“I don’t know what the hell this is all about, Mickey, but I thought you might be interested.”
“In what?”
“About an hour ago, Harry Cronin, who went off at midnight, brought a citizen in here wearing nothing but an overcoat. Danny the Judge put him in a detention cell, and Harry in the captain’s office. Then he called Denny Coughlin, Inspector Wohl of Special Operations, and Jason Washington of Homicide.”
Jason doesn’t work in Homicide anymore. I’m surprised Moskowitz doesn’t know that.
“And?”
“They’re all here. Plus some guy, a heavy hitter, from the FBI. And a lady doctor.”
“Has the guy in the overcoat got a name, Lenny?”
“Ketcham, Ronald.”
“Nice not to talk to you, Lenny. I owe you a big one.”
“I figure I still owe you,” Sergeant Moskowitz said and hung up.
On being advised by Lieutenant Daniel Justice that Mr. Michael J. O’Hara of the Bulletin was in the building and desired a minute or two of his time, Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin left the small room equipped with a one-way mirror adjacent to the interview room and went to speak to him.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting this way, Mickey,” he greeted him. “People will start to talk.”
“Ah, Denny, you silver-tongued devil, you!”
“I’d love to know who tipped you to this. He would be on Last Out for the rest of his life, walking a beat in North Philly.” Last Out was the midnight-to-eight shift.
“What do you mean, ‘who tipped me’? I was on my way home, Denny, for some well deserved rest, when what do I hear on the radio? You’re coming here. Peter Wohl is coming here. So I figured, what the hell, I’d come down here, we’d all have a cup of coffee, chew the rag a little—”
“Chew the rag a little about what, for example?”
“For example, why did you put the arm out for Mr. Ronald R. Ketcham?”
“Ronald R. Ketcham? I don’t seem to recall the name.”
“And why, if it was a Locate, Do Not Detain, did he wind up in a holding cell?”
“A holding cell?”
“Wearing nothing but an overcoat.”
“Mickey, you have your choice between me throwing you out of here myself, or agreeing to really sit on this one. And that may mean permanently sitting on it. Now and forever.”
“You got a deal, Denny.”
“I’ll fill you in later,” Coughlin said. “I don’t want to miss any of this.”
He waved O’Hara into the small room with the one-way mirror adjacent to the interview room. There Mr. O’Hara found Inspector Peter Wohl; Amelia Payne, M.D.; Mr. Walter Davis, Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; a well-dressed individual Mr. O’Hara correctly guessed was also in the employ of the FBI; and Lieutenant Daniel Justice.
Through the one-way mirror, he saw Sergeant Jason Washington and a distraught-looking man sitting in a chair wearing nothing but a blanket around his shoulders.
Mickey waved a cheerful hello.
The FBI agent Mickey didn’t recognize looked confused.
Mr. Davis of the FBI looked very uncomfortable, as did Danny the Judge.
Dr. Payne smiled at him absently, her attention devoted to what was going on on the other side of the mirror.