“Oh, Jesus!” Olivia said.
“I’m just ensuring that I will not get carried away,” Matt said.
“I won’t let that happen,” Olivia said.
“Good. I invariably falter in the face of temptation.”
“You’re out of your mind, you know that?”
“You sound just like my sister, Mother.”
She shook her head, but she smiled.
“This is nice booze,” she said. “I’m afraid to ask what it costs.”
“Fear not, Mother, that was my round. But actually it’s not very expensive. Not like twelve-year-old or single malts. I found it in Scotland. It was the bar whiskey.”
“In Scotland?”
“My father and I, and my father’s buddy and his-son-my-buddy, were shooting driven birds over there.”
What the hell does that mean?
“I don’t know what that means,” Olivia confessed.
“They raise pheasants,” Matt explained, “and charge people to shoot them. They call it a ‘drive.’ The shooters form a line, and then the beaters drive the birds-hence ‘driven birds’-toward the line of shooters. Great shooting.”
“It sounds barbaric,” Olivia said.
“You’re a vegetarian?”
“No.”
“Where do you think your roast beef came from? A steer that died of old age?”
Olivia didn’t reply.
“The pheasants are raised to be eaten, just like chickens and turkey. I suppose you could argue that wringing their necks would be kinder than shooting them, but I don’t see the difference. And three hours after they’re shot, they’re cleaned, plucked, packed in ice, and on the way to a gourmet restaurant. ”
“And you get your kicks by slaughtering the pheasants, right? You get a real kick out of killing things, right?”
“You got it, Mother,” Matt said. “Once you understand that, everything falls in place.”
She could tell by both the bitter tone of his voice and his eyes that she had really angered him.
He shook his head in disgust, turned away, and picked up his glass.
What made him so angry?
Oh, God! When Mickey O’Hara called him Wyatt Earp, he blew up. And then O’Hara told me about the bad guy Matt “put down”-by which he meant killed. I didn’t mean to suggest he liked killing people! But I guess it sounded like I did.
So what do I do now, apologize?
The waiter slid plates holding hot roast beef sandwiches across the bar to them.
“I think you probably have just saved my life,” Matt said, sniffing appreciatively and picking up a French fry. “But just to make sure, you’d better give me another of these.”
Olivia saw that he had drained his glass.
The bartender chuckled and looked at Olivia.
“Why not?” she said.
Matt looked at her in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry for what, Mother?”
“I was out of line,” she said.
Matt met her eyes. It made her uncomfortable, but she couldn’t look away.
After a long moment, he said, “I guess that makes us even.”
And then he looked away, and unwrapped his knife and fork from its napkin wrap and attacked the sandwich.
Olivia took a healthy swallow of her drink, and when the bartender delivered the second round, emptied what was left of hers into the new glass.
She was astonished at the speed with which Matt emptied his plate of the roast beef, the potatoes, and the beans. She had taken only her third bite when she saw him lay his knife and fork on the empty plate and slide it across the bar toward the bartender.
“Very nice,” Matt said.
“Glad you liked it.”
“Did you know Cheryl Williamson?” Matt asked the bartender.
“I guess you heard?” the bartender replied.
Matt nodded.
“Goddamned cops,” the bartender said. “I guess you heard what those bastards did? Or didn’t do. Pardon the French.”
“What did you say your name was?” Matt asked.
“Charley,” the bartender said.
“Mother, show Charley your badge,” Matt said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“Detective Lassiter, show Charley your badge,” Matt ordered.
Olivia pulled her oversweater far enough to one side so the bartender could see her badge, which she had pinned to the waistband of her skirt.
“Sorry, I didn’t know… ” Charley the bartender said, uncomfortably.
“No problem,” Matt said. “The reason we don’t wear uniforms is so people can’t spot us as cops right off. By the way, I’m Sergeant Payne. My friends call me ‘Matt.’ ”
He extended his hand across the bar until Charley the bartender took it.
“Tell me, Charley,” Matt said, as he slipped back onto his stool. “Have you made up your mind for all eternity, or would you be interested in the facts about what those goddamned bastard cops did or didn’t do?”
“Hey, Sergeant, I said I was sorry…”
“If we’re going to be friends, call me Matt,” Matt said. “And that wasn’t the question, Charley. Are you interested in the facts, or have you made up your mind, and don’t want the facts to get in the way?”
“Okay. Let’s have the facts,” Charley said.
“Mother, give Charley the facts,” Matt said.
“Is that your name?” Charley blurted.
“I call her that to remind myself not to make a pass at her,” Matt said.
“Really?”
“Really,” Matt said. “Tell Charley what really happened, Mother.”
“Okay. From the top… ” Olivia began.
“… so at the end, what you have are two decent young cops who feel guilty as hell for not breaking into her apartment,” Olivia finished. “Even though they did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
“Jesus,” Charley the bartender said, and turned away, to return in a moment with the bottle of Famous Grouse.
“On me,” he said, as he started pouring. “Not on the house, on me. I feel bad about what I said before.”
