"It won't look right, if you don't go to the house tonight." Mrs. Olga Wohl came on the extension. "We've known the Moffitts all our lives. And, tomorrow, at the wake, there will be so many people there

…"

"I'll try to get by later, Mother," Peter said. "I'm going out to dinner."

"With who, if you don't mind my asking?"

He didn't reply.

"You hear anything, Peter?" Chief Inspector Wohl asked.

"The woman who shot Dutch is a junkie. They have an ID on her, and on the guy, another junkie, who was involved. I think they'll pick him up in a couple of days; I wouldn't be surprised if they already have him. My phone answerer is blinking. A Homicide detective named Jason Washington's got the job-"

"I know him," August Wohl interrupted.

"I asked him to keep me advised. As soon as I hear something, I'll let you know."

"Why should he keep you advised?" August Wohl asked.

"Because the commissioner, for the good of the department, has assigned me to charm the lady from TV."

"I saw the TV," Wohl's father said. "The blonde really was an eyewitness?"

"Yes, she was. She just made the identification, of the dead girl, and the guy who ran. Positive. I was there when she made it. The guy's name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher."

"White guy?"

"Yeah. The woman, too. Her name is Schmeltzer. Her father has a grocery store over by Lincoln High."

"Jesus, I know him," August Wohl said.

"Dad, I better see who called," Peter said.

"He's going to be at Marshutz amp; Sons, for the wake, I mean. They're going to lay him out in the Green Room; I talked to Gertrude Moffitt," Peter's mother said.

"I'll be at the wake, of course, Mother," Peter said.

"Peter," Chief Inspector Wohl, retired, said thoughtfully, "maybe it would be a good idea for you to wear your uniform to the funeral."

"What?" Peter asked, surprised. Staff inspectors almost never wore uniforms.

"There will be talk, if you're not at the house tonight-"

"You bet, there will be," Peter's mother interjected.

"People like to gossip," Chief Inspector Wohl went on. "Instead of letting them gossip about maybe why you didn't come to the house, let them gossip about you being in uniform."

"That sounds pretty devious, Dad."

"Either the house tonight, with his other close friends, or the uniform at the wake," Chief Inspector Wohl said. "A gesture of respect, one way or the other."

"I don't know, Dad," Peter said..

"Do what you like," his father said, abruptly, and the line went dead.

He's mad. He offered advice and I rejected it. And he's probably right, too. You don't get to be a chief inspector unless you are a master practitioner of the secret rites of the police department.

There was only one recorded message on the telephone answerer tape:

"Dennis Coughlin, Peter. You've done one hell of a job with that TV woman. That was very touching, what she said on the TV. The commissioner saw it, too. I guess you know-Matt Lowenstein told me he saw you-that the commissioner wants you to stay on top of this. None of us wants anything embarrassing to anyone to happen. Call me, at the house, if necessary, when you learn something."

While the tape was rewinding, Peter glanced at his watch.

"Damn!" he said.

He tore off his jacket and his shoulder holster and started to unbutton his shirt. There was no time for a shower. He was late already. He went into the bathroom and splashed Jamaica Bay lime cologne from a bottle onto his hands, and then onto his face. He sniffed his underarms, wet his hands again, and mopped them under his arms.

He stripped to his shorts and socks, and then dressed quickly. He pulled on a pale blue turtleneck knit shirt, and then a darker blue pair of Daks trousers. He slipped his feet into loafers, put his arms through the straps of the shoulder holster, and then into a maroon blazer. He reached on a closet shelf for a snap-brim straw hat and put that on. He examined himself in the full-length mirrors that covered the sliding doors to the bedroom closet.

"My, don't you look splendid, you handsome devil, you!" he said.

And then he ran down the stairs and put a key to the padlock on one of the garage doors, and pulled them open. He went inside. There came the sound of a starter grinding, and then an engine caught.

A British racing green 1950 Jaguar XK-120 roadster emerged slowly and carefully from the garage. It looked new, rather than twenty-three years old. It had been a mess when Peter bought it, soon after he had been promoted to lieutenant. He'd since put a lot of money and a lot of time into it. Even his mother appreciated what he had done; it was now his "cute little sporty car" rather than "that disgraceful old junky rattletrap."

He drove at considerably in excess of the speed limit down Lancaster Avenue to Belmont, and then to the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute. Barbara Crowley, R.N., a tall, lithe young woman of, he guessed, twenty-six, twenty-seven, who wore her blond hair in a pageboy, was waiting for him, and smiled when the open convertible pulled up to her.

But she was pissed, he knew, both that he was late, and that he was driving the Jaguar. She contained her annoyance because she was trying as hard as he was to find someone.

"We're being sporty tonight, I see," Barbara said as she got in the car.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he said. "I will prove that, if you give me a chance."

"It's all right," she said.

Impulsively, and although he knew he wasn't, in the turtleneck, dressed for it, he decided on the Ristorante Alfredo. He could count, he thought, on having some snotty Wop waiter, six months out of a Neapolitan slum, look haughtily down his nose at him.

It started going bad before he got that far.

An acne-faced punk in the parking garage gave him trouble about parking the Jaguar himself. It had taken him, literally, a year to find an unblemished, rust-free right front fender for the XK-120, and no sooner had he got it on, and had, finally, the whole car lacquered (20 coats) properly than a parking valet who looked like this one's idiot uncle scraped it along a concrete block wall.

He had since parked his car himself.

The scene annoyed Barbara further, although he resolved it with money, to get it over with.

SEVEN

When she saw that Peter Wohl was leading her to Ristorante Alfredo, Barbara Crowley protested.

"Peter, it's so expensive!"

She sounds like my mother, Peter thought.

"Well, I'll just stiff my ex-wife on her alimony," he said, as he opened the door to Ristorante Alfredo. "Tell her to have the kids get a job, too."

Barbara, visibly, did not think that was funny. There was no ex-wife and no kids, but it was not the sort of thing Barbara thought you should joke about, particularly when there was someone who could hear and might not understand. She hadn't thought it was funny the last time he'd made his little joke, and, to judge by her face, it had not improved with age.

The headwaiter was a tall, silver-haired man, who had heard.

"Have you a reservation, sir?" he asked.

"No, but it doesn't look like you have many, either,"

Peter said, waving in the general direction of the half-empty dining room.

The headwaiter looked toward the bar, where a stout man in his early thirties sat at the bar. He was wearing an expensive suit, and his black hair was expensively cut and arranged, almost successfully, to conceal a rapidly receding hairline.

His name was Ricco Baltazari, and the restaurant and bar licenses had been issued in his name. It was actually owned by a man named Vincenzo Savarese, who; for tax purposes, and because it's hard for a convicted felon to get a liquor license, had Baltazari stand in for him.