Badge of Honour 06 - The Murderers Read online

  He did, he came to understand, really have an insight into how Lowenstein thought, and what Lowenstein wanted.

  Usually, Harry went wherever Lowenstein went. This morning, however, he sensed without a hint of any kind from Lowenstein that he would not be welcome in Captain Henry Quaire’s office when the Chief went in there to discuss the murder of Officer Jerome H. Kellog with Quaire and Lieutenant Natali.

  He got himself a cup of coffee and stationed himself near the entrance to the Homicide Unit, where he could both keep an eye on Quaire’s office and intercept anybody who thought they had to see the Chief.

  Chief Lowenstein came suddenly out of Quaire’s office and marched out of Homicide. As he passed Harry, he said, “I’ve got to go see the Dago.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Dago was the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, the Honorable Jerry Carlucci.

  They rode down to the lobby in the elevator, and out the door to where Harry had parked the Chief’s official Oldsmobile, by the CHIEF INSPECTOR DETECTIVE BUREAU sign at the door.

  The police band radios came to life with the starting of the engine, and there was traffic on the command band:

  “Mary One, William Five, at the Zoo parking lot,” one metallic voice announced.

  “A couple of minutes,” a second metallic voice replied.

  “Mary One” was the call sign of the limousine used by the Mayor of Philadelphia, “William” the identification code assigned to Special Operations.

  “Who’s William Five?” Sergeant McElroy asked thoughtfully.

  “Probably Tony Harris,” Lowenstein said. “Washington is William Four. But what I’d really like to know is why Special Operations is meeting the Mayor, or vice versa, in the Zoo parking lot. I wonder what wouldn’t wait until the Mayor got to his office.”

  “Yeah,” McElroy grunted thoughtfully.

  “Well, at least we know where to wait for the Mayor. City Hall, Harry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Weisbach call in this morning?”

  “No, sir.”

  “When we get to City Hall, you find a phone, get a location on Weisbach, call him, and tell him to stay wherever he is until I get back to him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When the mayoral Cadillac limousine rolled onto the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Philadelphia City Hall, which sits in the middle of the junction of Broad and Market streets in what is known as Center City, Chief Lowenstein was leaning against the right front fender of his Oldsmobile waiting for him.He knew that Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich habitually began his day by waiting in Mayor Carlucci’s office for his daily orders, and he wanted to see Mayor Carlucci alone.

  Lowenstein walked quickly to the side of the long black Cadillac, reaching it just as Lieutenant Jack Fellows pulled the door open. He saw that his presence surprised Fellows, and a moment later, as he came out of the car, Mayor Carlucci as well.

  “’Morning, Matt,” Carlucci said. He was a tall, large-boned, heavyset man, wearing a well-tailored, dark blue suit, a stiffly starched, bright-white shirt, a dark, finely figured necktie, and highly polished black wing-tip shoes.

  He did not seem at all pleased to see Lowenstein.

  “I need a minute of your time, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Here, you mean,” Carlucci said, on the edge of unpleasantness, gesturing around at the traffic circling City Hall.

  A citizen recognized His Honor and blew his horn. Carlucci smiled warmly and waved.

  “Yes, sir,” Lowenstein said.

  Carlucci hesitated a moment, then got back in the limousine and waved at Lowenstein to join him. Fellows, after hesitating a moment, got back in the front seat. The Mayor activated the switch that raised the divider glass.

  “OK, Matt,” Carlucci said.

  “A police officer has been shot,” Lowenstein began.

  “Dead?” the Mayor interrupted. There was concern and indignation in the one word.

  “Yes, sir. Shot in the back of his head.”

  “Line of duty?”

  “His name is Kellog, Mr. Mayor. He was an undercover officer assigned to the Narcotics Unit. He was found in his home about an hour ago.”

  “By who?”

  “When he didn’t show up for work, they sent a Twenty-fifth District car to check on him.”

  “He wasn’t married?”

  “Separated.”

