The Assassin

FIVE

"Mayor Carlucci's residence," Violetta Forchetti said, clearly but with a distinct Neapolitan accent when she picked up the telephone.

Violetta was thirty-five but looked older. She was slight of build, and somewhat sharp-faced. She had come to the United States from Naples seventeen years before to marry Salvatore Forchetti, who was twenty-five and had himself immigrated four years previously.

There had just been time for them to get married, and for Violetta to become with child when, crossing 9^th and Mifflin Streets in South Philadelphia, they were both struck by a hit-and-run driver. Salvatore died instantly, and Violetta, who lost the child, had spent four months in St. Agnes's Hospital.

The then commander of the 6^th District of the Philadelphia Police Department, Captain Jerry Carlucci, had taken the incident personally. He was himself of Neapolitan heritage, had known Sal, who had found work as a butcher, and been a guest at their wedding.

He had suggested to his wife that it might be a nice thing for her to go to St. Agnes's Hospital, see what the poor woman needed, and tell her she had his word that he would find the hit-and-run driver and see that he got what was coming to him.

Angeline Carlucci, who looked something like Violetta Forchetti, returned from the hospital and told him things were even worse than they looked. Violetta's parents were dead. The relatives who had arranged for her to come to America and marry Salvatore didn't want her back in Naples. She was penniless, a widow in a strange country.

When Violetta got out of the hospital, she moved in temporarily with Captain and Mrs. Carlucci, Jerry's idea being that when he caught the sonofabitch who had run them down, he would get enough money out of the bastard's insurance company to take care of Violetta, to make her look like a desirable wife to some other hard-working young man.

They never found the sonofabitch who had been driving the car. So when Jerry and Angeline, right after he'd made inspector, moved out of their house on South Rosewood Street in South Philly to the new house (actually it was thirty years old) on Crefield Street, Violetta went with them. She was good with the kids, the kids loved her, and Angeline needed a little help around the house.

A number of young, hard-working, respectable men were introduced to Violetta, but she just wasn't interested in any of them. She had found her place in life, working for the Carluccis, almost a member of the family.

When, as police commissioner, Jerry bought the big house in Chestnut Hill, and did it over, they turned three rooms in the attic into an apartment for Violetta, and she just about took over running the place, the things that Angeline no longer had the time to do herself.

It was said, and it was probably true, that Violetta would kill for the Carlucci family. It was true that Violetta did a better job of working the mayor's phone than any secretary he'd ever had in the Roundhouse or City Hall. When she handed him the phone, he knew that it was somebody he should talk to, not some nut or ding-a-ling.

"Matt Lowenstein, Violetta," the caller said. "How are you?"

"Just a minute, Chief," Violetta said. Chief Inspector Lowenstein was one of the very few people who got to talk to the mayor whenever he called, even in the middle of the night, when she had to put her robe on and go downstairs and wake him up.

The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, who was fifty-one years old and had an almost massive body and dark brown hair and eyes, was wearing an apron with CHIEF COOK painted on it when Violetta went into the kitchen of the Chestnut Hill mansion. He was in the act of examining with great interest one of two chicken halves he had been marinating for the past two hours, and which, when he had concluded they had been soaked enough, he planned to broil on a charcoal stove for himself and Angeline.

"Excellence, it is Chief Lowenstein," Violetta said.

Violetta had firm Italianate ideas about the social structure of the world. Jerry had never been able to get her to call him "Mister." It had at first been "Captain," which was obviously more prestigious than "Mister," then "Inspector" as he had worked his way up the hierarchy from staff inspector through inspector to chief inspector, and then "Excellence" from the time he'd been made a deputy commissioner.

He joked with Angeline that Violetta had run out of titles with " Excellence." There were only two more prestigious: "Your Majesty" and "Your Holiness," plus maybe "Your Grace," none of which, obviously, fit.

"Grazie,"he said and went to the wall-mounted telephone by the door.

"How's my favorite Hebrew?" the mayor said.

