He wondered if someone would have one at Marshutz amp; Sons, predicting that someone like him would show up without one. And if that didn't happen, what he would do about it.
He drove Louise back to Stockton Place and pulled to the curb before Number Six.
"What about later?" he asked.
"What about later?" she parroted.
"When am I going to see you?"
"I have to work, and then I have to see my father, and then I have to go back to work. I'll call you."
"Don't call me, I'll call you?"
"Don't press me, Peter," she said, and got out of the car. And then she walked around the front and to his window and motioned for him to lower it. She bent down and kissed him. It started as a quick kiss, but it quickly became intimate.
Not passionate, he thought, intimate.
"That may not have been smart," Louise said, looking into his eyes for a moment, and then walking quickly into the building, not looking back.
Intimate, Peter Wohl thought, and a little sad, as in a farewell kiss.
He looked at her closed door for a moment, and then made a U-turn on the cobblestones, and drove away.
He had headed, without thinking, for Marshutz amp; Sons, but changed his mind and instead drove to the Roundhouse. There might have been another development, something turned up around Jerome Nelson's car, maybe, or something else. If there was something concrete, maybe it would placate Arthur J. Nelson. His orders had been to stroke him, not antagonize him.
And somewhere in the Roundhouse he could probably find someone who could give him a mourning band; he didn't want to take the chance that he could get one at the funeral home.
He went directly to Homicide.
Captain Henry C. Quaire was sitting on one of the desks, talking on the telephone, and seemed to expect him; when he saw Wohl he pointed to one of the rooms adjacent to one of the interrogation rooms. Then he covered the phone with his hand and said, "Be right with you."
Wohl nodded and went into the room. Through the one-way mirror, he could see three people in the interrogation room. One was Detective Tony Harris. There was another man, a tall, rather aesthetic-looking black man in his twenties or thirties whom Wohl didn't recognize but who, to judge by the handcuffs hanging over his belt in the small of his back, was a detective. The third man was a very large, very black, visibly uncomfortable man handcuffed to the interrogation chair. He fit the description of Pierre St. Maury.
As Peter reached for the switch that would activate the microphone hidden in the light fixture, and permit him to hear what was being said, Captain Quaire came into the room. Peter took his hand away from the switch.
"What's going on?" Peter asked. "Is that Pierre St. Maury?"
"No," Quaire said. "His name is Kostmayer. But Porterfield thought he was, and brought him in."
"Porterfield is the other guy?"
Quaire nodded and grunted. "Narcotics. Good cop. He's high on the detective's list and wants to come over here when he gets promoted."
"So what's going on?"
"This guy was so upset that Porterfield thought he was Maury that Porterfield thinks he knows something about the Nelson job."
"Does he?" Wohl asked.
"We are about to find out," Quaire said, throwing the microphone switch. "He already gave us Mr. Pierre St. Maury's real name-Errol F. Watson-and address. I already sent people to see if they can pick him up at home."
Wohl watched the interrogation for fifteen minutes. Admiringly. Tony Harris and Porterfield worked well together, as if they had done so before. He wondered if they had. They pulled one little thing at a time from Kostmayer, sometimes sternly calling him by his last name, sometimes, kindly, calling him "Peter," one picking up the questioning when the other stopped.
It was slow. Kostmayer was reluctant to talk. It was obvious he was more afraid of other people than his own troubles with the law.
"What have you got on him?" Wohl asked.
"Couple of minor arrests," Quaire said. "He's a male prostitute. The usual stuff. Possession of controlled substances. Rolling people."
Kostmayer finally said something interesting.
"Well, I heardthis," he said, seemingly on the edge of tears. "I onlyheard it; I don't know if it'strue or not."
"We understand, Peter," Tony Harris said, kindly. "What did you hear?"
"Well, there was talk, and you know people just talk, that a certain two men who knew Pierre, and knew that he was, you know,friends, with Jerome Nelson, were going to get the key to the apartment-you know, the Nelson apartment-from him."
"Why were they going to do that, Peter?" Tony Harris asked.
"What certain two people, Kostmayer?" Detective Porterfield demanded.
"Well, they were, you know, going to take things," Kostmayer said.
"What were their names, Kostmayer?" Porterfield said, walking to him and lowering his face to his. "I'm losing my patience with you."
"I don't know their names," Kostmayer said.
He's lying,Peter Wohl thought, at the exact moment Porterfield put that thought in words: "Bullshit!"
Wohl looked at Quaire, who had his lower lip protruding thoughtfully.
Then Wohl looked at his watch.
"Hell, I have to get out of here," he said. "I'm due at Marshutz amp; Sons in fifteen minutes."
"You going to be a pallbearer? Is that why you're wearing your uniform?"
"Yeah. And Henry, I need a mourning strip for my badge. Where can I get one?"
"I've got one," Quaire said, taking Wohl's arm and leading him to. his office. There, he took a small piece of black elastic hatband material from an envelope and stretched it over Wohl's badge.
"I appreciate it, Henry. I'll get it back to you."
"Why don't you?" Quaire said. "Then the next time, God forbid, we need one, you'll know where to find one."
Wohl nodded.
"I'll let you know whatever else they find out, Peter," Quaire said.
"As soon as you get it, please. Even at Dutch's funeral."
"Sure," Quaire said.
Wohl shook Quaire's hand and left.
Brewster Cortland Payne II had had some difficulty persuading Amy, Foster, and B.C. to attend the funeral of Captain Richard C. Moffitt.
Amy had caved in more quickly, when her father told her that her mother felt the loss more than she was showing, and that while she wouldn't ask, would really appreciate having another female along.
Foster and B.C. were a little more difficult. When Brewster Payne raised the subject, he saw his sons were desperately searching for a reason not to go.
Finally, B.C. protested, truthfully, that he had "seen the man only once or twice in my life."
"He was your brother's uncle, Brew," Brewster Payne said, "and your mother's brother-in-law."
"You know," Foster said, thoughtfully, "the only time I ever think that Mother isn't my-what's the word?-natural mother is when something like this comes up."
"I'm sure she would accept that as a compliment," Brewster Payne said.
"Or that Matt isn't really my brother," Foster went on. "I presume you did try to talk him out of this becoming-a-policeman nonsense?"
"First things first," Brewster Payne said. "Matt is your brother, de facto and de jure, and I'm sure you won't say anything about something like that to him."
"Of course not," Foster said.
"I already told him," B.C. said, "that I thought he was nuts."
Out of the mouth of the babe,Brewster C. Payne thought. He said: "To answer your second question, no, I didn't really try to talk Matt out of becoming a policeman. For one thing, I learned of it after the fact, and for another, he's your mother's son, and as you have learned there are times when neither of them can be dissuaded from what they want to do. And, finally, son, I don't agree that it's nonsense. I told him, and I believe, that it can be a very valuable learning experience for him."