Final Justice

TWENTY

There was a telephone in a niche in the low fieldstone wall around the patio of the Payne house in Wallingford, but when it rang, Patricia Payne really didn’t want to answer it.

Feeling just a little ashamed of herself-this has to be prurient interest-the truth was that she was fascinated by the interrogation of her son by her husband and her daughter concerning his encounter with Homer C. Daniels.

She had known Amelia M. Payne, M.D., from before she had taken her first steps-and was in fact the only mother Amy had ever known-and she had given birth to Matt. They were her children.

And she had taken maternal pride in both. Amy was a certified genius, and while Matt wasn’t as smart, he had graduated summa cum laude from Pennsylvania. And she knew that her husband was a very good lawyer, and Amy a highly regarded psychiatrist, and Matt was carrying his father’s sergeant’s badge.

But knowing that hadn’t prepared her for sitting with them and listening to them speak of this unspeakable crime, and the man who had committed it, and his motivations, and the legal aspects of the whole sordid series of events as professionals, rather than father and son and daughter.

And it wasn’t just an idle conversation. They had been at it over an hour, ever since Brewster’s sedate black Cadillac had unexpectedly led Amy’s battered Suburban and Matt’s unmarked police Ford into the drive. When he had called from the Flatspin Restaurant where they had had lunch, she had asked what the chances were of having “the children” home for supper. He had said he’d see. From his tone of voice, it had seemed unlikely.

But then they’d appeared, surprising and pleasing her. Brewster had said Matt couldn’t come for supper, he had to be with Stan Colt, so they’d come now. They’d immediately gone out to the patio, arranged themselves on the comfortably upholstered lawn furniture, and started talking about Homer C. Daniels.

Without being asked, Mrs. Newman, the Payne house-keeper-a comfortable looking gray-haired woman in her fifties-had produced a pot of coffee and a tray with toasted rye bread, liverwurst, mustard, and sliced raw onions, and then taken a chair by the door. Patricia was pleased to see Mrs. Newman was as fascinated with Mr. Homer C. Daniels as she was.

And then the phone rang, and Patricia didn’t want to talk to anyone, and said as much.

“Grab that, please, Elizabeth,” she called. “And get rid of whoever it is. I’ll call them back.”

Mrs. Newman took her walk-around telephone from a pocket in her dress and spoke into it. Then she got up and walked to them.

“Mrs. Nesbitt for Mr. Payne,” she said. “She won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Damn!” Brewster C. Payne, Esq., said.

“Not you,” Mrs. Newman said. “Young Mrs. Nesbitt for Young Mr. Payne.”

“Shit,” Young Mr. Payne said.

“Matty!” his mother said.

Mrs. Newman handed him the phone.

“And how is the somewhat careless caretaker of my god-daughter? ”

“God, you’re such an asshole, Matt…” Daffy Nesbitt said.

“Thank you for sharing that with me. I’ll tell Mother what you said.”

“… but despite that, I’m going to do you a favor.”

“Oh, God!”

“I probably really shouldn’t tell you this, but Chad said I should.”

“You’re in the family way again?”

“No, goddamn it!”

“Can we get to the point of this fascinating conversation, please?”

“We’re having a few people in here before we make an appearance at the Four Seasons thing,” Daffy said.

“What people?” Matt asked.

“Old friends of ours, of yours,” Chad said.

“And I want you to show up in black tie and spare us your usual bad manners,” Daffy said.

“What’s in it for me?”

“Terry,” Chad Nesbitt chimed in.

“She’s the door prize?”

Chad laughed.

“I can’t imagine why,” Daffy said. “But she really likes you. She asked if you would be coming.”

Now, that’s interesting!

Detective Lassiter’s cellular phone was reported out of service. And messages left on her answering machine and at Northwest Detectives asking that she call him had brought no response.

“Tell me more,” Matt said.

“You could take Terry to the Colt dinner at the Four Seasons and then to La Famiglia.”

“Whose idea is that?”

“Mine,” Daffy said. “She’s not throwing herself at you.”

“Well, I don’t know. I like it better when they throw themselves at me.”

