FOUR


At just about the same time-9:35 P.M. -Detective Matthew M. Payne left the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel by the rear service entrance and walked quickly, almost trotted, up Walnut Street toward his apartment on Rittenhouse Square, Mr. John Francis “Frankie” Foley walked, almost swaggered, into the Reading Terminal Market four blocks away at Twelfth and Market streets.

Mr. Foley was also twenty-five years of age, but at six feet one inch tall and 189 pounds, was perceptibly larger than Detective Payne. Mr. Foley was wearing a two-toned jacket (reddish plaid body, dark blue sleeves and collar) and a blue sports shirt with the collar open and neatly arranged over the collar of his jacket.

Mr. Foley walked purposefully through the Market, appreciatively sniffing the smells from the various food counters, until he reached the counter of Max’s Cheese Steaks. Waiting for him there, sitting on a high, backless stool, facing a draft beer, a plate of french-fried potatoes, and one of Max’s almost-famous cheese steak sandwiches, was Mr. Gerald North “Gerry” Atchison, who was forty-two, five feet eight inches tall, and weighed 187 pounds.

Mr. Atchison, who thought of himself as a businessman and restaurateur-he owned and operated the Inferno Lounge in the 1900 block of Market Street-and believed that appearances were important, was wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit, a crisp white shirt, a finely figured silk necktie, and well-polished black wing-tip shoes.

Both gentlemen were armed, Mr. Atchison with a Colt Cobra. 38 Special caliber revolver, carried in a belt holster, and Mr. Foley with a. 45 ACP caliber Colt Model 1911A1 semiautomatic pistol that he carried in the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back. Mr. Atchison was legally armed, having obtained from the Sheriff of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where he maintained his home, a license to carry a concealed weapon for the purpose of personal protection.

Mr. Atchison had told the Chief of Police that he often left his place of business late at night carrying large sums of cash and was concerned with the possibility of being robbed. The Chief of Police knew that the 1900 block of Market Street was an unsavory neighborhood and that Mr. Atchison was not only a law-abiding citizen, but a captain in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, in which he was himself an officer, and granted the license to carry.

It is extremely difficult in Philadelphia for any private citizen to get a license to carry a concealed weapon, but Philadelphia honors concealed-weapons permits issued by other police jurisdictions. Mr. Atchison, therefore, was in violation of no law for having his pistol.

Mr. Foley, on the other hand, did not have a license to carry a concealed weapon. He had applied for one, with the notion that all the cops could say was “no,” in which case he would be no worse off than he already was. And for a while, it looked as if he might actually get the detective to give him one. The detective he had talked to when he went to fill out the application forms had a USMC Semper Fi! decalcomania affixed to his desk and Frankie had told him he’d been in the Crotch himself, and they talked about Parris Island and Quantico and 29 Palms, and the detective said he wasn’t promising anything because permits were goddamned hard to get approved-but maybe something could be worked out. He told Frankie to bring in his DD-214, showing his weapons qualifications, so a copy of that could be attached to the application; that might help.

Frankie explained that while he would be happy to bring in his Form DD-214, which showed that he had qualified as Expert with the. 45, there was a small problem. A fag had come on to him in a slop chute at 29 Palms, and he had kicked the shit out of him, and what his Form DD-214 said about the character of his release from service was “Bad Conduct,” which was not as bad as “Dishonorable,” but wasn’t like “Honorable” either.

Frankie could tell from the way the detective’s attitude had changed when he told him he’d gotten a “Bad Conduct” discharge from the Crotch that bringing in his DD-214 would be a waste of fucking time, so he never went back.

He was, therefore, by the act of carrying a concealed firearm, in violation of Section 6106 of the Crimes Code of Pennsylvania, and Sections 907 (Possession of Instrument of Crime), and 908 (Possession of Offensive Weapon) of the Uniform Firearms Act, each of which is a misdemeanor of the first degree punishable by imprisonment of not more than five years and/or a fine of not more than $10,000.

Mr. Foley was not concerned with the possible ramifications of being arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. Primarily, he accepted the folklore of the streets of Philadelphia that on your first bust you got a walk, unless your first bust was for something like raping a nun. The prisons were crowded, and judges commonly gave first offenders a talking-to and a second chance, rather than put them behind bars. Frankie had never been arrested for anything more serious than several traffic violations, once for shoplifting, and once for drunk and disorderly.

And even if that were not the case, he trusted Mr. Atchison, who did carry a gun, about as far as he could throw the sonofabitch- what kind of a shitheel would hire somebody to kill his own wife? — and he was not going to be around him anywhere at night without something to protect himself.

More important, the purpose of their meeting was to finalize the details of the verbal contract they had made between themselves, the very planning of which, not to mention the execution, was a far more serious violation of the Crimes Code of Pennsylvania than carrying a gun without a permit.

