The Witness

SEVEN

Detective Jason Washington was sitting slumped almost sinfully comfortably in his molded plywood and leather chair, his feet up on a matching footstool, when the telephone rang. The chair had been, ten days before, his forty-third birthday gift from his daughter and sonin-law. He had expected either a necktie, or a box of cigars, or maybe a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. The chair had surprised him to begin with, and even more after he'd seen one in the window of John Wanamaker's Department Store with a sign announcing that the Charles Eames Chair and Matching Footstool was now available in Better Furniture for $980.

A glass dark with twelve-year-old Scotch rested on his stomach. Whenever anything disturbing happened, it was Jason Washington's custom to make himself a drink of good whiskey. He would then sit down and think the problem over. During the thought process, he never touched the whiskey. The net result of this, he sometimes thought, was that he wasted a lot of good whiskey.

"Hello," he said to the telephone. He had a very deep, melodious voice. When she was little, his daughter used to say he should be on the radio.

"Mr. Washington, this is Matt."

Officer Matthew M. Payne had the discomfiting habit of calling Detective Washington "Mr." At first, Washington had suspected that Payne was being obsequious, or perhaps even, less kindly, mocking him in some perverse manner known only to upper-class white boys. He had come to understand, however, that Matt Payne called him "Mr.," even after being told not to, as a manifestation of his respect. Washington found this discomfiting too.

"Hello, Matt."

"I hate to bother you at home, but I have a little problem. Is this a bad time for me to call?"

I am sitting here alone with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, just hoping for something to brighten my day.

"What is it, Matt?"

"The feds are going to try the two guys who carved up Jerome Nelson."

What the hell is he talking about?

"Run that past me again?"

"The inspector and I had lunch with the FBI SAC, Mr. Davis. He told the inspector the feds are going to try the doers of the Nelson job for kidnapping. He asked the inspector for what we have on the job. The inspector told me to Xerox everything we have in the files, what Homicide has, and to check with Mr. Harris. I just left Homicide. I can't find Harris. The inspector wants it all on his desk first thing in the morning."

The first thought Jason Washington had was, Has Wohl lost his mind? If Czernick finds out he has been slipping material to the FBI, he'II be on the phone to Jerry Carlucci two seconds later, and ten seconds after that, Wohl will be teaching "Police Administration" at the Academy.

This was immediately followed by the obvious rebuttal: Either Czernick is in on this, or Wohl has his own agenda; the one thing Peter Wohl is not is a fool.

And then: Interesting, the way he calls the FBI guy "Mr."; Wohl "the inspector"; and, the first time, Harris "Mr." But that title of respect dropped off the second time he got to Tony. Since he knows that Tony is a first-rate detective, it has to be something else. A little vestigial Main Line snobbery, because Tony dresses like a bum? Or has the kid figured out that Tony has a bottle problem? One possibility is that he called Tony at home-if a furnished room can be called a home-and Tony was incoherent, and he 'd rather not deal with that.

"Why don't you bring what you have here, Matt? I'll have a look at it; see if it's all there."

"Yes, sir," Matt Payne said. "Thank you. I'm on my way."

Washington broke the connection with his finger and dialed Tony's number. There was no answer.

Meaning he's not there. Or that he's there, passed out.

He took a well-worn leather-bound notebook from his pocket, found the number of the Red Rooster, Tony Harris's favorite bar, and dialed it. Tony wasn't there. Washington left word for him to call him at home. It was possible, even likely, that Wohl would want to see him in the morning. Wohl, being Wohl, probably knew all about Tony's bottle problem, but it would not do Tony any good if Wohl saw him with the shakes.

He hung up, looked at the drink he had left sitting on the table beside his chair, and took the first swallow from it.

Jason and Martha Washington lived in an apartment on the tenth floor of a luxury building on the parkway. A wall of ceiling-to-floor windows in the living room gave them a view of the Art Museum, the Schuylkill River, and West Philadelphia.

Martha Washington was a commercial artist who made just about as much money as he did. Now that their daughter, Barbara, was gone, married to a twenty-five-year-old electronics engineer at RCA, across the Delaware in Jersey, who made as much money as his in-laws did together, the Washingtons were, as Jason thought of it, "comfortable."

