W. Griffin - The Assassin

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"The Good of the Department is what I'm talking about."

"Then you have lost me somewhere along the way."

"Do you know how many college graduates have applied for the Department in the last year?"

"No."

"Fifty-three."

"So?"

"Do you know how many college graduates applied, in the three years previous to this one?"

"I have no idea."

"Seventeen. Not each year. Total."

"Now I'm really lost."

"Public relations," the mayor said significantly.

"What does that mean?"

"That a lot of young men, fifty-three young men, with college degrees, with the potential to become really good cops, saw Payne's picture in the newspapers and decided they might like being a cop themselves."

"Do you know that? Or just think that?"

"I checked it out," the mayor said.

"So what are you saying, Jerry? That we should put Payne on recruiting duty?"

"I'm saying you and Coughlin should have left him right where he was, in Special Operations."

"A," Lowenstein said, "you always transfer people who get promoted. B, there are no detectives in Special Operations."

"A, that 'transfer people when they get promoted' didn't come off the mountain with Moses, engraved on stone, and B, as of today there are two detectives assigned to Special Operations."

'Two detectives who should have been sent back to Homicide where they belong," Lowenstein said.

"If you mean Jason Washington, he's a sergeant now. He got promoted, and he didn't get transferred out of Special Operations. I said twodetectives. One of whom is Tony Harris, who would probably go back to being a drunk if we sent him back to Homicide."

Lowenstein took a deep swallow of his Jack Daniel's and water. He was impressed again with Jerry Carlucci's intimate knowledge of what was going on in the Department.

Detectives Jason Washington and Tony Harris, in Lowenstein's judgment the two best Homicide detectives, had been "temporarily" assigned to the then newly formed Special Operations Division when Mayor Carlucci had taken away the Northwest serial rapist job from Northwest Detectives and given it to Peter Wohl.

Other special jobs had come up, and they had never gone back to Homicide, which had been a continuing source of annoyance to Matt Lowenstein. The only good thing about it was that Tony Harris seemed to have gotten his bottle problem under control working for Wohl. Until just now, Matt Lowenstein had believed that Harris's boozing was known to only a few people, not including the mayor.

"You said 'two detectives,'" Lowenstein said, finally. "The other one's name is Payne, right?"

"You're a clever fellow. Maybe you should be a detective or something," Jerry Carlucci said.

Lowenstein did not reply.

"He can learn as much watching Washington and Harris as he could have learned in East Detectives, and probably quicker," Carlucci said. "And he'll be available, without a lot of bullshit and resentment, the next time the Department needs to do somebody who can do the Department a lot of good a favor."

"Oh, shit," Matt Lowenstein said.

"You don't like it?" the mayor said. There was just a hint of coldness in his voice.

"What I don't like is that you're right," Lowenstein said. "It wasn't fair to either East Detectives or Payne to send him there. I don't know if he'll stay on the job or not, but if he does, it wouldn' t be at East Detectives."

"I thought about that too," Carlucci said. "Whether he would stay. I decided he would. He's been around long enough, done enough, to have it get in his blood."

"You make it sound like syphilis," Lowenstein said.

Mr. Ricco Baltazari had his luncheon, a dozen cherrystone clams, a double thick lamb chop, medium rare, with mint sauce, and a sliced tomato with olive oil and vinegar in his place of business, the Ristorante Alfredo, in Center City, Philadelphia, three blocks east of the Union League.

A table in the rear of the establishment had been especially laid for the occasion, for Mr. Gian-Carlo Rosselli had called Mr. Baltazari with the announcement that Mr. S. thought he would like to have a little fish for his lunch and was that going to pose any problems?

Mr. Baltazari had told Mr. Rosselli that it would be no problem at all, and what time was Mr. S. thinking of having his lunch?

"Twelve-thirty, one," Mr. Rosselli had replied and then hung up without saying another word.

Mr. Baltazari had personally inspected the table after it was set, to make sure there wasn't any grease or lipstick or whatever the dishwasher had missed; that there were no chips on the dishes or glasses; and that there were no spots on the tablecloth or napkins the laundry hadn't washed out. Then he went into the kitchen and personally first selected the slice of swordfish that would be served to Mr. S., and then the wines he thought Mr. S. might like. After a moment's thought, he added a third bottle, of sparkling wine, to his original selections and had it put into the refrigerator to cool. Sometimes Mr. S. liked sparkling wine.

As a final preparation, Mr. Baltazari walked two blocks farther east, toward the Delaware River, where he had a shave and a trim and had his shoes shined.

Mr. S., whose full name was Vincenzo Carlos Savarese, was more than just a customer. Despite what it said on Ristorante Alfredo's restaurant and liquor licenses, that Ricco Baltazari was the owner and licensee, it was really owned by Mr. Savarese. Mr. Baltazari operated it for him, it being understood between them that no matter what it said on the books about salary and profits, that Mr. S. was to be paid, in cash, once a month, fifty percent of gross receipts less the cost of food, liquor, rent, salaries, and laundry.

Out of his fifty percent, Mr. Baltazari was expected to pay all other expenses. Anything left over after that was his.

There was no written agreement. They were men of honor, and it was understood between them that if it ever came to Mr. S.'s attention that Mr. Baltazari had been fucking with the books, taking cash out of the register, or in any other way, no matter how, depriving Mr. S. of his full return on his investment, Mr. Baltazari could expect to find himself floating facedown in the Delaware River, or stuffed into the trunk of his Cadillac with twenty-dollar bills inserted into his nostrils and other cranial cavities.

Mr. Savarese, a slightly built, silver-haired, superbly tailored and shod man in his early sixties, arrived at Ristorante Alfredo at five minutes to one. He took great pride in his personal appearance, believing that a businessman, such as himself, should look the part.

He had, ten years before, arranged the immigration from Rome of a journeyman gentlemen's tailor and set him up in business in a downtown office building. At Mr. S.'s recommendation, a number of his business associates had begun to patronize the tailor, and he had found financial security and a good life in the new world. It was understood between the tailor and Mr. Savarese that the tailor would not offer to cut a suit for anyone else from a bolt of cloth from which he had cut a suit for Mr. Savarese.

Shoes were something else. Mr. Savarese was a good enough businessman to understand there was not a sufficient market in Philadelphia to support a custom bootmaker, no matter how skilled, so he had his shoes made in Palermo on a last carved there for him on a visit he had made years before attending the funeral of a great-aunt.

Mr. Savarese did not own an automobile, and rarely drove himself, although he took pains to make sure his driver's license did not lapse. The Lincoln sedan in which he arrived at Ristorante Alfredo was owned by Classic Livery, which supplied limousines to the funeral trade, and which was owned, in much the same sort of arrangement as that which Mr. Savarese had with Mr. Baltazari vis-a-vis Ristorante Alfredo, by Mr. Paulo Cassandro. Mr. Cassandro, as now, habitually assigned his brother, Pietro, to drive the automobile he made available for Mr. Savarese's use.