Part 43 (2/2)
”Now Sherlock Holmes knows too,” Wohl said, nodding at Matt Payne. ”He tell you about the pimp?”
”No.”
”What pimp?” Matt asked.
”That's right,” Wohl said. ”You don't know, either, do you?”
”No, sir.”
Wohl related the whole sequence of events leading up to the death of Marvin Lanier.
”So what I think you should do, Jason,” he concluded, ”is get on the radio and get in touch with Tony Harris, and see what, if anything, they-he and D'Amata-have come up with. And then tell Tony I saw the mayor this morning, and he wants the Magnella shooting solved. I wish he'd get back on that.”
”You saw the mayor? I saw your car at City Hall.”
”Just a friendly little chat, to a.s.sure me of his absolute faith in me,” Wohl said dryly.
”Yes, sir,” Was.h.i.+ngton said. ”You want me to take Payne with me? Or have you got something for him to do?''
Wohl gathered the photographs together, stacked them neatly, and put them back in the envelope. ”Payne, you go out to Bustleton and Bowler, driving slowly and carefully, obeying all the speed limits. When you get there, telephone Captain John J. Duffy at the Roundhouse and tell him that I would be grateful for an appointment at his earliest convenience.”
”Yes, sir.”
”And then contact me and tell me when Captain Duffy will be able to see me.”
”Where will you be, Inspector?”
”Around,” Wohl said. ”Around.”
”Come on, Peter!” Was.h.i.+ngton said.
”You made your point, Jason. Leave it,” Wohl said. He b.u.mped hips with Matt, signaling he wanted to get up, then picked up the envelope with the photographs. When Matt was standing in the aisle, Wohl dropped money on the table and started to walk away. Then he turned. ”Good job, Jason, coming up with the photographs. Thank you.”
”Just don't do something with them that will make me regret it,” Was.h.i.+ngton said.
”I told you to leave it, Jason!” Wohl said, icily furious. Then he walked out of the Oak Lane Diner and got in his car. Neither Jason Was.h.i.+ngton nor Matt Payne was surprised to see him head back downtown rather than toward Bustleton and Bowler. The Philadelphia office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was downtown.
”Until a moment ago,” Was.h.i.+ngton said, ”there was an element of humor in this. Now it's not at all funny.”
”So he tells the FBI what he thinks of them. So what?”
Was.h.i.+ngton looked at him, as if surprised that Matt could ask such a stupid question.
”I really don't understand,” Matt said.
”The FBI doesn't like criticism,” he explained. ”Especially in a case like this, where it's justified. So instead of admitting they acted like horses' a.s.ses, they will come up with a good reason why they didn't happen to mention to us that they had men on DeZego. 'A continuing investigation' is one phrase they use; 'cla.s.sified national security matters' is another one. And they go to Commissioner Czernick and say, 'We thought we had an agreement that whenever one of your people wants something from us, he would go through Captain Duffy's Office of Extradepartmental Affairs. Your man Wohl was just in here making all kinds of wild accusations and behaving in a most unprofessional manner.”'
”But they were wrong,” Matt protested.
”We don't like to admit it, but we need the FBI, use it a lot. The NCIC is an FBI operation. They have the best forensic laboratories in the world. They sometimes tip us off to things. They pa.s.s out s.p.a.ces at the FBI Academy. You get an FBI expert to testify in court, the jury believes him if he announces the moon is made of green cheese. The bottom line is that we need them as much, maybe more, than they need us. For another example, the FBI was 'consulted' before we got the federal grant to set up Special Operations. If they had said-even suggested-that we wouldn't use the money wisely, we wouldn't have gotten it. So we try to maintain the best possible relations.h.i.+p with the FBI.”
”And Wohl doesn't know that?”
”Wohl's angry. He has every right to be. He doesn't get that way very often, but when he does-”
”s.h.i.+t,” Matt said.
”Let's just hope he cools off a little before he storms through the door and tells the SAC what he thinks of him and the other a.s.sholes,” Was.h.i.+ngton said.
”The what?”
”SAC, special agent in charge,” Was.h.i.+ngton explained, translating. ”There are also AACs, three of them, which stands for a.s.sistant agent in charge. But as p.i.s.sed as Peter is, he's going to see the head man, not one of the underlings.”
He slid off the seat and stood up.
”If you hear anything, let me know, and vice versa,” he said.
”If that G.o.dd.a.m.n Dolan hadn't gotten clever-”
”Don't be too hard on him,” Was.h.i.+ngton said. ”I think one of the reasons Peter Wohl is so angry is that he knows that if he had a chance to take pictures of a couple of FBI clowns on a surveillance, he would have mailed them to their office too. I've pulled their chain once or twice myself. There's something in their anointed-by-the-Almighty demeanor that brings that sort of thing out in most cops.”
He smiled at Matt and then walked out of the diner. Matt got in the Porsche and turned right onto North Broad Street.
A minute or two later he glanced at the pa.s.senger seat and saw that he still had the two envelopes with duplicate sets of photographs Was.h.i.+ngton had given him in City Hall.
He felt sure that the order to ”give one to Chief Lowenstein and the other to Chief Coughlin” Was.h.i.+ngton had given him was intended only to unnerve Sergeant Dolan.
Since the pictures were of two G.o.dd.a.m.n FBI agents, they really had no value at all.
A moment later he had a second thought: Or did they?
Two blocks farther up North Broad Street, in violation of the Motor Vehicle Code of the City of Philadelphia, Officer Matthew Payne dropped the Porsche 911 into second gear, pushed the accelerator to the floor, and made a U-turn, narrowly averting a collision with a United Parcel truck, whose driver shook his fist at him and made an obscene comment.
”May I help you, sir?” the receptionist in the FBI office asked.
”I'd like to see Mr. Davis, please,” Peter Wohl said.
”May I ask in connection with what, sir?”
”I'd rather discuss that with Mr. Davis,” Wohl said. ”I'm Inspector Wohl of the Philadelphia Police.”
”One moment, sir. I'll see if Special Agent Davis is free.”
She pushed a b.u.t.ton on her state-of-the-art office telephone switching system, spoke softly into it, and then announced, ”I'm sorry, sir, but Special Agent Davis is in conference. Can anyone else help you? Perhaps one of the a.s.sistant special agents in charge?”
”No, I don't think so. Were you speaking with Mr. Davis or his secretary?”
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