W. Griffin - The Assassin

Enraging many of the people in Highway, including, Wohl was sure, Mike Sabara, he had named Sabara his deputy and given Highway to Pekach. But that had been almost a year ago, and it had worked out well. It had probably taken Sabara, Wohl thought, no more than a week to realize that the alternative to his being named Wohl's deputy was a transfer elsewhere in the Department, and probably another month to believe what Wohl had told him when he took over Special Operations, that he would be of greater usefulness to the Department as his deputy than he would have been commanding Highway.

Wohl understood the Highway mystique. He still had in his closet his Highway sergeant's leather jacket and soft-crowned billed cap, unable to bring himself to sell, or even give them away, although there was absolutely no way he would ever wear either again. But it had been time for Sabara to take off his Highway breeches, and for Pekach, who had worn a pigtail in his plain-clothes Narcotics assignment, to get back in uniform.

"Good morning, Inspector," they said, almost in chorus.

Wohl smiled and motioned for them to follow him into his office.

"I hope you brought your notebooks," he said. "I have just come from the Fountain of All Knowledge."

"I don't like the sound of that," Sabara said.

Pekach closed the office door behind him.

"What did the Polack want, Peter?" he asked.

Wohl did not respond directly.

"Is Jack Malone around?" he asked. "I'd rather go through this just once."

"He went over to the garage," Sabara said, stepping to Wohl's desk as he spoke and picking up a telephone. "Have you got a location on Lieutenant Malone?" He put the phone back in its cradle. "He just drove in the gate."

Wohl sat down at his desk and took the Overnight from his IN box. He read it. He raised his eyes to Pekach.

"We have anybody in on the shooting at the Acme?"

"One car, plus a sergeant who was in the area."

"Did you talk to them? Was it a good shooting?"

"It looks that way. They shot first. The lieutenant-what the hell is his name?-"

Wohl and Sabara shrugged their shoulders.

"-not only identified himself as a police officer, but used an electronic megaphone to do it. One of the doersthen shot at him and another Stakeout guy. When he was down, the other doer started shooting. It looks to me like it was clearly justified."

"The commissioner seemed a little unsure," Wohl said. "Open the door, Dave, and see if O'Mara's out there. If he is, have him lasso Jack."

"I'll tell you who was also at the Acme, Peter, in case you haven' t heard. Matt Payne."

"I heard. I saw Henry Quaire in the Roundhouse."

"This time he was a spectator," Sabara said.

Pekach came back into the office, followed by a uniformed lieutenant, John J. "Jack" Malone, who showed signs of entering middle age. His hairline was starting to recede; there was the suggestion of forming jowls, and he was getting a little thick around the middle.

"Good morning, sir," he said.

"Close the door, Jack, please," Wohl said. "Gentlemen, I don't believe you've met the new commanding officer of Dignitary Protection?"

Malone misinterpreted what Wohl had intended as a little witticism. The smile vanished from his face. It grew more than sad, bitter.

"When did that happen, sir?" he asked.

Wohl saw that his little joke had laid an egg, and he was furious with himself for trying to be clever. Malone thought he was being told, kindly, that he was being transferred out of Special Operations. And with that came the inference that he had been found wanting.

"About ten minutes ago, Jack," Wohl said, "which is ten minutes after the commissioner told me we now have Dignitary Protection. Have you got something against taking it over?"

"Not here," Malone said, visibly relieved. "I thought I was being sent to the Roundhouse."

Well, that's flattering. He likes it here.

"Do you know a sergeant by the name of Henkels?"

"Yes, sir, I know him."

"There is something in your tone that suggests that you are not especially impressed with the sergeant."

"There used to be a Sergeant Henkels in Central Cell Room," Pekach volunteered. "If it's the same guy, he has a room temperature IQ."

"That's him, Captain. I guess they moved him upstairs," Malone said.

The Central Cell Room was in the Police Administration Building.

"Well, Sergeant Henkels and his Dignitary Protection files are about to be transferred out here. Into your capable command, Lieutenant Malone."

"Oh, God. He's a real dummy, Inspector. God only knows how he got to be a sergeant."

"Well, I'm sure you will find a way to keep the sergeant usefully occupied."

"How about sending him to Wheel School and praying he breaks his neck?" Malone suggested.

"I don't think there will be time to do that before the Vice President comes to town," Wohl said.

"I saw that in the papers," Malone said. "We're going to have that? There's not a hell of a lot of time…"

"We'll have to manage somehow."

"Who are they going to move into command?" Malone asked. "Did the commissioner say?"

Wohl shook his head, no. He was more than a little embarrassed that he hadn't considered that.

"One of the chiefs probably," Mike Sabara said. "It's the Vice President."

"They're not going to move anybody in," Peter Wohl said, softly but firmly. "If this is a Special Operations responsibility, we'll be responsible."

"You'd be putting your neck on the line, Peter," Mike Sabara said. "Let them send somebody in, somebody who's familiar with this sort of operation."

"Let them send someone in here with the authority to tell our people what to do?" Wohl replied. "No way, Mike. We'll do it. Discussion closed."

Corporal Vito Lanza had not been the star pupil in Bishop John Newmann High School's Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Typing courses, but he had tried hard enough not to get kicked out of the class. Being dropped from Typing would have meant assignment as a library monitor (putting books back on shelves), or as a laboratory monitor (washing all that shit out of test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks), neither of which had great appeal to him.

Almost despite himself, he had become a fairly competent typist, a skill he thought he would never use in real life after graduation, and certainly not as a cop, chasing criminals down the street on his Highway Patrol Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

There was a two-and-a-half-year period after graduation from Bishop Newmann High, until he turned twenty-one and could apply for the cops, during which Vito had had a number of jobs. He worked in three different service stations, worked in a taxi garage, and got a job cleaning Eastern airliners between flights at the airport. He hated all of them, and prayed after he took the Civil Service Examination for the cops that he would not be found wanting.

Officer Lanza had quickly learned that being a cop was not what he thought it would be. Right out of the Academy, he had been assigned to the 18^th District at 55^th and Pine Streets. He spent eight months riding around the district in a battered Ford van, with another rookie police officer. Hauling prisoners (a great many of whom were drunks, not even guys who'd done a stickup) from where they had been arrested to the holding cells in the District Station was not exactly what he'd had in mind when he had become a law enforcement officer. Neither was hauling sick people from their houses to a hospital.

(Philadelphia Police, unlike the police of other major American cities, respond to every call for help. The citizens of Philadelphia have learned over the years that what one does when Junior falls off the porch and cracks his head open, or Grandma falls on an icy sidewalk, or Mama scalds herself with boiling water on the stove, is to call the cops.)