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“No. But I’ve talked to Lieutenant Natali, and explained to him the situation here, and I think the two of you would be able to work something out that would be in everybody’s best interests.”
“Jesus, I don’t know,” Leslie said.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll ask Lieutenant Natali to come here and talk to you.”
“Jesus, I wish you could stick around.”
“I could come to talk some more, later, if you’d like.”
“Yeah.”
Washington put out his hand. Leslie’s right arm was handcuffed to the chair, so he had to shake Washington’s hand with his left hand.
“Good luck, Mr. Leslie,” Washington said.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t know what to do.”
“Talk it over with Lieutenant Natali,” Washington said. He walked to the door and pulled it open, then closed it.
“Just between us, Mr. Leslie, to satisfy my curiosity. Why did you think you had to shoot Officer Kellog?”
“Well, shit,” Leslie said. “I had to. He seen my face. He was a cop. I knew he’d find me sooner or later.”
“Yes,” Washington said. “Of course, I understand.”
“I’m going to hold you to what you said about coming to talk to me,” Leslie said.
“I will,” Washington said. “I said I would, and I will.”
He left the interview room.
Lieutenant Natali and Detective D’Amata came out of the adjacent room. They had been watching through a one-way mirror.
Natali quoted, “I had to. He seen my face. He was a cop.”
“Christ!” D’Amata said in mingled disgust and horror.
“What’s really sad,” Washington said, “is that he doesn’t acknowledge, or even understand, the enormity of what he’s done. The only thing he thinks he did wrong is to get caught doing it.”
“You don’t want to stick around, Jason?” D’Amata said. “I’ll probably need your help.”
Washington looked at Lieutenant Natali.
“Does Joe know who Mrs. Kellog believed was responsible for her husband’s death?”
“You mean Narcotics Five Squad?” D’Amata asked.
“I thought he should know,” Natali said. “I told him to keep it under his hat.”
“That’s what I was doing, Joe, when they sent me here. But to coin a phrase, ‘Duty calls.’ Or how about, ‘It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it’? Do I have to tell you I’d much rather stay here?”
Both Natali and D’Amata shook their heads. Natali touched Washington’s arm, and then Washington walked out of Homicide.
The Honorable Thomas J. “Tony” Callis, the District Attorney of the County of Philadelphia, had decided he would personally deal with the case of Messrs. Francis Foley and Gerald North Atchison rather than entrust it to one of the Assistant District Attorneys subordinate to him.This was less because of his judgment of the professional skill levels involved (although Mr. Callis, like most lawyers, in his heart of hearts, believed he was as competent an attorney as he had ever met) than because of the political implications involved.
He was very much aware that the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, was taking a personal interest in this case, a personal interest heavily flavored with political implications. The Ledger, which was after Carlucci’s scalp, had been running scathing editorials bringing to the public’s attention the Police Department’s inability to arrest whoever had blown Atchison’s wife and partner away. (Alternating the “Outrageous Massacre of Center City Restaurateur’s Wife and Partner” editorials, Tony Callis had noted, with equally scathing editorials bringing to the public’s attention that a cop had been brutally murdered in his kitchen, and the cops didn’t seem to know anything about that, either.)
Mr. Callis, a large, silver-haired, ruddy-faced, well-tailored man in his early fifties, had a somewhat tenuous political alliance with Mayor Carlucci. It was understood between the parties that either would abandon the other the moment it appeared that the alliance threatened the reelection chances of either.
