and did Nick know what he was doing inside. Nick asked why did they want to know, and they told him it was none of his business. So Nick goes inside, tells the duty officer, who calls the FBI duty officer and asks him what a couple of FBI agents, one of them named Jernigan, are doing parked in the Special Operations parking lot, and the FBI duty officer says he doesn’t have an agent named Jernigan. So Nick and the duty officer go back to the parking lot, and the FBI guys are gone. Then they go see Matt, who’s working upstairs, and ask him what’s going on, and Matt tells them not to worry about it, the FBI thinks he’s a kidnapper they’re looking for.”
“Oh, God!” Wohl said, laughing. “So within thirty minutes, it’s all over Special Operations. The FBI with egg on its face again.”
“That’s funny, I admit. But what’s not funny is, of course, that somebody couldn’t wait to tell Mickey, and he put that and us being in the Rittenhouse Club together and came up with the idea that something’s going on he doesn’t know about, and the way to find out is to ask me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I didn’t feel free to tell him until I’d first checked with you.”
What do you call that? Passing the buck?
“So he’s going to come see me?” Wohl asked. “First thing in the morning, no doubt?”
“Probably, since he didn’t beat me here,” Coughlin said, smiling. He held up his whiskey glass. “I told you, we mostly drank our dinner. I don’t like to make decisions when I do that. I figured telling Mickey he’d have to ask you would give us time to think how much we’re going to tell him. We’re going to have to tell him something.”
Wohl didn’t reply.
“So I decided to come here,” Coughlin said. “And on the way I had a couple of other unpleasant thoughts.”
“Oh?”
“Do me a favor, Peter, and don’t decide before you think it over that this is the whiskey talking.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Chief,” Peter said.
“Yes, you would. I would too, if you showed up at my place at this hour of the night with half a bag on.”
Their eyes met for a moment, and then Coughlin went on.
“I’m worried about Matty,” he said. “I’m sorry I went along with this ‘cooperation’ with the FBI business.”
“I don’t think you had much choice.”
“I could have said no, and then gotten to Jerry Carlucci before Walter Davis did and told him why I said no.”
“What would you have told him?”
“That these animal activists are really dangerous people, and that Matt’s not experienced enough to deal with them.”
“As I understood it, he isn’t going to deal with them. Just see if he can, by getting close to the Reynolds woman, positively locate them for the FBI. And the FBI will deal with them.”
“Did you see what was in his eyes when I gave him that order?” Coughlin asked. “And I made that order as clear as I could.”
“I remember. What about his eyes?”
“There was a little moving sign in them. Like that sign in Times Square. You know what it said?”
Wohl shook his head again.
“Yeah, right. Say what you want, old man, but give me half a chance, and I’m going to put the arm on these people, make the FBI look stupid, and get to be the youngest sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Department. Just like Peter Wohl.”
Wohl was torn between wanting to smile at the image, and a sick feeling that Coughlin was right.
“Chief, for one thing, Matt knows an order when he hears one.”
“Ha!” Coughlin snorted.
“And he’s both smart and getting to be a pretty good cop. He won’t do anything stupid.”
“He’s too smart for his own good, he thinks he’s a much better cop than he really is, and what would you call crawling around on that ledge on the Bellvue-Stratford twelve stories above South Broad Street? That wasn’t stupid?”
“That was stupid,” Wohl admitted.
“And how would you categorize his using a boosted passkey to go into the Reynolds girl’s room in the hotel? The behavior of a seasoned, responsible police officer?”
Wohl didn’t reply.
“Not to mention taking the FBI on a wild-goose chase in North Philly?”
“Well, under the circumstances, I might have done that myself,” Wohl said. “But I see your point.”
“There’s a lot of his father in Matty,” Coughlin said. It took Wohl a moment to understand Coughlin was not talking about Brewster Cortland Payne.