Final Justice (Badge of Honor 8)

Peter Wohl nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Mickey, you didn’t hear any of this,” Coughlin said.

“When do I hear any of this?”

“I’ll let you know what happens when we meet with Eileen, but that’ll probably still be off the record.”

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“If you’ve identified these crumbs, what’s all this about?”

“In the words of our beloved district attorney, we want to make goddamn sure these critters don’t walk out of the courtroom because we did something stupid now that we finally know who they are,” Coughlin said.

He rose to his feet.

“Eat Barbara’s cake and drink your coffee first,” Olga Wohl ordered firmly. “Five minutes one way or the other’s not going to matter.”

Five minutes later, the first radio call was made when Frank Hollaran took the microphone from beneath the dash and spoke into it: “Radio, C-2 en route to the Roundhouse from Chief Wohl’s residence.”

Immediately after that, there were two more calls, as D-l (Chief Inspector of Detectives Lowenstein) and S-l Inspector Wohl (Special Operations) reported that they, too, were on their way from Chief Wohl’s house to the Roundhouse.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here, Eileen,” Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani said, as he walked into Deputy Commissioner Coughlin’s conference room.

“You’re the police commissioner, Ralph,” the Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon replied, matter-of-factly. “I thought you ought to be on this, so I asked Al Unger to call you.”

There were several shadings to their relationship. The most important was that Commissioner Mariani served at the pleasure of the Hon. Alvin W. Martin, mayor of the City of Philadelphia. The mayor is one of the two senior officials in Philadelphia who have no one to answer to but the law and the voters. The other is the district attorney.

Almost as important, both the police commissioner and the district attorney felt-even if they never articulated this belief-that the burden of protecting the citizens of the City of Brotherly Love from the barbarians hung primarily from his/her shoulders alone, and that the function of the other was to assist them in this noble pursuit.

As a practical matter, both realized there had to be sort of a partnership arrangement to effectively keep the barbarians at the gate, since neither could issue orders to the other.

In the relationship between district attorneys and police commissioners there were also the factors of respect, trust, and admiration. In the past, district attorneys and police commissioners had sometimes not respected, trusted, or admired each other at all. Eileen Solomon and Ralph Mariani not only held each other in high professional regard, but were also friends.

But in this case, the truth was that Eileen hadn’t even thought of Ralph when she asked Denny to meet her in the Roundhouse until she had called Al Unger to tell him she needed a ride, and he had brought the subject up.

Detective Albert Unger was the senior of the two members of the District Attorney’s Squad who served as driver/bodyguard for the D.A. So far as he-and others-were concerned, the D.A. needed round-the-clock protection. Threats against her life had been made by a number of people he thought were perfectly capable of trying to whack her.

The D.A., however, firmly said she didn’t want a cop in the lobby of her apartment building twenty-four hours a day, much less hanging around in her apartment.

So a deal was struck. A word was spoken into the ear of Wachenhut Security, who provided the unarmed doorman/ concierge/security guard in the lobby of the luxury apartment building on the Parkway in which Dr. and Mrs. Solomon resided. Four new employees, all of them retired Philadelphia police officers, were shortly afterward engaged to work the lobby of the apartment building. All of them were licensed to carry firearms, and all of them shared Al Unger’s belief that there were critters who would like to whack the D.A., whom all of the retired police officers held in very high regard.

The second part of the deal was a solemn promise by the D.A.-“What would you like me to do, Al, put one hand on a Bible and swear to God?” she had asked in exasperation- that she would never leave the apartment unless he knew where she was going and why.

This meant that Unger-or somebody else from the squad-would either drive the D.A. or follow her in an unmarked car, whether she was riding in the doctor’s Caddy, or jogging along the Parkway on her thrice-weekly hour-long jaunts to keep her hips and thighs under control.

When the D.A. had called Al Unger to say that she was sorry, but she had to go to the Roundhouse and right now, he had naturally asked why, and she had told him.

“I didn’t hear Mariani’s name mentioned, boss.”

“You think he should be there?”

“I think he ought to be asked.”

If I don’t ask him, Eileen had decided, when he hears about it, Ralph will get his macho Italian ego bruised, and maybe decide Denny went behind his back.

“Okay. Ask him,” she said. “I’ll be waiting downstairs in ten minutes.”

Detective Unger had, en route to the apartment, made a radio call.