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“Get the wife and kid out of the city, why don’t you? Get them a little fresh air out in the country. See your wife’s family.”

“Right.”>

“What’s going to happen to Leslie?” Coogan asked.

“Probably, I can get him convicted of first-degree murder. He’s going away for a while.”

“Christ, we ought to give him a medal. He done us a favor,” Coogan said.

“Like what?” Phebus asked sarcastically. “Calling all the attention he did to the Five Squad? Letting people listen to those tapes?”

“Kellog won’t be making any more tapes,” Coogan said. “Will he?”

“Who else is going to listen to those tapes?” Calhoun asked.

“Nobody now, I don’t think. Special Operations made copies of them when they were looking for Kellog’s shooter.”

“You don’t think they got anything off them, do you?” Calhoun asked.

“Good question. I don’t know.”

“We just saw one of those hotshots,” Calhoun said. “At the Roundhouse. The one that shot the serial rapist.”

“Payne?”

“Yeah.”

“What was he doing?”

“Beats the shit out of me. He was in the Roundhouse parking lot. I seen him twice, once when I went into Central Lockup and when I come out.”

“He’s Inspector Wohl’s errand boy,” Phebus said. “There’s no telling what he could have been doing.”

“Maybe he’s listening to Kellog’s tapes. Maybe he’s already listened to Kellog’s tapes. Maybe that son of a bitch Kellog said my name on those tapes. Maybe he was watching me,” Calhoun said.

“Jesus Christ, just when I think you’re getting some smarts,” Phebus said, “you start bouncing off the walls. If Special Operations was taking a close look at Five Squad, the word would be out.”

“And what if we do hear some word like that?”

“Then we shut down. As simple as that. If we don’t do something stupid here, or something stupid in Harrisburg, there’s nothing for Special Operations, Internal Affairs, this new thing—what the fuck do they call it? ‘Ethical Affairs’—or anybody else to find.”

Calhoun didn’t reply.

“If Prasko hadn’t made that stupid telephone call to Kellog’s widow, Calhoun,” Phebus went on, “Special Operations wouldn’t have been in on this at all. That beat cop would have caught Leslie the way he did, and that would have been the end of it. Nobody would have given a shit what might be on those tapes. Frankly, you and Prasko worry me more than Kellog ever did.”

“It’s a shame they wasn’t both at home when that asshole picked the wrong house to rob,” Calhoun said. “Then Prasko wouldn’t have had to call to protect all our asses.”

“What Prasko did was threaten her life,” Phebus said coldly. “He didn’t—”

“He told her to keep her mouth shut about what she knew, or thought she knew, about us. What’s so wrong about that?”

“Prasko knew Kellog’s wife was shacked up with a homicide detective. And he should have known the minute he made a threatening call, she was going to tell her boyfriend, the homicide detective, about it. That was fucking stupid!”

Calhoun looked at him a moment and then shrugged, granting the point.

“Let me worry about protecting our asses,” Phebus said. “You stay off the fucking telephone!”

“Watch it,” Calhoun said, nodding his head toward the door.