The Assassin

NINETEEN

Penny started to go through the door of the Birch Suite into the corridor, but then stopped and looked around.

"If I had my druthers," she said, "we would just stay here for a while longer. Like forever."

"We've already had that discussion. What we're going to do is take one more look around Las Vegas East, and then we go back to Philadelphia."

"You still haven't told me what we're-whatyou're -looking for."

"I really don't know. I think this is a bum lead, but I want to be sure before I go back and say so."

"That doesn't make much sense," she said as she walked past him and out into the corridor.

Matt went to the desk, settled the bill, and then handed a bellman Penny's bag and five dollars and told him to bring the Mercedes to the door.

"I'll be out in a few minutes," he said. "I'm going to give you a chance to get a little of your money back."

From the uncomfortable smile on the desk clerk's face, Matt understood that making reference to the casino was not considered good form.

He glanced at his watch as they approached the casino door. It was quarter to two.

If it was nearly deserted at half past nine, I'll give you five to one that it will be me and the croupier again.

He was wrong. The room was not crowded, but there were gamblers at all but one of the tables.

He reached into his jacket and took out some of the hundred-dollar bills. He looked and counted. There were six.

"Here," he said, handing them to Penny.

She took the money, looked at it, and then at him, then shrugged.

"Is that the going rate?" she asked, "Or is that five hundred, plus a hundred tip?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ!"

"Sorry," she said, again sounding as if she meant it. She touched his arm, just above the elbow, and gently squeezed it. "Our new relationship is going to take some getting used to."

That, madam, qualifies as the understatement of the millennium.

She turned from him and walked directly to the blackjack table. He followed her and got there in time to watch her hand the money to the dealer.

"Quarters," she said.

This is not the first time she's done this.

He looked around the room, and then at the others at the blackjack table.

There are some people in here now who look like gamblers, as opposed to the Bible Study Group who was in here earlier. But where is it written that a gambler has to wear a two-tone coat and a pastel shirt open to his navel, like that clown at the end of the table? Or, for that matter, where is it written that a Mafioso cannot buy his clothes at Brooks Brothers and look like he went to Princeton?

He watched Penny gamble. She grew intense, to the point of pursing her lips. He had watched her apply lipstick in the room, after she had put on her underwear, before she had put her dress back on. It had been a curious mixture of innocence and eroticism. She had seen him watching her in the mirror and pursed her lips in a kiss.

She quickly lost most of her chips, and then as quickly began to increase the size of the two stacks before her, subconsciously making the stacks even as the game progressed.

She's good at this. Better than I am. I always lose my shirt playing blackjack.

She bumped her rear end against him, and when he looked down, she nodded her head toward her chips.

"Not only economical," she said. "But maybe even profitable."

"The evening is young," he said.

He saw that the clown in the pastel shirt at the end of the table was looking at him curiously.

You could be a mobster, my friend. The question is, have you made me as a cop?

"Nature calls, Penny," he said. "I'll be right back."

She nodded absently.

He glanced around the room, found the rest rooms sign, and walked to it. The men's room was empty. He relieved himself, and then looked at himself in the mirror.

You don't look like a cop. Hay-zus was right about that. On the other hand, you have achieved a certain fame, or infamy, for taking down Mr. Warren K. Fletcher, aka the Northwest serial rapist, and also by getting yourself shot, getting your picture in the newspapers and everything. Is that why El Mafioso has made you?

You don't know he's made you. He may just be wondering where a nice, clean-cut young man like you gets the money to play games in here. Or he may be wondering how he can get a good-looking blonde like the one you're playing with.

And why are you so sure that guy is wrong? He probably has a used car lot in Wilkes-Barre or someplace.

Matt turned from the men's room mirror and went back into the casino. He looked around the room again, but didn't see anyone who attracted his interest. The only guy who was at all interesting was the Mafioso Used Car Salesman at Penny's table.

Penny turned and smiled when she sensed he was again standing behind her.

"Whatever you were doing, do it again," she said. "Look!"

She now had four stacks of chips in front of her, each ten, eleven, maybe twelve chips high.

"You want to quit when you're ahead?"

