The Murderers boh-6 Read online

  Nothing of interest came over the radio, however, as they left Center City behind them, and an interesting thought destroyed some of Mickey’s good feeling that he had outwitted Denny Coughlin and Peter Wohl.

  It is entirely possible that those two bastards have decided to pull my chain. They saw me watch them leave the Roundhouse, and before I got into my car one or the other of them got on his radio and said, “If Mickey follows us, let’s take him on a tour of Greater Philadelphia.” They’re probably headed nowhere special at all, and after I follow them to hell and gone, they will pull into a diner someplace for a cup of coffee, and wait for me with a broad smile.

  He had just about decided this was a very good possibility when there was activity on the radio.

  “William One.”

  “William One,” Peter Wohl’s voice responded.

  “William Two requests a location.”

  Mickey knew that William Two was the call sign of Captain Mike Sabara, Wohl’s second-in-command.

  “Inform William Two I’m on my way to Chestnut Hill and I’ll phone him from there.”

  Damn, they got me! The two of them are headed for Dave Pekach’s girlfriend’s house. She’s having an engagement party the day after tomorrow. It has to be that. Why else would the two of them be going to Chestnut Hill at this time of the morning?

  Mickey turned off the Schuylkill Expressway onto the Roosevelt Boulevard extension.

  I’ll go get some breakfast at the Franklin Diner and then I’ll go home.

  He reached down and moved the switch on the third of his radio receivers from the Special Operations frequency so that it would receive the police communications of the East Division. He did this without thinking, in what was really a Pavlovian reflex, whenever he drove out of one police division into another.

  And there was something going on in the Twenty-fifth District.

  “Twenty-five Seventeen,” a voice said.

  “Twenty-five Seventeen,” a male police-radio operator responded immediately.

  “Give me a supervisor at this location. This is a Five Two Nine Two, an off-duty Three Six Nine.”

  Mickey knew police-radio shorthand as well as any police officer. A Five Two Nine Two, an off-duty Three Six Nine, meant the officer was reporting the discovery of a body, that of an off-duty cop.

  A “dead body,” even of a cop, was not necessarily front-page news, but Mickey’s ears perked up.

  “Twenty-five A,” the police radio operator called.

  “Twenty-five A,” the Twenty-fifth District sergeant on patrol responded. “What’s that location?”

  “300 West Luray Street.”

  “I got it,” Twenty-five A announced. “En route.”

  And then Mickey’s memory turned on.

  Mickey glanced in his rearview mirror, hit the brakes, made a tire-squealing U-turn, and headed for 300 West Luray Street.

  One of the unofficial perquisites of being the Commanding Officer of Highway Patrol was that of being picked up at your home and driven to work, normally a privilege accorded only to Chief Inspectors. A Highway car just seemed to be coincidentally in the neighborhood of the Commanding Officer every day at the time the Commanding Officer would be leaving for work. Captain David Pekach, however, normally chose to forgo this courtesy. He said that it would be inappropriate, especially since Inspector Peter Wohl, his superior, usually drove himself.

  While this was of course true, Captain Pekach had another reason for waiving the privilege of being picked up at home and driven to work, and then being driven home again when the day’s work was over. This was because it had been a rare night indeed, since he had met Miss Martha Peebles, that he had laid his weary head to rest on his own pillow in his small apartment.

  He believed that any police supervisor-and he was Commanding Officer of Highway, which made him a special sort of supervisor-should set an example in both his professional and personal life for his subordinates. The officers of Highway would not understand that his relationship with Martha was love of the most pure sort, and a relationship which he intended to dignify before God and man in holy matrimony in the very near future.

  He was painfully sensitive to the thoughts of his peers-the most cruel “joke” he had heard was that “the way to get rich was to have a dong like a mule and find yourself a thirty-five-year-old rich-as-hell virgin”-and if they, his friends, his fellow captains, were unable to understand what he and Martha shared, certainly he could not expect more from rank-and-file officers.