Not only did they have the condo at The Shore, but Martha had a Lincoln; the furniture in the apartment was all they wanted; and Martha was starting to buy (and sell at often amazing profit) art. It had been a long time, he thought, since there had been an angry or hurt look in Martha's eyes when he walked in wearing a Tripler or Hart, Shaffner amp; Marx new suit.

They no longer had to think about the costs of getting Barbara a good education. That need had been removed from the financial equation when the graduate student of engineering had snatched her from her cradle the week before he graduated and RCA started throwing money at him.

Ten minutes later the doorman announced that a Mr. Payne was calling.

"If he's wearing shoes, send him up, please."

Washington timed his walk to the door precisely; he opened it as Matt got off the elevator.

"Sorry to bother you with this at home," Matt said.

"Come on in, Matt. I am drinking from the good stuff; make yourself one."

"What's the occasion?"

"Let me see what you have," Washington said, putting out his hand for the manila envelope. "You know where the booze is."

Matt headed for the liquor cabinet.

He is, with the possible exception of Peter Wohl, the only one of my brothers in blue who is not awed and/or made uncomfortable by this apartment.

Washington sat down on a leather upholstered couch and took the photocopies from the envelope and went through them. Payne sat in an armchair watching him.

"I think everything's there, Matt," Washington said, finally.

"Thank God," Matt said. "Thank you."

"You couldn't find Tony, you said?"

"He didn't answer the radio-twice, and he didn't answer the phone at his apartment."

"You ever been to his apartment?"

Matt shook his head no.

Then he hasn't found Tony mumbling incoherently into his booze. Moot point, he will learn eventually.

"Anything interesting going on at Homicide?"

"They had a murder of a guy during a robbery at a furniture store on South Street."

"I heard the call," Washington said.

Theofficer needs assistance shooting hospital case call had been on the air when he switched on the police radio in his unmarked police car as he came off the Benjamin Franklin Bridge into Philadelphia from New Jersey. By the time he reached the parkway, he had heard Matt Lowenstein calling in that he was at the scene. That too was very interesting. The chief of the Detective Division would ordinarily not go in on a robbery, or even a murder. Neither was uncommon in Philadelphia. He finally decided that Lowenstein had coincidentally been somewhere near without anything else important to do.

The car issued to Jason Washington by the Philadelphia Police Department was a new, two-tone (blue over gray) Ford LTD four-door sedan. It had whitewall tires, elaborate chrome wheel covers, and powder blue velour upholstery. There were only eight thousand odd miles on the odometer, and the car still even smelled new.

Detectives (like corporals, only one step above the lowest rank in the Police Department hierarchy) are not normally given brand-new cars to drive, much less to take home after work, but Jason Washington was not an ordinary detective.

Until recently, he had been able to take more than a little pride in his reputation of being the best detective in the Homicide Bureau, which was tantamount to saying that he was arguably the best detective in the entire Philadelphia Police Department, as it is generally conceded that the best detectives are assigned to Homicide.

Washington had not willingly given up his assignment to Homicide. He had been transferred (he thought of it as "shanghaied") to the justthen-formed Special Operations Division over his somewhat bluntly stated desire not to be transferred.

There had been a number of advantages in being assigned to Homicide. There was of course the personal satisfaction of simply knowing that youwere a Homicide detective. That satisfaction was of course buttressed if you could believe that you were probably the best Homicide detective in the Bureau.

Jason Washington was not plagued with extraordinary humility. While he was perfectly willing to admit there were a number of very good detectives in Homicide, he could not honestly state that he knew of any who were quite as professionally competent as he was.

And the money was good, because of overtime. As a Homicide detective, he had taken home as much money as a chief inspector. Chief inspectors, he knew, often put in as many hours as he did, but under Civil Service regulations, they didn't get paid for it; they were given "compensatory time off" that they never seemed able to find time to take.

And chief inspectors (and other Police Department supervisors) spent a good portion of their time handling administrative matters that had little to do with catching critters, marching them through the judicial process, and seeing them sentenced and packed off to the pokey.

In Homicide, all Jason Washington had had to do was catch critters, either on jobs that had come to him via the Wheel, or on jobs that the Wheel had given to others, but on which he had been asked to "assist."