He and Matt Lowenstein went way back. And he was fully aware that behind his back, Matt Lowenstein referred to him as "The Dago."

"The package from Las Vegas, Mr. Mayor, arrived safely at the airport, and two minutes ago passed through the gates in Chestnut Hill."

"No press?"

"Ardell-Paul Ardell, the Airport lieutenant?-"

"I know who he is."

"He said he didn't see any press. We probably attracted more attention taking her off the plane that way than if we' d just let Payne walk her through the terminal."

"Yeah, maybe. But this way, Matt, we did Detweiler a favor. And if Payne had walked her into the airport and there had been a dozen assholes from the TV and the newspapers…"

"You're right, of course."

"I'm always right, you should remember that."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor."

"You free for lunch tomorrow?"

That'scant, Matt Lowenstein thought, having recently discovered that cant without the apostrophe meant that what was said was deceitful or hypocritical.What Jerry Carlucci was really saying was, " If you had something you wanted to do for lunch tomorrow, forget it."

"Yeah, sure."

"Probably the Union League at twelve-thirty. If there's a change, I'll have my driver call yours."

"Okay. Anything special?"

"Czernick called an hour or so ago," the mayor said. "The Secret Service told him what I already knew. The Vice President's going to honor Philadelphia with his presence."

Taddeus Czernick was police commissioner of the City of Philadelphia.

"It was in the papers."

"Maybe Czernick's driver was too busy to read the papers to him," the mayor said.

Jerry Carlucci was not saying unkind things behind Commissioner Czernick's back. He regularly got that sort of abuse in person. Matt Lowenstein had long ago decided that Carlucci not only really did not like Czernick, but held him in a great deal of contempt.

But Lowenstein had also long ago figured out that Czernick would probably be around as commissioner as long as Carlucci was the mayor. His loyalty to Carlucci was unquestioned, almost certainly because he very much liked being the police commissioner, and was very much aware that he served at Carlucci's pleasure.

"Half past twelve at the Union League," Lowenstein said. "I'll look forward to it."

Carlucci laughed.

"Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Matt," he said, and then added, "I just had an idea about Payne too."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm still thinking about it. I'll tell you, tomorrow. You callWhatsisname?-At the airport?"

"Paul Ardell?"

"Yeah, right. And tell him I said thanks for a job well done."

"Yes, sir."

"Good night, Matt. Thank you."

"Good night, Mr. Mayor."

Marion Claude Wheatley made pork chops, green beans, apple sauce, and mashed potatoes for his supper. He liked to cook, was good at it, and when he made his own supper not only was it almost certainly going to be better than what he could get at one of the neighborhood restaurants, but it spared him both having to eat alone in public and from anything unpleasant that might happen on the way home from the restaurant.

Marion lived in the house in which he had grown up, in the 5000 block of Beaumont Street, just a few blocks off Baltimore Avenue and not far from the 49^th Street Station. There was no point in pretending that the neighborhood was not deteriorating, but that didn' t mean his house was deteriorating. He took a justifiable pride in knowing that he was just as conscientious about taking care of the house as his father had been.

If something needed painting, it got painted. If one of the faucets started dripping, he went to the workshop in the basement and got the proper tools and parts and fixed it.

About the only difference in the house between now and when Mom and Dad had been alive was the burglar bars and the burglar alarm system. Marion had had to have a contractor install the burglar bars, which were actually rather attractive, he thought, wrought iron. The burglar alarm system he had installed himself.

Marion had been taught about electrical circuits in the Army. He could almost certainly have avoided service by staying in college, but that would have been dishonorable. His father had served in World War II as a major with the 28^th Division. He would have been shamed if his son had avoided service when his country called upon him.

He had taken Basic Training at Fort Dix, and then gone to Fort Riley for Officer Candidate School, and been commissioned into the Ordnance Corps. He had been trained as an ammunition supply officer, and then they had asked him if he would be interested in volunteering to become an Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer before he went to Vietnam. Marion hadn't even known what that meant when they asked him. They told him that EOD officers commanded small detachments of specialists who were charged with disposing of enemy and our own ordnance, which he understood to mean artillery and mortar shells, primarily, which had been fired but which for some reason hadn't exploded when they landed.