“Suit yourself, you bastard,” Daffy said.

“What time is this drunken brawl of yours?”

“Five-ish,” Daffy said.

“What was that all about?” Dr. Payne inquired, asking the question her mother had just, reluctantly, decided was none of her business and couldn’t ask.

“Daffy wants me to go by Society Hill before the Colt dinner at the Four Seasons. They’re having people in. What I think they really want is for me to entertain one and all by telling them all about Homer C. Daniels.”

“That’s unkind, Matt,” Patricia Payne said. “They’re your oldest friends.”

“And they’re playing cupid again,” Matt said, “trying to pair me off with Terry Davis.”

“So you’re not going?” Amy asked.

“As Mother says, Chad and I go back a long way,” Matt said, realizing as he said it that it sounded transparently lame.

At 11:48, when Matt Payne left La Famiglia-an upscale restaurant on South Front Street just below Market Street, overlooking the Delaware River-he was just about convinced that he was going to get lucky with Terry Davis.

Everything had gone well, from his immediately being able to put his hands on the little box with the studs for his dress shirt when he hastily changed into a dinner jacket at his apartment-that almost never happened-through the drinks at Chad and Daffy’s place until now.

Terry had looked very good indeed when he went into the party, and she did in fact seem glad to see him. And he’d even gotten along with the people Chad and Daffy had in. Many of them he’d known all his life. Usually, however, when he saw them socially, they gave him the impression that he’d done something terrible that had moved him far below the salt. Like being a cop. So he didn’t often see them socially. When he did, he often, in Daffy’s words, showed his ass, and embarrassed everybody.

Tonight there had been none of that, with one minor exception.

“I didn’t know, Payne, until I saw you on the tube, that you were a sergeant,” J. Andrew Stansfield III had said, coming up to where Matt was looking out the windows onto the Delaware.

“That’s right, Stansfield.”

Matthew M. Payne, Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, and J. Andrew Stansfield III had graduated from Episcopal Academy together. Stansfield had gone on to Princeton, then the Harvard School of Business Administration, and then found employment with Stansfield amp; Stansfield, Commercial Realtors.

“I’m afraid I actually don’t know what that means,” Stansfield said.

“It means I make four percent more than I made when I was detective,” Matt said. “It comes to right over two thousand a year.”

“That’s all?” Stansfield said, genuinely surprised.

Then his face showed that he suspected Payne was pulling his leg.

“Well, there are certain professional privileges,” Matt said.

“For example?”

“For example, when Terry and I leave here for the Four Seasons, my car is parked right outside on the cobblestones of Stockton Place,” Matt said. “If you tried to park there, Stansfield, you’d be towed.”

“Yes, I know,” J. Andrew Stansfield had said, nodding and seeming a bit confused. Terry Davis had squeezed his arm, and when he looked at her, her eyes were smiling.

And Terry had smelled very nice indeed in his Porsche on the way to the Four Seasons, where he was able-because Sergeant Al Nevins of Dignitary Protection was there awaiting the arrival of Stan Colt and wanted to talk to him-to park very near the door.

“We’re playing games later,” Nevins said. “The limo will take Colt and the Bolinskis-”

“Bolinski as in ‘The Bull’?” Matt interrupted.

Nevins nodded.

“-the limo will take them back to the Ritz, where they will go inside, get on the elevator, go to the basement and out into the alley, where they will get into a Suburban and go to La Famiglia.”

“Clever,” Matt said.

“With a little luck it will work,” Nevins said.

Casimir Bolinski, L.L.D., Esq., whom Matt had never met before, turned out to be a very nice guy who would have been perfectly happy to stay in an anteroom off the dining room with Matt and Terry-whom he knew-during the banquet, had not his wife found him.

“Honey, we’re going to La Famiglia after this. I don’t want to eat any of that fancy French food…”

“You’re going to go in there and sit next to the cardinal and the monsignor, you’re going to drink only water, and when they introduce you, you’re going to hand him this.”

She handed him an envelope containing a check.

“Jesus Christ, Antoinette! That much?”

