Those two are going somewhere interesting together, somewhere they hope I wont show up.
He turned on all three of the shortwave receivers mounted under the dashboard. The receivers in Mickey OHaras car were the best the Bulletin s money could buy. They were each capable of being switched to receive any of the ten different frequencies utilized by the Police Department.
One of these was the universal band (called the J-Band) to which every police vehicle had access. Each of Philadelphias seven police divisions had its own radio frequency. An eighth frequency (the H-Band) was assigned for the exclusive use of investigative units (detectives cars, and those assigned to Narcotics, Intelligence, Organized Crime, etcetera). And since Mayor Jerry Carlucci had gotten all that lovely ACT Grant money from Congress, there was a new special band (the W-Band) for the exclusive use of Special Operations (including the Highway Patrol).
Ordinary police cars were limited to the use of two bands, the Universal J Band, and either one of the division frequencies, or the H (Detective) Band.
Mickey switched one of his radios to the J (Universal) Band, the second to the H (Detective) Band, and the third to the W (Special Operations) Band, a little smugly deciding that if anything interesting was happening, or if Wohl and Coughlin wanted to talk to each other, the odds were that it would come over one of the three.
It quickly became clear that wherever the two of them were going, they were going together and in a hurry. Wohl stayed on Coughlins bumper as they drove through Center City and then out the Parkway and along the Schuylkill.
Nothing of interest came over the radio, however, as they left Center City behind them, and an interesting thought destroyed some of Mickeys good feeling that he had outwitted Denny Coughlin and Peter Wohl.
It is entirely possible that those two bastards have decided to pull my chain. They saw me watch them leave the Roundhouse, and before I got into my car one or the other of them got on his radio and said, If Mickey follows us, lets take him on a tour of Greater Philadelphia. Theyre probably headed nowhere special at all, and after I follow them to hell and gone, they will pull into a
diner someplace for a cup of coffee, and wait for me with a broad smile.
He had just about decided this was a very good possibility when there was activity on the radio.
William One.
William One, Peter Wohls voice responded.
William Two requests a location.
Mickey knew that William Two was the call sign of Captain Mike Sabara, Wohls second-in-command.
Inform William Two Im on my way to Chestnut Hill and Ill phone him from there.
Damn, they got me! The two of them are headed for Dave Pekachs girlfriends house. Shes having an engagement party the day after tomorrow. It has to be that. Why else would the two of them be going to Chestnut Hill at this time of the morning?
Mickey turned off the Schuylkill Expressway onto the Roosevelt Boulevard extension.
Ill go get some breakfast at the Franklin Diner and then Ill go home.
He reached down and moved the switch on the third of his radio receivers from the Special Operations frequency so that it would receive the police communications of the East Division. He did this without thinking, in what was really a Pavlovian reflex, whenever he drove out of one police division into another.
And there was something going on in the Twenty-fifth District.
Twenty-five Seventeen, a voice said.
Twenty-five Seventeen, a male police-radio operator responded immediately.
Give me a supervisor at this location. This is a Five Two Nine Two, an off-duty Three Six Nine.
Mickey knew police-radio shorthand as well as any police officer. A Five Two Nine Two, an off-duty Three Six Nine, meant the officer was reporting the discovery of a body, that of an off-duty cop.
A dead body, even of a cop, was not necessarily front-page news, but Mickeys ears perked up.
Twenty-five A, the police radio operator called.
Twenty-five A, the Twenty-fifth District sergeant on patrol responded. Whats that location?
300 West Luray Street.
I got it, Twenty-five A announced. En route.
And then Mickeys memory turned on.
Mickey glanced in his rearview mirror, hit the brakes, made a tire-squealing U-turn, and headed for 300 West Luray Street.
One of the unofficial perquisites of being the Commanding Officer of Highway Patrol was that of being picked up at your home and driven to work, normally a privilege accorded only to Chief Inspectors. A Highway car just seemed to be coincidentally in the neighborhood of the Commanding Officer every day at the time the Commanding Officer would be leaving for work. Captain David Pekach, however, normally chose to forgo this courtesy. He said that it would be inappropriate, especially since Inspector Peter Wohl, his superior, usually drove himself.
While this was of course true, Captain Pekach had another reason for waiving the privilege of being picked up at home and driven to work, and then being driven home again when the days work was over. This was because it had been a rare night indeed, since he had met Miss Martha Peebles, that he had laid his weary head to rest on his own pillow in his small apartment.