories why he did so. One held that he carried it for self-protection; there was always some nut running loose who wanted to get in the history books by shooting some public servant. The Department had just sent off to Byberry State Hospital a looney-tune who thought God had ordered him to blow up the Vice President of the United States. A perfectly ordinary-looking guy who was a Swarthmore graduate and a financial analyst for a bank, for God’s sake, who had a couple of hundred pounds of high explosive in his basement and thought God talked to him!

The Mayor did not like to think how much it had cost the Department in just overtime to put that fruitcake in the bag.

A second theory held that he carried it primarily for public relations purposes. This theory was generally advanced by the Mayor’s critics, of whom he had a substantial number. “He’s never without at least one cop-bodyguard with-a-gun, so what does he need a gun for? Except to get his picture in the papers, ‘protecting us,’ waving his gun around as if he thinks he’s Wyatt Earp or somebody.”

The only person who knew the real reason the Mayor elected to go about armed was his wife.

“Do you need that thing?” Angeline Carlucci had asked several years before, in their bedroom, as she watched him deal with the problem, Where does one wear one’s revolver when wearing a cummerbund?

“Honey,” the Mayor had replied, “I carried a gun for twenty-six years. I feel kind of funny, sort of half-naked, when I don’t have it with me.”

Mayor Carlucci had begun his career of public service as a police officer, and had held every rank in the Philadelphia Police Department except policewoman before seeking elective office.

Mrs. Carlucci accepted his explanation. So far as she knew, her husband had never lied to her. If she thought that there were perhaps other reasons-she knew it did not hurt him with the voters when his picture, with pistol visible, at some crime site, was published in the papers-she kept her opinion to herself.

“Mary One,” Lieutenant Fellows said into the microphone of the Command Band radio.

The response from Police Radio was immediate.

“Mary One,” a pleasant, female-sounding voice replied.

“We need a location on Mickey O’Hara,” Lieutenant Fellows said.

“Stand by,” Police Radio said, and Lieutenant Fellows hung the microphone up as the dividing glass whooshed back into place.

Police Radio, in the person of thirty-seven-year-old Janet Grosse, a civilian with thirteen years on the job, was very familiar with Mr. O’Hara, as well as with what the Mayor’s bodyguard-she had recognized Lieutenant Fellows’s voice-wanted. He wanted a location on Mickey O’Hara, that and nothing more. He expected her to be smart enough not to go on the air and inquire of every radio-equipped police vehicle in Philadelphia if they had seen Mickey, and if so, where.

Janet had the capability of doing just that, and if it got down to that, she would have to, the result of which would be that the police frequencies would be full with at least a dozen reports of the last time anyone had seen Mickey’s antenna-festooned Buick. While he didn’t know every cop in Philadelphia, every cop knew him.

And Mickey would be monitoring his police band radios and would learn that they were looking for him. Fellows had said the Mayor wanted a location on him, not that he wanted Mickey to know he wanted to know where he was.

Janet thought a moment and then threw a switch on her console which caused her voice to be transmitted over the Highway Band. Only those vehicles assigned to Highway Patrol, plus a very few in the vehicles of the most senior white shirts, were equipped with Highway Band radios.

“William One,” she said.

William One was the call sign of Inspector Peter Wohl. Janet knew that his official vehicle-an unmarked new Ford, which he customarily drove himself-was equipped with an H-Band radio.

There was no answer, which did not surprise Janet, as she had a good hunch where he was, and what he was doing, and consequently that he would not be listening to his radio. Neither was she surprised when a voice came over the H-Band:

“Radio, this is Highway One. William One is out of service. I can get a message to him.”

Highway One was the call sign of the vehicle assigned to the Commanding Officer of the Highway Patrol, which was a subordinate unit of the Special Operations Division.

I thought that would happen. William One, Highway One, and just about every senior white-shirt not on duty is in Chestnut Hill tonight. Wohl is having Highway One take his calls.

“Highway One, are you in Chestnut Hill?”

“Right.”

“Is Mickey O’Hara there, too?”

“Right.”

Bingo! I am a clever girl. Look for a gathering of white-shirts where the free booze is flowing, and there will be Mickey O’Hara.

“That will be all, Highway One. Thank you,” Janet said. She switched to the Command Band.

“Mary One.”

“Mary One.”

“The gentleman is in Chestnut Hill at a party,” Janet reported. “Do you need an address?”

“That was quick,” Fellows said, laughter in his voice. “No, thanks, I’m sure we can find him with that. Thank you.”

“Have a good time,” Janet said, and sat back and waited for another call.

“Mayor, Mickey’s already at the party.”

Mayor Carlucci nodded.

“When we get there, find him. Give me a couple of minutes to circulate, and then ask Mickey if he has a moment for me,” the Mayor said, “and bring him over.”

“Yes, sir.”

There were uniforms-white hats from the Traffic Division, not policemen from the Fourteenth District, which included Chestnut Hill-directing traffic on Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill. The mayoral limousine was quickly waved to the head of the line of cars waiting to pass through the ornate gates of the five-acre estate. As the Cadillac rolled past, each uniform saluted and got a wave from the Mayor in return.

The long, curving drive to the turn-of-the-century Peebles mansion was lined with parked cars, and there a cluster of chauffeurs gathered around a dozen limousines-including three Rolls Royces, Jerry Carlucci noticed-parked near the mansion itself.

If is wasn’t for what’s going to be on the front page of every newspaper in town tomorrow, the Mayor thought, tonight would be a real opportunity. Now all I can hope for is to minimize the damage, keep these people from wondering whether they’re betting on the wrong horse.

There was a man in a dinner jacket collecting invitations just outside the door. He didn’t ask for the Mayor’s, confirming the Mayor’s suspicion that he looked familiar, and was probably a retired police officer, now working as a rent-a-cop for Wachenhut Security, or something like that.