“You graduated West Catholic,” Mrs. Bolinski said. “You owe them. They tossed Mickey and Stan out. They don’t. Anyway, it’s deductible.”

Mrs. Bolinski, looking not unlike a tugboat easing an aircraft carrier down a river, had then escorted her husband into the dining room.

Terry Davis again smelled delightfully in the Porsche on the way from the Four Seasons to La Famiglia, but there he couldn’t park the Porsche in front, and instead had to take it to the adjacent parking lot.

There were red plastic cones-the kind used to mark lanes on highways-in the first half-dozen parking places by the entrance.

But Terry held his hand as they walked from where he finally found an empty slot, which he decided was more than enough compensation for the inconvenience.

At dinner, he found himself seated beside Casimir Bolinski, Esq., and across from Michael J. O’Hara, who, sensing they had an appreciative audience in Terry Davis, entertained her with stories of their time at West Catholic High School.

The cardinal had not come to La Famiglia, but Monsignor Schneider was there, sitting beside Stan Colt.

More than once, during a meal that began with an enormous antipasto and ended with spumoni onto which a shot of Amaretto had been poured, Miss Davis’s knee brushed against Matt’s. Often enough to allow himself to think it wasn’t entirely accidental.

And there was another indication of good things to come at the first of the two goodnight and farewell sessions. The first was held inside the restaurant.

“You’re just going to have to come to the coast, Matt,” Stan Colt said. “You make him come, Terry.”

“I will,” Terry had said, and squeezed his arm again.

Matt was surprised when they actually left the restaurant that the Classic Livery body wagon with darkened windows wasn’t waiting on the sidewalk for Colt and party, but then he saw Sergeant Nevins and half a dozen men he knew to be detectives discreetly lining the path to the parking lot.

When they got there, Matt saw that the body wagon, Mickey O’Hara’s Buick Rendezvous, a black Oldsmobile, and three unmarked cars were in the spaces that had been blocked off by the red lane markers.

There was a second goodnight and farewell session there. Monsignor Schneider seemed reluctant to say good night, making Matt wonder how deep the cleric had gone into the wine.

But finally everybody was loaded into the vehicles, and they left. Terry took Matt’s hand again and then leaned against him, suggesting an arm around her shoulders would not be unwelcome. They walked through the parking lot toward the Porsche.

The only problem now seemed where to go:

My apartment’s a dump to begin with, and a mess after that quick shower and jump into the dinner jacket. And there’s probably something, hair, lipstick on a towel, whatever, that’ll give away that Olivia-screw her! — has been there.

Terry’s staying at the Ritz-Carlton, but if we go there, she may not want them to know I went to her room, and it will be a brief kiss and I had a lovely time.

Can I suggest another hotel?

Screw it. The apartment it is.

He opened the door to the Porsche for her, then got in and started the engine. He saw that the parking slot in front of him was empty.

If there’s not a concrete block in the way, I can just drive through.

There was not and he did.

He turned left-the only entrance/exit was where he came in, and he would have to drive to the end of the line, and then out that way-and flicked the headlights onto high.

“What the fuck is that?” he asked aloud, and then he accelerated rapidly and braked as quickly.

“Oh, my God!” Terry said. She had seen what he had.

There was a man propped up against the rear of one of the parked cars, his legs sprawled in front of him. A woman was kneeling beside him, wiping at his face. He was bleeding from the mouth.

Matt jumped out of the car.

“What happened?”

“What does it look like?” the woman snapped. “We were mugged.”

“I gave him my wallet, why did they have to do this?” the man asked, and spit. What looked like part of a tooth came out of his mouth.

“Have you got a cell phone?” the woman demanded. “We need an ambulance.”

Matt reached for his cell phone.

“My God, they’re coming back!” the man said.

Matt saw where he was looking.

At the extreme end of the parking lot, there were two young men in dark clothes.

“You’re sure that’s them?” Matt asked.

“That’s them, that’s them, that’s them,” the woman said.

“Stop right there,” Matt called, loudly. “I’m a police officer.”

The two started running.

One of them had what could be a sawed-off shotgun, or a softball bat.

