'The reason I'm calling, Peter-'
'Yes, sir?'
'Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson called me yesterday afternoon. You know who I mean?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Under the circumstances, if you take my meaning, we can use all the friends we can get.'
'Yes, sir.'
'He has a client, a woman named Martha Peebles. Chestnut Hill. Very wealthy woman. Has been burglarized. Isbeing burglarized. She is not happy with the level of police service she's getting from the Fourteenth District and/or Northwest Detectives. She complained to Colonel Mawson, and he called me. Got the picture?'
'I'm not sure,' Peter said.
'I think it would be a very good idea, Peter,' Commissioner Czernick said, 'if police officers from the Special Operations Division visited Miss Peebles and managed to convince her that the Police Departmentstrike that,Special Operations -is taking an avid interest in her problems, and is doing all that can be done to resolve them.'
'Commissioner, right now, Special Operations is me and Mike Sabara and Sergeant Whatsisname- Frizell.'
'I don't care how you do this, Peter,' Czernick said, coldly. 'Just do me a favor and do it.'
'Yes, sir.'
'I seem to recall that Denny Coughlin got me to authorize the immediate transfer to you of forty volunteers. For openers.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well then, you ought to have some manpower shortly,'
Czernick said.
'Yes, sir.'
'Keep me informed about the abducted woman, Peter,' Czernick said. 'I have an unpleasant gut feeling about that.'
'Yes, sir, of course.'
'Tell your dad I said hello when you see him,' Czernick said, and hung up.
Peter put the handset back in its cradle and turned to Mickey O'Hara.
'What can I do for you, Mickey?'
'Don't let the doorknob hit me in the ass?' O'Hara said.
'No. What I said was 'What can I do for you, Mickey?' When I throw you out, I won't be subtle. Is there something special, or do you just want to hang around?'
'I'm interested in the abducted woman,' O'Hara said. 'I figure when something breaks, this will be the place. So I'll just hang around, if that's okay with you.'
'Fine with me,' Wohl said. He turned to Mike Sabara. 'Mike, get on the phone to the Captain of Northwest Detectives, and the Fourteenth District Commander. Tell them that Commissioner Czernick just ordered me to stroke a woman named Peebles, and that before I send a couple of our people out to see her, I'm going to send them by to look at the paperwork. She's-what the commissioner said was-beingburglarized, and she's unhappy with the service she's been getting, and she has friends in high places.'
'Who are you going to send over?'
'Officers Martinez and McFadden,' Wohl said.
'Who are they?' Sabara asked, confused.
'Two of the three kids sitting on the folding chairs in the foyer,' Wohl said. 'I'm doing what I can with what I've got. Then, the next item on the priority list: We need people. I would like to have time to screen them carefully, but we don't have any time. A teletype went out yesterday, asking for volunteers. I don't know if there have been any responses yet, but find out. If there have not been any, or even, come to think of it, if there have-'
'McFadden and Martinez used to work undercover for me in Narcotics,' Pekach said to Sabara. 'They're the two that found Gerald Vincent Gallagher. They're here?'
'Chief Coughlin sent them over,' Wohl said. 'To Special Operations, David, not Highway.'
'They're good cops. Not much experience in Chestnut Hill…' Pekach said.
'Like I said, I'm doing what I can with what I have,' Wohl said. 'As I was saying, Mike, get us some people. If you, or Dave, can think of anybody you can talk into volunteering, do it. Then call around, see if there have been volunteers. Check them out. Have them sent here today. Go to the Districts if that's necessary. The only thing: tell them that if they don't work out, they go back where they came from.'
'You want to talk to them?' Sabara asked. 'Before we have them sent over here?'
'After you've picked them, I want to talk to them, sure,' Wohl said. 'But you know what we need, Mike.'
Peter picked up his telephone and pushed one of the buttons. ' Sergeant, would you ask Sergeant Frizell to come in here? And send in the three plainclothes officers waiting in the foyer?' There was a pause, then: 'Yeah, all at once.'
'Now, I'll be polite,' Mickey O'Hara said. 'Am I in the way?'
'Not at all,' Peter said. 'I'll let you know when you are, Mickey.'
Sergeant Frizell, trailed by Officers McFadden, Martinez, and Payne, came into the office.
'What do we know about cars?' Wohl asked.
'For the time being,' Frizell replied, 'we have authority to draw cars, unmarked, from the lot at the Academy on the ratio of one car per three officers assigned.'
'And then they'll have to be run by Radio, right, to get the proper radios?'
'Right.'
'I want all our cars to have J-Band, Detective, Highway, and ours, whenever we get our own,' Peter said.
'I'm not sure that's in the plan, Inspector,' Frizell said.
'I don't give a damn about the plan,' Peter said. 'You call Radio and tell them to be prepared to start installing the radios. And call whoever has the car pool, and tell them we're going to start to draw cars today. Tell them we have fifty-eight officers assigned; in other words that we want twenty cars.'
'But we don't have fifty-eight officers assigned. We don't have any.'
'We have three at this moment,' Wohl said. 'And Captain Sabara is working hard on the others.'
'Yes, sir,' Sergeant Frizell said. 'But, Inspector, I really don't think there will be fifteen unmarked cars available at the Academy.'
'Then take blue-and-whites,' Wohl said. 'We can swap them for unmarked Highway cars, if we have to.'
'Inspector,' Frizell said, nervously, 'I don't think you have the authority to do that.'
'Do that right now, please, Sergeant,' Wohl said, evenly, but aware that he was furious and on the edge of losing his temper.
The last goddamned thing I need here is this Roundhouse paper pusher telling me 1 don't have the authority to do something.
Frizell, sensing Wohl's disapproval, and visibly uncomfortable, left the room.
Wohl looked at the three young policemen.
'You fellows know each other, I guess?'
'Yes, sir,' they chorused.
'Okay, this is what I want you to do.' He threw car keys at Matt Payne, who was surprised by the gesture, but managed to snag them. ' Take my car, and drive McFadden and Martinez to the motor pool at the Police Academy. There, you two guys pick up two unmarked cars. Take one of them to the radio shop and leave it. You take my car to the radio shop, Payne, and stay with it until they put another radio in it. Then bring it back here. Then you take Captain Sabara's car and have them install the extra radios in it. Then you bring that back. Clear?'
'Yes, sir,' Matt Payne said.
'You two bring the other car here. I've got a job I want you to do when you get here, and when you finish that, then you'll start shuttling cars between the motor pool and the radio garage and here. You understand what I want?'
'Yes, sir.'
Getting cars, and radios for them, and handing out assignments to newly arrived replacements, is a
