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“He told me you had accepted. Period.”

“I never thought of accepting. The reason I didn’t call him this morning to tell him was that I was busy.”

“Look at me, Peter,” Carlucci said. Wohl met his eyes. “Now tell me again, when did you decide?”

“When he made the offer,” Wohl said evenly. “I was afraid I would say something I would regret if I said anything last night.”

Carlucci looked at him intently for a full thirty seconds before he spoke again.

“Okay. That obviously changes things,” he said, finally, and then looked around the table. “Since Inspector Wohl is not resigning from the Department, there is no need to name a replacement for him at Special Operations at this time—”

“Mr. Mayor!” Czernich said.

“—temporary or otherwise,” Carlucci went on coldly. Then he looked at Wohl. “There will be, Peter, unless you get this mess straightened out. Capisce?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep me informed,” the mayor said, and got up and walked out of the room.

TWENTY-SIX

Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., sat, as quietly and as inconspicuously as possible, on a folding steel chair in the small office that housed the Special Investigations Section of the Special Operations Division. He was very much afraid that he would, at any moment, be ordered out of the room on some minor errand or other, and he very much wanted to hear what was being said in the room.

The entire staff of the Special Investigations Section, that is to say Sergeant Jason Washington, Detective Anthony Harris, and himself, was in the room.

The night before, Officer Lewis had spent just about an hour making up an organizational chart for the Special Investigations Section using a drafting set he had last used in high school. There were three boxes on the chart, one on top of the other. The uppermost enclosed Sergeant Washington’s name. The one in the middle read, Det. Harris, and the one on the bottom, PO Lewis. Black lines indicated the chain of authority.

It was sort of, but not entirely, a joke. Every other bureaucratic subdivision of the Special Operations Division had an organizational chart. It had been Tiny’s intention, when Sergeant Washington saw the new organizational chart thumb-tacked to the corkboard and, as he almost certainly would, asked, “What the hell is that?” to reply, “We may be small, but we’re bureaucratically up to standards.”

Tiny Lewis had come to believe there was a small but credible hope that he could manage to stay assigned to the Special Investigations Section rather than find himself back in uniform and riding around in one of the Special Operations RPCs, which was the most likely scenario.

For one thing, the Officer Magnella murder job was no closer to a solution than it had ever been, and since it was the murder of a cop, it would continue to be worked. Tony Harris would continue to need his services as an errand runner. For another, now that they were officially caught up in the bureaucracy, there would be paperwork, that which was now being done by Inspector Wohl’s administrative sergeant. He could take that over. Certainly the Black Buddha wouldn’t want to do it, nor Tony Harris. If he could make himself useful, his temporary assignment just might become permanent.

And my God, what a way to see how detectives worked! Even Pop says Tony is nearly as good as Washington, and everybody knows Washington is as good as they come.

It hadn’t gone exactly as planned. The Black Buddha had come into the office to find Tiny waiting for him, nodded at him idly, and then looked at the corkboard.

“What the hell is that?”

“That’s our organizational chart.”

“Jesus Christ!” Washington had offered contemptuously before asking, “Is there any coffee?”

“Yes, sir.”

That was, of course, because of what had happened to Monahan. Washington, almost visibly, was thinking of nothing but that. The only other thing he had said before Harris came into the office was, as he pointed to the phone, “Wohl, Sabara Pekach, and nobody else. Lowenstein and Coughlin too.”

“Yes, sir.”

Running telephone interference had provided the excuse to stay in the office and watch them brainstorm the job. It had been absolutely fascinating to Tiny, as much for the way the two of them worked together as for the various scenarios they came up with.

They seemed to have a telepathic, or at least a shorthand, means of communication. They exchanged ideas with very few words, as if both knew the way the other one’s brain worked.

And Tiny got to listen.

“From the beginning,” Washington had begun. “The firebomb.”

“Somebody knew the Highway car was sent there.”