Sometimes shells and rockets could be disarmed, which meant that their detonating mechanisms were rendered inoperative, but sometimes that wasn't possible, and the explosive ordnance had to be "blown in place."

That meant that Explosive Ordnance Disposal people had to be trained in explosives, even though, as an officer, he wouldn't be expected to do the work himself, but instead would supervise the enlisted specialists.

That training had included quite a bit about electrical circuits, about which Marion had previously known absolutely nothing.

But what he had learned in the Army was more than enough for him to easily install the burglar alarm. Actually, it was plural. Alarms. There was one system that detected intrusion of the house on the first floor. If the alarm system was active, and any window, or outside door, on the first floor was opened, that set off one warning buzzer and a light on the control panel Marion had set up in what had been Mom and Dad's bedroom, but was now his.

The second system did the same thing for windows on the second floor and the two dormer windows in the attic. The third system protected the powder magazine only. The powder magazine was in the basement. It had originally been a larder where Mom had stored tomatoes mostly, but beans too, and chow-chow and things like that. Marion liked cooking, but he wasn't about to start canning things the way Mom had. It wasn't worth it.

The first time he had put something in the powder magazine, it was still a larder. That was when he had come from Vietnam on emergency leave when Mom had gotten so sick. At the time, he had wondered why it was so important that he knew he had to bring twenty-seven pounds ofCzechoslovakiaplastique and two dozen detonators home with him. Now, of course, he knew. It was all part of God's plan.

If God hadn't wanted him to bring theplastique home, then when the MPs at Tan Son Nhut had randomly inspected outbound transient luggage, they would have selected his to inspect, and taken it away from him.

Marion hadn't then yet learned that when something odd or out of the ordinary happens, that he didn't have to worry about it, because it was invariably God's plan, and sooner or later, he would come to understand what the Lord had had in mind.

When he'd come home, Mom was already in University Hospital, but there was a colored lady taking care of the house, and he didn't want her hurting herself in any way, so he had put theplastique and the detonators in the larder and put a padlock on the door.

God had put off taking Mom into Heaven until they had had a chance to say good-bye, but not much more than that. He had been home seventy-two hours when the Lord called her home. And then he'd had those embarrassing weeping sessions whenever he thought of Mom or Dad or all the kids (he thought of them as kids, although they weren't much younger than he was) who'd fouled up, or been unlucky and been disintegrated, and they hadn't sent him back to Vietnam, but instead to Fort Eustis, Virginia, as an instructor in demolitions to young officers in the Engineer Basic Officer School.

They used mostly Composition C-4 at Eustis, which wasn't as good as the Czechoslovakianplastique the Viet Cong used, and sometimes just ordinary dynamite, and when he was setting up the demonstrations, he often slipped a little Composition C-4, or a stick of dynamite, or a length of primer cord, in his field jacket pocket and then brought it to Philadelphia and put it in the larder when he came home on weekends.

God, of course, had been making him do that, even though at the time he hadn't understood it.

One of the first things he did when he was released from active duty was to turn the larder into a proper powder magazine. This meant not only reinforcing the door with steel bars and installing some really good locks, but also installing a small exhaust fan for ventilation that turned on automatically for five minutes every hour, and, after a good deal of experimentation and consulting a humidity gauge, one 100-watt and one 40-watt bulb that burned all the time and kept the humidity down below twenty percent.

After Marion had his supper, he put the leftover green beans in the refrigerator, and the leftover mashed potatoes and the pork chop bones in the garbage, and then washed his dishes.

He then went to watch the CBS Evening News, to see if there would be anything on it about the Vice President coming to Philadelphia. There was not, but it had been in the newspapers, and therefore it was true.

He turned the television off, and then went down the stairs to the cellar. He took the keys to the powder magazine from their hiding place, on top of the second from the left rafter, and unlocked the door.

