Final Justice boh-8 Page 3

  “Can you imagine him in a uniform, addressing some uniform roll call in a district?” Fenson asked.

  “No, I can’t,” O’Hara admitted. “Is Washington here?”

  “He’s out at the Roy Rogers scene. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s a question of what I can do for you,” O’Hara said. “Can you get Washington on the horn and tell him I’ve got a picture of the doers? A lousy picture, I admit, but a picture. ”

  He laid it on the detective’s desk.

  “You’re sure this is them? And you’re right, it’s a lousy picture.”

  “I’m sure,” O’Hara said. “I took it.”

  “Washington called a couple of minutes ago and said he was coming in,” the detective said.

  Mickey O’Hara used the gentlemen’s rest facility, then sipped on a paper cup of tepid coffee.

  Eight minutes after that, an enormous-six feet three, 225 pounds-superbly tailored, very black man came into Homicide. Known behind his back as “The Black Buddha,” Lieutenant Jason Washington regarded himself-and was generally regarded by others-as the best homicide detective in Philadelphia, and possibly the best homicide detective between Bangor, Maine, and Key West, Florida.

  “Michael, my friend, how are you?” he greeted O’Hara with obvious sincerity, plus a warm smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  “Hey, Jason,” O’Hara said. “I have a lousy picture of the doers.”

  He pointed to the photograph lying on the detective’s desk. Washington picked it up, examined it carefully, then looked at O’Hara.

  “I concur in your judgment of the quality,” he said. “And the source, Mickey?”

  “I went in on the robbery-in-progress call,” O’Hara said. “When I got there, these two were leaving. I took that picture. ”

  “And you believe these were the doers?”

  “Yeah, that’s them,” O’Hara said. “They match the description I got from one of the employees.”

  “The camera zeroed in on the light in the doorway,” Washington said. “Pity.”

  “Its twelve hundred dots to the inch. Maybe the lab’ll be able to salvage more than I could,” Mickey said.

  “Detective Fenson,” Washington said. “Didn’t you think, considering Mr. O’Hara’s reputation as one of the more skilled photographers of the dark side of our fair city, that it behooved you to get this photograph to the lab as quickly as possible?”

  “That’s a pretty bad picture, Lieutenant.”

  “But a picture nevertheless, Detective Fenson,” the Black Buddha said softly. “I constantly try to make the point that no stone should ever be left unturned.”

  Fenson picked up the picture and walked out of the room.

  “I am grateful for the photograph, Mickey,” Washington said. “Even if others may not be. I have a feeling that this case isn’t going to be as easy to close as everyone else seems to feel it will be.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Intuition,” Washington said. “Nothing concrete.”

  “Your intuition is… what? Legendary?”

  “That has been said,” Washington said, smiling, then added, “I just have the feeling, Mick. I really hope I’m wrong.”

  “I got a couple of shots of the bodies, too,” O’Hara said, and handed him the manila envelope.

  Washington looked at them, then raised his eyes to O’Hara.

  “I presume that these will shortly appear in the Bulletin?”

  “I cleaned them up some,” O’Hara said. “But yeah, they will.”

  Washington took O’Hara’s meaning.

  “Thank you, Mickey.”

  O’Hara gave a deprecating shrug.

  “Buy you a cup of decent coffee, Jason?”

  “Cafe Royal? In the Four Seasons?”

  “Why not? The Bulletin’s paying.”

  “Then I accept your kind offer,” Washington said.

  TWO

  Office of the Deputy Commissioner (Patrol) Police Administration Building Eighth amp; Race Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Thursday, 7:45 A.M.

  When Deputy Commissioner (Patrol) Dennis V. Coughlin, a tall, heavyset, ruddy-faced man who still had all of his curly silver hair and teeth at age fifty-nine, walked into his office on the third floor of the Police Administration Building, he saw that there were three documents on his desk demanding his immediate attention.

