Final Justice

TWENTY-ONE

In Philadelphia, any discharge-even accidental- of a police officer’s weapon is investigated by the Internal Affairs Unit. Even if the discharge of the police officer’s weapon results in a death, Internal Affairs still retains the weapon results in a death, Internal Affairs still retains the responsibility for, and authority to, conduct the investigation. The Homicide Division “assists.”

This policy came into being when various civil rights organizations charged that police shootings-fatal and nonfatal-were being covered up when investigated by Homicide or Detective Divisions, and that only Internal Affairs, an elite unit already charged with the investigation of police malfeasance, could be trusted to investigate shootings fully and fairly.

When the first “assist officer, shots fired” call was broadcast to every police vehicle in Philadelphia, it was received in the Crown Victoria assigned to Inspector Michael Weisbach, of the Internal Affairs Division, who was at the time returning to his home from a social event at Temple Beth Emmanuel.

He did not respond to the call, primarily because he was a considerable distance from South Front Street, and realized that by the time he could get there, at least twenty, and probably more, other units would be on the scene.

But he did turn to his wife and say, “I really hope no one was hit. I’m really beat.”

By the time he got to his home, however, other radio traffic had made it clear that he wasn’t going to be able to go to bed anytime soon. And after he’d dropped his wife off and headed for the Internal Affairs office on Dungan Road in northeast Philadelphia, there came, several times, official confirmation.

“I-2, Radio.”

“I-2, go.”

“We have two suspects down, one dead, at the assist officer, shots fired, unit block South Front Street.”

“Okay. I’m on my way to IAD.”

Then his cellular telephone chirped the first bars of “Rule Britannia.”

“Weisbach.”

“Inspector, this is Captain Fein, Sixth District.”

“Hello, Jake.”

“Two suspects down, one dead, at the assist officer, shots fired on South Front.”

“I’m on my way to IAD. Thanks for the heads up.”

“Out of school, Mike, it looks righteous.”

“I sure hope so. Thanks again, Jake.”

He had just laid the telephone down on the seat when it played “Rule Britannia” again.

“Weisbach.”

“Kimberly, boss. I just got a call from Lieutenant McGuire of Dignitary Protection. He was the first supervisor on the scene in the shots fired on South Front, and he’s transporting the shooter here.”

“I’m en route.”

“You’re not going to like this, boss. The shooter’s Sergeant Matt Payne.”

“Oh, hell.”

“You want me to call the FOP?”

“Yes, please. And put Payne in an interview room and don’t do anything else until I get there.”

“Yes, sir. There’s more, boss.”

“Let me have it.”

“Stan Colt and his entourage were there. The press has hold of it and they’re all over the scene. I’m watching it on the television here in the office. They broke into the prime-time shows to cover it live. It’s a real cluster fuck out there.”

Under the contract between the City of Philadelphia and Lodge #5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, it is agreed that whenever any police officer, regardless of rank, is detained for any reason that might result in criminal prosecution, the detaining unit will, at the same time it notifies senior police officials, notify the Fraternal Order of Police.

The Fraternal Order of Police will then dispatch an attorney to ensure that the rights of the police officer being detained are not violated in any way, and to assist him in any way deemed necessary.

There are lawyers under contract to Lodge #5 to provide counsel on call. There are other lawyers in Philadelphia who provide their professional services, pro bono publico, to Lodge #5.

Perhaps the most distinguished of this latter group is Armando C. Giacomo, Esq., a slight, lithe, dapper Italian who once served his country as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, then came home to become either the best and most successful criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, or the second best. The other contender for that unofficial title being Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, Esq., of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.

The difference between the two was essentially in their clientele. Colonel Mawson, who often defended individuals accused of stealing, misappropriating, embezzling, taking by fraud or deception, or otherwise illegally acquiring huge sums of money-and was compensated accordingly-declined to offer his professional services to anyone with any connection, however remote, to organized crime, or the illegal trade in controlled substances.

Arguing that even the most despicable scoundrels were entitled under the United States Constitution to the best defense possible, Armando C. Giacomo defended, very often successfully, the most despicable scoundrels alleged to be connected with organized crime and/or the illegal traffic in controlled substances, and was compensated accordingly.

Mr. Giacomo’s understanding with Lodge #5, Fraternal Order of Police, was that he wished to offer his services only in cases worthy of his talent. As the ordinary thug could not afford to avail himself of his services, neither should the cop charged with, say, drunken driving, or slapping the wife around, have his professional services made available to him, pro bono publico. He preferred to defend officers charged with violating the civil rights of citizens, and-above all- officers alleged to have illegally taken life in the execution of their official duties.

When the official of Lodge #5, Fraternal Order of Police, was informed by Captain Daniel Kimberly of Internal Affairs that a sergeant was being detained for investigation of a shooting of two suspects, one of them fatal, he immediately began searching for Mr. Giacomo’s unlisted home number in his Rolodex. And he was not at all surprised, despite the hour, that Mr. Giacomo said he would go directly to IAD, and that the FOP representative should meet him there.