  “Has she been notified?”

  “They are trying to locate her.”

  “Get to the goddamned point, Matt.”

  “The story is that she’s moved in with another detective.”

  “Oh, Jesus! Do you know who?”

  “Detective Wallace J. Milham, of Homicide.”

  “Isn’t he the sonofabitch whose wife left him because she caught him screwing around with her sister?”

  Mayor Carlucci’s intimate knowledge of the personal lives of police officers was legendary, but this display of instant recall surprised Lowenstein.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is what you’re trying to tell me that this guy, or the wife, is involved?”

  “We don’t know, sir. That is, of course, possible.”

  “You realize the goddamned spot this puts me in?” the Mayor asked rhetorically. “I show up, or Czernich shows up, to console the widow, and there is a story in the goddamned newspapers, and the day after that it comes out—and wouldn’t the Ledger have a ball with that?—that she’s really a tramp, shacked up with a Homicide detective, and they’re the doers?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s why I thought I’d better get to you right away with this.”

  “And if I don’t show up, or Czernich doesn’t, then what?” the Mayor went on. He turned to Lowenstein. “So what are you doing, Matt?”

  “Detective Milham is on the street somewhere. They’re looking for him. A good man, Joe D’Amata, is the assigned detective. Lou Natali’s already on his way to the scene, and probably Henry Quaire, too.”

  “You ever hear the story of the fox protecting the chicken coop?” Carlucci asked nastily. “If you haven’t, you can bet that the Ledger has.”

  “Henry Quaire is a straight arrow,” Lowenstein said.

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t. I’m talking about appearances. I’m talking about what the Ledger’s going to write.”

  “I don’t think Wally Milham has had anything to do with this. I think we’re going to find it’s Narcotics-related.”

  “A man who would slip the salami to his wife’s sister is capable of anything,” the Mayor said. “I have to think that maybe he did. Or the wife did, and if he’s shacked up with her…”

  “So what do you want me to do, give it to Peter Wohl?”

  “Wohl’s got enough on his back right now,” the Mayor said.

  You mean running an investigation of corruption that I’m not even supposed to know about, even though I’m the guy charged with precisely that responsibility?

  “What’s the name of that mousy-looking staff inspector? Weis-something?”

  “Mike Weisbach?”

  “Him. He’s good, and he’s a straight arrow.”

  You used to think I was a straight arrow, Jerry. What the hell happened to change your mind?

  “What are you going to do? Have him take over the investigation?”

  “The Commissioner’s going to tell him to observe the investigation, to tell you every day what’s going on, and then you tell me every day what’s going on.”

  The Mayor pushed himself off the cushions and started to crawl out of the car, over Lowenstein. He stopped, halfway out, and looked at Lowenstein, whose face was no more than six inches from his.

  “I hope, for everybody’s sake, Matt, that your Homicide detective who can’t keep his pecker in his pocket isn’t involved in this.”

  Lowenstein nodded.

  The Mayor got out of the limousine and walked briskly toward the entrance to City Hall. Lieutenant Fellows got quickly out of the front seat and ran after him.<
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  Lowenstein waited until the two of them disappeared from sight, then got out of the limousine, walked to his Oldsmobile, and got in the front seat beside Harry McElroy.

  “You get a location on Weisbach?”

  “He’s in his car, at the Federal Courthouse, waiting to hear from you.”

  Lowenstein picked a microphone up from the seat.

  “Isaac Fourteen, Isaac One.”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Meet me at Broad and Hunting Park,” Lowenstein said.

  “En route.”

  Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach’s unmarked year-old Plymouth was parked on Hunting Park, pointing east toward Roosevelt Boulevard, when Chief Inspector Lowenstein’s Oldsmobile pulled up behind it.“We’ll follow you to the scene,” Lowenstein said to Harry McElroy as he opened the door. “You know where it is?”

  “I’ll find out,” McElroy said.

  Lowenstein walked to Weisbach’s car and got in beside him.

