W.E.B Griffin - The Witness

The Day After New Year's Day Reception given by Taddeus Czernick, who was the police commissioner of the City of Philadelphia was considered by Staff Inspector Peter F. Wohl as a lousy idea whose time had unfortunately come.

New Year's Eve is not a popular festive occasion so far as the police of Philadelphia are concerned. For one thing, almost no police are free to make merry themselves, because they are on duty. On New Year's Eve all the amateur drunks are out in force, with a lamentable tendency to settle midnight differences of opinion with one form of violence or another, and/or to run their automobiles through red lights and into one another, which of course requires the professional services of the Police Department to put things in order.

New Year's Day is worse. Philadelphia greets the New Year with the Mummer's Parade down Broad Street. There are massive crowds of people, many of whom have ingested one form of antifreeze or another, to control. Pickpockets and other thieves, who have been anxiously awaiting the chance to ply their trades, come out of the woodwork.

For a very long time, the Day After New Year's Day was a day on which every police officer who did not absolutely have to be on duty stayed home, slept late, and tried to forget how he had spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

But then, during the reign of Police Commissioner Jerry Carlucci, that all changed. Jerry Carlucci had decided that it behooved him to make some gesture to the senior commanders of the Department in token of his appreciation for their faithful service during the past year.

He would, he decided, have a Commissioner's Reception at his home, and invite every captain and above in the Department. It would have been nice to invite all the white shirts, but there were just too many lieutenants; they would have to wait until they got themselves promoted. Since New Year's Day was out of the question, because everybody was working, the Day After New Year's Day was selected.

By the time Commissioner Czernick had assumed office, following the election of Jerry Carlucci as mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, the Commissioner's Reception on the Day After New Year's Day had become a tradition.

The wives, of course, loved it. Because their husbands had been working, they hadn't had the chance to do anything special on New Year's Eve. Now, through the gracious invitation of the commissioner, they had the opportunity to get all dressed up and meet with the other ladies in a pleasant atmosphere.

If the senior officers of the Philadelphia Police Department, who had really looked forward to doing nothing more physically exerting than walking from the bedroom to their chair in front of the TV in the living room, didn't like it, too bad.

Marriage was a two-way street. It was not too much to ask of a husband that he put on either his best uniform (uniforms were " suggested") or his good suit and spend three hours in the company of his spiffed-up spouse, who had spent New Year's watching the TV.

What wives thought of the affair was not really germane for Staff Inspector Wohl, who did not have one, had never had one, and had absolutely no desire to change that situation anytime soon.

There was a Mrs. Wohl at the reception however, in the role of wife. She was Mrs. Olga Wohl, whose husband was Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl, Retired.

Mrs. Wohl had actually said to Staff Inspector Wohl, "Peter, if you were married, your wife would be here with you. She would love it."

Peter Wohl had learned at twelve that debating his mother was a nowin arrangement, so he simply smiled at her.

"And you should have worn your uniform," Mrs. Wohl went on. "You look so nice in it. Why didn't you?"

Wohl was wearing a nearly new single-breasted glen plaid suit, a light blue, button-down collar shirt, and a striped necktie his administrative assistant had told him was also worn by members of Her Britannic Majesty's Household Cavalry. He was a pleasant-looking thirty-five-year-old who did not much resemble what comes to mind when the term "cop" or "staff inspector" comes up.

"It didn't come back from the cleaners."

That was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Staff Inspector Wohl's uniform was hanging in one of his closets. He had bought it when he had been promoted to lieutenant, and the epaulets were adorned with a golden bar. Now the epaulets carried the golden oak leaf (like an army major's) of a staff inspector, but the uniform still looked almost brand-new. He had seldom worn it as a lieutenant, or as a captain, and he rarely wore it now. He had last worn it six months before at the inspector's funeral Captain Richard F. "Dutch" Moffitt had earned for himself by getting killed in the line of duty. It would not have bothered Staff Inspector Wohl if his uniform remained in his closet, unworn, until the moths ate it down to the last button hole.

"Well, you certainly have no one to blame but yourself for that."

"You're right, Mother," he said, reaching for another shrimp.

The food at the Commissioner's Day After New Year's Day Reception was superb. This was less a manifestation of either Commissioner Czernick' s taste or his generosity toward his guests but rather of the high esteem in which Commissioner Czernick and the police generally were held by various citizens of the City of Brotherly Love.

This, too, was a legacy from the reign of Jerry Carlucci as police commissioner. At the very first Commissioner's Reception to which then Sergeant Wohl had gone (under the mantle of then active Chief Inspector Wohl), the food had been heavily Italian in flavor When the mayor's many friends in the Italian community had heard that Jerry was having a party for the other cops on the Day After New Year's Day, it seemed only right that they sort of help him out.

You can say a lot of things, many of them unpleasant, about Jerry Carlucci, but nobody ever heard of him taking a dime. And on what he's making as commissioner, he can't afford to feed all them cops. Angelo, call Salvatore, and maybe Joe Fierellio, too, and tell them I'm gonna make up some pasta and a ham, and maybe some pastry, and send it out to Jerry Carlucci's house, for the Day After New Year's Day cop party he's giving, and ask them maybe they want to get in on it.

By the time Commissioner Carlucci's Second Annual Day After New Year' s Day Reception was held, the Commissioner's many friends in the other ethnic communities of the City of Brotherly Love had learned what the Italians had done. The repast of the Second Reception had been multinational in scope. By the time of Commissioner Carlucci's last Day After New Year's Day Reception (three years before; two days after which he had to resign to run for mayor), beingpermitted to make a little contribution to the Commissioner's Day After New Year's Day Reception carried a certain cachet among the city's restaurateurs, fish mongers, pastry bakers, florists, and wholesale butchers.

"When did you start drinking that?"

"Right after the waiter filled the glass."

"I mean, start drinking champagne?"

"As soon as I heard it was free, Mother."

"Don't be a smarty-pants, Peter. It gives me a headache, is what I mean."

"Then if I were you, I wouldn't drink it."

A tall, muscular, intelligent-faced young man, who looked to be in his late twenties, walked up to them.

"Good afternoon, Inspector," he said, and nodded at Olga Wohl. "Ma' am."

"Hello, Charley," Wohl said. "Do you know my mother?"

"No, I don't. I know Chief Wohl, ma'am."