W.E.B Griffin: Men In Blue

"Go ahead."

"We've got a homicide. Son of a very important man. His car, a Jaguar, turned up missing. Then I heard they found it in Jersey. You know anything about that?"

"Major Knotts found it," McGrory said. "On his way over here last night. It was on a dirt road off Three Twenty-two."

"Do you know if they turned up anything? Besides the car?" Wohl asked.

"Knotts told me that when they got the NCIC hit, and then heard from you guys, he ordered the mobile crime lab in. And they were supposed to have people out there this morning, when it was light, to have a look around the area."

"You usually do that when you find a hot car?"

"No, but the word was 'homicide,' " McGrory said. Then he added, " Inspector, if they found anything interesting, I'm sure they would have passed it on to you. And probably to me, too. I mean, they knew Dutch and I were close."

"Yeah, I'm sure they would have," Wohl said, and started to say something else when someone spoke his name.

He turned and saw Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick's aide.

"Hello, Jank," Wohl said. "This is Lieutenant McGrory. Sergeant Jankowitz, Commissioner Czernick's indispensable right-hand man."

The two shook hands.

"Inspector Wohl," Jankowitz said, formally, "Commissioner Czernick would like to see you in his office at two this afternoon."

"Okay," Wohl said. "I'll be there."

Jankowitz started to say something, then changed his mind. He smiled, nodded at McGrory, and walked away.

Watching him go, Wohl's eyes focused on the street. He saw a ropedoff area in which a number of television camera crew trucks were parked. And he saw Louise. She was standing on a truck, and looking at the area through binoculars. When they seemed to be pointed in his direction, he raised his hand to shoulder level and waved. He wondered if she saw him.

A hand touched his shoulder. He turned and saw his father. And then his mother and Barbara Crowley.

"Hello, Dad," Peter said. "Lieutenant McGrory, this is my father, Chief Inspector Wohl, Retired. And my mother, and Miss Crowley."

Barbara surprised him by kissing him.

"When we heard you were going to be a pallbearer," Peter's mother said, "I asked Barbara if she wanted to come. Gertrude Moffitt, before she knew you were going to be a pallbearer, told me she'd given us three family seats, and since you wouldn't need one now, I asked Barbara. I mean she's almost family, you know what I mean."

"That was a good idea," Peter said.

"Got a minute, Peter?" Chief Inspector August Wohl, Retired, said, and took Peter's arm and led him out of hearing.

"You're in trouble," Peter's father said. "You want to tell me about it?"

"I'm not in trouble, Dad," Peter said. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"What's that got to do with being in trouble? The word is around that both the Polack and the mayor are after your scalp."

"They think I talked to Mickey O'Hara and said something I shouldn't. I haven't seen O'Hara in ten days. I don't know who ran off at the mouth, but it wasn't me. And I can't help it if Nelson is pissed at me. I didn't say anything to him, either, that I shouldn't."

"The mayor will throw you to the fish if he thinks he will get theLedger off his back. And so will the Polack. You better get this straightened out, Peter, and quick."

There was a burst of organ music from Saint Dominic's. The man from Marshutz amp; Sons began to collect the pallbearers.

When he was formed in ranks beside Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl glanced at the street again, at the TV trucks. He saw Louise again, and was sure that she was looking at him, and that she had seen Barbara kiss him.

She was waving her hand slowly back and forth, as if she knew he was watching her, and wanted to wave goodbye.

One of their own had died in the line of duty, and police officers from virtually every police department in a one-hundred-mile circle around Philadelphia had come to honor him. They had come in uniform, and driving their patrol cars, and the result was a monumental traffic jam, despite the best efforts of more than twenty Philadelphia Traffic Division officers to maintain order.

When Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl made their careful way down the brownstone steps of Saint Dominic's Church (Dutch Moffitt's casket was surprisingly heavy) toward the hearse waiting at the curb, there were three lines of cars, parked bumper to bumper, prepared to escort Captain Moffitt to his last resting place.

Their path to the curb was lined with Highway Patrol officers, saluting. There was an additional formation of policemen on the street, and the police band, and the color guard. To the right, behind barriers, was the press. Peter looked for, but did not see, Louise Dutton.

Both Peter and Dennis Coughlin grunted with the effort as they raised the end of the casket to the level of the hearse bed, and set it gently on the chrome-plated rollers in the floor. They pushed it inside, and a man from Marshutz amp; Sons flipped levers that would keep it from moving on the way to the cemetery.

The hearse would be preceded now by the limousine of the archbishop of Philadelphia and his entourage of lesser clerics, including Dutch's parish priest, the rector of Saint Dominic's, and the police chaplain. Ahead of the hearse was a police car carrying a captain of the Traffic Division, sort of an en route command car. And out in front were twenty Highway Patrol motorcycles.

Next came Dennis V. Coughlin's Oldsmobile, with the limousine carrying the rest of the pallbearers behind it. Then came the flower cars. There had been so many flowers that the available supply of flower cars in Philadelphia and Camden had been exhausted. It had been decided that half a dozen vans would be loaded with flowers and sent to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery ahead of the procession, both to cut down the length of the line of flower cars, and so that there would be flowers in place when the procession got there.

The flower vans would travel with other vehicles, mostly buses, preceding the funeral procession, the band, the honor guard, the firing squad, and the police officers who would line the path the pallbearers would take from the cemetery road to the grave site.

Behind the flower cars in the funeral procession were the limousines carrying the family, followed by the mayor's Cadillac, two cars full of official dignitaries, and then the police commissioner's car, and those of chief inspectors. Next came the cars of "official" friends (those on the invitation list), then the cars of other friends, and finally the cars of the police officers who had come to pay their respects.

It would take a long time just to load the family, dignitaries, and official friends. As soon as the last official-friends car had been loaded, the procession would start to move away from the church.

"Tom," Chief Inspector Coughlin ordered from the backseat of the Oldsmobile, "anything on the radio?"

"I'll check, sir," Sergeant Lenihan said. He took the microphone from the glove compartment.

"C-Charlie One," he said.

"C-Charlie One," radio replied.

"We're at Saint Dominic's, about to leave for Holy Sepulchre," Lenihan said. "Anything for us?"

"Nothing, C-Charlie One," radio said.

"Check for me, please, Tom," Wohl said. "Seventeen."

"Anything for Isaac Seventeen?" Lenihan said.

"Yes, wait a minute. They were trying to reach him a couple of minutes ago."

Wohl leaned forward on the seat to better hear the speaker.

"Isaac Seventeen is to contact Homicide," the radio said.

"Thank you," Lenihan said.

"There's a phone over there," Coughlin said, pointing to a pay phone on the wall of a florist's shop across the street. "You've got time."