(The Wheel wasn't really a wheel, but rather a piece of lined paper, on which, at the beginning of each tour, each Homicide detective's name was written. As each homicide came to the attention of the Homicide Bureau, the job was given to the detective whose name was at the head of the list. He would not be given another job until every other detective listed on the Wheel had, in turn, been given one.)

While Jason Washington was at least as good as any other Homicide detective while working the crime scene, and certainly at least as knowledgeable as any other Homicide detective in the use of the hightech techniques now available to match fibers, determine that a particular bullet had been fired from a particular weapon, and so on, his real strengths, he believed, were psychological and intellectual.

He believed, with more than a little reason, that he had no peers in interrogation. He could play, with great skill, any number of roles when interviewing a suspect. If the situation demanded it, Washington, who stood well over six feet and weighed 220 pounds, could strike terror into the heart of most human beings who had previously believed they were not afraid of the Devil himself. Or, with equal ease, he could assume the role of sympathetic uncle who understood how, through no fault of his own, the suspect had found himself in a situation where striking the deceased in the forehead with a fire axe had seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do under the circumstances, and that the decent thing to do now was put the whole unfortunate incident behind him (or her) by making a clean breast of it.

Intellectually, Washington believed that both by natural inclination (perhaps genetic) and by long experience, he had no equal in discovering anomalies. An anomaly, by definition, is a deviation, modification, mutation, permutation, shift, or variation from the norm. If there was one tiny little piece of the jigsaw puzzle that didn't fit, Jason Washington could find it.

He had, in other words, been perfectly happy as the acknowledged best detective in Homicide when Jerome Nelson had been found in his apartment on Society Hill dead of multiple wounds probably inflicted by one of his own matched set of teak-handled Solingen kitchen knives.

The Wheel had assigned the case to Detective Anthony C. "Tony" Harris, who was not only a good friend of Washington's, but, in Washington's judgment, the second-best detective in Homicide. As soon as the case had come in, and as soon as Jerome Nelson's position in society had become known, Jason Washington had felt sure that he would soon be involved with it himself. Tony certainly would want some help, and would naturally turn to Jason Washington, or Captain Henry C. Quaire, who commanded the Homicide Bureau, would order him to work with Tony.

It hadn't happened quite that way. The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, had taken the job away from the Homicide Bureau and given it to the newly formed Special Operations Division. Jason Washington's initial reaction to that had mirrored that of Captain Quaire and Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, who commanded the Detective Division that included the Homicide Bureau: righteous indignation that once more The Dago had put his goddamn nose in where it had no business.

Mayor Carlucci's notorious penchant for issuing orders directly to various divisions (for that matter, to individual officers) of the Police Department, instead of letting the commissioner run it, was, in a sense, understandable. Before winning, in his first bid for elective office, the mayoralty, The Dago had been police commissioner. He had, in fact, held every rank in the Philadelphia Police Department except police woman. He therefore believed that he knew at least as much about running the Police Department as anyone else. And he had read the statutory functions of the mayor, which quite clearly stated that he was responsible for supervising "the various departments of the city."

On a secondary level, his parochial indignation as a Homicide detective aside, Jason Washington had thought that he understood The Dago's game plan, and that it would work. The Dago had turned out to be a better politician than anyone ever thought he would be.

Jason Washington and Jerry Carlucci went way back together. Carlucci had done a year in Homicide as a lieutenant, before he passed the captain's examination and moved to Highway Patrol. It was only fair to acknowledge that Carlucci had been a good lieutenant-he had been an all around good cop, no one ever denied that-one proof of which being that even back then he had been smart enough to exercise only the barest minimum of supervision over Detective Jason Washington.

When, rarely, they bumped into each other, Washington could count on a bear hug and being greeted either by his Christian name or as "Ol' Buddy," or both. Jason Washington, who did not like to be hugged by anyone except his wife and daughter, and disliked being called "Ol' Buddy" by anyone, always smiled and referred to The Dago as "Mr. Mayor."

The way Washington had seen the assignment of the Nelson job to Special Operations seemed to make sense. Carlucci had just set up Special Operations. It was his. What had become a big deal murder in the newspapers, because of the victim, was actually just a routine homicide. The odds were that the job would be closed in a week or two by Homicide. But that would not earn The Dago any favorable space in the newspapers. That's what Homicide was supposed to do, solve homicides.

