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The bartender served the drinks.
“Tad Czernich said he has a little office off the hall; that we could use that,” Cohan said. “Now let’s see if we can find it.”
I sense, Peter Wohl thought, that while this little chat is obviously important—Czernich knows about it—it doesn’t concern anything I’ve either done wrong or have not done.
Commissioner Czernich’s home office was closet-sized. There was barely room for a desk, an upholstered “executive” chair, and a second, straight-backed, metal chair. Wohl thought, idly, that it was probably used by Czernich only to make or take telephone calls privately. There were three telephones on the battered wooden desk.
Cohan sat in the upholstered chair.
“Have you got room enough to turn around and close the door?” he asked.
“If I suck in my breath.”
Wohl closed the door behind him and sat down, feeling something like a schoolboy, in the straight-backed chair.
“Peter, the sequence in which this happened was that I was going to talk to you first, then, if you were amenable, to Tad, and if he was amenable, then to the mayor. It didn’t go that way. I got here as the mayor did. He wanted to talk to me. I had to take the opportunity; he was in a good mood. So the sequence has been reversed.”
Which means that I am about to be presented with a fait accompli; Carlucci has apparently gone along with whatever Cohan wants to do, and whether I am amenable or not no longer matters.
“You’re aware, I’m sure, Peter, that the great majority of FBI agents are either Irish or Mormons?”
“I know one named Franklin D. Roosevelt Stevens that I’ll bet isn’t either Irish or Mormon,” Peter said.
Cohan laughed, but Peter saw that it was with an effort.
“Okay,” Cohan said. “Strike ‘great majority’ and insert ‘a great many.’”
“Yes, sir. I’ve noticed, come to think of it.”
“You ever hear the story, Peter, about why is it better to get arrested by an Irish FBI agent than a Mormon FBI agent?”
What the hell is this, a Polish joke?
“No, sir. I can’t say that I have.”
“Let’s say the crime is spitting on the sidewalk, and the punishment is death by firing squad. You know they really do that, the Mormons in Utah, execute by firing squad?”
“Yes, sir. I’d heard that.”
“Okay. So here’s this guy, spitting on the sidewalk. If the Mormon FBI guy sees him, that’s it. Cuff him. Read him his Miranda and stand him up against the wall. The law’s the law. Spitters get shot. Period.”
“I’m a little lost, Commissioner.”
“Now, the Irish FBI agent: He sees the guy spitting. He knows it’s against the law, but he knows that he’s spit once or twice himself in his time. And maybe he thinks that getting shot for spitting is maybe a little harsh. So he either gets something in his eye so he can’t identify the culprit, or he forgets to read him his rights.”
“And therefore, be nice to Irish FBI agents?”
“What follows gets no further than Czernich’s closet, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know Jack Malone, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
Before Chief Inspector Cohan had been named a deputy commissioner, Sergeant John J. Malone had been his driver. Wohl now remembered that Malone had been on the last lieutenant’s list. He couldn’t remember where he had been assigned. If, indeed, he had ever known.
“And?”
