“I’m having a little problem with the local cops. Your local cops. I thought you might be able to help me-the Bureau- out on this.”
“Do whatever I can, you know that. My local cops? What are they doing way down there?”
“You had a murder up there…”
“We have a lot of murders up here.”
“This one was of a young woman raped and murdered in her apartment. It was on the NCIC, looking for a similar modus operandi.”
“That one made the front pages. It seems like the cops were actually on the scene, but couldn’t take the door because there was no sign of forced entry. They took a beating for a while in the press.”
“Well, one of my agents heard about the case, and then there was a similar modus operandi in a little village across the bay from here, and he went to check it out…”
“And it was the man the locals here are looking for? Good for you, Walt! A little favorable publicity never hurts the Bureau, does it? You’re sure you’ve got the right man?”
“When he got over there, your locals were already there.”
“You don’t say. That’s odd. I had lunch with the Commissioner-Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani-yesterday, and he didn’t say anything to me.”
The sonofabitch! There’s no way Philadelphia cops would go all the way to Alabama without Mariani knowing all about it. And he didn’t say a goddamn word!
“There were Philadelphia Homicide cops there, plus an assistant D.A.”
“Well, your man took over, didn’t he, Burton?”
“He ran into a stone wall, Walt. I was hoping you could speak to somebody up there.”
“You didn’t get any names, by chance?”
“There was a Lieutenant Washington, a Sergeant Payne, and a female detective-I don’t have a name on her-an assistant D.A. named Cohen, and some wiseass of a reporter named O’Hara, who accused my agent of shamelessly trying to steal the arrest. Do you think you could say a word in the appropriate ear up there?”
Of course I could. And then Mariani would shove it down my throat. With great joy.
“No. I don’t think I could, Burton.”
“ ‘No’? Just like that? ‘No’?”
“Let me tell you about the locals you’re dealing with, Burton,” Davis said. “Starting with the sergeant. You remember a couple of months ago, when one of my people had to put down a terrorist?”
“The guy with the machine gun? A real O.K. Corral shoot-out? ”
“That’s the case. Well, he had with him a local cop who, it has been reliably reported to me, said, ‘Some of my best friends are FBI agents, but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.’ ”
“A real wiseass, eh?”
“Whose father is a senior partner in what is probably our most important law firm. That’s the sergeant. The lieutenant is probably Jason Washington. Is he a great big black fellow? ”
“That’s the man. My agent says he’s enormous.”
“Who is married to a lady who moves in the same exalted arty circles as our mayor, and incidentally is the best Homicide investigator I’ve ever known.”
“I see.”
“Mr. Cohen is one of our two-hundred-odd assistant district attorneys. He specializes in the prosecution of homicides. He is generally held in high esteem-on a scale ranging upward from one to two hundred, he would be mighty close to two hundred, in other words-by those who know him. Including me.”
“Well, they didn’t behave with anything like professional courtesy, no matter who they are. They stood right there while this belligerent reporter-”
“And that would be Mr. Michael J. O’Hara, Burton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter of the Philadelphia Bulletin,” Davis interrupted, “whom I have been assiduously attempting to cultivate since they made me the SAC here. Without conspicuous success. I can only hope your agent didn’t antagonize him.”