But if Jerry Carlucci's Special Operations solved the Nelson job, His Honor the Mayor could, and would, claim the credit. And Washington had seen that The Dago had carefully hedged his bet: Special Operations was commanded by Peter Wohl, who not only had been a sergeant in Homicide, but was, in Washington's judgment (and that of a lot of other knowledgeable people), one of the smartest cops in the Department. Before The Dago had formed Special Operations and given it to Peter Wohl, Wohl had been the youngest (ever) staff inspector in the department.

Staff inspectors ranked immediately above captains. With the exception, now, of Wohl, they operated within the Internal Affairs Division, and were charged with, primarily, investigations of corruption within and outside the Police Department. Wohl, just before being given Special Operations, had sent two judges and a city councilman to the state penitentiary for some rather imaginative income augmentation.

Washington had reasoned that Carlucci had decided that Wohl would have no trouble finding who had punctured Jerome Nelson so thoroughly, and that Special Operations-thus the mayor-would get the credit.

Washington had underestimated both Carlucci and Wohl. To make sure that Wohl did indeed catch the critters who had punctured Nelson with his own imported butcher knives, he gave him blanket authority to transfer to Special Operations anybody he thought he needed. Wohl had immediately decided that he needed Detectives Washington and Harris, and over howls of protest from the chief inspector of the Detective Division, the commanding officer of the Homicide Bureau, and Detectives Harris and Washington, they had been transferred to Special Operations.

Wohl was not only a good cop, but a good guy, and he had assured both Washington and Harris that he would see they could make as much overtime money as they had in Homicide, and done other things to soothe their ruffled feathers. They would work directly for him (and his deputy, Captain Mike Sabara) rather than under some sergeant, and had even arranged for the both of them to draw brand-new cars (normally reserved for at least captains) from the Police Garage.

He would not, however, promise (as Washington asked) to return them to Homicide once they caught whoever had murdered Jerome Nelson.

That job had just about solved itself when two critters had been caught by the cops in Atlantic City using Nelson's credit cards, but by then a looney tune in Northwest Philadelphia had started abducting and then carving up women, and the process had been repeated: Jerry Carlucci had called a press conference to announce he had given the job of apprehending the Northwest serial rapist to Special Operations, and Wohl had given it to Washington and Harris.

Washington and Harris had just about identified the psychopath who was carrying women off in the back of his van when, in one of those lucky breaks that sometimes happen, his van had been spotted by the rookie cop Wohl had had dumped in his lap by Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and was using as his driver.

Denny Coughlin, in what some people would call blatant nepotism but which Jason Washington felt perfectly sensible, had sent Officer Matthew M. Payne right out of the Police Academy to Special Operations, his intention clearly being to keep the kid from getting hurt before he came to his senses and quit the cops.

The kid had been born Matthew Mark Moffitt, three months after his father, Sergeant John Xavier Moffitt, had gotten himself shot to death answering a silent alarm. Sergeant Moffitt and Denny Coughlin had gone through the Academy together, and Coughlin had wept shamelessly at his funeral and when he had become the baby's godfather three months later.

Washington had always had the private opinion that Denny Coughlin had been more than a little sweet on the widow. If he had been (or, for that matter, if he still was; he had never married), he hadn't been able to do anything about it, for six months after Sergeant Moffitt had been killed, his widow got a job working as a trainee-secretary for Lowerie, Tant, Foster, Pedigill and Payne, a large and prestigious law firm. She hadn't worked more than a month or so when, pushing the kid in a stroller by the Franklin Institute on a Sunday afternoon, she met Brewster Cortland Payne II, walking his kids.

Payne recognized her vaguely from work; she was one of the girls in the typing pool. He spoke to her, and Patty Moffitt replied, because she had seen him at work too. He was the only son of one of the two founding partners of the law firm. Within half an hour, Brewster Cortland Payne II learned that Mrs. Moffitt was a widow, and Patty Moffitt learned that his kids were motherless: Mrs. Payne had been killed in an auto accident returning from the Payne lodge in the Poconos some months before.

