At the end of the corridor was a locked door with a glass panel leading to the Central Lockup and the booking sergeant's desk.
Matt went and looked through the panel.
A uniform came to the window and indicated with a jerked thumb that he would prefer that Matt go away. Matt showed him his detective's identification, which visibly surprised the uniform, who then moved to open the door.
Matt shook his head, "no."
The uniform shrugged and walked away.
Matt looked into the booking area. Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of the Narcotics Five Squad, now in the company of another scruffy-looking character, whom Matt recognized from the photograph on his records but could not put a name to, was watching the process by which two district uniforms were relieved of responsibility for four prisoners.
Two of the latter were black, and dressed in flashy clothing. The other two were white, and dressed in a manner that suggested to Matt that they had white-collar jobs of some sort; had been out on the town; had decided that acquiring and ingesting one controlled substance or another would add a little excitement to the evening; had been in the process of acquiring same from the black gentlemen, whereupon all four had been busted by members of the Five Squad.
There was nothing else to see.
Matt turned and walked back out of the corridor, then changed direction. He motioned for the corporal behind the plate glass to open the door to the lobby of the Roundhouse. Once inside, he availed himself of the facilities of the gentlemen's rest room, and then finally left the building.
He got back in the unmarked car and backed it out of its parking slot.
As he drove out of the parking lot, Officer Timothy J. Calhoun and the other male Caucasian suspected of also being a police officer attached to the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit, walked toward him.
He didn't have the headlights on, so there was no blinding light to interfere with Officer Calhoun's view of the driver of the unmarked car. Confirmation that Officer Calhoun recognized him as the man who had been in the parking lot a few minutes earlier seemed to come when Matt glanced in his rearview mirror and saw that Officer Calhoun had stopped en route to his car, turned, and was looking curiously at Matt's car.
On what is that curiosity based? Simply that he remembered seeing me before, and a policeman's mind picks up on things like that? Or because his sensitivity to things like that has been increased because he's a dirty cop?
He almost certainly made this thing as an unmarked car. So what is a young guy doing driving a new unmarked car? Is he going to put that together and decide it's a Special Operations unmarked car? And come up with a suspicion that Special Operations is watching him?
That would be illogical. There are a hundred other reasons why somebody from Special Operations would be at the Roundhouse at this hour having nothing to do with the Five Squad.
But if I were a dirty cop, I would be a little paranoid.
Did I do something stupid, following him into the Roundhouse? Did he see me looking through the window?
Well, to hell with it. It's done.
Matt turned the headlights on as he left the parking lot, and headed for Rittenhouse Square.
"Who was that in the unmarked car?" Officer Tom Coogan inquired of Officer Timothy Calhoun as soon as they were inside the well-worn Buick Special.
"I just made him," Calhoun said. "Remember the guy that popped the sicko, the serial rapist? Blew his brains out?"
"John Wayne, something like that?"
"Payne. His name is Payne."
"That was him?"
"That was him, I'm sure. That fucking new unmarked car makes me sure. He's one of them hotshots in Special Operations. Every one of them fuckers gets a new car, did you know that?"
"I heard it," Coogan said. "I ran into Charley Mc-Fadden-remember him?-at the FOP."
"I remember him, sure. He made detective, didn't he?"
"Him and the spic. Martinez. Mutt and Jeff both made detective, and both of them are in Special Operations, and both run around in brand-new unmarked cars."
"There's a moral in there, Coogan. Shoot a bad guy, and get yourself promoted."
"Mutt and Jeff didn't shoot a bad guy, they tossed him under an elevated train," Coogan replied.
Calhoun laughed.
"What the fuck do they do out there in Special Operations? " he asked.
"Who the fuck knows? They're Carlucci's fair-haired boys. They caught that loony tune who wanted to blow up the vice president. Shit like that."
"How do you get in Special Operations?"
"Shoot a bad guy, I told you. Get your picture on TV."
"If we shoot one of our bad guys, we'd wind up on charges for violating the fucker's civil rights," Calhoun said.
"Speaking of our bad guys, what did we get?"
"Nothing. Zip," Calhoun said.
"Nothing?"
"The two johns had eighty-five bucks between them," Calhoun explained. "The dinges had a half-dozen bags and three hundred bucks and change. I figured it wasn't worth the risk to take any of it."
"Three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks. A little bit here, a little bit there…" Coogan made a little joke.
It went over Calhoun's head.
"Somebody might have thought it strange that the dinges had only a hundred or so," he replied seriously. "And we don't take it all, remember? Don't be so fucking greedy, Coogan."
"Up yours, Calhoun!"
They drove to the Narcotics Unit's office at 22nd Street and Hunting Park Avenue, decided finishing the paperwork could wait until they had a beer, and walked across the street to the Allgood Bar.
It was late, and not shift-change time, and there was hardly anybody in the place. Except, sitting at a table in the rear, a stocky, swarthy man in his late thirties, who raised his bottle of Ortlieb's beer in greeting when he saw them.
Coogan and Calhoun stopped at the bar only long enough to get beers of their own and then walked to his table carrying them.
"What did you do to your face, Calhoun?" Assistant District Attorney Anton C. Phebus asked.
Calhoun touched his face gingerly. Under three days' growth of beard on his right cheek was an angry red bruise.
"There was this guy, six feet six, one of them Zulus," Calhoun said. "Skinny as a rail. I don't think he weighed 130 pounds," Officer Calhoun explained. "I started to put cuffs on him, got one on him, and then he decided he didn't want to be arrested…"
He mimed the action, spilling a little beer in the process, of someone suddenly spreading his arms to avoid being handcuffed.
"… and the loose cuff got me," he finished.
"And what did you do to him?" Phebus asked, chuckling.
"He's gonna sing soprano for a while. You wouldn't believe how strong that skinny fucker was!"
"Maybe he was on something," Phebus suggested.
"Maybe," Calhoun said, considering this. "But I don't think so. He was just strong, is all. And he took me by surprise."
"Aside from that," Phebus chuckled, "how was the arrest?"
"Zip," Coogan offered.
"Zip?" Phebus asked, surprised, and then looked at Calhoun. "Zip, like in zero?"
"You told me to think, I thought," Calhoun said. "What they had wasn't worth the risk."
"Good boy," Phebus said. "There's always another day."
"So you keep saying," Calhoun said.
Phebus looked as if he intended to reply, but changed his mind.
"Two things," he said. "They're going to let me prosecute Leslie, which means I can get-"
"Who's Leslie?" Coogan interrupted.
"The junkie shit who popped Kellog," Calhoun furnished, contemptuously.
"Sorry," Coogan said, flushing, aware he had just said something stupid.