“I would hazard to guess, old buddy, that you are on the lady’s shitlist,” said Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, who was sprawled on a green leather couch. Sitting somewhat awkwardly beside him was his wife, the former Daphne Elizabeth Browne, who was visibly in the terminal stages of pregnancy.
A thick plate-glass coffee table in front of the couch held a bottle of champagne in a glass cooler.
“What are we celebrating?” Matt asked.
“Look at how he’s dressed!” Penny Detweiler snapped.
“Never fear, Chadwick is here, the problem will be solved,” Chad Nesbitt said, waving his champagne glass as he rose from the couch. “Will you have a little of this, Matthew?”
“What are we celebrating?” Matt asked again.
“I am no longer peddling soup store by store,” Nesbitt said. “I will tell you all about it as you change out of your costume.”
Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV and Matthew Mark Payne had been best friends since they had met, at age seven, at Episcopal Academy. They had been classmates and fraternity brothers at the University of Pennsylvania, and Matt had been Chad’s best man when he married.
Nesbitt grabbed the champagne bottle from its cooler by its neck, snatched up a glass, handed it to Matt, then led him down a corridor to his bedroom. There he gestured toward a walk-in closet and arranged himself against the headboard of his king-sized bed.
“What the hell are you dressed up for?” he asked. “Or as?”
“I was on the job.”
“Unstopping toilets?”
“That’s not original. I was asked the same question just fifteen minutes ago,” Matt said as he selected a shirt and tie from Chad Nesbitt’s closet.
“In other words, it’s secret police business, right? Not to be shared with the public?”
“Right.”
“I wouldn’t count on dipping your wick tonight, Matthew. Penny’s really pissed.”
“I told her I didn’t know when I could get here,” Matt said.
“Your tardy appearance is a symptom of what she’s pissed about, not the root cause.”
“So what else is new?”
“How long are you going to go on playing cop?”
“I am not playing cop, goddamn it! And you. This is what I do. I’m good at it. I like it. Don’t you start, too.”
“I’m afraid I have contributed to the lady’s discontent,” Nesbitt said. “The champagne is because you are looking at the newest Assistant Vice President of Nesfoods International.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I hate to admit it, but the old man was right. The whole goddamned business does ride on the shoulders of the guys who are out there every day fighting for shelf space. And the only way to really understand that is to go out on the streets and do it yourself.”
The business to which Mr. Nesbitt referred was Philadelphia’s largest single employer, Nesfoods International. Four generations before, George Detweiler had gone into partnership with Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt to found what was then called The Nesbitt Potted Meats amp; Preserved Vegetables Company. It was now Nesfoods International, listed just above the middle of the Fortune 500 companies and still tightly held. C. T. Nesbitt III was Chairman of the Executive Committee and H. Richard Detweiler, Penny’s father, was President and Chief Executive Officer.
“Newest Assistant Vice President of what?” Matt asked.
“Merchandising.”
“Congratulations,” Matt said.
“A little more enthusiasm would not be out of order,” Chad said. “Vice President, even Assistant Vice President, has a certain ring to it.”
Matt threw a pair of Nesbitt’s trousers and a tweed sports coat on the bed, then started to take his gray uniform trousers off. He had trouble with the right leg, which he finally solved by sitting on the bed, pulling the trousers leg up, and unstrapping an ankle holster.
“Doesn’t that thing bother your leg?” Chad asked.
“Only when I’m taking my pants off. I meant it, Chad. Congratulations.”
“Penny was already here when I got home,” Chad said. “When I made the grand announcement, her response was, ‘And Matt is still childishly playing policeman,’ or words to that effect.”
“If I had gone into the Marine Corps with you, I would just be finishing my first year in law school,” Matt replied. “I wonder what she would call that.”
“Sensible,” Chad said. “Your first foot on the first rung of your ladder to legal and/or corporate success. Anyway, if she is bitchy tonight, you know who to blame.”
“I don’t want to be a lawyer, and I don’t-especially don’t-want to work for Nesfoods International.”
“‘ Especially don’t ’? What are you going to do when you marry Penny? It’s a family business, for Christ’s sake.”
“Your family. Her family. Not mine.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Chad said. “She’s an only child. I don’t know how much stock she owns now, but…”
“Let it go, Chad!”
“…eventually, she’ll inherit…”
“Goddamn it, quit!”
“Your old man sits on the board,” Chad went on. “Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester’s biggest client is Nesfoods.”
“Just for the record, it is not,” Matt said. “Now, are you going to quit, or do you want to celebrate your vice presidency all by yourself?”
Nesbitt sensed the threat wasn’t idle.
“One final comment,” he said. “And then I’ll shut up. Please?”
After a moment, as he closed the zipper of Chad’s gray flannel slacks, Matt nodded.
“I liked the Marine Corps. I was, I thought, a damned good officer. I really wanted to stay. But I couldn’t, Matt. For the same reasons you can’t ignore who you are, and who Penny is. I think they call that maturity.”
“You’re now finished, I hope?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now we’ll go out and celebrate your vice-presidency. I can handle you alone, or Penny, but not the both of you together.”
“OK.”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a new Italian place down by the river. Northern Italian. I think that means without tomato sauce.”
Matt pulled up his trousers leg and strapped his ankle holster in place.
“You really have to carry that with you all the time?” Chad asked.
“I’m a cop,” Matt said. “Write that on the palm of your hand.”
Mr. John Francis “Frankie” Foley checked his watch as he circled City Hall and headed west on Kennedy Boulevard. It was ten forty-five. He had told Mr. Gerald North “Gerry” Atchison “between quarter of eleven and eleven,” so he was right on time.
Mr. Foley considered that a good omen. It was his experience that if things went right from the start, whatever you were doing would usually go right. If little things went wrong, like for example you busted a shoelace or spilled spaghetti sauce on your shirt, or the car wouldn’t start, whatever, so that you were a little late, you could almost count on the big things being fucked up, too.
And he felt good about what he was going to do, too, calm, professional. He’d spent a good long time thinking the whole thing through, trying to figure out what, or who, could fuck up. His old man used to say, “No chain is stronger than its weakest link,” and say what you want to say about that nasty sonofabitch, he was right about that.
And the weak link in this chain, Mr. Foley knew, was Mr. Gerry Atchison. For one thing, Frankie was pretty well convinced that he could trust Atchison about half as far as he could throw the slimy sonofabitch. I mean, what kind of a shitheel would offer somebody you just met a chance to fuck his wife, even if you were planning to get rid of her for business purposes?
The first thing that Frankie thought of was that maybe what Atchison was planning on doing was letting him do the wife and the business partner, and then he would shoot Frankie. That would be the smart thing for him to do. He would have his wife and partner out of the way, and if the shooter was dead, too, with the fucking gun in his hand, Atchison could tell the cops that when he heard the shots in the basement office he went to investigate and shot the dirty sonofabitch who had shot his wife and his best friend and business partner. And with Frankie dead, not only couldn’t he-not that he would, of course-tell the cops what had really happened, but Atchison wouldn’t have to come up with the twenty-five hundred Frankie was due when he did the wife and the business partner.