Final justice

The second cause of a

This was actually a double irritant. Mr. Ke

The third irritant was that Roscoe G. Ke

Roscoe G. Ke

So Mr. Ke

He saw that Mr. O'Hara had guests in his office, Casimir "The Bull" Bolinski and presumably Mrs. Bolinski, and he smiled at them.

"What have you got for me, Mickey?" Mr. Ke

O'Hara raised one hand from the keyboard of his computer terminal, on which he was typing with great rapidity, and pointed to the screen of his personal (as opposed to the Bulletin's) computer.

There was a very clear photograph of a well-known Philadelphia police officer on it, this one showing him in a di

"There's more," O'Hara said.

The city editor looked at the other images from the parking lot, then read Mickey's story on the computer screen. He didn't speak until O'Hara had finished and pushed the Transmit key. Then he said, "Great stuff, Mickey! Really great! The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Does It Again."

Mickey stood up.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"For a head, how about 'Main Line Wyatt Earp 2, Bad Guys 0 in Shootout at the La Famiglia Corral'?"

"You sonofabitch," Mickey said. "That's a cop doing his job."

"Watch your mouth, Michael," Casimir said. "Antoinette…"

"A goddamn cop in a tuxedo who obviously likes to shoot people."

"You sonofabitch, you're no better than the goddamn Ledger!"

"Don't call me a sonofabitch, O'Hara. I won't stand for it."

"Then don't make wiseass remarks about a cop liking what he has to do to do his job, you arrogant, elitist, bleeding-heart…" Mickey paused, searching his memory for the most scalding insult he could think of, and then, triumphantly, concluded, "… Missouri School of Journalism sonofabitch!"

"Michael, I'm not going to tell you again," Casimir said.

"You can't talk to me like that, O'Hara!"

"I just did. What are you going to do about it?"

Mr. Michael J. O'Hara assumed a fighting crouch and cocked his fists.

Mr. Roscoe G. Ke

He threw a roundhouse right at Mr. O'Hara. Mr. O'Hara nimbly dodged the punch, feinted with his right, then punched Mr. Ke

Mr. Ke

Casimir J. Bolinski, Esq., erupted from Mr. O'Hara's $2,100 Charles Eames chair, rushed across the office, wrapped his arms around Mr. O'Hara, and without much apparent effort carried him across the city room-past many members of theBulletin staff-and into an elevator. Mrs. Bolinski followed them.

Mr. Ke

"You're fired, you insane shanty Irish sonofabitch! Fired!" he shouted. "When I'm through with you, you won't be able to get a job on theNational Enquirer."

Mrs. Bolinski stuck her tongue out at Mr. Ke

Ten minutes later, after an application of ice had stopped his nosebleed, Mr. Ke

And then he called his assistant and told him to save space on page one, section one, copy to come, for a three-column pic, plus a four-hundred-word jump inside with three or four pics.

[FOUR] When Inspector Weisbach came into the Internal Affairs Unit Captain Daniel Kimberly was talking with Lieutenant McGuire and another man he sensed was a police officer. He didn't see Payne.

Kimberly anticipated his question.

"I put Sergeant Payne in an interview room and asked him to wait," Kimberly said. "Nothing else. And I called the FOP."

"Good," Weisbach said.

"Who called back just a moment ago to inform me that Mr. Armando C. Giacomo is en route here to represent Sergeant Payne."

"How fortunate for Sergeant Payne," Weisbach said.

"Inspector, this is Lieutenant McGuire…"

"How are you, Lieutenant?"

"Good evening, sir. Or good morning, sir."

"And this is Sergeant Al Nevins, Inspector," McGuire said.

"You were the first supervisor on the scene?"

"Yes, sir."

"A uniform got there ahead of you?"

"No, sir. Mickey O'Hara got there first-by about thirty seconds. When Nevins and I got there, he had already taken Payne's picture, standing over the man Payne put down."

"I understood there were two men shot?"

"Yes, sir. One fatally. Payne blew his brains out."

"How do youknow that, Lieutenant?"

"Well, sir, Payne told us. And we saw the body. The bullet struck right about here."

He pointed at his own face.

"Did Payne also tell you what happened?"

"He said there had been an armed robbery of a couple picking up their car in the lot; that he'd walked up on it right afterward, told the robbers to stop. They ran, he went after them. They fired at him with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, and he put both of them down."

"Did they hit him?" Weisbach asked.

"No, sir," McGuire said, and hesitated.

"Go on, Lieutenant," Weisbach said.

"He was a little shaken up, sir."

"How shaken up?"

"Acted odd, you know," McGuire said.

"No, I don't know."

"Well, there was the business about his weapon," McGuire said.

"What about his weapon?"

"I took it from him, of course," McGuire said, and pointed to one of the desks in the room. There were two Ziploc bags on it. One of them held Matt's Officer's Model Colt.45 pistol, and the other a magazine.

"Of course?" Weisbach asked.

"Yes, sir, and he gave me some lip that I was supposed to give it back to him. He didn't give me any trouble, but he told me I was supposed to give it back to him after I counted the rounds left in the magazine."

"At that time, Lieutenant, did you believe that Sergeant Payne (a) posed a danger to others or himself, and/or (b) that he had committed a crime of any kind?"

"No, sir. From what I saw it was a good shooting."

"Two things, Lieutenant. There is no such thing as a good shooting. They are all lamentable. Some of them are unfortunately necessary, but there is no such thing as a 'good' shooting."

"Sir, I meant-"

"Secondly, Lieutenant, you might find it valuable to refresh your memory regarding the regulations dealing with taking a weapon from an officer in a situation like this."

"Sir?"

"The sergeant was right, Lieutenant. Absent any reason to believe that the shooting officer poses a danger to himself or others, or belief that the officer has committed a felony, the regulations state that his weapon will be returned to him by the supervisor after he counts the rounds remaining in the magazine, and takes possession of that."