The Witness boh-4 Read online

  Officer Collins was equipped with a portable radio, and heard Mrs. Grosse's call to RPC 611. He took his radio from its holster and spoke into it.

  "Six Beat Two," he said. "That's on me. I've got it."

  Mrs. Grosse immediately replied, "Okay, Six Beat Two. Six Eleven, resume patrol."

  Officer Molyneux, without responding, turned off his flashing lights, but, having nothing better to do, continued driving down South Street toward Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc.

  Officer Collins walked purposefully (but did not run or even trot; audible alarms went off all the time) down South Street to the Goldblatt Building. It was only when he found the doors closed and the Venetian blinds closed that he suspected that anything might be out of the ordinary. Business was slow, but Goldblatt's shouldn't be closed.

  He glanced up the street and saw RPC 611 coming in his direction. Now trotting, he went to the corner of South and South Ninth Streets, stepped into the street, and raised his arm to attract the attention of the driver of 611. He recognized Officer Molyneux.

  He made a signal for Molyneux to cover the front of the building, and when he was sure that Molyneux understood what was being asked of him, Collins trotted down South Ninth Street to Rodman Street, which was more of an alley than a street, and then to the rear of the Goldblatt Building.

  The fire door had an automatic closing device, but it had not completely closed the door. Collins was able to get his fingers behind the inch-wide strip of steel welded to the end of the door to shield the crack between door and jamb and pull the door open.

  He took several steps inside the building, and then saw the body lying in the freight elevator and the blood on the elevator's wall.

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" he breathed, and reached for his radio.

  "Six Beat Two, Six Beat Two, give me some backup here, I think I've got a robbery in progress! Give me a wagon too. I've got a shooting victim!"

  Then, suddenly remembering that portable radios often fail to work inside a building, he went back into the alley and repeated his call.

  "What's your location, Six Beat Two?" Police Radio replied.

  "800 South Street. Goldblatt Furniture."

  The first response was from Officer Molyneux.

  "Six Eleven, I'm on the scene. In front."

  He was drowned out by the Police Radio transmission. First there were three beeps, and then Mrs. Grosse announced, "800 South Street. Assist officer. Holdup in progress. Report of shooting and hospital case."

  Then there came a brief pause, and the entire message, including the three beeps, was repeated.

  The response was immediate:

  "Six A, in." Six A was one of the two 9^th District sergeants on duty. He was responsible for covering the lower end of the district, from Vine Street to South Street. The other sergeant (Six B) covered the upper end of the district from Vine to Poplar Streets.

  "Six Oh One, in." Six Oh One was one of the 9^th District's two-man vans.

  "Highway Twenty-Two, in on that."

  "Six Ten, in," came from another 6^th District RPC.

  "Six Command, in," came from the car of the 6^th District lieutenant on duty, who was responsible for covering the entire district.

  Officer Collins replace his radio in its holster, drew his service revolver, and, with his mouth dry and his heart beating almost audibly, went, very carefully, back into the building.

  FIVE

  Officers Gerald Quinn and Charles McFadden had spent all of the morning hanging around the sixth-floor hallway outside Courtroom 636 in City Hall waiting to be called to testify. The assistant DA sent word, however, that they probably would be, and asked them not to leave the building until he gave them permission or until the court broke for lunch.

  That meant that in addition to the lousy coffee served by the concessionaire in the stairwell, they would have to eat lunch in some crowded greasy spoon restaurant nearby.

  They went back to Courtroom 636 a few minutes before two. The assistant district attorney told them they would not be needed. By the time they had gone back downstairs and checked out through Court Attendance, it was a few minutes after two.

  They went out and found their car. Quinn got behind the wheel and cranked the battered Chevrolet. The radio warmed almost immediately, and came to life:

  "BEEP BEEP BEEP. 800 South Street. Assist officer. Holdup in progress. Report of shooting and hospital case.

  "BEEP BEEP BEEP. 800 South Street. Assist officer. Holdup in progress. Report of shooting and hospital case.

  Quinn had the siren howling and the lights flashing even before McFadden could pick up the microphone.

  When he had it in his hand, he said, "Highway Twenty-Two in on that."

  ****

  Mrs. Janet Grosse's-Police Radio's-second call about the robbery of Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc Beep Beep Beep. 800 South Street. Assist officer. Holdup in progress. Report of shooting and hospital case. was also picked up by one of the several police frequency radios in an antennae festooned Buick, a new one, registered to one Michael J. O'Hara of the 2100 block of South Shields Street in West Philadelphia.

  Mr. O'Hara had just a moment before entered the Buick after having taken luncheon (a cheese-steak sandwich, a large side order of french fries, and three bottles of Ortleib's beer) at Beato's on Parrish Street, in the company of Sergeant Max Feldman, of the 9^th District.

  When the call came, Mr. O'Hara was filling out a small printed document that he would, on Friday, turn into the administrative office of the PhiladelphiaBulletin, the newspaper by which he was employed. It would state that in the course of business he had entertained Sergeant Feldman at luncheon at a cost of $23.50, plus a $3.75 tip, for a total of $27.25. In due course, a check would be issued to reimburse Mr. O'Hara for this business expense.

  Actually, Mr. O'Hara had not paid for the lunch, and indeed had no idea what it had cost. Sergeant Feldman's money was no good at Beato' s, and the management had picked up Mr. O'Hara's tab as a further courtesy to Sergeant Feldman.

  But several months before, Casimir J. Bolinski, LLD, had renegotiated Mr. O'Hara's contract for the provision of his professional services to theBulletin. Among other stipulations, the new contract required theBulletin to reimburse Mr. O'Hara for whatever expenses he incurred in carrying out his professional duties, specifically including the entertainment of individuals who, in Mr. O'Hara's sole judgment, might prove useful to him professionally.

  Since Casimir had gone to all that trouble for him, it seemed to Mr. O'Hara that it would be ungrateful of him not to turn in luncheon expense vouchers whether or not cash had actually changed hands. Anyway, Mr. O'Hara reasoned, if Beato's hadn't grabbed the tab, hewould have paid it.

  Mr. O'Hara's profession was journalism. Specifically, he was theBulletin's top crime reporter. Arguably, he was the best crime reporter in Philadelphia or, for that matter, between Boston and Washington.

  Dr. Bolinski had enjoyed a certain fame-some said "notoriety"-as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers professional football team before hanging up the suit and joining the bar and entering the legal specialization field of representing professional athletes.

  Bull Bolinski had surprised a lot of people, including Mickey O'Hara, who had known him since they were in the third grade at Saint Stephen' s Parochial School at 10^th and Butler, with his near-instant success at big-dollar contract negotiations.

  "What it is, Michael," The Bull had once explained to him over a beer, "is that the fuckers think I'm just a dumb fucking jock. That gives me a leg up on the bastards."

  The Bull was the only person in the world except Mickey's mother who called Mr. O'Hara "Michael." Mickey, similarly, was the only person in the world save Mrs. Bolinski who called The Bull "Casimir." The Bull's mother didn't even call him Casimir; usually it was Sonny, but often she called him "Bull" too.

  That went back to Saint Stephen's too, where Sister Mary Magdalene, the principal,
had a thing about Christian names. You either used the name you got when you were baptized, or you took a crack across the hand, bottom, or a stab into the ribs from Sister Mary Magdalene's eighteen-inch steel-reinforced ruler.

  Casimir had been in town eight months before and had been deeply shocked to learn how little Michael was being compensated for his services by theBulletin.

  "Jesus, Michael, you got a fucking Pulitzer Prize, and that's all those cheap bastards are paying you? That's fucking outrageous!"

  "Casimir, you may have been a hot shit ball player, and you may be a hot shit lawyer now, but you don't know your ass from left field about newspapers."

  "Trust me, Michael," The Bull had said confidently. "I can handle those bastards."

  Somewhat uneasily, Mr. O'Hara had placed the financial aspects of his career into Dr. Bolinski's hands. To his genuine surprise, theBulletin was now paying him more money than he had ever expected to make, and there were fringe benefits like the Buick (previously he had driven his own car and been reimbursed at a dime a mile) and the expense account.

