The Assassin

7UP.

"I'm okay. Thanks."

Matt crossed the room to the bar and picked up three bottles of Ortlieb's beer and a bottle of 7UP and returned to the table.

When he passed the 7UP to Jesus, Martinez snapped, "I told you I was okay."

"I'm the last of the big spenders, all right?" Matt countered, and then his annoyance overwhelmed him. "Drink it. Maybe it'll help you grow."

Martinez was instantly to his feet.

"I'm big enough to whip your ass anytime, hotshot."

"Don't fuck with me, Martinez, I've had a bad day."

"Shut up, Hay-zus," Charley said. "Shut up and sit down."

"Fuck him!" Martinez snarled. "Fucking hotshot!"

"Hey!" an authoritative voice called from somewhere in the large, dark, low-ceilinged room. "Watch the goddamned language. There's ladies in here, for Christ's sake."

Martinez turned on his heel and went quickly out the door. Matt could hear his shoes on the concrete stairs. They made a sort of metallic ringing sound.

"What was that all about?" Matthews asked.

"You shouldn't have made that crack about him growing, Matt," Charley said.

"All he had to do was say 'thank you' for the goddamn 7UP. Or say nothing. He didn't have to bite my ass. I don't have to put up with his shit. Or yours, either."

"Oh, boy," Matthews said. "I'm going to get to see a real barroom brawl."

"He never liked you for openers," Charley said, "and then you passed the exam, and he didn't."

"What am I supposed to do, apologize for passing the exam?"

"Just show a little consideration for his feelings is all," Charley said, almost plaintively.

Matt laughed and sat down.

"What's so funny?"

"Let it go, Charley," Matthews said.

"I want to know what he thinks is so funny!"

"Drink your beer, Charley," Matthews said.

"Jesus," Charley said, and sat down.

"I want to say something to you, Charley," Matt said.

"Yeah?" McFadden asked suspiciously. "What would that be?"

"I don't want you telling Mary, if she comes in here and finds you lying on the floor, that I held you down and poured booze down your throat."

McFadden glowered at him for a moment and then said, "Fuck you, Matt."

There was affection in his voice.

"And so what's new with you, Detective Payne?" Matthews asked. " Aside from you going back to Special Operations, I mean?"

"That upset Hay-zus too," Charley interrupted. "When he heard that you're going back out there. Sort of rubbing it in his face. With him flunking the exam."

"Loyalty, thy name is McFadden," Matt said.

"Something wrong with that?"

"Not a thing, pal. I admire it," Matt said, and then turned to Matthews. "How about the FBI? Arrested anybody interesting lately?"

"No, but I'm hot on the trail of a big-time gambler. Was he pulling my leg, or did you really win six thousand bucks out there?"

"Sixty-seven hundred, he tells you, in the interests of accuracy."

"And what if you had lost?"

"I was going to quit when I lost a hundred," Matt said. "But I didn't lose it."

"You went out there to bring the Detweiler girl home?"

"Right."

"How is she?"

"I don't know," Matt said. "She seems perfectly normal. As normal as she ever was."

The question and his response made him uncomfortable. He stood up.

"I need another beer."

He was surprised when Jack Matthews showed up at his elbow while he was waiting for his turn with the bartender.

"My turn to buy," Jack said.

He wants something. How do I know that?

"I thought you would never say that," Matt replied.

Matthews took money from his pocket.

"I understand Special Operations now runs Dignitary Protection," he said.,

"I don't know. I haven't reported in yet. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I've been assigned to liaise between the Bureau and the Secret Service for the Vice President's visit."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, for example, when the Secret Service big shot arrives at 30^th Street Station from Washington tomorrow morning, I will be a member of the official welcoming party."

"You get to carry his bags? Boy, you are moving up in the FBI, aren't you?"

Why am I unwilling to tell him,"Whoopee, what a coincidence, me too!"

"Screw you, Matt," Matthews said, chuckling. "Look, if you can find out who's going to run this for the Police Department, it would be helpful to me. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure, Jack. I'll ask around."

At quarter to seven the next morning, half an hour early, Officer Tom O'Mara pulled Staff Inspector Peter Wohl's unmarked car to the curb in front of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building.

And then he didn't know what to do. It was an office building, and it was Sunday, and it was closed. Detective Payne had told him he lived on the top floor. That was a little strange to begin with. Who lived in an office building?

He got out of the car and walked to the plate-glass door and looked in. There was a deserted lobby, with a polishing machine next to a receptionist's desk, and nothing else. O'Mara walked to the edge of the sidewalk and looked up. He couldn't see anything. But then when he glanced back at the building, he saw a doorbell, mounted on the bricks next to the door where you could hardly see it.

He went to it and pushed it. He couldn't hear anything ringing. He decided the only thing he could do was just wait. He went to the car and leaned on the fender.

A minute or so later, a Holmes Service rent-a-cop appeared in the lobby and looked out curiously. O'Mara walked to the door as the renta-cop unlocked it.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm a police officer," O'Mara said.

