The Assassin

EIGHT

Detective Matthew M. Payne was the guest of Brewster C. Payne for lunch at the Union League. On the way into Philadelphia from Upper Darby, while pumping gas into the Porsche, he had seen a pay telephone and remembered that his father had left a message on the answering machine to which he had not responded. He'd called him, and been invited to lunch.

He had hung up the phone thinking that virtuewas its own reward. He had nobly been the dutiful son, and only in the middle of the conversation realized that his father would have the solution to what he should do with his Las Vegas winnings.

Brewster Payne arrived first and was asked by the headwaiter how many would be in his party.

"Just my son, Charley."

"Then you wouldn't mind sitting at a small table?"

"Not at all."

One of the prerogatives of being a member of the Board of Governors was being able to walk into the dining room anytime before twelve-thirty without a reservation and finding a good four-place table with a RESERVED sign on it was available to you.

Brewster Payne had just been served, without having to ask for it, a Famous Grouse with an equal amount of water and just a little ice, when he saw his son stop at the entrance and look around for him.

He thought, as he very often did, it is incredible that that welldressed, very nice young man is a policeman with a gun concealed somewhere on his person. A gun, even more incredibly, with which he has killed two people.

Matt spotted him and smiled and walked across the room. Brewster Payne got to his feet and extended his hand. At the last moment, he moved his hand to his son's shoulders and gave him a brief hug.

"I didn't know how long I would have to wait, so I ordered a drink."

"I am ninety seconds late, just for the record."

A waiter appeared.

"I'll have a Tuborg, please," Matt ordered.

"Your sister is annoyed with you."

"Anything else new?"

"Have you called her?"

"No."

"I think you should have. She wanted to know how things went in Las Vegas."

"Vis-a-vis Precious Penny, more smoothly than I would have thought," Matt said. "She only said 'Fuck you, Matt' twice."

"What was that about?"

"Idle conversation," Matt said. "She left a message on the machine, very sweetly thanking me for going out there and fetching her home. I don't really have anything to tell Amy; that's why I didn't call her."

"That you had nothing to report would have been useful in itself."

"Okay, I'll call her."

"You don't have to now. She went out to Chestnut Hill this morning and saw her."

"Great," Matt said. "Then that's over. Ask me what else happened in Las Vegas."

"What else happened in Las Vegas?"

Matt reached in his pocket and handed his father the $3,700 check from the Flamingo.

"And I have another three thousand in cash," Matt said as soon as he saw his father's eyebrows raise in surprise.

Brewster Payne looked at him.

"Three thousand more in cash?"

Matt nodded. "What do I do with it?"

"What were you playing?"

"Roulette."

"I didn't know you knew how to play roulette."

"Now you do. I think I have found my niche in life." He saw the look in his father's eyes and added: "Hey, I'm kidding."

"I hope so. How did this happen?"

"I started out to lose twenty dollars and got lucky and lost my mind."

"Lost your mind?"

"If I had been thinking clearly, I would have quit when I was four thousand odd ahead. But I didn't, and went back to the tables and won another twenty-seven hundred."

"Then you were smart enough to quit?"

"Then it was time to go get Penny."

Brewster Payne shook his head and tapped the check with a long, thin finger.

'The first thing you do is put enough of this in escrow to pay your taxes."

"What taxes?"

"Income taxes. Gambling winnings are taxable."

"That's outrageous!"

Brewster Payne smiled at his son's righteous indignation.

"'The law is an ass,' right?"

"That sums it up nicely," Matt said. And then he had a thought. " How does the IRS know I won? Or how much I won?"

Brewster Payne held the check up.

"You'll notice your social security number is on here. They're required to inform the IRS, and they do."

"What about the three thousand in cash?"

"An unethical lawyer might suggest to you that you could probably conceal that from the IRS and get away with it. I am not an unethical lawyer, andyou are an officer of the law."

"Jesus H. Christ!"

"Pay the two dollars, Matt. Sleep easy."

"It's nottwo dollars!"

"You're a big boy. Do what you like."

"So what do I do with it?"

"My advice would be to put it in tax-free municipals. You've already got a good deal of money in them. If you'd like, I'll take care of it for you."

Matt's indignation had not run completely down.

"You win, we get our pound of flesh. Youlose, tough luck, right?"