In exchange for five thousand dollars, half to be paid now at Max’s, and the other half when the job was done, Mr. Foley had agreed to “eliminate” Mrs. Alicia Atchison, Mr. Atchison’s twenty-five-year-old wife, who Mr. Atchison said had been unfaithful to him, and Mr. Anthony J. Marcuzzi, fifty-two, Mr. Atchison’s business partner, who, Mr. Atchison said, had been stealing from him.

Frankie wasn’t sure whether Marcuzzi had really been stealing from the Inferno-it was more likely that Atchison just wanted him out of the way. Maybe he was stealing from Marcuzzi, and was afraid Marcuzzi was catching on-but he was sure that his wife’s fucking around on him wasn’t the reason Atchison wanted her taken care of. Atchison had another broad Frankie knew about, another young one, and probably he figured that since he was having Marcuzzi taken care of, he might as well get rid of them both at once. Or maybe he thought it would look more convincing if she got knocked off when Marcuzzi got it. Or maybe there was insurance on her or something.

But whatever his reasons, it wasn’t because he was really pissed off that she had let somebody get into her pants. Two weeks after Frankie had met Gerry Atchison, before Atchison had talked to him about taking care of his wife and Marcuzzi, he had just about come right out and said that if Frankie wanted to fuck Alicia, that was all right with him.

Frankie had been tempted-Alicia wasn’t at all bad-looking, nice boobs and legs-but had decided against it, as it wasn’t professional. He didn’t want to get involved with somebody he was going to take out.

On his part, Mr. Foley had not been entirely truthful with Mr. Atchison, either. He was not, as he had led Mr. Atchison, and others, to believe, an experienced hit man who accepted contracts from the mob in Philadelphia (and elsewhere, like New York and Las Vegas) that for one reason or another they would rather not handle themselves.

This job, in fact, would be his first.

It was, as he thought of it, putting his foot on the ladder to a successful criminal career. He’d given it a lot of thought when they’d thrown him out of the Crotch. There was a lot of money to be made as a professional criminal. The trouble was, you had to start out doing stupid things like breaking in someplace, or stealing a truck. If you got caught, you spent a long time in jail. And even if you didn’t get caught, unless you had the right connections, you didn’t get shit-a dime on the dollar, if you were lucky-for what you stole.

You had to get on the inside, and to do that, you needed a reputation. The most prestigious member of the professional criminal community, Frankie had concluded, was the guy who everybody knew took people out. Nobody fucked with a hit man. So clearly the thing to do was become a hit man, and the way to do that was obviously to hit somebody.

The problem there was to find somebody who wanted somebody hit and was willing to give you the job. Frankie was proud of the way he had handled that. He knew a guy, Sonny Boyle, from the neighborhood, since they were kids. Sonny was now running numbers; only on the edges of doing something important, but he knew the important people.

Frankie picked up their friendship again, hanging out in bars with him, and not telling Sonny what he was doing to pay the rent, which was working in the John Wanamaker’s warehouse, loading furniture on trucks. He let it out to Sonny that he had been kicked out of the Crotch for killing a guy-actually it had been because they caught him stealing from wall lockers-and when Sonny asked what he was doing told him he was in business, and nothing else.

And then the next time he had seen in the newspapers that the mob had popped somebody-the cops found a body out by the airport with. 22 holes in his temples-he went to Sonny Boyle and told him he needed a big favor, and when Sonny asked him what, he told Sonny that if the cops or anybody else asked, they had been together from ten at night until at least three o’clock in the morning, and that they hadn’t gone anywhere near the airport during that time.

And when Sonny had asked what he’d been doing, he told Sonny he didn’t want to know, and that if he would give him an alibi, he would owe him a big one.

That got the word spreading-Sonny had diarrhea of the mouth, and always had, which is what Frankie had counted on-and then he did exactly the same thing the next time the mob shot somebody, and there was one of them “police report they believe the murder had a connection to organized crime” crime stories by Mickey O’Hara in the Bulletin; he went to Sonny and told him he needed an alibi.

Three weeks after that happened, Sonny took him to the Inferno Lounge and said there was somebody there, the guy who owned it, Gerry Atchison, that he wanted him to meet.

He’d known right off, from the way Atchison charmed him and bought him drinks, shit, even as much as told him he could have a shot at fucking his wife, that Sonny had been telling Atchison about his pal the hit man and that Atchison had swallowed it whole.

There were to be other compensations for taking the contract in addition to the agreed-upon five thousand dollars. Frankie would become sort of a mixture of headwaiter and bouncer at the Inferno Lounge. The money wasn’t great, not much more than he was getting from Wanamaker’s, but he told Atchison that he was looking for a job like that, not for the money, but so he could tell the cops, when they asked, that he had an honest job.