“Where the hell were you when we needed you?” the woman asked.

Matt ran back to the Porsche and got in. He tossed his cellular into Terry’s lap.

“What the hell are you doing?” Terry asked.

He had the car moving before the door had closed.

He wound it up in first, and touched the brake only as he reached the end of the lane of cars. As he turned left, the windshield of the Porsche suddenly reflected light all over.

There was a boom.

“You cocksucker!” Matt said, slamming on the brakes.

The object in the man’s hand obviously was not a softball bat.

There was another boom. Part of the windshield fell out.

Matt dove out of the car, and half rolled, half crawled, between two parked cars.

He pulled his Colt Officer’s Model. 45 from the small of his back and worked the action. A cartridge flew out. He’d had one in the chamber.

That leaves five.

He ran between the cars, dropped to his knees, and peered very carefully around the bumper of one.

The two were climbing the chain-link fence at the end of the parking lot.

Matt stood up, held the pistol in both hands, and called out, “That’s it. Just drop to the ground.”

One of them dropped to the ground and one didn’t.

For a moment, Matt didn’t know what to do.

Then the second one dropped to the ground, reached into his jacket, and came out with a semiautomatic pistol and started firing it wildly.

And then there was another boom, immediately followed by the sound of heavy lead shot striking metal and glass near him.

Matt fired four times, taking out the shotgunner first, and then the man with the pistol. The shotgunner went down and stayed there. The man with the pistol didn’t. He began to scream in agony.

Matt took the spare clip to the. 45 from where he had concealed it-behind the white handkerchief in the breast pocket of the dinner jacket- ejected the empty clip from the pistol, and slipped in the spare.

Then, holding the weapon in both hands, he carefully walked up to the two men on the ground. The one with the shotgun was on his back, his head in a pool of blood. One of Matt’s shots had struck him, straight on, in the right cheek.

The other one was screaming.

Matt saw the pistol-at first glance in the dark, it looked like a Browning. 380-and keeping his eye on the man, bent over, carefully picked it up with two fingers on the grips, and then put it in his hip pocket.

“You got anything else?” he asked, and patted the writhing man down to make sure he didn’t.

Then he went back and picked up the shotgun on the ground near the body, and turned and walked quickly toward the Porsche and the victims.

The first thing he saw was that only one headlight was working. And then he saw the pellet holes in the hood and door and windshield frame, and what was left of the windshield. Then he first smelled and then saw gasoline running from under the Porsche.

“Jesus,” he said. He laid the shotgun on the roof and jerked Terry’s door open.

She looked at him without comprehension.

And then he saw that her face was bleeding.

“Are you all right?”

“All right?” she parroted.

He unfastened her seat belt, reached into her lap, reclaimed his cellular, and then pulled her out of the car.

There was blood on her dress, but when he put his hand to it, she pushed him away, as if he was taking liberties with her person. He led her around the corner and sort of leaned her against a Ford van.

Then he went to the victims.

“It’s over,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

“All right? All right?” the woman snapped at him. “What the hell is the matter with you? Are you drunk, or what? Can’t you hear that screaming?”

“I’m calling for assistance,” Matt said. “Help will be here soon.”

He punched in 911 on his cellular as he walked back to Terry.

“Police Radio.” Mrs. Angelina Carracelli, who had been on the job for twenty-two years, answered his call on the second ring.

“This is Sergeant Payne, 471. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance.”

Mrs. Carracelli waited for the sergeant to provide greater details. When none were forthcoming, she said, “Sergeant?”

“Radio,” Sergeant Payne said, a little distantly. “That’s not exactly accurate. I’m doing fine. I don’t need assistance. But there are people here who do.”

“You said ‘shots fired,’ Sergeant?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of shots fired.”

“What is your location, Sergeant?”

“I’m going to need two ambulances-no, three. And the fire department. There’s spilled gas.”

“What is your location, Sergeant?”

“I’m in the parking lot next to La Famiglia Restaurant on South Front Street.”

“Are you injured?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you.”

“Are you in uniform, Sergeant?”