"Can I have fifteen more minutes?"

"Sure."

A waitress appeared, in a regular uniform, not the short skirt and mesh stockings of Las Vegas, and asked if she could get them something to drink.

"Not for me, thank you," Penny said.

"Could I get some black coffee?" Matt asked.

When the waitress delivered the coffee, Matt felt the eyes of the Used Car Salesman Mafioso on him again, and this time met his glance. The man smiled at him.

Now what the hell does that mean? That he's made me? And is laughing at me? Or that he thinks maybe we went to elementary school together, but isn't sure?

Matt, just perceptibly, nodded his head.

His eyes dropped to the chips in front of his new friend. He was playing quarters too, but he wasn't having the luck Penny was. He was down to six chips, and he lost those in the next two hands.

He turned from the table and walked toward the cashier's window. A woman, a peroxide blonde with spectacular breastworks, trailed after him.

How come you didn't notice that before? You always react to bosoms such as those as if they were electromagnets. Matthew, my boy, you are sated, that is why. Or maybe because you have changed your criteria for magnificent breasts. After tonight, you will always define magnificent breasts as rather small, pink-tipped, and astonishingly firm.

"Time's up," Matt said to Penny. "Daddy has to go into the office early tomorrow."

"Okay," Penny said, without argument. She slid two quarter chips across the table to the dealer, and then scooped up the rest. There were so many she could barely hold them.

"He would have cashed those in for you."

"I wanted to carry them," Penny said. "To savor my triumph."

The Mafioso Used Car Salesman was leaning over the cashier's marble counter.

He's signing a-what do you call it?-an IOU? He needs more chips. He's been losing.

That bulge under his arm is a gun. In a shoulder holster. He is a Mafioso. Only Mafiosos and cops carry guns.

Christ, he's a cop! That's what's wrong with him!

The Mafioso/Cop slid the IOU, or whatever it was properly called, under the cashier's grill, and she slid a plastic tray full of quarter chips back out to him.

There were eight stacks of chips, each of ten chips, each chip worth twenty-five dollars. Matt did the math quickly in his head.

That tray is worth two thousand dollars! Cops can't afford that kind of gambling money. Bingo!

Vito Lanza turned from the cashier's window. The guy who looked familiar was standing behind him in line.

With the blonde who also looks familiar. And she's been doing a lot better than I have. Well, hell, maybe with her going, my luck will change, Vito thought.

"Don't I know you from somewhere, pal?" Vito asked the young guy.

"I don't think so."

"You look kind of familiar, you know?"

"I was thinking the same thing."

"You come here a lot?"

"Second time."

"Well…Vegas! You ever go to Vegas?"

"Yeah, sure."

"And you was there last week, right?" Vito asked triumphantly.

"Right."

"At the Flamingo, right?"

"Right again."

"And you flew back to Philadelphia on American, right? The both of you. In first class?"

"Right," Matt said. "So that's where it was. I knew I'd seen you somewhere."

"Well, how about that!" Vito said.

"How about that," Matt parroted.

"Small world, right?" Vito said. He handed the tray of chips to Tony, and put out his hand. "Vito Lanza. This is Tony."

"Matt Payne, this is Penny."

"Pleased to meet you," Tony said.

"Hi!" Penny said.

"How's your luck, Vito?" Matt asked.

"Aw, you know how it goes. Win a little, lose a little. The night' s young."

"That's what I keep telling him," Penny said, and walked between Vito and Tony to the cashier's window and dumped her chips on the cashier's counter.

"Well, see you around," Vito said.

"See you around."

In the Mercedes, Penny leaned over and stuffed bills into Matt's jacket pocket.

"You didn't have to do that," he said.

"Yes, I did. If you're going to buy me off, it's going to take a lot more than a lousy six hundred dollars. Besides, I've got twentytwo hundred more."

"My God, that much?"

"That much," she said. "Tonight, in more ways than one, has been my lucky night."

"I think we had better proceed very, very slowly," Matt said.

"I thought you would say something like that once you'd had your wicked way with me," Penny said. "That was him, wasn't it? Who you were looking for all the time?"

He looked at her in surprise, then nodded.