The city editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, Roscoe G. Kennedy, responded to a computer message from Michael J. O’Hara-

Kennedy-Hold space page one section one for threecolumn pic, plus jump for 350–400 words, + 3, 4 more picsOhara — in several ways, the first being annoyance. O’Hara’s message was very much in the form of an order, rather than a request or suggestion.

No matter how much money and perquisites O’Hara’s pal Casimir Bolinski, the football-jock-turned-sports-attorney, had beat the people upstairs out of in exchange for the services of Michael O’Hara, Roscoe G. Kennedy felt that this in no way changed the fact that Michael J. O’Hara was a staff writer, no more, and Roscoe G. Kennedy was the city editor, and thus entitled to tell the staff writer what to do, and when, not the reverse.

The second cause of annoyance was that in order to see what immortal prose Michael J. O’Hara believed was worthy of a three-column photograph on page one of section one-plus a jump with more pictures-before O’Hara saw fit in his own sweet time to send it to him, he would have to go to O’Hara’s office.

This was actually a double irritant. Mr. Kennedy did not think a lowly staff writer was entitled to an expensively furnished private office-O’Hara’s $2,100 exotic wood and calfskin-upholstered Charles Eames chair was more salt in the wound here-in the first place, and to get to it, he was going to have to get up from his desk and walk across the city room, which meant past a large number of other staff writers, all of whom would see that he was calling on O’Hara rather than the other way around.

The third irritant was that Roscoe G. Kennedy knew that if O’Hara thought he had something worthy of space on page one of section one, and with a large jump to be placed elsewhere, the sonofabitch probably did.

Roscoe G. Kennedy was honest enough to admit-if sometimes through clenched teeth-that Mickey O’Hara was really a hell of a good writer, and had earned his Pulitzer Prize.

So Mr. Kennedy resisted the urge to summon Mr. O’Hara to his presence to discuss his latest contribution to the Bulletin, and instead got up and walked across the city room and knocked politely at the door.

He saw that Mr. O’Hara had guests in his office, Casimir “The Bull” Bolinski and presumably Mrs. Bolinski, and he smiled at them.

“What have you got for me, Mickey?” Mr. Kennedy asked.

O’Hara raised one hand from the keyboard of his computer terminal, on which he was typing with great rapidity, and pointed to the screen of his personal (as opposed to the Bulletin’s) computer.

There was a very clear photograph of a well-known Philadelphia police officer on it, this one showing him in a dinner jacket, with a cellular phone in one hand and a. 45 Colt in the other, standing just a little triumphantly over a man lying on the ground.

“There’s more,” O’Hara said.

The city editor looked at the other images from the parking lot, then read Mickey’s story on the computer screen. He didn’t speak until O’Hara had finished and pushed the Transmit key. Then he said, “Great stuff, Mickey! Really great! The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Does It Again.”

Mickey stood up.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“For a head, how about ‘Main Line Wyatt Earp 2, Bad Guys 0 in Shootout at the La Famiglia Corral’?”

“You sonofabitch,” Mickey said. “That’s a cop doing his job.”

“Watch your mouth, Michael,” Casimir said. “Antoinette…”

“A goddamn cop in a tuxedo who obviously likes to shoot people.”

“You sonofabitch, you’re no better than the goddamn Ledger!”

“Don’t call me a sonofabitch, O’Hara. I won’t stand for it.”

“Then don’t make wiseass remarks about a cop liking what he has to do to do his job, you arrogant, elitist, bleeding-heart…” Mickey paused, searching his memory for the most scalding insult he could think of, and then, triumphantly, concluded, “… Missouri School of Journalism sonofabitch!”

“Michael, I’m not going to tell you again,” Casimir said.

“You can’t talk to me like that, O’Hara!”

“I just did. What are you going to do about it?”

Mr. Michael J. O’Hara assumed a fighting crouch and cocked his fists.

Mr. Roscoe G. Kennedy rose to the challenge.

He threw a roundhouse right at Mr. O’Hara. Mr. O’Hara nimbly dodged the punch, feinted with his right, then punched Mr. Kennedy in the nose with his left, and then in the abdomen with his right.

Mr. Kennedy fell, doubled over, to the floor, taking with him the Bulletin’s computer terminal.

Casimir J. Bolinski, Esq., erupted from Mr. O’Hara’s $2,10 °Charles Eames chair, rushed across the office, wrapped his arms around Mr. O’Hara, and without much apparent effort carried him across the city room-past many members of the Bulletin staff-and into an elevator. Mrs. Bolinski followed them.

Mr. Kennedy regained his feet and sort of staggered to the door.

“You’re fired, you insane shanty Irish sonofabitch! Fired!” he shouted. “When I’m through with you, you won’t be able to get a job on the National Enquirer.”

Mrs. Bolinski stuck her tongue out at Mr. Kennedy.

