FIFTEEN.
[ONE].
I may have had more of these than I remember," Mickey O"Hara said, interrupting Washington, and holding up his Old Bushmills on the rocks, "because the guy in the door looks just like Stan Colt."
"Yes, he does, doesn"t he?" Washington agreed.
Mr. Colt, smiling, his hand extended, marched up to them.
"Hi," he said. "You"re Matt"s boss, aren"t you? Lieutenant Washington?"
"Yes, I am," Washington said. "And unless I err, you are Mr. Stan Colt?"
"Right!"
"I"m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Colt," Washington said, adding: "This is Mr. Michael J. O"Hara, of the Bulletin. Bulletin."
"No s.h.i.t!" Mr. Colt exclaimed. "You"re Mickey O"Hara? G.o.dd.a.m.n! You"re a G.o.dd.a.m.n legend!"
He enthusiastically pumped Mickey"s hand.
"Mr. O"Hara is indeed one of our more prominent journalists, " Washington said, as Wohl, trailed by Matt, came into the bar.
"When you and Bull Bolinski got caught running numbers for Frankie the Gut, you took the fall for him, got expelled, and the Bull got to graduate, got to be All-American . . . you know. The Bull told me all about you."
"You know Casimir?" Mickey asked.
"h.e.l.l, yeah, I know the Bull. We West Catholic guys got to stick together, you know. He always stays with me when he"s on the Coast."
"I"ll be d.a.m.ned," Mickey said. "I heard you were in town, raising money for West Catholic, but I didn"t know you went there."
"You probably wouldn"t remember me. I used to be Stanley Coleman, I was a freshman and you and the Bull were juniors when you got s.h.i.t-canned, but I sure remember you."
"I"ll be d.a.m.ned," Mickey said, and now returned Mr. Colt"s enthusiastic hand-pumping.
Wohl walked up, smiling a little lamely.
"Well, I see you"ve met Mr. O"Hara, Mr. Colt," he said.
"Met him, s.h.i.t! We go way back; we both got kicked out of West Catholic. Jesus, I"m glad you brought me in here!"
"Me, too," Mickey said.
"Hey, bartender," Mr. Colt called, and when he had his attention, made a circling motion with his hand, which the bartender correctly interpreted to mean that he should bring liquid refreshment to one and all.
"The usual, Inspector?" the bartender asked.
Wohl nodded.
"Detective?"
"Hey, he"s a sergeant," Mr. Colt corrected him. "Give us both one of those Irish martinis."
"And if I don"t want an Irish martini?" Matt asked, smiling.
"Drink it anyway, you"re an outnumbered WASP," Colt said, and then frowned, remembering. "Hey, I still don"t have any money. I"ll pay you back."
"Sure."
"The Bulletin Bulletin will pay," Mickey announced. "Why don"t we get a table?" will pay," Mickey announced. "Why don"t we get a table?"
They took a table. The bartender delivered a round of drinks.
"You hang out with these guys, right, Mickey?" Mr. Colt inquired.
"Yeah. What I want to know is what you"re doing with them."
"Matt"s showing me around the police department, and doing a G.o.dd.a.m.n good job of it."
"For a WASP," Mickey said, "Matty"s a pretty good cop. I owe him big time."
"How come?"
"A couple of years back, we were in an alley, and a really bad guy comes down it shooting at us with a .45-"
"Jesus, Mickey!" Matt protested.
"-and Matty put him down," O"Hara went on. "Took a bullet in the leg, but the bottom line was one dead bad guy."
"No s.h.i.t?"
"We call him the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line."
"My friends don"t call me that," Matt said, coldly.
"Or sometimes the Casanova of Center City," O"Hara went blithely on.
"Yeah, I like his taste in women," Mr. Colt said. "You should have seen the one he had with him tonight."
"Curiosity overwhelms me," Washington said. "To whom does Mr. Colt refer, Matthew?"
"Captain Quaire a.s.signed Detective La.s.siter to explain the Williamson job to him," Matt said.
"You got something going with her, Matty?" O"Hara asked.
"No, I don"t."
Mr. Colt winked broadly, held up his balled first with the thumb extended, and said, "Right."
Washington and Wohl smiled.
"So what"s going on in here?" Mr. Colt inquired. "You"re just hanging out, or what?"
O"Hara looked at Wohl.
"You tell him, Peter," he said.
Wohl"s smile vanished. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged.
"Mr. Colt . . ." he began.
"I can"t get you to call me "Stan"?"
