W.E.B Griffin: The Witness

"Mother, this is Sergeant Draper. He's Commissioner Cohan's driver."

"Nice to meet you," she said. "Are you having a nice time?"

"Yes, ma'am. Inspector, when you have a minute, the commissioner would like to have a word with you."

"Which commissioner, Charley?" Wohl asked. "Your commissioner, or that one?"

He raised his glass in the direction of half a dozen men gathered in a knot. One of them was the Hon. Jerry Carlucci. The others were Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl, Retired, Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Captain Jack McGovern, and Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick.

"Mine, sir," Sergeant Draper said, a little chagrined. "Commissioner Cohan is over thataway." He pointed with an inclination of his head.

"Tell him I'll be right with him."

"Yes, sir."

"Where, by the way," Olga Wohl asked as soon as Draper was out of earshot, "is your driver?"

"I don't have a driver, Mother. I am a lowly staff inspector."

"You know what I mean. The Payne boy. Your father likes him."

"Oh, you mean, my administrative assistant?"

"You know very well what I meant. Shouldn't he be here?"

"I believe Officer Payne is having dinner with his parents."

"He should be here. He could meet people."

"He already knows people."

"I mean theright people."

"He already knows the right people. He told me that he and his father were going to play golf with H. Richard Detweiler and Chadwick T. Nesbitt this morning."

"Really?"

Chadwick T. Nesbitt III and H. Richard Detweiler were chairman of the board and president, respectively, of Nesfoods, International, which had begun more than a century before as Nesbitt Potted Meats and was now Philadelphia's largest single employer.

"Now ifI were interested in social climbing, I probably could have talked myself into an invitation."

"You don't play golf."

"I could learn."

"He's a policeman now, Peter. It doesn't matter who his family is."

"Mother, I have no intention of telling them, but I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that if Jerry Carlucci or the commissioner knew where Matt is, they would be delighted."

Mrs. Wohl sniffed; Peter wasn't sure what it meant.

"I'd better go see what Cohan wants," Wohl said. "Can I trust you to go easy on the booze?"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter Wohl!"

"I'll be right back," Wohl said. "I hope."

Deputy Commissioner-Administration Francis J. Cohan was a fairskinned, finely featured, trim man of fifty or so. He was dressed in a suit almost identical to Peter Wohl's, but instead of the blue buttondown collar shirt and striped necktie, he wore a stiffly starched white shirt and a tie bearing miniature representations of the insignia of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

"Happy New Year, Commissioner," Wohl said. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Happy New Year, Peter," Cohan said, smiling and offering his hand. " Yes, I did. Why don't we get ourselves a fresh drink and find a quiet corner someplace? What is that, champagne?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did you start drinking that?"

"As soon as I saw the bottles with 'Moet et Chandon' on them. This is first-class stuff."

"It gives me a headache."

"May I say I admire your taste in suits, Commissioner?"

Cohan chuckled. "I noticed," he said. "Makes us look like the Bobbsey Twins, doesn't it?"

"Did you ever notice, sir, that when a man goes someplace and sees someone else with a suit like his, he thinks, 'Well, he certainly has good taste,' but if a woman sees somebody with a dress like hers, she wants to go home?"

"Don't get me started on the subject of women," Cohan said, and put his hand on Wohl's arm and led him to the bar. "Sometimes I think the Chinese had the right idea. Just keep enough for breeding purposes and drown the rest at birth."

Commissioner Cohan ordered a fresh Scotch and water. "And bubbly for my son here. You'd better give him two. Those look like small glasses, and this may take some time."

The bartender served the drinks.

"Tad Czernick said he has a little office off the hall; that we could use that," Cohan said. "Now let's see if we can find it."

I sense, Peter Wohl thought, that while this little chat is obviously important-Czernick knows about it-it doesn't concern anything I've either done wrong or have not done.

Commissioner Czernick's home office was closet-sized. There was barely room for a desk, an upholstered "executive" chair, and a second, straight-backed, metal chair. Wohl thought, idly, that it was probably used by Czernick only to make or take telephone calls privately. There were three telephones on the battered wooden desk. Cohan sat in the upholstered chair.

"Have you got room enough to turn around and close the door?" he asked.

"If I suck in my breath."

Wohl closed the door behind him and sat down, feeling something like a schoolboy, in the straight-backed chair.

"Peter, the sequence in which this happened was that I was going to talk to you first, then, if you were amenable, to Tad, and ifhe was amenable,then to the mayor. It didn't go that way. I got here as the mayor did. He wanted to talk to me. I had to take the opportunity; he was in a good mood. So the sequence has been reversed."

Which means that I am about to be presented with a fait accompli; Carlucci has apparently gone along with whatever Cohan wants to do, and whether I am amenable or not no longer matters.

"You're aware, I'm sure, Peter, that the great majority of FBI agents are either Irish or Mormons?"

"I know one named Franklin D. Roosevelt Stevens that I'll bet isn't either Irish or Mormon," Peter said.

Cohan laughed, but Peter saw that it was with an effort. "Okay," Cohan said. "Strike 'great majority' and insert 'a great many.' "

"Yes, sir. I've noticed, come to think of it."

"You ever hear the story, Peter, about why is it better to get arrested by an Irish FBI agent than a Mormon FBI agent?"

What the hell is this, a Polish joke?

"No, sir. I can't say that I have."

"Let's say the crime is spitting on the sidewalk, and the punishment is death by firing squad. You know they really do that, the Mormons in Utah, execute by firing squad?"

"Yes, sir. I'd heard that."

"Okay. So here's this guy, spitting on the sidewalk. If the Mormon FBI guy sees him, that's it. Cuff him. Read him his Miranda and stand him up against the wall. The law's the law. Spitters get shot. Period."

"I'm a little lost, Commissioner."

"Now, the Irish FBI agent: He sees the guy spitting. He knows it's against the law, but he knows that he's spit once or twice himself in his time. And maybe he thinks that getting shot for spitting is maybe a little harsh. So he either gets something in his eye so he can't identify the culprit, or he forgets to read him his rights."

"And therefore, be nice to Irish FBI agents?"

"What follows gets no further than Czernick's closet, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"You know Jack Malone, don't you?"

"Sure."

Before Chief Inspector Cohan had been named a deputy commissioner, Sergeant John J. Malone had been his driver. Wohl now remembered that Malone had been on the last lieutenant's list. He couldn't remember where he had been assigned. If, indeed, he had ever known.

"And?"

"What do I think of him? Good cop. Smart. Straight arrow. "

"Not always smart," Cohan said.

"Oh?"

"Assault is a felony," Cohan said carefully. "A police officer who is found guilty of committing any crime, not just a felony, is dismissed. A Mormon FBI guy would say, 'That's the law. Fire him. Put the felon in jail.' "

But you're Irish, right?

"You may have noticed, Peter, that I'm Irish," Cohan said.

"Who did he hit?"