Ten minutes later, after an application of ice had stopped his nosebleed, Mr. Kennedy gave Mr. O’Hara’s latest-and as far as he was concerned, certainly last-contribution to the Bulletin some serious thought.

And then he called his assistant and told him to save space on page one, section one, copy to come, for a three-column pic, plus a four-hundred-word jump inside with three or four pics.

When Inspector Weisbach came into the Internal Affairs Unit Captain Daniel Kimberly was talking with Lieutenant McGuire and another man he sensed was a police officer. He didn’t see Payne.

Kimberly anticipated his question.

“I put Sergeant Payne in an interview room and asked him to wait,” Kimberly said. “Nothing else. And I called the FOP.”

“Good,” Weisbach said.

“Who called back just a moment ago to inform me that Mr. Armando C. Giacomo is en route here to represent Sergeant Payne.”

“How fortunate for Sergeant Payne,” Weisbach said.

“Inspector, this is Lieutenant McGuire…”

“How are you, Lieutenant?”

“Good evening, sir. Or good morning, sir.”

“And this is Sergeant Al Nevins, Inspector,” McGuire said.

“You were the first supervisor on the scene?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A uniform got there ahead of you?”

“No, sir. Mickey O’Hara got there first-by about thirty seconds. When Nevins and I got there, he had already taken Payne’s picture, standing over the man Payne put down.”

“I understood there were two men shot?”

“Yes, sir. One fatally. Payne blew his brains out.”

“How do you know that, Lieutenant?”

“Well, sir, Payne told us. And we saw the body. The bullet struck right about here.”

He pointed at his own face.

“Did Payne also tell you what happened?”

“He said there had been an armed robbery of a couple picking up their car in the lot; that he’d walked up on it right afterward, told the robbers to stop. They ran, he went after them. They fired at him with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, and he put both of them down.”

“Did they hit him?” Weisbach asked.

“No, sir,” McGuire said, and hesitated.

“Go on, Lieutenant,” Weisbach said.

“He was a little shaken up, sir.”

“How shaken up?”

“Acted odd, you know,” McGuire said.

“No, I don’t know.”

“Well, there was the business about his weapon,” McGuire said.

“What about his weapon?”

“I took it from him, of course,” McGuire said, and pointed to one of the desks in the room. There were two Ziploc bags on it. One of them held Matt’s Officer’s Model Colt. 45 pistol, and the other a magazine.

“Of course?” Weisbach asked.

“Yes, sir, and he gave me some lip that I was supposed to give it back to him. He didn’t give me any trouble, but he told me I was supposed to give it back to him after I counted the rounds left in the magazine.”

“At that time, Lieutenant, did you believe that Sergeant Payne (a) posed a danger to others or himself, and/or (b) that he had committed a crime of any kind?”

“No, sir. From what I saw it was a good shooting.”

“Two things, Lieutenant. There is no such thing as a good shooting. They are all lamentable. Some of them are unfortunately necessary, but there is no such thing as a ‘good’ shooting.”

“Sir, I meant-”

“Secondly, Lieutenant, you might find it valuable to refresh your memory regarding the regulations dealing with taking a weapon from an officer in a situation like this.”

“Sir?”

“The sergeant was right, Lieutenant. Absent any reason to believe that the shooting officer poses a danger to himself or others, or belief that the officer has committed a felony, the regulations state that his weapon will be returned to him by the supervisor after he counts the rounds remaining in the magazine, and takes possession of that.”

“Inspector, I thought it was evidence…”

“So you implied. The point here is that a clever lawyer, such as Mr. Giacomo, may make the point that your disarming of Sergeant Payne against regulations is proof of bias.”

“Jesus, I didn’t know.”

“Obviously. Now, was there any other indication of what you considered odd behavior in Sergeant Payne?”

“He was… sort of out of it, sir. Distant, maybe, is the word.”

The telephone on one of the desks rang, and Captain Kimberly went to answer it, and the door opened and Inspector Peter Wohl and Amelia A. Payne, M.D., came into the room.

“Hello, Mike,” Wohl said. He nodded at the others.

“Where is he?” Amy asked.

“Honey!” Wohl said, warningly.

“Peter, as I understand it, Sergeant Payne is no longer assigned to Special Operations,” Weisbach said.

“That’s right.”

“That makes me ask, you’ll understand, what you’re doing here?”

“What we’re doing here?” Amy flared. “Jesus H. Christ! I want to see my brother, is what we’re doing here.”

“And what Dr. Payne is doing here?” Weisbach continued.

“Inspector,” Captain Kimberly said. “That was Captain Hollaran on the phone. He and Commissioner Coughlin are en route here. He asked who was the supervisor. I told him you were.”

Weisbach nodded his understanding.

“Unless you can tell me you have official business here, Peter,” Weisbach said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you and the lady to leave.”

“I’m not a lady, goddamn it, I’m a physician. And I demand to see my brother.”

“Take it easy, honey,” Wohl said. “Mike’s just going by the book. He has to.”

“Screw his book. Screw him. I demand to see my brother.”

“Peter… ” Weisbach said.