A month later Patricia Moffitt, enraging her family, her late husband's family, and the Payne family establishment, became Mrs. Brewster C. Payne II. Nice Irish Catholic Widows do not marry Main Line WASPs in an Episcopal Church, nor let their fatherless children be adopted by WASPs, nor become Episcopalians.

Similarly, Main Line WASPs, scions of distinguished families, and heirs apparent to prestigious law firms, do not consort with-much less marry-little Irish typists from Kensington. Brewster C. Payne II resigned from the family law firm and set up his own practice in a two-room office with his bride functioning as his secretary.

That was twenty-odd years ago. Mrs. Brewster C. Payne II (who had borne Mr. Payne two additional children) was now a Main Line Matron of impeccable reputation, and Brewster C. Payne, Attorney At Law, was now the presiding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, Lawyers, whose offices and eighty-four junior partners and associates occupied two entire floors of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, and were arguably the most successful and unquestionably one of the two or three most prestigious law firms in the city.

Mrs. Payne had done what she could (in Jason Washington's opinion, taken the extra step, and then a couple more) to see that her son did not lose contact with either her late husband's family or with her late husband's best friend, Dennis V. Coughlin.

Her late husband's family were cops. John X. Moffitt's father and grandfather had been cops, and his brother (Richard C, known as " Dutch") was a cop. Her ex-mother-in-law, known as Mother Moffitt, a formidable German/Irish lady in her late sixties, had a father and two brothers who had retired from the Department.

Seven months before, when Captain "Dutch" Moffitt had been given a police funeral presided over by the cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia at Saint Monica's Church, Mother Moffitt had let the world know that she had not forgiven her ex-daughter-in-law for leaving Holy Mother Church and taking her son with her. Patricia Moffitt Payne's name had been conspicuously absent not only from the list of family members entitled to sit in a reserved pew but from the list of Friends of the Family as well.

When Denny Coughlin had told the inspector working the door that the entire Payne family was to be seated inside and up front in Saint Monica's if that meant evicting members of the City Council, Mother Moffitt had pretended Patty Payne and her husband and their kids were invisible.

Three days later Matthew M. Payne had walked into the City Administration Building across from City Hall, taken the exam, and joined the cops.

There was nothing that either Brewster C. Payne or Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin could do about it. The two, who over the years had become friends, had a long talk over lunch at the Union League Club. They agreed that Matt's motives were fairly obvious: The fact that his Uncle Dutch had been killed obviously had a lot to do with it, and so did the results of a physical examination that found something wrong with his eyes and would keep him from becoming a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps when he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

He could prove his challenged masculinity by becoming a cop, in the footsteps of his real father, uncle, and grandfather.

Adoptive father and godfather agreed that what Matt really should do was go on to law school, but they also agreed that he was just as hardheaded as his mother when he wanted to do something, and could not be talked out of joining the cops.

It was to be hoped that when the emotions caused by Dutch's death and the Marine Corps rejection had time to simmer down, he would come to his senses. They were both agreed that Matt was a more levelheaded kid than most. With a little bit of luck that would happen before he was close to graduating from the Police Academy.

It didn't happen. He did well in the Academy.

Dennis V. Coughlin, as a sergeant, had gone to Patricia Moffitt's apartment to tell her that her husband had just been shot to death. He had no intention of going to Patricia Moffitt Payne to tell her her son had just been killed as a cop. The most influential of the seven chief inspectors had a word with the chief of Personnel, and Officer Payne was assigned to Special Operations.

There, after Denny Coughlin had a quiet word with Peter Wohl, Officer Payne was assigned duties as a sort of clerk/driver, the hope now being that when he saw what police work was really like, he would finally come to his senses, quit the cops, and go to law school.

What Jason Washington hadn't already known of Matt Payne's background had been filled in by Peter Wohl when he gave him Payne as a gofer. The investigation of the Northwest Philadelphia serial rapist/murderer had become very intense. Washington needed someone to run errands, make telephone calls, and otherwise save his time.

Payne had gone with Washington to Bucks County, where the body of the latest victim had been found. Washington had gotten a description of the man, his van, the license plate number, and had made plaster casts of the van's tire tracks. Within hours, they would know who they were looking for.

