we ought to give him a medal. He done us a favor,” Coogan said.
“Like what?” Phebus asked sarcastically. “Calling all the attention he did to the Five Squad? Letting people listen to those tapes?”
“Kellog won’t be making any more tapes,” Coogan said. “Will he?”
“Who else is going to listen to those tapes?” Calhoun asked.
“Nobody now, I don’t think. Special Operations made copies of them when they were looking for Kellog’s shooter.”
“You don’t think they got anything off them, do you?” Calhoun asked.
“Good question. I don’t know.”
“We just saw one of those hotshots,” Calhoun said. “At the Roundhouse. The one that shot the serial rapist.”
“Payne?”
“Yeah.”
“What was he doing?”
“Beats the shit out of me. He was in the Roundhouse parking lot. I seen him twice, once when I went into Central Lockup and when I come out.”
“He’s Inspector Wohl’s errand boy,” Phebus said. “There’s no telling what he could have been doing.”
“Maybe he’s listening to Kellog’s tapes. Maybe he’s already listened to Kellog’s tapes. Maybe that son of a bitch Kellog said my name on those tapes. Maybe he was watching me,” Calhoun said.
“Jesus Christ, just when I think you’re getting some smarts,” Phebus said, “you start bouncing off the walls. If Special Operations was taking a close look at Five Squad, the word would be out.”
“And what if we do hear some word like that?”
“Then we shut down. As simple as that. If we don’t do something stupid here, or something stupid in Harrisburg, there’s nothing for Special Operations, Internal Affairs, this new thing—what the fuck do they call it? ‘Ethical Affairs’—or anybody else to find.”
Calhoun didn’t reply.
“If Prasko hadn’t made that stupid telephone call to Kellog’s widow, Calhoun,” Phebus went on, “Special Operations wouldn’t have been in on this at all. That beat cop would have caught Leslie the way he did, and that would have been the end of it. Nobody would have given a shit what might be on those tapes. Frankly, you and Prasko worry me more than Kellog ever did.”
“It’s a shame they wasn’t both at home when that asshole picked the wrong house to rob,” Calhoun said. “Then Prasko wouldn’t have had to call to protect all our asses.”
“What Prasko did was threaten her life,” Phebus said coldly. “He didn’t—”
“He told her to keep her mouth shut about what she knew, or thought she knew, about us. What’s so wrong about that?”
“Prasko knew Kellog’s wife was shacked up with a homicide detective. And he should have known the minute he made a threatening call, she was going to tell her boyfriend, the homicide detective, about it. That was fucking stupid!”
Calhoun looked at him a moment and then shrugged, granting the point.
“Let me worry about protecting our asses,” Phebus said. “You stay off the fucking telephone!”
“Watch it,” Calhoun said, nodding his head toward the door.
Sergeant Patrick J. Dolan of the Narcotics Unit had entered Allgood’s Bar.
He walked directly to their table.
“What do you know good, Tony?” he said to Phebus. “What are you doing in here? Homesick for Narcotics?”
“How are you, Pat?” Phebus said, offering him his hand.
“Say hello to Gladys for me,” Dolan said.
“I’ll do that.”
Dolan turned to Coogan and Calhoun.
“You two are supposed to do the paper before you start bending your elbows,” Dolan said.
“Give us a break, Sergeant,” Calhoun said.
“Break, my ass. Finish your beer and come across the street.”
“Right,” Calhoun said.
“See you around, Tony,” Calhoun said as he got to his feet.
Sergeant Dolan walked to the door, waited there until Coogan had finished his beer, then led Coogan and Calhoun across Hunting Park Avenue and into the Narcotics Unit.
NINE
Special Agent Jack Matthews, who had been sitting in one of the two armchairs in the outer office of SAC Walter Davis, got to his feet when Davis walked in, in the process of taking off his topcoat.
Davis believed that an important key to leadership was to have one’s subordinates believe that you were concerned about them, and that a splendid way to do this was, under certain circumstances, to address them by their Christian and/or nicknames.
Yesterday, he could not have told you this nice young man’s first name if his life depended on it. He remembered it now, most likely because of his late-afternoon conversation with him vis-à-vis the recruitment of Detective Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department.
“Good morning, Jack,” Davis said with a smile.
“Good morning, sir.”
“You’re waiting to see me, Jack?” Davis asked, now just a shade annoyed. He had told Matthews to let him know what happened, but he hadn’t really