"Essentially," Brewster Payne said. "And if you would like some additional advice?"

"Sure."

"I would not tell your mother about this. Right now she thinks of you as her saintly son who went out to the desert to help a sick girl. I would rather have her think that than to have a mental picture of you at the Las Vegas craps tables…"

"Roulette."

"…roulette tables, surrounded by scantily dressed chorus girls."

"It's true."

"What's true?"

"They have some really good-looking hookers out there."

"But you, being virtuous, had nothing to do with them, and were rewarded by good luck at the roulette tables?"

"Absolutely. I have the strength of ten because in my heart, I'm pure."

"When do you go back to work?"

"Tomorrow, probably. I've got to go to Chief Lowenstein's office at half past one. I suspect that someone is going to tell me that when I go back to work, I say I was doing paperwork in the Roundhouse, not running out to Vegas to fetch Precious Penny."

The waiter appeared and interrupted the conversation to take their order.

"Have you plans for tonight?"

"No, sir."

"I think your mother would like to have you for dinner. She's making a leg of lamb."

"Thank you."

"Amy will be there."

"I have just been sandbagged."

"Yes," Brewster Payne said. "I had that in mind when I mentioned the lamb." He handed Matt the Flamingo check. 'Take this, and the cash, to the bank. Cash this, and have them give you a cashier's check for the entire amount of money, payable to First Philadelphia. Give it to me tonight, and I'll take care of it from there."

Matt nodded, and took the check back.

"How much in taxes are they going to get?"

"You don't really want to know. It would ruin your lunch."

"I'll have the vegetable soup and the calves' liver, please," Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein told the waiter.

"Shrimp cocktail and the luncheon steak, pink in the middle," the Honorable Jerry Carlucci ordered.

When the waiter had gone, the mayor said, "You should have had the shrimp and steak. I'm buying."

"Most of the time when you say you're buying I wind up with the check. Besides, I like the way they do liver in here."

"I had a call from H. Richard Detweiler this morning," the mayor said.

"And?"

"And he said he wanted me to know he was very grateful for our letting the Payne kid go out there and bring his daughter home, and if there was ever anything he could for me I should not hesitate to let him know."

"You should hold off calling that marker in until you're running for governor or the Senate. Or the White House."

"All I want to do is be mayor of Philadelphia."

"Isn't that what you said when they appointed you police commissioner? That all you wanted to be was commissioner?"

"What is this, Beat Up On Jerry Carlucci Day?"

"You want a straight answer to that?"

"No, lie to me."

"I sent word to Payne to meet me in my office at half past one. I' m going to tell him, when he goes back on the job, that what he was doing was paperwork in the Roundhouse, not running out to Las Vegas, for Christ's sake, baby-sitting Detweiler's daughter. He's going to have a hard enough time proving himself over at East as it is…"

"I've been in a detective division. Right there in East Detectives, as a matter of fact. You don't have to tell me about detective divisions."

"…without us pulling him out of there every time somebody like Detweiler wants a favor from you," Lowenstein finished.

"I'm not as dumb as I look, Matt," the mayor said. "I'm even one or two steps ahead of you."

"Are you?"

"Yes, I am. I thought you and Denny Coughlin did a dumb thing when you sent him to East Detectives in the first place."

"He made detective. What you do with new detectives is send them to out to the Academy to learn the new forms, and then to a division, to learn how tobe a detective. You tell me, why is that dumb?"

"Because he is who he is."

"You tell me, who is he?"

"He's the guy who took down the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist, and the guy who shot it out with that Islamic Liberation Army jackass and won. That makes him different, without the other things. Like I said, I've been in a detective division. They're really going to stay on his ass to remind him he's a rookie, until he proves himself."

"He's a good kid. He can handle that."

"Sure he can, and what have we got then? I'll tell you what we'll have-one more detective who can probably work a crime scene about as good as any other detective."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"The Good of the Department is what I'm talking about."

"Then you have lost me somewhere along the way."

"Do you know how many college graduates have applied for the Department in the last year?"

"No."

"Fifty-three."

"So?"

"Do you know how many college graduates applied, in the three years previous to this one?"

"I have no idea."

"Seventeen. Not each year. Total."

"Now I'm really lost."

"Public relations," the mayor said significantly.

"What does that mean?"

