out there dirty? Could be. I’ll have another look.”
“Hold off on that, Mario,” Commissioner Marshall said.
“What, exactly, is the problem with Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs?” Chief Lowenstein asked. “You said there was a problem.”
“They want to send somebody out there, undercover,” Marshall said.
“In the Airport Unit?” Lowenstein asked incredulously. “As a cop?”
Marshall nodded.
“They’ve made it an official request,” Captain Duffy said. “By letter.”
“Tell them to go fuck themselves, by official letter,” Lowenstein said.
“It’s not that easy, Matt,” Marshall said. “The commissioner says we’ll have to come up with a good reason to turn them down.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Lowenstein replied. “There’s no way some nice young agent of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs can pass himself off to anyone in the Airport Unit as a cop. And if there’s dirty cops out there, we should catch them, not the feds. Do you think you could explain that to the commissioner? ”
“Art and I had an idea, talking this over,” Chief Coughlin said.
Ah ha! thought Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, a lithe, well-built, just under six feet tall thirty-five-year-old. The mystery is about to be explained. This is not a conference. Whatever is going to be done has already been decided upon by Marshall and Coughlin. The rest of us are here to be told what the problem is, and what we are expected to do. I wonder what the hell I’m here for? None of this is any of my business.
“I’ll bet you did,” Lowenstein said.
Shame on you, Commissioner Marshall, Wohl thought. You broke the rules. You are not supposed to present Chief Lowenstein with a fait accompli. You are supposed to involve him in the decision-making process. Otherwise, he is very liable to piss on your sparkling idea.
“Matt, of course, is right,” Chief Coughlin went on. “There is no way a fed could go out to the Airport Unit and pass himself off as a cop. And, no offense, Mario, I personally would be very surprised if the people out there weren’t very suspicious of the corporal you sent out there when their corporal got killed.”
“He feels very strongly that no one suspected he worked for me,” Chief Delachessi said.
“What did you expect him to say?” Lowenstein said, somewhat unpleasantly. “ ‘Boy, Chief, sending me out there was really dumb. They made me right away’?”
“So what we need out there is a real cop . . .” Coughlin said.
“Are you inferring, Denny, there’s something wrong with the guy I sent out there?” Chief Delachessi interrupted.
“Come on, Mario, you know I didn’t mean anything like that,” Coughlin said placatingly.
“That’s what it sounded like!”
“Then I apologize,” Coughlin said, sounding genuinely contrite.
“What Chief Coughlin meant to say, I think,” Commissioner Marshall said, “was that if we’re to uncover anything dirty going on out there—and I’m not saying anything is—we need somebody out there who will (a) not make people suspicious and (b) who will be there for the long haul, not just a temporary assignment, like Mario’s corporal.”
The rest of you guys might as well surrender, Peter Wohl thought. If Marshall and Coughlin have come up with this brilliant idea, whatever it is, there’s only one guy who can shoot it down, and he’s got a sign on his desk reading Mayor Jerry Carlucci.
“Where are you going to get this guy?” Lowenstein asked.
“We think we have him,” Coughlin said. “We wanted to get your input.”
Yeah, you did. As long as the input is “Jesus, what a great idea, why didn’t I think of that?”
“We need an officer out there,” Commissioner Marshall said, “whose assignment will not make anybody suspicious, and an officer who is experienced in working undercover.”
“You remember the two undercover officers, from Narcotics, who bagged the guy who shot Dutch Moffitt?” Chief Coughlin asked.
“Mutt and Jeff,” Lowenstein said.
Now I know why I was invited, Peter Wohl thought.
The officers in question were Police Officers Charles McFadden and Jesus Martinez, who had been assigned to Narcotics right out of the Police Academy. McFadden was a very large Irish lad from South Philadelphia, in whom, Wohl was sure, Chief Coughlin saw a clone of himself. Martinez was very small, barely over departmental minimum height and weight requirements, of Puerto Rican ancestry. They were called “Mutt and Jeff” because of their size.
Staff Inspector Peter Wohl knew a good deal about both officers. They had been assigned to Special Operations after they had run to earth an Irish junkie from Northeast Philadelphia who had shot Captain Dutch Moffitt, then the Highway Patrol commander,