The Highway car slammed on his brakes, and Washington almost ran into him. As he jammed his hand on the horn, the unmarked car behind him slammed into his bumper.
Washington signaled furiously for the Highway car to get moving. It began to move again the instant there was a sound like a blown-up paper bag being ruptured, and then a puff of orange flame.
Those dirty rotten sonsofbitches!
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Mr. Monahan said.
Washington's hand found his microphone.
"Keep moving!" he ordered. "The beat cop'll call it in. Go to the Roundhouse."
Washington looked in his mirror. The unmarked car behind him was still moving, already through the puddle of burning gasoline.
"What the hell was it, a fucking Molotov cocktail?" an incredulous voice, probably, Washington thought, one of the Highway guys, came over the radio.
"Can you see, Mr. Monahan, if the car behind us is all right?" he asked.
"It looks okay."
Washington picked up the microphone again.
"Okay. Everything's under control," he said.
In a porcine rectum, he thought, everything's under control. What the hell is going on here? This is Philadelphia, not Saigon!
SEVENTEEN
The tall, trim, simply dressed woman who looked a good deal younger than her years stood for a moment in the door to the lounge of the Union League Club, running her eyes over the people in the room, now crowded with the after-work-before-catching-the-train crowd.
Finally, with a small, triumphant smile, she pointed her finger at a table across the room against the wall.
"There," she announced to her companion.
"I see them," he replied.
She walked to the table, with her companion trailing behind her, and announced her presence by reaching down and picking a squat whiskey glass up from the table.
"I really hope this is not one of those times when you're drinking something chic," she said, taking a healthy swallow.
Mr. Brewster Cortland Payne, who had just set the drink (his third) down after taking a first sip, looked up at his wife and, smiling, got to his feet.
Patricia Payne sat down in one of the heavy wooden chairs.
"I needed that," she said. "Denny has been trying to convince me, with not much success, that we don't have anything to worry about. Has Inspector Wohl been more successful than he has?"
"I hope so," Peter Wohl said. "Good evening, Mrs. Payne. Chief."
"Peter," Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin said. "Brewster. "
Brewster C. Payne raised his hand, index finger extended, above his shoulders. The gesture was unnecessary, for a white-jacketed waiter, who provided service based on his own assessment of who really mattered around the place, now that they were letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry in, was already headed for the table.
"Mrs. Payne, what can I get for you?"
"You can get Mr. Payne whatever he was drinking, thank you, Homer," she said. "I just stole his."
"Yes, ma'am," the waiter said with a broad smile. "And you, sir?"
"The same please," Coughlin said.
"To answer your question, Pat," Brewster C. Payne said, "Yes. Peter has been very reassuring."
"Did he reassure you before or after you heard about the Molotov cocktail?" Patricia Payne asked.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I was in the bar of the Bellevue-Stratford, being reassured by Denny," she said, "when Tom Lenihan came running in and said, if I quote him accurately, 'Jesus Christ, Chief, you're not going to believe this. They just threw a Molotov cocktail at the cars guarding Monahan.'"
"My God!" Payne said.
"At that point, I thought I had better get myself reassured byyou, darling, so I called the office and they said you had come here. So Denny brought me. So how wasyour day?"
Both Wohl and Payne looked at Chief Coughlin, and both shared the same thought, that they had never seen Coughlin looking quite so unhappy.
"Oh, Denny, I'm sorry," Patricia Payne said, laying her hand on his. "That sounded as if I don't trust you, or am blaming you. I didn't mean that!"
"From what I know now," Coughlin said, "what happened was that when Washington picked up Monahan at Goldblatt's to take him to the Roundhouse, somebody tossed a bottle full of gasoline down from a roof, or out of a window. It bounced off the Highway car, broke when it hit the street, and then caught fire."
"Anyone hurt?" Wohl asked.
"No. The burning gas flowed under a car on South Street and set it on fire."
"Monahan?"
"I got Washington on the radio. He said Monahan was riding with him. They were behind the Highway car, and one of your unmarked cars was behind them. Monahan is all right. He's at the Roundhouse right now. The lineups at the Detention Center will go on as scheduled, as soon as they finish at the Roundhouse."
"What are they doing over there?" Wohl asked.
"I suppose Washington thought that was the best place to go; Central Detectives will want to get some statements, put it all together. And the lab probably wants a look at the Highway car they hit with the bottle. Maybe pick up another car or two to escort them to the Detention Center."
If you were thinking clearly, Peter Wohl, you would not have had to ask that dumb question.
"I think I'd better get over there," Wohl said.
Coughlin nodded.
"Peter, I called Mike Sabara and told him I thought it would be a good idea if he sent a Highway car over to Frankford Hospital. I hope that's all right with you."
"Thank you. That saves me making a phone call," Wohl said. He got to his feet. "Mrs. Payne," he began, and then couldn't think of what to say next.
She looked up at him and smiled.
"Peter-you don't mind if I call you Peter?"
"No, ma'am."
"Peter, as I walked over here with Denny, I thought that I couldn't ask for anyone better than you and Denny to look out for Matt."
"Absolutely," Brewster C. Payne agreed.
"Patty, we'll take care of Matt, don't you worry about that," Denny Coughlin said emotionally.
"Sit down, Peter," Brewster C. Payne said, "and finish your drink. I' m sure that everything that should be done has been done."
"He's right. Sit down, Peter," Chief Coughlin chimed in.
"Right now, both of us would be in the way at the Roundhouse."
Wohl looked at both of the men, and then at Patricia Payne, and then sat down.
The Police Department records concerning Captain David R. Pekach stated that he was a bachelor, who lived in a Park Drive Manor apartment. Captain Pekach had last spent the night in his apartment approximately five months before, that is to say four days after he had made the acquaintance of Miss Martha Peebles, who resided in a turn-of-the-century mansion set on five acres at 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.
Miss Peebles, who had a certain influence in Philadelphia (according toBusiness Week magazine, her father had owned outright 11.7 percent of the anthracite coal reserves of the United States, among other holdings, all of which he had left to his sole and beloved daughter), had been burglarized several times.
When the police had not only been unable to apprehend the burglar, but also to prevent additional burglaries, she had complained to her legal adviser (and lifelong friend of her father) Brewster Cortland Payne, of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.
Mr. Payne had had a word with the other founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, who handled the criminal side of their practice. Colonel Mawson had had a word with Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick about Miss Peebles's problem, and Commissioner Czernick, fully aware that unless Mawson got satisfaction from him, the next call the sonofabitch would make would be to Mayor Carlucci, told him to put the problem from his mind, he personally would take care of it.