"Shit," Detective Harris said, but smiled.
"Thank you, Detective Harris," Weisbach said, "for so succinctly summing up the feelings of so many of us."
There were general chuckles.
"But we're cops, gentlemen, all of us. And we do what we're ordered to do, so let's get on with it," Weisbach said. "My first order-I don't give many orders, so pay attention when I do-is that this is one job that nobody talks about. Not to your wives, not at the FOP bar, not to your buddies. Not to anyone. If there's something dirty going on in Narcotics Five Squad, and they even suspect we're looking close at them, they'll just shut down whatever they're doing and wait until the storm blows over. Which obviously means our job would be much harder. Everybody got that clear in their minds?"
He looked at Matt Payne so long that Matt nodded. And then he kept looking. Finally, Matt understood what was expected of him. He stood up and said, "Yes, sir."
Weisbach looked at everybody but Sergeants Washington and Sandow in turn, and waited until each of them stood up and said, "Yes, sir."
"For all practical purposes, Sergeants Washington and Sandow will not be taking a very active role in this," Weisbach said. "Sergeant Sandow for the obvious reasons, he'll be handling the paperwork, and Sergeant Washington because he really is a legend in his own time, and the first time he started asking questions, looking around Five Squad, they would wonder why. To only a slightly lesser degree-he is not nearly as visible as Sergeant Washington-this also applies to Detective Harris.
"This does not mean," Weisbach went on, to be interrupted by a chorus of chuckles, and then went on, "that Sergeant Washington and Harris will not be involved in this-quite the opposite-just that they won't be out ringing doorbells. The flow of reports will be through Washington to me, and I expect Washington to bring Harris in on everything. Okay?"
There was a chorus of "Yes, sirs," and Washington nodded his understanding.
"Is there anybody here who doesn't know how and where the interest in Five Squad began?" Weisbach asked. "I mean the accusations made to Sergeant Washington by Officer Kellog's wife at the time of the murder? Hands, please."
No hands went up.
"I'm not surprised. My wife says cops gossip more than women," Weisbach went on. "Okay, let me bring everybody up-to-date on what's happened since. If you've heard this before, bear with me.
"When these allegations first came up, I spoke with Captain Pekach. He was surprised to hear them. He felt, I suppose still feels, that if anything was going on in Narcotics, he would have heard about it, or at least had suspicions. Now, since Captain Pekach is both not naive, and an experienced police supervisor, what that means is-let's go on the presumption that there are dirty cops in the Five Squad-that they're smart and doing what they're doing skillfully enough to keep a smart supervisor like Captain Pekach from even suspecting that something's going on."
He looked at Detective Jesus Martinez.
"Jesus, when you worked Narcotics, did you hear anything about the Five Squad? Suspect anything?"
Martinez shook his head, "no."
"Charley?" Weisbach asked, looking at Detective McFadden.
"No, sir," McFadden said. "Five Squad were the hotshots. They hung together. They didn't even talk to the peasants."
Weisbach nodded.
"More proof that they know how to keep their mouths shut," Weisbach said. "I asked Captain Pekach to let his imagination run free, and come up with how Five Squad could illegally profit from the performance, or nonperformance, of their official duties.
"Captain Pekach said he doesn't think Five Squad is taking payments from drug dealers or others to ignore their criminal activities. He made the point that the statistics-the number of 'good' arrests resulting in court convictions made by Five Squad-are extraordinary.
"That, he said-and I think he's right-left one possibility: if there is something dirty going on, it's taking place during raids and arrests. I looked into this idea, and found out that the number of times Five Squad conducted raids and arrests without support from other police units, the districts, Highway Patrol, and ACT teams is unusual.
"In other words, with no one present during a raid or arrest but fellow members of the Narcotics Five Squad, it's possible that Five Squad is illegally diverting to their own use part of the cash and other valuables that would be subject to seizure before it was entered upon a property receipt."
"Yeah," Detective McFadden thought out loud.
"McFadden?" Weisbach asked.
"They run a bust. The bad guy has, say, ten thousand in cash. They turn in say, eight or nine thousand. What's the bad guy going to do? 'Hey, I got ripped off of a thousand '? Who's going to believe him?"
"I think it will probably turn out to be something like that," Weisbach said.
"Or controlled substances," Jesus Martinez said. "They bust the guy, he's got fifty bags of crap. They turn in forty. Same story."
"If Martinez is right about that-and I'm afraid he might be-that would mean that Five Squad is putting drugs back onto the street," Weisbach said.
"Are we talking out of school here?" McFadden asked.
"Yes, we are."
"I done a little of that myself," McFadden said, "Took a couple of bags here and there to feed my snitches."
"You never sold any, Charley," Jesus said.
"What I'm saying is that's how it could have started," McFadden said. "You need to make a car payment or something, you got five, ten bags you took away from some scumbag to feed your snitches. Fuck your snitches, sell the shit, make your car payment."
Staff Inspector Weisbach had spoken to Captain Pekach about Detectives Martinez and McFadden, who had worked for him when he'd been a lieutenant in Narcotics.
They both had been assigned to Narcotics right out of the Academy, solely because Narcotics needed a steady stream of undercover officers whose faces were not known on the street. Until they were "burned"-that is, became known-rookie cops were very valuable in making buys, and thus causing arrests. Many rookies were psychologically unable to work undercover, and many other rookies, because of inexperience or just plain bad luck, were quickly burned. Once burned, rookie cops working undercover Narcotics then resumed a rookie's normal police career. Most of them wound up in districts, walking a beat, until such time as their superiors felt they could be trusted working district wagons.
McFadden and Martinez had been the exception to the general rule. They liked what they were doing, and had been extraordinarily good at it. They had come to be known as "Mutt and Jeff," after the comic book characters, because of their sizes. They made a large number of good arrests, and they had been on the job over a year before they had been burned.
And the way they were burned had set them aside from their peers, too.
The commanding officer of Highway Patrol, Captain "Dutch" Moffitt, a very colorful and popular officer, had been shot to death when, off-duty and in civilian clothing, he had tried to stop an armed robbery of a diner on Roosevelt Boulevard.
The identity of the shooter, a drug addict, was known, and the entire Philadelphia Police Department was looking for him. Mutt and Jeff had run him down on their own time, at the Bridge Street elevated train station. McFadden had literally run the shooter down, chasing him down the elevated train tracks at considerable risk to his own life, until a train had come along, and the shooter had fallen under its wheels.