  While it would not be fair to say that Mickey O'Hara was happy to hear that someone had been illegally deprived of their property at gunpoint, or that somebody had gotten themselves shot, neither would it be honest to say that he was beside himself with vicarious sorrow.

  It had been a damned dull week, so far, and so far the line of type reading,"By Michael J. O'Hara, Bulletin Staff Writer" had not appeared on the front page of theBulletin. A good shooting would probably fix that.

  Mickey finished filling out the expense account chit, shoved the pad of forms back into the glove compartment, and got the Buick moving.

  Mickey knew the streets of the City of Philadelphia as well as any London taxi driver knows those of the city on the Thames. He turned left onto 26^th Street and headed south toward the Art Museum and moved swiftly down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway toward City Hall. The pedestrian traffic around City Hall was frustrating, but his pace picked up as he headed south on Broad Street toward South Street. As he turned east on South Street, he could see flashing lights a few blocks ahead.

  He drove expertly. That is to say, he was not reckless. But he paid absolutely no attention to the posted speed limits, and paused for red lights only long enough to make sure he could get across the intersection without getting hit.

  He was not worried about being cited for violation of the Motor Vehicle Code. His chances of being charged with speeding or running a red light or reckless lane changing were about as great as those of Mayor Jerry Carlucci's.

  Mickey O'Hara was regarded by the Police Department as one of their own. To be sure, there was always some stiff-necked prick who would point out that all Mickey O'Hara was, was a goddamn civilian and entitled to no special privileges. But for every one of these, there were two or three cops, driving RPCs or walking beats, or captains and inspectors, who had known Mickey for twenty years and had come to believe that he was on the side of the cops, and told the prick where to head in.

  When the Emerald Society had a function, and there was a head table, Mickey O'Hara was routinely seated at it. The Fraternal Order of Police club, downtown, off North Broad Street, had an ironclad rule that the only way a civilian could get past the door was in the company of a member. Except for Mickey O'Hara, who could be expected to drop in once a night for a beer, sitting at a stool near the cash register that might as well have had his name on it, because it was tacitly reserved for him.

  The thing about Mickey, it was said, was that he never betrayed a confidence. If you told him something was out of school, you would never see it in the newspaper.

  There was a white-capped (Traffic Division) cop diverting traffic away from South Street onto South 9^th Street when Mickey O'Hara's Buick appeared.

  He waved Mickey through, winked at him as he passed, and then furiously blew his whistle at the car behind him, who thought he wanted to follow Mickey.

  Mickey pulled up behind a car he recognized as belonging to Central Detectives. Some of the chrome letters that had once spelled out CHEVROLET had fallen off; now it read CHE RO T. He had seen it the night before downtown; a lawyer from Pittsburgh had been mugged and stabbed coming out of a bar. The detective had told Mickey what had happened, and when Mickey had asked him, "What do you think?" the detective had said, "It's a start, but the bastards breed like rabbits."

  Mickey took a 35-mm camera from the passenger side floor and got out. He saw that South Street was jammed with police vehicles of all descriptions. There were three 6^th District RPCs, cars assigned to one of the 6^th District sergeants and the 6^th District lieutenant captain, a Highway RPC, a 6^th District van and two stakeout vans, the Mobile Crime Lab vehicle, and a number of unmarked cars. One of the unmarked cars was a brand-new Chevrolet Impala, telling Mickey that a captain (or better) with nothing more important to do had come to the crime scene, and was more than likely getting in the way. The other unmarked cars were battered; that meant they were from Central Detectives.

  Obviously (people were standing around) whatever had happened here was over. The stakeout vans, which are manned by specially trained policemen who are equipped with special weapons (rifles, shotguns, machine guns, et cetera) and equipment, and called into use in situations where ordinary armament (handguns) is likely to be inadequate, were not going to be needed.

  Then Mickey saw a familiar face, that of Homicide Detective Joe D' Amata, and knew that something serious had happened. The "hospital case" in the Police Radio call hadn't needed a hospital.