  They were in the center of his leather-bound desk blotter, held in place by a heavy china coffee mug bearing the logotype of the Emerald Society, a fraternal organization of police officers of Irish heritage.

  Denny Coughlin had joined “The Emerald” thirty-seven years before, right after graduation from the Police Academy and coming on the job, and had twice served as its president.

  Coughlin peeled off the double-breasted jacket of his well-tailored dark blue suit as he walked toward his closet, exposing a Smith amp; Wesson snub-nosed. 38 Special revolver worn, butt forward, on his right side.

  Except for those rare times over the years when he wore a uniform, Denny Coughlin had slipped that same pistol’s holster onto his belt every morning for thirty-three years, since the day he had reported on the job as a rookie detective.

  He hung his jacket carefully on a hanger in his closet, closed the door, and turned to his desk.

  Captain Francis Xavier Hollaran, an equally large Irishman who at forty-nine still had all of his teeth but not very much left from what had once been a luxurious mop of red hair, entered the room carrying a stainless-steel thermos of coffee.

  “I went by Homicide,” he greeted the commissioner. “Nothing that’s not in there.”

  Hollaran indicated with a nod of his head the documents on the green blotter on Coughlin’s desk.

  “It’s only nine hours,” Coughlin replied. “They’ll get something soon.” He paused, then added, “Jesus Christ, won’t they ever learn?”

  “Wolf, wolf, boss,” Frank Hollaran said. “You answer so many calls like that that are false alarms, you get careless.”

  “And dead,” Coughlin said, more than a little bitterly.

  Two of the documents on the green blotter under the Emerald Society mug detailed the events surrounding the death on duty of Officer Kenneth J. Charlton of the First District. (In Philadelphia, “districts” are what are called “precincts” in many other major police departments.)

  One was an “Activities Sheet,” which listed every move detectives of the Homicide Bureau had made in the case, including a listing of every interview conducted. The Activities Sheet was a “discoverable document,” which meant it would have to be made available to the defense counsel of anyone brought to trial in the case. Attached to it was a teletype message known as a “white paper,” which was a less formal, less precise report. As an unofficial, internal memorandum, the white paper was not “discoverable.” The two documents together presented the details of the case as it had so far developed.

  According to them, Officer Charlton had, at 11:26 the previous evening, responded to a radio report of a robbery in progress at the Roy Rogers restaurant at South Broad and Snyder Streets in South Philadelphia. That was a fact and was listed on the Activities Sheet. It was also a fact that Officer Charlton had not waited for backup to arrive before going into the restaurant.

  The white paper theorized that Officer Charlton had been close to the scene when the call came, and had probably decided that he would have backup within a minute or two, but that waiting for it before entering the restaurant would give the robbers a chance to escape. It was further theorized that the doers had probably seen his patrol car coming. Charlton had been on the job seventeen years, and if he had used his siren and flashing lights at all, he was experienced enough to have turned them off before getting close to the scene. One of the doers had then ducked behind the cashier’s counter, waited until Officer Charlton started to come behind the register, then grabbed him and held him while the other doer had shoved a pistol under Charlton’s body armor and fired
and shot him in the spine.

  After the doer who had grabbed Charlton had paused long enough to fire two shots at Charlton’s body, both doers had then fled from the restaurant. An autopsy might be able to determine if the first shot had killed Charlton, or whether he had still been alive when the second doer had shot him twice again.

  It was splitting legal hairs.

  Under Paragraph 250l(a) of the Criminal Code of Pennsylvania, Criminal Homicide is defined as the act of intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently causing the death of another human being.

  Paragraph 2502(b) of the Criminal Code of Pennsylvania further defines Criminal Homicide to be Murder of the Second Degree when the offense is committed by someone engaged as the principal, or an accomplice, in the perpetration of a felony. Armed robbery is a felony.

