W. Griffin: The Last Witness

Ten minutes later, Carlos picked up the handheld radio and said: “Visual made. Coming up on my two o’clock. Should overtake in five-repeat five-minutes. Over.”

“L-Five, Tin Can. I see you on-screen. Understand five minutes.”

Carlos glanced at the gorgeous brunette as he reached for the Fountain’s throttles. She was napping, her empty champagne cup tipped over in her lap.

He retarded the three big diesels slightly. The speed indicator on the dash and on the readout on the screen of the Global Positioning Satellite receiver both dropped from fifty to thirty-five mph.

The pack quickly pulled away from the Fountain. When he was about a hundred yards back, Carlos looked over his right shoulder, saw no other boats, and turned the wheel to the right. Then, lining up the cargo ship with the tip of his bow, he bumped the throttles up until the speed indicators read sixty-five.

He glanced back to his left. The high-performance boats cut across the water, their frothy white V-shaped wakes scoring the deep blue surface.

No one seemed to notice that their pack now numbered nine.

Six minutes later, Miguel Treto’s voice crackled over the radio: “L-Five, Tin Can. Approach at the stern, starboard side. No lines. My crew will hold you alongside.”

“Got it.”

Carlos saw a white thirty-foot-long center console fishing boat come out from the far side of the Nuevo Dia , crossing in front of her bow. There looked to be maybe ten aboard-young men and women-plus a burly, shirtless captain with dreadlocks.

The passengers were quickly moving under a cover at the front of the boat as it picked up speed and headed toward land.

Carlos deftly maneuvered the Fountain into the shadow of the Nuevo Dia , nudging up against four rubber bumpers hanging on either side of the boarding ladder. A pair of long aluminum poles with hooks reached down and held the boat secure against the bumpers.

Carlos glanced at the brunette, who now craned her neck looking up to the top of the ladder. He did, too, and saw that an attractive young blonde in a sundress had already started down the rungs.

He crossed the cockpit, preparing to help her step from the ladder onto the Fountain. He looked up again and grinned. He had a perfect angle right up her dress-and saw she wore no panties.

The brunette led the last of the girls into the cabin as the long aluminum pole next to Carlos started being pulled upward. About a minute later, it reappeared with the handles of an enormous black duffel bag looped around its hook. The pole lowered the stuffed duffel to the deck of the Fountain, then pulled back up and lowered a second one.

Carlos dragged them to the transom, opened a hatch there in the deck, and dropped the bags into the dry-storage hold below.

As the Fountain began drifting away from the cargo ship, Carlos spun the wheel and gave the port engine about twice the throttle of the others, causing the Fountain to turn clockwise almost in its own length. He then started to straighten up the wheel as he added more throttle to the other two engines, balancing out the rpm’s. Then he pushed all three throttles at once. The Fountain practically leapt forward, and in almost no time was hitting sixty-five mph.

Five minutes later, as a few of the girls were coming out of the cabin and sipping champagne from clear plastic cups, he spotted the last pack of boats in the Poker Run. He made turns to put his bow a little ahead of the pack, then bumped up the throttles to wide open.

Carlos pretended not to notice that the wind with the higher speeds was causing the brunette’s champagne to slosh all over her.

Office of the First Deputy Commissioner

Philadelphia Police Headquarters

Eighth and Race Streets

Sunday, November 16, 3:05 P.M.

“Yes-to answer the question that I’m sure has been on everyone’s mind-I’m damn well aware that this is a highly volatile situation,” the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, mayor of Philadelphia, all but growled. “To a large degree, the department has been lucky to keep quiet and compartmentalized the disappearance of the first two caseworkers. But with the McCain girl now gone missing, it would appear that that luck just ran the hell out.” He waved his right hand in the direction of the muted flat-screen television that was tuned to a local newscast. “Especially when the goddamn media gets wind of it.”

Five men, all standing, watched Carlucci pacing along the curved wall of bookshelves in the large third-floor office. Built in a circle design, the decades-old four-story “Roundhouse” was said not to have a straight wall anywhere, including in its elevators.

The men were First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, whose office it was; Captain Francis Xavier Hollaran, Coughlin’s assistant; Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein; Captain Henry Quaire, the head of the Homicide Unit and who reported to Lowenstein; and Quaire’s number two, Lieutenant Jason Washington. All were in plainclothes.

Carlucci was a massive-large-boned and heavyset-sixty-two-year-old with intense brown eyes and dark brown hair graying at the temples. He wore the suit he had put on for church that morning, a pin-striped gray woolen two-piece with a light blue dress shirt with white French cuffs and collar, and a red silk necktie with a matching silk pocket square.

Before becoming mayor, Carlucci had spent twenty-six years in the Philadelphia Police Department, holding, he was quick to announce, every rank but that of policewoman. He spoke bluntly and did not suffer fools-period. When he reached across the proverbial political aisle, it usually was with an iron fist. That certainly had made him more than a few enemies, but he didn’t give a damn. He enjoyed the respect of far many others-ones who appreciated his ability to not only confront seemingly impossible problems but, more times than not, to effectively fix them.

Carlucci stopped at the window near the big wooden desk. He turned to Coughlin, who stood behind the desk, next to the high-back black leather chair that showed years of use. Coughlin, tall and heavyset, with a full head of curly silver hair and eyes that missed nothing, projected a formidable presence.

“Denny, where the hell did you say Ralph was?”

“He’s the keynote speaker at the National Chiefs of Police convention.”

“Which is where?”

“Vegas.”

Carlucci’s eyebrows went up. “Of course he gets to go to tony Las Vegas. I think the nicest place-and I use that loosely-that I went as commissioner was Newark.”

There were a few chuckles.

Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariana was the department’s top cop-the last position Carlucci had held before his retirement and being elected mayor. Both the commissioner and the first deputy commissioner served at the mayor’s pleasure, although they were appointed to their jobs by the city’s managing director. The seven thousand policemen they commanded-the country’s fourth-largest force-were all civil servants.

Carlucci was neither surprised at Mariana’s absence nor was he angry. It was no secret that Mariana-a natty, stocky, balding Italian with four stars on his white uniform shirt-served as the face of the police department, while it was his three-star, Denny Coughlin, who effectively saw to the day-to-day running of the department.

And it was His Honor the mayor who ultimately called the shots.

The brass in the room had a long history-certainly professional but also to varying degrees personal-with one another. When young Philadelphia police officers showed promise, a “rabbi” quietly mentored them as they rose in the ranks, preparing them to take on greater responsibilities. Jerry Carlucci, for one example, then a captain and head of the Homicide Unit, had been Denny Coughlin’s rabbi.