Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [125]
Coughlin believed that Matt--whom he had known from the day of his birth--had reacted to (a) the death of his uncle and (b) his failure of the U.S. Marine Corps' Pre-Commissioning Physical Examination by applying for the police department to (a) avenge his uncle and (b) prove his manhood.
It was understandable, of course, but the bottom line was that a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who had been raised not only in wealth but as the adopted son of a Philadelphia Brahmin, was very unlikely to find happiness walking a police beat. Worse, he was liable to get hurt.
Sergeant Dennis V. Coughlin had knocked at the door of his best friend's pregnant wife to tell her that Sergeant Jack Moffitt had been killed responding to a silent alarm at a gas station in West Philadelphia.
Chief Inspector Coughlin had no intention of knocking at the door of Mrs. Patricia Moffitt Payne to tell her that her son--Jack's son, his godson--Matt, had been killed in the line of duty.
And all of this had coincided with the formation, at the "suggestion" of the then-mayor of the City of Philadelphia, the Hon. Jerome H. "Jerry" Carlucci, of the Special Operations Division of the police department.
Mayor Carlucci, who boasted that he had held every rank in the Philadelphia police department except for policewoman, had not been at all bashful about making suggestions about the department to then-Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich.
Mayor Carlucci had also "suggested" to Commissioner Czernich that he consider Staff Inspector Peter F. Wohl, then assigned to Internal Affairs, to be the commanding officer of the new Special Operations Division. Commissioner Czernich had immediately seen the wisdom of the suggestions, and issued the appropriate orders.
Peter Wohl was then the youngest staff inspector--ever-- in the department. It was well-known that his father, Chief Inspector (Retired) August Wohl, had been Jerry Carlucci's rabbi as the mayor had risen through the ranks. But it was also well-known that Peter Wohl was a hell of a good cop, an absolutely straight arrow, and smarter than hell, so the cries of nepotism were not as loud as they might have been.
Coughlin, the then-chief inspector, had solved the problem of what to do with Officers Martinez, McFadden, and Payne by ordering their assignment to Special Operations.
In a private chat with then-Staff Inspector Wohl, he suggested that in his new command Wohl would probably be able to find places where Officers Martinez and McFadden could be useful in plainclothes, and that Officer Payne could probably make himself useful as Wohl's administrative assistant, until he realized the mistake he had made by coming on the job, and quit and got on with his life.
Wohl had accepted Coughlin's suggestions with as much alacrity as the commissioner had accepted the mayor's suggestions. He was wise enough to know that he had very little choice in the matter. His rabbi had spoken.
Finding useful employment for Martinez and McFadden had posed no problem. Wohl had been pleasantly surprised how well they had performed in interviews with suspects. Between them, they had seemed to know when they were not being told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then one or the other of them had been able to get it.
When they played Good Cop/Bad Cop, Martinez had been very effective as the frightening arm of the law, and McFadden, despite his size, as the kindly young Irishman who understood what had happened and wanted only to help.
Officer Payne had, not surprising Wohl, been an efficient administrative assistant--sort of a male secretary--from the first day. Wohl, who agreed with Chief Coughlin that Payne would leave the job just as soon as he realized