  So if it was determined that Officer Charlton died immediately as a result of being shot by Doer Number One at the cash register, Doer Number Two was guilty of the crime of Murder in the Second Degree because the act occurred while he was an accomplice in the commission of a felony.

  If Officer Charlton was still alive when Doer Number Two shot him twice again, killing him, then Doer Number Two was guilty of Murder in the Second Degree because he was the principal, and Doer Number One was guilty as the accomplice.

  The Activities Sheet reported that by the time other police arrived at the scene, both Doer Number One and Doer Number Two had disappeared into the night and that a very poor-quality photograph had been taken of them as they left the scene by a citizen, and turned over to the Homicide Bureau.

  Both Commissioner Coughlin and Captain Hollaran were familiar with all the details in the report on Coughlin’s desk. They had been at the Roy Rogers before Officer Charlton’s body had been taken away by the coroner.

  There was a standing operating procedure that Commissioner Coughlin-who exercised responsibility for all the patrol functions of the department-would be immediately notified in a number of circumstances, whatever the hour. Those circumstances included the death of a police officer on duty.

  There was an unofficial standing operating procedure understood and invariably applied by the police dispatchers. Whenever a call came in asking to be connected with Deputy Commissioner Coughlin so that he could be notified of the death of a police officer on duty-or something of almost as serious a nature-Captain F. X. Hollaran was notified first.

  After he was notified of such an incident, Hollaran would wait a minute or two-often using the time to put on his clothing and slip his Smith amp; Wesson snub-nose into its holster-and then call Coughlin’s private and unlisted number to learn from Coughlin whether he wanted to be picked up, or whether he would go to the scene himself, or whether there was something else Coughlin wanted him to do.

  The procedure went back many years, to when Captain Denny Coughlin had been given command of the Homicide Bureau and Homicide detective Frank Hollaran had become- without either of them planning it-Coughlin’s right-hand man.

  As Coughlin had risen through the hierarchy, Hollaran had risen with him, with time out for service as a uniform sergeant in the Fifth District, as a lieutenant with Northeast Detectives, and as district commander of the Ninth District.

  Last night, when Hollaran had called Coughlin, Coughlin had said, “You better pick me up, Frank. It’s going to be a long night.”

  It had turned out to be a long night. The commissioner himself, Ralph J. Mariani, had shown up at the Roy Rogers minutes after Coughlin and Hollaran. He had immediately put Hollaran to work organizing the notification party. The mayor, who was out of town, was not available, so Mariani would be the bearer of the bad news.

  When finally the party was assembled, it consisted of Mariani, Coughlin, the police department chaplain, the pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church attended by the Charlton family, the First District captain, and Officer Charlton’s lieutenant and sergeant.

  Captain Leif Schmidt, the First District commander, telephoned Mrs. Charlton and told her that he had had a report her husband had been injured and taken to Methodist Hospital, and that he had dispatched a car to pick her up and take her there.

  Sergeant Stanley Davis, Officer Charlton’s sergeant, accompanied by police officer Marianna Calley, went to the Charlton home and suggested to Mrs. Charlton that it might be a good idea if Officer Calley, who knew the kids, stayed with them while she went to the hospital.

  The notification protocol had evolved through painful experience over the years. It was better to tell the wife at the hospital that she was now a widow, rather than at her home. There were several reasons, high among them being that it kept the goddamn ghouls from the TV stations from shoving a camera in the widow’s face to demand to know how she felt about her husband getting killed.

  It also allowed the notification party to form at the hospital before the widow got there. The mayor would normally be there, and the police commissioner, and other senior white shirts, and it was better for them to hurry to a known location than descend one at a time at the officer’s home, which sometimes might not have space for them all, and would almost certainly be surrounded by the goddamn ghouls of the Fourth Estate, all of whom had police scanner radios, and would know where to go.

  Telling the widow at the hospital hadn’t made the notification any easier, but it was the best way anyone could think of to do it.

