More important, his father was a friend of both Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and Chief Inspector (Retired) Augustus Wohl. When Officer O'Mara, who had five years on the job in the Traffic Division, had failed, for the second time, to pass the examination for corporal, both Chief Coughlin and Chief Wohl had had a private word with Inspector Wohl.

They had pointed out to him that just because someone has a little trouble with promotion examinations doesn't mean he's not a good cop, with potential. It just means that he has trouble passing examinations.

Not like you, Peter, the inference had been. You're not really all that smart, you're just good at taking examinations.

One or the other or both of them had suggested that what Officer O'Mara needed was a little broader experience than he was getting in the Traffic Division, such as he might get if it could be arranged to have him assigned to Special Operations as your administrative assistant.

"Now that you've lost Young Payne:" his father had said.

"Now that Matt's gone to East Detectives…" Chief Coughlin had said.

In chorus: "You're going to need someone to replace him. And you know what a good guy, and a good cop, his father is."

And so Officer O'Mara had taken off his uniform, with the distinctive white Traffic Division brimmed cap, and donned a trio of suits Inspector Wohl somewhat unkindly suspected were left over from his high school graduation and/or obtained from the Final Clearance rack at Sears Roebuck and come to work for Special Operations.

Peter Wohl was sitting on his bed, pulling his socks on when Officer O'Mara walked in with a cup of coffee.

"I couldn't find any cream, Inspector, but I put one spoon of sugar in there. Is that okay?"

Inspector Wohl decided that telling Officer O'Mara that he always took his coffee black would be both unkind and fruitless: He had told him the same thing ten or fifteen times in the office.

"Thank you," he said.

"Stakeout got two critters at the Acme on Baltimore Avenue last night. It was on TV," Officer O'Mara said.

"'Got two critters'?"

"Blew them away," O'Mara said, admiration in his voice.

"Any police or civilians get hurt?"

"They didn't say anything on TV."

Wohl noticed that Officer O'Mara did not have any coffee.

"Aren't you having any coffee, Paul?"

"I thought you just told me to get you some," O'Mara said.

"Help yourself, Paul. Have you had breakfast?"

"I had a doughnut."

"Well, we're going to the Roundhouse. We can get some breakfast on the way."

"Yes, sir," O'Mara said, and walked out of the bedroom.

Peter Wohl walked to his closet and after a moment's hesitation selected a gray flannel suit. He added to it a light blue button-down collar shirt and a regimentally striped tie.

Clothes make the man, he thought somewhat cynically. First impressions are important. Particularly when one is summoned to meet with the commissioner, and one doesn't have a clue what the sonofabitch wants.

There was no parking space in the parking lot behind the Police Administration Building reserved for the commanding officer, Special Operations, as there were for the chief inspectors of Patrol Bureau (North), Patrol Bureau (South), Command Inspections Bureau, Administration, Internal Affairs, Detective Bureau, and even the Community Relations Bureau.

Neither could Paul O'Mara park Peter Wohl's official nearly new Ford sedan in spots reserved for CHIEF INSPECTORS AND INSPECTORS ONLY, because Wohl was only a staff inspector, one rank below inspector. The senior brass of the Police Department were jealous of the prerogatives of their ranks and titles and would have been offended to see a lowly staff inspector taking privileges that were not rightly his.

Wohl suspected that if a poll were taken, anonymously, of the deputy commissioners, chief inspectors, and inspectors, the consensus would be that his appointment as commanding officer, Special Operations Division, reporting directly to the deputy commissioner, Operations, had been a major mistake, acting to the detriment of overall departmental efficiency, not to mention what harm it had done to the morale of officers senior to Staff Inspector Wohl, who had naturally felt themselves to be in line for the job.

If, however, he also suspected, asked to identify themselves before replying to the same question, to a man they would say that it was a splendid idea, and that there was no better man in the Department for the job.

They all knew that the Hon. Frank Carlucci, mayor of the City of Philadelphia, had suggested to Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick that Wohl be given the job. And they all knew that Mayor Carlucci sincerely-and not without reason-believed himself to know more about what was good for the Police Department than anybody else in Philadelphia.

A "suggestion" from Mayor Carlucci to Commissioner Czernick regarding what he should do in the exercise of his office was the equivalent of an announcement on faith and morals issued by the pope, ex cathedra. It was not open for discussion, much less debate.

Peter Wohl had not wanted the job. He had been the youngest, ever, of the fourteen staff inspectors of the Staff Investigations Unit, and had liked very much what he was doing. The penal system of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was now housing more than thirty former judges, city commissioners, and other high-level bureaucrats and political office holders whom Peter Wohl had caught with their hands either in the public treasury or outstretched to accept contributions from the citizenry in exchange for special treatment.

He had even thought about passing up the opportunity to take the examination for inspector. There had been little question in his mind that he could pass the examination and be promoted, but he suspected that if he did, with only a couple of years as a staff inspector behind him, with the promotion would come an assignment to duties he would rather not have, for example, as commanding officer of the Traffic Division, or the Civil Affairs Division, or even the Juvenile Division.

Department politics would, he had believed, keep him from getting an assignment as an inspector he would really like, which would have included commanding one of the nine Police Divisions (under which were all the police districts) or one of the two Detective Field Divisions (under which were the seven Detective Divisions) or the Tactical Division, under which were Highway Patrol, the Airport, Stakeout, Ordnance Disposal, the police boats in the Marine Unit, the dogs of the Canine Unit, and a unit whose function he did not fully understand called Special Operations.

And then Mayor Carlucci had a little chat with Commissioner Czernick. There was a chance for the Philadelphia Police Department to get its hands on some federal money, from the Justice Department. Some Washington bureaucrat had decided that the way to fight crime was to overwhelm the criminal element by sheer numbers. Under the acronym ACT, for Anti-Crime Team, federal money would allow local police departments to dispatch to heavy crime areas large numbers of policemen.

Philadelphia already was trying the same tactic, more or less, with the Highway Patrol, an elite, specially uniformed, two-men-in-acar unit who normally practiced fighting crime by going to heavy crime areas. But they were, of course, paying for it themselves.

There was a way, Mayor Carlucci suggested, to enlist the financial support of the federal government in the never-ending war against crime. The Philadelphia Police Department would form an ACT unit. It would be placed in the already existing Special Operations Unit. And since Highway Patrol was already doing the same sort of thing, so would Highway Patrol be placed in the Special Operations Division. And Special Operations, the mayor suggested, would be taken out from under the control of the Special Investigations Bureau, made a division, and placed under the direct command of the police commissioner himself.