Everything seemed to be in good shape. The humidity gauge said there was twelve percent humidity and that it was fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit in the magazines. That was well within the recommended parameters for humidity and temperature. He carefully locked the door again, put the keys back in their hiding place, and went back upstairs and turned the television back on.

Maybe he would be lucky, and there would be a decent program for him to watch. Everything these days seemed to be what they called T amp;A. For Teats and Ass. He thought that was a funny phrase. He knew the T amp;A offended God, but he thought that God would not be offended because he thought T amp;A was funny. He had learned words like that in the Army, and he wouldn't have been in the Army if God hadn't wanted him to be.

Vito Lanza went back to his room and emptied his pockets, tossing everything on the bed. Everything included the wad of bills he had left over after he'd had the Flamingo cashier give him a check for most of the money he'd won. There was almost five hundred dollars, two hundreds, two fifties, and a bunch of twenties and tens, plus some singles.

It sure looked good.

He unpacked his luggage, dividing the clothing into two piles, the underwear and socks and shirts his mother would wash, and the good shirts and trousers and jackets that would have to go to the dry cleaners.

The money looked good. He collected it all together and made a little wad of it, with the hundreds outside, and stuck them in his pocket.

The one goddamned thing I don't want to do is stick around here and have Ma give me that crap about not understanding why I have to go somewhere to relax.

He made a bundle of the clothing that had to go to the dry cleaners, and then picked up one of the jackets on the bed and put that on. He went to the upper right-hand drawer of the dresser and took out his Colt snubnose, and his badge and photo ID. From the drawer underneath, he took out a clip holster and six.38 Special cartridges. He loaded the Colt, put it in the holster, and then clipped the holster to his belt.

"You just got home," his mother said when he went out of the house, "where are you going?"

"To the dry cleaners, and then I got some stuff to do."

He decided to walk. He had found a place to park the goddamned Buick, and if he took it now, sure as Christ made little apples, there would be no parking place for blocks when he came back.

Vito dropped the clothes off at the Martinizer place on South Broad Street and then headed for Terry's Bar amp; Grill. Then he changed his mind. He wasn't in the mood for Terry's. It was a neighborhood joint, and Vito was still in a Flamingo Hotel amp; Casino mood.

He stepped off the curb and looked down South Broad in the direction of the navy yard until he could flag a cab. He got in and told the driver to take him to the Warwick Hotel. There was usually some gash in the nightclub in the Warwick, provided you had the moneyand he did-to spring for expensive drinks.

The cab dropped him off at the Warwick right outside the bar. The hotel bar is on the right side of the building, off the lobby. The nightclub is a large area on the left side of the building, past the desk and the drugstore. Vito decided he would check out the hotel bar, maybe there would be something interesting in there, and then go to the nightclub.

He found a seat at the bar, ordered a Johnnie Walker on the rocks, and laid one of the fifty-dollar bills on the bar to pay for it.

Francesco Guttermo, who was seated at a small table near the door to the street in the Warwick Bar, leaned forward in his chair, then motioned for Ricco Baltazari to move his head closer, so that others would not hear what he had to say.

"The guy what just come in, at the end of the bar, he's got a gun," Mr. Guttermo, who was known as "Frankie the Gut," said. The appellation had been his since high school, when even then he had been portly with a large stomach.

Mr. Baltazari, who was listed in the records of the City of Philadelphia as the owner of Ristorante Alfredo, one of Center City's best Italian restaurants (northern Italian cuisine, no spaghetti with marinara sauce or crap like that), was expensively and rather tastefully dressed. He nodded his head to signify that he had understood what Frankie the Gut had said, and then relaxed back into his chair, taking the opportunity to let his hand graze across the knee of the young woman beside him.

She was a rather spectacularly bosomed blonde, whose name was Antoinette, but who preferred to be called "Tony." She slapped his hand, but didn't seem to be offended.

After a moment Mr. Baltazari turned his head just far enough to be able to look at the man with the gun, his backside and, in the bar's mirror, his face.

Then he leaned forward again toward Mr. Guttermo, who moved to meet him.

