Page 6

He then removed the memory chip from the goldfish’s mouth, unlocked a drawer in his desk and unlocked a metal box in the drawer, dropped the memory chip into it, relocked it, closed the desk drawer, and relocked that.

Mickey was thinking of writing a book-Casimir Bolinski said he was sure he could sell it for him “for big bucks, Mick, if you ever get off your lazy Irish ass and write a proposal”-and if he did, he would need the pictures.

He tapped keys again and a photo-editing program came up on the LCD monitor’s screen. The first picture, of the two black guys coming out of the Roy Rogers, appeared.

It was really a lousy picture, understandable in the circumstances.

For one thing, he had thrown the viewfinder to his eye with such haste that the picture was cockeyed; the two doers appeared in the lower right quarter of the picture, and only from the waist up.

Far worse, the camera’s internal light meter had detected the bright light coming from the door, decided that was the ambient light, and set the camera accordingly. The entrance to the restaurant appeared in near perfect clarity, but the two doers were not in the light from the door, and consequently they could hardly be seen. You could see it was two guys, but you couldn’t see any facial details.

Mickey quite skillfully tried to fix it, using all of the capabilities of the photo-editing program. He “lightened” the two guys. That didn’t work. Neither did darkening the perfectly captured restaurant entrance. He tried everything else he could think of, but nothing worked.

Finally he gave up. He cropped out the unnecessary background, typed keys that renamed “00001. JPG” to “Doers-XRR. JPG,” then pressed the Enter key. Then he pushed other keys, which ordered yet another electronic device necessary to the performance of his duties to print three copies, eight by ten inches, 1,200 dots per square inch. A $5,300 electronic device hummed and clicked as it began to execute the order.

00002. JPG and 00003. JPG-the pictures of the body of Officer Kenneth J. Charlton, the poor bastard, lying dead at the entrance of the Roy Rogers-also required editing.

He first made a copy of each as they had come from the camera, renaming them Chardwn1. JPG and Chardwn2. JPG respectively, and ordered three eight-by-ten copies of each at 1,200 dots per square inch.

Then he went back to each picture in turn, cropped out unnecessary background, very carefully edited the picture so that Officer Charlton’s eyes appeared to be closed, not twisted in agony, and then made the pool of blood in which Charlton’s head was lying disappear. He then renamed these pictures Charbul1. JPG and Charbul2. JPG, ordered the printing of one eight-by-ten of each, and also sent the pictures by the Internet to O’Hara@PhillyBulletin. com.

He did much the same thing with the other pictures-those of that poor dame in the kitchen and the young black kid- that he had made with the digital camera.

Although a somewhat complicated process, doing everything took him less than ten minutes. He had a good deal of experience doing the same sort of thing, and of course he had, literally, the best equipment the Bulletin’s money could buy to do it with.

Mickey knew that some people-just about any cop- would think what he should have done was simply turn the memory chip over to the cops, to assist them in their search for the murderers.

Mickey had several problems with that. For one thing, if the cops had the memory chip, there was no way he could get copies of the pictures before the Bulletin went to bed at 3 A.M. For another, while Mickey thought it was important that the public get to see the bodies of Kenny Charlton and the Puerto Rican, Latina, whatever, lady lying where they had fallen, there were families involved, and there was no reason the families had to see how fucking gruesome it actually was. Seeing Daddy and Momma in the Bulletin lying dead was going to be bad enough.

When he had finished, he picked up his telephone with one hand, and with the other slid out a shelf on his desk to which a list of telephone numbers was affixed under celluloid. He found what he wanted and punched it in.

“First District, Corporal Foley.”

“Mickey O’Hara, Jerry. Did they pick up the Roy Rogers doers yet?”

“Not yet, Mick. They’re still looking.”

“You’re sure, Jerry?”

“Jesus, yeah, I’m sure. I thought they would have something by now. Every cop in Philadelphia’s down here looking for them.”

"Thank you, Jerry.”

He dropped the telephone into its cradle, looked at the gray monitor before him, a cursor blinking on it, and then tapped the balls of his fingers together as he searched for the lead sentence of what he was about to write. He wanted to get it right.

After a moment, it came to him.

CESlug-Massive Manhunt Begins for Roy Rogers Murderers

By Michael J. O’Hara, Bulletin Staff Writer,Photos by Michael J. O’Hara

Philadelphia April 27-Philadelphia police began a massive manhunt just before midnight, confident they would quickly apprehend the two young black men eyewitnesses say first shot to death Mrs. Maria Manuela Fernandez, kitchen supervisor of the Roy Rogers restaurant at South Broad and Snyder Streets, during a robbery and then shot Police Officer Kenneth J. Charlton, of the First District, who responded to the call, killing him instantly. Amal al Zaid, a maintenance worker at the restaurant, told this reporter Mrs. Fernandez, a single mother of three, was shot without warning by one of the robbers as she was on the telephone reporting the robbery to police authorities, and then ambushed Officer Charlton as he entered the restaurant a few minutes later.

Five minutes and 250 words later, Mickey gave the computer screen a quick read, cursed the goddamn sci-fi movie typeface, then inserted a missing comma and pushed the Send key.

Then he turned to the printer, picked the photographs from the tray, put the ones intended for the cops into a large manila envelope, and, carrying the ones from which he had deleted the blood, walked out of his office and across the city room to the city editor.

“These the pics?” the city editor asked.