“Inspector Weisbach, with your permission,” Peter said, “I’d like to stay here with the lady until the arrival of Commissioner Coughlin.”

The door opened again.

Armando C. Giacomo strode in. He was wearing a tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, a pajama top, and bedroom slippers.

“Sorry it took me so long to get here,” he said. “Hello, Mike. Amelia. Peter. What brings you two here?”

“They won’t let me see my brother,” Amy said. “Tell them they have to.”

“Do I correctly infer that it is Sergeant Payne who was allegedly involved in this unfortunate incident?”

Weisbach nodded.

“I’m not sure if they have to give you access to your brother, Amy,” Giacomo said, “but I am absolutely sure that I have the right to see the detainee, accompanied by the physician of my choice. Isn’t that correct, Inspector Weisbach?”

“I think you can have a police physician, Counselor,” Weisbach said. “I’ll have to check about Dr. Payne.”

“You’re splitting hairs, Inspector. If the police department can seek, as they have on several occasions that come readily to both our minds, the consultation of Dr. Payne in the investigation of crimes, the only reason I can see why you refuse her, as my consultant in this matter, access to the detainee is that you are personally biased against my client, determined to deprive him of his full rights under the Constitution, or, perhaps…”

“He’s in there, Counselor,” Weisbach said, pointing to the closed door of the interview room.

Amy walked quickly to the door and pulled it open.

Sergeant Payne was sitting at a table.

Tears were running down his cheeks.

He smiled like a child when he saw Amy.

“I guess I did it again, huh, Amy?”

He suddenly slammed his left hand on top of his right and stared at it angrily. After a moment, he took the left hand away and looked at the right. The right hand rose, trembling, from the table. He slapped it down again.

“I have no idea what’s the matter with it,” he explained with a shy smile. “It just keeps doing that.”

“Jesus Christ,” Armando C. Giacomo said.

He turned to Inspector Weisbach, who looked almost as horrified and unhappy as he felt.

“Inspector, I believe that Dr. Payne is about to advise me that in her professional medical opinion, Sergeant Payne, having suffered understandable pain, fear, and anguish as the result of tonight’s events, not only is not able to intelligently respond to any questions posed by anybody, but is in urgent need of medical attention. Would you have problems with that?”

“No, sir,” Weisbach said. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No, goddamn it!” Amy called from the interview room. “He’s had enough sirens and flashing lights for tonight.”

The men looked away in embarrassment.

Doctor Payne was holding Sergeant Payne in her arms, stroking his head. He was sobbing uncontrollably.

After a moment, Peter Wohl entered the room.

“Take him,” Amy ordered.

Very gently, Wohl pulled Matt from Amy’s arms and took him into his own.

She went to Kimberly’s telephone and dialed a number from memory.

“This is Dr. Payne. I will require a private room immediately, anywhere but in psychiatric. I will be there shortly with the patient.”

She hung up, but stood there with her hand on the telephone in thought.

Captain Frank Hollaran and First Deputy Commissioner Coughlin walked into the room.

“Amy, honey!” he said when he saw her. “I’m not sure you should be here…”

“Just shut up, Uncle Denny,” she said, levelly. “Now I’m taking care of him.”

Then she raised her voice.

“Get him on his feet, Peter. We’re going to take him out of here.”

In a moment, Wohl appeared in the interview room door, his arm around Matt.

Matt smiled shyly at everybody as Wohl led him across the room and out the door, but no one spoke or moved.

Sergeant Matthew Payne was lying on his side in the hospital bed, his arm over his face, when the door opened.

He first looked annoyed, and then curious. His hand reached out and found the bed control. As the back of the bed rose, he rolled onto his back, then folded his arms over his chest and looked somewhat defensively at the two physicians who entered the room. One was his sister, the other a short, plump, somewhat jowly man in his fifties.

He was Aaron Stein, M.D., the Moses and Rebecca Wertheimer Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Stein had surprised many of his peers-and annoyed as many more-when he selected Amelia Payne, M.D., for a psychiatric residency under his mentorship. She had then just turned twenty-two years old.

She had worked under him-he always insisted on saying “with him”-ever since, and it was widely believed that Dr. Stein had been responsible for Dr. Payne’s current position as the Joseph L. Otterby Professor of Psychiatry.

“I must really be off my rocker if Amy called in the heavy-duty reinforcements,” Matt said.

“How do you feel, Matt?” Dr. Stein asked.

“I feel as if I was drugged,” Matt said. “I can’t imagine why.”

“All I gave you was a sleeping pill,” Amy said.

“Did it say ‘for elephants’ on the bottle?”

Dr. Stein chuckled.

“How long have I been here?” Matt asked.

“You slept through yesterday,” Amy said.

“Let me guess,” Matt said. “Light began to come through the windows a couple of hours ago. This is the morning of the second day?”

“Yes, it is,” Stein said, smiling.

“I normally tell time by looking at my watch,” Matt said. “But that seems to be missing. And both the telephone and the TV seem not to be working.”

