"What have you got, Joe?" Captain Quaire said.
"High noon at the OK Corral, Captain," D'Amata said. "Whaddaya say, Payne? How are you?"
"Hello, Joe."
"He calls Tony Harris 'Mr.' " Captain Quaire said. "That tell you anything?"
"Tony Harris is much older than I am," D'Amata said, grinning. He turned to the other detective. "You know Payne, don't you?"
The other detective shook his head no.
"Jerry Pelosi, Central Detectives, Matt Payne, Special Operations, also known as 'Dead Eye.' "
"I knowwho he is, I just never met him. How are you, Payne?" Pelosi said, offering Matt a large, muscular hand and a smile.
"Hi," Matt said, and then, to keep D'Amata from making further witty reference to the shooting, he asked, "What's this 'OK Corral' business?"
"'High Noon at the OK Corral,'" D'Amata corrected him. "The current count of bullets fired and found at Goldblatt's, not counting what the medical examiner will find in Mr. Cohn-three, maybe four-is twentysix."
"Jesus," Captain Quaire said.
"And they're still looking."
"What's Goldblatt's?" Matt asked.
"Furniture store on South Street," Pelosi explained. "Robbery and murder. Early this afternoon."
"And a gun battle," Matt offered.
"No," D'Amata said, as much to Captain Quaire as to correct Payne. " Not a gun battle. Nobody took a shot at them. Nobody even had a gun. The doers just shot the place up, for no reason that I can figure."
Quaire looked between the two detectives. When his eyes met Pelosi's, Pelosi said, "WhatI can't figure, Captain, is why they hit this place in the first place. They never have much cash around, couple of hundred bucks, maybe a thousand tops. They could have hit any one of the bars around there, and got more. And why did they hit it now? I mean, right after the holidays, there's no business?"
"You have any idea who the doers are?" Quaire asked.
"No, but we're working on that," D'Amata said. "The victims are still a little shaky. I want them calm when I show them some pictures."
Quaire nodded.
"I'd better get out of here," Matt Payne said, suspecting he might be in the way. "Thank you for your help, Captain. And it was nice to meet you."
"Same here," Pelosi replied.
"Anytime you want to sell that piece of shit you drive around in, Payne, cheap, of course, call me," D'Amata said, punching Matt's shoulder.
Matt got as far as the outer door when Captain Quaire called his name. Matt turned.
"Yes, sir?"
"If you manage to find him," Quaire said. "Give our regards toMr. Harris. Tell him we miss his smiling face around here."
"Yes, sir," Matt said. "I'll do that."
On the way to the lobby in the elevator, Matt thought first,If they didn't like me, they would not tease me. Teasing, he had learned, was not the police way of expressing displeasure or contempt.
And then he thought, Shit, I'll be out all night looking for Harris.
And then a solution to his problem popped into his mind. He crossed the lobby to the desk and asked the corporal if he could use the telephone.
"Business?"
"No, I'm going to call my bookie," Matt said.
The corporal, not smiling, pushed the telephone to him. Matt dialed, from memory, the home telephone of Detective Jason Washington.
SEVEN
Detective Jason Washington was sitting slumped almost sinfully comfortably in his molded plywood and leather chair, his feet up on a matching footstool, when the telephone rang. The chair had been, ten days before, his forty-third birthday gift from his daughter and sonin-law. He had expected either a necktie, or a box of cigars, or maybe a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. The chair had surprised him to begin with, and even more after he'd seen one in the window of John Wanamaker's Department Store with a sign announcing that the Charles Eames Chair and Matching Footstool was now available in Better Furniture for $980.
A glass dark with twelve-year-old Scotch rested on his stomach. Whenever anything disturbing happened, it was Jason Washington's custom to make himself a drink of good whiskey. He would then sit down and think the problem over. During the thought process, he never touched the whiskey. The net result of this, he sometimes thought, was that he wasted a lot of good whiskey.
"Hello," he said to the telephone. He had a very deep, melodious voice. When she was little, his daughter used to say he should be on the radio.
"Mr. Washington, this is Matt."
Officer Matthew M. Payne had the discomfiting habit of calling Detective Washington "Mr." At first, Washington had suspected that Payne was being obsequious, or perhaps even, less kindly, mocking him in some perverse manner known only to upper-class white boys. He had come to understand, however, that Matt Payne called him "Mr.," even after being told not to, as a manifestation of his respect. Washington found this discomfiting too.
"Hello, Matt."
"I hate to bother you at home, but I have a little problem. Is this a bad time for me to call?"
I am sitting here alone with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, just hoping for something to brighten my day.
"What is it, Matt?"
"The feds are going to try the two guys who carved up Jerome Nelson."
What the hell is he talking about?
"Run that past me again?"
"The inspector and I had lunch with the FBI SAC, Mr. Davis. He told the inspector the feds are going to try the doers of the Nelson job for kidnapping. He asked the inspector for what we have on the job. The inspector told me to Xerox everything we have in the files, what Homicide has, and to check with Mr. Harris. I just left Homicide. I can't find Harris. The inspector wants it all on his desk first thing in the morning."
The first thought Jason Washington had was, Has Wohl lost his mind? If Czernick finds out he has been slipping material to the FBI, he'II be on the phone to Jerry Carlucci two seconds later, and ten seconds after that, Wohl will be teaching "Police Administration" at the Academy.
This was immediately followed by the obvious rebuttaclass="underline" Either Czernick is in on this, or Wohl has his own agenda; the one thing Peter Wohl is not is a fool.
And then: Interesting, the way he calls the FBI guy "Mr."; Wohl "the inspector"; and, the first time, Harris "Mr." But that title of respect dropped off the second time he got to Tony. Since he knows that Tony is a first-rate detective, it has to be something else. A little vestigial Main Line snobbery, because Tony dresses like a bum? Or has the kid figured out that Tony has a bottle problem? One possibility is that he called Tony at home-if a furnished room can be called a home-and Tony was incoherent, and he 'd rather not deal with that.
"Why don't you bring what you have here, Matt? I'll have a look at it; see if it's all there."
"Yes, sir," Matt Payne said. "Thank you. I'm on my way."
Washington broke the connection with his finger and dialed Tony's number. There was no answer.
Meaning he's not there. Or that he's there, passed out.
He took a well-worn leather-bound notebook from his pocket, found the number of the Red Rooster, Tony Harris's favorite bar, and dialed it. Tony wasn't there. Washington left word for him to call him at home. It was possible, even likely, that Wohl would want to see him in the morning. Wohl, being Wohl, probably knew all about Tony's bottle problem, but it would not do Tony any good if Wohl saw him with the shakes.
He hung up, looked at the drink he had left sitting on the table beside his chair, and took the first swallow from it.
Jason and Martha Washington lived in an apartment on the tenth floor of a luxury building on the parkway. A wall of ceiling-to-floor windows in the living room gave them a view of the Art Museum, the Schuylkill River, and West Philadelphia.