[ONE] 140 South Broad Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 8:45 P.M.
Captain Francis X. Hollaran pointed to his wristwatch and said to First Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, “You’re on in fifteen, boss.” Both were wearing suits and ties.
Coughlin nodded.
From the corner of the room, he looked around at the audience. People were beginning to fill the fifty seats set up around the ten round tables in the western wing of the Grant Room of the Union League of Philadelphia. The room, thirty-seven feet square with ten-foot-high ceilings, was elegantly decorated with stunning chandeliers, dark wood-paneled walls, rich burgundy drapery, and thick deep-red-patterned woolen carpeting. A waitstaff in understated black outfits served light hors d’oeuvres and drinks, the latter being mostly coffee and water and soft drinks but also a fair number of cocktails.
The crowd was composed mostly of men. All were well-dressed and well-groomed.
And well-connected.
The Union League of Philadelphia was founded as a patriotic society in 1862, during the Civil War, by men of the upper middle class. They supported the Union side in the war and, of course, President Lincoln’s policies. In keeping with its motto of “Love of Country Leads,” the League fiercely supported the military of the United States of America. Its building, listed on the National Historic Register, occupied a whole block of Center City.
Coughlin regularly came and spoke to the Union League’s members and guests as an outreach of the police department. The gathering had evolved-which was to say, had grown far beyond his expectations-from smaller informal chats over drinks in the League’s bar down the corridor. Still, he tried to keep the tone of the larger gathering the same as that of those earlier ones-that of a more or less casual get-together.
The outreach was a self-appointed task, one he felt neither the mayor nor the police commissioner could do effectively because of their high profiles. And they both agreed with Coughlin; as first deputy police commissioner, he was the top cop who really had his hand in the everyday business of all the varied departments.
Coughlin considered it highly important that the city’s heavy hitters had a better understanding of what the department was doing-and what the men on the street were up against. If they did, he figured, then they would be more prone to defend and support the police department. And, failing that, at least not be of a limited mind-set to rush to judgment and damn the department for the slightest infraction.
Denny Coughlin quickly patted his suit coat at chest level, first one side then the other. He felt relief when he found that the half-dozen index cards bearing his notes for the evening discussion were still in the inside left pocket.
Coughlin then looked at Hollaran and said, “Frank, Jason Washington told me that that Texas Ranger is with Matty.”
“That’s right, Denny.”
“Put out the arm for them, would you, please? For one, I’d like to meet the man. Liz Justice spoke highly of him. For another, he might be able to contribute to tonight’s topic. Meantime, I’m going to visit the gentlemen’s facility before this thing gets started.”
Hollaran nodded, then stepped into the corridor. He pulled out his cell phone from his suit jacket’s inside pocket. But then he remembered that by the door was a chrome-plated four-foot-tall pole on a round chrome base that displayed a sign: