She really thought the reason I wasn't going over to the house was because taking her there would be one more reluctant step on our slow, but inexorable march to the altar. I squirmed out of that, and now she is offering me comfort, in the way women have comforted men since they came home with dinosaur bites.

"What I think I will do is take you home, apologize for my lousy attitude-"

"Don't be silly, Peter," Barbara interrupted.

"And then go home and get my uniform out of the bag so that I will remember to get it pressed in the morning."

"Your uniform?"

"Dutch was killed in the line of duty," Peter said. "There will be, the day after tomorrow, a splendiferous ceremony at Saint Dominic's. I will be there, in uniform, which, my mother and dad hope, will be accepted as a gesture of my respect overwhelming my bad manners for not joining the other close friends at the house tonight."

He saw a question forming in her eyes, but she didn't, after a just perceptible hesitation, ask it. Instead, she said, "I don't think I've ever seen you in your uniform."

"Very spiffy," he said. "When I wear my uniform, I have to fight to preserve my virtue. It drives the girls wild."

"I'll bet you look very nice in a uniform," Barbara said.

He looked for and found the waiter and waved him over and called for the check.

There would be no check, the waiter said. It was Mr. Savarese's pleasure.

Barbara insisted in going home in a cab. She wasn't mad, she assured him, but she was tired and he was tired, and they both had had bad days and a lot to do tomorrow, and a cab was easier, and made sense.

She kissed him quickly, and got in a cab and was gone. He went to the parking garage and reclaimed the Jaguar.

As soon as he got behind the wheel, Peter Wohl began to regret not having gone to her apartment with Barbara. For one thing, he had learned that turning down an offer of sexual favors was not a good way to maintain a good relationship with a female.They could have headaches, or for other reasons be temporarily out of action, but the privilege was not reciprocal. He had probably hurt her feelings, or angered her (even if she didn't let it show), or both, by leaving her. He was sorry to have done that, for Barbara was a good woman.

Less nobly, he realized that a piece of ass would probably be just what the doctor would order for what ailed him. Seeing Dutch slumped dead against the wall had affected him more than he liked to admit. And looking down Louise Dutton's dressing gown, even if she had caught him at it, and made an ass of him, had aroused him. Whatever else could or would be said about the TV lady, she really had a set of perfect teats.

He had been driving without thinking about where he was going. When he oriented himself, he saw he was on Market Street, west of the Schuylkill River, just past Thirtieth Street Station. That wasn't far from Barbara's place.

What the hell am I doing? I really don't want to see her any more tonight.

He was also, he realized, just a couple of blocks away from the Adelphia Hotel.

There was a bar off the lobby of the Adelphia Hotel, in which, from time to time, he had found females sitting who were amenable to a dalliance; often guests of the hotel who, he supposed, were more prone to fool around while in Philadelphia than they would back in Pittsburgh; and sometimes what he thought of asStrawbridge amp; Clothier women, the upper crust of Philadelphia and the Main Line, who, if the moon was right, could as easily be talked out of their fashionable clothing.

And even if there were no females, the bar was dark, and he was not known to the bartenders as a cop, and there was a guy who played the piano.

He would see what developed naturally. The worst possible scenario would be no available women. In which case, he would have a couple drinks and listen to the guy play the piano and then do what he probably should have done anyway, go home. He really did have to remember to get his uniform out of the zipper bag in the closet and get it pressed tomorrow.

His eyes had barely adjusted to the darkness of the bar when a male voice spoke in his ear. "Can I buy you a drink?"

He turned to see who had made the offer. The face was familiar, but he couldn't immediately put a name, or an identification, to it.

"It is you, Inspector? I mean… youare Inspector Wohl, aren't you?"

It came together. Dutch's nephew. He had met the kid that afternoon, outside Dutch's house.

"Let me buy you one," Wohl said, smiling and offering his hand. "Matt Moffitt, right?"

"Matt Payne," the boy said. "I was adopted."

"Yeah, I heard something about that," Wohl said. "Sorry."

"No problem," Matt said.

The bartender appeared.

"I don't know what he wants," Wohl said, "but Johnnie Red and soda for me."

"The same," Matt said.

"You old enough?" the bartender challenged. "You got a driver's license?"

Matt handed it over. The bartender eyed it dubiously, then asked Matt for his birth date. Finally he shrugged, and went to make the drinks.

"They lose their licenses," Wohl said. "You can't blame them."

When the drinks came, Matt laid a twenty on the bar.

"Hey, I'll get these," Wohl said.

"My pleasure," Matt Payne said. He picked up his glass, raised it, and said, "Dutch."

"Dutch," Wohl repeated, and raised his glass.

"I just came from the Moffitts'," Matt said. "After that, I needed this."

"I was supposed to be there. But I got tied up," Wohl said. "I couldn't get away. I'll go by Marshutz amp; Sons, to the wake, tomorrow."

"It was pretty awful," Matt said.

"Why do you say that?" Wohl asked.

"The kids, for one thing, my cousins," Matt said. "Losing their father is really tough on them. And my grandmother was a flaming pain in the ass, for another. She was a real bitch toward my mother."

"What?" Wohl asked. "Why?"

"My grandmother thinks what my mother should have done when my father got killed was turn into a professional widow, like she is. Instead, she married my stepfather. "

"What's wrong with that?"

"Out of the church," Matt said. "Mother married one of those heathen Protestant Episcopals. And then Mother converted herself, and took me with her. And then let my stepfather adopt me."

"German Catholic mothers of that generation have very positive ideas," Wohl said. "I know, I've got one of them. She and Gertrude Moffitt are old pals."

"You weren't at the house," Matt said, and Wohl wasn't sure if it was a question or a challenge.

"I also have a German Lutheran father," Wohl said, "who went along with her until he suspected, correctly, that a priest at Saint Joseph' s Prep was trying to recruit me for the Jesuits. Then he pulled me out of Good Ol' Saint Joe's and moved me into Northeast High. She still has high hopes that I will meet some good Catholic girl, who will lead me back into the fold."

I wonder why I told him that?

"Then you do know," Matt said.

"The reason I didn't go to see Jeannie Moffitt tonight was because I didn't want to," Wohl said. "And I figured if Dutch is really looking down from his cloud, he would understand."

Matt chuckled. "You were pretty close?"

"I knew him pretty well, all our lives, but we weren't close. Dutch was Highway Patrol, and that's a way of life. They don't think anybody else really is a cop. Maybe Organized Crime, or Intelligence, but certainly not a staff inspector. I guess, really, that Dutch tolerated me. I'd been in the Highway Patrol, even if I later went wrong."

"You were there, where he was shot, I mean. I heard that."

"I was nearby when I heard the call. I responded."

"I don't understand what really happened," Matt said. "He didn't know he was shot?"