When Peter Wohl walked into the outer office, he saw the conference room was crowded with people. He recognized Deputy Commissioner Howell, Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, Captain Henry C. Quaire, commanding officer of the Homicide Bureau, Captain Charley Gaft of the Civil Disobedience Squad, Captain Jack McGovern of the Second District, and Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein before someone closed the door.

"He's waiting for you, Inspector," Sergeant Jank Jankowitz said, gesturing toward the commissioner's office door.

"Thank you," Peter said, and walked to the open door and put his head in.

"Come on in, Peter," Commissioner Czernick said. "And close the door."

"Good morning, sir," Peter said.

"I've got a meeting waiting. This will have to be quick," Czernick said. "I want to know what happened with that TV girl from the time I asked you to keep a lid on things. If something went wrong, start there."

"Nothing went wrong, sir," Peter said. "I had her taken from the scene by two cops I borrowed from Jack McGovern. She went to WCBL, and the cops stayed with her until she was finished. Then they took her home. I later went to her apartment and brought her to Homicide." He smiled, and went on: "Jason Washington put on his kindly uncle suit, and the interview went very well. She told me afterward she thought he was a really nice fellow."

Commissioner Czernick smiled, and went on: "But you did get involved with what happened later? With the Nelson murder?"

"Yes, sir. I was on my way home from dinner-"

"Did you go by the Moffitt house? I didn't see you. I saw your dad and mother.''

"No, I didn't," Peter said. "I'm going to go to the wake. I went and had dinner . . . d.a.m.n!"

"Something wrong?"

"I had dinner in Alfredo's," Peter said. "Vincenzo Savarese came by the table, with his wife and sister, and said he was sorry to hear about Dutch Moffitt, and left. When I called for the bill, they told me he'd picked up the tab. I forgot about that. I want to send a memo to Internal Affairs."

"Who were you with?"

"A girl named Barbara Crowley. She's a nurse at the Psychiatric Inst.i.tute."

"That's the girl you took to Herman Webb's retirement party?"

"Yes, sir."

"I admire your taste, Peter," Commissioner Czernick said. "She seems to be a very fine young woman."

"So my mother keeps telling me," Wohl said.

"You should listen to your mother," Czernick said, smiling.

"When I got home, I called Homicide to see if anything had happened, if they'd found Gerald Vincent Gallagher, and they told me what had happened at Stockton Place, and I figured I'd better go, and I did."

That, Peter thought, wasn't the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it wasn't a lie. So why do 1 feel uncomfortable?

"What happened there?''

"Can I go off the record?" Wohl asked.

The commissioner looked at him with surprise, thought that over, and then nodded.

"Lieutenant DelRaye had rolled on the job, and with his usual tact, he'd rubbed Louise Dutton the wrong way. When I got there, she was locked in her apartment, and DelRaye was about to take down her door. He had a wagon waiting to bring her over here."

"Jesus!" Czernick said. "So what happened?"

"I talked to her. She'd found the body, and was understandably pretty upset. She said she was not going to come over here, period. And she meant it. She asked me to take her out of there, and I did."

"Where did you take her?"

"To my place," Peter said. "She said she didn't want to go to a hotel. I'm sure she felt she would be recognized. Anyway, it was half past two in the morning, and it seemed like the thing to do."

"You better hope your girl friend doesn't find out," Czernick said.

"So I calmed her down, and gave her something to eat, and at eight o'clock, I brought her in. I just got to Homicide when you called down there."

"How do you think she feels about the police department?" Czernick asked.

"DelRaye aside, I think she likes us," Peter said.

"She going to file a complaint about DelRaye?" Czernick asked.

"No, sir."

"You see Colonel Mawson downstairs?"

"Yes, sir. I guess WCBL sent him over?"

"No," Czernick said. "The name Stanford Fortner Wells mean anything to you, Peter?"

Wohl shook his head no.

"Wells Newspapers?" Czernick pursued.

"Oh, yeah. Sure."

"He sent the colonel," Czernick said.