"Stan, just about everybody in the department trusts Mickey to keep his mouth shut when he knows something we don"t want to be public knowledge," Wohl said. just about everybody in the department trusts Mickey to keep his mouth shut when he knows something we don"t want to be public knowledge," Wohl said.
"There"s usually a little you-scratch-my-back-and-I"ll-scratch -yours in the deal, Stan," Mickey said. "You asked before if what we"re doing here is hanging out. No. What I"m doing is waiting to see if, or how well, the inspector is going to scratch my back."
"Under the circ.u.mstances, Stan, I"m going to have to ask you not to repeat, to anyone, what I"m about to tell Mickey and you."
"You got it. My lips are sealed," Mr. Colt said. He looked at Matt, held up his right hand with the three center fingers extended, and added, "Boy Scout"s Honor."
"Tony Harris went to Harrisburg," Wohl said. "The State Police were able to get a hit from the print on the visor cap using the AFIS."
"I"m terribly sorry to interrupt, old sport," Mr. Colt interrupted in his British accent, "but I haven"t the foggiest f.u.c.king idea what you are talking about."
Wohl turned his head to look at Colt, and for a moment Matt thought Colt was about to be either frozen with a Wohl glance, or perhaps even treated to an example of Wohl sarcasm, but Wohl surprised him by smiling.
"Well, dear boy, we certainly can"t have that, now can we?" Wohl said, in a British accent very nearly as good as the actor"s. Then he dropped the accent and added, "There was a double homicide in connection with an armed robbery of a Roy Rogers restaurant on South Broad, the guys who did it got away, and we just found out, using a fingerprint we previously thought was useless, who they are."
"You got a match?" Mickey asked. "I thought the lab- Candelle himself-said there wasn"t enough?"
"We"ve identified one of them. The fat guy. And in Known a.s.sociates on his sheet is a guy who lives two doors away from him in the Paschall Homes Project in Southwest Philly who fits the description of the other one."
He stopped and looked at Washington.
"You brought the pictures for Mick?"
Washington nodded and went into his suit jacket, coming out with two Philadelphia Police mug shots. He handed them to O"Hara.
"Can you make either of them, Mick?" Wohl asked.
O"Hara looked carefully at both and then shook his head.
"As much as I"d like to, no," O"Hara said. "It was dark, and as you may recall, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds took a shot at me."
"No s.h.i.t?" Mr. Colt inquired, awe in his voice.
"Anyway, the D.A. doesn"t think what we have is enough to convict them for sure. We need more-the weapon, for example. So we"re not going to arrest them right now."
"Instead?"
"We"re going to keep them under surveillance until we can develop more. That"s the reason that Jason and I were still in Homicide when you called. We had everybody and his brother in there, setting up the surveillance. . . ."
"And that"s why I was ever so politely booted out of there, right?" Mr. Colt inquired.
"Excuse me?" Wohl asked.
"When that captain sent Matt"s girlfriend to explain that other job to me . . ." He paused and made a pumping motion with his fist. "That was to get me out of Homicide, right?"
"I think one could reasonably draw that a.s.sumption, Mr. Colt," Washington said.
"I would have been in the way, right?"
"And been privy to things we would rather not be known to the public," Washington replied.
"Well, what the h.e.l.l, we had a nice dinner, right?" Mr. Colt said.
"Very nice," Matt said.
"Can I ask you a question, Mickey?" Mr. Colt inquired, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "How come you were at this Roy Rogers? Just a coincidence? You went there for a hamburger or whatever?"
"No. I responded to a possible armed-robbery-in-progress call, and I got there just as these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were leaving."
"Explain that? You"ve got a police scanner? Right?"
"He has a battery of police scanners," Washington said. "With which he eavesdrops on police communications in the tristate area. You may have noticed all the antennae."
"That Buick Whatchamacallit outside is yours? I saw all the antennas."
"It"s a Rendezvous," Mickey said. "Yeah, that"s mine."
"If you want to really see the police department at work, Mr. Colt," Washington said, "perhaps Mr. O"Hara would be good enough to let you ride around with him. He responds to every interesting call, which usually means a call where violence is likely to be found."
"Be glad to have you, Stan," Mickey said.
"Jeez, I"d like that."
"Then we"ll do it," Mickey said.
"There"s a problem there," Wohl said. "We really have to make sure you have a police officer with you, Stan."
"Why, and what"s wrong with Matt?"
"Because the commissioner says so," Wohl said. "And what"s wrong with Matt is that he"s been on the job all day and it"s getting close to midnight."
"What about the other detective?" Mr. Colt asked. "The little one?"