“Which means what?”

“Let me explain this to you as best I can. If you are not cooperative, they’re going to take you to court and ask for the death penalty. In my judgment, they have enough circumstantial evidence to get a conviction.”

“And if I’m cooperative, what?”

“You probably would not get the death penalty. It’s possible that the District Attorney would be agreeable to having evidence of your drug addiction given to the court, and that the court would take it into consideration when considering your sentence.”

“Shit.”

“I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Leslie. You should discuss this with a lawyer.”

“When do I get a lawyer?”

“When Homicide arrests you for murder, and your Miranda rights come into play. That’s going to happen. What you have to decide, before you are arrested for murder, is whether you want to cooperate or not.”

“I could plead, what did you say, ‘diminished capacity’?”

“What I said was that you can either tell the truth, and make it easier on yourself and Homicide, or lie, and make it harder on yourself and Homicide.”

“You’re not going to be around for this?”

“No. But I’ve talked to Lieutenant Natali, and explained to him the situation here, and I think the two of you would be able to work something out that would be in everybody’s best interests.”

“Jesus, I don’t know,” Leslie said.

“I’ve got to go. I’ll ask Lieutenant Natali to come here and talk to you.”

“Jesus, I wish you could stick around.”

“I could come to talk some more, later, if you’d like.”

“Yeah.”

Washington put out his hand. Leslie’s right arm was handcuffed to the chair, so he had to shake Washington’s hand with his left hand.

“Good luck, Mr. Leslie,” Washington said.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know what to do.”

“Talk it over with Lieutenant Natali,” Washington said. He walked to the door and pulled it open, then closed it.

“Just between us, Mr. Leslie, to satisfy my curiosity. Why did you think you had to shoot Officer Kellog?”

“Well, shit,” Leslie said. “I had to. He seen my face. He was a cop. I knew he’d find me sooner or later.”

“Yes,” Washington said. “Of course, I understand.”

“I’m going to hold you to what you said about coming to talk to me,” Leslie said.

“I will,” Washington said. “I said I would, and I will.”

He left the interview room.

Lieutenant Natali and Detective D’Amata came out of the adjacent room. They had been watching through a one-way mirror.

Natali quoted, “I had to. He seen my face. He was a cop.”

“Christ!” D’Amata said in mingled disgust and horror.

“What’s really sad,” Washington said, “is that he doesn’t acknowledge, or even understand, the enormity of what he’s done. The only thing he thinks he did wrong is to get caught doing it.”

“You don’t want to stick around, Jason?” D’Amata said. “I’ll probably need your help.”

Washington looked at Lieutenant Natali.

“Does Joe know who Mrs. Kellog believed was responsible for her husband’s death?”

“You mean Narcotics Five Squad?” D’Amata asked.

“I thought he should know,” Natali said. “I told him to keep it under his hat.”

“That’s what I was doing, Joe, when they sent me here. But to coin a phrase, ‘Duty calls.’ Or how about, ‘It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it’? Do I have to tell you I’d much rather stay here?”

Both Natali and D’Amata shook their heads. Natali touched Washington’s arm, and then Washington walked out of Homicide.

The Honorable Thomas J. “Tony” Callis, the District Attorney of the County of Philadelphia, had decided he would personally deal with the case of Messrs. Francis Foley and Gerald North Atchison rather than entrust it to one of the Assistant District Attorneys subordinate to him.

This was less because of his judgment of the professional skill levels involved (although Mr. Callis, like most lawyers, in his heart of hearts, believed he was as competent an attorney as he had ever met) than because of the political implications involved.

He was very much aware that the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, was taking a personal interest in this case, a personal interest heavily flavored with political implications. The Ledger, which was after Carlucci’s scalp, had been running scathing editorials bringing to the public’s attention the Police Department’s inability to arrest whoever had blown Atchison’s wife and partner away. (Alternating the “Outrageous Massacre of Center City Restaurateur’s Wife and Partner” editorials, Tony Callis had noted, with equally scathing editorials bringing to the public’s attention that a cop had been brutally murdered in his kitchen, and the cops didn’t seem to know anything about that, either.)

Mr. Callis, a large, silver-haired, ruddy-faced, well-tailored man in his early fifties, had a somewhat tenuous political alliance with Mayor Carlucci. It was understood between the parties that either would abandon the other the moment it appeared that the alliance threatened the reelection chances of either.

As a politician possessed of skills approaching the political skills of the Mayor, the District Attorney had considered the possibility that Mayor Carlucci would be happy to drop the ball, the Inferno ball, into his lap. That he would, in other words, be able to get the Ledger off his back by making an arrest in the case on information that might not hold up either before a grand jury or in court.

“My Police Department,” the Mayor might well say, “with its usual brilliance, nabbed those villains. If they walked out of court free men, that speaks to the competence of Mr. Callis.”

Proof-not that any was needed-that this case had heavy political ramifications came when the police officers sent to the District Attorney’s office to present their evidence gathered turned out to be Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein and Inspector Peter Wohl, Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Division. Mr. Callis-who normally disagreed with anything written in the Ledger, which had opposed him in the last election-was forced to admit that there was indeed more than a grain of truth in the Ledger ’s editorial assertion that the Special Operations Division had become Carlucci’s private police force.

And with Chief Lowenstein’s opening comment. when he was shown into Callis’s office:

“Mr. District Attorney, I bring you the best regards of our mayor, whose office Inspector Wohl and I just left.”

“How gracious of our beloved mayor! Please be so kind, Chief Inspector, to pass on my warmest regards to His Honor when you next see him, which no doubt will be shortly after we conclude our little chat.”

“It will be my pleasure, Mr. District Attorney.”

“How the hell are you, Matt?” Callis asked, chuckling. “We don’t see enough of each other these days.”

“Can’t complain, Tom. How’s the wife?”

“Compared to what? How are you, Peter?”

“Mr. Callis,” Wohl said.

“You’re a big boy now, Peter. A full inspector. You don’t have to call me ‘Mister.’”

Wohl smiled and shrugged, and raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“My saintly father always told me, when you’re with a lawyer, be respectful and keep one hand on your wallet,’ Wohl said.

Callis chuckled. “Give my regards to the saintly old gentleman, Peter. And your mother.”

“Thank you, I will.”

“OK. Now what have we got?”

“We have the guns used in the Inferno murders. We have-” Lowenstein began.

“Tell me about the guns, Matt,” Callis interrupted.

Lowenstein opened his briefcase. He took a sheaf of Xerox copies from it and laid it on Callis’s desk.

“The lab reports, Tom,” he said. “They’re pretty conclusive.”

“Would you mind if I asked Harry Hormel to come in here?” Callis asked. “If I can’t find the time to prosecute, it’ll almost certainly be Harry.”