“You needed rest, Matt,” Dr. Stein said.

“Is that a polite way of telling the lunatic that he was really bouncing off the walls?”

“It’s just what I said,” Stein said. “You needed rest, Matt. And not only don’t we heavy-duty psychiatrists use that word anymore-actually it means ‘affected by the moon’-but you’re not loony, bonkers, gaga, or whatever else you’re thinking.”

Matt had to smile. He remembered what his father said about Dr. Stein: “He looks, and acts, like a beardless Santa Claus.”

“Then what is wrong with me?” he asked.

“In layman’s terms,” Dr. Stein said, “do you know what thoroughbred racehorses and overachiever workaholics like yourself have in common?”

“We make a lot of money for other people?” Matt asked, innocently, after a moment.

Stein laughed.

“You don’t know when to stop. You don’t understand that you have limits like ordinary horses and other human beings,” he said.

He turned to Dr. Payne.

“He’s all right,” he said. “I’ll talk to him now. I’ll page you when we’re through. And on your way out, have them send two breakfasts in here.” He turned back to Matt. “I’ve never known you not to be hungry. What would you like? Take advantage of my presence. I get whatever I want.”

“I am a little hungry,” Matt said.

“Send in the ward nurse,” Dr. Stein said. “She’s getting a little too big for her britches, and it will do her good to take our breakfast order.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “Amy’s gone. That was a very nice breakfast, thank you very much. And now, I hope, you’re going to tell me what’s wrong with me?”

“I already told you what I know is wrong with you. Do you want to hear what your sister thinks is wrong with you?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“She’s been really worried for some time about you, and she’s been coming to me for some time to tell me why she’s worried.”

“Is that ethical?”

“Ethical, schmethical. She loves you. She’s a pretty good doctor. We’re friends. She came to me. It’s done-she can’t undo telling me. You want to hear what she thinks?”

“Okay.”

“She has developed quite a theory-basically that you don’t know who you really are.”

“Who does she think I really am?”

“Essentially, the psychological heir of your mother.”

“I don’t know what she can mean by that.”

“That your psychological makeup is gentle, kind, even intellectual, maybe. Anyway, the antithesis of warrior.”

Matt threw his hands up to indicate he had no idea what Amy was driving at.

“She thinks you have been conditioned all your life by your role models to believe you were destined to be a warrior, ” Stein said.

“What role models?”

“Commissioner Coughlin for one, the cop’s cop,” Stein said. “But primarily, the legend of your biological father, who died heroically in the line of duty. Your uncle, the cop captain, what was his name?”

“Dutch,” Matt said. “Captain Dutch Moffitt.”

“Who similarly died heroically in the line of duty, right?”

“He had just finished telling some kid to put the gun down, he didn’t want to have to kill him, and some goddamn junkie shot him with a. 22, of all goddamn weapons.”

“But heroically, right?”

“I suppose.”

“And he died heroically right at the time when the Marine Corps told you, ‘No, thanks, you don’t measure up to our standards,’ right?”

“They found something wrong with my ear,” Matt said.

“All of these things combining, in the Dr. Amy Payne theory of what’s wrong with Little Brother, to compel you to join the police force to prove your manhood, that you’re a warrior.”

“Jesus!”

“And then you met another man, who became your mentor, Inspector Peter Wohl. Another warrior role model.”

“Okay.”

“Now, being as intelligent as you are, you could not have been unaware, in Amy’s theory, that Role Model One, Commissioner Coughlin, had arranged for a job for you that was not really police work. You weren’t walking around dark streets in a uniform with a gun and a nightstick, in other words. And you subconsciously understood this to mean that Coughlin and Wohl, Role Model Two, didn’t think of you as a fellow warrior, but rather as sort of a wimp who had to be protected.”

“She told you all of this?” Matt asked.

“And then you shot the Northwest serial rapist, trying to prove that you were indeed a warrior and a man.”

“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I shot that sonofabitch because he was trying to run me over with a van.”

“But still, even after this warrior act, neither Coughlin nor Wohl was convinced that you were a warrior. The proof of this, your subconscious believed, came on the memorable day when the real cops, the real warriors, were about to face down the bad people and they sent you a block away to safety, allegedly to protect a journalist.”

“I must be crazy, I’m starting to think she may be onto something.”

“I’m not finished. She’s given this a lot of thought.”

“Go on.”

“And again you risked your life to prove you were a man, a warrior, when a bad guy appeared in the alley and you faced up to him.”

“He was shooting at us! What was I supposed to do?”

“You’re an intelligent young man. You should have ducked, run away. You were driven by the need to prove your masculinity.”

“My God!”

“And going off at somewhat of a tangent, Dr. Payne feels that your interest in so many members of the opposite sex is really a manifestation of your need to prove your manhood, carnally. And that, of course, is another proof, she feels, that you doubt your own manhood.”

“And all this time, I thought she was my friend.”

“She spoke to me as one physician to another. Give her that much, Matt. This was not idle gossip.”

