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.Other property stolen from Jerome Nelson's apartment had beenlocated and tied to them, and their fingerprints had been all over the Jaguar.Page 137 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlThe way Wohl put it together in his mind, the two critters being held in NewJersey had gotten the keys to the Nelson apartment from Watson, probably inexchange for a promise to split the burglary proceeds with him.Surprised tofind Jerome Nelson at home, they had killed him.And then they had killedWatson to make sure that when the police found him, he couldn't implicatethem.But the two critters had availed themselves of their right under the MirandaDecision to have legal counsel.And their lawyer had pointed out to them thatwhile they were probably going to be convicted of the murder of Watson, ifthey professed innocence of the Nelson robbery and murder, the Pennsylvaniaauthorities didn't have either witnesses or much circumstantial evidence totry them with.It was a statement of fact that sentences handed down to critters of whatevercolor for having murdered another critter tended to be less severe than thosehanded down to black men for having murdered a rich and socially prominentwhite man.And if the two critters in the Ocean County jail hadn't known thisbefore the State of New Jersey provided them with free legal counsel, theyknew it now.Their story now was that they had met Watson riding around in a Jaguar, andbought certain merchandise he had for sale from him.They had last seen himsafe and sound near the boardwalk in Atlantic City.They had no idea who hadkilled him, and they had absolutely no knowledge whatever of a man namedJerome Nelson, except that his had been the name on the credit card theybought from Errol Watson/Pierre St.Maury.Ordinarily, it wouldn't have mattered.It would have been just one moresordid job in a long, long list of sordid jobs.The critters would have goneaway, even if the New Jersey prosecutor had plea-bargained Watson's murderdown to second-degree murder or even first-degree manslaughter.They wouldhave gotten twenty-to-life, and the whole job would have been forgotten in amonth.But Jerome Nelson was not just one more victim.His father was Arthur J.Nelson, who owned the Ledger, and who had naturally assumed that when MayorJerry Carlucci and Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick had called on himimmediately after the tragedy to assure him that the full resources of thePhiladelphia Police Department would be brought to bear to bring whoever wasresponsible for this heinous crime against his son to justice, that the PoliceDepartment would naturally do what it could to spare the feelings of thevictim's family.That, in other words, the sexual proclivities of the primesuspect, or his racial categorization, or that he had been sharing Jerome'sapartment, would not come out.Page 138 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlMayor Carlucci had seemed to be offering what Arthur J.Nelson had, as thepublisher of a major newspaper, come to expect as his due; a little specialtreatment.Commissioner Czernick had even told Nelson that he had assigned oneof the brightest police officers in the Department, Staff Inspector PeterWohl, to oversee the detectives in the Homicide Division as they conductedtheir investigation, and to make sure that everything that could possibly bedone was being done.That hadn't happened.Mr.Michael J.O'Hara, of the Bulletin, had fed several drinks to, andstroked the already outsized ego of, a Homicide Division Lieutenant namedDelRaye, which had caused Lieutenant DelRaye to say something he probablywould not have said had he been entirely sober.That resulted in a front page,bylined story in the Bulletin announcing that according to a senior policeofficial involved in the investigation the police were seeking JeromeNelson's live-in lover, who happened to be a black homosexual, or words tothat effect.Once Mickey O'Hara's story had broken the dam, the other two major newspapersin Philadelphia, plus all the radio and television stations, had considered ittheir sacred journalistic duty to bring all the facts before the public.Mrs.Arthur J, Nelson, who had always manifested some symptoms of nervousdisorder, had had to be sent back to the Institute of Living, in Hartford,Connecticut, said to be the most expensive psychiatric hospital in thecountry, after it had come out, in all the media except the Ledger, that heronly child had been cohabiting with a Negro homosexual.Mr.Arthur J.Nelson had felt betrayed, not only by his fellow practitionersof journalism, but by the mayor and especially by the police.If thatgoddamned cop hadn't had diarrhea of the mouth, Jerome could have gone to hisgrave with some dignity, and his wife wouldn't be up in Hartford again.Peter Wohl had been originally suspected by both Arthur J.Nelson and themayor as the cop with the big mouth, but Commissioner Czernick had believedWohl's denial, and found out himself, from Mickey O'Hara, that the loudmouthhad been Lieutenant DelRaye.When Mayor Carlucci had called Mr.Nelson to tell him that, and also thatLieutenant DelRaye had been relieved of his Homicide Division assignment andbanished in disgrace and in uniform to a remote district; and also to tellhim that Peter Wohl had been in on the arrest of the two suspects in AtlanticCity, what had been intended as an offering of the olive branch had turnednasty.Both men had tempers, and things were said that could not be withdrawn.Page 139 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlAnd it had quickly become evident how Arthur J.Nelson intended to wage thewar.Two days later, a young plain-clothes Narcotics Division cop had caughtup with Gerald Vincent Gallagher, the drug addict who had been involved in theshooting death of Captain Dutch Moffitt.It had been a front-page story in allthe newspapers in Philadelphia, the stories generally reflecting support forthe police, and relief that a drug-addict cop-killer had been run to ground.The Ledger had buried the story, although factually reported, far inside thepaper.The Ledger editorial, headlined Vigilante Justice?'' implied thatGerald Vincent Gallagher, who had fallen to his death under the wheels of asubway train as he tried to escape the Narcotics cop, had instead been pushedin front of the train.The most recent barrage had been the Jackbooted Gestapo editorial.ArthurJ.Nelson wanted revenge, and apparently reasoned that since Mayor Carluccihad risen to political prominence through the ranks of the Police Department,a shot that wounded the cops also wounded Carlucci. What is he doing, Wohl asked, putting me between him and the Ledger? Peter, I think what you see is what you get, Coughlin said. What I see is me, Wohl said, who hasn't worn a uniform or worked anywherebut headquarters in ten years being put in charge of Highway, and of somethingcalled ACT that I don't know a damned thing about.I don't even know what it'ssupposed to do. The mayor told the Commissioner he has every confidence that, within ashort period of time I think that means a couple of weeks he will be able tocall a press conference and announce that his Special Operations Division hasarrested the sexual deviate who has been raping the decent women of NorthwestPhiladelphia. Rape is under the Detectives' Bureau, Wohl protested. So it is, Coughlin said. Except that the Northwest Philly rapist isyours. So it is public relations. Page 140 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm
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