“That’s absolutely unnecessary and we shouldn’t,” Matt said. “But we will.”
“Are they going to catch this guy?” Charley asked.
“We’re going to get him,” Matt said. “The question is when. The sooner they get him, the sooner they’ll be able to be sure he won’t be able to do something like this to somebody else.”
“Maybe I get this from the movies,” Charley said, “but those Homicide detectives seem to know what they’re doing.”
“I know two that don’t,” Matt said. Charley looked at him in surprise. “These two,” Matt finished.
“You’re Homicide?”
Matt nodded.
“And that’s what we’re doing here. Trying to run this guy down. We understand Cheryl used to come in here.”
“Who told you that?” Charley asked.
“Her mother,” Olivia said. “And she gave me a list of people Cheryl hung out with.” She handed him the list. “Do you know any of these people?”
“Most of them,” Charley reported after a minute.
“Any of them in here right now?”
Charley looked down the bar, then looked through the doors of two adjacent rooms and came back to report that none of them were.
“Well, we’ll run them down,” Matt said.
“It would help if you could tell us anything about Cheryl,” Olivia said. “What kind of a girl was she?”
“Let me say something unpleasant,” Matt said. “It’s okay to say unkind things about the dead if the purpose is to find out who killed them.”
Charley considered that a moment.
“I take the point,” he said. “Okay, so far as I know, she was really a nice girl. If she were a bimbo, I’d say so, okay? You want my gut feeling?”
“Please,” Olivia said.<
br />
“I think she came in here hoping that Mr. Right, the guy on the white horse, you know what I mean, would walk in and make eyes at her. And I don’t think he ever did. She was good-looking. Guys hit on her. But she wasn’t looking for a one-night stand, and I never saw her leave here with a guy. Sometimes, when she was in here with her girlfriends, a couple of them would leave together with a couple of guys. Never alone. You know what I mean?”
“I get the picture,” Matt said.
Matt’s cell phone went off.
“Payne.”
“D’Amata, Matt. Where are you?”
“Halligan’s Pub.”
“Yeah. Lassiter said you’d be going there. She with you?”
“Yeah.”
“You eat yet?”
“Just finished.”
“I’m in Liberties,” D’Amata said. “I figured you might want to compare notes.”
He’s taking care of me. That’s nice.
“Okay.”
“The Black Buddha’s going to want to know what’s going on, and he’ll be finished with that artsy thing pretty soon. If you don’t want to come to Center City, I could meet you someplace. ”
“I’ll come there. I’ve got to pick up my car at the Roundhouse anyway. Thirty minutes?”
“Thirty minutes,” D’Amata said, and hung up.
Matt looked at Olivia.
“We have to meet D’Amata, Mother,” he said.
She nodded.
“Can I ask you a favor?” Matt asked the bartender.
“Name it.”
“I’m going to give you a card-a bunch of cards-with my number on it. If any of the people on the list Mother gave you come in, would you hand them one and ask them to call?”
“Sure.”
"Give one to anybody who might have an idea,” Matt said. "Okay?”
“You got it.”
Matt took a small, stuffed-to-capacity card case from his pocket.
“These are old,” Matt said. “They say Special Operations. But the number I write on them will be Homicide. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Tell them to ask for me or Detective Lassiter, but if neither of us is there, to talk to any Homicide detective, and leave a phone number and an address.”
“Got it.”
It took Matt and Olivia about five minutes to write her name and the Homicide number on all of the cards.
Then Matt asked for the check.
“On me,” Charley the bartender said.
“No,” Matt said, firmly, handing over his American Express card. “The one drink-between friends-we’ll take with thanks. The rest we pay for.”
Charley shrugged, but took the card.
Matt signed the receipt, looked at it, and said, “Mother, your half comes to fifteen-fifty, with tip.”
She dug in her purse and came up with a five and a ten and handed it to him.
“I owe you fifty cents.”
“I’ll remember,” he said.
He put out his hand to Charley.
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “You’ve been more helpful than I think you understand. I’ll probably come by again tomorrow, or Mother will. Okay?”
“Any time,” Charley said.
“What we’ll do, Mother, is go by the Roundhouse. I’ve got to get a property receipt for the sales slip I got in New York, and I want to pick up my car,” Matt said when they were in the Porsche. “You can take it home after we meet with Joe D’Amata.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Olivia said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure I should be driving. I’m not used to three drinks of scotch in forty-five minutes, and that third drink was really a double.”
He looked at her and smiled.
“Mother, are you plastered?” he asked, amused.
“Tiddly, not plastered,” Olivia said. “And I’m not your mother.”
His eyebrows rose.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said, and he saw that she was blushing.
“In vino veritas,” Matt said, softly.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Matt said, and moved his head the six or eight inches necessary to kiss her.
She didn’t pull away.
“I really didn’t want that to happen,” she said, softly a moment later.
“Are you sorry?”
“Just drive the goddamn car, will you, please?”
He put the Porsche in gear and started off.