That would be nice too. He could quit the fucking Wanamaker’s warehouse job and be available, where people could find him. Frankie Foley was sure that when the word spread around, as he knew it would, that he’d done a contract on Atchison’s wife and Marcuzzi, his professional services would be in demand.

Mr. Foley slid onto the backless high stool next to Mr. Atchison. Atchison seemed slightly startled to see him.

“You got something that belongs to me, Gerry?” Frankie Foley asked Gerry Atchison, whereupon Mr. Atchison handed Mr. Foley a sealed, white, business-size envelope, which Mr. Foley then put into the lower left of the four pockets on his two-tone jacket.

“We got everything straight, right?” Mr. Atchison inquired, somewhat nervously.

Mr. Foley nodded.

Mr. Atchison did not regard the nod as entirely satisfactory. He looked around to see that the counterman was wholly occupied trying to look down the dress of a peroxide blonde, and then leaned close to Frankie.

“You will come in for a drink just before eleven,” he said softly. “I’ll show you where you can find the ordnance. Then you will leave. Then, just after midnight, you will walk down Market, and look in the little window in the door, like you’re wondering why the Inferno’s closed. If all you see is me, then you’ll know I sent Marcuzzi downstairs to count the cash, and her down to watch him, and that I left the back door open.”

“We been over this twenty times,” Mr. Foley said, getting off the stool. “What you should be worried about is whether you can count to twenty-five hundred. Twice.”

“Jesus, Frankie!” Mr. Atchison indignantly protested the insinuation that he might try to shortchange someone in a business transaction.

“And you lay off the booze from right now. Not so much as another beer, understand?” Mr. Foley said, and walked away from Max’s Cheese Steaks.

Mr. Paulo Cassandro, who was thirty-six years of age, six feet one inches tall, and weighed 185 pounds, and was President of Classic Livery, Inc., had dined at the Ristorante Alfredo, one of the better restaurants in Center City Philadelphia, with Mr. Vincenzo Savarese, a well-known Philadelphia businessman, who was sixty-four, five feet eight inches tall and weighed 152 pounds.

Mr. Savarese had a number of business interests, including participation in both Ristorante Alfredo and Classic Livery, Inc. His name, however, did not appear anywhere in the corporate documents of either, or for that matter in perhaps ninety percent of his other participations. Rather, almost all of Mr. Savarese’s business participations were understandings between men of honor.

Over a very nice veal Marsala, Mr. Cassandro told Mr. Savarese that he had a small problem, one that he thought he should bring to Mr. Savarese for his counsel. Mr. Cassandro said that he had just learned from a business associate, Mrs. Harriet Osadchy, that an agreement that had been made between Mrs. Osadchy and a certain police officer and his associates was no longer considered by the police officer to be adequate.

“As I recall that agreement,” Mr. Savarese said, thoughtfully, “it was more than generous.”

“Yes, it was,” Mr. Cassandro said, and went on: “He said that his expenses have risen, and he needs more money.”

Mr. Savarese shook his head, took a sip of Asti Fumante from a very nice crystal glass, and waited for Mr. Cassandro to continue.

“Mrs. Osadchy feels, and I agree with her, that not only is a deal a deal, but if we increase the amount agreed upon, it will only feed the bastard’s appetite.”

Mr. Cassandro was immediately sorry. Mr. Savarese was a refined gentleman of the old school and was offended by profanity and vulgarity.

“Excuse me,” Mr. Cassandro said.

Mr. Savarese waved his hand in acceptance of the apology for the breach of good manners.

“It would be, so to speak, the nose of the camel under the flap of the tent?” Mr. Savarese asked with a chuckle.

Mr. Cassandro smiled at Mr. Savarese to register his appreciation of Mr. Savarese’s wit.

“How would you like me to handle this, Mr. S?”

“If at all possible,” Mr. Savarese replied, “I don’t want to terminate the arrangement. I think of it as an annuity. If it is not disturbed, it will continue to be reasonably profitable for all concerned. I will leave how to deal with this problem to your judgment.”

“I’ll have a word with him,” Mr. Cassandro said. “And reason with him.”

“Soon,” Mr. Savarese said.

“Tonight, if possible. If not tonight, then tomorrow.”

“Good,” Mr. Savarese said.

Mr. Cassandro was fully conversant not only with the terms of the arrangement but with its history.

Mrs. Harriet Osadchy, a statuesque thirty-four-year-old blonde of Estonian heritage, had come to Philadelphia from Hazleton, in the Pennsylvania coal region, four years before, in the correct belief that the practice of her profession would be more lucrative in Philadelphia. Both a decrease in the demand for anthracite coal and increasing mechanization of what mines were still in operation had substantially reduced the work force and consequently the disposable income available in the region.

