The Investigators Read online

  “That’s probably what your mother’ll say when you call her from Central Lockup and tell her you need bailing out, and for what.”

  The girl started to whimper.

  “You gonna start taking your clothes off, or not?” Prasko said. “I don’t have all night.”

  Sobbing now, the girl unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged out of it, then unfastened her skirt and let it fall to the floor.

  “All of it, all of it,” Prasko said.

  The girl unfastened her brassiere and then, now moving quickly, pushed her white underpants down off her hips. Then she backed up to the bed and lay down on it, her legs spread, her face to one side, so she didn’t have to look at Prasko.

  Officer Prasko dropped his trousers and then his shorts and moved to the bed.

  When he was done, he went into the bathroom and struck Ketcham in the face with his revolver, hard enough to draw blood and daze him. Then he unlocked the handcuffs.

  “Stay where you are for five minutes or I’ll come back and blow your fucking brains out,” Prasko said.

  Then he went into the bedroom, glanced quickly at the naked, whimpering girl on the bed, took the twenty thousand dollars from the table, and left room 138.

  As soon as Ketcham heard the sound of the car starting, and then driving away, he got off the bathroom floor and went into the bedroom and tried to put his arms around the girl.

  She pushed him away and shrieked.

  “Cynthia,” he said, trying to sound comforting, and again tried to put his arms around her.

  Cynthia shrieked again.

  THREE

  The District Attorney of Philadelphia, the Hon. Thomas J. “Tony” Callis—a large, silver-haired, ruddy-faced, well-tailored man in his early fifties—looked up from his desk, and saw Harrison J. Hormel, Esq.—a some what rumpled-looking forty-six-year-old—standing in the door, waiting to be noticed.

  Harry Hormel was arguably the most competent of all the assistant district attorneys Callis supervised. And he had another characteristic Callis liked. Hormel was apolitical. He had no political ambitions of his own, and owed no allegiance to any politician, except the current incumbent of the Office of the District Attorney.

  “Come in, Harry,” Mr. Callis called.

  Hormel slipped into one of the two comfortable green leather armchairs facing Callis’s desk.

  “What do you want to happen to James Howard Leslie?” Hormel asked, without any preliminaries.

  “Boiling in oil would be nice,” Tony Callis said. “Or perhaps drawing and quartering.”

  Mr. James Howard Leslie, by profession a burglar, had been recently indicted for murder in the first degree. It was alleged that one Jerome H. Kellog, on returning to his home at 300 West Luray Street in Northwest Philadelphia, had come across Mr. Leslie in his kitchen. It was further alleged that Leslie had thereupon brandished a blue .38 Special five-inch-barrel Smith & Wesson revolver; had then ordered Kellog to raise his hands and turn around; and when Kellog had done so, had shot Kellog in the back of the head, causing his death. It was further alleged that after Kellog had fallen to the floor of his kitchen, Leslie had then shot him again in the head, for the purpose of making sure he was dead.

  When Leslie had discussed the incident with Sergeant Jason Washington of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department, Leslie had explained that he had felt it necessary to take Kellog’s life because Kellog had seen his face, and as a policeman, would probably be able to find him and arrest him for burglary.

  The question Hormel was really asking, Callis understood, was whether the City of Philadelphia wanted to go through the expense of a trial, seeking a sentence that would incarcerate Leslie for the rest of his natural life, or whether Leslie should be permitted to cop a plea, which would see him removed from society for, say, twenty years, which was, in practical terms, about as long behind bars as a life sentence would mean.

  Ordinarily, there would be no question of that. The full wrath and fury of the law would suddenly descend on the shoulders of anyone who had in cold blood taken the life of a police officer. Or even someone who had shot a cop by mistake, while in the act of doing anything illegal.

  Ordinarily, Callis himself would have personally prosecuted Leslie. For one thing, he really believed that letting a scumbag get away with shooting a cop really would undermine the very foundations of civilized society. For another, press reports of the vigorous prosecution of such a villain by the district attorney himself would be remembered at election time.

