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“Calls from whom?” Matt interrupted.

“I was thinking of the press, those bastards are not above saying they’re somebody’s brother, but now that I think of it, these people may try to call you too.”

“In either case, hang up,” Wohl said. “No matter what you would say, it would be the wrong thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And above all,” Wohl said, “as the hangman said as he led the condemned man up the scaffold steps, try not to worry about this.”

“Oh, God!” Washington groaned, and then they all laughed.

A little too heartily, Matt thought. That wasn’t that funny.

SIXTEEN

The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadelphia,

sat in the commissioner’s chair at the head of the commissioner’s conference table in the commissioner’s conference room on the third floor of the Roundhouse rolling one of Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein’s big black cigars in his fingers. His Honor was visibly not in a good mood.

One indication of this was the manner in which he had come by the cigar.

“Matt, I don’t suppose you have a spare cigar you could let me have, do you?” the mayor had politely asked.

Lowenstein knew from long experience that when The Dago was carefully watching his manners, it was a sure sign that he was no more than a millimeter or two away from throwing a fit.

“Thank you very much, Matt,” the mayor said very politely.

Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich, a large, florid-faced man sitting to the mayor’s immediate left, next to Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, produced a gas-flame cigarette lighter, turned it on, and offered it to the mayor.

“No, thank you, Commissioner,” the mayor said, very politely, “I’m sure Matt will offer me a match.”

He turned to Lowenstein, sitting beside Peter Wohl on the other side of the table. Lowenstein handed him a large kitchen match and the mayor then took a good thirty seconds to get the cigar going. Finally, exhaling cigar smoke as he approvingly examined the coal on the cigar, he said, very politely, “Well, since we are all here, do you think we should get going? Why don’t you just rough me in on this, Commissioner, and then I can ask specific questions of the others, if there’s something I don’t quite understand.”

“Yes, sir,” Commissioner Czernich said. “Should I start, sir, with the Goldblatt robbery and murder?”

“No, start with what happened at five o’clock this morning. I know what happened at Goldblatt’s.”

“Chief Lowenstein asked the assistance of Inspector Wohl, that is, Special Operations, in arresting eight men identified by a witness as the doers of the Goldblatt job. They obtained warrants through the district attorney. The idea was to make the arrests simultaneously, and at a time when there would be the least risk to the public and the officers involved, that is at five o’clock in the morning.”

“And the operation presumably had your blessing, Commissioner?”

“I didn’t know about it until it was over, Mr. Mayor.”

“You and Lowenstein had a falling out?” Carlucci demanded, looking from one to the other. “You’re not talking to each other? What?”

“It was a routine arrest, arrests, Jerry,” Lowenstein said. “There was no reason to bring the commissioner in on it.”

“Just for the record, Matt, correct me if I’m wrong, this is the first time we’ve arrested the Islamic Liberation Army, right? Or any other kind of army, right? So how is that routine?”

“Just because eight schwartzers call themselves an army doesn’t make them an army,” Lowenstein said. “So far as I’m concerned, these guys are thieves and murderers, period.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to the newspapers,” Carlucci said. “The newspapers think they’re an army.”

“Then the newspapers are wrong,” Lowenstein said.

“And it never entered your mind, Peter,” Carlucci asked, turning to Wohl, “to run this past the commissioner and get his approval?”

“Mr. Mayor, I thought of it like Chief Lowenstein did. It was a routine arrest.”