Peter suddenly recalled, very clearly, what he'd thought when he'd first seen Louise Dutton's apartment; that she couldn't afford it; that she might be a high-cla.s.s hooker on the side, or some rich man's "good friend." That certainly would explain a lot.

"He's her father," Czernick went on. "So it seems the extra courtesies we have been giving Miss Dutton were the thing to do."

"She told me she had tried to call her father, but that he was out of the country," Peter said. "London, she said. She didn't tell me who he was."

He realized that he had just experienced an emotional shock, several emotions all at once. He was ashamed that he had been so willing to accept that Louise was someone's mistress, which would have neatly explained how she could afford that expensive apartment. His relief at learning that Stanford Wells was her father, not her lover, was startling. And immediately replaced with disappointment, even chagrin. Whatever slim chance there could be that something might develop between him and Louise had just been blown out of the water. The daughter of a newspaper empire was not about to even dally with a cop, much less move with him into a vine-covered cottage by the side of the road.

"Peter, I want you to stay with this," Commissioner Czernick said. "I'm going to tell J. Arthur Nelson that I've a.s.signed you to oversee the case and that you'll report to him at least daily where the investigation is leading."

"Yes, sir," Peter said.

"Find out where things stand, and then you call him. Better yet, go see him."

"Yes, sir."

"Make sure that he understands what you're telling him is for him personally, not for the Ledger. Tell him as much as you think you can. I don't want the Ledger screaming about police inept.i.tude. And stay with the Dutton woman, too. I don't want the Philadelphia Police Department's federal grants cut because Stanford Fortner Wells III tells his politicians to cut them. Which I think he d.a.m.ned sure would have done if we had brought his daughter here handcuffed in the back of a wagon."

"Yes, sir," Peter said.

"That's it, Peter," Commissioner Czernick said. "Keep me advised."

NINE.

Mr. and Mrs. Kevin McFadden, who lived in a row house on Fitzgerald Street, not far from Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia, were not entirely pleased with their son Charles's choice of a career as a policeman. Kevin McFadden had been an employee of the Philadelphia Gas Works since he had left high school, and Mrs. McFadden (Agnes) had just naturally a.s.sumed that Charley would follow in his father's footsteps. By and large the gas works had treated Kevin McFadden all right for twenty-seven years, and when he turned sixty, he would have a nice pension, based on (by then) forty-one years of service to the company.

Mrs. Agnes McFadden could not understand why Charley, who his father had got on as a helper with the gas works after his graduation from Bishop Newman High School, had thrown that over to become a cop. Her primary concern was for her son's safety. Being a policeman was a dangerous job. Whenever she went in Charley's room and saw his gun and the boxes of ammunition for it, on the closet shelf, it made her shudder.

And it wasn't as if he would have been a helper forever. You can't start at the top, you have to work your way up. Kevin had worked his way up. He was now a lead foreman, and the money was good, and with his seniority, he got all of his weekends and most holidays off.

Kevin hadn't been a lot of a help, when Agnes McFadden had tried to talk Charley out of quitting the gas works and going on the cops. He had taken Charley's side, agreeing with him that a pension when you were forty-five was a h.e.l.l of a lot better than a pension you got only when you were sixty, if you lived that long.

"Christ," he said, "Charley could retire at forty-five years old, still a young man, and go get another job, and every month there would be a check from the city for as long as he lived."

And he added that if Charley didn't want to work for the gas works, that was his business.

Mr. and Mrs. McFadden, however, were in agreement concerning Charley's duties within the police department. They didn't like that one d.a.m.ned bit, even if they tried (with not much success) to keep it to themselves.

He went around looking like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned b.u.m. Facts are facts. Agnes hadn't let Kevin go to work in clothes like that, even way back when he didn't have much seniority and was working underground. G.o.d only knew what people in the neighborhood thought Charley was doing for a living.

Not that he was around the neighborhood much. They hardly ever saw him, they couldn't remember the last time he had gone to church with them, and he never even went to Flo & Danny's Bar & Grill with his father anymore.

