Her father would, she said, tears in her eyes, which really hurt Dave Pekach, turn over in his grave if she broke her word to him, and worse, were married according to the rules of the Church of Rome, which would have required her to promise any children of their union to be raised in the Roman Catholic faith.
Extensive appeals through the channels of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, lasting months, had resulted in a compromise. After extensive negotiations, with the prospective groom being represented by Father Kaminski, his family’s parish priest, and the prospective bride by Brewster Cortland Payne II, Esq., the compromise had been reached in a ninety-second, first-person conversation between the Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and his good friend the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia, with enough time left over to schedule eighteen holes at Merion Golf Course and a steak supper the following Wednesday.
It had been mutually agreed that the wedding would be an ecumenical service jointly conducted by the Episcopal Bishop and a Roman Catholic Monsignor, and the prospective bride would be required only to promise that she would raise any fruit of their union as “Christians.”
Mother Pekach had been, not without difficulty, won over to the compromise by Father Kaminski, who reminded her what St. Paul had said about it being better to marry than to burn, and argued that if the Cardinal himself was going to send Monsignor O’Hallohan, the Chancellor of the Archdiocese, himself, to St. Mark’s Church for the wedding, it really couldn’t be called a heathen ceremony in a heathen church.
There would be a formal announcement of their engagement the day after tomorrow, at a party, with the wedding to follow a month later.
Captain Pekach drove out the gates of the Peebles’ estate at 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, and tried to decide the best way to get from there to Frankford and Castor avenues at this time of the morning. He decided he would have a shot at going down North Broad, and then cutting over to Frankford. There was no good way to get from here to there.
He reached under the dashboard without really thinking about it and turned on both of the radios with which his car, and those of half a dozen other Special Operations/Highway Patrol cars, were equipped.
As he approached North Broad and Roosevelt Boulevard, the part of his brain which was subconsciously listening to the normal early-morning radio traffic was suddenly wide awake.
“Give me a supervisor at this location. This is a Five Two Nine Two, an off-duty Three Six Nine.”
“Twenty-five A,” the police radio operator called.
“Twenty-five A,” the Twenty-fifth District sergeant on patrol responded. “What’s that location?”
“300 West Luray Street.”
300 West Luray Street? My God, that’s Jerry Kellog’s address. Jerry Kellog? Dead? Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
“I got it,” Twenty-five A announced. “En route.”
Without really being aware of what he was doing, Captain Pekach reached down and turned on the lights and siren and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
It took him less than three minutes to reach 300 West Luray Street, but that was enough time for him to have second thoughts about his rushing to the scene.
For one thing, it’s none of my business.
But on the other hand, anything that happens anywhere in the City of Philadelphia is Highway’s business, and I’m the Highway Commander.
That’s bullshit and you know it.
But Jerry Kellog is one of my guys.
Not anymore he’s not. You’re no longer a Narcotics Lieutenant, but the Highway Captain.
Yeah, but somebody has to notify Helene, and who better than me?
Jesus, I heard there was bad trouble between them. You don’t think…
There was a Twenty-fifth District RPC at the curb, and as Pekach got out of his car, a Twenty-fifth District sergeant’s car pulled up beside him.
“Good morning, sir,” the Sergeant said, saluting him. He was obviously surprised to see Pekach. “Sergeant Manning, Twenty-fifth District.”
“I heard this on the radio,” Pekach said. “Jerry Kellog used to work for me in Narcotics. What’s going on?”
“I seen him around,” Sergeant Manning said. “I didn’t know he was working Narcotics.”
The front door of the house opened and a District uniform came out and walked up to them. And he too saluted and looked at Pekach curiously.
“He’s in the kitchen, Sergeant,” he said.
“Anything?”
“No. When I got here-”
“What brought you here?” Pekach interrupted.
“He wasn’t answering his phone, sir. Somebody from Narcotics asked us to check on him.” Pekach nodded. “When I got here, the back door was open, and I looked in and saw him.”
“You check the premises?” the Sergeant asked.
“Yeah. Nobody was inside.”
“You should have asked for backup,” the Sergeant said, in mild reprimand.
“I’m going to have a look,” Pekach announced.
Pekach went through the open front door. He found the body, lying on its face, between the kitchen and the “dining area,” which was the rear portion of the living room.
Kellog was on his stomach, sprawled out. His head was in a large pool of blood, now dried nearly black. Pekach recognized him from his chin and mustache. The rest of his head was pretty well shattered.
Somebody shot him, maybe more than once, in the back of his head. Probably more than once.
What the hell happened here? Was Narcotics involved? Christ, it has to be.
“Well,” Sergeant Manning said, coming up behind Pekach, “he didn’t do that to himself. I’m going to call it in to Homicide.”
“I’ve got to get to a phone myself,” Pekach said, thinking out loud.
“Sir?”
No, I don’t. You’re not going to call Bob Talley and volunteer to go with him to tell Helene that Jerry’s dead.
“I’m going to get out of everybody’s way. If Homicide wants a statement from me, they know where to find me.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Manning said.
Dave Pekach turned and walked out of the house and got back in his car.
TWO
When the call came into the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department from Police Radio that Officer Jerome H. Kellog had been found shot to death in his home in the Twenty-fifth District, Detective Joseph P. D’Amata was holding down the desk.
D’Amata took down the information quickly, hung up, and then called, “We’ve got a job.”
When there was no response, D’Amata looked around the room, which is on the second floor of the Roundhouse, its windows opening to the south and overlooking the parking lot behind the building. It was just about empty.
“Where the hell is everybody?” D’Amata, a slightly built, natty, olive-skinned thirty-eight-year-old, wondered aloud.
D’Amata walked across the room and stuck his head in the open door of Lieutenant Louis Natali’s office. Natali, who was also olive-skinned, dapper, and in his mid-thirties, looked something like D’Amata. He was with Sergeant Zachary Hobbs, a stocky, ruddy-faced forty-four-year-old. Both looked up from whatever they were doing on Natali’s desk.
“We’ve got a job. In the Twenty-fifth. A cop. A plainclothes narc by the name of Kellog.”
