The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

The White Shirts were aware that no manner of stern admonition to lower-ranking police officers would stop them from furnishing Mr. O’Hara with facts they thought would interest him. Ninety-five percent of the uniformed police officers of the Philadelphia Police Department thought of Mr. O’Hara as one of their own.

In each of Philadelphia’s police districts, the day-to-day administrative routines are under the supervision of a corporal. The corporal is always assisted by a “trainee,” which is something of a monumental misnomer, as the term would suggest to the layman a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, very young police officer.

Quite the reverse is true. Many trainees are veteran police officers with many years on the job, who for a variety of reasons, but often their physical condition, are not up to walking a beat, or riding around in a radio patrol car for eight hours. They don’t wish to go out on a pension, and being designated a trainee both gives them something important to do and gives the district the benefit of their long experience.

Michael J. O’Hara knew every trainee in the Philadelphia Police Department by his first name, and just about every trainee felt privileged to consider himself a friend of the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist.

When Mickey O’Hara went into the 1st District Headquarters at 24th and Wolf streets in Southwest Philadelphia, he caught the attention of the corporal behind the plate-glass window and mimed drinking from a coffee cup. The corporal smiled, gave Mickey a thumbs-up, and pushed the button that activated the lock on the door that carried the caveat, ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE—POLICE PERSONNEL ONLY.

Mickey went into the room, helped himself to a cup of coffee, and put a dollar bill into the coffee kitty.

“Shit, Mickey, you don’t have to do that!” the trainee, a portly, florid-faced fifty-year-old with twenty-six years on the job, said.

“I am simply upholding the reputation of those of Gaelic extraction as perfect gentlemen,” Mickey replied.

(In truth, this was not entirely a benevolent gesture. The dollar would be reported on Mr. O’Hara’s expense account as “Coffee and Doughnuts for three, 1st Police District, $8.50.”)

The corporal and the trainee laughed, then laughed even louder when Mickey told them the story of the cop in the 19th District who, after he’d had a couple of belts on the way home, realized it was not only three A.M. when he got there, but that he probably smelled of perfume which was not that of his wife. Knowing that if he tried to take a shower, his wife would hear the water and wake up for sure, he needed a better idea, and found one. He tiptoed into the bathroom, remembering not to turn on the lights, because that would wake the wife. Then he stripped and sprayed himself liberally all over with deodorant. When he sniffed himself, he thought he could still smell perfume, so he sprayed himself again, and then tiptoed into the bedroom and eased himself into bed without waking his wife.

“That took him about ninety seconds,” Mickey finished. “Just long enough for the wife’s hair spray—what he thought was deodorant—to glue his wang to his left leg and his balls to the other.”

The laughter emanating from the office was of such volume as to attract the attention of the district commander and the tour lieutenant, who looked into the office, saw Mr. O’Hara, and entered the office to say hello.

Mickey repeated the story for their edification and amusement, and they chatted about mutual acquaintances for several minutes. The district captain told Mickey he and the lieutenant were going to ride around—which he knew meant take a look around the 1st District—and invited him to join them.

He declined with thanks. They shook hands, and the White Shirts left the office.

Neither the corporal nor the trainee thought it out of the ordinary—or inappropriate—when Mickey went to a clipboard containing the most recent communications from the Roundhouse, took it off its nail, and started reading them.

He found one of interest.

A Locate, Do Not Detain had been issued on one Ronald R. Ketcham, white male, twenty-five, five-ten, brown hair, 165 pounds, of an address on Overbrook Avenue, which Mickey recognized as being near the Episcopal Academy. The bulletin said he might be driving a Buick coupe, and gave the license number. The cooperation of suburban police departments was requested.

What attracted Mr. O’Hara’s attention was that the Locate, Do Not Detain ordered that any information generated on Mr. Ketcham be immediately furnished directly to ChInsp. Coughlin or Insp. Wohl or Sgt. Washington—it gave their telephone numbers—rather than be reported through ordinary channels.

Mickey carried the clipboard to the trainee.

“Pat, what’s this, do you think?”

“Yeah, I noticed that. The last I heard, Denny Coughlin wasn’t running Missing Persons. I don’t have a clue.”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell?”

Pat shook his head, “no.”

“Probably some ambulance chaser took off for Atlantic City with his squeeze, and the wife came home from Mama’s before she was expected.”

“Probably,” Mickey said, although he didn’t think so.

He thought about it a minute, then decided he would not call Denny Coughlin and ask him what it was all about.

Paragraph 11.B. of the Unspoken Rules required that, in a situation like this, he make inquiries of the senior White Shirt whose name he had, to avoid putting the subordinates on the spot about what to tell him. Denny Coughlin would tell him, of course. But that would use up a favor, and Mickey liked to have Denny Coughlin in his debt, rather than the other way around.

So Mickey didn’t call Chief Inspector Coughlin, but instead filed Ronald R. Ketcham away in a corner of his mind, to be retained until he heard something else.

Officer Tommy O’Mara put his head into Captain Michael Sabara’s office.

“Sir, there’s a civilian who wants to talk to you.”