The Victim

EIGHTEEN

Officer Matthew Payne was feeling a little sorry for himself. He had been given an impossible task-how the hell was he supposed to find one man in a city the size of Philadelphia?- and Peter Wohl had made it plain that he expected him to accomplish it: No excuses, please. Just do it.

When he had tried looking for Jason Washington in all the places he could think, starting with his home, and then going to the Roundhouse and over to the parking garage and even to Hahneman Hospital, he went back to the Roundhouse, on the admittedly somewhat flimsy reasoning that Washington had told him to meet him in Homicide in the Roundhouse before he left word on the answering machine not to meet him there.

Washington was not in Homicide and had not been there.

It occurred to Matt that very possibly Washington had finished doing whatever he was doing and had gone, as he said he would, out to Bustleton and Bowler. If Washingtonwas at Bustleton and Bowler, where he said he would be, and Officer Payne was downtown at the Roundhouse looking for him, Officer Payne was going to look like a goddamn fool.

Which, in the final analysis, was probably a just evaluation.

He called Bustleton and Bowler. "Special Operations, Sergeant Anderson."

"This is Payne, Sergeant. Is Detective Washington around there someplace?"

"No. He called in and wanted to talk to you. He said he told you to wait for him here."

"Did he say where he was?"

"No. He just said if I saw you, I was to sit on you."

"Okay."

"Wait a minute. He said that he would be at City Hall."

"Thank you very much," Matt said.

He hung up, rode the elevator down from Homicide, and ran out of the building into the parking lot, where a white-capped Traffic officer was in the process of putting an illegal-parking citation under the Porsche's windshield wiper.

"Could I change your mind about doing that if I told you I was on the job?" Matt asked.

The Traffic cop, who was old enough to be Matt's father, looked at him dubiously.

"You're a 369?"

Matt nodded.

"Where?"

"Special Operations," Matt said.

The Traffic cop, shaking his head, removed the citation.

"What did you guys do?" he asked, nodding at the Porsche. " Confiscate that from a drug dealer?"

This is not the time to tell Daddy that I chopped down the cherry tree.

"Yeah," Matt said. "Nice, huh?"

The Traffic cop shook his head resignedly and walked off without another word.

Matt drove to City Hall and parked the Porsche in an area reserved