“Not a damned thing,” Wohl said. “Push me the phone, will you?”
He dialed a number from memory.
“This is Inspector Wohl,” he said. “Would you have the Highway car nearest Northwest Detectives meet me there, please?”
He hung up and pushed the telephone back across the desk.
“I need a ride,” he explained.
“Something wrong with your car? Hell, I’d have given you a ride, Inspector. You want to call and cancel that?”
“Thanks but no thanks,” Wohl said.
“Well, then”—Spanner smiled—“how about a cup of coffee?”
“Thank you,” Wohl said.
A Highway Patrol officer came marching through the Northwest Detectives squad room before Wohl had finished his coffee. Wohl left the unfinished coffee and followed him downstairs to the car.
“I need a ride to the Roundhouse,” Wohl said, as he got in the front beside the driver. “You can drop me there.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said.
They pulled out of the District parking lot and headed downtown on North Broad Street. Wohl noticed, as he looked around at the growing deterioration of the area, that the driver was scrupulously obeying the speed limit.
“If you were God,” Wohl said to the driver, “or me, and you could do anything you wanted to, to catch the guy who’s been assaulting the women in Northwest Philly—and I think we’re talking about the same doer who forced the woman into the van last night—what would you do?”
The driver looked at him in surprise, and took his time before answering, somewhat uneasily. “Sir, I really don’t know.”
Wohl turned in his seat and looked at the Highway Patrol officer in the backseat. “What about you?”
The man in the backseat raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“The way I hear, we’re doing everything we know how.”
“You think he’s going to turn the woman loose?” Wohl asked.
“I dunno,” the driver replied. “This is the first time he’s…kept…one.”
“If you think of something, anything,” Wohl said, “don’t keep it to yourself. Tell Captain Pekach, or Captain Sabara, or me.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said.
“Something wrong with this unit?” Wohl asked.
“Sir?”
“Won’t it go faster than thirty-five?”
The driver looked at him in confusion.
“Officer Hawkins says it was the civilian who ran the stoplight last night,” Wohl said. “I believe him. We’re looking for witnesses to confirm Hawkins’s story.”
The driver didn’t react for a moment. Then he pushed harder on the accelerator and began to move swiftly through the North Broad Street traffic.
With a little luck, Wohl thought, these guys will have a couple of beers with their pals when their tour is over, and with a little more luck, it will have spread through Highway by tomorrow morning that maybe Inspector Wohl ain’t the complete prick people say he is; that he asked for advice; said he believed Hawkins; and even told the guy driving him to the Roundhouse to step on it.
ELEVEN