There is a rank structure in the police department, paralleling that of the army, even to the insignia of rank. So far as Mickey was concerned, anybody in the rank of lieutenant or higher (a white-shirt) was not really a cop, but a brass hat, a memb
er of the establishment. There were exceptions to this, of course. Mickey was very fond of Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, for example, and had used his considerable influence with the managing editor to see that when Lowenstein’s boys were bar mitzvahed, those socioreligious events had been prominently featured in the paper.
And he had liked Dutch Moffitt. There were a few others, a captain here, a lieutenant there, whom Mickey liked, even including Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, but by and large he considered anyone who wore a white shirt with his uniform to be much like the officers he had known and actively disliked in the army.
He liked the guys—the ordinary patrolmen and the corporals and detectives and sergeants—on the street, and they liked him. He got their pictures in the paper, with their names spelled right, and he never violated a confidence.
Mickey O’Hara had just gone to work when he heard the call, “man with a gun at the El terminal at Frankford and Pratt.” That is to say, he had just left Mulvaney’s Tap Room at Tabor and Rising Sun avenues, where he had had two beers and nobly refused the offer of a third, and gotten in his car to drive downtown, where he planned to begin the day by dropping by the Ninth District police station.
Almost immediately, there were other calls. Another Fifteenth District car was ordered to the Margaret-Orthodox Station, which was the next station, headed downtown, from Bridge and Pratt Streets, and then right after that came an “assist officer” call, and then a warning that plainclothes officers were on the scene. Finally, there was a call for the rescue squad and the fire department.
Mickey O’Hara decided that whatever was happening between the Pratt & Bridge Streets Terminal and the Margaret-Orthodox Station might be worthy of his professional attention.
He went down to Roosevelt Boulevard, turned left, and entered the center lane. He drove fast, but not recklessly, weaving skillfully through traffic, cursing and being cursed in turn by the drivers of more slowly moving vehicles. He went around the bend at Friends’ Hospital, slipped into the outside lane, and made a right turn, through a red light, onto Bridge Street.
When Mickey O’Hara got to the Bridge & Pratt Streets Terminal, he found a crowd of people who were being kept from going up the stairs to the El station by four or five cops under the supervision of a sergeant.
He caught the eye of the sergeant, winked, and shrugged his shoulders in a “what’s up?” gesture.
A moment later, the sergeant shouldered his way through the crowd.
“Undercover Narcotics guy spotted the kid who shot Dutch Moffitt,” the sergeant said instead of a greeting when they shook hands. “He took off down the tracks, with the undercover chasing him, and fell off the walkway, fried himself on the third rail, and then got himself run over by a train.”
“Jesus!” Mickey O’Hara said.
“They’re still up there,” the sergeant said.
“Is there anyway I can get up there?” Mickey asked
“Watch out for the third rail, Mick,” the sergeant said
THIRTEEN
Ward V. Fengler, who had three months before been named a partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester (there were seventeen partners, in addition to the five senior partners), pushed open the glass door from the Butler Aviation waiting room at Philadelphia International Airport and walked onto the tarmac as the Bell Ranger helicopter touched down.
Fengler was very tall and very thin and, at thirty-two, already evidencing male pattern baldness. He had spent most of the day, from ten o’clock onward, waiting around the airport for Mr. Wells.
Stanford Fortner Wells III got out of the helicopter, and then turned to reach for his luggage. He was a small man, intense, graying, superbly tailored. The temple piece of a set of horn-rimmed glasses hung outside the pocket of his glen plaid suit.
“Mr. Wells, I’m Ward Fengler of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester,” Fengler said. “Colonel Mawson asked me to meet you.”
Wells examined him quickly but carefully and put out his hand.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting like this,” he said. “First, we had to land in Newfoundland, and then when we got to New York, the goddamned airport, I suppose predictably, was stacked to heaven’s basement.”
“I hope you had a good flight,” Fengler said.
“I hate airplanes,” Wells said, matter-of-factly.
“We have a car,” Fengler said. “And Colonel Mawson has put you up in the Warwick. I hope that’s all right.”
“Fine,” Wells said. “Has Mawson talked to Kruger?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“The reason I asked is that someone is to meet me at the Warwick.”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”