"Keep your seat, Sergeant," Weisbach said. "I know where it is. I've c.r.a.pped out there myself more than once."

"Yes, sir."

Weisbach went to the closet-size room, opened the door, and snapped on the lights. He knew the large, muscular man sleeping on his back, his mouth open, snoring lightly, but not well; they had never really worked together. Searching his memory, he couldn't come up with one thing, good or bad, about Lieutenant Mitch.e.l.l Roberts, except what everybody thought about him. He was a good cop. Not an exceptional cop. It had taken him four shots at the lieutenants' examination before he scored high enough on it to make the promotion list.

Lieutenant Mitch.e.l.l Roberts woke and pushed himself up on the cot, supporting himself on his elbows, squinting in the sudden light.

"Who are you?" he asked, half indignantly, half curiously.

"Mike Weisbach, Mitch. Sorry to wake you."

"Jesus, Inspector, I didn't recognize you right off. Sorry."

"Sorry to have to wake you."

"What can I do for you?"

"I need to look at some of your records," Weisbach said.

"Sure," he said, and then had a second thought: "Jesus, at this time of night? I thought you guys worked the day shift."

"At this time of night," Weisbach said, and then made a decision based on nothing more than intuition: Lieutenant Mitch.e.l.l Roberts could be trusted.

"I'm really glad to see you here, Mitch."

"Asleep?" Roberts asked.

"I've taken a nap or two in here myself," Weisbach said. "What I meant was that I know I can trust you to keep your mouth shut."

"Yes, sir. Sure you can."

"Can you tell your sergeant he didn't see me in here? And expect him to keep his mouth shut?"

"Yes, sir," Roberts replied, after taking time to think it over. "Michaels is a good cop."

"Ordinarily, that would be good enough, but sometimes good cops change when it has to do with dirty cops. I don't pretend to understand that, but that's the way it is. They start thinking 'It's we cops, we brothers, against everybody else' even when-as in this case-the dirty cops are really slime."

"Is that what this is about? Dirty cops?"

" 'Dirty'-or 'slime'-doesn't do these sc.u.mbags justice," Weisbach said. "I really want these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and I don't want your sergeant to keep me from getting them by running off at the mouth to anybody."

"Oh," Roberts said. "Okay. That's good enough, coming from you, for me. Don't worry about Michaels."

"I'll worry," Weisbach said. "Prove me wrong."

"What do you need?"

"I want you to get me the records of everybody the Narcotics Five Squad has brought in here in the last ten days."

"One of those Narcotics Five Squad hotshots is dirty? But you said 'these sc.u.mbags', plural 'sc.u.mbags', didn't you?"

"I don't want you even to say 'Narcotics Five Squad' out loud, Mitch. And I don't want your sergeant, or anybody else, to know what records you took out of the files."

"What am I going to do with the records, once I get them out of the file?"

"I'm going to leave Lockup now, before you come out. I'm going upstairs to Chief Coughlin's office, where you will bring the records. After we Xerox them, you will bring them back here and put them back in the files."

"Chief Coughlin's office? He's up there?"

"No, but by the time I get there, Frank Hollaran is supposed to be there and have the Xerox machine warmed up," Weisbach said.

Sergeant Francis Hollaran was Chief Inspector Coughlin's driver, a somewhat inexact job description that really meant his function was to do whatever possible, whenever possible, to spare his chief from wasting his time.

But it was more than that. Most of the inspectors and chief inspectors of the Philadelphia Police Department had learned what was expected of very senior supervisors by serving as "driver" to a chief inspector earlier in their careers.

"It'll take me a couple of minutes, Inspector," Roberts said.

Captain David Pekach pulled into the s.p.a.ce reserved for the commanding officer of the Highway Patrol in the parking lot of the Special Operations Division at Castor and Frankford avenues and got out of the car.

A handsome young Irishman in a Highway Patrol sergeant's uniform stepped out of the shadows and extended a mug of coffee to him.

"I thought you might need this," he said with a smile.

Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd was on the manning charts as the administrative a.s.sistant to the commanding officer, Highway Patrol. He performed essentially the same duties for Captain Pekach as Sergeant Hollaran performed for Chief Inspector Coughlin, and in fact, everybody thought of him as Pekach's driver. But, as a captain, Pekach, who really needed someone to run intelligent interference for him, was not authorized a driver, and to a.s.sign him one would have further antagonized a large number of inspectors and chief inspectors in the department who believed that Highway Patrol and Special Operations White Shirts were already enjoying far too many perquisites.

Naming O'Dowd as Pekach's administrative a.s.sistant had been Wohl's idea.

Pekach took the coffee mug.

"The question, Jerry, is how did you know I would probably need a cup of coffee at"-he looked at his watch-"ten minutes to four in the morning?"