"He's probably a cop," Mr. Baltazari said.

"He paid for the drink with a fifty from a wad," Mr. Guttermo said.

"Maybe he hit his number," Mr. Baltazari said with a smile. "Maybe that's your fifty he's blowing."

It was generally believed by, among others, the Intelligence Unit and the Chief Inspector's Vice Squad of the Philadelphia Police Department that Mr. Guttermo, who had no other visible means of support, was engaged in the operation of a Numbers Book.

"You don't think he's interested in us?" Frankie the Gut asked.

"We're not doing anything wrong," Mr. Baltazari said. "Why should he be interested in us? You're a worrier, Frankie."

"You say so," Frankie the Gut replied.

"All we're doing is having a couple of drinks, right, Tony?" Mr. Baltazari said, touching her knee again.

"You said it, baby," Tony replied.

But Mr. Baltazari, who hadn't gotten where he was by being careless, nevertheless kept an eye on the guy with a gun who was probably a cop, and when the guy finished his drink and picked up his change and walked out of the bar, a slight frown of concern crossed his face.

"Go see where he went, Tony," he said.

"Huh?"

"You heard me. Go see where that guy went."

Tony got up and walked out of the bar into the hotel lobby.

"What are you thinking, Ricco?" Frankie the Gut asked. "That cops don't buy drinks with fifties?"

"Some cops don't," Mr. Baltazari said.

Tony came back and sat down and turned to face Mr. Baltazari.

"He went into The Palms," she said.

Mr. Baltazari was silent for a long moment. It was evident that he was thinking.

"I would like to know more about him," he said, finally.

"You think he was interested in us?" Frankie the Gut said.

"I said I would like to know more about him," Mr. Baltazari said.

"How are you going to do that, baby?" Tony asked.

"You're going to do it for me," Mr. Baltazari said.

"What do you mean?" Tony asked suspiciously.

Mr. Baltazari reached in his pocket and took out a wad of crisp bills. He found a ten, and handed it to Tony.

"I want you to go in there, I think it's five bucks to get in, find him, and be friendly," he said.

"Aaaah, Ricco," Tony protested.

"When you are friendly with people, they tell you things," Mr. Baltazari observed. "Be friendly, Tony. We'll wait for you."

"Do I really have to?"

"Do it, Tony," Mr. Baltazari said.

Tony was gone almost half an hour.

"Let's get out of here," she said, "I told him I had to go to the ladies'."

"What did you find out?" Mr. Baltazari asked.

"Can't we leave? What if he comes looking for me?"

"What did you find out?"

"He's a cop. He's a corporal. He just made a killing in Vegas."

"Did he say where he worked?"

"At the airport."

"Did he say how much of a killing?"

"Enough to buy a Caddy. He said he's going out and buy a Cadillac tomorrow."

Mr. Baltazari thought that over, long enough for Tony to find the courage to repeat her request that they leave before the cop came looking for her.

"No," Mr. Baltazari said. "No. What I want you to do, Tony, is go back in there and give him this."

He took a finely bound leather notebook from the monogrammed pocket of his white-on-white shirt, wrote something on it, tore the page out, and handed it to her.

"What's this?"

"Joe Fierello is your uncle. He's going to give your friend a deal on a Cadillac."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No, I'm not. You go back in there and be nice to him, and tell him you think your Uncle Joe will give him a deal on a Caddy."

"You meanstay with him?"

"I gotta go home now anyway, my wife's been on my ass."

"Jesus, Ricco!" Tony protested.

Mr. Baltazari took out his wad of bills again, found a fifty, and handed it to Tony.

"Buy yourself an ice-cream cone or something," he said.

Tony looked indecisive for a moment, then took the bill and folded it and stuffed it into her brassiere.

"I thought we were going to my place," she said.

"I'll make it up to you, baby," Mr. Baltazari said.

Detective Payne had fallen asleep in his arm chair watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers gracefully swooping around what was supposed to be the terrace of a New York City penthouse on WCAU-TV's Million Dollar Movie.

