“Tell her thank you,” the Mayor ordered.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Fellows said, and replaced the handset in its cradle and looked to the Mayor for further orders.
“Take a look at this, Jack,” the Mayor ordered, and pushed the memorandum toward Fellows.
“My God!” Fellows said.
“I had no idea this mess we’re in went that high,” Commissioner Czernich said.
“I thought I told you to close your mouth,” the Mayor said, then looked at Fellows. “Jack, call down to the courtyard and see if there’s an unmarked car down there. If there is, I want it. You drive. If there isn’t, call Special Operations and have them meet us with one at Broad and Roosevelt Boulevard.”
“Yes, sir,” Fellows reported, and picked up the telephone again.
The Mayor watched, his face expressionless, as Fellows called the sergeant in charge of the City Hall detail.
“Inspector Taylor’s car is down there, Mr. Mayor,” Fellows reported.
“Go get it. I’ll be down in a minute,” the Mayor ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
The Mayor watched Fellows hurry out of his office and then turned to Commissioner Czernich.
“How many people know about that memo?”
“Just yourself and me, Mr. Mayor. And now Jack Fellows.”
“Keep—” the Mayor began.
“And Harry McElroy,” Czernich interrupted him. “It wasn’t even sealed. The envelope, I mean.”
“Keep it that way, Tad. You understand me?”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Mayor.”
The Mayor stood up and walked out of his office.
“Sarah,” the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia said gently to the gray-haired, soft-faced woman standing behind the barely opened door of a row house on Tyson Street, off Roosevelt Boulevard, “I know he’s in there.”She just looked at him.
She looks close to tears, the Mayor thought. Hell, she has been crying. Goddamnitalltohell!
“What do you want me to do, Sarah?” the Mayor asked very gently. “Take the door?”
The door closed in his face. There was the sound of a door chain rattling, and then the door opened. Sarah Lowenstein stood behind it.
“In the kitchen,” she said softly.
“Thank you,” the Mayor said, and walked into the house and down the corridor beside the stairs and pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen.
Chief Matthew L. Lowenstein, in a sleeveless undershirt, was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a cup of coffee. He looked up when he heard the door open, and then, when he saw the Mayor, quickly averted his gaze.
The Mayor laid Lowenstein’s badge and photo ID on the table.
“What is this shit, Matt?”
“I’m trying to remember,” Lowenstein said. “I think if you just walked in, that’s simple trespassing. If you took the door, that’s forcible entry.”
“Sarah let me in.”