“Oh, no, I’m not in uniform,” Matt chuckled.

Mrs. Carracelli made several quick decisions. First, that the call was legitimate, not someone’s idea of a joke. That there was something wrong with the sergeant. His voice was strange, and he sounded a little disoriented. He might be injured, or even wounded.

She muted the telephone line and pushed the appropriate switches.

Every police radio in Philadelphia heard three shrill beeps, and then the call:

“Assist the Officer, South Front Street, parking lot by La Famiglia Restaurant unit block South Front Street. Shots fired. Assist the Officer, parking lot by La Famiglia Restaurant unit block South Front Street. Shots fired. All officers use caution, plainclothes police on the scene.”

The three shrill beeps and the call were also heard in the Buick Rendezvous, which was carrying Mr. and Mrs. Casimir Bolinski up Market Street toward the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

“Shit,” Mr. Michael J. O’Hara said, as he put the Rendezvous into a screeching U-turn. “That’s where Matty is!” As they followed the black Suburban up Market Street in their unmarked Crown Victoria, Lieutenant Gerry McGuire and Sergeant Al Nevins heard the same call.

McGuire found the microphone.

“Dan Seven-four and Dan Seven-five, stay with the assignment,” he said into it, and then he tossed the microphone to Nevins as he desperately looked for a hole in the oncoming traffic on Market Street in which he could make a U-turn.

“Radio,” Sergeant Nevins said to the microphone, “Dan Seven-one in on the Assist Officer on Front Street. Be advised there is probably an officer in plainclothes on the scene.”

Mrs. Carracelli opened the telephone line.

“Sergeant, identify your unit and give conditions.”

“My name is Payne. Homicide,” Matt said. “There was an armed robbery, two black males, one pistol, one shotgun.”

“Are there any injuries?” Mrs. Carracelli asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

“One of the doers looks dead; the other’s alive. He’ll need Fire Rescue. At least one of the victims is going to need an ambulance. Maybe three victims. And I’m going to need the fire department. There’s gas on the ground.”

“Are you injured?”

“No, I’m fine. They missed me.”

“Help is on the way.”

“I can hear the sirens. Tell them I’m deep inside the parking lot.”

“Help is on the way,” Mrs. Carracelli said, and muted the telephone line again.

Three more shrill beeps went out over Police Radio.

“All units responding to the Assist Officer on the unit block of South Front Street, be advised shots have been fired at police and there are plainclothes police officers on the scene. One is inside the parking lot. All units be advised, the unit block of South Front Street, shots have been fired at police and there are plainclothes officers on the scene. One is inside the parking lot. Suspects in the shooting are two black males. Both have been shot and are still at the location.”

Matt looked down at Terry.

She looked up at him with horror in her eyes.

“Help is on the way,” he said. “You can hear it…”

“What about the… man who’s screaming? Can’t you do something for him?”

“I’d like to put another round in the sonofabitch, is what I’d like to do.”

“My God, I can’t believe you said that. You really are a cold-blooded sonofabitch, aren’t you?”

Matt decided there was no point in arguing with her.

“There will be help in a minute,” he said, and started walking back toward where he’d put the two men down.

Halfway there, he pulled his bow tie loose and opened his collar.

He was sweat-soaked.

He looked at the cellular and punched in an autodial number.

Detective Payne’s call was answered by Inspector Peter F. Wohl in his residence in the 800 Block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill, in Northwest Philadelphia.

When Wohl’s cell phone-in a charging cradle on his bedside table-chirped, he was not wearing any clothing at all, and was engaged in chasing a twenty-eight-year-old female around his bedroom with the announced intention of divesting her of her sole remaining article of clothing, black nylon underpants.

When the cell phone tinkled, Wohl said “Shit” and the young woman-having only moments before decided to let Peter work his wicked way with her-softly said, “Amen.”

Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., knew Inspector Peter Wohl well enough to know that not only was he going to answer the phone, but that the odds were that it was something that would keep them from ending what had been a delightful evening in what she had thought was going to be a delightful way.

