There was a beep.
And then a rather pleasant, if somewhat exasperated in tone, male voice came over the small loudspeaker.
"Cute, very cute! Pick up the damned telephone, Matt."
Matt Payne recognized Peter Wohl's voice. His arm shot out and grabbed the telephone.
"Good morning," he said.
"Is it too much to hope that I'm interrupting something lewd, immoral, and probably illegal?"
"Unfortunately, you have found me lying here in a state of involuntary celibacy."
"Mighty Matthew has struck out? How did that happen? "
"I strongly suspect the lady doesn't like policemen. I was doing pretty well, I thought, before what I do for a living came up."
"Sometimes that happens." Wohl chuckled.
"What's up, boss?"
"Golf is off, Matt. Sorry."
"Okay," Matt said. "I'm sorry, too."
"Carlucci called my father last night and 'suggested' everybody get together for a little pasta at my father's house this afternoon, and then 'suggested' who else should be there. You weren't on the list. I wish I wasn't."
The mayor's habit of issuing orders in the form of suggestions was almost infamous. Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl, Retired, had been Carlucci's rabbi as Carlucci had worked his way up through the police ranks. Carlucci had once, emotionally, blurted to Peter that Chief Wohl was the only man in the world he completely trusted.
"What's it about?"
"Lowenstein and Coughlin will be there. And Mike Weisbach. And Sabara. You're a detective. You figure it out."
It wasn't hard to make a good guess. Matthew Lowenstein and Dennis V. Coughlin were generally regarded as the most influential of all the chief inspectors of the Philadelphia Police Department. Michael Weisbach was a staff inspector, generally regarded as one of the best of that group of senior investigators. Captain Michael J. Sabara was deputy commander of Special Operations.
"Not Captain Pekach?" Matt asked.
"Not Captain Pekach. I think the mayor heard him say 'if there was anything dirty in Narcotics, I would know about it' once too often."
"That makes it official? We're going to get stuck with that Five Squad business?" Matt asked.
"This makes it, I'd guess, a sure thing. Official will probably come down on Monday."
"Damn!"
"Sorry about golf, Matt. I was really looking forward to it."
"Yeah, me, too."
"I'll call you when I know how bad it is," Wohl said.
"Damn," Matt repeated.
The phone went dead in his ear.
He held it a moment in his hand, as his mind ran through all the ramifications-none of them pleasant-of the mayor "suggesting" to Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich that Special Operations-not Internal Affairs-conduct an investigation of alleged corruption in the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit.
He looked up at the ceiling, where a clock on the bedside table projected the time of day. It was 9:15 A.M. He had gone to bed after two. He had planned to sleep until noon, by which time he presumed he would be rested, clear-eyed, and capable of parting Peter Wohl-who was a pretty good golfer-from, say, a hundred dollars at Merion.
Now he was awake, and once awake, he stayed awake. What was he going to do now? And, for that matter, for the rest of the day?
A call of nature answered that question for the immediate future. Matt put the telephone in its cradle, got out of bed, and went into his tiny bathroom. He was subjecting a rather nasty-looking bug who had fallen into the water closet to a strafing attack when the telephone rang again.
He cocked his head toward the open door so that he could hear what Caller Number Two had on his or her mind.
The prerecorded message played, and there came the beep.
"Matt, damn you, I know she's there, and I absolutely have to talk to her this instant! Pick up the telephone!"
The voice was that of Mrs. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV.
Without taking his eyes from the bug he had under relentless aerial attack, Matt raised his left hand, center finger extended, the others bent, over his head and in the general direction of the loudspeaker on the telephone answering device.
Dear Daffy, Matt reasoned, is almost certainly referring to good ol' blue-eyed, blond-haired, splendidly knockered, Whatsername-Susan Reynolds-with whom I struck out last night.
Daffy thinks she came here with me.
Can it be that the Sweet Susan-Daffy knows her well-has been known to do with others what she would not do last night with me?
Damn!
He flushed the toilet by depressing the lever with his foot, pulled his T-shirt over his head, and stepped into his tiny shower stall. He had just finished what he thought of as Phase One (rinse) of his shower and reached for the soap to commence Phase Two (soap) when the telephone rang again.
He slid the shower door open to listen.
This time it was Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV himself.
"Matt, if you're there, for Christ's sake, answer the phone! Daffy's climbing the walls!"
Matt walked naked and dripping to the telephone and picked it up.
"She's not here, whoever she is," he said.
"Then where the hell is she?" Chad Nesbitt challenged.
"Since I'm not even sure who you're talking about, pal-"
"Susan Reynolds, of course," Chad said shortly.
"Not here. The last time I saw the lady, she was in your dining room."
"She's not with you?" Chad asked, obviously surprised, and went on before Matt could reply. "But she was, right?"
"Listen carefully. She is not here. She has never been here. Let your imagination soar," Matt said. "Consider the possibility that she left your place with someone else."
"You were putting the make on her, Matt," Chad challenged.
"Indeed I was. But the lady proved to be monumentally uninterested."
"She didn't call home," Chad said.
"Thank you for sharing that with me."
"She always calls her mother before she goes to sleep," Chad said.
"How touching!"
Daffy Browne Nesbitt came on the line. "Don't be such a sarcastic son of a bitch, Matt. Honestly, you're a real shit!"
"I would appreciate it if you would attempt to control your foul tongue when under the same roof as my goddaughter, " Matt said solemnly.
"She didn't call her mother last night," Chad said. "So her mother called her. At the Bellvue. And then she called here."
"Why did she call there?"
"I just told you," Chad said, somewhat impatiently. "There was no answer at the Bellvue. Then she called here, at half past two. Daffy told her that she had gone with you to listen to jazz."
"Daffy told her what? Why?"
"I certainly didn't want to tell her mother that she was in your apartment," Daffy said.
"Have you been eavesdropping all along, Daffy, or did you just come on the line? The reason I ask is because I have already told Chad that your pal is not now, and never has been, in my apartment."
"Then where is she?" Daffy challenged indignantly.
"This is where I came in. I haven't the foggiest idea where she might be, Daffy, and"-he shifted into a Clark Gable accent-"frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
Chad chuckled.
"The both of you are shits," Daffy said, and hung up.
"You might try washing her mouth out with soap," Matt said.
"She's upset. She lied to Susan's mother, and now she's been caught at it."
"I'm the one who should be pissed about that, old buddy. She told Mommy that the family virgin was out with me."
"You're close," Chad said. "Be a good chap, won't you, and go by the Bellvue?"
"You're as close as I am, Chad," Matt protested.
The Bellvue-Stratford Hotel, on South Broad Street, was nowhere near equidistant between Matt Payne's apartment-which consisted of a bedroom, a bath not large enough for a bathtub, a kitchen separated from the dining area by a no longer functioning sliding partition, and a living room from which one could, if one stood on one's toes, catch a glimpse of a small area of Rittenhouse Square, four floors below, through one of two eighteen-inch wide dormer windows-and the Nesbitt triplex on Stockton Place.