Mickey walked through the door, waved at the desk man, and exchanged casual greetings, a nod of the head, or a smile, with the half dozen detectives working at their own battered desks, then took a quick, practiced glance at the large, yellow legal pad on the desk man's desk. On it, the desk man would have written the names of any citizens brought into the squad room for "interviews" on the shift. It was an informal record, intended primarily to remind the desk man who had hauled in who, and was responsible for the critter. If a citizen got as far as the detective squad room, the odds were the "interview" would be followed by an arrest.
Mickey found nothing that looked particularly interesting, so he walked across the squad room to a small alcove at the rear, which held a coffee machine. He helped himself to a cup, black, then tucked a dollar bill in the coffee kitty can.
When he came out of the alcove, he looked into the window of the small office used by the Lieutenants of Northwest Detectives. Lieutenant Teddy Spanner, who had the watch, and Lieutenant Louis Natali of Homicide were inside. That was unusual; you rarely saw a Homicide Lieutenant in one of the Detective District Squad Rooms, unless something important was going down.
Lou Natali, a slight, olive-skinned man who was losing his hair, was leaning on the glass wall. Behind the desk, Spanner, a very large fair-skinned man in his shirtsleeves, waved at Mickey, calling him inside.
"How goes it, Mickey?" Spanner said, as Mickey leaned over the desk to shake his hand.
"Can't complain," Mickey said, and turned to Lou Natali. "What do you say, Lou?"
"Haven't seen you around lately, Mick," Natali said, "You been sick or something?"
"I took a couple of weeks off," Mickey said.
"You go down to the shore?" Spanner asked.
"The shore?" Mickey asked.
"You told me, Mick, the last time I saw you, that what you needed was to go lay on the beach."
"I just hung around the house and watched the wallpaper peel," Mickey said.
"So what's new, Mick?" Natali asked, chuckling.
What's new? I'm now making a thousand bucks a week, less a hundred for the Bull, plus a Buick Super, Mercury Monterey, or equivalent automobile. And I just met a really interesting girl. That's what's new.
"Nothing much," Mickey said. "You tell me."
Both police officers shrugged their shoulders.
Mickey was disappointed. He had had a gut feeling when he saw Lou Natali that something was up. Mickey knew both of them well enough not to press the question. Probably nothing was. If there was, either Spanner or Natali would have told him, maybe prefacing it with"Off the record, Mick" but they would have told him.
"Tell me about the naked lady in Fairmount Park," Mickey said. "I heard the call last night."
"Every car in the District, plus half the Highway Patrol, went in on that, Mick," Spanner said. "But aside from that, it's not very funny. Lou and I were just talking about it."
"Tell me," Mickey said.
"Off the record?"
Goddamn, I knew there was something!
"Sure."
"You heard, I suppose, about the guy who's been raping women in Manayunk and Roxborough?"
Mickey nodded.
"From what I understand, he's the same guy who dumped the woman in Fairmount Park."
"Raped her first, you mean?"
"Not quite," Spanner said. "This is a real sick guy. Getting sicker, too."
"I don't know what you mean," Mickey said.
"He's not even screwing them anymore," Spanner said. "What he's doing now is getting his rocks off humiliating them. Pissing on them, and worse."
"Jesus!" Mickey said. "Worse?"
"What he did last night was put a knife to her throat and make her take it in the mouth. Then when he couldn't get his rocks off, he pissed all over her. Then he tied her hands behind her back and dumped her out on Forbidden Drive."
"Nice fella," Mickey said.
"Sure as Christ made little apples," Natali said, "unless they bag this scumbag, he's going to kill somebody. Cut 'em up, probably. I'm afraid he's going to start going after young girls."
"Jesus," Mickey said. He felt a little sick to his stomach when he thought of some slimeball doing something like that to a nice girl like Mary Travis. "You got anything going?"
"Not much. No good description. All we know is that he's a white guy with a van. And likes to wear a mask," Spanner said.
"You didn't get that here, Mickey," Natali said. "What I'm worried about is that I don't want to give the sonofabitch any ideas."
Mickey made a gesture signifying that he wouldn't violate the confidence.
"Who's got this job?" Mickey asked. "Dick Hemmings," Spanner said. Mickey knew Dick Hemmings to be a brighter than usual Northwest Detective, which was saying something because, with a couple of exceptions, Northwest Division had some really good detectives.
"Who was the cop who answered the call?" Mickey asked.
"Bill Dohner," Spanner said. "I don't know where you can find him until he comes in tonight, but Dick Hemmings is in court. I got the feeling he'll be in there all day."
"Well, then I guess I'd better get down there," Mickey said. "And start earning my living."
He returned to the coffee machine alcove and washed out his cup, then put it in the rack. Then he picked up a telephone on one of the unoccupied desks in the detective squad room and dialed a number from memory.
"City desk," a male voice came on the line.
"This is O'Hara," he said.
"Mr. Michael J. O'Hara?" Gerald F. Kennedy, the city editor of theBulletin replied, in mock awe. "Might one dare to hope, Mr. O'Hara, that there is a small germ of truth in the rumor going around that you are no longer withholding your professional services?"
"Fuck you, Kennedy."
"Then to what do I owe the honor of this telephone call, Mr. O'Hara?"
"Who's been covering the Northwest Philly rapes?"
"Why do you want to know, Mickey?"
"I think I'm onto something."
"Are you?" Gerry Kennedy asked.
"Yeah, I am," Mickey said.
"Odd, but I don't seem to recall assigning this story to you."
"Are we going to play games? In which case, Kennedy, go fuck yourself. I get paid whether or not I work."
"I assigned the story to Cheryl Davies," Kennedy said. "She's not going to like it if I take it away from her and give it to you."
"Fuck her."
"I would love to," Gerry Kennedy said. "But I don't think it's likely. What do you want with her, Mickey?"
"Not a goddamned thing," Mickey said. "What I'm going to do, Kennedy, is cover this myself. And you decide whose stuff you want to run."
"How about working together with her, Mick?" Gerry Kennedy asked. "I mean, she's been on it for three weeks-"
He broke off in midsentence when he realized that Mickey O'Hara had hung up.
SIX
"Good afternoon, sir," Jesus Martinez, who was of Puerto Rican ancestry, and who was five feet eight inches tall and weighed just over 140 pounds, said to the man who had reached into the rear seat of a 1972 Buick sedan in the parking lot of the Penrose Plaza Mall at Lindbergh Avenue and Island Road in West Philadelphia, and taken out two shopping bags, one of them emblazonedJohn Wanamaker amp; Sons.
"What the fuck?" the man replied. His name was Clarence Sims, and he was six feet three and weighed 180 pounds.
"Been doing a little shopping, have you, sir?"
"Get out of my face, motherfucker," Clarence Sims replied.
"I'm a police officer," Jesus Martinez said, pulling up his T-shirt, which he wore outside his blue jeans, so that his badge, through which his belt was laced, came into sight. "May I see your driver's license and vehicle registration, please?"