"Really?"
"My father said he thought you would wind up on the other side of the bars," she said, laughing. And then she added, "Oh, I shouldn't have said that."
"It's all right," he said.
"You put a golf ball through his windshield," she said. "Do you remember that? Playing stickball?"
"Yeah," Charley said, remembering. "My old man beat hell out of me."
"So, do you like being a policeman?"
"I liked it better when I was plainclothes," he said. "But, yeah, I like it all right."
"I don't know what that means," she said.
"I used to work undercover Narcotics," Charley said. "Sort of like a detective."
"That was in the newspapers," she said.
"Yeah, well, after that, getting your picture in the newspapers, the drug people knew who I was. So that was the end of Narcotics for me."
"You liked that?"
"I liked Narcotics, yeah," Charley said.
"What are you doing now?"
"What I want to do is be a detective," Charley said. "So what I'm really doing now is killing time until I can take the examination."
"How are you 'killing time'?"
"Well, they transferred us, me and my partner, Hay-zus Martinez-"
"Hay-zus?"
"That's the way the Latin people say Jesus," Charley explained.
"Oh," she said.
"They transferred us to Special Operations," Charley said, "which is new. And then they made us probationary Highway Patrolmen. Which means if we don't screw up, after six months we get to be Highway Patrolmen."
"Is that something special?"
"They think it is. Like I said, I'd rather be a detective."
"I should think that after what you did, they'd want to make you a detective," Margaret McCarthy said.
"It don't work that way. You have to take the examination."
"Oh," she said.
I'm going to ask her if she wants to go to a movie or something. Maybe dinner and a movie.
He had difficulty framing in his mind the right way to pose the question, the result of that being that they rode in silence almost to the Temple campus without his saying a word.
Then he was surprised to hear himself say, "Right in there, two blocks down, is where Magnella got himself shot."
"You mean the police officer who was murdered?" Margaret asked, and when Charley nodded, she went on. "My Uncle Bob and his father are friends. They're in the Knights of Columbus together."
"Yeah. That's why I'm going to work now. They called up and asked me to come in early to work on that."
"Like a detective, you mean?"
"Yeah, well, sort of."
"That should be very rewarding," Margaret McCarthy said. "Working on something like that."
"Yeah," he said. "Look, you want to catch a movie, have dinner or something?"
"A movie or dinner sounds nice," she said. "I'm not so sure about something."
"I'll call you," he said. "Okay?"
"Sure," she said. "I'd like that. I get out at the next corner."
"How about in the morning?" Charley asked.
"You want to go to the movies in the morning?"
"Christ, I'm on the four-to-twelve," he said. "How are we going to
…"
"We could have coffee or something in the mornings," she said. "My first classes aren't until eleven."
He pulled to the curb and smiled at her. She smiled back.
A horn blew impatiently behind him.
Charley, at the last moment, did not shout, "Blow it out your ass, asshole!" at the horn blower. Instead he got out of the Volkswagen and stood on the curb with Margaret McCarthy for a moment.
"I have to go, Charley," she said. "I'll be late."
"Yeah," he said. "I'll call you."
"Call me," she said.
They shook hands. Margaret walked onto the campus.
Charley glowered at the horn blower, who was now smiling nervously, and then got in the Volkswagen and drove off. He remembered that he had not dropped off his dirty uniform at the dry cleaner. It didn't seem to matter. He felt better right now than he could remember feeling in a long time.
Things were looking up. Even things at work were looking up. It didn't make sense that they would call him, and probably Hay-zus, too, to go through that probationary bullshit and pay them overtime. The odds were that Captain Pekach was going to put them back on the street, doing what he knew they already knew how to do: grabbing scumbags.
"Is Inspector Wohl in his office?" the heavyset, balding man with a black, six-inch-long handmade long filler Costa Rican cigar clamped between his teeth demanded.
"I believe he is, sir," Sergeant Edward Frizell said politely as he picked up his telephone. "I'll see if he's free, sir."
By the time he had the telephone to his ear, Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein was inside Staff Inspector Peter Wohl's office at the headquarters of the Special Operations Division at Bustleton and Bowler Streets.
Peter Wohl was not at his desk. He was sitting on his couch, his feet up on his coffee table. When he saw Lowenstein come through the door, he started to get up.
"Good morning, Chief," he said.
Lowenstein closed the door.
"I came to apologize," he said. "For what I said last night."
"No apology necessary, Chief."
"I didn't mean what I said, Peter, I was just pissed off."
"You had a right to be," Wohl said. "I would have been."
"At the dago I did. Do. Not at you.Goddamn him! If he wanted to run the Police Department, why didn't he just stay as commissioner?"
"Because when he was commissioner, the mayor could tell him how to run the Department. Now he answers only to God and the voters."
"I'm not so sure how much input he'd take from God," Lowenstein said. "The last I heard, God was never a captain in Highway."
Wohl chuckled. "Would you like some coffee?" he asked.
"Yes, I would, thank you," Lowenstein said.
When Wohl handed him the cup, Lowenstein said, "I want you to know that before I came out here, I called Homicide and Organized Crime and Narcotics and told them that I completely agreed with Czernick's decision and that they were to give cooperation with you their highest priority. Goddamn lie, of course, about me agreeing, but it wasn't your fault, and I want the people who shot that young cop. As far as the DeZego job goes, frankly you're welcome to that one. I don't want the Detweilers mad at me."
"Thanks a lot, Chief," Wohl said.
"What's this I hear that one of your guys is dirty?"
"No. I don't think so. The Narcotics sergeant went off the deep end."
"Is that so?"
"The cop he suspected of being dirty is Matt Payne."
"Dutch Moffitt's nephew? I thought that he was working for you."
"He is. Payne drove into the parking lot shortly after the Detweiler girl. The Narcotics sergeant was watching her. Right afterward Payne drove away, which the sergeant thought was suspicious. Payne drives a Porsche, which is the kind of a car a successful drug dealer would drive. And then, when the Narcotics guy found out Payne was a cop, he really put his nose in high gear."
"But he's clean?"
"Payne parked his car there because he was also headed for the Union League, and the reason he drove the car away was because the 9^ th District lieutenant, Foster Lewis…?"
"I know him. Just made lieutenant. Good cop."
"… on the scene sent him to tell the Detweiler family, at the Union League."
"Payne drives a Porsche?"
Wohl nodded.
"Nice to have a rich father."
"Obviously."
"I heard Denny Coughlin put him in your lap."
"Chief Coughlin and the gentleman with an interest in the Police Department we were discussing earlier," Wohl said. "After Payne shot the rapist the mayor told the newspapers that Payne is my special assistant, so I decided Payneis my special assistant."