“Before?”
“After.”
O’Hara shrugged his acceptance.
“Then we go to the Investigation Section, upstairs, where Cazerra, Meyer, and the two officers will be waiting. Inspector Sawyer will arrest Captain Cazerra. I will arrest Lieutenant Meyer. Their badges, IDs, and guns will be taken from them. Staff Inspector Weisbach, assisted by Detectives Payne and Martinez, will arrest the two officers, and take their guns and badges.”
“Am I going to get to be there?” O’Hara asked.
“When Inspector Sawyer comes in here, you leave,” Wohl said. “Wait outside. When we come out, we will be on our way upstairs. You can come with us.”
“Thank you.”
“The Fraternal Order of Police will be notified immediately after the arrests,” Wohl went on. “It will probably take thirty minutes for them to get an attorney, attorneys, here. When that is over, I will take Captain Cazerra to the Police Administration Building in my car, which will be driven by Sergeant Washington. He will not be placed in a cell. Chief Coughlin has arranged for him to be immediately booked, photographed, fingerprinted, and arraigned. He will almost certainly be released on his own recognizance.”
“Nice, smooth operation,” O’Hara said.
“The same thing will happen with the others. Weisbach will take Lieutenant Meyer to the Roundhouse in his car, with Officer Lewis driving. Detectives Payne and Martinez will take the two officers in a Special Operations car.”
“It would be nice if I could get a shot of Cazerra and Meyer in handcuffs,” O’Hara said.
Wohl ignored him.
“It would be a good public relations shot, either one of them in cuffs,” O’Hara pursued.
Wohl looked at him and shook his head.
“Mick,” he said. “I am aware that there are certain public relations aspects to this, otherwise the Prince of the Fourth Estate would not be sitting in my office with egg spots on his tie and his fly open.”
Mickey O’Hara glanced in alarm toward his crotch. His zipper was fastened.
“Screw you, Peter.” He laughed. “Question: Don’t you think the Mayor would be happier if Captain Cazerra were arrested by the new Chief of the Ethical Affairs Unit?”
“Why would that make the Mayor happier?”
“Maybe assisted by Detective Payne?” Mickey went on, not directly answering the question. “Handsome Matthew is always good copy. That picture, I’m almost sure, would make page one. Isn’t that what Carlucci wants? More to the point, why he fixed it for me to be here?”
“I suggested last night that Mike make all the arrests.”
“Thanks a lot, Peter,” Mike Weisbach said sarcastically.
“Coughlin shot me down,” Wohl went on. “There’s apparently a sacred protocol here, and Coughlin wants it followed.”
“Just trying to be helpful,” Mickey said. “For purely selfish reasons. I want to get invited back the next time. I guess the Mayor will have to be happy with a picture of the Black Buddha standing behind Cazerra going into the Roundhouse. That should produce a favorable reaction from the voting segment of the black population, right?”
“Even if it does humiliate every policeman in Philadelphia,” Wohl said bitterly. “Mike, you’ve heard it. See anything wrong with it?”
Weisbach shook his head.
“OK,” Wohl said. “Then that’s the way we’ll do it.”
“OK,” Weisbach parroted.
“Afterward, Mike, you and I are going to have a long talk about the Ethical Affairs Unit.”
“Right,” Weisbach said.
Wohl’s door opened and Chief Inspector Coughlin walked in.
“Morning,” he said.
“Good morning, Chief,” Wohl and Weisbach said, almost in unison.
“How are you, Mickey?” Coughlin said cordially, offering his hand.
“No problems,” O’Hara said.
“Peter fill you in on what’s going to happen?”
“Yep.”
“Mick, just now, as I was driving over here, I wondered if you might not want to go with Captain Sabara when he arrests Cassandro.”
“Nice try, Denny,” O’Hara said. “But like I told Peter, a picture of a third-rate gangster in cuffs isn’t news. A District captain getting arrested is.”
Officer O’Mara put his head in the door.
“Inspector Sawyer is here, sir.”
Wohl looked at Coughlin, who nodded.
“Ask him to come in,” Peter said.
Inspector Gregory Sawyer, a somewhat portly, gray-haired man in his early fifties, came in the room.
He was visibly surprised at seeing Mickey O’Hara.
“I’ll see you guys later,” Mickey said. “How are you, Greg?”
He walked out of the room.
“Greg,” Coughlin said. “I wasn’t exactly truthful with you last night.”
“Excuse me, Chief?”
“That thing ready?” Coughlin asked, pointing at the tape recorder.
“Yes, sir,” Wohl said.
“Sit down, Greg,” Coughlin said.
“Yes, sir.”
“At the orders of the Commissioner, Inspector Wohl has been conducting an investigation of certain allegations involving Captain Cazerra, Lieutenant Meyer, and others in your division. A court order was obtained authorizing electronic surveillance of a room in the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel. What you are about to hear is one of the recordings made,” Coughlin said formally. “Turn it on, please,” he said, and then walked to Wohl’s window and looked out at the lawn in front of the building.
ELEVEN
At 7:40 A.M. Miss Penelope Detweiler was sitting up in her canopied four-poster bed in her three-room apartment on the second floor of the Detweiler mansion when Mrs. Violet Rogers, who had been employed as a domestic servant by the Detweilers since Miss Detweiler was in diapers, entered carrying a tray with coffee, toast, and orange juice.
Miss Detweiler was wearing a thin, pale blue, sleeveless nightgown. Her eyes were open, and there was a look of surprise on her face.
There was a length of rubber medical tubing tied around Miss Detweiler’s left arm between the elbow and the shoulder. A plastic, throwaway hypodermic injection syringe hung from Miss Detweiler’s lower left arm.
“Oh, Penny!” Mrs. Rogers moaned. “Oh, Penny!”
She put the tray on the dully gleaming cherrywood hope chest at the foot of the bed, then stood erect, her arms folded disapprovingly against her rather massive breast, her full, very black face showing mingled compassion, sorrow, and anger.
And then she met Miss Detweiler’s eyes.
“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Mrs. Rogers said, moaned, and walked quickly to the bed.
She waved a large, plump hand before Miss Detweiler’s eyes. There was no reaction.
She put her hand to Miss Detweiler’s forehead, then withdrew it as if the contact had burned.
