W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

The malefactors knew that the magistrate would probably release them on their own recognizance, and that if they actually got to trial they would walk, but it was a fucking pain in the ass to go through all that bullshit.

Officer Bailey would at some point shortly thereafter inform the trash there was a way to avoid all the inconvenience. They could make their backyard so clean they could eat off it. Get rid of all the garbage, right down to where there once had been grass. Get it all in plastic bags or something, and put it out on the street so the garbageman could take it off.

And keep it that way from now on, or Officer Bailey, who was going to check, would come down on their trashy asses like a ton of bricks, they could believe that.

Far more often than not, the malefactors would agree to this alternate solution of the problem at hand.

Mr. Leslie had, indeed, heard stories about the old black cop who had a hair up his ass about burning garbage, and had heard stories that if he caught you, he’d make you clean up the whole goddamned place or throw your ass in jail.

He was debating- Jesus Christ, I’m tired -whether it would be better to let the cop lock him up, or clean up the yard. It would take fucking forever to get all this shit out of here.

Mr. Leslie was not given the opportunity to make a choice.

Officer Bailey just spun him around and, guiding him with one hand on his arm and the other on his shoulder, led him to the cop car. He opened the door and guided Mr. Leslie to a seat in the rear.

Then he returned to the backyard, and the pile of garbage. He took a mechanical pencil from his pocket, squatted beside the garbage, and began to shove things aside. The first item he uncovered was a wedding picture.

He looked at it carefully.

“Lord almighty!” he said wonderingly.

He stirred the garbage a bit more. He was looking for the frame it was logical to assume would be with a photograph of what was supposed to be the happiest moment of a man’s life. He could not find one.

He stopped stirring, and, still squatting, was motionless in thought for about thirty seconds.

Then he stood up and walked to Leslie’s house. He rapped on the door with his nightstick until the brown-trash Puerto Rican woman appeared.

She stared at him with contempt.

“ Telefono? ” Officer Bailey inquired.

The brown-trash woman just looked at him.

He looked over her shoulder, saw a telephone sitting on top of the refrigerator, pointed to it and repeated, “ Telefono.”

Her expression didn’t change, but she shrugged, which Officer Bailey decided could be interpreted to mean that she had given him permission to enter her home.

And now the phone won’t work. They won’t have paid that bill either.

There was a dial tone.

“Homicide, Detective Kramer.”

“Detective, this is Officer Woodrow W. Bailey, of the Thirty-ninth District.”

“What can I do for you, Bailey?”

“I’d like to talk to somebody working the job of that police officer, Kellog, who was murdered.”

“What have you got, Bailey?”

“You working the job, Detective?”

“The assigned detective’s not here. But I’m working it.”

“What I got may not be anything, but I thought it was worth telling you.”

“What have you got, Bailey?”

“A fellow named James Howard Leslie-he’s a junkie, done some time for burglary-was burning garbage in his backyard.”

“And?” Detective Kramer asked, somewhat impatiently.

“I put the fire out, and then I got a good look at what he was burning. I don’t know…”

“What, Bailey?”

“There was a photograph of Officer Kellog and his wife, on their wedding day, in his garbage.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Detective Kramer asked, very carefully: “How do you know it was Officer Kellog?”

“There’s a sign on the wall behind him. ‘Good Luck Officer Kellog From the Seventeenth District.’ And I remembered his picture in the newspapers.”

“Where’s the picture now?”

“I left it there.”

“Where’s the guy…Leslie, you said?”

“In my car. I arrested him for setting an unlawful fire.”

“Where are you?”

“Behind his house. In the alley. The 1900 block of Sedgwick Street.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t let him out of your sight, don’t let anybody near where you found the picture, and don’t touch nothing you don’t have to.”

Bailey hung up the telephone, then called the Thirty-ninth District and asked for a supervisor to meet him at the scene.

“What have you got, Bailey?” the Corporal inquired.

“A garbage burner,” Bailey said, and hung up.

He nodded at Leslie’s Puerto Rican woman, then walked back through the yard to his car and got behind the wheel.

“Hey, Officer, what’s happening?” Mr. Leslie inquired, sliding forward with some difficulty on the seat to get closer to the fucking cop.

“You under arrest, Speed,” Officer Bailey replied. “For setting a fire in your backyard.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, man! For burning some fucking garbage?”

“If I was you, I’d just sit there and close my mouth,” Officer Bailey replied.

As a general rule of thumb, unless the visitor to the Mayor’s office was someone really important (“really important” being defined as someone of the ilk of a United States Senator, the Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, or the Cardinal Archbishop of the Diocese of Philadelphia) Mrs. Annette Cossino, the Mayor’s secretary, would escort the visitor to the door of the Mayor’s office, push it open, and say, “The Mayor will see you now.”

The visitor would then be able to see the Mayor deep in concentration, dealing with some document of great importance laid out on his massive desk. After a moment or two, the Mayor would glance toward the door, look surprised and apologetic, and rise to his feet.

“Please excuse me,” he would say. “Sometimes…”

Visitors would rarely fail to be impressed with the fact that the Mayor was tearing himself from Something Important to receive them.

This afternoon, however, on learning that Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein had asked for an appointment for himself and Inspector Peter Wohl, His Honor had decided to deviate from the normal routine.

While he could not be fairly accused of being paranoid, the threatened resignation of Chief Lowenstein had caused the Mayor to consider that he really had few friends, people he could really trust, and that Matt Lowenstein was just about at the head of that short list.

“When he comes in, Annette,” the Mayor ordered, “you let me know he’s here, and I’ll come out and get him.”

Such a gesture would, the Mayor believed, permit Chief Lowenstein to understand the high personal regard in which he was held. And Peter Wohl would certainly report the manner in which Lowenstein had been welcomed to the Mayor’s office to his father. The Mayor was perfectly willing to admit-at least to himself-that his rise through every rank to Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department-which, of course, had led to his seeking the mayoralty-would not have been possible had not Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl covered his ass in at least half a dozen really bad situations.

And when he thought about that, he realized that Inspector Peter Wohl was no longer a nice young cop, but getting to be a power in his own right. And that he could safely add him to the short list of people he could trust.

He was pleased with his decision to greet Lowenstein and Wohl in a special manner.

And was thus somewhat annoyed when he pulled the door to his office open, a warm smile on his face, his hand extended, and found that Chief Lowenstein was at Annette’s desk talking on the telephone.