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Marshall shook his head, no.

"You said, 'getting past the Airport Unit,'" Chief Lowenstein said. "Was that an accusation?"

"Jack?" Marshall said.

"They stayed a hairbreadth away from making that an accusation, Chief," Captain Duffy, a florid-faced, nervous-appearing forty-fiveyear-old, said.

"Paul?" Marshall asked Chief Inspector Easterbrook, under whose Special Investigations Bureau were the Narcotics Unit, the Narcotics Strike Force, and Vice.

Easterbrook was just the near side of being fat. His collar looked too tight.

"Is heroin coming through the airport?" he asked rhetorically. " Sure it is. I haven't heard a word, though, that anybody in the Airport Unit is dirty."

Everyone looked at Chief Inspector Delachessi, a plump, short, natty forty-year-old, among whose Internal Investigations Bureau responsibilities were Internal Affairs, the Organized Crime Intelligence Unit, and the Staff Investigation Unit. Eighteen months before, he had been Staff Inspector Peter Wohl's boss.

"Neither have I," Delachessi said. "Not a whisper. And what is it now-two months ago?-when that Airport Unit corporal got himself killed coming home from the shore, the corporal who was his temporary replacement was one of my guys. He didn't come up with a thing. Having said that, is somebody out there dirty? Could be. I'll have another look."

"Hold off on that, Mario," Commissioner Marshall said.

"What, exactly, is the problem with Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs?" Chief Lowenstein asked. "You said there was a problem."

"They want to send somebody out there, undercover," Marshall said.

"Inthe Airport Unit?" Lowenstein asked incredulously. "As acop?"

Marshall nodded.

"They've made it an official request," Captain Duffy said. "By letter."

"Tell them to go fuck themselves, by official letter," Lowenstein said.

"It's not that easy, Matt," Marshall said. "The commissioner says we'll have to come up with a good reason to turn them down."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Lowenstein replied. "There's no way some nice young agent of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs can pass himself off to anyone in the Airport Unit as a cop. And if there's dirty cops out there, we should catch them, not the feds. Do you think you could explain that to the commissioner?"

"Art and I had an idea, talking this over," Chief Coughlin said.

Ah ha! thought Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, a lithe, well-built, just under six feet tall thirty-five-year-old. The mystery is about to be explained. This is not a conference. Whatever is going to be done has already been decided upon by Marshall and Coughlin. The rest of us are here to be told what the problem is, and what we are expected to do. I wonder what the hell I'm here for? None of this is any of my business.

"I'll bet you did," Lowenstein said.

Shame on you. Commissioner Marshall, Wohl thought. You broke the rules. You are not supposed to present Chief Lowenstein with a fait accompli. You are supposed to involve him in the decision-making process. Otherwise, he is very liable to piss on your sparkling idea.

"Matt, of course, is right," Chief Coughlin went on. "There is no way a fed could go out to the Airport Unit and pass himself off as a cop. And, no offense, Mario, I personally would be very surprised if the people out there weren't very suspicious of the corporal you sent out there when their corporal got killed."

"He feels very strongly that no one suspected he worked for me," Chief Delachessi said.

"What did you expect him to say?" Lowenstein said, somewhat unpleasantly. "'Boy, Chief, sending me out there was really dumb. They made me right away'?"

"So what we need out there is a real cop…" Coughlin said.

"Are you inferring, Denny, there's something wrong

with the guy I sent out there?" Chief Delachessi interrupted.

"Come on, Mario, you know I didn't mean anything like that," Coughlin said placatingly.

"That's what it sounded like!"