ELEVEN
As Matt approached Liberties Bar on North Second Street, he saw Martha Washington’s Mercedes parked in front, beside Peter Wohl’s Jaguar and a half-dozen unmarked cars.
Well, so much for Joe D’Amata’s noble attempt to bring me up to speed before Washington asks what I’ve been doing on my first day as a Homicide sergeant.
He pulled the Porsche to the curb beside one of the unmarked cars, turned off the key, and turned to Olivia.
“You all right, Mother?” he asked.
“Of course I’m all right,” she snapped.
“Hey, you’re the one who admitted she was too… ‘tiddly’… to drive.”
“You’re an arrogant sonofabitch, you know that?”
He looked at her a moment.
“I owe you that one,” he said. “But that ends it. I am not going to burn for my sin through all eternity. You could have turned your head.”
“You bastard!”
“What I’m doing right now-fully aware that no good deed ever goes unpunished-is trying to be a nice guy.”
“How?” she asked, thickly sarcastic.
“You go in there and they see you’re plastered and bitchy, you’ll be back at Northwest in the morning.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Why can’t I keep my mouth shut?
Why did I have to call him an arrogant sonofabitch? And a bastard?
Because I’m bitchy and plastered, that’s why.
Shit!
“The Mercedes belongs to Lieutenant Washington-or his wife, same thing-and the Jaguar to Inspector Wohl. There’s a new unmarked, which probably means Captain Quaire… You getting the picture?”
“Got it,” Olivia said. “Thanks.”
“Just sit there, pay attention, and speak only when spoken to, smile, and lay off the booze. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Matt got out of the car and stood impatiently, waiting for Olivia to figure out the seat belt and get out of it. He did not hold the door to the bar open for her, but once he was through it, he did hold it open long enough so that it didn’t close in her face.
Matt walked to the table holding Jason Washington, Peter Wohl, Joe D’Amata, Harry Slayberg, and-surprising him- Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin and Captain Francis X. Hollaran; the new unmarked car was the commissioner’s. Matt stood there, sort of waiting for permission to sit down.
Coughlin smiled at Detective Lassiter.
“Matt been keeping you busy, Detective?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good work with the Williamsons, Detective,” Coughlin said. “I think-between you and the story Mickey O’Hara had in the paper-that fire’s now under control.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Sit down, and help yourself,” Coughlin ordered, nodding at the bottles on the table. “You, too, Matt.”
“Could I get a Diet Coke?” Olivia called to the bartender.
“You don’t drink?” Coughlin asked, making it a statement. “Sorry.”
“Sometimes, sir, not now.”
“Joe tells me you got the sales slip for the camera in New York?” Coughlin asked Matt.
“Yes, sir. Henry Ford of Detroit, Michigan, himself bought it.”
“You might call out there and see if they have something similar. Maybe there is a Detroit connection.”
“I’ve already done that, sir,” Matt said, and added, to Washington, “I gave a Hom
icide sergeant there your number. I didn’t have any other direct Homicide number.”
Washington nodded.
“How did you do at Halligan’s Pub?” he asked.
“The bartender said she was looking for Mr. Right to come riding in on a white horse,” Matt replied. “That so far as he knew, she didn’t play around. We left him cards to pass out to anybody who might know anything, specifically including the names of the guys Mother got from Mrs. Williamson.”
" ’Mother’?” Coughlin asked.
“I call Detective Lassiter that to remind myself this beautiful female is Detective Lassiter, and that sergeants aren’t supposed to notice the beautiful part.”
There was laughter and chuckles.
“Good thinking, Sergeant,” Coughlin said, smiling broadly.
Goddamn him!
Does he really think I’m beautiful?
“What we’re doing now, Lassiter,” Wohl said, “is waiting for another beautiful woman-”
“You’ll notice he used the word ’beautiful,’ ” Coughlin interrupted, “which suggests that war of the sexes is in the armistice mode.”
Wohl flashed him an angry look. The others chuckled.
“-Dr. Payne,” Wohl continued, “who has graciously agreed to provide her take on the Williamson doer.”
“Where is she?” Matt said.
“Where else, Matt? At the hospital. We were on our way here when her phone buzzed.”
What’s going on here? Is Inspector Wohl in a relationship with Matt’s sister? They had a fight, and everybody knows about it? That maybe they fight all the time?
“What did Amy give you so far?” Matt asked.
“Why don’t we wait and get it from her?” Wohl said.
“In the meantime,” Washington said, “we may have, using the term ‘lead’ in the broadest possible sense, finally come up with a lead in the Roy Rogers job.”
“Jason looked under the rock under the rock again,” Coughlin said, approvingly.
“The witness neglected to tell us,” Washington went on, “that the miscreant presently known, for lack of more precise information, as ‘the fat guy’ was wearing a visor-a crownless baseball cap, so to speak-when he sat down at the booth by the kitchen door. He was not wearing it when he left the scene.”
“How do we know that?” Olivia asked.
Washington’s look showed that he did not like to be interrupted.
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