  Obviously, if he was picked up and dropped off every day at Martha’s house, there would be talk. So he drove himself. And it was nobody’s business but his own that he had arranged with the telephone company to have the number assigned to his apartment transferred to Martha’s house, so that if anyone called his apartment, he would get the call in Chestnut Hill.

  In just five weeks, he thought as he got into his assigned Highway Patrol car and backed it out of the five-car garage behind Martha’s house, the problem would be solved, and the deception no longer necessary. They would be married.

  They would already be married if they were both Catholic or, for that matter, both Episcopal. Both Martha and his mother had climbed up on a high horse about what was the one true faith. His mother said she would witness her son getting married in a heathen ceremony over her dead body, and Martha had said that she was sorry, she had promised her late father she would be married where he had married, and his father before him, in St. Mark’s Church in Center City Philadelphia.

  Her father would, she said, tears in her eyes, which really hurt Dave Pekach, turn over in his grave if she broke her word to him, and worse, were married according to the rules of the Church of Rome, which would have required her to promise any children of their union to be raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

  Extensive appeals through the channels of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, lasting months, had resulted in a compromise. After extensive negotiations, with the prospective groom being represented by Father Kaminski, his family’s parish priest, and the prospective bride by Brewster Cortland Payne II, Esq., the compromise had been reached in a ninety-second, first-person conversation between the Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and his good friend the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia, with enough time left over to schedule eighteen holes at Merion Golf Course and a steak supper the following Wednesday.

  It had been mutually agreed that the wedding would be an ecumenical service jointly conducted by the Episcopal Bishop and a Roman Catholic Monsignor, and the prospective bride would be required only to promise that she would raise any fruit of their union as “Christians.”

  Mother Pekach had been, not without difficulty, won over to the compromise by Father Kaminski, who reminded her what St. Paul had said about it being better to marry than to burn, and argued that if the Cardinal himself was going to send Monsignor O’Hallohan, the Chancellor of the Archdiocese, himself, to St. Mark’s Church for the wedding, it really couldn’t be called a heathen ceremony in a heathen church.

  There would be a formal announcement of their engagement the day after tomorrow, at a party, with the wedding to follow a month later.

  Captain Pekach drove out the gates of the Peebles’ estate at 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, and tried to decide the best way to get from there to Frankford and Castor avenues at this time of the morning. He decided he would have a shot at going down North Broad, and then cutting over to Frankford. There was no good way to get from here to there.

  He reached under the dashboard without really thinking about it and turned on both of the radios with which his car, and those of half a dozen other Special Operations/Highway Patrol cars, were equipped.

  As he approached North Broad and Roosevelt Boulevard, the part of his brain which was subconsciously listening to the normal early-morning radio traffic was suddenly wide awake.

  “Give me a supervisor at this location. This is a Five Two Nine Two, an off-duty Three Six Ni
ne.”

  “Twenty-five A,” the police radio operator called.

  “Twenty-five A,” the Twenty-fifth District sergeant on patrol responded. “What’s that location?”

  “300 West Luray Street.”

  300 West Luray Street? My God, that’s Jerry Kellog’s address. Jerry Kellog? Dead? Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

  “I got it,” Twenty-five A announced. “En route.”

  Without really being aware of what he was doing, Captain Pekach reached down and turned on the lights and siren and pushed the accelerator to the floor.

  It took him less than three minutes to reach 300 West Luray Street, but that was enough time for him to have second thoughts about his rushing to the scene.

  For one thing, it’s none of my business.

  But on the other hand, anything that happens anywhere in the City of Philadelphia is Highway’s business, and I’m the Highway Commander.

  That’s bullshit and you know it.

  But Jerry Kellog is one of my guys.

  Not anymore he’s not. You’re no longer a Narcotics Lieutenant, but the Highway Captain.

  Yeah, but somebody has to notify Helene, and who better than me?