  “Good morning, Chief,” Weisbach said.

  He was a slight man of thirty-eight, who had started losing his never-very-luxuriant light brown hair in his late twenties. He wore glasses in mock tortoise frames, and had a slightly rumpled appearance. His wife, Natalie, with whom he had two children, Sharon (now eleven) and Milton (six), said that thirty minutes after putting on a fresh shirt, he looked as if he had been wearing it for three days.

  “Mike,” Lowenstein replied, offering his hand. “Follow Harry.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A police officer named Kellog was found an hour or so ago shot in the back of his head.”

  “I heard it on the radio,” Weisbach said as he pulled into the line of traffic.

  “You are going to—observe the investigation. You are going to report to me once a day, more often if necessary, if anything interesting develops.” He looked at Weisbach and continued. “And I will report to the Mayor.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “It seems that Officer Kellog’s wife—he’s been working plainclothes in Narcotics, by the way—moved out of his bed into Detective Milham’s.”

  “Wally Milham’s a suspect?” Weisbach asked disbelievingly.

  “He’s out on the street somewhere. Quaire is looking for him. I want you to sit in on the interview.”

  “Then he is a suspect?”

  “He’s going to be interviewed. The Mayor doesn’t want to be embarrassed by this. He wants to be one step ahead of the Ledger. If a staff inspector is involved, he thinks it won’t be as easy for the Ledger to accuse Homicide, the Department—him—of a cover-up.”

  “Why me?” Weisbach asked.

  “What the Mayor said was, ‘He’s good and he’s a straight arrow,’” Lowenstein replied, and then he met Weisbach’s eyes and smiled. “He knows that about you, but he doesn’t know your name. He referred to you as ‘that mousy-looking staff inspector, Weis-something.’”

  Weisbach chuckled.

  “He knows your name, Mike,” Lowenstein said. “What we both have to keep in mind is that the real name of the game is getting Jerry Carlucci reelected.”

  “Yeah,” Weisbach said, a tone that could have been either resignation or disgust in his voice.

  Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach, who was one of the sixteen staff inspectors in the Philadelphia Police Department, had never really wanted to be a cop until he had almost five years on the job.

  His father operated a small, mostly wholesale, findings store, Weisbach’s Buttons and Zipper World, on South Ninth Street in Center City Philadelphia, and the family lived in a row house on Higbee Street, near Oxford Circle. By the time he had finished high school, Mike had decided, with his parents’ approval, that he wanted to be a lawyer.

  He had obtained, on a partial scholarship, in just over three years, a bachelor of arts degree from Temple University, by going to school year round and supporting himself primarily by working the graveyard shift managing a White Tower hamburger emporium on the northwest corner of Broad and Olney. The job paid just a little more than his father’s business could afford to pay, and there was time in the early-morning hours, when business was practically nonexistent, to study.

  Sometime during this period, Natalie had changed from being the Little Abramowitz Girl Down the Block into the woman with whom Michael knew he wanted to share his life. And starting right then—when he saw her in her bathing suit, he thought of the Song of Solomon—not after he finished law school and took the bar exams and managed to build a practice that would support them.

  The thing for them to do, he and Natalie decided, was for him to get a job. Maybe a day job with the City, or the Gas Company, that would pay more than he was making at White Tower, not require a hell of a lot of work from him, and permit him to go to law school at night. With what she could earn working in her new job as a clerical assistant at the Bursar’s Office of the University of Pennsylvania, there would be enough money for an apartment. That was important, because they didn’t want to live with his family or hers.

  He filed employment applications with just about every branch of city government, and because there didn’t seem to be a reason not to, took both the Police and Fire Department entrance examinations.

  When the postcard came in the mail saying that he had been selected for appointment to the Police Academy, they really hadn’t known what to do. He had never seriously considered becoming a cop, and his mother said he was out of his mind, as big as he was, what was going to happen if he became a cop was that some six foot four Schwartzer was going to cut his throat with a razor; or some guy on drugs would shoot him; or some gangster from the Mafia in South Philly would stand him in a bucket full of concrete until it hardened and then drop him into the Delaware River.

