When he walked back into his office, Irene Craig followed him.
“What the devil is wrong with the cops?” she asked. “She gave them a description of this creep, even if that was a phony name.”
“Why do I suspect that you were, as a figure of speech, out there all the time with your ear to my keyhole?” he asked.
“You knew I would be monitoring that,” she said. “I also had Ed take it down on the stenotype machine. I should have a transcript before the colonel gets back.”
“Good girl!” he said.
“There are some women in my position who would take high umbrage at a sexist remark like that,” she said. “But I’ll swap compliments. You handled her beautifully.”
“Now may I go back to work, boss?” Payne said.
“Oh, I think the colonel can handle this from here,” she said, and walked out of his office.
Brewster Cortland Payne II returned to his brief.
FIVE
The eight men gathered in the conference room of the suite of third-floor offices in the Roundhouse assigned to the Police Commissioner of the City of Philadelphia chatted softly among themselves, talking about anything but business, waiting for the Commissioner to more or less formally open the meeting.
He did not do so until Deputy Commissioner for Administration Harold J. Wilson, a tall, thin, dignified man, entered the room, mumbled something about having been hung up in traffic, and sat down.
Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick then matter-of-factly thumped the table with his knuckles, and waited for the murmur of conversation to peter out.
“The mayor,” Commissioner Czernick said, evenly, even dryly, “does not want Mike Sabara to get Highway Patrol.”
Taddeus Czernick was fifty-seven years old, a tall, heavyset man with a thick head of silver hair. His smoothly shaven cheeks had a ruddy glow. He was just starting to jowl. He was wearing a stiffly starched shirt and a regimentally striped necktie with a dark blue, pin-striped, vested suit. He was a handsome, healthy, imposing man.
“He say why?” Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein asked.
“He said, ‘In uniform, Mike Sabara looks like a guard in a concentration camp,’” Czernick quoted.
Chief Inspector Lowenstein, a stocky, barrel-chested man of fifty-five, examined the half inch ash on his six-inch-long light green Villa de Cuba “Monarch” for a moment, then chuckled.
“He does,” Lowenstein said, “if you think about it, he does.”
“That’s hardly justification for not giving Sabara the Highway Patrol,” Deputy Commissioner Wilson said, somewhat prissily.
“You tell the dago that, Harry,” Lowenstein replied.
Deputy Commissioner Wilson glowered at Lowenstein, but didn’t reply. He had long ago learned that the best thing for him to say when he was angry was nothing.
And he realized that he was annoyed, on the edge of anger, now. He was annoyed that he had gotten hung up in traffic and had arrived at the meeting late. He prided himself on being punctual, and when, as he expected to do, he became Police Commissioner himself, he intended to instill in the entire department a more acute awareness of the importance of time, which he believed was essential to efficiency and discipline, than it had now.
He was annoyed that when he had walked into the meeting, the only seat remaining at the long conference table in the Commissioner’s Conference Room was beside Chief Inspector Lowenstein, which meant that he would have to inhale the noxious fumes from Lowenstein’s cigar for however long the meeting lasted.
He was annoyed at Chief Inspector Lowenstein’s reference to the mayor of the City of Philadelphia, the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, as “the dago,” and even more annoyed with Commissioner Czernick for not correcting him for doing so, and sharply, on the spot.
So far as Deputy Commissioner Wilson was concerned, it was totally irrelevant that Mayor Carlucci and Chief Lowenstein were lifelong friends, going back to their service as young patrolmen in the Highway Patrol; or that the mayor very often greeted Chief Lowenstein in similarly distasteful terms. (“How’s it going, Jew boy?”) The mayor was the mayor, and senior officials subordinate to him were obliged to pay him the respect approp
riate to his position.
Deputy Commissioner Wilson was also annoyed with the mayor. There was a chain-of-command structure in place, a standing operating procedure. When it became necessary to appoint a senior police officer to fill a specific position, the Deputy Commissioner for Administration, after considering the recommendations made to him by appropriate personnel, and after personally reviewing the records of the individuals involved, was charged with furnishing the Commissioner the names, numerically ranked, of the three best qualified officers for the position in question. Then, in consultation with the Deputy Commissioner for Administration, the Commissioner would make his choice.
Deputy Commissioner for Administration Wilson had not yet completed his review of the records of those eligible, and recommended for, appointment as Commanding Officer, Highway Patrol. Even granting that the mayor, as chief executive officer of the City of Philadelphia, might have the right to enter the process, voicing his opinion, doing so interfered with both the smooth administration of Police Department personnel policy, and was certain to affect morale adversely.
It had to do with Mayor Carlucci’s mind-set, Deputy Commissioner Wilson believed. It was not that the mayor thought of himself as a retired policeman. Mayor Carlucci thought of himself as a cop who happened to be mayor. And even worse than that, Mayor Carlucci, who had once been Captain Carlucci, Commanding Officer, Highway Patrol, thought of himself as a Highway Patrolman who also happened to be mayor.