She had first practiced her profession as a freelance entrepreneur, until, inevitably, her nightly presence in the lounges of the better Center City hotels had come to the attention of the plainclothes vice officers assigned to the Inspector of Central Police Division.

Following her third conviction, which resulted in a thirty-day sentence at the House of Correction for violation of Sections 5902 (Prostitution) and 5503 (Disorderly Conduct) of the Crimes Code of Pennsylvania, she realized that she would either have to go out of business or change her method of doing business. By then, she had come to know both many of her fellow freelance practitioners of the world’s oldest profession, and several gentlemen who she correctly believed had a certain influence in certain areas in Philadelphia.

With a high degree of tact, she managed to get to meet Mr. Cassandro, and to outline her plan for the future. If it would not interfere in any way with any similar arrangement in which any of Mr. Cassandro’s friends and his associates had an interest, she believed the establishment of a very high-class escort service would fill a genuine need in Philadelphia.

Since she was unaware of how things were done in Philadelphia, and was a woman alone, she would require both advice, in such things as finding suitable legal and medical services, and protection from unsavory characters who might wish to prey upon her. She said she believed that ten percent of gross receipts would be a fair price to pay for such advice and protection.

Mr. Cassandro had told Mrs. Osadchy that he would consider the question, make certain inquiries, and get back to her.

He then sought an audience with Mr. Savarese and reported the proposal to him. After thinking it over for several days Mr. Savarese told Mr. Cassandro that he believed Mrs. Osadchy’s proposal had some merit, and that he should encourage her to cautiously proceed with it.

It was agreed between them as men of honor that Mr. Savarese would receive twenty-five percent of the ten percent of gross proceeds Mrs. Osadchy would pay to Mr. Cassandro, in payment for his counsel.

The business prospered from the start. Mrs. Osadchy chose both her work force and her clientele with great care. She also understood the absolute necessity of maintaining good relations with the administrative personnel of the hotels-not limited to security personnel-where her work force practiced their profession.

For example, if she anticipated a large volume of business from, say, a convention of attorneys, or vascular surgeons, or a like group of affluent professionals, she would engage a room (or even, for a large convention, a small suite) in the hotel for the duration of the convention. No business was conducted in the room. But between professional engagements, her work force would use it as a base of operations. This both increased efficiency and eliminated what would otherwise have been a parade of unaccompanied attractive young women marching back and forth through the hotel lobby.

And Mrs. Osadchy was of course wise enough to be scrupulously honest when it came to making the weekly payments of ten percent of gross income to Mr. Cassandro.

For his part, Mr. Cassandro introduced Mrs. Osadchy to several attorneys and physicians who could be relied upon to meet the needs of Mrs. Osadchy and her work force with both efficacy and confidentiality. And, more important, he let the word get out that Mrs. Osadchy was a very good friend of his, and thus entitled to a certain degree of respect. An insult to her would be considered an insult to him.

It was a smooth-running operation, and everybody had been happy with it.

And now this fucking cop was getting greedy, which could fuck everything up, and was moreover a personal embarrassment to Mr. Cassandro, who had not liked having to go to Mr. Savarese with the problem.

I should have known, when he started wanting to help himself to the hookers, Mr. Cassandro thought angrily, that this sonofabitch was going to cause me trouble.

He’s a real sleazeball, and now it’s starting to show. And cause me trouble.

What I have to remember, because I keep forgetting it, is that Lieutenant Seymour Meyer is a cop, a cop on the take, and not a businessman, and consequently can be expected to act like an asshole.

When Mr. Cassandro left Mr. Savarese in the Ristorante Alfredo, instead of getting into the car that was waiting for him outside, he walked to the Benjamin Franklin Hotel on Chestnut Street and entered a pay telephone booth in the lobby.

He telephoned to Mrs. Harriet Osadchy and told her that he was working on their problem, that he had been given permission to deal with it.

“I’m really glad to hear that,” Mrs. Osadchy replied. “He’s really getting obnoxious.”

“Financially speaking, you mean?” Mr. Cassandro asked, laughing. “Or generally speaking?”

“He called up about an hour ago, and asked what the room number was at the Bellvue. So I told him. And then he said the reason he wanted to know was because it was a slow night, and he was a little bored, so why didn’t I send Marianne over there, so they could have a little party.”

“He’s a real shit, Harriet,” Mr. Cassandro sympathized.

“It’s not just the money that he don’t pay the girls and I have to. He’s a sicko with the girls. I had a hard time making Marianne go.”

“He’s a real shit,” Mr. Cassandro repeated, and then he had a pleasant thought. “Harriet, why don’t you call over there?”

“What?”

