Jason Washington had gone to sleep watching the NBC evening news on television while he was going over in his mind the sequence of events leading to the death, at the hands of person or persons unknown, of Anthony J. DeZego.
Mr. DeZego had spent the day at work, at Gulf Seafood Transport, 2184 Delaware Avenue, which fact was substantiated not only by his brother-in-law, Mr. Salvatore B. Mariano, another guinea gangster scumbag, but by four of his coworkers whom Jason Washington believed were telling the truth.
Mr. DeZego had then driven to the Warwick Hotel in downtown Philadelphia in his nearly new Cadillac. That fact was substantiated by the doorman, whom Washington believed, who said that Mr. DeZego had handed him a ten spot and told him to take care of the car. The car had then been parked in the Penn Services Parking Garage, fourth floor, by Lewis T. Oppen, Jr., a bellboy, who had done the car parking, left the parking stub, as directed, on the dashboard, and then delivered the keys to Mr. DeZego in the hotel cocktail lounge.
Mr. DeZego had later walked to the Penn Services Parking Garage and gone to the roof, where someone had blown the top of his head off, before or after popping Miss Penelope Detweiler, who had more than likely gone there to meet Mr. DeZego.
There was additional confirmation of this sequence of events by Sergeant Dolan and Officer What's-his-name of Narcotics, who had staked out the Warwick. They even had photographs of Mr. DeZego arriving at the Warwick, in the bar at the Warwick, and walking to, and into, the Penn Services Parking Garage.
Mr. DeZego's car had been driven by somebody to the airport. Probably by the doer. Doers. Why?
"Wake up, Jason, dammit!" Mrs. Martha Washington had interrupted the data-sorting function of his subconscious brain. "You toss and turn all night if I let you sleep in that chair!"
"You act like I've done something wrong," Jason said indignantly.
His brain said, There is an anomaly in what Dolan told me.
"Run around the room or something," Martha Washington said. "Just don't lay there like a beached whale. When you snore, you sound like-I don't know what."
Jason went into the kitchen.
I will just go see Sergeant Dolan in the morning. But I can't take the kid with me. Dolan thinks Matt is dealing coke.
He poured coffee in a mug, then dialed Matt's number and told his answering machine not to meet him at the Roundhouse but to go to Bustleton and Bowler instead.
At nine-fifteen he went to bed, at the somewhat pointed suggestion of his wife.
He went to sleep feeding questions to the computer.
Where is the anomaly? I know it's there.
Officers Jesus Martinez and Charles McFadden, in uniform, came to their feet when Captain David Pekach walked into the building at Bustleton and Bowler.
"Good morning," Pekach said.
"Sir, can we talk to you?" McFadden asked.
I know what that's about, I'll bet, Pekach thought. They were not thrilled by their twelve-hour tour yesterday riding up and down the Schuylkill Expressway. They want to do something important, be real cops, and they do not think handing out speeding tickets meets that criteria.
Then he had an unpleasant thought: Do they think that because they caught me speeding, they have an edge?
"Is this important?" he asked somewhat coldly.
"I don't know," McFadden said. "Maybe not."
"Have you spoken to your sergeant about it?"
"We'd really like to talk to you, sir," Jesus Martinez said.
Pekach resisted the urge to tell them to go through their sergeant. They were good cops. They had done a good job for him. He owed them that much.
"I've got to see the inspector," he said. "Hang around, if you like. If I can find a minute, we'll talk."
"Yes, sir," Martinez said.
"Thank you," McFadden said.
Pekach walked to Peter Wohl's door. It was open, and Wohl saw him and waved him in.
"Good morning, Inspector," Pekach said.
"That's open to debate," Wohl said. "Have I ever told you the distilled essence of my police experience, Dave? Never drink with cops."
"You've been drinking with cops?"
"Two cops. My father and Payne."
Pekach chuckled. "What's that, the odd couple?"
"I went to cry on the old man's shoulder, and that led us first to Groverman's Bar and then to my place, and then Payne showed up to cry on my shoulder. I sent the old man home with Sergeant Henderson and made Payne sleep on my couch."
"What was Payne's problem?"
"He let his mouth run away with him, told the Nesbitt kid, the one who was married, the Marine…?"
Pekach nodded.
"… that we know the Detweiler girl was using coke. And he told the bride, and she told her mother, and her mother told H. Richard Detweiler, who is highly pissed that we could suspect his daughter of such a thing, and the last time Payne saw him, he was looking for the mayor to express his outrage."
"Is he going to be trouble?"
"Probably," Wohl said, "but Payne looked so down in the mouth about it that I didn't have the heart to jump all over him. You may find this hard to believe, David, but when I was young, I ran off at the mouth once or twice myself."
"No!" Pekach said in mock shock.
"True." Wohl chuckled. "How was your evening? How was Ristorante Alfredo? You go there?"
"Yeah. I want to talk to you about that," Pekach said, and handed Wohl the matchbook he had been given in the restaurant.
"There's a name inside. Marvin Lanier. Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
"I got that from Vincenzo Savarese," Dave replied.
Wohl looked at him with interest in his eyes.
"Not from Savarese himself," Pekach went on carefully, "but from the greaseball, Baltazari, who runs it for him. But he made it plain it had come from Savarese."
"Ricco Baltazari gave you this?" Wohl asked.
There was a rap on the doorjamb.
"Busy?" Captain Mike Sabara asked when he had Wohl's attention.
"Come on in, Mike, I want you to hear this," Wohl said. As Sabara entered the office Wohl tossed the matchbook to him. "Dave got that from Vincenzo Savarese at the Ristorante Alfredo." When Sabara, after examining it, looked at him curiously, Wohl pointed to Pekach.
"Okay," Pekach said. "From the top. Almost as soon as we got in the place, the headwaiter came to the table and said Baltazari would like a word with me. He was sitting at a table across the room with Savarese."
"They knew you were going to be there, didn't they?" Wohl said thoughtfully. "You made a reservation, right?"
"I had a reservation," Pekach said. "So I went to the table, and as soon as I got there, Baltazari left me alone with Savarese. Savarese told me he wanted to thank me for something I did for his granddaughter."
"Huh?" Sabara asked.
"A couple of months ago, when I was still in Narcotics, I was coming home late one night and stopped when I thought I saw a drug bust. Big bust. Four kids caught buying some marijuana. But they ran and there was a chase, and the kid wrecked his old man's car, so they were headed for Central Lockup. I looked at them, felt sorry for the girls, didn't want them to have to go through Central Lockup, and sent them home in a cab."
"And one of the girls wasSavarese's granddaughter?" Sabara asked. "We got any unsolved broken arms, legs, and head assaults on the books? We could probably pin that on Savarese. You don't give grass to his granddaughter unless you've got a death wish."
Wohl chuckled. "He'd beat it. Temporary insanity."
"I didn't know who she was and had forgotten about it until Savarese brought it up."
Pekach nodded and went on. "He gave me some bullshit about my graciousness and understanding-"