His eyebrows went up.
"Did you?"
"Yes," he said. "Lovely subject for breakfast conversation."
"Why?"
"Because I think otherwise he would have shot me," Peter said. " Lovely weather we've been having, isn't it?"
"An interesting scenario popped into my mind in the bedroom," Louise said.
"That happens to me all the time," he said. "You really thought of something we haven't done?"
He smiled, and she knew he was pleased that he thought she had changed the subject, but she knew she couldn't stop now.
"There I am, sitting in my rocking chair, knitting little booties, in our little rose-covered cottage by the side of the road," Louise said, "while our three adorable children… You get the picture."
"Sounds fine to me," Peter said.
"And the doorbell rings, and I go to answer it, and there stands Hizzoner the Mayor Carlucci. 'Sorry, Mrs. Wohl,' Hizzoner says. 'But your fine husband, the late Inspector Wohl, was just shot by an angry housewife. Or was it a bandit? Doesn't really matter. He's dead. Gone to that Great Roundhouse in the Sky.' "
It took Peter a moment to reply, but finally he said, "Are you always this cheerful in the morning?"
"Only when I'm on my way to see a severed head while en route to a funeral," Louise said. "But I'm serious, Peter."
"Then I'll answer you seriously," he said. "Iam a Staff Inspector. I don't respond to calls. Supervisors supervise. The guys on the street are the ones that have to deal with the public. That's for openers. And most police officers who do their twenty years on the street never fire their pistols except on the range."
"That's why you carry a gun all the time, right?" Louise countered.
"I can't remember the last time I took it out of the holster except to clean it," Peter said.
"I can," Louise said. "The very first time I saw you, Peter, you were jumping out of a car with your gun in your hand."
"That was an anomaly," Peter said. "Dutch getting shot was an anomaly. He's probably the first captain who fired his weapon in the line of duty in twenty years."
"That may be, but Dutch got shot," Louise said. "Got shot and killed. And there you were, with your gun in your hand, rushing to the gun battle at the OK Corral."
"What did you think when you saw me getting out of my car?"
" 'Where did that good-looking man come from?' "
"How about 'Thank God, it's the cops'?" Peter asked, softly.
She met his eyes for a long moment.
"Touche" she said, finally.
"That's what I do, baby," Peter said. "I'm a cop. And I'm good at what I do. And, actuarially speaking, I'm in probably no more of a risky occupation than a, hell, I don't know, an airline pilot or a stockbroker."
"Tell that to Mrs. Moffitt," Louise said.
"Eat your eggs before they get cold, baby," Peter said.
"I don't think so," she said, pushing the plate away. "I think I would rather get something to eatafter I look at the head."
"I'm sorry, but that is necessary," Peter said.
"Peter, I don't know if I could spend the rest of my life wondering if I 'm going to be a widow by the end of the day," Louise said.
"You're exaggerating the risk," he said.
"Is it graven on stone somewhere that you have to spend the rest of your life as a cop?"
"It's what I do, Louise. And I like it."
"I was afraid you'd say that," she said, and got to her feet. "Go put on your policeman's suit, and take me to see the severed head," she said.
"We can talk this out," Peter said.
"I think everything that can be said on the subject has been said," Louise said. "It was what Daddy was talking about when he said the idea of us getting married was a lousy one."
"Come on, baby," Peter said. "I understand why you're upset, but-"
"Just shut up, Peter," Louise said. "Just please shut up."
Antonio V. "Big Tony" Amarazzo, proprietor of Tony's Barbershop, stood behind the barber chair, swinging it from side to side so that the man in the chair could admire his handiwork. He had given the large man under the striped bib his very first haircut, twenty years before, the day before he started kindergarten.
Officer Charles McFadden looked into the mirror. The mirror was partly covered by the front page of the Four Star Edition of theBulletin, with his picture on it, which had been taped to the mirror below the legend (lettered with shoe whitener) "OUR NEIGHBORHOOD HERO CHARLEY MCFADDEN."
"Looks fine, Mr. Amarazzo," Charley said. "Thank you."
"'Mister Amarazzo'?" Big Tony replied. "You sore at me or what? We haven't been friends since God only knows how long?"
Charley, who could not think of a response, smiled at Big Tony's reflection in the mirror.
"And now we're gonna give you a shave that'll turn your chin into a baby's bottom," Big Tony said.
"Oh, I don't want a shave," Charley protested.
"You can't go to Saint Dominic's needing a shave," Big Tony said, as he pushed Charley back in the chair and draped his face in a hot towel, "and don't worry, it's on the house. My privilege."
Ninety seconds later, as Charley wondered how long (he had never had a barbershop shave before) Big Tony was going to keep the towels on his face, someone else came into the barbershop.
"You know who's in the chair, under the towels?" Charley heard Big Tony say. "Charley McFadden, that's who. You seen theBulletin?"
"I seen it," an unfamiliar voice said. "I'll be goddamned."
Charley had folded his hands over his stomach. He was startled when his right hand was picked up, and vigorously shaken by two hands.
"Good for you, Charley," the voice said. "I was just telling the wife, when we seen the paper, that if there was more cops like you, and more shitasses killed like the one you killed, Philly'd be a hell of a lot better off. We're all proud of you, boy."
"I knew all along," Charley heard Big Tony say, "that Charley was a cop. I couldn't say anything, of course."
When Big Tony pulled the hot towel off, and started to lather Charley's face, there were three other men from the neighborhood standing behind the chair, waiting to shake his hand.
It was a pleasant spring morning, and the Payne family was having breakfast outside, on a flagstone patio. The whole family, for the first time in a long time, was all home at once. Foster J. Payne, twenty-five, who looked very much like his father, had come home from Cambridge, where he had just completed his second year at Harvard Law; and Amelia Alice "Amy" Payne, twenty-seven, who had three years before-the youngest in her Johns Hopkins class-earned the right to append "M.D." after her name, had just completed her residency in psychiatry at the Louisiana State University Medical Center, and had come home to find a place for herself in Philadelphia. Brewster C. Payne III, eighteen, who had just graduated from Episcopal Academy, had commuted to school; but he was, after spending the summer in Europe (his graduation present), going to Dartmouth; and Patricia Payne was very aware that the nest would then be forever empty.
Amy was petite and intense, not a pretty girl, but an attractive, natural one. In judging his children intellectually (and of course, privately) Brewster Payne had rated his daughter first, then Matt, then Foster, and finally Brewster, who was known as "B.C." Just as privately, Patricia Payne had done the same thing, with the same result, except that she had rated B.C. ahead of Foster.
Amy was very smart, perhaps even brilliant. She had been astonishingly precocious, and as astonishingly determined from the time she had been a little girl. Patricia worried that it might cause her trouble when she married, until she learned to adapt to her husband, or perhaps to the more general principle that it is sometimes far wiser to keep your mouth shut than to persist in trying to correct someone else's erroneous notions.