this belief-that the burden of protecting the citizens of the City of Brotherly Love from the barbarians hung primarily from his/her shoulders alone, and that the function of the other was to assist them in this noble pursuit.
As a practical matter, both realized there had to be sort of a partnership arrangement to effectively keep the barbarians at the gate, since neither could issue orders to the other.
In the relationship between district attorneys and police commissioners there were also the factors of respect, trust, and admiration. In the past, district attorneys and police commissioners had sometimes not respected, trusted, or admired each other at all. Eileen Solomon and Ralph Mariani not only held each other in high professional regard, but were also friends.
But in this case, the truth was that Eileen hadn’t even thought of Ralph when she asked Denny to meet her in the Roundhouse until she had called Al Unger to tell him she needed a ride, and he had brought the subject up.
Detective Albert Unger was the senior of the two members of the District Attorney’s Squad who served as driver/bodyguard for the D.A. So far as he-and others-were concerned, the D.A. needed round-the-clock protection. Threats against her life had been made by a number of people he thought were perfectly capable of trying to whack her.
The D.A., however, firmly said she didn’t want a cop in the lobby of her apartment building twenty-four hours a day, much less hanging around in her apartment.
So a deal was struck. A word was spoken into the ear of Wachenhut Security, who provided the unarmed doorman/ concierge/security guard in the lobby of the luxury apartment building on the Parkway in which Dr. and Mrs. Solomon resided. Four new employees, all of them retired Philadelphia police officers, were shortly afterward engaged to work the lobby of the apartment building. All of them were licensed to carry firearms, and all of them shared Al Unger’s belief that there were critters who would like to whack the D.A., whom all of the retired police officers held in very high regard.
The second part of the deal was a solemn promise by the D.A.-“What would you like me to do, Al, put one hand on a Bible and swear to God?” she had asked in exasperation- that she would never leave the apartment unless he knew where she was going and why.
This meant that Unger-or somebody else from the squad-would either drive the D.A. or follow her in an unmarked car, whether she was riding in the doctor’s Caddy, or jogging along the Parkway on her thrice-weekly hour-long jaunts to keep her hips and thighs under control.
When the D.A. had called Al Unger to say that she was sorry, but she had to go to the Roundhouse and right now, he had naturally asked why, and she had told him.
“I didn’t hear Mariani’s name mentioned, boss.”
“You think he should be there?”
“I think he ought to be asked.”
If I don’t ask him, Eileen had decided, when he hears about it, Ralph will get his macho Italian ego bruised, and maybe decide Denny went behind his back.
“Okay. Ask him,” she said. “I’ll be waiting downstairs in ten minutes.”
Detective Unger had, en route to the apartment, made a radio call.
“DA-1 to C-1.”
“Go.”
“Can you tell the commissioner that DA-1 is en route to the Roundhouse, and would like him to be there if he has the time?”
There was a thirty-second delay, which Detective Unger had correctly presumed was how long it took to relay the message to the commissioner in the backseat and get a response.
“DA-1, the commissioner will be there in thirty minutes.”
Commissioner Mariani nodded at Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and Chief of Detectives Lowenstein, and sat down in Coughlin’s chair, left vacant for him at the head of the table.
“I didn’t hear anything on the radio,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve positively identified one of the doers in the Roy Rogers job,” Coughlin said. “And have a pretty good idea who the other one is. He fits the description, he’s the other guy’s cousin, and he’s been in trouble with the doer before.”
“Good. You could have told me that on the telephone. Who are they?”
“Two young guys from the Paschall Homes Housing Project, ” Coughlin said. “You know, Seventy-second and Elm-wood in southwest Philly?”
Mariani nodded.
“Lawrence John Porter, twenty, the doer, the one we’ve been calling the ‘fat guy,’ and Ralph David Williams, nineteen, ” Coughlin went on. “Neither has ever been in bad trouble before.”
“How’d you find them?”
“Tony Harris went to Harrisburg. The State Police’ve got a new machine, and they could lift more points from the print than Candelle could here,” Lowenstein said.
“Good points?”
“It wouldn’t matter if they were, Ralph,” Eileen said.
“Excuse me?”
“A federal judge refused to admit fingerprints in a trial-a trial here-a couple of months back.”
“I heard something about that.”
“I’m not saying it’ll happen, but we do have judges here who like to make law by following federal precedent. If the prints are inadmissible, all you’ve got is witnesses…”
“Something wrong with that, Eileen?”
“All the defense has to do is create reasonable doubt in the mind of one juror,” she said. “And we all know the jury pool always contains a number of people who are simply unable to believe that any black kid ever did anything wrong.”
“You’re not trying to tell me you think these two cop-killers are going to walk?”
“I’m trying to tell you, Ralph, that it’s a possibility, which will become a certainty if we make any mistakes from here on in.”
“God damn it!”
“That’s the bad news, Ralph,” Coughlin said. “The good news might, I say might, be that we can find the murder weapon… It’s a revolver and we have a bullet-”
“And can tie the weapon to either one of these two,” Eileen interjected. “Credibly tie it to either one of them.”
“Or really get lucky, and once they’re arrested, they confess. They’re just a couple of young punks,” Coughlin went on.
“Which any public defender six months out of law school will contend was obtained by mental duress…” Eileen said.
“Jesus,” Lowenstein said.
“… or worse. And I don’t think we can count on these two being defended by an incompetent from the Public Defender’s Office. This is Murder Two, and they will assign the best man they’ve got. Or, worse than that, some really competent defense lawyer will take it pro bono because this trial’s going to be all over the papers and TV.”
“You’ve got their sheets?” Mariani asked.
Lowenstein shoved a folder across the conference table to him.
“There’s not much,” he said. “A couple of shoplifting charges, car burglaries, that sort of thing.”
Mariani read the records of previous encounters with the law of the two suspects, shrugged, and then looked at Eileen Solomon.
“Okay, Eileen. What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t think we should rush to arrest these two until we have a better case.”
“Matt told me he was concerned that these two, having gotten away so far with the Roy Rogers job, and knowing you can only be executed once, might do the same sort of thing again, just as soon as they spend what they took from the Roy Rogers,” Mariani said, but it was a question.
“That’s a valid concern, and I share it,” Eileen said.