  Michael graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy and was assigned to the Seventh District, in the Far Northeast region of Philadelphia. For the first year, he was assigned as the Recorder in a two-man van, transporting prisoners from the District to Central Lockup in the Roundhouse, and carrying people and bodies to various hospitals.

  The second year he spent operating an RPC, turning off fire hydrants in the summer and working school crossings. He took the examination for promotion to detective primarily because it was announced two weeks after he had become eligible to take it. At the time, he would have been much happier to take the corporal’s exam, because corporals, as a rule of thumb, handled administration inside districts. But there had been no announcement of a corporal’s exam, so he took the detective’s examination.

  If he passed it, he reasoned, there would be the two years of increased pay while he finished law school.

  Detective Michael Weisbach was assigned first to the Central Detective District, which covers Center City. There, almost to his surprise, he not only proved adept at his unchosen profession, but was actually happy to go to work, which had not been the case when he’d been working the van or walking his beat in the Seventh District.

  His performance of duty attracted the attention of Lieutenant Harry Abraham, whose rabbi, it was said, was then Inspector Matt Lowenstein of Internal Affairs. When Abraham was promoted to captain and assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, he arranged for Weisbach to be transferred with him.

  Detective Weisbach was promoted to sergeant three weeks before he passed the bar examination. With it came a transfer to the office of just-promoted Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, who had become Chief of the Detective Division.

  It just made sense, he told Natalie, to stick around the Department for a little longer. If he was going to go into private practice, they would need a nest egg to furnish an office, pay the rent, and to keep afloat until his practice reached the point where it would support them.

  By then, although he was really afraid to tell even Natalie, much less his mother, he was honest enough to admit to himself that the idea of practicing law, handling people’s messy divorces, trying to keep some scumbag from going to prison, that sort of thing, did not have h
alf the appeal for him that being a cop did.

  When he passed the lieutenant’s examination, Chief Lowenstein actually took him out and bought him lunch and told him that if he kept up the good work, there was no telling how high he could rise in the Department. Natalie said that Chief Lowenstein was probably just being polite. But when the promotion list came out, and he was assigned to the Intelligence Unit, instead of in uniform in one of the districts, he told Natalie he knew Lowenstein had arranged it, and that he had meant what he said.

  There had been a shake-up in the Department, massive retirements in connection with a scandal, and he had made captain much sooner than he had expected to. With that promotion came an assignment in uniform, to the Nineteenth District, as commanding officer. The truth was that he rather liked the reflection he saw in the mirror of Captain Mike Weisbach in a crisp white shirt, and captain’s bars glistening on his shoulders, but Natalie said she liked him better in plain clothes.

  More vacancies were created two years later in the upper echelons of the Department, as sort of an aftershock to the scandal and the retirements the original upheaval had caused. Three staff inspectors, two of whom told Mike they had never planned to leave the Internal Affairs Division, were encouraged to take the inspector’s examination. That of course meant there were now three vacancies for staff inspectors, and Mike had already decided to take the exam even before Chief Lowenstein called him up and said that it would be a good idea for him to do so.

  And like the men he had replaced, Mike Weisbach thought he had found his final home in the Department. He had some vague notion that, a couple of years before his retirement rolled around, if there was an inspector’s exam, he would take it. There would be a larger retirement check if he went out as an inspector, but he preferred to do what he was doing now to doing what the Department might have him do—he didn’t want to wind up in some office in the Roundhouse, for example—if he became an inspector now.

  Staff inspectors, who were sometimes called—not pejoratively—“supercops,” or “superdetectives,” had, Weisbach believed, the most interesting, most satisfying jobs in the Department. They handled complicated investigations, often involving prominent government officials. It was the sort of work Mike Weisbach liked to do, and which he knew he was good at.