right? Am I getting too old for this?
I wonder what the hell this is all about?
There was not much going on at 3:40 A.M. in Central Lockup in the Roundhouse. It had been a relatively slow night (the moon was not full, for one thing) and the usual ten-thirty-to-one-A.M. busy period was over.
Sergeant Keyes J. Michaels, on the desk, had been reading the Philadelphia Daily News when he heard the solenoid that controlled the door from the corridor between the lobby of the Roundhouse and the Lockup room buzz.
What looked to Michaels like one more ambulance-chaser—a rumpled-looking, plump little man wearing eyeglasses and needing a shave—came through the door and walked toward Michaels’s desk.
Michaels wondered how come they had passed him into Lockup—the ambulance-chasers were ordinarily not allowed in Lockup—but really didn’t give much of a damn. It was almost four o’clock, and he was sleepy.
The ambulance-chaser stood patiently in front of Sergeant Michaels until Michaels raised his eyes to him.
“Can I do something for you, sir?”
“Who’s the supervisor on duty? I’d like to speak to him, please?”
The supervisor on duty, Lieutenant Mitchell Roberts, after making sure that nothing further required his attention, had retired to a small room in which there just happened to be a cot.
Michaels, who liked Roberts, was reluctant to have him woken up by an ambulance-chaser who almost certainly wanted special treatment for some scumbag.
“Can I help you, sir? The supervisor’s not here at the moment.”
“I’m afraid not, Sergeant. I need to speak to the supervisor on duty.”
“I just told you, sir, he’s not here at the moment.”
“Where is he?”
“Just who the hell do you think you are?”
“My name is Weisbach,” the ambulance-chaser said. “Staff Inspector Michael Weisbach. Does that change anything, Sergeant?”
“Sorry, sir. The lieutenant has stepped out for a moment. I’ll let him know you’re here, sir?”
“Where is he? In that little room with the cot?”
“I’ll get him for you, sir.”
“Keep your seat, Sergeant,” Weisbach said. “I know where it is. I’ve crapped 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 Mitchell 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 Mitchell 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 Mitchell 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 scumbags justice,” Weisbach said. “I really want these bastards, 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