"That a lot of young men, fifty-three young men, with college degrees, with the potential to become really good cops, saw Payne's picture in the newspapers and decided they might like being a cop themselves."

"Do you know that? Or just think that?"

"I checked it out," the mayor said.

"So what are you saying, Jerry? That we should put Payne on recruiting duty?"

"I'm saying you and Coughlin should have left him right where he was, in Special Operations."

"A," Lowenstein said, "you always transfer people who get promoted. B, there are no detectives in Special Operations."

"A, that 'transfer people when they get promoted' didn't come off the mountain with Moses, engraved on stone, and B, as of today there are two detectives assigned to Special Operations."

'Two detectives who should have been sent back to Homicide where they belong," Lowenstein said.

"If you mean Jason Washington, he's a sergeant now. He got promoted, and he didn't get transferred out of Special Operations. I said twodetectives. One of whom is Tony Harris, who would probably go back to being a drunk if we sent him back to Homicide."

Lowenstein took a deep swallow of his Jack Daniel's and water. He was impressed again with Jerry Carlucci's intimate knowledge of what was going on in the Department.

Detectives Jason Washington and Tony Harris, in Lowenstein's judgment the two best Homicide detectives, had been "temporarily" assigned to the then newly formed Special Operations Division when Mayor Carlucci had taken away the Northwest serial rapist job from Northwest Detectives and given it to Peter Wohl.

Other special jobs had come up, and they had never gone back to Homicide, which had been a continuing source of annoyance to Matt Lowenstein. The only good thing about it was that Tony Harris seemed to have gotten his bottle problem under control working for Wohl. Until just now, Matt Lowenstein had believed that Harris's boozing was known to only a few people, not including the mayor.

"You said 'two detectives,'" Lowenstein said, finally. "The other one's name is Payne, right?"

"You're a clever fellow. Maybe you should be a detective or something," Jerry Carlucci said.

Lowenstein did not reply.

"He can learn as much watching Washington and Harris as he could have learned in East Detectives, and probably quicker," Carlucci said. "And he'll be available, without a lot of bullshit and resentment, the next time the Department needs to do somebody who can do the Department a lot of good a favor."

"Oh, shit," Matt Lowenstein said.

"You don't like it?" the mayor said. There was just a hint of coldness in his voice.

"What I don't like is that you're right," Lowenstein said. "It wasn't fair to either East Detectives or Payne to send him there. I don't know if he'll stay on the job or not, but if he does, it wouldn' t be at East Detectives."

"I thought about that too," Carlucci said. "Whether he would stay. I decided he would. He's been around long enough, done enough, to have it get in his blood."

"You make it sound like syphilis," Lowenstein said.

Mr. Ricco Baltazari had his luncheon, a dozen cherrystone clams, a double thick lamb chop, medium rare, with mint sauce, and a sliced tomato with olive oil and vinegar in his place of business, the Ristorante Alfredo, in Center City, Philadelphia, three blocks east of the Union League.

A table in the rear of the establishment had been especially laid for the occasion, for Mr. Gian-Carlo Rosselli had called Mr. Baltazari with the announcement that Mr. S. thought he would like to have a little fish for his lunch and was that going to pose any problems?

Mr. Baltazari had told Mr. Rosselli that it would be no problem at all, and what time was Mr. S. thinking of having his lunch?

"Twelve-thirty, one," Mr. Rosselli had replied and then hung up without saying another word.

Mr. Baltazari had personally inspected the table after it was set, to make sure there wasn't any grease or lipstick or whatever the dishwasher had missed; that there were no chips on the dishes or glasses; and that there were no spots on the tablecloth or napkins the laundry hadn't washed out. Then he went into the kitchen and personally first selected the slice of swordfish that would be served to Mr. S., and then the wines he thought Mr. S. might like. After a moment's thought, he added a third bottle, of sparkling wine, to his original selections and had it put into the refrigerator to cool. Sometimes Mr. S. liked sparkling wine.

As a final preparation, Mr. Baltazari walked two blocks farther east, toward the Delaware River, where he had a shave and a trim and had his shoes shined.

Mr. S., whose full name was Vincenzo Carlos Savarese, was more than just a customer. Despite what it said on Ristorante Alfredo's restaurant and liquor licenses, that Ricco Baltazari was the owner and licensee, it was really owned by Mr. Savarese. Mr. Baltazari operated it for him, it being understood between them that no matter what it said on the books about salary and profits, that Mr. S. was to be paid, in cash, once a month, fifty percent of gross receipts less the cost of food, liquor, rent, salaries, and laundry.

