"Today's Thursday," Wohl said. "I'll call the captain of the 12^th and tell him you will either report for duty on Monday or resign by then. Think it over, over the weekend."
"You don't think I should resign?"
"I don't think you should resign right now, today," Wohl said. "I think you would have made a pretty good cop. I think you were given too great an opportunity to fuck up. But you did fuck up, and you're going to have to make your mind up whether or not you want to take your lumps." Matt looked at him.
"That's all, Officer Payne," Wohl said. "You can go." When Payne had left and closed the door behind him, Wohl went to his coffee machine and poured himself a cup of coffee.
"Fuck it," he said suddenly, angrily. He opened a filing cabinet drawer and took out a bottle of bourbon and liberally laced the coffee with it.
"If anybody wants any of that, help yourself," he said.
"Inspector," Captain Sabara said, "I didn't want to open my mouth, but a lot of what happened just now went right over my head."
Wohl looked at him as if confused.
"Oh, that's right," he said. "You guys don't know about the FBI agents, do you?"
Both shook their heads.
He told them.
"So what Payne was really doing at Hahneman Hospital was less playing at detective than trying to get my chestnuts out of the fire," he concluded. "The poor bastard waited for me out there, in that pathetic innocence, really thinking that now that he had solved this shooting, it would get me off the hook for making an ass of myself with the FBI."
"Shit," Pekach said.
"If I was him, I'd quit," Wohl said. "But if he doesn't, I'll-I don't know how-try to get the word around the 12^th that he's really a good kid."
"I know Harry Feldman over there," Sabara said.
"He's the captain?"
"Yeah. I'll have a word with him," Sabara said.
"Thanks. Not surprising me at all, it seems to have turned out that Payne's new boss hates my ass. Do you think Czernick knew that?"
"I know a couple of guys in the 12^th," Pekach said. "I'll talk to them."
"What do you think is going to happen about the FBI?" Sabara asked.
"If Duffy doesn't know about the photographs yet, or of me going down there out of channels, he will shortly," Wohl said. "And from there, how long will it take him to walk down the corridor from his office to Czernick's?"
"Give Czernick Dolan," Sabara said. "That wasn't your fault."
"I might have done the same thing," Wohl said. "Those two looked like your standard, neatly dressed, shiny-shoes 'Look at me, Ma, I'm a G-man' FBI agents, just begging for the needle. I won't give Czernick Dolan. What he did was dumb, but not dumb enough to lose his pension over it, and that's what Czernick's reaction would be. Anyway, all Czernick is interested in doing is covering his ass in front of the mayor. I'm on his list now, so just let him add the photographs to everything else I've done wrong or shown a lack of judgment doing."
"Dolan won't do anything like that again, Peter," Pekach said.
"You're not defending the son of a bitch, Dave, are you?" Sabara asked.
"I should have added 'when I'm through with him,' " Pekach said.
"Well, what's done is done," Sabara said. "Let's go get some lunch."
"I've got to meet someone for lunch," Pekach said.
"Is that what they call a nooner, Dave?" Wohl asked mischievously. Then he saw the look on Pekach's face. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that."
Pekach's face showed the apology was inadequate.
"What that is, Dave," Wohl said, "is a combination of a bad day and a bad case of jealousy. But I was out of line, and I'm sorry."
"I already forgot it," Pekach said. Both his face and his tone of voice made it clear that was far short of the truth.
"I'll buy lunch," Captain Mike Sabara said, "providing it doesn't go over two ninety-five."
Wohl chuckled. "Thanks, Mike, I really hate to pass that up, but I've got plans too. Maybe it would be a good idea if you hung around here until either Dave or I get back."
"You got it," Sabara said. "I'll send out for something. You want to tell me where you're going?"
"If you need me, put it on the radio," Wohl said. He looked at Dave Pekach. "If you're still sore, Dave, I'm still sorry."
"I just don't like people talking that way about her," Pekach blurted. "It's not like what everybody thinks."
"What everybody thinks, Dave, is that you have a nice girl," Wohl said. "If anybody thought different, you wouldn't get teased."
"That's right, Dave," Sabara agreed solemnly.
Pekach looked intently at each of them. He smiled, shrugged, and walked out of the room.
When he was out of earshot, Sabara said, "But you were right, that's what you call it, a nooner."
"Captain Sabara, for a Sunday school teacher, you're a dirty old man," Wohl said. "I should be back in an hour. If something important comes up, put it on the radio."
"Yes, sir," Sabara said.
Martha Peebles was on the lawn, armed with the largest hedge clippers Dave Pekach had ever seen-they looked like two of King Arthur's swords or something stuck together- when he drove into the drive. She waved it at him when she saw him.
He parked the car in the garage, where it wouldn't attract too much attention, and walked toward the house. She met him under the portico.
"Hello, Precious," she said. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," he said. "What are you going to do with that thing?"
She pointed the clippers in the general direction of his crotch and opened and closed it. Both of his hands dropped to protect the area.
"Oh, come on," she said. "You know I wouldn't want to hurt that."
"I don't know," he said. "I hope not."
"Something is wrong," she said. "I can tell. Something happen at Bustleton and Bowler?"
"Nothing that anybody can do anything about," Pekach said.
"Well," she said, taking his arm. "You can tell me all about it over lunch. I made French onion soup. Made it. Not from one of those packet things. And a salad. With Roquefort dressing."
"Sounds good," he said.
"And there'snobody in the house," she said. "Which I just happen to mentionen passant and not to give you any ideas."
"I always wonder when I eat this stuff," Jason Washington said as he skillfully picked up a piece of Peking Beef with chopsticks and dipped it in a mixture of mustard and plum preserves, "if they really eat it in Peking, or whether it was invented here by some Chinaman who figured Americans will eat anything."
"It's good," Peter Wohl said.
"They use a lot of monosodium glutamate," Washington said. "To bring the taste out. It doesn't bother me, but it gets to Martha. She thought she was having a heart attack-angina pectoris."
"Really?"
"Pain in the pectoral muscles," Washington explained, and pointed to his pectorals.
"She went to the doctor and told him that whenever she had Chinese food, she had angina pectoris. He said, in that case, don't eat Chinese food. And then, when she calmed down, he told her that making diagnoses was his business, and about the monosodium glutamate."
"I didn't know that," Wohl said, "about monosodium glutamate."
In his good time, Wohl thought, Jason will get around to telling me what's on his mind. He didn't ask if I was free for lunch because he didn't want to eat Peking Beef alone.
"I feel really bad about Matt Payne," Washington said. "If I had any idea he was going to see that Detweiler girl, I would have stopped him."
So that's what's on his mind.