Washington had sent Payne back to Philadelphia with the tire casts and orders to tell Peter Wohl of the latest developments before he quit for the day. Payne had dropped off the tire casts at the laboratory in the Roundhouse, and then turned in the unmarked police car he had been driving at Special Operations headquarters at Bustleton and Bowler Streets.

In his own car, on the way to Wohl's apartment in Chestnut Hill, Payne had spotted the van. There was no way he could call for backup. In the very first time he had ever attempted to exercise his authority as a police officer, Payne had walked up to the van.

The driver had then tried to run him over. Payne had jumped out of the way, but the van had wiped out the rear end of Payne's Porsche 911 and then raced away.

Payne had fired five shots, all the cylinder of his snub-nosed Smith amp; Wesson Undercover held. One bullet, in what Jason Washington believed (and, more importantly, Payne realized) was blind luck, had struck the van driver in the back of the head.

The van had crashed into a tree. When Payne jerked the door open, he found the looney-tune's next intended victim, already stripped naked and trussed up like a Christmas turkey, under a tarpaulin in the back.

When Police Radio had put out thebeep beep beep, assist officer, shots fired, hospital case the second response had been "M-Mary One in on the shots fired."

M-Mary One was the radio call assigned to Jerry Carlucci's official Cadillac. The mayor had been on the way to his Chestnut Hill home after speaking at a dinner in South Philadelphia.

The lifelong cop in Jerry Carlucci could no more resist responding to anassist officer shots fired than he could pass up a chance to speak to a group of potential voters. Then, too, he sensed that there were a lot of voters out there who liked to see pictures in the newspapers, or on television, of their mayor at a crime scene, personally leading the war against crime.

Mickey O'Hara had also been working the streets that night. The next morning'sBulletin had a three-column picture of Mayor Carlucci, standing so that the snub-nosed revolver on his belt was visible under his jacket, with his arm around Officer Payne's shoulder. In the accompanying story by Michael J. O'Hara,Bulletin Staff Writer, Officer Payne was described by the mayor as both "administrative assistant" to Peter Wohl and as "the type of well-educated, dedicated, courageous young police officer" now, under his direction, being recruited for the Police Department.

The mayor's description of Matt Payne as Wohl's administrative assistant had erased any notions Wohl might have had to transfer Officer Payne someplace else.

He had joked about it to Washington: "Thank God for our mayor. I didn't even know what an administrative assistant was, and now I have one." But Washington sensed that Wohl was really not at all displeased.

For one thing, a "driver," analogous to an aide-de-camp for a general officer in the military services, was a perquisite of inspectors, chief inspectors, and deputy commissioners. Wohl was only a staff inspector, but he was also the only division commanding officer who was not at least an inspector. Before the mayor's off-the-cuff designation of Matt Payne as his "administrative assistant," Wohl had not had a driver, and there would have been cracks about delusions of glory from the corps of inspectors and chief inspectors, more than a few of whom thought they should have been given command of Special Operations, if he had asked for one.

But most important, Washington thought, was that Wohl needed not only a driver, but one like Matt Payne. It may have sounded like bullshit when The Dago said it for the papers, but Washington could find nothing wrong with the notion of young police officers who were in fact well educated, dedicated, and courageous.

"Detective D'Amata said it was 'high noon at the OK Corral' at the furniture store," Matt Payne said.

There he goes again. "Detective D'Amata," said with respect, instead of just D'Amata, or for that matter "Joe." Joe D'Amata would not be at all annoyed to be called by his first name by Matt. So far as D'Amata' s concerned, Matt stopped being a rookie when he shot the serial rapist.

"Meaning what?"

"He said the doers really shot the place up. He said they found twenty-six bullets."

"There was a gun battle?"

"No. That's what he said was interesting. They just shot off their guns. Not even the victim had a gun."

"There was just the one victim?"

"He was the maintenance man; he walked in on it."

"They have a lead on the doers?"

"I think Detective D'Amata has a good idea. He said that the witnesses were still pretty shaky; he wanted them to calm down a little before he showed them pictures."

"That may work, and it may not," Washington said. "A lot of people, with good reason, are nervous about having to go to court and point their fingers. Particularly at scumbags like these, a gang of them."

"Yes, sir," Matt said.

Washington met his eyes.

