The teletype messages had been passed over the Police Communications Network. There was a teletype machine in each of the twenty-two districts (in New York City, and many other cities, the term used for district police stations was "precinct"); in each Detective Division; and elsewhere.

Wohl read the first message.

GENERAL: 0650 06/30/73 From Commissioner

:::::::::::

:::::::::::

Well, there goes whatever small chance I had to plead Mike Sabara's case. Now that it's official, it's too late to do anything about it.

He read the second message.

General: 0651 06/30/73 From Commissioner

:::::::::::

:::::::::::

The radio designator "Sam" was already in use, Wohl knew. Stakeout and the Bomb Squad used it. It was "Sam" rather than the military " Sugar" because the first time a Bomb Squad cop had gone on the air and identified himself as "S-Sugar Thirteen" the hoots of derision from his brother officers had been heard as far away as Atlantic City.

Special Operations had been given, he reasoned, the "Sam" designator because Special Operations, also "S" was going to be larger than "S" for Stakeout. So what were they going to use for Stakeout and the Bomb Squad? It would not work to have both using the same designator.

But that was a problem that could wait.

He read the third and fourth teletype messages.

General: 0652 06/30/73 From Commissioner

:::::::::::

:::::::::::

General: 0653 06/30/73 From Commissioner

:::::::::::

:::::::::::

"I'll be in touch," Chief Coughlin said to the telephone, and hung up. He turned to Wohl, smiling.

"You don't seem very surprised, Peter," Coughlin said.

"I heard."

"You did?" Coughlin said, surprised. "From who?"

"I forget."

"Yeah, you forget," Coughlin said, sarcastically. "I don't know why I'm surprised."

"I don't suppose I can get out of this?" Wohl asked.

"You're going to be somebody in the Department, Peter," Coughlin said. "It wouldn't be much of a surprise if you got to be Commissioner."

"That's very flattering, Chief," Wohl said. "But that's not what I asked."

"Don't thank me," Coughlin said. "I didn't say that. The mayor did, to the Commissioner. When the mayor told him he thought you should command Special Operations."

Wohl shook his head.

"That answer your question, Inspector?" Chief Coughlin asked.

"Chief, I don't even know what the hell Special Operations is," Wohl said, "much less what it's supposed to do."

"You saw the teletype. Highway and ACT. You were Highway, and you've got Mike Sabara to help you with Highway."

"I don't suppose anybody asked Mike if he'd like to have Highway?" Wohl asked.

"The mayor says Mike looks like a concentration camp guard," Coughlin said. "Dave Pekach, I guess, looks more like what the mayor thinks the commanding officer of Highway Patrol should look like."

"This is a reaction to that'Gestapo in Jackboots' editorial? Is that what this is all about?"

"That, too, sure."

"TheLedger is going after Carlucci no matter what he does," Wohl said.

"His Honor the Mayor," Coughlin corrected him.

"And after me, too," Wohl said. "Arthur J. Nelson blames me for letting it out that his son was… involved with other men."

Arthur J. Nelson was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Daye-Nelson Publishing, Inc., which owned theLedger and twelve other newspapers across the country.

" 'Negro homosexuals,' " Coughlin said.

It had been a sordid job. Jerome Nelson, the only son of Arthur J. Nelson, had been murdered, literally butchered, in his luxurious apartment in a renovated Revolutionary War-era building on Society Hill. The prime suspect in the case was his live-in boyfriend, a known homosexual, a man who called himself "Pierre St. Maury." A fingerprint search had identified Maury as a twenty-five-year-old black man, born Errol F. Watson, with a long record of arrests for minor vice offenses and petty thievery. Watson had himself been murdered, shot in the back of the head with a.32 automatic, by two other black men known to be homosexuals.