“Tell her to keep him there. I want to talk to him. That’s as good a place as any.”

“I’ll call her,” Harriet said dubiously. “But I don’t want her involved in anything, Paulo.”

“Trust me, Harriet,” Mr. Cassandro said, and hung up.

Detective Matt Payne turned off the Parkway into the curved drive of a luxury apartment building and stopped with a squeal of tires right in front of the door. The uniformed doorman standing inside looked at him in annoyance.

The car was a silver Porsche 911. It had been Matt’s graduation present, three years before, when he had finished his undergraduate studies, cum laude, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Miss Penelope Detweiler, who was his fiancee in everything but formal announcement and ring-on-her-finger, frequently accused him, with some justification, of showering far more attention on it than he did on her.

He was still wearing the gray cotton uniform of the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel Maintenance Staff. By the time he had gone from the hotel to his apartment on Rittenhouse Square, which is five blocks west of the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel, to get the car, he had concluded (a) the smart thing for him to have done was to have prevailed yet again on Tiny Lewis’s good nature and asked him to take the damned tapes to Washington, and (b) that since he had failed to do so he was going to be so late that changing his clothing was out of the question. He had gone directly to the basement garage and taken his car.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he said to the doorman, who, accustomed to Payne’s frequent, brief, nocturnal visits, simply grunted and picked up his telephone to inform Ten Oh Six that a visitor was on his way up.

Mrs. Martha Washington, a very tall, lithe, sharply featured woman, who looked, Matt often thought, like one of the women portrayed on the Egyptian bas-reliefs in the museum, opened the door to him. She was wearing a loose, ankle-length silver lame gown.

“He’s not here, Matt,” she said, giving him her cheek to kiss. “I just opened a nice bottle of California red, if you’d like to come in and wait. He was supposed to be here by now.”

“I’m already late for dinner, thank you,” he said. “Would you give him this, please?”

He handed her a large, sealed manila envelope.

“Dinner, dressed like that?” she said, indicating his maintenance department uniform. “It looks like you’ve been fixing stopped-up sinks. What in the world have you been up to?”

She saw the uncomfortable look on his face, and quickly added: “Sorry, forget I asked.”

“I’ll take a rain check on the California red,” Matt said. “I don’t know where we’re going for dinner, but I’ll be home early if he wants me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Ten minutes later, Matt pulled the Porsche to a stop at the black painted aluminum pole, hinged at one end, which barred access to a narrow cobblestone street in Society Hill, not far from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. A neatly lettered sign reading “Stockton Place-Private Property-No Thoroughfare” hung on short lengths of chain from the pole. A Wachenhut Private Security officer came out of a Colonial-style redbrick guard shack and walked to the Porsche.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Matthew Payne, to see Mr. Nesbitt.”

“One moment, sir, I’ll check,” the Wachenhut Security officer said, and went back into his shack.

It was said that, before renovation, the area known as Society Hill, not far from the Delaware River, had been going downhill since Benjamin Franklin-whose grave was nearby in the Christ Church Cemetery at Fifth and Arch streets-had walked its narrow streets. Before renovation had begun, it was an unpleasant slum.

Now it was an upscale neighborhood, with again some of the highest real estate values in Philadelphia. The Revolutionary-era buildings had been completely renovated-often the renovations consisted of discarding just about everything but the building’s facades-and turned into luxury apartments and town houses.

One of the developers, while doing title research, had been pleasantly surprised to learn that a narrow alley between two blocks of buildings had never been deeded to the City. That provided the legal right for them to bar the public from it, something they correctly suspected would have an appeal to the sort of people they hoped to interest in their property.

They promptly dubbed the alley “Stockton Place,” closed one end of it, and put a Colonial-style guard shack at the other.

Having been informed that Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, who with his wife occupied Number Nine B Stockton Place-an apartment stretching across what had been the second floor of three Revolutionary-era buildings-did in fact expect a Mr. Payne to call, the Wachenhut Security officer pressed a switch on his control console which caused the barrier pole to rise.

Matt drove nearly to the end of Stockton Place, carefully eased the right wheels of the Porsche onto the sidewalk, walked quickly into the lobby of Number Nine, and then quickly up a wide carpeted stairway to the second floor.

The door to Nine B opened as he reached the landing. Standing in it, looking more than a little annoyed, was Miss Penelope Detweiler, who was twenty-four, blond, and just this side of beautiful. She was wearing a simple black dress, adorned with a string of pearls and a golden pin, a representation of a parrot.

“Where the hell have you been?” Miss Detweiler asked, and then, seeing how Detective Payne was attired, went on: “Matt, for Christ’s sake, we’re going to dinner!”

“Hi!” Detective Payne said.

