Detective Weisbach was promoted to sergeant three weeks before he passed the bar examination. With it came a transfer to the office of just-promoted Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, who had become Chief of the Detective Division.
It just made sense, he told Natalie, to stick around the Department for a little longer. If he was going to go into private practice, they would need a nest egg to furnish an office, pay the rent, and to keep afloat until his practice reached the point where it would support them.
By then, although he was really afraid to tell even Natalie, much less his mother, he was honest enough to admit to himself that the idea of practicing law, handling people’s messy divorces, trying to keep some scumbag from going to prison, that sort of thing, did not have half the appeal for him that being a cop did.
When he passed the lieutenant’s examination, Chief Lowenstein actually took him out and bought him lunch and told him that if he kept up the good work, there was no telling how high he could rise in the Department. Natalie said that Chief Lowenstein was probably just being polite. But when the promotion list came out, and he was assigned to the Intelligence Unit, instead of in uniform in one of the districts, he told Natalie he knew Lowenstein had arranged it, and that he had meant what he said.
There had been a shake-up in the Department, massive retirements in connection with a scandal, and he had made captain much sooner than he had expected to. With that promotion came an assignment in uniform, to the Nineteenth District, as commanding officer. The truth was that he rather liked the reflection he saw in the mirror of Captain Mike Weisbach in a crisp white shirt, and captain’s bars glistening on his shoulders, but Natalie said she liked him better in plain clothes.
More vacancies were created two years later in the upper echelons of the Department, as sort of an aftershock to the scandal and the retirements the original upheaval had caused. Three staff inspectors, two of whom told Mike they had never planned to leave the Internal Affairs Division, were encouraged to take the inspector’s examination. That of course meant there were now three vacancies for staff inspectors, and Mike had already decided to take the exam even before Chief Lowenstein called him up and said that it would be a good idea for him to do so.
And like the men he had replaced, Mike Weisbach thought he had found his final home in the Department. He had some vague notion that, a couple of years before his retirement rolled around, if there was an inspector’s exam, he would take it. There would be a larger retirement check if he went out as an inspector, but he preferred to do what he was doing now to doing what the Department might have him do-he didn’t want to wind up in some office in the Roundhouse, for example-if he became an inspector now.
Staff inspectors, who were sometimes called-not pejoratively-“supercops,” or “superdetectives,” had, Weisbach believed, the most interesting, most satisfying jobs in the Department. They handled complicated investigations, often involving prominent government officials. It was the sort of work Mike Weisbach liked to do, and which he knew he was good at.
He still went to work in the morning looking forward to what the day would bring. It was only rarely that he was handed a job he would rather not do.
This “observation” of a Homicide investigation fell into that category. It was the worst kind of job. The moment he showed up on the scene, whichever Homicide detective had the job-for that matter, the whole Homicide Unit-would immediately and correctly deduce that they were not being trusted to do their job the way it should be done.
And he would feel their justified resentment, not Lowenstein or Mayor Carlucci.
As he followed Harry McElroy, crossing over Old York Road and onto Hunting Park Avenue, then onto Ninth Street, he tried to be philosophical about it. There was no sense moaning over something he couldn’t control.
The street in front of Officer Kellog’s home was now crowded with police vehicles of all descriptions, and Mike was not surprised to see Mickey O’Hara’s antenna-festooned Buick among them.
“I don’t have to tell you what to do,” Chief Lowenstein said as he got out of the car. “Call me after the Milham interview.”
“Yes, sir,” Mike said, and walked toward the District cop standing at the door of the row house.
The cop looked uncomfortable. He recognized the unmarked Plymouth as a police vehicle, and was wise enough in the ways of the Department to know that a nearly new unmarked car was almost certain to have been assigned to a senior white-shirt, but this rumpled little man was a stranger to him.
“I’m Staff Inspector Weisbach. I know your orders are to keep everybody out, but Chief Lowenstein wants me to go in.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Henry Quaire and Lieutenant Lou Natali were in the kitchen, trying to stand out of the way of the crew of laboratory technicians.
They don’t have any more business here than I do. You don’t get to be a Homicide detective unless you know just about everything there is to know about working a crime scene. Homicide detectives don’t need to be supervised.
“Good morning, Henry, Lou.”
“Hello, Mike,” Quaire replied. His face registered his surprise, and a moment later his annoyance, at seeing Weisbach.
“Inspector,” Natali said.
Weisbach looked at the body and the pool of blood and quickly turned away. He was beyond the point of becoming nauseous at the sight of a violated body, but it was very unpleasant for him. His brief glance would stay a painfully clear memory for a long time.
“Shot twice, it looks, at close range,” Quaire offered.
“I don’t suppose you know who did it?” a voice behind Mike asked.
Mike turned to face Mr. Michael J. O’Hara of the Bulletin.
“Not yet, Mickey,” Quaire said. “The uniform was told to keep people out of here.”
“I have friends in high places, Henry,” O’Hara said. “Not only do I know Staff Inspector Weisbach here well enough to ask him what the hell he’s doing here, but I know the legendary Chief Lowenstein himself. Lowenstein told the uniform to let me in, Henry. He wouldn’t have, otherwise.”
“He’s out there?” Quaire asked.
O’Hara nodded.
“Talking to Captain Talley.”
“I want to talk to Talley too,” Quaire said, and walked toward the front door.
“So what are you doing here, Mike?” O’Hara asked.
“‘Observing,’” Weisbach said. He saw the displeased reaction on Lieutenant Lou Natali’s face.
“Is that between you and me, or for public consumption?” O’Hara asked.
“Spell my name right, please.”
“‘Observing’? Or ‘supervising’?”
“Observing.”
“Exactly what does that mean?”
“Why don’t you ask Chief Lowenstein? I’m not sure, myself.”
“OK. I get the picture. But-this is for both of you, off the record, if you want-do you have any idea who shot Kellog?”
“No,” Natali said quickly.
“I just got here, Mike.”
“Is there anything to the story that the Widow Kellog is-how do I phrase this delicately?- personally involved with Wally Milham?”
“I don’t know how to answer that delicately,” Natali said.
“Mike?”
“I heard that gossip for the first time about fifteen minutes ago,” Weisbach said. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.”
His eye fell on something in the open cabinet behind Natali’s head.
“What’s that?” he asked, and pushed by Natali for a closer look.
“It’s a tape recorder. With a gadget that turns it on whenever the phone is used,” Weisbach said. “Has that been dusted for prints, Lou?”