  Jesus, I heard there was bad trouble between them. You don’t think…

  There was a Twenty-fifth District RPC at the curb, and as Pekach got out of his car, a Twenty-fifth District sergeant’s car pulled up beside him.

  “Good morning, sir,” the Sergeant said, saluting him. He was obviously surprised to see Pekach. “Sergeant Manning, Twenty-fifth District.”

  “I heard this on the radio,” Pekach said. “Jerry Kellog used to work for me in Narcotics. What’s going on?”

  “I seen him around,” Sergeant Manning said. “I didn’t know he was working Narcotics.”

  The front door of the house opened and a District uniform came out and walked up to them. And he too saluted and looked at Pekach curiously.

  “He’s in the kitchen, Sergeant,” he said.

  “Anything?”

  “No. When I got here-”

  “What brought you here?” Pekach interrupted.

  “He wasn’t answering his phone, sir. Somebody from Narcotics asked us to check on him.” Pekach nodded. “When I got here, the back door was open, and I looked in and saw him.”

  “You check the premises?” the Sergeant asked.

  “Yeah. Nobody was inside.”

  “You should have asked for backup,” the Sergeant said, in mild reprimand.

  “I’m going to have a look,” Pekach announced.

  Pekach went through the open front door. He found the body, lying on its face, between the kitchen and the “dining area,” which was the rear portion of the living room.

  Kellog was on his stomach, sprawled out. His head was in a large pool of blood, now dried nearly black. Pekach recognized him from his chin and mustache. The rest of his head was pretty well shattered.

  Somebody shot him, maybe more than once, in the back of his head. Probably more than once.

  What the hell happened here? Was Narcotics involved? Christ, it has to be.

  “Well,” Sergeant Manning said, coming up behind Pekach, “he didn’t do that to himself. I’m going to call it in to Homicide.”

  “I’ve got to get to a phone myself,” Pekach said, thinking out loud.

  “Sir?”

  No, I don’t. You’re not going to call Bob Talley and volunteer to go with him to tell Helene that Jerry’s dead.

  “I’m going to get out of everybody’s way. If Homicide wants a statement from me, they know where to find me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Manning said.

  Dave Pekach turned and walked out of the house and got back in his car.

  TWO

  When the call came into the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department from Police Radio that Officer Jerome H. Kellog had been found shot to death in his home in the Twenty-fifth District, Detective Joseph P. D’Amata was holding down the desk.

  D’Amata took down the information quickly, hung up, and then called, “We’ve got a job.”

  When there was no response, D’Amata looked around the room, which is on the second floor of the Roundhouse, its windows opening to the south and overlooking the parking lot behind the building. It was just about empty.

  “Where the hell is everybody?” D’Amata, a slightly built, natty, olive-skinned thirty-eight-year-old, wondered aloud.

  D’Amata walked across the room and stuck his head in the open door of Lieutenant Louis Natali’s office. Natali, who was also olive-skinned, dapper, and in his mid-thirties, looked something like D’Amata. He was with Sergeant Zachary Hobbs, a stocky, ruddy-faced forty-four-year-old. Both looked up from whatever they were doing on Natali’s desk.

  “We’ve got a job. In the Twenty-fifth. A cop. A plainclothes narc by the name of Kellog.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Shot in the back of his head in his kitchen.”

  “And?” Natali asked, a hint of impatience in his voice.

  “Joe said his name was Kellog, Lieutenant,” Hobbs said delicately.

  “Kellog?” Natali asked. And then his memory made the connection. “Jesus Christ! Is there more?”

  D’Amata shook his head.

  There was a just-perceptible hesitation.

  “Where’s Milham?”

  Hobbs shrugged.

  “Lieutenant, there’s nobody out there but me,” D’Amata said.

  “Is Captain Quaire in his office?”

  “Yes, sir,” D’Amata said.

  “Hobbs, see if you can find out where Milham is,” Natali ordered. “You get out to the scene, Joe. Right now. We’ll get you some help.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Natali walked to Captain Henry C. Quaire’s office, where he found him at his desk, visibly deep in concentration.