“Don’t ‘Hi’ me, you bastard! We had reservations for nine-thirty, you’re not even here at nine-thirty, and when you finally show up, you’re dressed like that!”

He tried to kiss her cheek; she evaded him, then turned and walked ahead of him into the living room of the apartment. Wide glass windows offered a view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the Delaware River, and an enormous sign atop a huge brick warehouse on the far-New Jersey-side of the river showing a representation of a can of chicken soup and the words N ESFOODS I NTERNATIONAL.

“I would hazard to guess, old buddy, that you are on the lady’s shitlist,” said Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, who was sprawled on a green leather couch. Sitting somewhat awkwardly beside him was his wife, the former Daphne Elizabeth Browne, who was visibly in the terminal stages of pregnancy.

A thick plate-glass coffee table in front of the couch held a bottle of champagne in a glass cooler.

“What are we celebrating?” Matt asked.

“Look at how he’s dressed!” Penny Detweiler snapped.

“Never fear, Chadwick is here, the problem will be solved,” Chad Nesbitt said, waving his champagne glass as he rose from the couch. “Will you have a little of this, Matthew?”

“What are we celebrating?” Matt asked again.

“I am no longer peddling soup store by store,” Nesbitt said. “I will tell you all about it as you change out of your costume.”

Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV and Matthew Mark Payne had been best friends since they had met, at age seven, at Episcopal Academy. They had been classmates and fraternity brothers at the University of Pennsylvania, and Matt had been Chad’s best man when he married.

Nesbitt grabbed the champagne bottle from its cooler by its neck, snatched up a glass, handed it to Matt, then led him down a corridor to his bedroom. There he gestured toward a walk-in closet and arranged himself against the headboard of his king-sized bed.

“What the hell are you dressed up for?” he asked. “Or as?”

“I was on the job.”

“Unstopping toilets?”

“That’s not original. I was asked the same question just fifteen minutes ago,” Matt said as he selected a shirt and tie from Chad Nesbitt’s closet.

“In other words, it’s secret police business, right? Not to be shared with the public?”

“Right.”

“I wouldn’t count on dipping your wick tonight, Matthew. Penny’s really pissed.”

“I told her I didn’t know when I could get here,” Matt said.

“Your tardy appearance is a symptom of what she’s pissed about, not the root cause.”

“So what else is new?”

“How long are you going to go on playing cop?”

“I am not playing cop, goddamn it! And you. This is what I do. I’m good at it. I like it. Don’t you start, too.”

“I’m afraid I have contributed to the lady’s discontent,” Nesbitt said. “The champagne is because you are looking at the newest Assistant Vice President of Nesfoods International.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I hate to admit it, but the old man was right. The whole goddamned business does ride on the shoulders of the guys who are out there every day fighting for shelf space. And the only way to really understand that is to go out on the streets and do it yourself.”

The business to which Mr. Nesbitt referred was Philadelphia’s largest single employer, Nesfoods International. Four generations before, George Detweiler had gone into partnership with Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt to found what was then called The Nesbitt Potted Meats amp; Preserved Vegetables Company. It was now Nesfoods International, listed just above the middle of the Fortune 500 companies and still tightly held. C. T. Nesbitt III was Chairman of the Executive Committee and H. Richard Detweiler, Penny’s father, was President and Chief Executive Officer.

“Newest Assistant Vice President of what?” Matt asked.

“Merchandising.”

“Congratulations,” Matt said.

“A little more enthusiasm would not be out of order,” Chad said. “Vice President, even Assistant Vice President, has a certain ring to it.”

Matt threw a pair of Nesbitt’s trousers and a tweed sports coat on the bed, then started to take his gray uniform trousers off. He had trouble with the right leg, which he finally solved by sitting on the bed, pulling the trousers leg up, and unstrapping an ankle holster.

“Doesn’t that thing bother your leg?” Chad asked.

“Only when I’m taking my pants off. I meant it, Chad. Congratulations.”

“Penny was already here when I got home,” Chad said. “When I made the grand announcement, her response was, ‘And Matt is still childishly playing policeman,’ or words to that effect.”

“If I had gone into the Marine Corps with you, I would just be finishing my first year in law school,” Matt replied. “I wonder what she would call that.”

“Sensible,” Chad said. “Your first foot on the first rung of your ladder to legal and/or corporate success. Anyway, if she is bitchy tonight, you know who to blame.”

“I don’t want to be a lawyer, and I don’t-especially don’t-want to work for Nesfoods International.”

“‘ Especially don’t ’? What are you going to do when you marry Penny? It’s a family business, for Christ’s sake.”

“Your family. Her family. Not mine.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Chad said. “She’s an only child. I don’t know how much stock she owns now, but…”

“Let it go, Chad!”

“…eventually, she’ll inherit…”

“Goddamn it, quit!”