The look on Peter’s face as he listened to what the caller was saying confirmed her worst fears, as did his almost conversational response to what the caller had said:

“Was it a good shooting?”

Amy had been Peter Wohl’s on-and-off girlfriend, lover, and the next-thing-to-fiancee long enough to have acquired an easy familiarity with police department cant.

She knew, in other words, that “a good shooting” was one in which the police shooter was not only fully justified in having used deadly force in the execution of his duties, but in circumstances such that his justification would be obvious to those who would investigate the incident, which was officially the Internal Affairs Division of the police department and the Office of the District Attorney, and unofficially Philadelphia’s newspapers, radio and television stations, and more than a dozen civil rights organizations.

“Well, you know the drill,” Inspector Peter Wohl said to his caller. “They’ll take you to Internal Affairs.”

He clicked the cell phone off and tossed it on the bed, then raised his eyes and looked at Amy, who was still where she had been when the phone tinkled, standing on his mattress, holding on to the right upper bedpost.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Fuck you, Peter!” she said, furiously.

“Maybe we can work that in a little later,” Wohl said. “But right now I have to go to Internal Affairs.”

“No you fucking well don’t!” Amy went on. A part of her brain-the psychiatrist part-told her that she had lost her temper, which disturbed her, while another-purely feminine- part told her she had every justification in the world for being angry with the male chauvinistic sonofabitch for choosing duty over hanky-panky with her, particularly at just about the precise moment she had decided to let him catch her.

He looked at her with a smugly tolerant smile on his lips, which added fuel to her anger.

“I ‘fucking’ well don’t?” he parroted, mockingly.

“Peter, you’ve got a deputy,” she said, when she thought she had regained sufficient control. “Under you and your deputy, there are three captains, and probably four times that many lieutenants.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“There is a thing known in management as delegation of authority and responsibility,” Dr. Payne went on reasonably.

“I agree. I think what you’re asking is why do I, as the Caesar of my little empire, have to personally rush off whenever one of my underlings has need of a friendly face and an encouraging word?”

“That’s just about it, yeah,” she said.

“Ordinarily, I would agree with you, having given the subject some thought after your last somewhat emotional outburst. ”

She felt her temper rising again, and with a great effort kept her mouth shut, as Peter found clean linen and started to put it on. Only when she was sure that she had herself under control did she go on.

“Let me guess. This is an exception to the rule, right?”

“Right.”

“Fuck you, Peter. It will always be ‘this is an exception to the rule.’ ”

“That was Matt on the phone,” he said.

“Oh, God!” she said, her anger instantly replaced with an almost maternal concern. “Oh, God, not again!”

“It looks that way, I’m afraid,” Wohl said.

“What happened?”

“Matt said-right after the Colt party-he was in the parking lot next to La Famiglia Restaurant?”

She nodded. She knew the restaurant well.

“And he walked up on an armed robbery. They shot at him, and he shot back, and put both of them down-one for good.”

“Why the hell couldn’t he have just, for once, for once, looked the other way?”

“He’s a cop, honey,” Wohl said.

“Is he all right?”

“He sounded all right to me.”

She jumped off the bed and looked around the room.

“Where the hell is my damned bra?” she asked softly, more of herself than of him.

“It’s probably in the living room,” Wohl said.

She looked at him, then picked up her skirt and stepped into it.

“I gather you won’t be here when I get back?” Wohl asked.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” he said.

“Don’t think you know what I want to do, please,” she said. “What it is, is that you don’t want me to go with you.”

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t. And I don’t think Matt will want to see you right now, either.”

She slipped her feet into her shoes, then went out of the room, returning in a moment in the act of putting her brassiere on.

She backed up to him.

“Fasten it, will you, please?”

“Funny,” he said after fussing with the catch for a moment. “I didn’t have this much trouble opening it.”

She didn’t reply until she was sure he had fastened the catch, and then she turned and faced him.

“I can’t believe that you’re as unaffected by this as you’re trying to make out,” she said. “You know what this is going to do to him.”

“I’m really unhappy about it, if that’s what you mean,” he replied. “But no, I don’t know what this is going to do to him. I hope that it was a good shooting, and I’d like to think he’s already worked his way through the questions something like this brings up.”