"I never would have guessed," the rent-a-cop said, and then when he saw the look on O'Mara's face added, "I retired in 1965 out of the Third District."

"Does a detective named Payne live here?"

The rent-a-cop motioned him into the building and pointed at an elevator.

"Take a ride to the third floor. Payne lives up there. You'll see a doorway with an intercom."

"Thank you."

Matt Payne, obviously fresh from a shower, was buttoning his shirt when O'Mara climbed the flight of stairs from the third floor.

"I decided making coffee would be a waste of effort, sorry," he said.

"Nice apartment," O'Mara said.

"If you're a midget," Payne said. "Give me a minute to get my pants on."

"I'm early."

"You get the worm, then," Payne said as he walked to the rear of the apartment.

O'Mara looked around the apartment. There was an oil painting of a naked lady mounted to the bricks of the fireplace.

It would be nice, Officer O'Mara thought, to have a place like this to bring a girl to. He had thought of getting an apartment, but every time he brought the subject up, his mother had a fit. There would be enough time to get his own apartment later, when he was married. The thing he had to do now was learn to save his money, and renting an apartment when there was a perfectly good room for him to use at home would be like throwing money down the toilet.

He wondered if Payne brought the Detweiler girl here. She seemed to be a nice girl, even after what he'd heard about her being on drugs.

"I like your picture," O'Mara said. "The inspector's got one like it."

"Yeah, I know," Payne said. "Mrs. Washington gave me that one."

"Sergeant Washington's wife?"

"Yeah," Payne said, walking to the fireplace mantel and picking up his Chief's Special snub-nosed revolver and slipping it into a holster that fit inside his waistband.

"Is it hard to get through the qualification?" O'Mara asked.

"What?"

O'Mara pushed his coat aside to reveal his standard-issue Smith amp; Wesson Military and Police revolver, which had a six-inch barrel and was time and a half as large as the snubnose.

In order to carry anything but the issue revolver, it was necessary to go through a test-"the qualification"-at the range at the Police Academy.

"The Range guys make a big deal of it," Payne said. "It helps if you know one of them."

"I got a cousin works out there," O'Mara said.

"Then talk to him," Payne said as he shrugged into his jacket. " Where are you parked?"

"Out in front."

"I should have told you to come around the back, there's a garage in the basement. Sorry."

"No problem."

"How'd you get in?"

"I rang the doorbell. A rent-a-cop let me in."

"The guy who usually works the building on Sundays is a retired cop," Matt said.

"He told me."

The telephone rang.

O'Mara saw that Payne was reluctant to answer it, that he was really making up his mind whether or not he would, and he wondered what that was all about. Finally, Payne shrugged and picked it up.

"Hello."

"You sound grumpy," Evelyn said. "Did I wake you up?"

"Hi. No. As a matter of fact, I was just about to walk out the door." There was a silence, and then Matt added: "Hey, I mean that. I' ve got to work. Women work from sun to sun, a policeman's work is never done."

"I was going to ask you to dinner. Is that out of the question?"

"I'll have to call you. I don't know how long this will take."

"How long what will take? Or is it bad form to ask?"

"I've got to pick up a VIP at 30^th Street Station and drive him to see my boss."

"Oh."

"I may be through at ten, ten-thirty, and I may not be through until five or six."

"Matt, it would be kinder, if you'd rather break this off, for you to come out and say so."

"There is nothing I would rather do than come out there right now," Matt said. "Don't be silly."

"You mean that, or you're being polite?"

"Of course, I mean it."

"Will you call me, please, when you know something?"

"As soon as I find out."

"I bought steaks yesterday," Evelyn said. "I thought you'd like a steak."

Then she hung up.

You bought steaks, and then you went home and started calling me, apparently every half hour. Jesus!

Why the hell didn't you take the out she gave you?

He put the handset in its cradle, and turned away from the table. The phone rang again.

Jesus, now what does she want?

"Hello."

"I just wanted to make sure you were out of bed," Peter Wohl said. "O'Mara should be there any minute."

"He's here now. We were just about to leave."

"No suggestion that either one of you is unreliable," Wohl said. " But things happen, and I didn't want the Secret Service standing around 30^th Street feeling unloved."

"You want me to kiss him when he gets off the train?"

"That would be nice," Wohl said, and hung up.

Matt hung up again and looked at O'Mara.

"That was the boss. He wanted to be sure I was out of bed."

There are those that feel that Philadelphia's 30^th Street Station is one of the world's most attractive railroad stations. It was built before World War II when the Pennsylvania Railroad was growing richer by the day, and the airplane was regarded as a novelty, not a threat for passenger business. And even after the airplane had killed the long-distance railroad passenger business in other areas, along the New York-Washington corridor, going by train remained quicker and more convenient.

There were a lot of people going in and out of the doors at the west exit of 30^th Street Station when Tom O'Mara pulled up in a NO