"You going to tell me about it?"

"No."

"Well, I'm glad I was able to be helpful," she said. She caught his hand, and moved it to her mouth, and kissed it.

The large, illuminated clock mounted on the Strawbridge amp; Clothier Department Store in Jenkintown showed quarter to five when Matt looked up at it from Penny's Mercedes.

That meant he would be at her place at five, or a few minutes after. He looked over at her, expecting to find her still curled up asleep.

She was not asleep. She was awake and had apparently been reading his mind again.

"I think we could make this little deception of ours more credible if I arrived home at, say, seven," she said. "We having left GiGi's at, say, five. What time do you have to be at work?"

"Eight."

"We could find an all-night diner, I suppose," Penny said. "Or we could go to your apartment. I've never been to your apartment."

"I've got to change clothes," Matt said. "And reclaim my car."

"Or we could go to your apartment," Penny repeated.

Where we are likely to find Evelyn circling the block, looking for her missing lover. That does not rank as one of the good ideas of all time.

"Is that an indecent proposal?"

"More like female curiosity," Penny said. "Would your delicate male ego be crushed if I told you that I have had enough romance for the next day or two?"

He chuckled.

She reached out her hand and rubbed her fingers across his cheek.

"Make that'physical romance'," she said. "You can hold my hand, if you want."

She moved her hand to his on the steering wheel and caught it and moved it to her chest.

That is a tender, as opposed to erotic, gesture.

"You need a shave," she said. "Are you going to take me to your apartment, Matthew?"

"I suppose that's best, even for someone whose delicate male ego has just been crushed flat."

"Women have the right to change their minds," she said cheerfully. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

She suddenly let go of his hand and sat up.

"I know. Look for an all-night grocery store. We'll get eggs and bacon, or maybe Taylor Ham, and coffee and orange juice, and I'l1 make us breakfast."

"You're hungry again?"

"I can't imagine why."

"It would be easier to find a diner."

"I want to make us breakfast!"

"It's tiny," Penny said. "Where did you ever find this place?"

The red light on the answering machine, surprising Matt not at all, was blinking.

"My father owns it," he said. "The kitchen is that place back there with all the white things."

He motioned her ahead of him, and then ducked and pulled the answering machine's plug out of its socket.

"Does it have a toilet?"

"Off the bedroom," he said, catching up with her and pointing.

He unpacked the groceries, setting them on the kitchen counter. Then he went to the refrigerator and threw away all the food he had purchased with the noble intention of making his own meals, and which was now spoiled.

She came back into the kitchen.

"Would it help your crushed ego to learn that I am very sore?"

"Jesus," he said. "I'm sorry."

She walked quickly to him and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"I'm not," she said. "Cheap at twice the price."

He put his hands on her shoulders, and then slid them down to her waist and pulled her against him. He ran the balls of his fingers along her spine and wondered why he found that so erotic.

After a moment, she pushed him away.

"Tarzan sit," Penny said. "Jane make food."

He went into the living room and put his pistol on the mantelpiece, and then sat down in his armchair. He looked at the dead answering machine.

And then he reached for the telephone, lifted it up, and consulted a typewritten list of telephone numbers.

Officer Jesus Martinez answered, sleepily, on the third ring.

"Martinez."

"This guy you're interested in: dark-skinned, maybe thirty, thirty-five, five-nine or…"

"Payne?" Jesus asked incredulously.

"…five-nine or ten. Maybe one-seventy. Wears his shirts unbuttoned to the navel?"

"What the hell?"

"You said his name is Lanzo, Lanza, something like that?"

"Lanza, Vito Lanza. What about him?"

"At two o'clock this morning, he was signing a two-thousand-dollar IOU in the back room at the Oaks and Pines Lodge," Matt said.

There was a long silence.

"Marker,"Martinez said, finally. "Not an IOU, a marker."

"I stand corrected."

"What were you doing up there?"

"Is this your guy, Hay-zus?"

"Yeah. I'm sure. How didyou know who he was?"

"He was carrying. I made him as a cop. And he made me…"

"Shit!"