  The third document on Deputy Commissioner Coughlin’s desk, which had been delivered to his office shortly before five the previous afternoon-just after Coughlin had left for the day-was in a sealed eight-by-ten manila envelope, bearing the return address “Deputy Commissioner (Personnel) ” and addressed “Personal Attention Comm. Coughlin ONLY.”

  Coughlin tried and failed to get his fingernail under the flap, and finally took a small penknife from his desk drawer and slit it open.

  It contained a quarter-inch-thick sheaf of stapled-together paper. Coughlin glanced at the first page quickly and then handed it to Hollaran.

  “I think this is what they call a dichotomy,” Coughlin said. “The good news is also the bad news.”

  Hollaran took the sheaf of xerox paper and looked at the first three pages. It was unofficially but universally known as “The List.”

  It listed the results of the most recent examination for promotion to sergeant. Two thousand seven hundred and eighty-two police officers-corporals, detectives, and patrolmen with at least two years’ service-had taken the examination. Passing the examination and actually getting promoted meant a fourteen percent boost in basic pay for patrolmen, and a four percent boost for corporals and detectives.

  A substantial percentage of detectives earned so much in overtime pay that taking the examination, passing it, and then actually getting promoted to sergeant-who put in far less overtime-would severely reduce their take-home pay. Many detectives took the sergeant’s examination only relatively late in their careers, as a necessary step to promotion to lieutenant and captain, because retirement pay is based on rank.

  The examination had two parts, written and oral. Originally, there had been only a written examination, but there had been protests that the written examination was “culturally biased” and an equally important oral examination had been added to the selection process.

  Passing the written portion of the examination was a prerequisite to taking the oral portion of the examination, and a little more than five hundred examinees had failed to pass the written and been eliminated from consideration.

  Oral examinations had begun a month after the results of the written were published, and had stretched out over four months.

  Six hundred eighty-four patrolmen, corporals, and detectives had passed the oral portion of the sergeant’s examination and were certified to be eligible for promotion.

  That was not at all the same thing as saying that all those who were eligible for promotion would be promoted. Only fifty-seven of the men on The List-less than ten percent-would be “immediately”-within a week or a month-promoted. A
number of factors, but primarily the city budget, determined how many eligibles would be promoted and when. The eligibles who weren’t promoted “immediately” would have to wait until vacancies occurred-for example, when a sergeant was retired or promoted.

  What that translated to mean was that if an individual ranked in the top 100, or maybe 125, on The List, he or she stood a good chance of getting promoted. Anyone ranking below 125 would almost certainly have to forget being promoted until The List “expired”-usually after two years- and a new sergeant’s examination was announced and held.

  The first name on The List in Hollaran’s hand-the examinee who had scored highest-was Payne, Matthew M., Payroll No. 231047, Special Operations.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Hollaran asked, smiling, and then added, unctuously, “Detective Payne is a splendid young officer, of whom the department generally, and his godfather specifically, can be justifiably proud.”

  “Go to hell, Frank,” Detective Payne’s godfather said, and then added, “What he needs is a couple of years-more than a couple: three, four years-in uniform, in a district.”

  “You really didn’t think Matt would ask for a district assignment? In uniform?” Hollaran asked, chuckling.

  When Police Commissioner Mariani had announced the latest examination for promotion to sergeant, he had added a new twist, which, on the advice of other senior police officials and personnel experts, he believed would be good for morale. The five top-ranking examinees would be permitted to submit their first three choices of post-promotion assignment, one of which would be guaranteed.

  Deputy Commissioner Coughlin had at first thought it wasn’t a bad idea. And then he had realized it was almost certainly going to apply to Matthew M. Payne, and that changed things. Matty’s scoring first-which meant that there would be no excuse not to give him the assignment he had chosen- made it even worse.

  “I had lunch with him last Thursday,” Coughlin said. “I told him, all things considered, that he stood a pretty good chance of placing high enough on The List…”