The identity of the shooter, a drug addict, was known, and the entire Philadelphia Police Department was looking for him. Mutt and Jeff had run him down on their own time, at the Bridge Street elevated train station. McFadden had literally run the shooter down, chasing him down the elevated train tracks at considerable risk to his own life, until a train had come along, and the shooter had fallen under its wheels.
The two had received their commendations from Mayor Carlucci himself, which had caused their photographs to be plastered all over the front pages of all the newspapers in Philadelphia except the Ledger, and thus effectively burning them from further duty as undercover narcs.
It wouldn’t have been fair, under those circumstances, to send the two of them out to a district to turn off fire hydrants in the summer, transport prisoners, and do the other things that other rookies with an out-of-the-Academy undercover narcotics assignment usually did after they were burned.
Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin had arranged for their assignment to Highway Patrol, considered the elite of the uniformed force. Normally, police officers couldn’t even apply for transfer to Highway unless they had at least five very good years on the job elsewhere.
They’d taken the examination for detective as soon as they were eligible. Martinez had placed two spots below Matt Payne, and McFadden two spots above the cutoff point at the bottom on the rankings.
They had to be considered outstanding young police officers, Staff Inspector Weisbach thought. And while there was no question in his mind that they were both straight arrows, there was something very disturbing to him in their matter-of-fact acceptance that it was perfectly acceptable—if admittedly illegal—police procedure to take drugs from evidence with the intention of using them to pay informers. That the end, so to speak, justified the means.
He was not morally outraged—he had been a policeman too long for that—but it bothered him.
“You think something like that happened, McFadden?” he asked.
“I don’t think anybody, any dirty cop, starts out by saying, ‘Fuck it, today I start being dirty.’ They have to have some reason, something that makes it all right. Tell themselves, for example, ‘Just this one time, when I make this car payment, that’ll be the end of it. I’ll never do it again.’ ”
“If you’re right, and I think you may be, that doesn’t explain how the whole Five Squad went bad,” Weisbach said.
“Are we sure they’re all dirty?” Martinez asked.
“If they’re not all actually involved,” Washington said, “I find it difficult to accept that anyone on Five Squad is not fully aware of what the others are doing.”
“Cops don’t snitch on other cops?” McFadden replied.
Washington nodded.
“Not unless their option is, their own innocence aside, going down with the others,” Tony Harris said. “Maybe the way to get into this is to find the one guy—if there is one—who is not dirty.”
“How do we find him, Tony?” Weisbach asked.
“Easy. He’s the one who doesn’t have money he shouldn’t have,” Harris said.
“Well, that’s where we’re going to begin. With money,” Weisbach said. “We’re going to see if anybody on the Five Squad has been spending—or saving—more money than seems reasonable on what the department is paying him. Frankly, I would be surprised if we can quickly, or easily, come up with something. If, on the first go-around, we can find anything suspicious at all.”
“I don’t understand, Inspector,” Matt Payne said.
“I think one of the things we all have to keep in mind, Payne, is that although Internal Affairs hasn’t been given this job specifically, that doesn’t mean they’re incompetent, or stupid. They’re always looking for signs of unusual affluence, and I would suspect they look closest at cops in jobs where taking bribes, or doing something else illegal, would be more likely. I’m sure they routinely check Narcotics people, is what I’m saying. And they didn’t find anything suspicious, or else they would have started their own investigation. Chief Coughlin tells me Internal Affairs was not conducting any kind of a specific investigation of anybody in Narcotics before we got this job.
“What I think that could mean is—presuming some members of Five Squad are dirty—that they are also too smart to go out and buy a new Buick in their own name, or a condo at the shore, or put money in their own bank account. You still with me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we—and by ‘we’ I mean McFadden and Jesus and Tiny—are going to go through