Badge Of Honor: Men In Blue Part 41

"Yes, sir. Chief ..."

"Just do it, Lieutenant," Coughlin said. "Brewster, I'm sorry . . ."

"We know what happened, Dennis," Brewster Payne said. "Thank you for your courtesy."

The pallbearers waited to be summoned behind Saint Dominic's, in a small gra.s.sy area between the church and the fence of the church cemetery.

Wohl took the opportunity to speak to the Jersey trooper lieutenant.

"I'm Peter Wohl," he said, walking up to him and extending his hand.

"Bob McGrory," the lieutenant said. "I heard Dutch talk about you."

"All bad?"

"He said you had all the makings of a good Highway Patrolman, and then went bad and took the examination for lieutenant.''

"Dutch really liked Highway," Wohl said. "And they liked him. One of his sergeants rolled on the 'a.s.sist officer' call, found out that Dutch was involved, and called in every Highway Patrol car in the city.''

"Dutch was a good guy. G.o.dd.a.m.ned shame, this," McGrory said.

"Yeah," Wohl agreed. "Mind if I ask you something else?"

"Go ahead."

"We've got a homicide. Son of a very important man. His car, a Jaguar, turned up missing. Then I heard they found it in Jersey. You know anything about that?"

"Major Knotts found it," McGrory said. "On his way over here last night. It was on a dirt road off Three Twenty-two."

"Do you know if they turned up anything? Besides the car?" Wohl asked.

"Knotts told me that when they got the NCIC hit, and then heard from you guys, he ordered the mobile crime lab in. And they were supposed to have people out there this morning, when it was light, to have a look around the area."

"You usually do that when you find a hot car?"

"No, but the word was 'homicide,' " McGrory said. Then he added, "Inspector, if they found anything interesting, I'm sure they would have pa.s.sed it on to you. And probably to me, too. I mean, they knew Dutch and I were close."

"Yeah, I'm sure they would have," Wohl said, and started to say something else when someone spoke his name.

He turned and saw Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick's aide.

"h.e.l.lo, Jank," Wohl said. "This is Lieutenant McGrory. Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick's indispensable right-hand man."

The two shook hands.

"Inspector Wohl," Jankowitz said, formally, "Commissioner Czernick would like to see you in his office at two this afternoon."

"Okay," Wohl said. "I'll be there."

Jankowitz started to say something, then changed his mind. He smiled, nodded at McGrory, and walked away.

Watching him go, Wohl's eyes focused on the street. He saw a roped-off area in which a number of television camera crew trucks were parked. And he saw Louise. She was standing on a truck, and looking at the area through binoculars. When they seemed to be pointed in his direction, he raised his hand to shoulder level and waved. He wondered if she saw him.

A hand touched his shoulder. He turned and saw his father. And then his mother and Barbara Crowley.

"h.e.l.lo, Dad," Peter said. "Lieutenant McGrory, this is my father, Chief Inspector Wohl, Retired. And my mother, and Miss Crowley.''

Barbara surprised him by kissing him.

"When we heard you were going to be a pallbearer," Peter's mother said, "I asked Barbara if she wanted to come. Gertrude Moffitt, before she knew you were going to be a pallbearer, told me she'd given us three family seats, and since you wouldn't need one now, I asked Barbara. I mean she's almost family, you know what I mean."

"That was a good idea," Peter said.

"Got a minute, Peter?" Chief Inspector August Wohl, Retired, said, and took Peter's arm and led him out of hearing.

"You're in trouble," Peter's father said. "You want to tell me about it?"

"I'm not in trouble, Dad," Peter said. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"What's that got to do with being in trouble? The word is around that both the Polack and the mayor are after your scalp."

"They think I talked to Mickey O'Hara and said something I shouldn't. I haven't seen O'Hara in ten days. I don't know who ran off at the mouth, but it wasn't me. And I can't help it if Nelson is p.i.s.sed at me. I didn't say anything to him, either, that I shouldn't."

"The mayor will throw you to the fish if he thinks he will get the Ledger off his back. And so will the Polack. You better get this straightened out, Peter, and quick."

There was a burst of organ music from Saint Dominic's. The man from Marshutz & Sons began to collect the pallbearers.

When he was formed in ranks beside Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl glanced at the street again, at the TV trucks. He saw Louise again, and was sure that she was looking at him, and that she had seen Barbara kiss him.