He woke up with a dry mouth, a sore neck, a left leg that had apparently been asleep so long it was nearly gangrenous, and a growling hunger in his stomach. He looked at the clock on the fireplace mantel. It was quarter to eight. That meant it was probably the worst time of the day to seek sustenance in his neighborhood. The hole-in-the-wall greasy spoons that catered to the office breakfast and lunch crowd had closed for the day.

That left the real restaurants, including the one in the Rittenhouse Club, which was the closest. That attracted his interest for a moment, as they did a very nice London broil, but then his interest waned as he realized he would have to put on a jacket and tie, then stand in line to be seated, and then eat alone.

The jacket-and-tie and eating-alone considerations also ruled out the other nice restaurants in the vicinity. Without much hope, he checked his cupboard. It was, as he was afraid it would be, nearly bare and, in the case of two eggs, three remaining slices of bread, and a carton of milk, more than likely dangerous. He nearly gagged disposing of the milk, eggs, and green bread down the Disposall.

He had a sudden, literally mouth-watering image of a large glass of cold milk to wash down a western omelet. And there was no question that his mother would be delighted to prepare such an omelet for him.

He went into his bedroom, pulled a baggy sweater over his head, and headed for the door, stopping only long enough to take his pistol, a Smith amp; Wesson.38 Special caliber "Chief's Special" and the leather folder that held his badge and photo ID from the mantelpiece. The holster had a clip, which allowed him to carry the weapon inside his waistband. If he remembered not to take his sweater off, his mother wouldn't even see the pistol.

He went down the narrow stairway to the third floor of the building, then rode the elevator to the basement, and after a moment's hesitation made the mature decision to drive the Bug to Wallingford. It would have been much nicer to drive the Porsche but the Bug had been sitting for two days, and unless it was driven, the battery would likely be dead in the morning when he had to drive it to work.

As he drove out Baltimore Avenue, which he always thought of as The Chester Pike, he made another mature decision. He drove past an Acme Supermarket, noticed idly that the parking lot was nearly empty, and then did a quick U-turn and went back.

He could make a quick stop, no more than five minutes, pick up a half gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, and a package of Taylor Ham, maybe even some orange juice, and be prepared to make his own breakfast in the morning. He would be, as he had learned in the Boy Scouts to be, prepared.

The store was, as he had cleverly deduced from the near-empty parking lot, nearly deserted. There were probably no more than twenty people in the place.

He was halfway down the far-side aisle, bread and Taylor Ham already in the shopping cart, moving toward the eggs-and-milk section, when he ran into Mrs. Glover.

"Hi!" he said cheerfully.

It was obvious from the hesitant smile on her face that Mrs. Glover was having trouble placing him. That was certainly understandable. While Mrs. Glover, who presided over the Special Collections desk at the U of P library had attracted the rapt attention of just about every heterosexual male student because of her habitual costume of white translucent blouse and skirt, it did not logically follow that she would remember any particular one of her hundreds of admirers.

"Matt Payne. Pre-Constitutional Law," he said. He had had occasion to partake of Mrs. Glover's professional services frequently when he was writing a term paper on what had happened, and who had been responsible for it, when the fledgling united colonies had been adapting British common law to American use.

"Oh, yes, of course," she said, and he thought her smile reflected not only relief that he was not putting the make on her, but genuine pleasure at seeing him. "How are you, Matt?"

"Very well, thank you," Matt said. "It's nice to see you, Mrs. Glover."

"Nice to see you too," she said, and pushed her cart past him.

She was wearing a sweater over her blouse, Matt Payne noticed, but the blouse was still translucent and her breastworks were as spectacular as he remembered them.

"This is the police," an electronically amplified voice announced. "Drop your weapons and put your hands on your head!"

"Oh, shit!" Matt Payne said.

There was the sound of firearms. First a couple of loud pops, and then the deep booming of a shotgun. There was a moment's silence, and then the sound of breaking glass.

