Badge of Honour 06 - The Murderers (24 page)

“Captain O’Connor, Northwest Detectives. Is the Chief available?”

“He’s here, but the door is closed. Inspector Wohl is with him, Captain.”

“I think this is important.”

“Hold on, Captain.”

“Coughlin.”

“Chief, this is Tom O’Connor.”

“I hope this is important, Tom.”

“Sergeant Monahan of the Fourteenth just called in a Five Two Nine Two from the Detweiler estate. The girl. The daughter. Drug overdose.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Chief Coughlin responded with even more emotion than O’Connor expected. Then, as if he had not quite covered the mouthpiece with his hand, O’Connor heard him say, “Penny Detweiler overdosed. At her house. She’s dead.”

“I’ll be a sonofabitch!” O’Connor heard Inspector Peter Wohl say.

“Chief, I’ve been trying to get Chief Lowenstein. You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

“Haven’t a clue, Tom. It’s ten past eight. He should be in his office by now.”

“I’ll try him there again,” O’Connor said.

“Thanks for the call, Tom.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mayor Carlucci’s office,” the receptionist, a thirty-odd-year-old, somewhat plump woman of obvious Italian extraction, had said into the telephone, and then hung up without saying anything else. Czernich thought he knew what the call was. Confirmation came when the receptionist got up and walked to the door of the Mayor’s private secretary and announced, “He’s entering the building.”

The Mayor’s secretary, another thirty-odd-year-old woman, also of obvious Italian extraction, who wore her obviously chemically assisted blond hair in an upswing, had arranged for the sergeant in charge of the squad of police assigned to City Hall to telephone the moment the mayoral limousine rolled into the inner courtyard of the City Hall Building.

Czernich stood up and checked the position of the finely printed necktie at his neck. He was wearing a banker’s gray double-breasted suit and highly polished black wing-tip shoes. He was an impressive-looking man.

Three minutes later, the door to the inner reception room was pushed open by Lieutenant Jack Fellows. The Mayor marched purposefully into the room.

“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” the Police Commissioner and the receptionist said in chorus.

“Morning,” the Mayor said to the receptionist and then turned to the Police Commissioner, whom he did not seem especially overjoyed to see. “Is it important?”

“Yes, Mr. Mayor, I think so,” Czernich replied.

“Well, then, come on in. Let’s get it over with,” the Mayor said, and marched into the inner office, the door to which was now held open by Lieutenant Fellows.

“Good morning,” the Mayor said to his personal secretary as he marched past her desk toward the door of his office. By moving very quickly, Lieutenant Fellows reached it just in time to open it for him.

Commissioner Czernich followed the Mayor into his office and took up a position three feet in front of the Mayor’s huge, ornately carved antique desk. The Mayor’s secretary appeared carrying a steaming mug of coffee bearing the logotype of the Sons of Italy.

The Mayor sat down in his dark green high-backed leather chair, leaned forward to glance at the documents waiting for his attention on the green pad on his desk, lifted several of them to see what was underneath, and then raised his eyes to Czernich.

“What’s so important?”

Commissioner Czernich laid a single sheet of paper on the Mayor’s desk, carefully placing it so that the Mayor could read it without turning it around.

“Sergeant McElroy brought that to my house while I was having my breakfast,” Commissioner Czernich said, a touch of indignation in his voice.

The Mayor took the document and read it.

T
O:
POLICE COMMISSIONER

F
ROM:
COMMANDING OFFICER, DETECTIVE BUREAU

S
UBJECT:
COMPENSATORY TIME/RETIREMENT

2. The undersigned has this date applied for retirement effective immediately.

3. Inasmuch as the undersigned does not anticipate returning to duty before entering retirement status, the undersigned’s identification card and police shield are turned in herewith.

Czernich took a step forward and laid a chief inspector’s badge and a leather photo identification folder on the Mayor’s desk.

“You did not see fit to let me know Chief Lowenstein was involved in your investigation,” Czernich said.

“Damn!” the Mayor repeated, this time with utter contempt in his voice, and then raised it. “Jack!”

Lieutenant Fellows pushed the door to the Mayor’s office open.

“Yes, Mr. Mayor?”

“Get Chief Lowenstein on the phone,” the Mayor ordered. “He’s probably at home.”

“Yes, sir,” Fellows said, and started to withdraw.

“Use this phone,” the Mayor said.

Fellows walked to the Mayor’s desk and picked up the handset of one of the three telephones on it.

“This makes the situation worse, I take it?” Commissioner Czernich asked.

“Tad, just close your mouth, all right?”

“Mrs. Lowenstein,” Fellows said into the telephone. “This is Lieutenant Jack Fellows. I’m calling for the Mayor. He’d like to speak to Chief Lowenstein.”

There was a reply, and then Fellows covered the microphone with his hand.

“She says he’s not available,” he reported.

“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.

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.”

“I told her not to. What’s on your mind, Mr. Mayor?”

“I want to know what the hell this is all about.”

Lowenstein raised his eyes to look at the Mayor.

“OK,” he said. “What it’s all about is that you don’t need a chief of detectives you don’t trust.”

“Who said I don’t trust you? For God’s sake, we go back a long way together, twenty-five years, at least. Of course I trust you.”

“That’s why you’re running your own detective squad, right? And you didn’t tell me about it because you trust me? Bullshit, Jerry, you don’t trust me. My character or my professional competence.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“And I don’t have to take your bullshit, either. I’m not Taddeus Czernich. I’ve got my time on the job. I don’t need it, in other words.”