“Your old man sits on the board,” Chad went on. “Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester’s biggest client is Nesfoods.”

“Just for the record, it is not,” Matt said. “Now, are you going to quit, or do you want to celebrate your vice presidency all by yourself?”

Nesbitt sensed the threat wasn’t idle.

“One final comment,” he said. “And then I’ll shut up. Please?”

After a moment, as he closed the zipper of Chad’s gray flannel slacks, Matt nodded.

“I liked the Marine Corps. I was, I thought, a damned good officer. I really wanted to stay. But I couldn’t, Matt. For the same reasons you can’t ignore who you are, and who Penny is. I think they call that maturity.”

“You’re now finished, I hope?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now we’ll go out and celebrate your vice-presidency. I can handle you alone, or Penny, but not the both of you together.”

“OK.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a new Italian place down by the river. Northern Italian. I think that means without tomato sauce.”

Matt pulled up his trousers leg and strapped his ankle holster in place.

“You really have to carry that with you all the time?” Chad asked.

“I’m a cop,” Matt said. “Write that on the palm of your hand.”

Mr. John Francis “Frankie” Foley checked his watch as he circled City Hall and headed west on Kennedy Boulevard. It was ten forty-five. He had told Mr. Gerald North “Gerry” Atchison “between quarter of eleven and eleven,” so he was right on time.

Mr. Foley considered that a good omen. It was his experience that if things went right from the start, whatever you were doing would usually go right. If little things went wrong, like for example you busted a shoelace or spilled spaghetti sauce on your shirt, or the car wouldn’t start, whatever, so that you were a little late, you could almost count on the big things being fucked up, too.

And he felt good about what he was going to do, too, calm, professional. He’d spent a good long time thinking the whole thing through, trying to figure out what, or who, could fuck up. His old man used to say, “No chain is stronger than its weakest link,” and say what you want to say about that nasty sonofabitch, he was right about that.

And the weak link in this chain, Mr. Foley knew, was Mr. Gerry Atchison. For one thing, Frankie was pretty well convinced that he could trust Atchison about half as far as he could throw the slimy sonofabitch. I mean, what kind of a shitheel would offer somebody you just met a chance to fuck his wife, even if you were planning to get rid of her for business purposes?

The first thing that Frankie thought of was that maybe what Atchison was planning on doing was letting him do the wife and the business partner, and then he would shoot Frankie. That would be the smart thing for him to do. He would have his wife and partner out of the way, and if the shooter was dead, too, with the fucking gun in his hand, Atchison could tell the cops that when he heard the shots in the basement office he went to investigate and shot the dirty sonofabitch who had shot his wife and his best friend and business partner. And with Frankie dead, not only couldn’t he-not that he would, of course-tell the cops what had really happened, but Atchison wouldn’t have to come up with the twenty-five hundred Frankie was due when he did the wife and the business partner.

Frankie didn’t think Atchison would have the balls to do that, but the sonofabitch was certainly smart enough to figure out that he could do something like that. So he’d covered those angles, too. For one thing, the first thing he was going to do when he saw Atchison now was make sure that sonofabitch had the other twenty-five hundred ready, and the way he had asked for it, in used bills, nothing bigger than a twenty.

If he didn’t have the dough ready, then he would know the fucker was trying to screw him. He really hoped that wouldn’t happen, he wanted this whole thing to happen, and if Atchison didn’t have the dough ready, he didn’t know what he’d do about it, except maybe smack the sonofabitch alongside his head with the. 45.

But Atchison could have the dough ready, Frankie reasoned, and still be planning to do him after he had done the wife and the partner. He had figured out the way to deal with the whole thing: first, make sure that he had the dough, and second, when he came back to do the contract, either make sure that Atchison didn’t have a gun, or, which is what most likely would happen, make sure that he always had the drop on Atchison.

All he had to be was calm and professional.

Frankie steered his five-year-old Buick convertible into the left lane, turned left off Kennedy Boulevard onto South Nineteenth Street, crossed Market Street, and then made another left turn into the parking lot at South Nineteenth and Ludlow Street. During the day, you had to pay to park there, but not at this time of night. There were only half a dozen cars in the place. He got out of the car, walked back to Market Street, and turned right.

He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a storefront window. He was pleased with what he saw. There was nothing about the way he was dressed (in a brown sports coat with an open-collared maroon sports shirt and light brown slacks) that made him look any different from anyone else walking up Market Street to have a couple of drinks and maybe try to get laid. No one would remember him because he was dressed flashy or anything like that.

He pushed open the door to the Inferno Lounge and walked in. There were a couple of people at the bar, and in the back of the place he saw Atchison glad-handing a tableful of people.

“Scotch, rocks,” Frankie said to the bartender as he slid onto a bar stool.

