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“Good idea,” Lowenstein said.
“I’ll have Czernich set it up,” the Mayor said. “Thanks for the call, Matt, and keep me posted.”
“Yes, sir,” Chief Lowenstein said.
It was necessary for Chief Lowenstein to telephone Mayor Carlucci at his office at ten-thirty the next morning to report that a small glitch had developed in the well-laid plans to effect the arrest of Mr. John Francis Foley.His whereabouts, the Chief was forced to inform the Mayor, were unknown. When he had not come out of his house to go to work when he was supposed to, Detectives Milham and Payne had gone to his door and rung the bell.
His mother had told him that she was worried about John Francis. He had gone out the night before and not returned. He rarely did that. If he decided to spend the night with a friend, Mrs. Foley reported, he always telephoned his mother to tell her. John Francis was a good boy, his mother said.
“You’re telling me you don’t know where this scumbag is?” the Mayor asked.
“Well, we know he’s not at the Wanamaker’s warehouse,” Lowenstein, more than a little embarrassed, reported. “We’re working on known associates.”
“Speaking of known associates, you do have an idea where Mr. Atchison is right now, don’t you?”
“The Media police are watching his house. He’s there.”
“Find Foley, Matt,” the Mayor ordered. “Soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you call the police?” the Mayor said, his sarcasm having been ignited. “Maybe he got himself arrested. Or check the hospitals. Maybe he got run over with a truck. Just find him, Matt!”
“Yes, sir.”
Chief Lowenstein replaced the pay telephone in Meagan’s Bar into its cradle. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then asked himself a question, aloud.
“Why the hell not?”
He dropped another coin in the slot, dialed a number, and told the lieutenant who answered to call the hospitals and see if they had a patient, maybe an auto accident or something, named John Francis Foley. And while he was at it, check the districts and see if anybody by that name had been arrested.
Philadelphia District Attorney Thomas J. Callis was in something of a quandary regarding the prosecution of James Howard Leslie, a.k.a. “Speed,” for the murder of Police Officer Jerome H. Kellog.Option one, of course, was that he would personally assume the responsibility for prosecuting the case. He knew that if he did that, in addition to the satisfaction he knew he would feel if he was able to cause the full weight of the law to come crashing down on the miserable little sonofabitch, there would be certain political advantages.
The trial was certain to attract a good deal of attention from the news media, print, radio, and television. The good people of Philadelphia could not avoid being made aware time and time again that their district attorney was in the front lines of the criminal justice system, personally bringing a terrible person, a cop killer, to the bar of justice.
The problem there was that there was a real possibility that he might not be able to get a conviction. The fact that there was no question Leslie had brutally shot Kellog to death was almost beside the point here. What was necessary was to get twelve people to agree that not only had he done it, but that he knew what he was doing when he did.
Leslie had asked for, and had been provided with, an attorney from the public defender’s office immediately after being advised of his rights under the Miranda decision.
That fellow practitioner of the law had turned out to be a somewhat motherly-appearing woman, who had spent seven years as a nun before being released from her vows and going to law school.
She had promptly advised Mr. Leslie to answer no questions, and he had not. Tony Callis had often watched the attorney in question (whom he very privately thought of as That Goddamned Nun) in action, and had come to have a genuine professional admiration for both her mind and her skill. He also believed that she had a personal agenda: She truly believed that murder was a sin, and that the taking of life by the state, as in a sentence to the electric chair, was morally no different from what Leslie had done to Kellog.
Her strategy, Callis thought, would be obvious. She would first attempt to plea-bargain the charge against Leslie down to something which would not result in the death penalty.
Callis could not agree to that, either, from rather deep personal feelings that a cop-killing under any circumstances undermined the very foundations of society and had to be prosecuted vigorously to the full extent of the law. And also because he did not want to see headlines in the Bulletin, the Daily News, and elsewhere telling the voters he had agreed to permitting a cop killer to get of
f with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
When the case then came to trial, That Goddamned Nun, oozing Christian, motherly charity from every pore, would with great skill try to convince the jury that he hadn’t done it in the first place—and Callis knew his case was mostly circumstantial—and if he had, he was a poor societal victim of poverty, ignorance, and neglect, which had caused him to seek solace in drugs, and he hadn’t known what he was doing, and consequently could not be held responsible.
The headlines in the Bulletin, the Daily News, and elsewhere would read, “DA Fails in Cop Killer Case; Leslie Acquitted.”
Option two was to have one of the assistant DAs take the case to court. In that case it was entirely possible that the Assistant DA would get lucky with a jury, who after ten minutes of deliberation would recommend Leslie be drawn and quartered, and the Assistant DA would get his picture in the papers and on the TV, and people would wonder why Callis hadn’t done the job he was being paid for.
Inasmuch as he had yet to weigh all the factors involved and come to a decision, Tony Callis was more than a little annoyed when his secretary reported that Inspector Peter Wohl, Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach, and Detective Matthew Payne were in his outer office and sought an immediate audience in re evidence in the Leslie case.
On general principle, Callis had them cool their heels for five minutes during which he wondered what the hell Wohl wanted—the Leslie case was a Homicide case—before walking to his door and opening it for them.