She was waving her hand slowly back and forth, as if she knew he was watching her, and wanted to wave goodbye.

EIGHTEEN.

One of their own had died in the line of duty, and police officers from virtually every police department in a one-hundred-mile circle around Philadelphia had come to honor him. They had come in uniform, and driving their patrol cars, and the result was a monumental traffic jam, despite the best efforts of more than twenty Philadelphia Traffic Division officers to maintain order.

When Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl made their careful way down the brownstone steps of Saint Dominic's Church (Dutch Moffitt's casket was surprisingly heavy) toward the hea.r.s.e waiting at the curb, there were three lines of cars, parked b.u.mper to b.u.mper, prepared to escort Captain Moffitt to his last resting place.

Their path to the curb was lined with Highway Patrol officers, saluting. There was an additional formation of policemen on the street, and the police band, and the color guard. To the right, behind barriers, was the press. Peter looked for, but did not see, Louise Dutton.

Both Peter and Dennis Coughlin grunted with the effort as they raised the end of the casket to the level of the hea.r.s.e bed, and set it gently on the chrome-plated rollers in the floor. They pushed it inside, and a man from Marshutz & Sons flipped levers that would keep it from moving on the way to the cemetery.

The hea.r.s.e would be preceded now by the limousine of the archbishop of Philadelphia and his entourage of lesser clerics, including Dutch's parish priest, the rector of Saint Dominic's, and the police chaplain. Ahead of the hea.r.s.e was a police car carrying a captain of the Traffic Division, sort of an en route command car. And out in front were twenty Highway Patrol motorcycles.

Next came Dennis V. Coughlin's Oldsmobile, with the limousine carrying the rest of the pallbearers behind it. Then came the flower cars. There had been so many flowers that the available supply of flower cars in Philadelphia and Camden had been exhausted. It had been decided that half a dozen vans would be loaded with flowers and sent to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery ahead of the procession, both to cut down the length of the line of flower cars, and so that there would be flowers in place when the procession got there.

The flower vans would travel with other vehicles, mostly buses, preceding the funeral procession, the band, the honor guard, the firing squad, and the police officers who would line the path the pallbearers would take from the cemetery road to the grave site.

Behind the flower cars in the funeral procession were the limousines carrying the family, followed by the mayor's Cadillac, two cars full of official dignitaries, and then the police commissioner's car, and those of chief inspectors. Next came the cars of "official" friends (those on the invitation list), then the cars of other friends, and finally the cars of the police officers who had come to pay their respects.

It would take a long time just to load the family, dignitaries, and official friends. As soon as the last official-friends car had been loaded, the procession would start to move away from the church.

"Tom," Chief Inspector Coughlin ordered from the backseat of the Oldsmobile, "anything on the radio?"

"I'll check, sir," Sergeant Lenihan said. He took the microphone from the glove compartment.

"C-Charlie One," he said.

"C-Charlie One," radio replied.

"We're at Saint Dominic's, about to leave for Holy Sepulchre," Lenihan said. "Anything for us?"

"Nothing, C-Charlie One," radio said.

"Check for me, please, Tom," Wohl said. "Seventeen."

"Anything for Isaac Seventeen?" Lenihan said.

"Yes, wait a minute. They were trying to reach him a couple of minutes ago."

Wohl leaned forward on the seat to better hear the speaker.

"Isaac Seventeen is to contact Homicide," the radio said.

"Thank you," Lenihan said.

"There's a phone over there," Coughlin said, pointing to a pay phone on the wall of a florist's shop across the street. "You've got time."

Peter trotted to the phone, fed it a dime, and called Homicide.

"This is Inspector Wohl," he said, when a Homicide detective answered.

"Oh, yeah, Inspector. Wait just a second." There was a pause, and then the detective, obviously reading a note, went on: "The New Jersey state police have advised us of the discovery of a murder victim meeting the description of Pierre St. Maury, also known as Errol F. Watson. The body was found near the recovered stolen Jaguar automobile. The identification is not confirmed. Photographs and fingerprints of St. Maury are being sent to New Jersey. Got that?"

"Read it again," Wohl asked, and when it had been, said, "If there's anything else in the next hour or so, I'm with C-Charlie One."

