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“Yeah.”
“Is he?”
“I don’t know. It strikes me as damned unlikely. If I had to bet, I’d say no. Why should he be? He’s got a dealership on every other corner in Philadelphia. Presumably, they’re making money. He sold the city the mayor?
?s limousine. Hell, my father bought his Buick from him; he gives a police discount, whatever the hell that is. And Commissioner Cohan obviously doesn’t think so; he thinks that the pressure got to Malone and his imagination ran away with him.”
“He was at the club yesterday. I saw him in the bar with that congressman I think is light on his feet.”
“Holland?” Wohl asked, and when Payne nodded, he went on, “Which club was that?”
“We played at Whitemarsh Valley.”
“So Holland has friends in high places, right? Is that what you’re driving at?”
“It would explain why the commissioner wants him out of the Auto Squad.”
“Yeah,” Wohl agreed a moment later. “Well, if Holland is doing hot cars, that’s now Lucci’s concern, not Malone’s.”
And I will make sure that Lieutenant Jack Malone clearly understands that.
“What are you going to do with him?” Payne asked.
“We now have a plans and training officer,” Wohl said. “His name is Lieutenant John J. Malone.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” Wohl said.
When Payne pulled into the parking lot, it was half past seven. The cars of Captain Mike Sabara, Wohl’s deputy, and Captain Dave Pekach, the commanding officer of Highway Patrol, were already there. Payne wondered if Wohl had sent for them—the normal duty day began at eight—or whether they had come in early on their own.
Once inside the building, Wohl, Sabara, and Pekach went into Wohl’s office and closed the door. Payne understood that his presence was not desired.
He told the sergeant on the desk that if the inspector was looking for him, he had gone to park his car and to get the inspector’s car.
When he came back and sat down at his desk, Wohl’s phone began to ring.
“Inspector Wohl’s office, Officer Payne.”
“My name is Special Agent Davis of the FBI,” the caller said. “Inspector Wohl, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir, the inspector is tied up. May I have him call you back?”
“I wonder if you would please tell him that Special Agent in Charge Davis wants just a moment of time, and see if he’ll speak to me?”
There was a tone of authority in Davis’s voice that got through to Matt.
“Hold on, please, sir,” he said, and walked to the closed door. He knocked and then, without waiting, opened it.
“Sir, there’s a Special Agent Davis—‘Special Agent in Charge’ is actually what he said—on twenty-nine. He said he wants ‘just a moment of your time.’ You want to talk to him?”
“For your general information, Officer Payne, Special Agent in Charge Davis is the high priest of the FBI in Philadelphia,” Wohl said. “Yes, of course, I’ll talk to him.” He picked up the telephone, pushed one of the buttons on it, and said, “Hello, Walter. How are you?”
Payne closed the door and went back to his desk.
When he got out of bed, at quarter past seven, John J. “Jack” Malone almost immediately learned that among a large number of other things that had gone wrong recently in his life he could now count the plumbing system of the St. Charles Hotel, where he resided. Specifically, both the hot and cold taps in his bathroom ran ice-cold.
While he fully understood that the St. Charles was not in the league of the Bellevue-Stratford or the Warwick, neither was it a flea bag, and considering what they were charging him for his “suite” (a bedroom, a tiny sitting room, and an alcove containing a small refrigerator, a two-burner electric stove, and a small table), it seemed to him that the least the bastards could do was make sure the hot water worked.
