“Find them,” Wohl said. “Tell them as soon as they can fit me into their busy schedule, I want to see them. And find Captain Pekach, too, please, and ask him to come see me.”
“Yes, sir.”
David Pekach was still in the Seventh District Building. Two minutes later, he was standing in Wohl’s doorway waiting for Wohl to raise his eyes from the papers on his desk. Finally, he did.
“Come in, please, David,” he said. “You want some coffee?”
Pekach shook his head no, then asked with raised eyebrows if Wohl wanted him to close the door. Wohl nodded that he did.
“I just finished talking to Chief Coughlin and the Commissioner,” Wohl said, deciding in that moment not to mention Mayor Jerry Carlucci.
“I thought maybe they would call,” David Pekach said, dryly.
“In addition to everything else,” Wohl said, “they both seem personally concerned and very upset with me about whatever the hell is going on with this Peebles woman. She was burgled again last night.”
“I heard.”
“I put your two hotshots, McFadden and Martinez, on the job. They’re looking for—”
Pekach’s nod of understanding told Wohl that Pekach knew about that, so he stopped. “The way they tackled the job, unless I am very wrong, was to take young Payne out there down to the FOP and get him falling-down drunk.”
“I don’t know,” Pekach said, loyally. “They were always pretty reliable.”
“They didn’t find the guy—the actor, the boyfriend of the Peebles woman’s brother—that I know,” Wohl said.
“You want me to talk to them?”
“No. I’ll talk to them. I want you to go talk to Miss Peebles.”
“What?”
“You go over there right now,” Wohl said. “And you ooze sympathy, and do whatever you have to do to convince her that we are very embarrassed that this has happened to her again, and that we are going to take certain steps to make absolutely sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“What certain steps?”
“We are going to put—call it a stakeout team—on her property from sunset to sunrise.”
“You lost me there,” Pekach confessed. “Where are you going to get a stakeout team? I mean, my God, if it gets in the paper that you’re using manpower to stake out a third-rate burglary site…”
“Martinez, McFadden, and Hungover Harry out there,” Wohl said. “The wages of sin are death, David. I’m surprised you haven’t learned that.”
Pekach chuckled. “Okay,” he said.
“And you will tell Miss Peebles that a Highway Patrol car will drive past her house not less than once every half hour during the same hours. Then you will tell your shift Lieutenant to set that up, and to tell the guys in the car that they not only are to drive by, but they are to drive into the driveway, making a lot of noise, and slamming the car doors when they get out of the car, so that Miss Peebles, when she looks in curiosity out her window, will see two uniformed officers waving their flashlights around in the bushes.”
“That’d spook the guy who’s doing this to her,” Pekach argued.
“I hope so,” Wohl said. “I don’t want another burglary at that address on the Overnight Report on the Commissioner’s desk tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” Pekach said, doubtfully, “you’re the boss.”
“I’m not going to tell Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson this, David,” Wohl said. “But I think they’re right. I think the doer is the brother’s boyfriend. When they’re not sitting outside her house, I want them to keep looking for him. Got the picture?”
“Like I said, you’re the boss. You’re more devious than I would have thought….”
“I’ll interpret that as a compliment,” Wohl said. “And as devious as I am, I will frankly tell you that the success of this operation will hinge on how well you can charm the lady.”
“Then why don’t you go charm her?”