Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

Mike Sabara came into the room a few minutes later, immediately after Peter had scalded his mouth on the lip of the coffee cup, which had apparently been delivered to his table fresh from the fires of hell.

Mike was in uniform, the crushed-crown cap and motorcyclist’s breeches and puttees peculiar to Highway Patrol, worn with a Sam Browne belt festooned with a long line of cartridges and black leather accoutrements for the tools of a policeman’s trade, flashlight, handcuffs, and so on. Mike was wearing an open-collared white shirt, with a captain’s insignia, two parallel silver bars, on each collar point.

The Highway Patrol and its special uniform went back a long time, way before the Second World War. It had been organized as a traffic law enforcement force, as the name implied, and in the old days, it had been mounted almost entirely on motorcycles, hence the breeches and puttees and soft-crowned cap.

There were still a few motorcycles in Highway—from somewhere Wohl picked out the number twenty-four—but they were rarely used for anything but ceremonial purposes, or maybe crowd control at Mummers Parades. The Highway Patrol still patrolled the highways—the Schuylkill Expressway and Interstate 95—but the Patrol had evolved over the years, especially during the reign of Captain Jerry Carlucci, and even more during the reign of Mayor Carlucci, into sort of a special force that was dispatched to clean up high-crime areas.

Highway Patrol cars carried two officers, while all other Philadelphia police cars carried only one. Unless they had specific orders sending them somewhere else, Highway Patrol cars could patrol wherever, within reason, they liked, without regard to District boundaries. They regarded themselves, and were regarded by other policemen, as an elite force, and there was always a long waiting list of officers who had applied for transfer to Highway Patrol.

Anyone with serious ambitions to rise in the police hierarchy knew the path led through Highway Patrol. Wohl himself had been a Highway Patrol Corporal, and had liked the duty, although he had been wise enough to keep to himself his profound relief that his service in Highway had been after the motorcycles had been all but retired and he had rarely been required to get on one. Going through the “wheel training course,” which he had considered necessary to avoid being thought of as less then wholly masculine, had convinced him that anybody who rode a motorcycle willingly, much less joyfully, had some screws in urgent need of tightening.

Wohl had several thoughts as he saw Mike Sabara walking across the room to him, wearing what for Sabara was a warm smile. He thought that Mike was not only an ugly sonofabitch but that he was menacing. Sabara’s swarthy face was marked with the scars of what could have been small pox, but more probably were the remnants of adolescent acne. He wore an immaculately trimmed pencil-line mustache. If it was designed to take attention from his disfigured skin, Wohl thought, it had exactly the opposite effect.

He was a short, stocky, barrel-chested man, with an aggressive walk. He was also hairy. Thick black hair showed at the open collar of his shirt and covered his exposed arms.

All of these outward things, Wohl knew, were misleading. Mike Sabara was an extraordinarily gentle man, father of a large brood of well-cared-for kids. He was a Lebanese, and active—he actually taught Sunday School—in some kind of Orthodox Church. Wohl had seen him crying at Dutch Moffitt’s funeral, the tears running unashamedly down his cheeks as he carried Dutch to his grave.

Sabara put out his large hand as he slipped into the seat across from Wohl. His grip was firm, but not a demonstration of all the strength his hand possessed.

“I appreciate you meeting me like this, Inspector,” Sabara said.

“I know why you’re calling me ‘Inspector,’ Mike,” Wohl said, smiling, “so I’ll have to reply, ‘My pleasure, Captain Sabara.’ Congratulations, Mike, it’s well deserved, and how come I wasn’t invited to your promotion party?”

Wohl immediately sensed that what he had intended as humor had fallen flat. Sabara gave him a confused, even wary, look.

“The Commissioner called me at home last night,” Sabara said. “He said to come to work today wearing captain’s bars.”

Which you just happened to have lying around, Wohl thought, and was immediately ashamed of the unkind thought. He himself had bought a set of lieutenant’s bars the day the examination scores had come out, even though he had known it would be long months before the promotion actually came through.

“So it’s official then?” Wohl said. “Well, congratulations. I can’t think of anybody better qualified.”

Wohl saw that, too, produced a reaction in Sabara different from what he expected. More confusion, more wariness.

The waitress reappeared.

“Get you something?”

“Iced tea, please,” Captain Sabara said. The waitress looked at him strangely. Sabara, Wohl thought, was not the iced tea type.

“Can I get right to it, Inspector?” Sabara asked, when the waitress had left.

“Sure.”

“If it’s at all possible,” Sabara said, “I’d like Highway Patrol.”

Sabara had, Wohl sensed, rehearsed that simple statement.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Mike.”

“I mean, I’d really like to take over Highway,” Sabara said, and there was more uncertainty in his eyes. “I mean, Christ, no one knows it better than I do. And I know I could do a good job.”

What the hell is he driving at?

“You want me to put in a good word for you? Is that it, Mike? Sure. You tell me to who, and I’ll do it.”

There was a pause before Sabara replied.

“You don’t know, do you?” he said, finally.