  It was not much of a secret that District Attorney Callis would be willing to serve the people of Philadelphia as their mayor if called upon to do so. And neither was it lost upon him that one of the reasons the incumbent mayor of Philadelphia, the Hon. Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, had been elected and reelected with such comfortable margins was his reputation of being personally tough on criminals.

  But the case of Leslie was not like, for example, that of some scumbag shooting a cop during a bank robbery. For one thing, Officer Kellog had not been on duty at the time of his tragic demise. Perhaps more important, Leslie was going to be represented at his trial by the Office of the Public Defender, specifically by a lawyer whom Callis most commonly thought of—not for publication, of course—as “The Goddamned Nun.”

  Ms. Imogene McCarthy—who had been known as Sister Luke during her ten years as a cloistered nun—had two characteristics that annoyed Callis, sometimes greatly. She devoutly believed that there were always extenuating circumstances—poverty, lack of education, parental abuse, drug addiction—which caused people like James Howard Leslie to do what they did, and which tragic circumstances should trigger not punishment but compassion and mercy on the part of society; and she was a very skillful attorney, both in the courtroom and in the appeals processes.

  Tony Callis was determined that The Goddamned Nun, as good as she was, was not going to get her client off on this one. Indeed, in her heart of hearts, she probably didn’t want to see him walk. What she didn’t want was for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to put James Howard Leslie into handcuffs and march him off to Rockview Prison in State College for what the judge had just told him would be incarceration for the rest of his natural life, thereby destroying all of his hopes to be educated, rehabilitated, and returned to society as a productive, law-abiding member thereof.

  What, Callis believed, McCarthy saw from her perspective as a reasonable solution to the case of James Howard Leslie was that he be allowed to plead guilty to Murder Three (voluntary manslaughter), a lesser offense that, she would be prepared to argue, would not only punish him and remove him from society for a very long period—say, seven to ten years—so that he could cause others no harm, but save both the Office of the District Attorney and the Office of the Public Defender the considerable cost in time and money of a trial and the following appeals processes.

  There was a certain logic to her position. If Kellog had not been a police officer, Callis might have entertained her plea-bargain offer. But Kellog had been a cop, and Leslie had killed him in cold blood, and deserved to be locked up permanently. Strapping the murdering son of a bitch into the electric chair was unfortunately—thanks to bleeding hearts and the Supreme Court—no longer possible. The only way to get him locked up for life was to bring him to trial.

  After some thought—it would do his political ambitions little good, he had reasoned, if he personally prosecuted Leslie only to have The Goddamned Nun get him off with something like seven to ten—Callis had decided to delegate the responsibility for prosecuting Leslie to Assistant District Attorney Hormel.

  “Phebus wants to prosecute,” Harry Hormel said. “He asked me.”

  Anton C. Phebus, Esq., was another of the assistant district attorneys under Callis’s supervision.

  Callis was not surprised that Tony Phebus wanted to prosecute Leslie, or even that Phebus had asked Hormel for the job. Phebus was an ex-cop, and thus felt a personal interest in seeing to it th
at Leslie, after a fair trial, would be locked up permanently. And Harry Hormel was de facto if not de jure, like one of Mr. Orwell’s pigs, the most equal of all the assistant district attorneys.

  “You don’t want to prosecute?” Callis asked.

  “I will,” Hormel said. “But if Phebus does, it will give him the experience.”

  Phebus was a relative newcomer both to the practice of law and the District Attorney’s Office. He had served twelve years as a police officer, rising to sergeant, and attending law school at Temple University whenever he could fit the hours into a policeman’s always changing schedule. He had joined the Office of the District Attorney fourteen months before, shortly after being admitted to the bar.

  Callis suddenly remembered—he had a very good memory, which had served him well—that Phebus had been a sergeant in the Narcotics Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department when he had been a cop, and that Jerome H. Kellog had also been assigned to the Narcotics Unit.

  “He and Kellog were buddies in Narcotics?” Callis asked. “Partners?”