“What else did she have to say?”

“You next began to prove your manhood by becoming a detective, and then a sergeant, in the latter case studying obsessively because it was obsessively so important to you that you do well-preferably better than anyone else- on the examination.”

“Anything else?”

“You told her, I think, that you were having nightmares about what happened in Doylestown?”

“And ten seconds after I did, I realized it was a mistake.”

“You ever have them about the other shootings, Matt?”

“What the hell, the cow’s out of the barn. Yeah. Most of them are about Doylestown, but every once in a while I have one about the guy who tried to run me down in the van, and now I suppose I’ll have them about the guy I just shot outside La Famiglia.”

“You said, ‘The guy in the van, the guy I just shot.’ But ‘Doylestown’?”

“I didn’t shoot anybody in Doylestown,” Matt said. “The guy we were after shot the girl who took us to him.”

“That’s all she was to you?”

Matt thought that over, then shrugged.

“No. I thought I was in love with her. I had to prove my manhood, I guess.”

Dr. Stein grunted.

“Amy thinks that your weeping over the girl in Doylestown was the first manifestation of your impending, uncontrollable psychological problems, and she feels the nightmares tend to confirm that theory.”

Matt looked at him but didn’t reply.

“You then were promoted to sergeant, and given your choice of assignment, and chose Homicide, primarily because Homicide is considered the ne plus ultra of warrior assignments in the police department.”

Matt shook his head.

“The warriors-Amy’s term-are Highway, the Bomb Squad… not Homicide,” he said.

Dr. Stein shrugged but did not respond directly.

“Where you were immediately plunged into things beyond your capacity to deal with,” he went on, “and to which you applied all of your best efforts. That, she believes, would have, so to speak, pushed you over the edge in and of itself, but then you became involved in this last incident, two nights ago, and that finally produced the inevitable result. You experienced an emotional meltdown, so to speak.”

“Well, I guess she’s got my number, doesn’t she?”

“She believes she has correctly assessed the situation.”

“And what does my all-wise sister think I should do about it?”

“That’s pretty clear to her too. She thinks you should face who you really are, and that done, take the appropriate action, which would be for you to resign from the police force, go back to law school, and assume a more suitable life for someone with your psychological makeup.”

“And you agree, right?”

“I didn’t say that. Are you interested in what I think?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“I don’t want you quoting me to her, Matt. I’d like your word on that.”

“Sure.”

“Your sister is a fine psychiatrist and a fine teacher. Perhaps for that reason I was terribly disappointed in just about everything she had to say, and certainly with her theories. They weren’t at all professional-although she is so good that some details were valid-but rather the near maternal musings of a loving sister. Furthermore, she should have known that, and that you should not even think about treating someone you deeply care for. It clouds the judgment. In this case, spectacularly.”

“You’re saying she’s wrong about everything?”

“Just about everything.”

“She makes a lot of sense to me,” Matt said. “So what do you think is wrong with me?”

“I told you when I first came in here. You’re like a thoroughbred racehorse. You think you have a bottomless pit of energy from which to draw strength, physical and emotional, and that you’re unstoppable. You don’t and you are.”

“I’ve found out that I’m stoppable, Dr. Stein. Did she tell you how I came apart?”

Matt mimed the rising of his trembling hand and slapping it down.

“In detail. Including how you wept and allowed yourself to be comforted as she held you like a mother. In short, Superman, you showed typical symptoms of emotional exhaustion. The treatment is basically rest and the admonition ‘Don’t push yourself so hard from now on.’ ”

“That’s all?”

“I think you ought to see Dr. Michaels a couple of times. He said he’d be happy to, and you won’t be the first cop he’s talked to about something like this, because you are by no means the first cop something like this has happened to.”

“Come in, Doctor,” Aaron Stein said to Amy Payne. “We have to discuss the patient in 1411, and your relationship with the patient.”

“What did Keyes Michaels have to say?” Amy asked.

“Dr. Michaels and I agree the patient was suffering from understandable emotional exhaustion, from which he-being of sound mind and body, so to speak-will recover rapidly with no lasting ill effects.”

“Well, I don’t agree with that, Aaron.”

“As his attending physician, and after consultation with Dr. Michaels, I have decided that further hospitalization is not indicated, and I have ordered his release.”

“Without consulting me?”

“That brings us to that, Doctor,” Stein said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re Matt’s sister, Amy, not his physician. You seem to have forgotten that. It’s unethical-not to mention stupid- for a physician to treat anyone with whom the physician has a familial or other emotional connection. It clouds the judgment. You know that. Or at least knew it. You seem to have forgotten.”

“All right,” she said after a moment. “I was wrong. Sorry.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ Doctor?”

“Of course I have.”

“Would you be interested in my advice in how you can do that, Doctor?”

“I’d be interested to know what you think it is that needs healing, Doctor,” Amy said, growing angry.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll give you the formulation I would recommend, and from that, if you’re half the intelligent, dedicated psychiatrist I think you are, you’ll be able to deduce what I think is wrong with you.”