Out of his fifty percent, Mr. Baltazari was expected to pay all other expenses. Anything left over after that was his.

There was no written agreement. They were men of honor, and it was understood between them that if it ever came to Mr. S.'s attention that Mr. Baltazari had been fucking with the books, taking cash out of the register, or in any other way, no matter how, depriving Mr. S. of his full return on his investment, Mr. Baltazari could expect to find himself floating facedown in the Delaware River, or stuffed into the trunk of his Cadillac with twenty-dollar bills inserted into his nostrils and other cranial cavities.

Mr. Savarese, a slightly built, silver-haired, superbly tailored and shod man in his early sixties, arrived at Ristorante Alfredo at five minutes to one. He took great pride in his personal appearance, believing that a businessman, such as himself, should look the part.

He had, ten years before, arranged the immigration from Rome of a journeyman gentlemen's tailor and set him up in business in a downtown office building. At Mr. S.'s recommendation, a number of his business associates had begun to patronize the tailor, and he had found financial security and a good life in the new world. It was understood between the tailor and Mr. Savarese that the tailor would not offer to cut a suit for anyone else from a bolt of cloth from which he had cut a suit for Mr. Savarese.

Shoes were something else. Mr. Savarese was a good enough businessman to understand there was not a sufficient market in Philadelphia to support a custom bootmaker, no matter how skilled, so he had his shoes made in Palermo on a last carved there for him on a visit he had made years before attending the funeral of a great-aunt.

Mr. Savarese did not own an automobile, and rarely drove himself, although he took pains to make sure his driver's license did not lapse. The Lincoln sedan in which he arrived at Ristorante Alfredo was owned by Classic Livery, which supplied limousines to the funeral trade, and which was owned, in much the same sort of arrangement as that which Mr. Savarese had with Mr. Baltazari vis-a-vis Ristorante Alfredo, by Mr. Paulo Cassandro. Mr. Cassandro, as now, habitually assigned his brother, Pietro, to drive the automobile he made available for Mr. Savarese's use.

Mr. Savarese, as now, was habitually accompanied by Mr. Gian-Carlo Rosselli, a tall, heavyset gentleman in his middle thirties.

When the Lincoln pulled to the curb before the marquee of Ristorante Alfredo, Mr. Rosselli, who was riding in the front seat, got out of the car and walked around the front to the sidewalk. He glanced up and down the street, and then nodded at Mr. Cassandro. Mr. Cassandro then got from behind the wheel and opened the rear door for Mr. Savarese.

By the time Mr. Savarese reached the door of the restaurant, Mr. Rosselli had pulled the door open for him. He stepped inside, where Mr. Baltazari was waiting for him. They shook hands. Mr. Baltazari was always very careful when shaking hands with Mr. Savarese, for his hands were very large and strong, and Mr. Savarese's rather delicate. Mr. Savarese played the violin and the violoncello, primarily for his own pleasure, but sometimes for friends, say at a wedding or an anniversary celebration. It was considered a great honor to have him play at such gatherings.

Mr. Baltazari led Mr. Savarese and Mr. Rosselli to the table, where the maitre d'hotel was standing behind the chair in which Mr. Savarese would sit, and a waiter (not the wine steward; that sonofabitch having this day, of all goddamned days, with Mr. S. coming in, called in sick) stood before two wine coolers on legs.

Mr. Savarese sat down, and the headwaiter pushed his chair in for him. He looked up at Mr. Rosselli, who was obviously waiting for direction, and made a little gesture with his hand, signaling that Mr. Rosselli should sit down.

"What are you going to feed me, Ricco?" Mr. Savarese asked with a smile.

"I thought some cherrystones," Mr. Baltazari said. "And there is some very nice swordfish?"

"I leave myself in your hands."

"I have a nice white wine…"

"Anything you think…"

"And some nice Fiore e Fiore sparkling…"

"The sparkling. It always goes so well with the clams, I think."

Mr. Baltazari snapped his fingers and the waiter who was standing in for the goddamned wine steward who'd chosen today to fuck off twisted the wire holding the cork in the sparkling wine off, popped the cork, and poured a little in a champagne glass whose stem was hollow to the bottom and cost a fucking fortune and was only taken out of the cabinet when Mr. S. was in the place.

