"Now you know why I had to drive you to work," Charley said.
She laughed.
"What are you going to do now? Go home? Or go back to the FOP and have a couple of beers with Matt?"
"If I went to the FOP and Payne was still there, I would have to carry him home. Anyway, he had a date."
"A date? He doesn't have a girl, does he?"
"He has lots of them. Jesus, with that car, what did you expect?"
"A lot of girls, including this one, don't really care what kind of a car a fellow drives."
"There's not a lot of girls like you."
"Is that the voice of experience talking?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Matt was really bananas about one girl. A rich girl, like him. He met her when Whatsername, the girl whose father owns Nesfoods, got married."
"What happened?"
"She was a rich girl. She thought he was nuts for wanting to be a cop. Instead of like, a lawyer, something like that."
"So why does he want to be a cop?"
"I thought a lot about that. What it is, I think, is that he likes it. It's got nothing to do with him not getting in the Marines, or that his father, his real father, was killed on the job. I think he just likes it. And he's working for Inspector Wohl. He gets to see a lot of stuff. I don't think he'd stick around if they had him in one of the districts, turning off fire hydrants."
"You really like him, don't you?"
"Yeah. We get along good."
"You going to ask him to be your best man when we get married?"
Charley had not thought about a best man.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I will, if I live that long."
"Are we going to start on that subject again?"
"I'm not starting anything. That's just the truth."
"We want to have some money in the bank when we get married."
"I'd just as soon go in hock like everybody else," Charley said. " Jesus, baby, I go nuts sometimes thinking about you."
"Like when, for example?"
"Like now, for example. Since you asked. I smell your soap, and then
I-"
"Then you what?"
"I think of you taking a shower."
"Those are carnal thoughts."
"You bet your ass they are," Charley said. "About as carnal as they get."
There was a long silence.
"I guess I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."
"You think you could live six weeks the way things are?"
"What happens in six weeks?"
"The semester's over. I could skip a semester. I wouldn't want to be a just-married, and work a full shift, and try to go to school. But I could skip a semester."
"Jesus, baby, you mean it?"
"I'll call my mother in the morning and tell her we don't want to wait anymore."
"Jesus! Great!"
"I get those thoughts too, honey," Margaret said. She reached over and caught his hand.
At the hospital, when she kissed him, she kissed him on the mouth and gave him a little tongue, something she didn't hardly ever do.
Where the fuck am I?
I was thinking about that, and what she said about her having those kind of thoughts, carnal thoughts too, and drove right across Broad Street without thinking where I'm supposed to be going.
"Shit!" he said, and slowed abruptly, and made the next left.
There's Holland's body shop. That means I'm behind Holland PontiacGMC, just a block off North Broad. That's not so bad. I could have wound up in Paoli or somewhere not thinking like that.
And then something wrong caught his eye. There was a guy sitting in a beat-up old Mustang in an alley.
If I hadn't been looking to see where the fuck I was, I would never have seen him.
What's wrong about it? Well, maybe nothing. Or maybe he's drunk. Or dead. Or maybe not. Now that I think of it, he was smoking a cigarette. People don't sit in alleys smoking cigarettes at midnight. Not around here.
He made the next right, and the next, and pulled to the curb.
Fuck it, McFadden. It ain't any of your business, and you ain't Sherlock Holmes.
Fuck fuck it!
Charley turned off the headlights and got out of the car. He took his wallet ID folder from his pocket and folded it back on itself, so the badge was visible, and then he took the snub nose from its holster, and held it at arm's length down along his leg so that it would be kind of hard to see,
Then he went in the alley, and sort of keeping in the shadows walked down close to the Mustang.
Piece of shit, that car.
Moving very quickly now, he walked up to the driver's window. He tapped on the window with his badge.
He scared shit out of the guy inside, who jumped.
The window rolled down.
"Excuse me, sir. I'm a police officer. Is everything all right?"
"I'm a Three-Six-Nine," the man said. "Everything's okay. On the job."
Oh, shit. He's probably a Central Detective on stakeout. Why didn't you mind your own fucking business?
Fuck fuck fuck it. Maybe he ain't.
"Let me see your folder, please," Charley said, and pulled the door open so the light would come on. It didn't.
Lieutenant Jack Malone thinking,This big fucker, whoever he is, smells something wrong, and he's got his gun out, very slowly and nonthreateningly found his badge and photo ID and handed it to Officer Charles McFadden.
"Lieutenant, I'm sorry as hell about this."
"Don't be silly. You were just doing your job. I suppose I did look a little suspicious."
"I didn't know what the fuck to think, so I thought I'd better check. Sorry to bother you, sir."
"No problem, I told you that," Malone said. "But I don't want this on the record. You call it in?"
"No, sir. I'm in my own car. No radio."
"Just keep this between ourselves. What did you say your name was?"
"McFadden, sir."
"You work this district?"
"No, sir. I'm Highway."
"Well, I'll certainly tell Captain Pekach how alert you were. But I don't want anyone else to know you saw me here. Okay?"
"Yes, sir. I understand. Good night, sir."
Charley stuffed his pistol back in its holster and walked back up the alley.
Nice guy. I really could have got my ass in a crack doing that. But he understood why I did it. Malone was his name. I wonder where he works. He said he knows Captain Pekach.
And then he got back in the Volkswagen, and there was still a faint smell of Margaret's soap, and he started to think about her, and her in the shower, and what she had said about her having those kinds of thoughts too, and Lieutenant Malone and the rusty piece of shit he was driving were relegated to a far corner of his mind.
TEN
The time projected on the ceiling by the clever little machine that had been Amelia Payne, M.D.'s birthday present to her little brother showed that it was quarter past eleven.
It should be later than that, Matt thought, considering all that's happened.
He bent one of the pillows on the bed in half and propped it under his head. Then he reached down and pulled up the blanket. The sheet that covered him wasn't enough; he felt chilled.
He could hear the shower running in the bath, and in his mind's eye saw Helene at her ablutions, and for a moment considered leaping out of the bed and getting in the shower with her.
He sensed that it would be a bad idea, and discarded the notion.
Three times is a sufficiency. At the moment, almost certainly, the lady is not burning with lust.
Well, two and a half, considering the first time was more on the order of premature ejaculation than a proper screw.
With an effort, she had been very kind about that. He was not to worry. It happened sometimes. But she had been visibly pleased at his resurgent desire, or more precisely when El Wango had risen phoenix like from the ashes of too-quickly burned passion.
And clearly done his duty: There is absolutely no way that she could have faked that orgasm.