“Him and the spic. Martinez. Mutt and Jeff both made detective, and both of them are in Special Operations, and both run around in brand-new unmarked cars.”
“There’s a moral in there, Coogan. Shoot a bad guy, and get yourself promoted.”
“Mutt and Jeff didn’t shoot a bad guy, they tossed him under an elevated train,” Coogan replied.
Calhoun laughed.
“What the fuck do they do out there in Special Operations?” he asked.
“Who the fuck knows? They’re Carlucci’s fair-haired boys. They caught that loony tune who wanted to blow up the vice president. Shit like that.”
“How do you get in Special Operations?”
“Shoot a bad guy, I told you. Get your picture on TV.”
“If we shoot one of our bad guys, we’d wind up on charges for violating the fucker’s civil rights,” Calhoun said.
“Speaking of our bad guys, what did we get?”
“Nothing. Zip,” Calhoun said.
“Nothing?”
“The two johns had eighty-five bucks between them,” Calhoun explained. “The dinges had a half-dozen bags and three hundred bucks and change. I figured it wasn’t worth the risk to take any of it.”
“Three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks. A little bit here, a little bit there . . .” Coogan made a little joke.
It went over Calhoun’s head.
“Somebody might have thought it strange that the dinges had only a hundred or so,” he replied seriously. “And we don’t take it all, remember? Don’t be so fucking greedy, Coogan.”
“Up yours, Calhoun!”
They drove to the Narcotics Unit’s office at 22nd Street and Hunting Park Avenue, decided finishing the paperwork could wait until they had a beer, and walked across the street to the Allgood Bar.
It was late, and not shift-change time, and there was hardly anybody in the place. Except, sitting at a table in the rear, a stocky, swarthy man in his late thirties, who raised his bottle of Ortlieb’s beer in greeting when he saw them.
Coogan and Calhoun stopped at the bar only long enough to get beers of their own and then walked to his table carrying them.
“What did you do to your face, Calhoun?” Assistant District Attorney Anton C. Phebus asked.
Calhoun touched his face gingerly. Under three days’ growth of beard on his right cheek was an angry red bruise.
“There was this guy, six feet six, one of them Zulus,” Calhoun said. “Skinny as a rail. I don’t think he weighed 130 pounds,” Officer Calhoun explained. “I started to put cuffs on him, got one on him, and then he decided he didn’t want to be arrested . . .”
He mimed the action, spilling a little beer in the process, of someone suddenly spreading his arms to avoid being handcuffed.
“. . . and the loose cuff got me,” he finished.
“And what did you do to him?” Phebus asked, chuckling.
“He’s gonna sing soprano for a while. You wouldn’t believe how strong that skinny fucker was!”
“Maybe he was on something,” Phebus suggested.
“Maybe,” Calhoun said, considering this. “But I don’t think so. He was just strong, is all. And he took me by surprise.”
“Aside from that,” Phebus chuckled, “how was the arrest?”
“Zip,” Coogan offered.
“Zip?” Phebus asked, surprised, and then looked at Calhoun. “Zip, like in zero?”
“You told me to think, I thought,” Calhoun said. “What they had wasn’t worth the risk.”
“Good boy,” Phebus said. “There’s always another day.”
“So you keep saying,” Calhoun said.
Phebus looked as if he intended to reply, but changed his mind.
“Two things,” he said. “They’re going to let me prosecute Leslie, which means I can get—”
“Who’s Leslie?” Coogan interrupted.
“The junkie shit who popped Kellog,” Calhoun furnished, contemptuously.
“Sorry,” Coogan said, flushing, aware he had just said something stupid.
“Which means,” Phebus went on, “that I can finally get to listen to what’s on Kellog’s fucking tapes.”
“There’s probably nothing on them,” Calhoun said. “Kellog wasn’t stupid.”
“He was covering his ass,” Phebus said. “Which means he was scared. People who are scared do stupid things.”
“Where are the tapes now?” Coogan asked.
“We have them,” Phebus said. “But I just couldn’t go to the evidence room and ask for them. Before. Now that I’m prosecuting Leslie, I’ll be expected to look at them, listen to them.”
Coogan nodded, then said, “You said ‘two things.’ ”
Phebus did not reply directly. He looked at Calhoun and asked, “Calhoun, you planning to go to Harrisburg anytime soon?”
“Should I?”
“Get the wife and kid out of the city, why don’t you? Get them a little fresh air out in the country. See your wife’s family.”
“Right.”>
“What’s going to happen to Leslie?” Coogan asked.
“Probably, I can get him convicted of first-degree murder. He’s going away for a while.”