"You've already put a lot of hours in today," Matt said. "We'll take you home…" And then he had a second thought. "Why don't we drop you at Homicide, and you see what the Captain or Washington wants you to do?"
It took her a moment to understand what he really meant.
"If anything interesting has come up, I could call you," she said.
"Great idea!" Colt said.
"Hay-zus, you got the number of the sergeant downstairs? " Matt asked.
Martinez took out his telephone, punched in numbers, and handed the phone to him.
"Sergeant Nevins."
"Matt Payne," Matt said. "Mr. Colt wants to ride around town a little. Is that going to pose any problems for you?"
"You want to take a couple of uniforms with you?"
"No. I was thinking about the press. They still there?"
"Yeah. We can handle them. Just give a couple of minutes' notice."
"We'll be down in five minutes," Matt said.
"I really appreciate this, buddy," Stan Colt said.
[FIVE] When officers commanding, for example, the Impact Unit and Internal Affairs get an order directly from the first deputy commissioner, they tend to drop whatever they might have been doing and start to comply with the order. The same is true when the commanding officer of a detective division gets any kind of an order from the chief inspector of detectives.
This being the case, Inspector Wohl had been more than a little surprised that the first person to respond to the summons issued was Steven J. Cohen, Esq., head of the District Attorney's Homicide Unit, a dapper, tanned, well-dressed forty-year-old.
"That was quick, Steve," Wohl greeted him. "Thank you."
"I would say I heard my mistress's voice, but that would be subject to misinterpretation," Cohen said. "I was in Center City. Please don't ask me why."
"Why were you in Center City, Steve?" Wohl asked.
"Would you believe my wife is a Stan Colt fan? And/or that I paid a hundred dollars each for two tickets entitling us to stand in a long line in the Bellvue-Stratford to shake his hand, and two very watery drinks? And that when Al called me, I was in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton, where he is staying, and where, my wife hoped, he would appear?"
"I believe you," Wohl said. "If you can't believe a lawyer, who can you believe?"
Cohen gave him the finger.
"What's up, Peter?"
"We've identified one of the doers in the Roy Rogers job," Peter began.
He had just about finished when Inspector Michael Weisbach of Internal Affairs walked into Homicide. Weisbach was a slightly built man who wore mock tortoise-frame glasses and always managed to look rumpled. Weisbach and Wohl were longtime friends.
He nodded at Cohen and looked expectantly at Wohl, but didn't say anything.
"So how's by you, Michael?" Wohl asked, finally, in a creditable mock-Yiddish accent.
Cohen chuckled.
"What the hell is this all about, Peter?" Weisbach asked, not able to resist a smile.
"I would deeply appreciate your patience, Inspector, until Captain Mikkles of Impact and Captain Calmon of Southwest Detectives get here," Wohl said. "I've just explained the whole thing to the shyster here, and I'd rather do it only once more, when everybody is here."
"How come the shyster gets special treatment?"
"Because I like him," Wohl said.
"Oh, Christ," Weisbach groaned.
Cohen pointed toward the door to Homicide. Captain Michael J. Mikkles, who commanded the Impact Task Force- a special antidrug unit-had just come in. He was a tall, very thin, bald-headed man in his fifties. He was halfway to Captain Quaire's office when Captain Calmon entered Homicide.
When he was in the office, and they had all shaken hands all around, Wohl closed the door.
"First things first," he said. "I need six undercover vehicles for an indefinite period, said vehicles suitable for a round-the -clock surveillance at the Paschall Homes Housing Project, and I need them right now."
"Who are we going to-" Weisbach started to ask.
"Indulge me, Mike," Wohl interrupted. "I'll explain everything in a minute. Right now, I want two undercover vehicles at Special Operations, two more within a couple of hours, and a total of six by morning. You two decide between you where they're coming from."
"You're just asking for vehicles, right? You don't want any of my detectives?" Captain Calmon asked.
"Just the vehicles. We'll use Special Operations and Homicide detectives for surveillance until we run out of people."
"Inspector," Captain Mikkles said. "I don't have any undercover cars to spare. The only way I could give you vehicles is to take them off jobs."
"Then that's the way it'll have to be," Wohl said, "unless Inspector Weisbach can give me two right now."
Weisbach took out his cellular and punched an autodial number.
"This is Weisbach," he announced. "How many covert cars-anything suitable for surveillance in a project-can I get out of the warehouse right now?"
The Internal Affairs Division, which is engaged primarily in investigating policemen, had a fairly large fleet of bona fide "civilian" cars and other vehicles because very few policemen cannot spot an unmarked car in the first glance. The vehicles- many of them forfeitures in drug cases-were kept in a warehouse several blocks from the IAD offices on Dungan Road.
He waited and listened, and then turned to Wohl.
"I've got two pretty beat-up vans and a Chrysler, almost new, you can have right now. Maybe tomorrow we can do better."
"They're in the warehouse?" Wohl asked. Weisbach nodded. "Then we have to figure a way to get them out to Special Operations."
"I'm here in my car," Weisbach said. "I could run a couple of people by the warehouse."
The IAD warehouse had no identifying signs on it, and IAD tried to preserve its anonymity by never going near it in marked or unmarked cars.
"Can you carry four people?" Wohl asked.
Weisbach nodded.
"Then we'll do that," Wohl said.
"Do I get an explanation of what's going on?" Weisbach asked. "I'd kind of like to know."
"Well, if you're going to be difficult," Wohl said, and turned to Captain Mikkles. "Mick, I'm going to have to have two more cars in, say, two hours. If that means you have to call off a surveillance, so be it."
"Yes, sir," Mikkles said. It was obvious he did not like the order.
"Okay," Wohl said. "Then let's go out there, and I'll explain, for what I really hope is the last time, what's going on."
Just about everybody in the outer office stopped talking and directed their attention toward Captain Quaire's office as Wohl and the others filed out of it.
[SIX] "For you, Inspector," Captain Michael J. Sabara said, handing Wohl one of the phones on Captain Quaire's desk. "It's Mickey O'Hara."
Sabara was sitting in Quaire's chair. Peter Wohl and Jason Washington were sitting on wooden chairs-Washington with his legs sprawled in front of him, Wohl sitting in his chair backward. Quaire had left five minutes earlier, at Wohl's pointed suggestion that since everybody had a lot to do in the morning, and he could think of nothing else they could do tonight, it might be a good idea to get some rest, it was already almost eleven.
Sabara, Wohl had just told him, was going to be responsible for providing what detectives Washington-to whom Wohl had given responsibility for the Paschall Homes Housing Project-decided he needed, and to make sure there were Highway Patrol cars always no farther than five minutes away from the surveillance site.
"And how is my all-time favorite journalist?" Wohl said into the phone.
"Pissed is how I am," O'Hara said. "Suspecting, as I do, that I am about to get another runaround."