AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Matt and Martinez turned around and left his office.
"You want some coffee, Peter?" Marchessi asked.
"What I would like is a stiff drink."
"At this hour of the morning?"
"Figure of speech," Wohl said.
"Both of them talked about 'gut feelings,' or implied it," Marchessi said. "My gut feeling is that they've found who we're looking for."
"But have they blown it?" Wohl asked. "Dammit, I asked him to give me a name."
"Give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't want to point a finger until he was sure."
"And while he was making sure, there was a good chance this guy would smell that he was being watched. And breaking into his car was absolute stupidity."
Marchessi chuckled.
"There was a story going around that one of my staff inspectors, carried away with enthusiasm, tapped the line of a Superior Court judge without getting the necessary warrant."
"Ouch!" Peter said.
"I didn't believe it, of course," Marchessi said. "I don't know what I would have done if somebody had discovered the tap."
"What, to change the subject, Chief, do we do about this?"
"Well, I think we've already been shifted into high gear, whether or not we like it," Marchessi said.
He pushed one of the buttons on his telephone, then picked up the receiver.
"Ollie, can you come in here a minute?" he said, and hung up.
Less than a minute later, Captain Richard Olsen, a large, blondhaired man of forty, wearing a blue blazer and a striped necktie, opened Marchessi's door without knocking.
"Sir?"
"Come in and close the door, Ollie. You remember Peter, of course?"
"What brings you slumming, Inspector?"
Captain Olsen, whose exact title Wohl could not remember, provided administrative services to the fourteen staff inspectors assigned to the Internal Investigations Bureau. The staff inspectors, from whose ranks Wohl had been transferred to command of Special Operations, handled sensitive investigations, most often involving governmental corruption. Wohl liked and respected him.
"How are you, Ollie?"
"Ollie," Marchessi asked, "if I wanted around-the-clock, moving surveillance of an off-duty Airport Unit corporal, starting right now, what kind of problems would that cause?"
Olsen thought that over for a minute.
"What squad is he assigned to?"
"Three squad, four to midnight," Wohl furnished.
"I can handle the next twenty-four hours, forty-eight, with no trouble. After that, I'll need some bodies. What are we looking for?"
"For openers, association with known criminals. Ultimately, to catch him smuggling drugs out of the airport."
"Watching him on the job would be difficult."
