He was sipping on a beer and frying a slice of the Taylor ham when the telephone rang.
Wohl, he thought, or Weisbach. They called the Forensics Lab to see how things were going, heard I was gone, and are now calling here .
“Hello.”
“Matt? Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you,” Mrs. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV began.
At the top of a long list of people I would rather not talk to right now is Dear Old Daffy.
“The orgy lasted a little longer than I thought it would. I just got home.”
“Have you been drinking?” It was more an accusation than a question.
“No.”
“You’re difficult when you’ve been drinking, and I want you to be nice,” Daffy said.
“Why does you wanting me to be nice worry me?”
“I’m worried about you. Chad and I are worried about you.”
“I’m all right, Daffy. Really.”
“Chad and I are worried about you being all alone in that terrible little apartment of yours.”
“That’s very kind of you, Daphne, but there’s nothing to worry about.”
“You have to get out, Matt. What’s done is done.”
“I understand.”
“Chad says that you’ll think we’re matchmaking or something like that.”
“What’s on your convoluted mind, Daffy?” Matt asked not at all pleasantly.
Her reply came all in a rush:
“The thing is, Matt, Amanda is coming to town tomorrow on business. Now, I realize you don’t really get along with her, and I have never understood why-she’s really a very nice girl-but we’ll have to take her to dinner, or have her here for dinner, or whatever, of course, and I thought that it would be nice if you came too. That’s all that’s on my mind. It would be good for you, and playing Cupid is the last thing on my mind.”
“Oh, Daffy,” Matt said, “I don’t think-”
“Please, Matt. Do it for me. Penny would want you to.”
“Well, if you put it that way.”
“Wonderful! I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you when and where.”
The phone went dead.
She hung up before I could change my mind.
Grinning from ear to ear, Matt returned to the kitchen. The Taylor ham was burned black, and the kitchen was full of smoke, but it didn’t seem to matter.
He burned his hand transferring the smoking pan to the sink, but that didn’t seem to matter either.
He was annoyed when the telephone went off again.
That has to be Wohl, Weisbach, or Washington about to ruin my good feeling.
“Hello.”
“You don’t sound like you’re in a very good mood, but at least I know where you are,” Amanda said.
“God is in His heaven and all is right with the world. I’m a little surprised He chose Daffy as His messenger, but who am I to question the Almighty?”
She giggled.
“She said she was going to call,” Amanda said.
“When am I going to see you?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not you have guests in your apartment.”
“No guests. Tomorrow night? How are you going to get away from Daffy?”
“So far as tomorrow night is concerned, I’ll think of something. Are you tied up tonight?”
“Where are you?”
“Thirtieth Street Station. I decided to take a chance and come down tonight.”
“Jesus!”
“Are you tied up tonight?”
“No, but if you’re into that sort of thing, I’m willing to try anything once.”
“Matt!”
“You bring the rope; I already have handcuffs.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“OK,” she said, and the phone went dead.
He walked quickly into the bedroom.
The bed had been changed, and was neatly turned down.
He went into the living room, put the answering machine on On, shut off the telephone bell, and then went quickly down the stairs.
A conference was held vis-a-vis the investigation of allegations of corruption within the Narcotics Unit after the tapes taken from the pile of burned garbage had been analyzed at some length.
Present were Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, Inspector Peter Wohl, Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach, and the Honorable Jerry Carlucci. The conference was held in the living room of Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl (Retired).
It was the consensus that while nothing incriminating had been found on the tapes, it was suspicious
(a) that Officer Kellog had carefully recorded his telephone conversations with other officers of Five Squad;
(b) that the conversations had used sort of a code to describe both past activity and planned activity.
It was also agreed, based on Inspector Wohl’s assessment of the reaction of Mrs. Kellog at the time, and on a conversation Staff Inspector Weisbach had had with Detective Milham concerning his wife, that
(a) there had indeed been a life-threatening telephone call to the former Mrs. Kellog shortly after her husband’s murder;
(b) that it was reasonable to presume that this call had come from someone on the Narcotics Squad.
Staff Inspector Weisbach also reported that, somewhat reluctantly, Captain David Pekach had come to him with conjecture concerning how members of the Narcotics Five Squad could illegally profit from the performance, or non-performance, of their official duties.
It was Captain Pekach’s opinion that-and official statistics regarding arrests in the area supported this position; the number of “good” arrests resulting in court convictions was extraordinary-the Narcotics Five Squad was not taking payments from drug dealers or others to ignore their criminal activities.
That left one possibility. That, if there was dishonest activity going on, it took place during raids and arrests. Inspector Weisbach felt that the number of times raids and arrests were conducted without support from other police units, the districts, Highway Patrol, and ACT teams was unusual.
With no one present during a raid or arrest but fellow members of the Narcotics Five Squad, Captain Pekach said, it was possible that the Narcotics Five Squad was illegally diverting, to their own use, part of the cash and other valuables which would be subject to seizure before it was entered on a property receipt.
“Shit,” the Mayor of Philadelphia said, confident that he was among friends and that his vulgarity would not become public, and also because he had really stopped being, for the moment, Mayor and was in his cop role. “That’s enough to go on. I want those dirty bastards. The only thing worse than a drug dealer is a dirty cop letting the bastards get away with it. Get them, Peter. Lowenstein will give you whatever help you need.”
“Yes, sir,” Inspector Wohl said.
The Bennington Wumnae News
Philadelphia Regional Chapter
BY P ATIENCE D AWES M ILLER ’70
