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“C-Charlie One,” radio replied.
“We’re at Saint Dominic’s, about to leave for Holy Sepulchre,” Lenihan said. “Anything for us?”
“Nothing, C-Charlie One,” radio said.
“Check for me, please, Tom,” Wohl said. “Seventeen.”
“Anything for Isaac Seventeen?” Lenihan said.
“Yes, wait a minute. They were trying to reach him a couple of minutes ago.”
Wohl leaned forward on the seat to better hear the speaker.
“Isaac Seventeen is to contact Homicide,” the radio said.
“Thank you,” Lenihan said.
“There’s a phone over there,” Coughlin said, pointing to a pay phone on the wall of a florist’s shop across the street. “You’ve got time.”
Peter trotted to the phone, fed it a dime, and called Homicide.
“This is Inspector Wohl,” he said, when a Homicide detective answered.
“Oh, yeah, Inspector. Wait just a second.” There was a pause, and then the detective, obviously reading a note, went on: “The New Jersey state police have advised us of the discovery of a murder victim meeting the description of Pierre St. Maury, also known as Errol F. Watson. The body was found near the recovered stolen Jaguar automobile. The identification is not confirmed. Photographs and fingerprints of St. Maury are being sent to New Jersey. Got that?”
“Read it again,” Wohl asked, and when it had been, said, “If there’s anything else in the next hour or so, I’m with C-Charlie One.”
He hung up without waiting for a reply and ran back to Chief Inspector Coughlin’s Oldsmobile.
“They found—the Jersey state troopers—found a body that’s probably St. Maury near Nelson’s car,” he reported.
“Interesting,” Coughlin said.
“The suspect they had in Homicide said there was talk on the street that two guys we
re going to get the key to Nelson’s apartment from his boyfriend,” Wohl said. “To see what they could steal.”
There was no response from Coughlin except a grunt.
The Oldsmobile started to move.
As they passed the cordoned-off area for the press, Wohl saw Louise. She was talking into a microphone, not on camera, but as if she were taking notes.
Or, Peter thought, she didn’t ‘t want to see me.
****
More than three hundred police cars formed the tail of Captain Richard C. Moffitt’s funeral procession. They all had their flashing lights turned on. By the time the last visiting mourner dropped his gearshift lever in “D” and started moving, the head of the procession was well over a mile and a half ahead of him.
The long line of limousines and flower cars and police cars followed the hearse and His Eminence the Archbishop down Torresdale Avenue to Rhawn Street, out Rhawn to Oxford Avenue, turned right onto Hasbrook, right again onto Central Avenue, and then down Central to Tookany Creek Parkway, and then down the parkway to Cheltenham Avenue, and then out Cheltenham to the main entrance to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at Cheltenham and Easton Road.
Each intersection along the route was blocked for the procession, and it stayed blocked until the last car (another Philadelphia Traffic Division car) had passed. Then the officers blocking that intersection jumped in their cars (or later, in Cheltenham Township, on their motorcycles) and raced alongside, and past, the slow-moving procession to block another intersection.
Dennis V. Coughlin lit a cigar in the backseat of the Oldsmobile almost as soon as they started moving, and sat puffing thoughtfully on it, slumped down in the seat.
He didn’t say a word until the fence of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery could be seen, in other words for over half an hour. Then he reached forward and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the back of the front seat.
“Peter, as I understand this,” he said, “we put Dutch on whatever they call that thing that lowers the casket into the hole. Then we march off” and take up position far enough away from the head of the casket to make room for the archbishop and the other priests.”