  Mickey stepped over the Crime Scene barrier and walked toward another familiar face. He now knew who was driving the new Impala.

  "I didn't know they let old men like you go in on real jobs," Mickey said.

  Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, a short, stocky man with large, dark eyes, who commanded the Detective Division, took a black, six-inch cigar from between his lips and looked coldly at Mickey.

  "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a laugh-a-minute Irishman," he said. "I knew if I didn't get out of here, something unpleasant, like you showing up, would happen."

  "Things a little slow at the Roundhouse, are they? Or are you trying to recapture your youth by patrolling the streets?"

  "I was driving by, all right? Up yours, O'Hara."

  Despite the exchange, they were friends. Matt Lowenstein met Mickey O'Hara's criteria for a very good cop. Not all senior supervisors did. O'Hara admired Lowenstein for being an absolute straight arrow, who protected his men like a mother hen.

  On Lowenstein's part, he not only respected O'Hara professionally, but when his son had been bar mitzvahed, not only had Mickey shown up (his gift had beenThe Oxford Complete Dictionary of the English Language) but the event had been reported on the front page of the Sunday Social Section, complete with a three-column picture of Lowenstein and his son via Mickey's influence at theBulletin.

  "So before you go back to the rocking chair, you going to tell me what happened? Why are you here?"

  "I told you, I was nearby and heard the call," Lowenstein said. "It's a strange one, Mickey. Six, eight guys, A-rabs-"

  "Real Arabs?" Mickey interrupted.

  "They kept saying 'motherfucker.' That's Arabian, isn't it?"

  Mickey chuckled. "I think so," he said solemnly.

  "They came in the place one at a time, spread out through the building, and then pulled guns. They shot up the place, God only knows why, and then tried to set some rugs on fire. The maintenance man walked in while it was going on, and they killed him."

  "He try to do something or what?"

  Lowenstein shrugged.

  "Don't know yet. You want to have a look?"

  "I'd like to, Matt," Mickey said.

  Lowenstein pursed his lips. A surprisingly loud whistle came from between them. A dozen people turned to look, including the uniformed cop guarding access to the Goldblatt crime scene.

  "He's okay," Lowenstein said, pointing to Mickey O'Hara.

 
; "Thanks," Mickey said.

  "Sylvia said if you can watch your filthy mouth, you can come to dinner."

  "When?"

  "How about tonight?"

  "Fine. What time and what can I bring?"

  "Half past six. You don't have to bring anything, but take a shave and a shower."

  "Didn't The Dago tell you you were supposed to cultivate the press?"

  "No. But I'll tell you what I did hear: You finally found some girl willing to be seen in public with you. Bring her, if you want."

  "Okay. I was going to anyway," Mickey said, and touched Lowenstein's arm and walked past the cop into Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc.

  ****

  As Michael J. O'Hara walked into Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc., on South Street, four blocks away, on 11^th Street, near Carpenter, three law enforcement officers in civilian clothing were having their lunch in Shank amp; Evelyn's Restaurant.

  They were Staff Inspector Peter Wohl and Officer Matthew Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department, and Walter Davis, a tall, well-built, well-dressed (in a gray pin-striped, three-piece suit) man in his middle forties, who was the special agent in charge (the "SAC") of the Philadelphia Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Shank amp; Evelyn's Restaurant was not the sort of place Walter Davis had had in mind when he had telephoned Wohl early that morning to ask if he was free for lunch. Davis had had in mind the Ristorante Alfredo, in downtown Philadelphia, in part because the food was superb and the banquettes would provide what he considered to be the necessary privacy he sought, and also because he thought it would provide an opportunity to needle the management a little.

  There was no question in Davis's mind (or for that matter in the minds of any peace officer with the brains to find his rear end with both hands) that Ristorante Alfredo was owned by persons connected with organized crime, otherwise known as "the Mob" and sometimes as " the Mafia."

  Davis was sure that there would be someone in the restaurant who would recognize him and Wohl, whom Davis believed to be as bright and competent a Philadelphia cop as they came, and note and report to his superiors that they had been taking lunch together.