"I am not going to tell you anymore not to call me 'sir,'" he said.

"Sorry," Matt said, throwing up his hands. "It just slips out."

"Let me show you what the postman brought today," Washington said. He went to the table by the door and returned with a postcard and handed it to Matt.

It was a printed form, Number 73-41, (Revised 3/72) issued by the Personnel Department of the City of Philadelphia, headed FINAL RESULTS OF EXAMINATIONS. It informed Jason Washington that his Final Average on the Examination for Police Sergeant was 96.52 and that his Rank on List was 3.

"Jesus!" Payne exclaimed happily.

"You asked what the occasion was," Washington said.

"Well, congratulations!" Matt said enthusiastically. "I didn't even know you had taken the examination."

"I'd almost forgotten I had," Washington said.

Matt looked at him with curiosity in his eyes, but did not ask.

"Two days after Wohl shanghaied me to Special Operations," Washington explained, "I put my name in. I almost didn't take it. I never cracked a book."

"But you came in third," Matt said.

"As I said, Officer Payne, you may now call me 'sir.'"

"Well, I think this is splendid!"

Spoken like a true Main Line WASP. "Splendid."

"Splendid?" Washington asked dryly.

"I think so."

"Thank you, Matt," Washington said.

"So what happens to you now? Will they transfer you?"

"I devoutly hope so," Washington said. "Back to Homicide."

"I'd hate to see you go."

Now that I think about it, I'm not so sure I want to go back to Homicide. Not as a sergeant.

"I don't think Peter Wohl will let me go anywhere until we catch the cop killer," Washington said.

"Is that the way that works? It's up to the inspector?"

"No. The way it works is that assignments of newly promoted people are made by Personnel. They evaluate the individual in terms of vacancies, his future career, and the good of the Department. After a good deal of thought and paper-pushing, they reach a decision, and the promotee-is that right, 'promotee'?"

"Why not?" Matt chuckled.

"-thepromotee gets his new assignment. Providing of course, that certain members of the hierarchy, Denny Coughlin, for example, and Matt Lowenstein, people like that, and, of course, our own beloved commander, P. Wohl, agree. If they don't like the promotee's assignment, they somehow manage to get it changed to one they do like. The operative words are 'for the good of the Department.'"

"I think I understand," Matt said.

There was the sound of a key in the door. Jason Washington started toward it, but it opened before he could reach it.

It was a very tall, sharply featured woman, her hair drawn tight against an angular skull.

She looks, Matt thought, like one of the Egyptian bas-reliefs in the museum.

Martha (Mrs. Jason) Washington, wearing a flowing pale green dress, stepped into the apartment. Behind her was the doorman, carrying a very large framed picture, wrapped in kraft paper.

"Take that from him, please," she ordered.

Washington put his hand in his pocket, gave the doorman a couple of dollar bills, and relieved him of the picture.

"Hello, Matt," Martha Washington said.

"Good evening," Matt said.

"What's this?" Jason asked.

"I thought you could tell from the shape," she said. "It's a bathtub."

Jason Washington tore the kraft paper away. It was a turn-of-thecentury oil painting of a voluptuous nude, reclining on her side.

"Finally, some art I can understand and appreciate," Washington said.

"Inspector Wohl's got one almost just like that," Matt said.

"That figures," Martha said. "That's to sell, Jason, not for you to ogle; don't get attached to it. I found it in one of those terribly chic places off South Street. I think he needed the money to pay the rent. I bought it right, and I think I know just where to get rid of it."

"Well,I like it," Matt said. "How much do you want for it?"

"You're too young," she said. "And besides, it would enrage your liberated female girlfriends."

"Yeah," Matt said, considering that. The prospect seemed to please him.

She seemed to see his whiskey glass for the first time.

"Are we celebrating something?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed," Matt said.

"Good evening, Matthew," Jason Washington said. "Nice of you to drop by."

"Just what's going on here?"

"Good night, Mrs. Washington," Matt said.

"Jason?" Mrs. Washington asked. There was a hint of threat in her voice.

"I took the sergeant's exam," Jason said.

"Well, it's about damned time," she said. "And you think you passed? Is that what you're celebrating?"

"Not exactly," Matt heard Jason Washington say as he pulled the door closed after him.