"Good morning, Inspector," he said. "I expect you want to see me?"

"When you get a free minute, Henry," Wohl said.

"Let me get a cup of coffee," Captain Quaire said, "and I'll be right with you."

Wohl waited until Quaire had carried his coffee mug into his office and then followed him in. Quaire put his mug on his desk, and then went to the door and closed it.

"I was told you would be around, Peter," he said, waving toward a battered chair. "But before we start that, let me thank you for last night."

"Thank me for what last night?" Wohl asked.

"I understand a situation developed on the Nelson job that could have been awkward."

"Where'd you hear that?"

Quaire didn't reply directly.

"My cousin Paul's with the Crime Lab. He was there," he said. "I had a word with Lieutenant DelRaye. I tried to make the point that knocking down witnesses' doors and hauling them away in a wagon is not what we of the modern enlightened law-enforcement community think of as good public relations."

Wohl chuckled, relieved that Quaire had heard about the incident from his own sources; after telling the commissioner what he had told him was off the record, he would have been disappointed if the commissioner had gone right to DelRaye's commanding officer with it.

"The lady was a little upset, but nothing got out of control."

"Was he drunk, Peter?"

I wonder if he got that, too, from his cousin Paul? And is Cousin Paul a snitch, or did Quaire tell him to keep his eye on DelRaye?

"No, I don't think so," Wohl replied, and added a moment later, "No, I'm sure he wasn't."

But I was. How hypocritical I am, in that circumstance. I wonder if anybody saw it, and turned me in?

"Okay," Quaire said. "That's good enough for me, Peter. Now what can I do for you to keep the commissioner off your back and Chief Lowenstein off mine?"

"Lowenstein said something to you about me? You said you expected me?" Wohl asked.

"Lowenstein said, quote, by order of the commissioner, you would be keeping an eye on things," Quaire said.

"Onlyas a spectator," Wohl said. "I'm to finesse both Miss Dutton and Mr. Nelson. I'm to keep Nelson up to date on how that job is going, and to make sure Miss Dutton is treated with all the courtesy an ordinary citizen of Philadelphia, who also happens to be on TV twice a day, can expect."

Quaire smiled. "That, the girl, might be very interesting," he said. "She's a looker, Peter. Nelson may be difficult. He's supposed to be a real sonofabitch."

"Do you think the Commissioner would rather have him mad at Peter Wohl than at Ted Czernick?" Wohl said. "I fell into this, Henry. I responded to the call at the Waikiki. My bad luck, I was on Roosevelt Boulevard."

"Well, what do you need?"

"I'm going from here to see Nelson," Wohl said. "I'd like to talk to the detective who has the job."

"Sure."

"If it's all right with you, Henry, I'd like to ask him to tell me when they need Miss Dutton in here. I don't want anybody saying, 'Get in the car, honey.' "

"Tony Harris got the Nelson job," Quaire said.

"I heard. Good man, from what I hear," Wohl said.

"Tony Harris is at the Nelson apartment," Quaire said. "You want me to get him in here?"

"I really have to talk to him before I see Nelson. Maybe the thing for me to do is meet him over there."

"You want to do that, I'll call him and tell him to wait for you."

"Please, Henry," Wohl said.

Staff Inspector Peter Wohl's first reaction when he saw Detective Anthony C. Harris was anger.

Tony Harris was in his early thirties, a slight and wiry man already starting to bald, the smooth youthful skin on his face already starting to crease and line. He was wearing a shirt and tie, and a sports coat and slacks that had probably come from the racks of some discount clothier several years before.

It was a pleasant spring day and Detective Harris had elected to wait for Inspector Wohl outside the crime scene, which had already begun to stink sickeningly of blood, on the street. Specifically, when Wohl passed through the Stockton Place barrier, Harris was sitting on the hood of Wohl's Jaguar XK-120, which was parked, top down, where he had left it last night.

There were twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer on the XK-120's hood, applied, one coat at a time, with a laborious rubdown between each coat, by Peter Wohl himself.Only an ignorant asshole, with no appreciation of the finer things of life, would plant his gritty ass on twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer.

Wohl screeched to a stop by the Jaguar, leaned across the seat, rolled down the window, and returned Tony Harris's pleasant smile by snapping, "Get your ass off my hood!"

Then he drove twenty feet farther down the cobble-stoned street and stopped the LTD.

Looking a little sheepish, Harris walked to the LTD as Wohl got out.

"Jesus Christ, Tony!" Wohl fumed, still angry. "There's twenty coats of lacquer on there!"

"Sorry," Harris mumbled. "I didn't think."

"Obviously," Wohl said.

Wohl's anger died as quickly as it had flared. Tony Harris looked beat and worn down. Without consciously calling it up from his memory, what Wohl knew about Harris came into his mind. First came the important impression he had filed away, which was that Harris was a good cop, more important, one of the brighter Homicide detectives. Then he remembered hearing that after nine years of marriage and four kids, Mrs. Harris had caught Tony straying from the marital bed and run him before a judge who had awarded her both ears and the tail.

If I were Tony Harris, Peter Wohl thought, who has to put in sixty, sixty-five hours a week to make enough money to pay child support with enough left over to pay for an "efficiency" apartment for myself, and some staff inspector, no older than I am, pulls rank and jumps my ass for scratching the precious paint on his precious sports car, I would be pissed. And rightly so.

"Hell, Tony, I'm sorry," Wohl said, offering his hand. "But I painted that sonofabitch by myself. All twenty coats."

"I was wrong," Harris said. "I just wasn't thinking. Or I wasn't thinking about a paint job."

"I guess what I was really pissed about was my own stupidity," Wohl said. "I know better than using my own car on the job. Right after I saw you, I asked myself, 'Christ, what if it had rained last night?' "

"You took that TV woman out through the basement in her own car?" Harris asked.

"Yeah."

"It took DelRaye some time to figure that out," Harris said. "Talk about pissed."

"Well, I'm sorry he was," Wohl said. "But it was a vicious circle, the more pissed he got at her, the more pissed she got at him. I had to break it, and that seemed to be the best way to do it. The whole department would have paid for it for a long time."

"I think maybe he was pissed because he knew his ass was showing," Harris said. "You can't push a dame like that around. She file a complaint?"

"No," Wohl said.

Harris shrugged.

"Did Captain Quaire say anything to you about me?" Wohl asked.

"He said it came from upstairs that you were to be in on it," Harris said.

"I've been temporarily transferred to the Charm Squad," Wohl said. " I'm to keep Miss Dutton happy, and to report daily to Mr. Nelson's father on the progress of your investigation."

Harris chuckled.

"What have you got, Tony?"

"He was a fag, I guess you know?"

"I met him," Wohl said.

"I want to talk to his boyfriend," Harris said. "We're looking for him. Very large black guy, big enough, strong enough, to cut up Nelson the way he was. His name, we think, is Pierre St. Maury. His birth certificate probably says John Jones, but that's what he called himself."