“You mean, after the first couple of good shootings it gets easier?” she asked, more than a little sarcastically.

He didn’t reply for a moment.

“I hope, for Matt’s sake, it does,” he said, finally.

She looked at him for a long moment, then walked out of the room again and came back pulling a sweater over her head.

“Your call,” she said. “We can take two cars, or I can go with you.”

He looked at her in the mirror-he was tying his tie-but didn’t say anything until he was finished.

Then he turned around and looked directly at her. “Thank you,” he said.

“What for?”

“You know what for,” he said.

He took a tweed sports coat from his closet, then followed her out of the bedroom, and through the living room to the door.

His apartment had once been the servants’ quarters above what had once been the stables, and then the five-car garage of the turn-of-the-century mansion now divided into “luxury apartments.”

They went down the outside stairs and to his unmarked Crown Victoria. He unlocked her door for her, and she reached up and kissed him.

“Sorry to have been such a bitch,” Amy said.

“Hey, I understand.”

He closed the door after her and went around the front and got in the car, and drove up to the drive, past the mansion to Norwood Street, and turned right.

“No flashing blue lights and screaming siren?” Amy asked.

“We’ll probably get to Internal Affairs before he does,” Wohl said.

He reached under the dash and came up with a microphone.

"S-1,” he said.

“Go ahead, S-1,” Police Radio-this time a masculine voice-replied.

“On my way from my home to Internal Affairs,” Wohl said.

“Got it.”

He dropped the microphone on the seat.

“Can you get Denny Coughlin on that?” Amy asked.

He picked up the microphone.

“Radio, S-1. Have you got a location on Commissioner Coughlin?”

"S-1, he’s at Methodist Hospital.”

“What’s going on there?”

“An officer was shot answering a robbery in progress on South Broad. And be advised, there’s a new assist officer, shots fired on Front Street. Just a couple of minutes ago.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

He put the microphone down.

“If the root of your question was ‘Does he know?’, the answer is if he doesn’t, he will in a matter of minutes.”

“He does a much better job of telling Mother and Dad about things like this than I do.”

“They’re almost certainly asleep at this hour. You really want to wake them up?”

“No,” she said after a moment. “But they’ll be hurt and angry if someone doesn’t tell them.”

“You really want to wake them up?” he asked again, and went on. “All you’re going to do is upset them. You-or Coughlin-can do it in the morning, when things have settled down.”

“Good morning, Mom!” she said, sarcastically. “Guess what happened, again, last night?”

He chuckled.

“Was it a good shooting, Peter?” she asked, almost plaintively.

“From the way Matt talked, it was,” he said. “We’ll soon find out.”

Mickey O’Hara beat the first police unit-a marked Sixth District car-and the second-Lieutenant Gerry McGuire’s unmarked Dignitary Protection Crown Victoria-to the parking lot by a good thirty seconds.

He was well into the parking lot, camera at the ready, before the uniformed officer, McGuire, and Nevins got of their cars, drew their weapons, and cautiously entered the lot.

O’Hara saw Matt Payne long before Matt Payne saw him-or, perhaps more accurately, acknowledged O’Hara’s presence.

Matt was standing at the far end of the lot, pistol drawn, looking down at what after another second or two O’Hara saw was a man writhing on the ground.

“Matt! Matty! You all right?”

O’Hara decided that the crescendo of sirens was so loud Matt couldn’t hear him.

But finally, just when O’Hara was close enough to be able to hear the anguished moans of the man on the ground, Matt turned and looked at him.

O’Hara instantly-and certainly not intentionally-turned from concerned friend to journalist.

Jesus, that’s a good picture! A good-looking young cop in a tuxedo, tie pulled down, gun in hand, looking down at the bad guy! Justice fucking triumphant!

He put the digital camera to his eye and made the shot. And three others, to make sure he got it.

“What took you so long, Mickey?” Matt asked.

“What the hell happened, Matt?”