He hung up without waiting for a reply and ran back to Chief Inspector Coughlin's Oldsmobile.

"They found-the Jersey state troopers-found a body that's probably St. Maury near Nelson's car," he reported.

"Interesting," Coughlin said.

"The suspect they had in Homicide said there was talk on the street that two guys were going to get the key to Nelson's apartment from his boyfriend," Wohl said. "To see what they could steal."

There was no response from Coughlin except a grunt.

The Oldsmobile started to move.

As they pa.s.sed the cordoned-off area for the press, Wohl saw Louise. She was talking into a microphone, not on camera, but as if she were taking notes.

Or, Peter thought, she didn't 't want to see me.

More than three hundred police cars formed the tail of Captain Richard C. Moffitt's funeral procession. They all had their flas.h.i.+ng lights turned on. By the time the last visiting mourner dropped his gears.h.i.+ft lever in "D" and started moving, the head of the procession was well over a mile and a half ahead of him.

The long line of limousines and flower cars and police cars followed the hea.r.s.e and His Eminence the Archbishop down Torresdale Avenue to Rhawn Street, out Rhawn to Oxford Avenue, turned right onto Hasbrook, right again onto Central Avenue, and then down Central to Tookany Creek Parkway, and then down the parkway to Cheltenham Avenue, and then out Cheltenham to the main entrance to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at Cheltenham and Easton Road.

Each intersection along the route was blocked for the procession, and it stayed blocked until the last car (another Philadelphia Traffic Division car) had pa.s.sed. Then the officers blocking that intersection jumped in their cars (or later, in Cheltenham Towns.h.i.+p, on their motorcycles) and raced alongside, and past, the slow-moving procession to block another intersection.

Dennis V. Coughlin lit a cigar in the backseat of the Oldsmobile almost as soon as they started moving, and sat puffing thoughtfully on it, slumped down in the seat.

He didn't say a word until the fence of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery could be seen, in other words for over half an hour. Then he reached forward and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the back of the front seat.

"Peter, as I understand this," he said, "we put Dutch on whatever they call that thing that lowers the casket into the hole. Then we march off" and take up position far enough away from the head of the casket to make room for the archbishop and the other priests."

"Yes, sir," Peter agreed.

"From the time we get there, we don't have anything else to do, right? I mean, when it's all over, we'll walk by and say something to Jeannie and Gertrude Moffitt, but there's nothing else we have to do as pallbearers, right?"

"I think that's right, Chief," Peter said.

"The minute we get there, Peter, I mean when we march away from the gravesite, and are standing there, you take off."

"Sir?"

"You take off. You go to the first patrol car that can move, and you tell them to take you back to Marshutz & Sons. Then you get in your car, whose radio is out of service, and you go home and you throw some stuff in a bag, and you go to Jersey in connection with the murder of the suspect in the Nelson killing. And you stay there, Peter, until I tell you to come home."

"Commissioner Czernick sent Sergeant Jankowitz to tell me the commissioner wants me in his office at two this afternoon," Peter said.

"I'll handle Czernick," Coughlin said. "You do what I tell you, Peter. If nothing else, I can buy you some time for him to cool down. Sometimes, Czernick lets his temper get in the way of his common sense. Once he's done something dumb, like swearing to put you in uniform, a.s.signed to Night Command, permanently, on the 'last out' s.h.i.+ft-"

"My G.o.d, is it that bad?" Peter said.

"If Carlucci loses the election, the new mayor will want a new police commissioner," Coughlin said. "If the Ledger doesn't support Carlucci, he may lose the election. You're expendable, Peter. What I was saying was that once Czernick has done something dumb, and then realized it was a mistake, he's got too hard a head to admit he was wrong. And he doesn't have to really worry about the cops lining up behind you for getting screwed. I think you're a good cop. h.e.l.l, I know you're a good cop. But there are a lot of forty-five- and fifty-year-old lieutenants and captains around who think the reason they didn't get promoted when you did is because their father wasn't a chief inspector."

"I won't resign," Peter said. "Night Command, back in uniform ... no matter what."

"Come on, Peter," Coughlin said. "You didn't come on the job last week. You know what they can do to somebody-civil service be d.a.m.ned-when they want to get rid of him. If you can put up with going back in uniform and Night Command, he'll think of something else."

Peter didn't reply.