Page 79 of The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

“But he’s like that, you know that,” Sabara said.

“He may be like that with other people, but he’s not going to be like that with me,” Wohl said.

“That puts me in the same boat with Dave. I’m lost.”

“Special Operations is going to make the arrests,” Wohl said. “And Special Operations is going to protect Homicide’s one witness. Not Highway.”

“And if Special Operations blows it?” Sabara asked.

“We have here an armed robbery, during which a murder occurred. We know who the doers are. The suspects are under surveillance at this moment by Homicide detectives. At five o’clock tomorrow morning, they will tell Sergeant Washington where these people are. At that point, police officers, with warrants, will be sent to assist the Homicide detectives in arresting them. If the police officers in question cannot accomplish this without difficulty, then perhaps they shouldn’t be cops, and their supervisors, by whom I mean you and me, Mike, shouldn’t be supervisors.”

Sabara didn’t reply.

“Two things,” Wohl said. “I don’t want anybody in Highway, or anywhere else, hearing about this before it happens. And I don’t want a big deal made of it. I’m not putting Highway down or Special Operations up. I’m treating the robbery and shooting at Goldblatt’s like any other robbery where things got out of hand and somebody got killed. The Homicide Bureau found out who did it, and uniformed officers are going to help them make the arrests. I don’t want to dignify a bunch of thugs by calling them an army.”

“What about the press?”

“We owe Mickey O’Hara one. Actually, we owe Mickey O’Hara a couple of dozen. When you decide where this thing will start, Mike, call Mickey and suggest he might find it interesting to be there.”

“Just Mickey?”

“Just Mickey.”

“Do we know where these guys are? I mean are they all in one area, or all over the city?” Sabara asked.

“Mostly in Frankford, the Whitehall area,” Jason Washington said. “One of them is in West Philadelphia.”

“Where’d you get that?” Wohl asked.

Washington met his eyes and then said, “I talked to Joe D’Amata.”

“One of Sergeant Washington’s responsibilities as head of the Special Investigations Section will be to keep in touch with the Detective Division, and especially Homicide,” Wohl said. “Matt, make sure you put that in when you write the job description.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, can I say something?”

“At your peril, Officer Payne.”

“There’s a parking lot, actually a playground, behind the school building. You could use that as a place to meet.”

“We’re going to need—” Sabara said, pausing to do the mental arithmetic, “—space to park fifteen, sixteen cars, plus what, four wagons and a couple of stakeout trucks. That big?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want stakeout acting like the 2nd Armored Division invading Germany,” Wohl said. “They should be available, but—”

“I understand,” Sabara said.

; “Matt, on your way to the FBI,” Wohl said, “swing past the school building and make sure the parking lot will be big enough. And then call Captain Sabara and tell him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jesus,” Wohl said angrily. “I haven’t looked at this stuff yet.”

He flipped through the photocopied documents for the FBI quickly and then looked up at Payne.

“You’d better leave now,” Wohl said. “I wouldn’t want the FBI to think I had forgotten them. And we won’t need you in on this. Get the building dimensions, and whatever other information about that place you think we can use, and be here at eight in the morning.” He paused and looked at the others. “By that time, we should have eight thugs, more or less, on their way, without fuss, to the Roundhouse. Then we can turn to important things, like making our new home habitable.”