"Jack Malone called me," O'Dowd said. "He said he didn't know what was going on, but that Inspector Wohl had put out the arm for you, and that Inspector Weisbach called in saying he would be unavailable until further notice. I figured you might need me."

"I probably will, and I appreciate your coming, but until I find out what the h.e.l.l is going on, I think you better wait in my office-out of sight. Malone meant well, but he really shouldn't have called you."

"Yes, sir."

"As soon as I find out what's going on, I'll let you know," Pekach said and, carrying the coffee mug, went into the schoolhouse.

There was no one in the former princ.i.p.al's office that now served as the office of the Special Operations commander and his deputy. Pekach even had to turn on the lights.

The first person to appear, five minutes later, was Sergeant Jason Washington.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on, Jason?" Pekach greeted him. When Washington didn't immediately reply, Pekach added: "The inspector told me to meet him here."

"I have something delicate to say," Washington said. "Under the circ.u.mstances-which I will explain if Peter Wohl doesn't arrive in the next few minutes to explain himself-I believe that while Wohl certainly would like to have Captain Sabara here, he may have forgotten-"

"And Mike would be p.i.s.sed not to be here, right?"

Washington nodded.

Pekach reached for one of the telephones on the desk of Officer Paul T. O'Mara, Wohl's administrative a.s.sistant.

He was not quite through dialing when Wohl walked in the office. He stopped dialing.

"Weisbach here yet?" Wohl asked.

"No, sir," Washington and Pekach said in chorus.

"Who are you calling?" Wohl asked.

"Mike," Pekach said.

"Whose idea was that?"

"Mine," Pekach said, as Washington held up his hand like a guilty child.

Wohl, smiling, shook his head.

"Whichever of you two is really to blame, thank you very much," he said. "As I was coming up Frankford Avenue, I thought of him, and of Tony Harris, McFadden, Martinez-"

He stopped when Washington held up his hand again.

"Be advised, sir, that my entire command, save, of course, the absent Detective Payne, is at this very moment rushing to the sound of the guns."

"Thank you, again," Wohl said.

"And Jerry O'Dowd got here before I did," Pekach said. "What's going on?"

"Just as soon as you get Mike out of bed, I'll tell you," Wohl said.

A very large, very black woman, attired in a flowered housecoat, opened her front door and examined her caller with mingled annoyance and curiosity.

"This better be something important, Dennis," the Hon. Harriet M. "Hanging Harriet" McCandless, judge of the Superior Court, announced. "I'm an old woman and need my sleep."

"Thank you for seeing me, Your Honor," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said. "I think you'll agree with me that this is important."

"It had better be," Judge McCandless announced. "Come in. I made a pot of coffee."

"Tony Callis is in my car, Your Honor," Coughlin said.

"Are you hinting that you would like to have him come in?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

Judge McCandless considered that for a full thirty seconds.

"Well, we can't have our distinguished district attorney sitting outside in the dark, can we?" she said finally. "You may fetch him, Dennis."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

"Now, just to make sure I have everything straight in my mind," Judge McCandless said, leaning back in her armchair as if she expected the back to move as her judge's chair did. "You, Tony, are going to come to me to appeal the decision of the magistrate to permit these people bail."

"Yes, Your Honor," District Attorney Callis said.

"Then, their bail having been revoked, you are going to return them to custody. Once in custody, in exchange for their testimony against the police officers in question, you are going to drop the charges on which they were arrested."

"If it gets to that, Your Honor. Only as a last resort will we agree to drop the charges."

"Come on, Tony," Judge McCandless said. "These people aren't stupid. They're going to want a deal, and you're going to give it to them. Your priority is to get the Five Squad."

"Jason Washington, Your Honor," Coughlin said, coming to Callis's a.s.sistance, "can often work miracles."

"I am second to no one in my appreciation of the Black Buddha's skill as an interrogator," Judge McCandless said. "But I repeat, these people aren't stupid. They are going to want to do a deal, and Tony is going to have to make one."

"We'll try, Your Honor," Tony Callis replied, "if it comes to that, to make the best deal possible."

"Several things occur to me," she replied flatly. "The second being that you'll make whatever deal you have to."

"And the first?" Tony Callis asked, as ingratiatingly as he could manage.

"If you get away with this," she said, "I will have to disqualify myself."

There was no reply.

"And while neither one of you is a nuclear scientist, I feel sure you considered that before you decided to wake me up at four o'clock in the morning."

And again there was no reply.

"Which suggests to me that this is very important to you," she finished. "So important that you are willing to take the risk that when these vermin are brought to trial, it might very well be before a brother or sister of mine on the bench who will desperately search the law for an excuse to let them walk."

Coughlin and Callis looked uncomfortable.

"But that's moot," Judge McCandless went on. "You in effect disqualified me by simply coming here and asking me about what you want me to do. If these vermin walk, it will be on your shoulders, not mine."

"I don't think they'll walk, Your Honor," Callis said.