“Thirteen,” a voice immediately replied. Matt recognized it as Charley McFadden’s.
“Thirteen, can you meet us at Johnny’s Hots?”
“On the way,” McFadden’s voice said. “Highway Thirteen. Let me have lunch at Delaware and Penn Street.”
“Okay, Thirteen,” the J-band radio operator said. J-band, the city-wide band, is the frequency Highway units usually listen to. It gives them the opportunity to go in on any interesting call anywhere in the city.
“Highway Nine. Hold us out to lunch at the same location.”
Matt dropped the microphone onto the seat.
“I guess you and McFadden are buying, huh?” the driver asked.
“Why should we do that?”
“You both passed the exam, didn’t you?”
“You heard that, did you?”
“I also heard that Martinez didn’t.”
“I think that’s what the business at the Roundhouse is all about. The inspector and Chief Coughlin are going to break it to him easy.”
“I tried the corporal’s exam three years ago and didn’t make it,” the driver said. “Then I figured, fuck it, I’d rather be doing this than working in an office anyhow.”
Was that simply a conversational interchange, or have I just been zinged?
“I’m surprised Hay-zus didn’t make it,” Matt said.
“Yeah, I was too. But I guess some people can pass exams, and some people can’t.”
“You’re right. You think McFadden knows we passed?”
“He told me this morning at roll call.”
“So that means Martinez knows too, I guess?”
“Yeah, I’m sure he knows.”
Was that why Hay-zus cut me cold, or was that on general principles ?
TWO
Detective Matthew M. Payne, of East Detectives, pulled his unmarked car to the curb just beyond the intersection of 12th and Butler Streets in the Tioga section of Philadelphia.
There was a three-year-old Ford station wagon parked at the curb. Payne reached over and picked up a clipboard from the passenger seat, and examined the Hot Sheet. It was a sheet of eight-and -a-half-by-eleven-inch paper, printed on both sides, which listed the tag numbers of stolen vehicles in alphanumeric order.
There were three categories of stolen vehicles. If a double asterisk followed the number, this was a warning to police officers that if persons were seen in the stolen vehicle they were to be regarded as armed and dangerous. A single asterisk meant that if and when the car was recovered, it was to be guarded until technicians could examine it for fingerprints. No asterisks meant that it was an ordinary run-of-the-mill hot car that nobody but its owner really gave a damn about.
The license number recorded on the Hot Sheet corresponded with the license plate on the Ford station, which had been reported stolen twenty-eight hours previously. There were no asterisks following the listing. Two hours previously, Radio Patrol Car 2517, of the 25th Police District, on routine patrol had noticed the Ford station wagon, and upon inquiry had determined that it had been reported as a stolen car.
The reason, obviously, that this Ford station wagon had attracted the attention of the guys in the blue-and-white was not hard for someone of Detective Payne’s vast experience—he had been a detective for three whole weeks—to deduce. The wheels and tires had been removed from the vehicle, and the hood was open, suggesting that other items of value on the resale market had been removed from the engine compartment.
The officer who had found the stolen car had then filled out Philadelphia Police Department Form 75-48, on which was listed the location, the time the car had been found, the tag number and the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), and the condition (if it had been burned, stripped, or was reasonably intact).
If he had recovered the vehicle intact, that is to say drivable, he would have disabled it by removing the coil wire or letting the air out of one or more tires. It is very embarrassing to the police for them to triumphantly inform a citizen that his stolen car has been recovered at, say, 12th and Butler, and then to have the car stolen again before the citizen can get to 12th and Butler.
The officer who had found the car had turned in Form 75-48 to one of the trainees in the Operations Room of the 25th District, at Front and Westmoreland Streets, because the corporal in charge was otherwise occupied. The term “trainee” is somewhat misleading. It suggests someone who is learning a job and, by inference, someone young. One of the trainees in the Operations Room of the 25th District had in fact been on the job longer than Detective Payne was old, and had been working as a trainee