'Lenny Moskowitz. I didn't call you.'
'What didn't you say when you didn't call me?'
'I don't know what the hell this is all about, Mickey, but I thought you might be interested.'
'In what?'
'About an hour ago, Harry Cronin, who went off at midnight, brought a citizen in here wearing nothing but an overcoat. Danny the Judge put him in a detention cell, and Harry in the captain's office. Then he called Denny Coughlin, Inspector Wohl of Special Operations, and Jason Washington of Homicide.'
Jason doesn't work in Homicide anymore. I'm surprised Moskowitz doesn't know that.
'And?'
'They're all here. Plus some guy, a heavy hitter, from the FBI. And a lady doctor.'
'Has the guy in the overcoat got a name, Lenny?'
'Ketcham, Ronald.'
'Nice not to talk to you, Lenny. I owe you a big one.'
'I figure I still owe you,' Sergeant Moskowitz said and hung up.
On being advised by Lieutenant Daniel Justice that Mr. Michael J. O'Hara of the Bulletin was in the building and desired a minute or two of his time, Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin left the small room equipped with a one-way mirror adjacent to the interview room and went to speak to him.
'We're going to have to stop meeting this way, Mickey,' he greeted him. 'People will start to talk.'
'Ah, Denny, you silver-tongued devil, you!'
'I'd love to know who tipped you to this. He would be on Last Out for the rest of his life, walking a beat in North Philly.' Last Out was the midnight-to-eight shift.
'What do you mean, 'who tipped me'? I was on my way home, Denny, for some well deserved rest, when what do I hear on the radio? You're coming here. Peter Wohl is coming here. So I figured, what the hell, I'd come down here, we'd all have a cup of coffee, chew the rag a little-'
'Chew the rag a little about what, for example?'
'For example, why did you put the arm out for Mr. Ronald R. Ketcham?'
'Ronald R. Ketcham? I don't seem to recall the name.'
'And why, if it was a Locate, Do Not Detain, did he wind up in a holding cell?'
'A holding cell?'
'Wearing nothing but an overcoat.'
'Mickey, you have your choice between me throwing you out of here myself, or agreeing to really sit on this one. And that may mean permanently sitting on it. Now and forever.'
'You got a deal, Denny.'
'I'll fill you in later,' Coughlin said. 'I don't want to miss any of this.'
He waved O'Hara into the small room with the one-way mirror adjacent to the interview room. There Mr. O'Hara found Inspector Peter Wohl; Amelia Payne, M.D.; Mr. Walter Davis, Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; a well-dressed individual Mr. O'Hara correctly guessed was also in the employ of the FBI; and Lieutenant Daniel Justice.
Through the one-way mirror, he saw Sergeant Jason Washington and a distraught-looking man sitting in a chair wearing nothing but a blanket around his shoulders.
Mickey waved a cheerful hello.
The FBI agent Mickey didn't recognize looked confused.
Mr. Davis of the FBI looked very uncomfortable, as did Danny the Judge.
Dr. Payne smiled at him absently, her attention devoted to what was going on on the other side of the mirror.
Inspector Wohl smiled in recognition and resignation.
Mickey helped himself to a cup of coffee, then sat down, backward, in a wooden chair and watched Sergeant Washington interviewing Mr. Ketcham.
TWENTY
Officer Timothy J. Calhoun was sitting with his wife on the couch in the living room watching the Today show on the tube when he heard the siren.
Police sirens were a part of life in Philadelphia. Out here in the sticks, you seldom heard one.
And this was more than one siren. Two. Maybe even three.
He took his sock-clad feet off the coffee table, then put his coffee cup on the table and stood up, slipping his feet into loafers.
'What is it?' Monica Calhoun asked.
'Probably a fire,' Tim said. 'Right around here someplace. Them sirens is getting closer.'
He walked to the front door and opened it and looked up and down the street. He could see neither a fire nor police nor fire vehicles, and pulled the door closed.
Just as he did, he heard one siren abruptly die. He knew that meant that whoever was running the siren had gotten where he was going.
There was still the sound of two sirens.
Monica joined him at the door.
'You didn't see anything?'
He shook his head, 'no.'
The sound of the sirens grew very loud, and then, one at a time, died suddenly.
Monica opened the door.
'Jesus, they're right here!' she said.
There was a Harrisburg black-and-white in the driveway, and what looked like an unmarked car with two guys in it at the curb, and as Tim watched two uniforms jump out of the car in the driveway, a second Harrisburg black-and — white came screeching around the corner and pulled its nose in behind the black-and-white in the driveway.
'What the fuck?'
The first uniform reached the door.
'Timothy J. Calhoun?'
'What the hell is going on?'
'Timothy J. Calhoun?'
'Yeah, I'm Calhoun.'
'Timothy J. Calhoun, I have a warrant for your arrest for misprision in office,' the first cop said. 'You are under arrest!'
'Timmy!' Monica wailed. 'What's going on?'
'Turn around, please, and put your hands behind your back,' the first uniform said, as the second uniform put his hands on his shoulders and spun him around.
'Timmy!' Monica wailed again.
'You have the right to remain silent…' The first cop began very rapidly to give him his rights under the Miranda decision.
'It's some kind of mistake, baby,' Tim said.
What did the uniform say? Misprision? What the fuck is misprision?
'Do you understand your rights as I have outlined them to you?' The first cop asked.
'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Timmy said. 'Look, I'm a cop, I don't know what the hell is going on here.'
'You're being arrested for being a dirty cop, Calhoun,' a voice-somehow familiar-said.
The uniform who had spun him around to cuff him now spun him around again.
Jesus Martinez, onetime plainclothes narc, was standing there looking at him with contempt.
'What the hell is going on here, Jesus?'