"Not as a cop. I was in Las Vegas when he was. He recognized me from Vegas and spoke to me."

"You're sure he didn't make you as a cop?"

"As you're so fond of telling me, Hay-zus, I don't look like a cop."

There was another pause.

"Payne, keep this under your hat, will you?"

"Who would I tell? What would I tell? 'Inspector, I just happened to be in an illegal gambling joint, and you know what, I wasn't the only cop in there'?"

"Just keep it under your hat, Payne, okay?"

"Okay. Are you forgetting something, Hay-zus?"

"What?"

"Try, 'Thank you very much, Detective Payne.'"

"Thanks, Payne," Jesus said. "I'll get back to you."

He hung up.

Matt said, "You're welcome, Hay-zus," and put the phone back in its cradle. He pushed himself out of the chair and went into the kitchen.

Penny was at the stove, and there was the peculiar smell of frying Taylor Ham.

"One egg or two? Over light or sunny side up?"

"Two. Up. Have I got time for a shower?"

"A quick one."

When he came back into the kitchen, Penny was in the process of wiping up the last of her egg yolk with a piece of toast.

"Boy, for a fat girl, you sure don't eat much."

"Your eggs are probably cold, which serves you right. What is that I smell?"

"Some kind of after-shave that comes from the Virgin Islands or somewhere. I get a ritual bottle of it from Amy on suitable occasions."

"Nice," she said. "Who's 'Hay-zus'?"

"Martinez. A cop."

"You don't like him much, do you? I could tell from the tone of your voice."

"No, I don't suppose I do like him. He's a good cop, though."

"Are you a good cop?"

"You haven't been reading the newspapers. I'm a goddamned Dick Tracy."

"You almost got killed, didn't you?"

"Yes, I guess I did."

"You know I don't understand you being a cop at all, don't you?"

"There's a good deal about you I don't understand, either."

"Was that a simple statement of fact, or are we back to Tony? And other things?"

"Are we going to fight now? Are things back to normal?"

"I don't know if we're going to fight or not, but I don't think things are ever going to be the same between us." She paused. "Do you?"

"No. How could they be?"

"If you can keep your lust under control, you can kiss me, Matthew."

He leaned across the table and kissed her lightly on the lips.

"I like kissing you better than fighting with you," Penny said. " Let's try that for a while and see what happens."

Peter Wohl, lying in his bed, had just decided that his delicate condition, the session with Larkin, Washington, Malone, and John Barleycorn having lasted until after ten, indicated a couple of soft boiled eggs on toast, rather than a restaurant breakfast, when his door buzzer sounded.

Who the hell is that, at quarter to seven?

He got out of bed, put on a bathrobe, and walked barefoot to the door.

"Hello, Hay-zus," he said. "How are you? Come on in."

What the hell do you want? That you couldn't have said on the telephone?

"I brought this back," Martinez said, thrusting the loose-leaf notebook with BUREAU OF NARCOTICS AND DANGEROUS DRUGS Investigator's Manual FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY stamped on its cover at Wohl.

At seven o 'clock in the goddamned morning?

"Thank you," Wohl said.

"And I wanted to talk to you," Martinez said a little uncomfortably. "I thought it would be better if I came. Instead of calling, I mean."

"Absolutely. Do you know how to make coffee?"

"Yes, sir."

"You make the coffee, then, while I catch a quick shower," Wohl said, and pointed toward his kitchen.

"Yes, sir."

"What's on your mind, Hay-zus?" Wohl asked, walking into the kitchen buttoning the cuff of his shirt.

"Inspector, the last time I was here: sir, you asked me if I had a gut feeling about anybody, anybody dirty, I mean, and I told you I didn't."

And now you 're going to tell me, right?

"I remember."

"I did, but I didn't want to say anything."

"I understand. What's your gut feeling, Hay-zus?"

'There's a corporal out there, name of Vito Lanza."

"And you think he's dirty? Why?"

"He just came back from Las Vegas with a lot of money. Enough to buy a new Cadillac."

"Your pal Matt Payne was just in Vegas and did about the same thing."

"Payne's different. Payne's got money. He can afford that kind of money to gamble."