“These two guys…” He raised the pistol and indicated the second body. Then he waited patiently while Mickey took images of the dead man before going on:

“These two guys mugged a nice middle-class black couple out for dinner. The guy gave him his wallet, and one of these bastards knocked his teeth out with a gun anyway. I walked up on it, tried to grab them, and they let fly with a sawed-off shotgun and what looks like a. 380 Browning-”

“Jesus, Payne,” Lieutenant McGuire asked. “What went down here?”

“-and shot the shit out of my car and almost killed my girlfriend, and I put them down,” Matt finished, almost conversationally.

O’Hara, Nevins, and McGuire looked at him curiously.

“Are you all right?” McGuire asked in concern.

“I’m fine. They missed,” Matt replied. “The victims are over here.”

Sergeant Nevins squatted beside the man on the ground, who glared hatefully at him.

“It looks like you’re off the ballet team,” he said. “But you’ll live. Fire Rescue’s on the way.”

He stood up.

“They had guns?” he asked. “Where are they?”

Matt carefully took the Browning from his hip pocket and held it out. McGuire took it.

“I put the shotgun on the roof of my car,” Matt said.

“Mickey, get the hell out of here!” McGuire ordered.

O’Hara ignored him.

“Around here, Matt?” he asked.

“Just around the corner,” Matt said. “Two angry females. The victim’s wife, who wanted to know where I was when I was needed, and my girlfriend-perhaps ex-girlfriend would be more accurate-who just described me as a cold-blooded sonofabitch for shooting these two.”

"O’Hara, I told you to get the hell out of here!” McGuire shouted after him.

“I presume the firemen are on their way?” Matt said to McGuire. “In addition to the other damage, they apparently shot out a fuel line. There’s gas all over the ground. Or maybe they got the tank.”

McGuire approached him warily.

“Why don’t you let me have your weapon, Payne?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, of course. I forgot.”

He handed the Colt to McGuire butt-first as three uniforms and two men who were dressed much like those they hoped to arrest for illegal trafficking in controlled substances ran up to them, pistols in hand.

McGuire removed the clip, counted the rounds it held, then worked the action and ejected the round in the chamber.

Matt reached into the breast pocket of the dinner jacket, came out with another magazine, and handed it to McGuire.

“This is the magazine, now empty, that was in my weapon,” he said. “And somewhere over there is a live round I inadvertently ejected when this started.”

“The crime scene people will find it,” McGuire said.

Holding Matt’s pistol carefully by the checkering on the wooden grips, he started to put it in the pocket of his suit coat.

“I think you’re supposed to give that back to me,” Matt said.

“What?”

“Regulations state that the first supervisor to reach the scene of an incident like this is to take the weapon used from the officer who used it, remove the magazine, count the remaining rounds, take possession of that magazine, then return the weapon to the officer, who will then load a fresh magazine into his weapon and return it to his holster.”

“Sergeant, this is evidence,” McGuire said.

“With all respect, sir, that is not what the regulations say.”

“Shut up, Sergeant,” McGuire said.

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Payne said.

A Fire Rescue ambulance began backing into the parking lot.

A Sixth District lieutenant, a very large man, came running up.

“My name is McGuire,” McGuire said. “Dignitary Protection Unit. I’m the first supervisor on the scene.”

“I’ve seen you around,” the Sixth District lieutenant said.

“I have relieved Sergeant Payne of his weapon, and am now going to transport him to Internal Affairs.”

“You’re the shooter, Sergeant?” the lieutenant asked.

“I think all the questions to him are supposed to be asked by Internal Affairs,” McGuire said. “Nevins will tell you what we know. Will you come with me, please, Sergeant Payne?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant McGuire put his hand on Sergeant Payne’s arm and walked with him through the parking lot to where the unmarked Dignitary Protection Crown Victoria sat, its engine running and its headlights and concealed blue flashers still on.

He put Matt in the backseat but didn’t close the door.

Nevins came to the car a moment later.

“You drive, Al,” McGuire said. “I’ll ride in the back with Payne.”

They exchanged questioning glances, then shrugged, and then Nevins got behind the wheel, and McGuire got in the backseat with Matt.