The bartender served the drink, and when Frankie didn’t decorate the mahogany with a bill, said, “Would you mind settling the bill now, sir? I go off at eleven.”

“You mean you’re closing at eleven?”

“The guy who works eleven ’til closing isn’t coming in tonight. The boss, that’s him in the back, will fill in for him,” the bartender said.

“Hell, you had me worried. The night’s just beginning,” Frankie said, and took a twenty-his last-from his wallet and laid it on the bar.

So far, so good. Atchison said tonight was the late-night bartender’s night off.

Frankie pushed a buck from his stack of change toward the bartender and then picked up his drink. There was a mirror behind the bar, but he couldn’t see Atchison in it, and he didn’t want to turn around and make it evident that he was looking for him.

Frankie wondered where whatsername, the wife- Alicia — was, and the partner.

I wonder if I should have fucked her. She’s not bad-looking.

Goddamn it, you know better than that. That would have really been dumb.

“What do you say, Frankie?” Gerry Atchison said, laying a hand on his shoulder. Frankie was a little startled; he hadn’t heard or sensed him coming up.

“Gerry, how are you?”

“I got something for you.”

“I hoped you would. How’s the wife, Gerry?”

Atchison gave him a funny look before replying, “Just fine, thanks. She’ll be here in a little while. She went somewhere with Tony.”

Tony is the partner, Anthony J. Marcuzzi. What did he do, send her off to fuck the partner?

“Tommy,” Gerry Atchison called to the bartender. “Stick around a couple of minutes, will you? I got a little business with Mr. Foley here.”

There was nothing Tommy could do but fake a smile and say sure.

Atchison started walking to the rear of the Inferno. Frankie followed him. They went down a narrow flight of stairs to the basement and then down a corridor to the office.

Atchison closed and bolted the office door behind them, then went to a battered wooden desk, and unlocked the right-side lower drawer. He took from it a small corrugated paper box and laid it on the desk.

He unwrapped dark red mechanic’s wiping towels, exposing three guns. One was a Colt. 38 Special caliber revolver with a five-inch barrel. The second was what Frankie thought of as a cowboy gun. In this case it was a Spanish copy of a Colt Peacemaker, six-shot, single-action. 44 Russian caliber revolver. The third was a Savage Model 1911. 32 ACP caliber semiautomatic.

“There they are,” he announced.

“Where’s the money?” Frankie asked.

“In the desk. Same drawer.”

“Let’s see it.”

“You don’t trust me?” Atchison asked with a smile, to make like it was a joke.

“Let’s see the money, Gerry,” Frankie said.

He picked up the Colt and opened the cylinder and dumped the cartridges in his hand. Then he closed the cylinder and dry-snapped the revolver. The cylinder revolved the way it was supposed to.

The noise of the dry snapping upset Gerry Atchison.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure these things work.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I checked them out.”

Yeah, but you don’t know diddly-shit about guns. You just think you do.

The Colt was to be the primary weapon. He would do both the wife and the partner with the Colt. The cowboy gun was the backup, in case something went wrong. Better safe than sorry, like they say. The Savage was to wound Atchison in the leg. Frankie would have rather shot him with the. 38 Special Colt, but Atchison insisted on the smaller. 32 ACP Savage.

Atchison held out an envelope to Frankie.

“You get this on delivery, you understand?”

Frankie took the envelope and thumbed through the thick stack of bills.

“You leave it in the desk,” Frankie ordered, handing the envelope back to Atchison. “If it’s there when I come back, I do it.”

Frankie next checked the functioning of the. 44 Russian cowboy six-shooter, and finally the. 32 Savage automatic.

He put them back in the corrugated paper box and folded the mechanic’s rags back over them.

“I sort of wish you’d take those with you,” Atchison said. “What if somebody comes down here and maybe finds them?”

“You see that don’t happen. I’m not going to wander around Center City with three guns.”

Atchison looked like he was going to say something, but changed his mind.

“I’ll show you the door,” he said.

Frankie followed him out of the office and farther down the corridor to the rear of the building. There a shallow flight of stairs rose toward a steel double door.

With Frankie watching carefully, Atchison removed a chain-and-padlock from the steel doors, then opened the left double door far enough to insert the padlock so that there would be room for Frankie’s fingers when he opened the door from the outside.

“Be careful when you do that. You let the door slip, you’ll never get it open.”

“I’m always careful, Gerry,” Frankie said.

Atchison took the corrugated paper box with the pistols from Frankie and put it on the top stair, just below the steel door.

He turned and sighed audibly. Then he smiled and put out his hand to Frankie.

“Jesus!” Frankie said with contempt. “Make sure that envelope is where it’s supposed to be,” he said, then turned and walked purposefully down the narrow corridor toward the stairs.

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