Mr. Savarese tasted the sparkling wine.

"That's very nice, Ricco," he said.

"Thank you," Mr. Baltazari said, beaming, and then added, to the headwaiter, "Put a case of that in Mr. S.'s car."

"You're very kind," Mr. Savarese said.

The waiter filled Mr. Savarese's glass with the Fiore e Fiore, and then poured some in Mr. Baltazari's and Mr. Rosselli's glasses.

Mr. Baltazari then raised his glass, and Mr. Rosselli followed suit.

"Health and long life," Mr. Baltazari said.

Mr. Savarese smiled.

"What is it the Irish say? 'May the sun'-or is it the wind?- ' always be at your back.' I like that."

"I think 'the wind,' Mr. S.," Mr. Rosselli said.

"I think it's the sun," Mr. Savarese said.

"Now that I think about it, I'm sure you're right," Mr. Rosselli said.

"It doesn't matter, either way," Mr. Savarese said graciously.

"The cherrystones and the swordfish for Mr. Savarese, right?" the maitre d'hotel asked. "And for you, sir?"

"What are you eating, Ricco?" Mr. Rosselli asked.

"Lamb chops."

"Same for me," Mr. Rosselli said. "Sometimes swordfish don't agree with me."

"How would you like them cooked, sir?"

"Pink in the middle."

The clams, on a bed of ice, were served. While they were eating them, Mr. Savarese inquired as to the health of Mr. Baltazari's wife and children, and Mr. Baltazari asked Mr. Savarese to pass on his best respects to Mr. Savarese's wife and mother.

The clams were cleared away, and the entree served.

Mr. Baltazari made a gesture, and a folding screen was put in place, screening the table from the view of anyone in the front part of the restaurant.

"Open another bottle of the Fiore e Fiore," Mr. Baltazari ordered, "and then leave us alone."

Mr. Savarese delicately placed a piece of the swordfish into his mouth, chewed, and nodded.

'This is very nice, Ricco," he said.

"I'm glad you're pleased, Mr. S."

"It has to be fresh," Mr. Savarese said. "Otherwise, when it's been on ice too long, it gets mushy."

"That was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico two days ago, Mr. S."

'Tell me why you told Joe Fierello to make the police officer a good deal," Mr. Savarese said as he placed another piece of swordfish into his mouth. "Tell me about the police officer, is what I want."

"I was going to call you this morning, but then Carlo called and said you was coming, and I figured it could wait until I could tell you in person."

Mr. Savarese nodded, and then gestured with his fork for Mr. Baltazari to continue.

"I try to keep my eyes open," Mr. Baltazari said. "So when I saw this cop flashing a wad in the Warwick

"How did you know he was a police officer?" Mr. Savarese interrupted.

"I can tell a cop, Mr. S.," Mr. Baltazari said, a bit smugly. "So I checked him out."

"How?"

"I happened to be with a lady," Mr. Baltazari said, just a little uneasily. "I had her do it for me."

"Can this lady be trusted?"

"She's a divorced lady, Mr. S. With a kid. She has a hard time making out on what they pay her at the phone company, so I help her out from time to time."

Mr. Savarese nodded, and Mr. Baltazari went on.

"She struck up a conversation with this guy, like I told her, and come back and told me he's a corporal, working at the airport, and that he just come home from Vegas, where he won a lot of money…"

"How much?"

"I don't know exactly, but he was talking about buying a Caddy, so I figure fifteen, twenty big ones, maybe a little more."

Mr. Savarese nodded his understanding again.

"So I figured this was one of those times when you have to do something right away, or forget it," Mr. Baltazari went on. "So I sent the lady back to the cop and told her to tell him she has an uncle who has a car lot who would give him a good deal."

"Is this police officer married?" Mr. Savarese asked.

"I don'tknow, Mr. S. He told Antoinette he's a bachelor."

"It would be better, if he was married," Mr. Savarese said.

"I'll find out for sure and let you know, Mr. S. Anyway, I figured if this wasn't such a hot idea, no harm. So I called Joe, and told him…"

"What you should have done, Ricco," Mr. Savarese said, "was call me and let me talk to Joe."

"I wasn't sure if you would have time to talk with me today, Mr.