"Is that all you've got to go on, Hay-zus?"

"The day before yesterday, this Lanza had a lot of money, in cash, ninety-four hundred dollars, in his glove compartment."

Maybe he is onto something. That's a lot of money. Christ knows, I never had ninety-four hundred dollars in cash. But then I never gambled in Las Vegas, either. And how the hell does he know that?

"How do you know that?"

Martinez's face flushed.

The reason he knows that is that he went into this guy's car. My God!

"Forget I asked that question. That way you won't have to lie to me," Wohl said. "Anything else?"

"There was also a matchbook from a place in the Poconos, called the Oaks and Pines Lodge," Martinez said. "I called a guy I know in Vice and asked him about it, and he said they gamble in the back room of that place."

"Fortunately, that's no concern of ours, our jurisdiction ending as it does at the city line."

Why did you do that? This guy is trying, and sarcasm is not in order.

"At two o'clock this morning, Lanza signed a marker for two thousand dollars at this place."

"How do you know that? What did you do, for Christ's sake, follow him?"

"No, sir. But I got it from a good source."

"You're supposed to be undercover, Martinez. That means you don't talk to people about what you're doing. Who's your source?"

"I don't want to get him in trouble, Inspector."

"Cut the crap, Martinez. Who's your source?"

"Well, I knew I never could get in this place. And even if I did, Lanza would recognize me. I had to find out."

"Once again, Martinez, cut the crap. Let's have it."

"Payne went up there, Inspector."

"You asked Payne to follow this guy?" Wohl asked incredulously.

"I asked him if he would, if I found out Lanza was going up there."

"And you heard he was going up there?"

"No. Payne went up there on his own. Last night. And he called me about five this morning and told me he saw Lanza sign a marker for two thousand dollars."

"How did he know who Lanza was?"

"He was carrying, and Payne made him as a cop, and then Lanza recognized Payne…"

"Lanza made Payne?"

"Not as a cop. He recognized him from Las Vegas, or something like that. But Payne said he was sure Lanza did not make him as a cop."

I don't need this. A bonafide lunatic is trying to disintegrate the Vice President of the United States, and we have no idea who he is or where he is, and I don't need to be distracted by a possibly dirty cop at the airport, or another proof that Matt Payne has a dangerous tendency to charge off doing something stupid.

"What we have here is a lucky gambler. The only law we know he's broken is to gamble in the Poconos. We wouldn't have a police department if every cop who gambles got fired."

"This guy is dirty, Inspector. I know it," Martinez said.

On the other hand we have here a guy who gambles big time in Las Vegas, had almost ten thousand dollars in cash in his glove compartment yesterday, and yet was signing a marker for two thousand in a joint in the Poconos. Which means, unless he used the ten thousand to pay off his mortgage or something, that he lost it, and signed a marker for more. The money bothers me. Cops do not have that kind of money. Honest cops don't.

And Martinez is not Matt Payne. He had two years undercover in Narcotics, and was damned good at it. He's had the time to develop the intuition. And he's not going off half-cocked, either, strictly on intuition. The last time he was here, he wouldn't give me this guy's name.

Wohl got up from the table and went into his bedroom. He took a small notebook from his bedside table, looked up a number, and dialed it.

"Chief Marchessi, this is Peter Wohl. Sorry to disturb you at home, sir. I think our man has come up with something. Have you got time in your schedule this morning to talk to us, sir?"

There was a pause.

"Thank you, Chief. We'll be there."

He hung up and went back in the kitchen.

"At half past eight, Hay-zus, we're going to see Chief Inspector Marchessi at Internal Affairs. You know where it is?"

"Yes, sir. At Third and Race."

"Be there."

"Yes, sir."

When Martinez had gone, Wohl went to the phone on the coffee table in his living room and dialed another number, this one from memory.

There was no answer on Detective Payne's line, and his answering machine did not kick in, although Wohl let it ring a long time.

Finally, he hung up and looked at his watch.

Christ, 1 won't get any breakfast at all!

At ten minutes past seven, Matt Payne very nearly drove Miss Penelope Detweiler's Mercedes into the wrought-iron gate of the Detweiler estate in Chestnut Hill.