“Please do, Doctor.”

“Marry the cop, Amy. Have a baby. Have several babies.”

She looked at him in genuine shock.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“You’re a young woman of childbearing age. Do what nature intended for you to do. Apply your very healthy, very normal maternal instincts to your own child, not your brother.” He paused. “In my judgment, that would make you even a better psychiatrist than you already are.”

She met his eyes but didn’t reply.

“The formulation you developed for your brother applies to you. You’re the overachiever workaholic, refusing to believe your well of strength can ever go dry. And the first symptom of your inevitable-unless you do something about it- emotional meltdown has been your delusionary relationship with your brother. You’re not his mother, and you’re not his doctor.”

“Marry the cop? Have babies?”

He nodded again. After a moment, he added:

“I’d like your word, Doctor, that insofar as the patient in 1411 is concerned, you will from this moment regard yourself as his sister, not his physician.”

“Jesus!”

“I will interpret that as meaning ‘Of course.’ Now, take your brother home, and see if you can get him to take it easy.”

“You free, Denny?” Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani asked from First Deputy Commissioner Coughlin’s door.

“Of course.”

“What do you hear about Matt?”

“His sister just called. They’re about to let him out of the hospital. She’s going to take him out to his parents’ place in Wallingford.”

“That was quick, wasn’t it?”

“They say he’s all right-that he was emotionally exhausted, is all.”

" ’They say’? His sister, you mean?”

“No. He was examined by both our psychiatrist, Dr. Michaels… You know him?”

“Sure. Keyes Michaels. Good man. Comes from a whole family of cops.”

“And Dr. Aaron Stein, who’s the head shrink at UP Medical Center.”

“I’m getting the feeling, Denny, that you don’t like-”

“Between us?”

Mariani nodded.

“Dr. Michaels is really proud he took his psychiatrist residency under Dr. Aaron Stein. I would be very surprised if Michaels disagreed with Stein about anything. Even if he did.”

“Meaning?”

“You weren’t at Internal Affairs when Matty came apart,” Coughlin said. “I was. I wanted to cry. I have trouble believing he’s all right so soon.”

“They’re psychiatrists and you’re not, Denny,” Mariani said.

Coughlin shrugged.

"You asked, Ralph.”

“Well, it was a good shooting,” Mariani asked. He laid a folder on Coughlin’s desk. “That’s Mike Weisbach’s initial report. Payne did everything by the book. One of the victims-the wife of the guy that got pistol-whipped- even wants to apologize for what she said to him-‘Where the hell were you when we needed you?’-when he walked up on it. She said she was upset, and wants to apologize. The only thing that wasn’t done by the book was when the Dignitary Protection Lieutenant… What’s his name?”

“McGuire.”

“… took Payne’s weapon as evidence.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Payne’s got a legitimate beef about that.”

“He won’t say anything,” Coughlin said. “He’s a good cop.”

“But you’re worried about him, right?”

“I’m worried about him. He needs a rest. A long one.”

“That poses a problem. If Dr. Michaels has pronounced him fit for duty, that means…”

Coughlin nodded, and finished the sentence:

“… he’s supposed to come to work tomorrow.”

“You don’t know if he’s got any vacation coming?”

“Something over four hundred hours. I just checked his jacket.”

“See that he takes thirty days of that, Denny. Make it an order.”

Coughlin nodded.

Patricia Payne held both of her son’s arms and looked intently up at him.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“Amy says I have to wear the straitjacket only when I leave the property,” Matt said. “She has it in her truck.”

“Don’t be such an ass, Matt,” Amy said. “You heard what Dr. Stein said.”

“Which was?” Patricia Payne asked.

“That what Matt and a jackass have in common is that they don’t know they have limits, and Matt reached his. All he needs is rest.”

“He said ‘thoroughbred racehorse,’ ” Matt said.

“And all he needs is rest?” Patricia Payne asked.

“That’s it, Mom,” Amy said. “Really.”

“Can you get some time off?” Patricia Payne asked.

“I’m sure I can,” Matt said.

“Well, go tell your father. He’s pacing back and forth on the patio, waiting to know what’s up.”

Matt walked toward the patio, and Patricia Payne led her daughter into the house, where she sought-and got- confirmation that all that was wrong with her son was that he had been pushed, or had pushed himself, beyond his limits, and that all he needed was rest.

Matt had just finished telling his father this, and was about to tell him that Amy had another medical theory that he thought had a lot of merit, despite what Drs. Stein and Michaels said, when Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, trailed by Captain Frank Hollaran, came onto the patio.

Coughlin was carrying in his hand what looked like a briefcase but was the size of a woman’s purse. Matt wondered what it was.

“I just had a talk with Dr. Keyes Michaels, the department psychiatrist, Brewster,” Coughlin said. “Good man. Comes from a family of cops. Knows cops. Says the only thing wrong with Matty is exhaustion, and all he needs is some rest.”

He turned to Matt.

“By order of the commissioner, you are now on vacation. Thirty days.”

