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The black Cadillac limousine provided by the taxpayers of Philadelphia to transport their mayor, the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, about in the execution of his official duties came north on South Broad Street, circled City Hall, which sits in the middle of the intersection of Broad and Market streets in the center of America’s fourth-largest city, and turned onto the Parkway, which leads past the Philadelphia Museum of Art to, and then along, the Schuylkill River.The Mayor was wearing a dark blue suit, a stiffly starched, bright-white shirt, a dark, finely figured necktie, highly polished black shoes, and a Smith & Wesson “Chief’s Special” .38 Special caliber revolver in a cutaway leather holster attached to his alligator belt.
He shared the backseat of the limousine with his wife, Angeline, who was wearing a simple black dress with a single strand of pearls and a pillbox hat which she had chosen with great care, knowing that what she chose had to be appropriate for both the events on tonight’s social calendar.
The evening had begun with the limousine taking them from their home in Chestnut Hill, in the northwest corner of Philadelphia, to the Carto Funeral Home at 2212 South Broad Street in South Philadelphia.
City Councilman the Hon. Anthony J. Cannatello, a longtime friend and political ally of Mayor Carlucci, had been called to his heavenly home after a long and painful battle with prostate cancer, and an appearance at both the viewing and at the funeral tomorrow was considered a necessary expenditure of the Mayor’s valuable and limited time. He had planned to be at Carto’s for no more than thirty minutes, but it had been well over an hour before he could break free from those who would have felt slighted if there had not been a chance to at least shake his hand.
Councilman Cannatello’s many mourners, the Mayor was fully aware, all voted, and all had relatives who voted, and the way things looked—especially considering what was going to be a front-page story in the Monday editions of Philadelphia’s four newspapers—the Bulletin, the Ledger, the Inquirer, and the Daily News—he was going to need every last one of their votes.
They were now headed back to Chestnut Hill for an entirely different kind of social gathering, this one a festive occasion at which, the Mayor had been informed, the engagement of Miss Martha Peebles to Mr. David R. Pekach would be announced.
It was going from one end of Philadelphia to the other in both geographical and social terms. The invitations, engraved by Bailey, Banks & Biddle, the city’s most prominent jewelers and social printers,
requesting “The Pleasure of the Company of The Honorable The Mayor of Philadelphia and Mrs. Jerome H. Carlucci at dinner at 606 Glengarry Lane at half past eight o’clock” had been issued in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II.
Mr. Payne, a founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester, arguably Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm, had been a lifelong friend of Miss Peebles’s father, the late Alexander F. Peebles. He had been Alex Peebles’s personal attorney, and Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester served as corporate counsel to Tamaqua Mining, Inc. In Mr. Peebles’s obituary in the Wall Street Journal, it was said Mr. Peebles’s wholly-owned Tamaqua Mining, Inc., not only owned approximately 11.5 percent of the known anthracite coal reserves in the United States, but had other substantial holdings in petrochemical assets and real estate.
A year after Mr. Peebles’s death, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that a suit filed by Mr. Peebles’s only son, Stephen, challenging his father’s last will and testament, in which he had left his entire estate to his daughter, had been discharged with prejudice by the Third United States Court of Appeals, sitting en banc.
As was the case in the Mayor’s visit to the viewing of the late City Councilman Cannatello at Carto’s, the Mayor had both a personal and a political purpose in attending Martha Peebles’s dinner. There would certainly be a larger than ordinary gathering of Philadelphia’s social and financial elite there, who not only voted, and had friends and relatives who voted, but who were also in a position to contribute to the Mayor’s reelection campaign.
Considering what was going to be in Monday’s newspapers, it was important that he appear to Martha Peebles’s friends to be aware of the situation, and prepared—more important, competent—to deal with it.
Personally, while he did not have the privilege of a close personal friendship with Miss Peebles, he was acquainted with the groom-to-be, Dave Pekach, and privately accorded him about the highest compliment in his repertoire: Dave Pekach was a hell of a good cop.
The Mayor had a thought.
I think Mickey O’Hara’s going to be at the Peebles place, but I don’t know. And Mickey’s just about as good as I am, getting his hands on things he’s not supposed to have. I want him to get this straight from me, not from somebody else, and then have him call me and ask about it. And the time to get it to him is now.
He pushed the switch that lowered the sliding glass partition between the passenger’s and chauffeur’s sections of the limousine, and slid forward off the seat to get close to the opening.
There was a passenger-to-chauffeur telephone in the limousine, but after trying it once to see if it worked, the Mayor had never used it again. He believed that when you can face somebody when you’re talking to them, that’s the best way.
The very large black man on the passenger side in the chauffeur’s compartment, who carried a photo-identification card and badge in a leather folder stating he was Lieutenant J. K. Fellows of the Philadelphia Police Department, had turned when he heard the dividing glass whoosh downward.
“Mayor?”
“Get on the radio and see if you can get a location on Mickey O’Hara,” the Mayor ordered.
Lieutenant Fellows nodded, and reached for one of the two microphones mounted just under the dashboard.
As the Mayor slid back against the cushions, his jacket caught on the butt of his revolver. With an easy gesture, as automatic as checking to see that his tie was in place, he knocked the offending garment out of the way.
Jerry Carlucci rarely went anywhere without his pistol.
There were several theories why he did so. One held that he carried it for self-protection; there was always some nut running loose who wanted to get in the history books by shooting some public servant. The Department had just sent off to Byberry State Hospital a looney-tune who thought God had ordered him to blow up the Vice President of the United States. A perfectly ordinary-looking guy who was a Swarthmore graduate and a financial analyst for a bank, for God’s sake, who had a couple of hundred pounds of high explosive in his basement and thought God talked to him!
The Mayor did not like to think how much it had cost the Department in just overtime to put that fruitcake in the bag.
A second theory held that he carried it primarily for public relations purposes. This theory was generally advanced by the Mayor’s critics, of whom he had a substantial number. “He’s never without at least one cop-bodyguard with-a-gun, so what does he need a gun for? Except to get his picture in the papers, ‘protecting us,’ waving his gun around as if he thinks he’s Wyatt Earp or somebody.”
The only person who knew the real reason the Mayor elected to go about armed was his wife.
“Do you need that thing?” Angeline Carlucci had asked several years before, in their bedroom, as she watched him deal with the problem, Where does one wear one’s revolver when wearing a cummerbund?
“Honey,” the Mayor had replied, “I carried a gun for twenty-six years. I feel kind of funny, sort of half-naked, when I don’t have it with me.”
Mayor Carlucci had begun his career of public service as a police officer, and had held every rank in the Philadelphia Police Department except policewoman before seeking elective office.