They understood, of course, when he told them he had been a.s.signed to the Narcotics Squad, in a "plainclothes" a.s.signment, and that the reason he dressed like a b.u.m was you couldn't expect to catch drug guys unless you looked like them. It wasn't like arresting somebody for speeding. And they believed him when he said it was an opportunity, that if he did good, he could get promoted quickly, and that there was practically unlimited overtime right now.

So far as Agnes McFadden was concerned, overtime was fine, but there was also such a thing as too much of a good thing. Charley had had his own phone put in; and two, three, and sometimes even more nights a week, he would no sooner get home, usually at some unG.o.dly hour after they had gone to bed, than it would ring, and it would be his partner calling; and she would hear him running down the stairs and slamming the front door (he'd been doing that since he was five years old) and then she would hear him starting up the battered old car-a Volkswagen- he drove and tearing off down the street.

Maybe, Agnes McFadden thought, if he was a real cop, and wore a uniform, and shaved, and had his hair cut; and rode around in a prowl car giving out tickets, going to accidents, and doing real cop-type things; it wouldn't be so bad; but she didn't like it at all, now, and if he wouldn't admit it, neither did his father.

Charley was twenty-five, and it was time for him to be thinking about getting married and starting a family. No decent girl would want to be seen with him in public, the way he looked (and sometimes smelled) and no girl in her right mind would marry somebody she couldn't count on to come home for supper, or who would jump out of bed in the middle of the night every time the phone rang. Not to mention being in constant danger of getting shot or stabbed or run over with a car by some n.i.g.g.e.r or spic or dago full of some kind of drug.

Officer Charles McFadden, who had been engaged in dipping a piece of toast into the yolk of his fried eggs, looked up at his father.

"Pop, ask me how many stars are in the sky?"

His father, who had been checking the basketball scores in the sports section of the Philadelphia Daily News, eyed him suspiciously, and took another forkful of his own eggs.

"It's not dirty," Charley McFadden said, reading his father's mind.

"Okay," Kevin McFadden said. "How many stars are in the sky?"

"All of them," Charley McFadden said, pleased with himself.

It took Kevin a moment, but finally he caught on, and laughed.

"Wisea.s.s," he said.

"Chip off the old block," Charley said.

"I don't understand," Agnes McFadden said.

"The only place, Mom, stars is, is in the sky," Charley explained.

"Oh," she said, not quite sure why that was funny. "There's some more home fries in the pan, if you want some."

Charley had come in in the wee hours, and slept until, probably, he smelled the coffee and the bacon, and then come down. It was now quarter after nine.

"No, thanks, Mom," Charley said. "I got to get on my horse."

"You goin' somewhere?" Agnes McFadden asked when Charley stood up and carried his plate to the sink. "Here, give me that. Neither you or your father can be trusted around a sink with dishes."

"I got to change the oil in the car," Kevin McFadden said. "And I bought some stuff that's supposed to clean out the carburetor. Afterward, I thought maybe you and me could go to Flo and Danny's and hoist one."

"I can't, Pop," Charley said. "I got to go to work."

"You didn't get in until four this morning-" Agnes McFadden said.

"Three, Mom," Charley interrupted. "It was ten after three when I walked in the door.''

"Three then," she granted. "And you got to go back? Your father has the day off, and it would be good for you to spend some time together. And fun, too. You go down to Flo and Danny's and when I finish cleaning up around here, I'll come down and have a gla.s.s of beer with the two of you."

"Mom, I got to go to work."

"Why?" Agnes McFadden flared. "What I would like to know is what's so important that it can't wait for a couple of hours, so that you can spend a little time with your family."

She was more hurt, Charley saw, than angry.

"Mom, you see on the TV where the police officer, Captain Moffitt, got shot?"

"Sure. Of course I did. What's that got to do with you?"

"There was two of them," Charley said. "Captain Moffitt shot one of them, and the other got away."

"I asked, so what's that got to do with you?"

"I think I know where I can catch him," Charley said.

"Mr. Big Shot," his mother said, heavily sarcastic. "There's eight thousand cops-I know 'cause I seen it in the newspaper-there's eight thousand cops, and you, you been on the force two years, and all you are is a patrolman, though you'd never know it to look at you, and you 're going to catch him!"