“Great,” Matt said.

Coughlin handed him the purse-size leather briefcase. “This is yours,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Your pistol. You forgot it at IAD.”

“Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

He laid the purselike thing on the fieldstone wall of the patio.

“Matt,” Brewster Payne said, “why don’t you go inside and get us something to drink?”

As soon as Matt was out of earshot, Brewster C. Payne sought-and got-confirmation from Dennis V. Coughlin that all that was wrong was that Matt was emotionally and physically exhausted, and all that he needed was rest.

As Matt rolled the bar cart across the fieldstones of the patio, Armando C. Giacomo, Esq., arrived.

He was now his normal, sartorially elegant self.

“Brewster, I realize I’m barging in-”

“Nonsense, Manny, you don’t need an invitation here.”

“Actually, I came to see my client,” Giacomo said. “How are you doing, Matt?”

“I’m fine.”

“I have been informed, unofficially, of course, but reliably, by both the cops and the D.A.’s office that nothing you did in the La Famiglia parking lot in any way violated any law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In legal terminology, it was a righteous shooting, Matt, and you’re off the hook.”

“Manny, we appreciate how quickly-” Brewster C. Payne began.

Giacomo waved his hand to signal thanks were unnecessary.

“But you will have a taste, Manny, right?”

“I thought you would never ask.”

Next to arrive were Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Joe D’Amata. As Matt was pouring their drinks, the telephone in the niche in the fieldstone wall rang and Brewster C. Payne answered it.

It was Mr. Stan Colt, calling from the Coast. The monsignor had called him, Mr. Colt said, and said he’d heard that Matt was a little under the weather, and “could I talk to him, if he’s up to it?”

Sergeant Payne assured Mr. Colt that he was fine, that he had just been a little exhausted, and that he would make a real effort to go out to the Coast, and soon.

Inspector Peter Wohl appeared next. He was intercepted by Mrs. Patricia Payne and Dr. Amelia Payne as he walked up the now car-clogged drive toward the house.

“Amy told me what you did for Matt the night… it happened, ” Patricia Payne said, “and I just wanted to say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

“Absolutely unnecessary,” Wohl replied. “I was just glad I was there. I think of Matt-I think of all of you-as family.”

“And we do, too, Peter,” Patricia Payne said, emotionally. “Don’t we, Amy?”

“Yeah,” Amy said, looking intently at him. “I guess we all really do.”

Her tone was strange, and Peter looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and as if he was about to say something. But then he saw something else, and smiled instead.

“Look who’s here,” he said. “Mutt and Jeff.”

Detectives Charles McFadden and Jesus Martinez got out of their unmarked Special Operations Crown Victoria and started up the drive.

They stopped, and looked uncomfortable when they saw Wohl.

“Sir,” McFadden said, biting the bullet, “Captain Sabara said it would be all right if we took the rest of the day off- we just took the truck to the impound lot-and came out here and saw how Sergeant Payne was doing.”

Wohl nodded.

“How’s he doing?” McFadden asked.

“He was exhausted, really exhausted,” Amy said. “But he’s fine, and he’ll be glad to see you.”

Detective Martinez unrolled the newspaper he had in his hand and extended it to Dr. Payne.

“My mother saved this for me-Charley and me was driving up from Alabama when this happened,” he said. “I didn’t know if Pa… Sergeant Payne had seen them or not.”

It was the Philadelphia Bulletin, with a three-column picture of Sergeant Matthew M. Payne in a dinner jacket, standing, pistol in hand, over a man on the ground.

With an effort, Mrs. Payne smiled and said,

“No, I don’t think he has. It was very kind of you, Detective, to think of bringing this.”

An hour-and several bottles of spirits-later, everybody had gone, and Matt and Brewster Payne found themselves again alone on the patio.

“Well, I don’t know if that was the rest Aaron Stein prescribed for you, but I don’t see how it could have been avoided, and in the long run, I think it was good for you,” Brewster C. Payne said.

“I’m all right, Dad.”

“What are you going to do for thirty days? Given it any thought?”

“Aside from getting the Porsche fixed… It’s in the impound lot, Peter told me-”

“You’re going to have it repaired?”

“I don’t know. There was a lot of damage.”

“You have time to decide.”

“I may get another car, something less ostentatious, suitable for a starving law student.”

Brewster Payne looked at him for a long moment without saying anything.

“When did you decide that?” he asked finally.

“In the hospital,” Matt said.

“May I comment?”

“I sort of expected ‘Finally, thank God, he’s come to his senses!’ ”

Brewster C. Payne chuckled, then said, “I would be delighted if that’s what you finally decide to do, Matt, but I suggest to you that that’s a very important decision to make, and important decisions should not he made impulsively.”

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you go to the Cape May house and take Final Tort out of sight of shore and watch the waves go up and down for a couple of days? That always helps me to think when I really need to.”

Matt thought that over for a moment, then nodded.

“You’re probably right. You usually are. But I really think my days as the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line are over.”