W.E.B Griffin: Men In Blue

Peter trotted to the phone, fed it a dime, and called Homicide.

"This is Inspector Wohl," he said, when a Homicide detective answered.

"Oh, yeah, Inspector. Wait just a second." There was a pause, and then the detective, obviously reading a note, went on: "The New Jersey state police have advised us of the discovery of a murder victim meeting the description of Pierre St. Maury, also known as Errol F. Watson. The body was found near the recovered stolen Jaguar automobile. The identification is not confirmed. Photographs and fingerprints of St. Maury are being sent to New Jersey. Got that?"

"Read it again," Wohl asked, and when it had been, said, "If there's anything else in the next hour or so, I'm with C-Charlie One."

He hung up without waiting for a reply and ran back to Chief Inspector Coughlin's Oldsmobile.

"They found-the Jersey state troopers-found a body that's probably St. Maury near Nelson's car," he reported.

"Interesting," Coughlin said.

"The suspect they had in Homicide said there was talk on the street that two guys were going to get the key to Nelson's apartment from his boyfriend," Wohl said. "To see what they could steal."

There was no response from Coughlin except a grunt.

The Oldsmobile started to move.

As they passed the cordoned-off area for the press, Wohl saw Louise. She was talking into a microphone, not on camera, but as if she were taking notes.

Or, Peter thought, she didn't 't want to see me.

More than three hundred police cars formed the tail of Captain Richard C. Moffitt's funeral procession. They all had their flashing lights turned on. By the time the last visiting mourner dropped his gearshift lever in "D" and started moving, the head of the procession was well over a mile and a half ahead of him.

The long line of limousines and flower cars and police cars followed the hearse and His Eminence the Archbishop down Torresdale Avenue to Rhawn Street, out Rhawn to Oxford Avenue, turned right onto Hasbrook, right again onto Central Avenue, and then down Central to Tookany Creek Parkway, and then down the parkway to Cheltenham Avenue, and then out Cheltenham to the main entrance to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at Cheltenham and Easton Road.

Each intersection along the route was blocked for the procession, and it stayed blocked until the last car (another Philadelphia Traffic Division car) had passed. Then the officers blocking that intersection jumped in their cars (or later, in Cheltenham Township, on their motorcycles) and raced alongside, and past, the slow-moving procession to block another intersection.

Dennis V. Coughlin lit a cigar in the backseat of the Oldsmobile almost as soon as they started moving, and sat puffing thoughtfully on it, slumped down in the seat.

He didn't say a word until the fence of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery could be seen, in other words for over half an hour. Then he reached forward and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the back of the front seat.

"Peter, as I understand this," he said, "we put Dutch on whatever they call that thing that lowers the casket into the hole. Then we march off" and take up position far enough away from the head of the casket to make room for the archbishop and the other priests."

"Yes, sir," Peter agreed.

"From the time we get there, we don't have anything else to do, right? I mean, when it's all over, we'll walk by and say something to Jeannie and Gertrude Moffitt, but there's nothing else we have to do as pallbearers, right?"

"I think that's right, Chief," Peter said.

"The minute we get there, Peter, I mean when we march away from the gravesite, and are standing there, you take off."

"Sir?"

"You take off. You go to the first patrol car that can move, and you tell them to take you back to Marshutz amp; Sons. Then you get in your car, whose radio is out of service, and you go home and you throw some stuff in a bag, and you go to Jersey in connection with the murder of the suspect in the Nelson killing. And you stay there, Peter, until I tell you to come home."

"Commissioner Czernick sent Sergeant Jankowitz to tell me the commissioner wants me in his office at two this afternoon," Peter said.

"I'll handle Czernick," Coughlin said. "You do what I tell you, Peter. If nothing else, I can buy you some time for him to cool down. Sometimes, Czernick lets his temper get in the way of his common sense. Once he's done something dumb, like swearing to put you in uniform, assigned to Night Command, permanently, on the 'last out' shift-"

"My God, is it that bad?" Peter said.

"If Carlucci loses the election, the new mayor will want a new police commissioner," Coughlin said. "If theLedger doesn't support Carlucci, he may lose the election. You're expendable, Peter. What I was saying was that once Czernick has done something dumb, and then realized it was a mistake, he's got too hard a head to admit he was wrong. And he doesn't have to really worry about the cops lining up behind you for getting screwed. I think you're a good cop. Hell, Iknow you're a good cop. But there are a lot of forty-five- and fifty-year-old lieutenants and captains around who think the reasonthey didn't get promoted when you did is becausetheir father wasn't a chief inspector."

"I won't resign," Peter said. "Night Command, back in uniform… no matter what."

"Come on, Peter," Coughlin said. "You didn't come on the job last week. You know what they can do to somebody-civil service be damnedwhen they want to get rid of him. If you can put up with going back in uniform and Night Command, he'll think of something else."

Peter didn't reply.

"It would probably help some if you could catch whoever hacked up the Nelson boy and shot his boyfriend," Coughlin said.

They were in the cemetery now, winding slowly down access roads. He could see Dutch Moffitt's gravesite. Highway Patrolmen were already lined up on both sides of the path down which they would carry Dutch's casket.

Jesus, Peter thought. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should have just stayed in Highway, and rode around on a motorcycle, and been happy to make Lieutenant at forty-five. That way there wouldn't 't have been any of this goddamned politics.

But then he realized he was wrong.

There's always politics. In Highway, it's who gets a new motorcycle and who doesn't. Who gets to do interesting things, or who rides up and down Interstate 95 in the rain, ticketing speeders. Same crap. Just a different level.

"Thank you, Chief," Peter said. "I appreciate the vote of confidence."

"I owe your father one," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said, matter-of-factly. "He saved my ass, one time."

"Hello?"

Peter's heart jumped at the sound of her voice.

"Hi," he said.

"I thought it might be you," she said. "You don't seem thrilled to hear my voice," Peter said.

"I don't get very many calls at midnight," she said, ignoring his reply.

"It took me that long to get up my courage to call," he said.

"Where are you, home? Or out on the streets, protecting the public?"

"I'm in Atlantic City," he said.

"What are you doing there?"

"Working on the Nelson job," he said.

"At two o'clock this afternoon, I had a call from WCTS-TV, Channel Four, Chicago," Louise said. "They want me to co-anchor their evening news show."

"Oh?"

"They want me so bad that they will give me twenty thousand a year more than I 'm making now, and they will buy out my contract here," Louise said. "That may be because I am very good, and have the proper experience, and it may be because my father owns WCTS-TV."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'd like to talk to you about that," she said. "Preferably in a public place. I don't want to be prone to argue." He didn't reply.