“What are you pissed off about? What happened at that goddamned party? Matt, for Christ’s sake, I was upset.”

“You were a pretty good cop, Jerry. Not as good as you think you were, but good. But that doesn’t mean that nobody else in the Department is as smart as you, or as honest. I’m as good a cop, probably better—
I
never nearly got thrown out of the Department or indicted—than you ever were. So let me put it another way. I’m sick of your bullshit, I don’t have to put up with it, and I don’t intend to. I’m out.”

“Come on, Matt!”

“I’m out,” Lowenstein repeated flatly. “Find somebody else to push around. Make Peter Wohl Chief of Detectives. You really already have.”

“So that’s it. You’re pissed because I gave Wohl Ethical Affairs?”

“That whole Ethical Affairs idea stinks. Internal Affairs, a part of the Detective Bureau, is supposed to find dirty cops. And by and large, they do a pretty good job of it.”

“Not this time, they didn’t,” the Mayor said.

“I was working on it. I was getting close.”

“There are political considerations,” the Mayor said.

“Yeah, political considerations,” Lowenstein said bitterly.

“Yeah, political considerations,” Carlucci said. “And don’t raise your nose at them. You better hope I get reelected, or you’re liable to have a mayor and a police commissioner you’d
really
have trouble with.”

“We don’t have a police commissioner now. We have a parrot.”

“That’s true,” the Mayor said. “But he takes a good picture, and he doesn’t give you any trouble. Admit it.”

“An original thought and a cold drink of water would kill the Polack,” Lowenstein said.

“But he doesn’t give you any trouble, does he, Matt?” the Mayor persisted.

“You give me the goddamned trouble.
Gave
me. Past tense. I’m out.”

“You can’t quit now.”

“Watch me.”

“The Department’s in trouble. Deep trouble. It needs you. I need you.”

“You mean you’re in trouble about getting yourself reelected.”

“If I don’t get reelected, then the Department will be in even worse trouble.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the Department wouldn’t be in trouble if you let the people who are supposed to run it actually run it?”

“You know I love the Department, Matt,” the Mayor said. “Everything I try to do is for the good of the Department.”

“Like I said, make Peter Wohl chief of detectives. He’s already investigating everything but recovered stolen vehicles. Jesus, you even sent the Payne kid in to spy on Homicide.”

“I sent the Payne kid over there to piss you off. I was already upset about these goddamned scumbags Cazerra and Meyer, and then you give me an argument about your detective who got caught screwing his wife’s sister, and whose current girlfriend is probably involved in shooting her husband.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“I wish I did know it.”

Lowenstein looked at the Mayor and then shook his head.

“That’s what Augie Wohl said. And Sarah said it, too. That you did that just to piss me off.”

“And it worked, didn’t it?” the Mayor said, pleased. “Better than I hoped.”

“You sonofabitch, Jerry,” Lowenstein said.

“Augie and Sarah are only partly right. Pissing you off wasn’t the only thing I had in mind.”

“What else?”

“I gave Ethical Affairs to Peter Wohl for political considerations, and even if you don’t like the phrase, I have to worry about it. Peter’s Mr. Clean in the public eye, the guy who put Judge Moses Findermann away. I needed something for the newspapers besides ‘Internal Affairs is conducting an investigation of these allegations.’ Christ, can’t you see that? The papers, especially the
Ledger
, are always crying ‘Police cover-up!’ If I said that Internal Affairs was now investigating something they should have found out themselves, what would that look like?”

Chief Lowenstein granted the point, somewhat unwillingly, with a shrug.

“What’s that got to do with Payne, sending him in to spy on Homicide?”

“Same principle. His picture has been all over the papers. Payne is the kind of cop the public wants. It’s like TV and the movies. A good-looking young cop kills the bad guys and doesn’t steal money.”

There was a faint suggestion of a smile on Lowenstein’s lips.

“So I figured if I send Payne to spend some time at Homicide (a) he can’t really do any harm over there and (b) if it turns out your man who can’t keep his dick in his pocket and/or the widow—and get pissed if you want, Matt, but that wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that’s the way it turns out—had something to do with Kellog getting himself shot, then what the papers have is another example of one of Mr. Clean’s hotshots cleaning up the Police Department.”

“I talked to Wally Milham, Jerry. I’ve seen enough killers and been around enough cops to know a killer and/or a lying cop when I see one. He didn’t do it.”

“Maybe he didn’t, but if she had something to do with it, and he’s been fucking her, which is now common knowledge, it’s the same thing. You talk to her?”

“No,” Lowenstein said.

“Maybe you should,” the Mayor said.

“You’re not listening to me. I’m going out. I’m going to move to some goddamned place at the shore and walk up and down the beach.”

“We haven’t even got around to talking about that.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You haven’t even heard my offer.”

“I don’t want to hear your goddamned offer.”

“How do you know until you hear it?”

“Jesus Christ, can’t you take no for an answer?”

“No. Not with you. Not when the Department needs you.”

The kitchen door swung open.

“I thought maybe you’d need some more coffee,” Sarah Lowenstein said a little nervously.

“You still got that stuff you bought to get rid of the rats?” Chief Lowenstein said. “Put two heaping tablespoons, three, in Jerry’s cup.”

“You two have been friends so long,” Sarah said. “It’s not right that you should fight.”

“Tell him, Sarah,” the Mayor said. “I am the spirit of reasonableness and conciliation.”

“Four tablespoons, honey,” Chief Lowenstein said.