He closed the file and handed it across the table to Washington.
"Jason's very good with people," Wohl said. "I thought it would be a good idea if he reinterviewed all the victims."
If Jason Washington heard Wohl, there was no sign. He was very carefully reading the file.
"I'll lay you ten to one that when we finally catch this scumbag," Tony Harris said, "it will come out that he's been going to one of your shrinks, Inspector, and that one ofthose scumbags has been reading the papers and knows fucking well his seventy-five-dollar-anhour patient is the guy who's been doing this. But he won't call us. Physician-patient confidentiality is fucking sacred. Particularly when the patient is coughing up seventy-five bucks an hour two, three times a week."
"I don't know how far Hemmings, or anybody, has checked out sexual offenders," Wohl said.
"I'll start there," Harris said. "These fuckers don't just start out big. Somewhere there's a record on him. Even if it's for something like soliciting for prostitution."
He said this as the waitress delivered the fresh round of drinks. She gave him a very strange look.
"I'm going to be in court most of this week and next," Washington said, without looking up from the file any longer than it took to locate the fresh drink.
"I figured that would probably be the case," Wohl said. "So why don't you work the four-to-midnight shift? It is my professional judgment that the people you will be interviewing will be more readily available in the evening hours."
Washington snorted, but there was a hint of a smile at his eyes and on his lips. He knew the reason Wohl had assigned him to the four-totwelve shift had nothing to do with more readily available witnesses. It would make all the time he spent in court during the day overtime.
"I'm going to be in court a lot, too," Tony Harris said. "That apply to me, too?"
"Since it is also my professional judgment that you can do whatever you plan to do during the evening hours better than during the day, sure," Wohl said.
Peter Wohl had been in Homicide and knew that, because of the overtime pay, Homicide detectives were the best paid officers in the Police Department. There was no question in his mind that Washington and Harris were taking home as much money as a Chief Inspector. That was the major, but not the only, reason they were unhappy with their transfer to Special Operations; they thought it was going to cut their pay.
It posed, he realized, what Sergeant Frizell would term a "personnel motivation problem" for him: if they didn't want to work for him, they didn't have to. About the only weapon he had as a supervisor short of official disciplinary action- and both Washington and Harris were too smart to make themselves vulnerable to something like that-was to send his men back where they had come from. Which would not make either Washington or Harris at all unhappy.
He had a somewhat immodest thought: if they didn't like me, to the point where they are willing to give me and Special Operations a chance, they would already have come up with twenty reasons to get themselves fired.
"Is the Flannery woman still in the hospital?" Washington asked.
"I don't know," Wohl said.
"She saw more of this guy than any of the others," Washington said, closing the file. "Can I have this?"
"No," Wohl said. "But I'll get you both a copy. Payne, when we get back to the office, Xerox this in four copies."
"Yes, sir."
"Ah," Washington said, looking around the room. "Here comes my lunch!"
The waitress delivered two New York Strip steaks, a filet mignon (to Washington) and a shrimp salad.
If I had ordered a steak, Matt thought, they would have ordered bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.
Nobody spoke another word until Washington laid his knife and fork on the plate, and delicately dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.
"We work for you, right?" he asked. "I don't have to check with Sabara every time I sharpen a pencil?"
"Mike is the Deputy Commander," Wohl said.
"We work for you, right?" Washington repeated.
"Mike is the Deputy Commander," Wohl repeated, "but I will tell him that the only job you two have is the Northwest Philly rapist. What have you got against Sabara?"
"He's a worrier," Washington said. "Worriers make me nervous."
Wohl chuckled.
Washington looked at Matt Payne. "You open to a little advice, son?"
"Yes, sir," Payne said.
" 'Yes, sir,' " Harris quoted mockingly.
"That's a very nice jacket," Washington said, giving Harris a dirty look, and then turning his face to Matt. "Tripler?"
"Yes," Matt said, surprised. "As a matter of fact it is."
"If you're going to wear a shoulder holster, you have to have them make allowance for it," Washington said. "Cut it a little fuller under the left arm. What you look like now, with the material stretched that way, is a man carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster."
Matt, smiling uneasily, looked at Inspector Wohl, whom he found grinning at him.
"Listen to him, Payne," Wohl said. "He's the recognized sartorial authority in the Police Department."
"The whole idea of plainclothes is to look like anything but a cop," Washington said. "What you really should do, in the summer, is get a snub-nose and carry it in an ankle holster. Very few people look at your ankles to see if you're carrying a gun, and even if they do, unless you wear peg-leg trousers like Harris here, they're pretty much out of sight on your ankles."
Wohl laughed.
Washington stood up and put out his hand to Wohl.
"Thank you for the lunch," he said. "I'll check in if I come up with anything."
"My pleasure," Wohl said. "Jason, what you have for radios in the car is J-Band and I don't know what else. It's arranged with Radio to give you Detectives and Highway, too. I mean, if you take the car there, they're set up to do the work right away. Tony, you paying attention?"
"When do I get a car?" Harris asked.
"As soon as Jason drives you over to get one."
Harris grunted.
"Sabara's not going to worry if I take the car home with me at night, is he?" Washington asked.
"No, he's not," Wohl said. "You stop worrying. You're going to be the star of our little operation."
"Here comes the horse manure again," Washington said, and walked out of the room.
"Nice to meet you, Payne," Harris said, offering him his hand. "See you around."
When they had left the restaurant, Wohl held up his coffee cup to catch the waitress's attention, and when she had refilled his cup from a stainless steel pot, he turned to Matt.
"Now we get to you, Officer Payne," he said.
"Sir?"
"It is generally accepted as a fact of life in the Police Department that before you do anything else with a rookie, you give him a couple of years in a District. In the case of someone your size, you assign him to a wagon. You know what a wagon is?"
"Yes, sir, a paddy wagon."
"Be careful where you say that," Wohl said. "To some of our brother officers of Irish extraction, paddy wagon is a pejorative term, dating back to the days when Irishmen were known as 'Paddys' and were hauled off to jail in a horse-drawn vehicle known as the 'Paddy Wagon.'
"Sir, I'm half-Irish."
"Half doesn't count. It's not like being a little pregnant. My mother's Catholic. But neither you nor I are products of the parochial school system, or alumni of Roman or Father Judge or North Catholic High. Neither are we Roman Catholics. Half-Irish or ex-Roman Catholic doesn't count."
"Yes, sir," Matt said, smiling. "I'll say 'wagon.' "