graduation and/or obtained from the Final Clearance rack at Sears Roebuck and come to work for Special Operations.
Peter Wohl was sitting on his bed, pulling his socks on when Officer O’Mara walked in with a cup of coffee.
“I couldn’t find any cream, Inspector, but I put one spoon of sugar in there. Is that okay?”
Inspector Wohl decided that telling Officer O’Mara that he always took his coffee black would be both unkind and fruitless: He had told him the same thing ten or fifteen times in the office.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Stakeout got two critters at the Acme on Baltimore Avenue last night. It was on TV,” Officer O’Mara said.
“ ‘Got two critters’?”
“Blew them away,” O’Mara said, admiration in his voice.
“Any police or civilians get hurt?”
“They didn’t say anything on TV.”
Wohl noticed that Officer O’Mara did not have any coffee.
“Aren’t you having any coffee, Paul?”
“I thought you just told me to get you some,” O’Mara said.
“Help yourself, Paul. Have you had breakfast?”
“I had a doughnut.”
“Well, we’re going to the Roundhouse. We can get some breakfast on the way.”
“Yes, sir,” O’Mara said, and walked out of the bedroom.
Peter Wohl walked to his closet and after a moment’s hesitation selected a gray flannel suit. He added to it a light blue button-down collar shirt and a regimentally striped tie.
Clothes make the man, he thought somewhat cynically. First impressions are important. Particularly when one is summoned to meet with the commissioner, and one doesn’t have a clue what the sonofabitch wants.
There was no parking space in the parking lot behind the Police Administration Building reserved for the commanding officer, Special Operations, as there were for the chief inspectors of Patrol Bureau (North), Patrol Bureau (South), Command Inspections Bureau, Administration, Internal Affairs, Detective Bureau, and even the Community Relations Bureau.
Neither could Paul O’Mara park Peter Wohl’s official nearly new Ford sedan in spots reserved for CHIEF INSPECTORS AND INSPECTORS ONLY, because Wohl was only a staff inspector, one rank below inspector. The senior brass of the Police Department were jealous of the prerogatives of their ranks and titles and would have been offended to see a lowly staff inspector taking privileges that were not rightly his.
Wohl suspected that if a poll were taken, anonymously, of the deputy commissioners, chief inspectors, and inspectors, the consensus would be that his appointment as commanding officer, Special Operations Division, reporting directly to the deputy commissioner, Operations, had been a major mistake, acting to the detriment of overall departmental efficiency, not to mention what harm it had done to the morale of officers senior to Staff Inspector Wohl, who had naturally felt themselves to be in line for the job.
If, however, he also suspected, asked to identify themselves before replying to the same question, to a man they would say that it was a splendid idea, and that there was no better man in the Department for the job.
They all knew that the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadelphia, had suggested to Police Commissioner Taddeus Czemich that Wohl be given the job. And they all knew that Mayor Carlucci sincerely—and not without reason—believed himself to know more about what was good for the Police Department than anybody else in Philadelphia.
A "suggestion" from Mayor Carlucci to Commissioner Czernich regarding what he should do in the exercise of his office was the equivalent of an announcement on faith and morals issued by the pope, ex cathedra. It was not open for discussion, much less debate.
Peter Wohl had not wanted the job. He had been the youngest, ever, of the fourteen staff inspectors of the Staff Investigations Unit, and had liked very much what he was doing. The penal system of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was now housing more than thirty former judges, city commissioners, and other high-level bureaucrats and political office holders whom Peter Wohl had caught with their hands either in the public treasury or outstretched to accept contributions from the citizenry in exchange for special treatment.
He had even thought about passing up the opportunity to take the examination for inspector. There had been little question in his mind that he could pass the examination and be promoted, but he suspected that if he did, with only a couple of years as a staff inspector behind him, with the promotion would come an assignment to duties he would rather not have, for example, as commanding officer of the Traffic Division, or the Civil Affairs Division, or even the Juvenile Division.
Department politics would, he had believed, keep him from