There was no question in Davis's mind (or for that matter in the minds of any peace officer with the brains to find his rear end with both hands) that Ristorante Alfredo was owned by persons connected with organized crime, otherwise known as "the Mob" and sometimes as " the Mafia."
Davis was sure that there would be someone in the restaurant who would recognize him and Wohl, whom Davis believed to be as bright and competent a Philadelphia cop as they came, and note and report to his superiors that they had been taking lunch together.
If that had caused Ricco Baltazari, who held the restaurant license for Ristorante Alfredo, or Vincenzo Savarese, "the businessman" who actually owned it, some uncomfortable moments wondering what the head of the FBI and the head of Special Operations were up to, together, that would have added a little something to the luncheon.
But that had not come to pass. Wohl had accepted the invitation, and said that since he would be at the Roundhouse at about lunchtime, he would just stop by the FBI office when he was finished with his business and pick Davis up.
The Administration Building of the Philadelphia Police Department, at 8^th and Race Streets, was universally called "the Roundhouse" because its architect had been fascinated with curves, and everything in the building was curved, right down to the elevators.
Wohl's own office was at Bustleton and Bowler Streets in Northeast Philadelphia, from which he commanded the Special Operations Division, which consisted of the Highway Patrol and a newly formed, somewhat experimental unit of above-average uniformed and plainclothes cops.
The original idea was that Special Operations, which like the Highway Patrol had city-wide responsibility, would move into high-crime areas of the city, and overwhelm the problem with manpower, special equipment and techniques, and an arrangement with the district attorney to hustle the arrested through the criminal justice procedure.
That was being done, but politics had inevitably entered the picture almost immediately. First, there had been the murder of Jerome Nelson, whose father, Arthur J. Nelson, was chairman of the board of the DayeNelson Corporation, which owned (among other newspapers and television stations) the PhiladelphiaLedger and WGHA-TV.
When a Homicide Division lieutenant, Edward M. DelRaye, had been truthfully tactless enough to inform the press that the police were looking for a Negro Male, Pierre St. Maury, a known homosexual known to be living with young Nelson in his luxury Society Hill apartment, in connection with the killing, theLedger and its publisher had declared war on both the Police Department and the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadelphia.
Mayor Carlucci had "suggested" to Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick that the investigation of the Nelson murder be turned over to Peter Wohl's Special Operations Division.
The case had more or less solved itself when two other Negro Homosexual Males had been arrested in Atlantic City in possession of Jerome Nelson's Visa and American Express cards, and had been charged by New Jersey authorities with the murder of Pierre St. Maury, whose body had been found near Jerome Nelson's abandoned Jaguar in the wilds of New Jersey.
SAC Davis knew that, for reasons that could only be described as political, Mayor Carlucci had "suggested" to Commissioner Czernick that Peter Wohl's Special Operations Division be given responsibility for three other situations that had attracted a good deal of media attention, much of it (all of it, in the case of theLedger) unfavorable.
The first of these, a serial murder-rapist in Northwest Philadelphia, had been resolved, to favorable publicity, when a police officer assigned to Special Operations had not only shot the murder-rapist to death, but done so when the villain actually had his next intended victim tied up, naked, in the back of his van.
The other two highly publicized cases had not gone at all well. One was the apparently senseless murder of a young police officer who had been on patrol near Temple University. A massive effort, still ongoing, hadn't turned up a thing, which gave Arthur Nelson'sLedger an at least once-a-week opportunity to run an editorial criticizing the Police Department generally, Special Operations specifically, and Mayor Carlucci in particular.
Davis was sure that the pressure on Wohl to find the cop killer must be enormous.
The third case had been that of a contract hit of a third-rate mobster, Anthony J. DeZego, also known as "Tony the Zee," on the roof of a downtown parking garage. Ordinarily, the untimely demise of a minor thug would have been forgotten in twenty-four hours, but this particular thug had been in the company of a young woman named Penelope Detweiler when someone had opened up on him with a shotgun. The Detweiler girl's father was president of Nesfoods International and one of the rocks upon which the cathedral of Philadelphia society had been built. Not only had this young woman been wounded during the attack on Mr. DeZego, but it had come out that she was not only carrying on with Tony the Zee but also addicted to heroin.
Obviously, since it wasn't their fault that their precious child had not only been shacking up with a married thug, but had been injecting and inhaling narcotics, it had to be somebody's fault. Since the police were supposed to stop that sort of thing it was obviously the fault of the police. For a few days, the influence of Nesfoods International had allied itself with Mr. Nelson and his newspaper in roundly condemning the Police Department and the mayor.
But then that had stopped, with Mr. Detweiler making a 180-degree turn. Davis had no idea how Mayor Carlucci (or possibly Peter Wohl) had pulled that off, but what had happened was that Detweiler had made a speech not only praising the police, but also starting, with a large contribution of his own, a reward fund to catch whoever had murdered the young cop in his patrol car.
Special Agent Davis knew that Mr. Detweiler's change of heart had nothing to do with the cops having caught whoever had killed DeZego and seriously wounded his daughter. That was never going to happen. The DeZego murder and the Detweiler aggravated assault cases would almost certainly never be officially closed.
There had been a report from the FBI's Chicago office that a known contract hit man meeting the description of the DeZego killer had been found in the trunk of his car with three.45-caliber bullets having passed through his cranial cavity. There was little question in anyone's mind that the DeZego/Detweiler hit man had himself been hit, probably to shut his mouth, but knowing something and being able to prove it were two entirely different things.
Special Agent in Charge Davis had been meaning to have lunch with Peter Wohl, to chat, out of school, about these cases, even before he had learned, within the past forty-eight hours, that the Nelson case was not, in something of an understatement, over. It was in fact the reason he had asked Staff Inspector Wohl to break bread with him, preferably in some quiet restaurant, like Ristorante Alfredo, where they could talk in confidence.
Davis had been summoned to Washington two days before and informed that after a review of the facts, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had brought the case of the two Negro Males who had kidnapped Pierre St. Maury, taken him against his will across a state border, and then shot him to death before a federal Grand Jury and secured an indictment against them under the Lindbergh Act.
Davis had been informed that it behooved him to do whatever he could to assist the deputy attorney general in securing a conviction. He had been told that the case had attracted the interest of certain people high in the Justice Department. Davis did not need to be reminded that the deputy attorney general of the United States, before his appointment, had been a senior partner of the law firm that represented the Daye-Nelson Corporation.
Davis had been on the telephone when Wohl had appeared at his office, and Wohl consequently had had to cool his heels for fifteen minutes before Davis could come out of his office to greet him, and apologize for getting hung up.