"In other words, with no one present during a raid or arrest but fellow members of the Narcotics Five Squad, it's possible that Five Squad is illegally diverting to their own use part of the cash and other valuables that would be subject to seizure before it was entered upon a property receipt."

"Yeah," Detective McFadden thought out loud.

"McFadden?" Weisbach asked.

"They run a bust. The bad guy has, say, ten thousand in cash. They turn in say, eight or nine thousand. What's the bad guy going to do? 'Hey, I got ripped off of a thousand '? Who's going to believe him?"

"I think it will probably turn out to be something like that," Weisbach said.

"Or controlled substances," Jesus Martinez said. "They bust the guy, he's got fifty bags of crap. They turn in forty. Same story."

"If Martinez is right about that-and I'm afraid he might be-that would mean that Five Squad is putting drugs back onto the street," Weisbach said.

"Are we talking out of school here?" McFadden asked.

"Yes, we are."

"I done a little of that myself," McFadden said, "Took a couple of bags here and there to feed my snitches."

"You never sold any, Charley," Jesus said.

"What I'm saying is that's how it could have started," McFadden said. "You need to make a car payment or something, you got five, ten bags you took away from some scumbag to feed your snitches. Fuck your snitches, sell the shit, make your car payment."

Staff Inspector Weisbach had spoken to Captain Pekach about Detectives Martinez and McFadden, who had worked for him when he'd been a lieutenant in Narcotics.

They both had been assigned to Narcotics right out of the Academy, solely because Narcotics needed a steady stream of undercover officers whose faces were not known on the street. Until they were "burned"-that is, became known-rookie cops were very valuable in making buys, and thus causing arrests. Many rookies were psychologically unable to work undercover, and many other rookies, because of inexperience or just plain bad luck, were quickly burned. Once burned, rookie cops working undercover Narcotics then resumed a rookie's normal police career. Most of them wound up in districts, walking a beat, until such time as their superiors felt they could be trusted working district wagons.

McFadden and Martinez had been the exception to the general rule. They liked what they were doing, and had been extraordinarily good at it. They had come to be known as "Mutt and Jeff," after the comic book characters, because of their sizes. They made a large number of good arrests, and they had been on the job over a year before they had been burned.

And the way they were burned had set them aside from their peers, too.

The commanding officer of Highway Patrol, Captain "Dutch" Moffitt, a very colorful and popular officer, had been shot to death when, off-duty and in civilian clothing, he had tried to stop an armed robbery of a diner on Roosevelt Boulevard.

The identity of the shooter, a drug addict, was known, and the entire Philadelphia Police Department was looking for him. Mutt and Jeff had run him down on their own time, at the Bridge Street elevated train station. McFadden had literally run the shooter down, chasing him down the elevated train tracks at considerable risk to his own life, until a train had come along, and the shooter had fallen under its wheels.

The two had received their commendations from Mayor Carlucci himself, which had caused their photographs to be plastered all over the front pages of all the newspapers in Philadelphia except the Ledger, and thus effectively burning them from further duty as undercover narcs.

It wouldn't have been fair, under those circumstances, to send the two of them out to a district to turn off fire hydrants in the summer, transport prisoners, and do the other things that other rookies with an out-of-the-Academy undercover narcotics assignment usually did after they were burned.

Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin had arranged for their assignment to Highway Patrol, considered the elite of the uniformed force. Normally, police officers couldn't even apply for transfer to Highway unless they had at least five very good years on the job elsewhere.

They'd taken the examination for detective as soon as they were eligible. Martinez had placed two spots below Matt Payne, and McFadden two spots above the cutoff point at the bottom on the rankings.

They had to be considered outstanding young police of ficers, Staff Inspector Weisbach thought. And while there was no question in his mind that they were both straight arrows, there was something very disturbing to him in their matter-of-fact acceptance that it was perfectly acceptable-if admittedly illegal-police procedure to take drugs from evidence with the intention of using them to pay informers. That the end, so to speak, justified the means.

He was not morally outraged-he had been a policeman too long for that-but it bothered him.

"You think something like that happened, McFadden?" he asked.

"I don't think anybody, any dirty cop, starts out by saying, 'Fuck it, today I start being dirty.' They have to have some reason, something that makes it all right. Tell themselves, for example, 'Just this one time, when I make this car payment, that'll be the end of it. I'll never do it again.' "

"If you're right, and I think you may be, that doesn't explain how the whole Five Squad went bad," Weisbach said.

"Are we sure they're all dirty?" Martinez asked.

"If they're not all actually involved," Washington said, "I find it difficult to accept that anyone on Five Squad is not fully aware of what the others are doing."

"Cops don't snitch on other cops?" McFadden replied.

Washington nodded.

"Not unless their option is, their own innocence aside, going down with the others," Tony Harris said. "Maybe the way to get into this is to find the one guy-if there is one-who is not dirty."

"How do we find him, Tony?" Weisbach asked.

"Easy. He's the one who doesn't have money he shouldn't have," Harris said.

"Well, that's where we're going to begin. With money," Weisbach said. "We're going to see if anybody on the Five Squad has been spending-or saving-more money than seems reasonable on what the department is paying him. Frankly, I would be surprised if we can quickly, or easily, come up with something. If, on the first go-around, we can find anything suspicious at all."

"I don't understand, Inspector," Matt Payne said.

"I think one of the things we all have to keep in mind, Payne, is that although Internal Affairs hasn't been given this job specifically, that doesn't mean they're incompetent, or stupid. They're always looking for signs of unusual affluence, and I would suspect they look closest at cops in jobs where taking bribes, or doing something else illegal, would be more likely. I'm sure they routinely check Narcotics people, is what I'm saying. And they didn't find anything suspicious, or else they would have started their own investigation. Chief Coughlin tells me Internal Affairs was not conducting any kind of a specific investigation of anybody in Narcotics before we got this job.

"What I think that could mean is-presuming some members of Five Squad are dirty-that they are also too smart to go out and buy a new Buick in their own name, or a condo at the shore, or put money in their own bank account. You still with me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we-and by 'we' I mean McFadden and Jesus and Tiny-are going to go through the motions of looking for unexplained amounts of money. I expect a thorough job. I would be delighted if they don't find unexplainable money and prove me wrong. Call that the first go-around. And while they're doing that, Payne, you're going to come up with a database of names of people in whose names Buicks and condos, et cetera, could be bought. Still with me?"