  It would be unwise to have a man with a really personal interest in sending the accused away for life serve as his prosecutor.

  “No. I checked that out. They never worked together, and they weren’t friends,” Hormel said.

  Callis was not surprised that Hormel had checked out that possible problem area before coming to see him.

  “What are you suggesting, Harry? That maybe Phebus couldn’t get around McCarthy?”

  “We have everything we need to get a conviction,” Hormel said. “A statement, everything. Phebus stands as good a chance of getting a conviction as I do. Miss McCarthy’ll give him her best shot, which would be a good learning experience for him both at the trial and during the appeals.”

  Obviously, Callis thought, Phebus has got himself a rabbi. Harry wants him to try this case. Probably because he figures Phebus will not resign to go into private practice anytime soon.

  Only a few assistant district attorneys make a career of it. Most leave to enter private practice after a few years on the job. Harry’s obviously interested in keeping Phebus. Nothing wrong in that. And Phebus is the kind of guy—he’s no mental giant, and he has a civil service mentality—who will want to stay on here.

  So what’s the downside?

  The Goddamned Nun makes a fool of him, and Leslie walks. Unlikely, but possible. But—even if it’s that bad—the public perception will be that I made an understandable mistake in assigning an ex-cop to prosecute a cop-killer. That’s better than McCarthy making a fool of me or Harry.

  More likely—we’ve got a strong case—Phebus will be able to get a conviction. The District Attorney’s Office will get the credit for the conviction, and I may even get a little credit for assigning an ex-cop to prosecute a cop-killer. The cops, at least, will appreciate that.

  The Goddamned Nun will appeal, of course, all the way to the Supreme Court, to get that scumbag out of jail. She may even be able to get away with it. Fighting the appeals will be both a pain in the ass and time-consuming. Right now, Phebus’s time isn’t all that valuable, and like Harry says, it will be a good learning experience for him.

  “Let Phebus prosecute, Harry,” Callis ordered. “But keep an eye on him. If there are problems, let me know.”

  Thirty-five-year-old Peter Frederick Wohl looked like—and was often mistaken for—an up-and-coming young stockbroker, or an attorney. He was fair-skinned, with even features, and carried 165 pounds on a lithe body just under six feet tall. He wore his light brown hair clipped short, and favored well-tailored, conservatively styled clothing, almost always worn with a crisply starched white button-down-collar shirt, regimentally striped neckties, and well-shined loafers. He drove a perfectly restored, immaculately maintained Jaguar XK-120 roadster, in the back of which could usually be found his golf clubs or his tennis racquet, or both.

  He was in fact a police officer, specifically the youngest inspector—and in the Philadelphia Police Department inspector is the second senior rank, after chief inspector. On those very rare occasions when he wore his uniform, it carried a silver oak leaf, like those worn by lieutenant colonels in the Army or Marines.

  Wohl was the commanding officer of the Special Operations Division, which was housed in a building at Frankford and Castor avenues that had been built in 1892 as the Frankford Grammar School. Wohl’s small, ground-floor office had been the office of the principal.

  He glanced up from a thick stack of paper demanding his administrative attention at the clock on the wall and saw that it was quarter past four. He shook his head in resignation and shoved all the paperwork in the side drawer of his desk, locking it.

  He took the jacket to a light brown glen plaid suit from a hanger on a clothes rack by the door and walked out of his office.

  Officer Paul Thomas “Tommy” O’Mara, a tall, fair-skinned, twenty-six-year-old in a suit Wohl suspected he had bought from the Final Clearance Rack at Sears Roe-buck, got to his feet. Tommy O’Mara was Wohl’s administrative assistant, and Wohl liked him despite the fact that his assignment had more to do with the fact that his father was Captain Aloysius O’Mara, commanding officer of the 17th District and an old friend of Peter’s father—Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl, Retired—than any administrative talent.

  “I’ll be with Chief Lowenstein in the Roundhouse, Tommy,” Wohl said.

  Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein was Chief of the Philadelphia Police Department Detective Division, and maintained his office in the Police Administration Building—universally called the Roundhouse because of its curved walls—at 8th and Race streets.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If he calls, I left five minutes ago,” Wohl said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tommy reminded Wohl of a friendly puppy. He tried very hard to please. He had five years on the job, all of it in Traffic, and had failed the examination for detective twice. Chief Wohl had asked his son to give him a job—working for Wohl meant an eight-to-five shift, five days a week—where he would have time to study for a third shot at the detectives’ exam.

  Wohl’s previous administrative assistant had been a graduate, summa cum laude, of the University of Pennsylvania, who had ranked second on the list the first time he had taken the detectives’ examination.

  Wohl thought of him now, as he started out of the building. He glanced at his watch, shrugged, and started up the stairs to the second floor of the building, taking them two at a time. At the top of the stairs, he walked down a corridor until he came to what had been a classroom but was now identified by a sign hanging over the door as the “Investigations Section.”

  He pulled the door outward without knocking and went inside.

  A very large (six feet three, 225 pounds) man sitting behind a desk quickly rose to his feet with a look of almost alarm on his very black face, holding his right hand out, signaling stop, and putting the index finger of his left hands to his lips, signaling silence.

  Wohl stopped, smiling, his eyebrow raised quizzically.

  The black man, who was Sergeant Jason Washington, chief of the Investigations Section, and Inspector Wohl were old friends, going back to the time Detective Washington, even then regarded as the best homicide investigator in the Philadelphia Police Department, had taken rookie homicide detective Wohl under his wing.

  If Sergeant Washington had had his way, he would still be, as he put it, a simple homicide detective. And he would have cheerfully and with some eloquence explained why: A good homicide detective—and there was no question in anyone’s mind, including his own, that Jason Washington had been the best of that elite breed—earned, because of overtime, as much money as a chief inspector. And for another, he had liked being the best homicide detective. It was intellectually challenging, stimulating work. He had routinely been given the most difficult cases.

  Washington’s friendship with Peter Wohl had been seriously strained when Wohl had had him transferred to the newly formed Special Operations
Division eighteen months before. There had been no harsh words—Jason Washington was not only genuinely fond of Wohl, but regarded him as the second-smartest man in the Philadelphia Police Department—and by rationalizing that if he intended to retire from the department as at least an Inspector, now was the time to start taking the promotion exams, Washington had accepted his new duties.

  Washington pointed to a full-length mirror mounted on the wall. In it was reflected the image of a good-looking young man with earphones on his head, seated before a typewriter. His face was contorted with deep frustration and resignation. His eyebrows rose in disbelief. He shook his head, then typed very quickly and very briefly.

  It was comical. Wohl was tempted to laugh. And did.

  “The tapes,” Sergeant Washington said.

  “Ah, the tapes,” Wohl said.

  The young man, whose name was Matthew M. Payne, and who had been Wohl’s administrative assistant before his promotion to detective, sensed that he was the subject of their attention, and tore the earphones from his head.

  “It is not kind to mock a young detective doing his best,” he said.

  “Chagrin overwhelms me,” Sergeant Washington said.

  Wohl walked to Payne’s desk.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Payne pointed at the sheet of paper in the typewriter.

  “Slowly and painfully,” he said.

  “Get anything?” Wohl asked.

  “They speaketh in tongues,” Payne said. “I have learned that they have a ‘Plan B’ and a ‘Plan C,’ but I have no idea what the hell that means.”

  “It’s a dirty job,” Wohl said, gently mocking, “but someone has to do it.”

  “Why me, dear Lord, why me?”

  “Because you can type,” Wohl said. “Where did you get that?” he asked, pointing to the dictating apparatus Payne was using.

  “There’s a place on Market Street, across from Reading Terminal,” Payne said.

  “You bought it?”

  “It was either buy it or suffer terminal index finger using that thing,” Payne said, pointing to a tape recorder, and miming—jabbing his index finger—as he added, “ahead three seconds, rewind three seconds, ahead three seconds. I was wearing out my finger.”