"Then why write the letter in the first place? Take that risk?" Sabara asked.
"Because he believes that he is a Christian, and is worried about the Vice President's soul," Larkin said. "Which brings us back to someone who thinks he's doing the Lord's work being a very dangerous character, indeed."
"We keep saying 'he,'" Wohl said, but it was a question.
'Two things. Both unscientific," Larkin replied. "Women don't normally do this sort of thing. And there is, in my judgment, a masculine character to the tone of the letter. It doesn't sound as if it's written by a female. But I could be wrong."
"Yeah," Wohl said thoughtfully.
"One more speculation," Larkin said. "'High explosives.' Technically, there are low-yield explosives and high-yield explosives. Maybe he knows the difference. That could suggest that this guy has some experience with explosives. It could just as easily mean, of course, that he doesn't know the difference, but just heard the term."
"But the whole letter suggests that he isn't thinking of taking a shot at the Vice President," Wohl said.
"Presuming, for the sake of argument, that you're right, that's a mixed blessing. Getting close enough to the Vice President to take a shot at him wouldn't be easy. Using explosives-and I don't think we can dismiss military ordnance, hand grenades, mines, that sort of thing-is something else. And since this guy is doing God's work, I don't think he's worrying about how many other people might have to be 'disintegrated.'"
"I don't suppose there's any chance of having the Vice President put off his visit until we can get our hands on this guy?" Wohl asked.
"No," Larkin said. "Not a chance."
"Has he seen this letter?"
Larkin shook his head, no.
"Well, you tell us, Charley," Wohl said. "How can we help?"
"That's a little delicate…"
"You'd rather discuss that in private, is that what you mean?"
Larkin nodded.
"Charley, anything that you want to say to me, you can say in front of these people," Wohl said.
Larkin hesitated, and then said, "You are like your dad, Peter. He once told me he never had anyone working for him he couldn't trust."
"There are some I trust less than others," Wohl said. "These I trust, period."
"Okay," Larkin said. "The word that gets back to me is that there is some bad feeling between the Police Department and the feds, the FBI in particular, but the feds generally."
"I can't imagine why anyone would think that," Wohl said, lightly sarcastic.
Larkin snorted.
"There's a story going around that both you, the Department, I mean, and the FBI were going after a big-time car thief. And the first time that either of you knew the other guys were working the job was when your cars ran into each other when you were picking him up."
"Not true," Wohl said.
Larkin looked at him in surprise.
'The real story is that nobody in the Department, except one hardnosed Irishman, believed that the car thief could possibly be a car thief. We were wrong, and the FBI was right."
"One of your guys, the hard-nosed Irishman?"
Wohl pointed at Jack Malone.
"And I didn't believe him, either," Wohl said. "Walter Davis and I had a long talk to see if we couldn't keep something like that from happening again."
Walter Davis was the SAC, the special agent in charge, of the Philadelphia office of the FBI.
"You get along with Davis all right, Peter?"
"As well as any simple local cop can get along with the FBI," Wohl said.
"Did you almost say 'the feds'?"
"No."
"Out of school," Larkin said. "I hear that part of the problem is a Captain Jack Duffy."
"Out of school, did you hear what Captain Duffy is supposed to have done?"
"What he doesn't do is the problem, is what I hear. Phrased delicately, both Walter Davis and our SAC here…Joe Toner, you know him, our supervisory agent in charge?"
Wohl shook his head, no.
"…tell me that in the best of all possible worlds, Captain Duffy would be a bit more enthusiastically cooperative than he is."
"That's delicately phrased," Wohl said. "But I don't think it's Duffy personally. He takes his guidance from the commissioner."
"Okay. Confession time," Larkin said. "Joe Toner found out somehow that Dignitary Protection had been given to something called Special Operations, which was under an Inspector Wall. So, when I began to suspect that this vice presidential visit was going to present serious problems, I decided I was going to bypass Captain Duffy. I called the Dignitary Protection sergeant…you know who I mean, the caretaker sergeant?"
"Henkels," Wohl furnished.
"Sergeant Henkels. And I told him that I wanted to see the supervisor in charge in our office. There, I was going to make sure he found out that Denny Coughlin and I are old pals. The logic being that Henkels and the lieutenant were going to be more impressed with, and more worried about annoying, Chief Coughlin than they would about Duffy. In other words, they would enthusiastically cooperate."
"You think the danger this guy poses is worth really pissing off Duffy and the commissioner?"
"I would rather have both love me, but yes, I do."
"And if getting Henkels and Malone to circumvent normal channels incidentally got them in deep trouble, too bad?"
"My job is to keep the Vice President alive, Peter. If I have to step on some toes…"
"You can't simply cut Duffy out of the picture, even if you wanted to," Wohl said.
"Joe Toner's deputy has an appointment with Duffy at eight o'clock Monday morning. We will go through the motions. But what I hoped to get first from Malone, and then from you, was more cooperation than I' m liable to get from Duffy. This is not one of those times when it would be all right for you to say, 'Fuck the feds.' We've got to find this guy before he has a chance to 'disintegrate' the Vice President, and in the process probably a bunch of civilians."
Wohl's face was expressionless, but obviously, Mike Sabara decided, he was giving his response a good deal of thought. Finally, Wohl reached for his coffee cup, picked it up, and then looked directly at Larkin.
"How, specifically, do you think we could help?"
"Some cop in this town has a line on this guy. Either somebody in Intelligence, Sex Crimes, Civil Affairs, something else esoteric, or a detective somewhere, or a beat cop. He's done something suspicious. If we're lucky, done something really out of the ordinary, like buying explosives, maybe. Had some kind of trouble with his neighbors. Done something that would make a good cop suspicious of him, but nothing he would make official."
"If you gave Jack Duffy," Wohl replied, "or, better yet, the commissioner himself what you've just given us, it would be brought up at the very next roll call."
"And laughed at," Larkin said. "But that's what Toner's deputy is going to do tomorrow morning, tell Duffy everything. I told you, we're going to go through the motions. And maybe we'll get lucky. But maybe lucky won't cut it."
"So what do you want from us?" Wohl asked.