Matt turned and ran and caught up with Mrs. Glover, and put his hands on her shoulders.

"Get on the floor!" he ordered.

She looked at him with terror in her eyes, and let him push her first to her knees and then flat on her stomach.

As he pushed his sweater aside to get at his pistol, and then fumbled to find his badge, he saw her looking at him with shock in her eyes.

There was the sound of another handgun firing twice.

"Motherfucker!" a male voice shouted angrily, and there was another double booming of a shotgun being fired twice. A moment later there was the sound of a car crash.

"Everybody all right?" a voice of authority demanded loudly.

A moment later the same voice, now electronically amplified, went on: "This is the police. It's all over. There is no danger. Please stay right where you are until a police officer tells you what to do."

Matt got to his feet, and holding his badge in front of him walked toward the front of the store.

As he reached the end of the aisle, he called out, "Three six nine, three six nine," and held the badge out as he carefully stepped into the checkout area.

"Who the hell are you?" a lieutenant holding a shotgun in one hand and a portable loudspeaker in the other demanded. He and three other cops in sight were wearing the peculiar uniform, including bulletproof vests, Stakeout wore on the job.

"Payne, East Detectives, sir."

"What are you doing in here?"

"I came in to get milk and eggs," Matt said.

"You see what happened?"

"I didn't see anything," Matt said truthfully.

There were flashing lights, and the sound of dying sirens, and Matt looked through the shattered plate-glass window and saw the first of a line of police vehicles pull up to the door.

The lieutenant made a vague gesture toward the last checkout counter. Matt saw a pair of feet extending into the aisle, and a puddle of blood.

"One there and another outside, in his car," the lieutenant said. "They had their chance to drop their guns and surrender, but they probably thought it would be like the movies. Jesus Christ!"

There was more contempt for the critters he had dropped than compassion, Matt thought.

That's the way it is. Not like the movies, either, where the cops are paralyzed with regret for having had to drop somebody. The bad dreams I have had about my shootings have been about those assholes getting me, not the other way around.

Matt looked through the hole where the plate-glass window had been. Three uniforms were in the act of pulling a man from his car. The car-crashing noise he had heard had apparently come when the doer, trying to flee, had crashed into one of the cars parked in the lot.

Matt had twice gone through the interviews conducted by the Homicide shooting team of officers involved in a fatal shooting. He blurted what popped into his mind.

"You'll spend the next six hours in Homicide."

The lieutenant's eyebrows rose.

"You been through this?" he asked.

"It goes on for goddamned ever," Matt said, and then added, " Christ, I'll be there all night too, and I didn't even see what happened."

The lieutenant met his eyes.

"You want to go, get out of here, now."

Matt had a quick mental image of Mrs. Glover, who looked to be on the edge of hysteria, getting carried down to the Homicide Bureau, in the Roundhouse, in a district wagon and then sitting around until one of the Homicide detectives had time to take her statement.

"I'm with somebody," Matt said. "A woman."

"Get out of here now, then," the lieutenant repeated. "Homicide, or the brass, will be coming in on this any minute."

"I owe you one," Matt said, and trotted back to where he had left Mrs. Glover lying on the floor.

She was still lying on the floor.

"It's all right," he said, and reached down and helped her to her feet. "Did you see anything? Anything at all?"

She shook her head, no.

"I told them you're with me," he said.

There was confusion in her eyes.

"We can go. Otherwise, you'll be taken to the Roundhouse and be there for hours."

"Are you a policeman or something?" she asked incredulously.

"I'm a detective," he said. "You all right? Can you walk?"

"I'm all right," she said. "What do we do about the groceries?"

"Leave them," he said, and took Mrs. Glover's arm and led her out the front of the store.

"Oh, my God!" Mrs. Glover said. "That's my car!"

And then she was clinging to him, whimpering. She had looked at the ground beside her car, where the second robber Stakeout had taken down was on his back in the middle of a spreading pool of blood. He had taken a load, Matt decided, maybe two loads, of double aught buckshot.

Well, that blows any chance we had to get away from here. Shit!