  “Boss,” Natali said. It took a moment to get Quaire’s attention, but he finally looked up.

  “Sorry. What’s up, Lou?”

  “Radio just called in a homicide. In the Twenty-fifth. The victim is a police officer. Jerome H. Kellog. The name mean anything to you?”

  “He worked plainclothes in Narcotics?”

  Natali nodded. “He was found with at least one bullet wound to the head in his house.”

  “You don’t think…?”

  “I don’t know, Boss.”

  “We better do this one by the book, Lou.”

  “Yes, sir. D’Amata was holding down the desk. He’s on his way.” He gestured across the room to where D’Amata was taking his service revolver from a cabinet in a small file room. “And so am I.”

  “Give me a call when you get there,” Quaire ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were two Twenty-fifth District RPCs, a District van, a Twenty-fifth District sergeant’s, and a battered unmarked car D’Amata correctly guessed belonged to East Detectives in front of Kellog’s house when D’Amata turned onto West Luray Street.

  A Twenty-fifth District uniform waved him into a parking spot at the curb.

  Joe got out of his car and walked to the front door, where a detective D’Amata knew, Arnold Zigler from East Detectives, was talking to the District uniform guarding the door. Joe knew the uniform’s face but couldn’t recall his name. Zigler smiled in recognition.

  “Well, I see that East Detectives is already here, walking all over my evidence,” D’Amata said.

  “Screw you, Joe,” Zigler said.

  “What happened?”

  “What I hear is that when he didn’t show up at work, somebody in Narcotics called the Twenty-fifth, and they sent an RPC-Officer Hastings here-over to see if he overslept or something. The back door was open, so Hastings went in. He found him on the floor, and called it in.”

  “Hastings, you found the back door was open?”

  “Right.”

  Kellog’s row house was about in the middle of the block. D’Amata decided he could look at the back door f
rom the inside, rather than walk to the end of the block and come in that way.

  D’Amata smiled at Officer Hastings, touched his arm, and went into the house.

  “Hey, Joe,” Sergeant Manning said. “How are you?”

  Again D’Amata recognized the face of the Sergeant but could not recall his name.

  “Underpaid and overworked,” D’Amata said with a smile. “How are you, pal?”

  “Underpaid, my ass!” the Sergeant snorted.

  D’Amata squatted by Kellog’s body long enough to determine that there were two entrance wounds in the back of his skull, then carefully stepped over it and the pool of blood around the head, and went into the kitchen.

  The kitchen door was open. There were signs of forced entry.

  Which might mean that someone had forced the door. Or might mean that someone who had a key to the house-an estranged wife, for example-wanted the police to think that someone had broken in.

  Without consciously doing so, he put We Know For Sure Fact #1 into his mental case file: Officer Jerome H. Kellog was intentionally killed, by someone who fired two shots into his skull at close range.

  He looked around the kitchen. The telephone, mounted on the wall, caught his eye. There were extra wires coming from the wall plate. He walked over for a closer look.

  The wires led to a cabinet above the sink.

  D’Amata took a pencil from his pocket and used it to pull on the cabinet latch. Inside the cabinet was a cassette tape recorder. He stood on his toes to get a better look. The door of the machine was open. There was no cassette inside. There was another machine beside the tape recorder, and a small carton that had once held an Economy-Pak of a half-dozen Radio Shack ninety-minute cassette tapes. It was empty.

  He couldn’t be sure, of course, and he didn’t want to touch it to get a better look until the Mobile Crime Lab guys went over it for prints, but he had a pretty good idea that the second machine was one of those clever gadgets you saw in Radio Shack and places like that that would turn the recorder on whenever the telephone was picked up.

  There were no tapes in the cabinet, nor, when he carefully opened the drawers of the lower cabinets, in any of them, either. He noticed that, instead of being plugged into a wall outlet, the tape recorder had been wired to it.