He stopped so suddenly that Penny was thrown against the dashboard.

"When the hell did you start closing the goddamned gate?"

"No, I don't think I'm hurt, but thank you for asking, darling."

"Sorry. Are you all right?"

"I'm going to be sore all over," Penny said innocently. "If it's not one thing, it's another. Whatever am I going to do about you, Matthew darling?"

"What's with the gate?"

"There's some kind of a machine on it. It closes automatically at ten, something like that, and then opens automatically when it gets light in the morning."

"Not this morning."

He got out of the car and went to a telephone box and lifted a telephone receiver. It rang automatically.

"May I help you?" a voice said.

"Princess Penelope seeks entrance to the castle," Matt said.

"Yes, sir," the voice, which Matt now recognized as that of Jensen, the chauffeur, said. He did not seem amused.

The right half of the double gates creaked majestically open.

"I'll tell you something else that gate does," Matt said as he drove through it. "It permits your parents to know when your boyfriends bring you home."

"Don't be silly," she said.

H. Richard Detweiler, in a quilted silk dressing gown, came out of the front door as Matt drove up, holding a cup of coffee.

"He doesn't do that too well, does he?" Penny said.

"Do what?"

"Manage to look like he just happened to be there?"

Matt drove right past Detweiler, waving cheerfully at him, and around to the garage. His Volkswagen was parked to one side.

"You lie to your father," Matt said. "I'm getting out of here."

"You're underestimating him. I'll bet there's no keys in your Bug."

There were not.

It was necessary to walk back to the house, where Penny gave an entirely credible, but wholly false, report of GiGi's party, and why they had decided to stay over and come back first thing in the morning.

Matt was at first amused. Then it occurred to him that if Penny could lie that easily to her father, she could lie as easily to someone else, say M. Payne, Esq., and it no longer seemed amusing.

And then he realized that H. Richard Detweiler didn't believe a word Penny had told him.

He has no idea where we really were, but he knows damned well we were not at GiGi's. So why isn't he mad? Aren't fathers supposed to be furious when young men screw their daughters?

As a general rule of thumb, yes. But not when the young gentleman is an old, dear, and more importantly, responsible friend of the family, and the young lady in question has previously been involved in things that make a night between the sheets seem quite innocent, indeed.

"I really have to go."

"I'll have Jensen bring your car around," Detweiler said.

"Just get me the keys, please, I can get it myself."

"Thank you for a lovely evening, Matt," Penny said. "Ask me again, soon."

When she was sure her father's back was turned, she winked lewdly at him.

At two minutes before eight, Matt Payne pushed open the door to the Special Investigations Section. Two sergeants were waiting for him.

"Payne," Sergeant Maxwell Henkels said, "I told you once before. This is the second time, I'm not going to tell you again. I want to know where you are located all the time."

Somebody, obviously, has been looking for me.

"I wasn't aware that applied when I'm off duty," Matt said.

"Yeah, well, now you do. You understand me, I'm not going to tell you again?"

"I understand, Sergeant."

"Payne," Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd said uncomfortably, a strange smile on his face. "You have thirty-one minutes to meet Inspector Wohl at Chief Marchessi's office in Internal Affairs."

"What?"

"What are you, deaf or what?" Sergeant Maxwell Henkels demanded.

"I'll handle this, Sergeant," O'Dowd said. "And to make things easier for everybody concerned, I'll keep track of Detective Payne's whereabouts. Will that be all right with you?"

"The inspector asked me where he was, and I felt like an asshole when I didn't know."

"Well, that won't happen again. Payne will keep me advised of his location, on and off duty, won't you, Payne?"

"Right."

Henkels left the office.

"You'd better get moving, Payne," O'Dowd said. "With the early morning traffic, you're going to have to push it."

"Do you know what this is all about?"

"No. But right now, you're not one of his favorite people. He made that pretty clear."

Matt tried to figure that out, but came up with nothing.

"I guess nothing happened overnight? About the lunatic?"

"Not a thing."

"Well, Sergeant," Matt said. "You know where I'll be."

Jerry O'Dowd nodded.