He had a somewhat immodest thought: if they didn't like me, to the point where they are willing to give me and Special Operations a chance, they would already have come up with twenty reasons to get themselves fired.

"Is the Flannery woman still in the hospital?" Washington asked.

"I don't know," Wohl said.

"She saw more of this guy than any of the others," Washington said, closing the file. "Can I have this?"

"No," Wohl said. "But I'll get you both a copy. Payne, when we get back to the office, Xerox this in four copies."

"Yes, sir."

"Ah," Washington said, looking around the room. "Here comes my lunch!"

The waitress delivered two New York Strip steaks, a filet mignon (to Washington) and a shrimp salad.

If I had ordered a steak, Matt thought, they would have ordered bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.

Nobody spoke another word until Washington laid his knife and fork on the plate, and delicately dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.

"We work for you, right?" he asked. "I don't have to check with Sabara every time I sharpen a pencil?"

"Mike is the Deputy Commander," Wohl said.

"We work for you, right?" Washington repeated.

"Mike is the Deputy Commander," Wohl repeated, "but I will tell him that the only job you two have is the Northwest Philly rapist. What have you got against Sabara?"

"He's a worrier," Washington said. "Worriers make me nervous."

Wohl chuckled.

Washington looked at Matt Payne. "You open to a little advice, son?"

"Yes, sir," Payne said.

" 'Yes, sir,' " Harris quoted mockingly.

"That's a very nice jacket," Washington said, giving Harris a dirty look, and then turning his face to Matt. "Tripler?"

"Yes," Matt said, surprised. "As a matter of fact it is."

"If you're going to wear a shoulder holster, you have to have them make allowance for it," Washington said. "Cut it a little fuller under the left arm. What you look like now, with the material stretched that way, is a man carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster."

Matt, smiling uneasily, looked at Inspector Wohl, whom he found grinning at him.

"Listen to him, Payne," Wohl said. "He's the recognized sartorial authority in the Police Department."

"The whole idea of plainclothes is to look like anything but a cop," Washington said. "What you really should do, in the summer, is get a snub-nose and carry it in an ankle holster. Very few people look at your ankles to see if you're carrying a gun, and even if they do, unless you wear peg-leg trousers like Harris here, they're pretty much out of sight on your ankles."

Wohl laughed.

Washington stood up and put out his hand to Wohl.

"Thank you for the lunch," he said. "I'll check in if I come up with anything."

"My pleasure," Wohl said. "Jason, what you have for radios in the car is J-Band and I don't know what else. It's arranged with Radio to give you Detectives and Highway, too. I mean, if you take the car there, they're set up to do the work right away. Tony, you paying attention?"

"When do I get a car?" Harris asked.

"As soon as Jason drives you over to get one."

Harris grunted.

"Sabara's not going to worry if I take the car home with me at night, is he?" Washington asked.

"No, he's not," Wohl said. "You stop worrying. You're going to be the star of our little operation."

"Here comes the horse manure again," Washington said, and walked out of the room.

"Nice to meet you, Payne," Harris said, offering him his hand. "See you around."

When they had left the restaurant, Wohl held up his coffee cup to catch the waitress's attention, and when she had refilled his cup from a stainless steel pot, he turned to Matt.

"Now we get to you, Officer Payne," he said.

"Sir?"

"It is generally accepted as a fact of life in the Police Department that before you do anything else with a rookie, you give him a couple of years in a District. In the case of someone your size, you assign him to a wagon. You know what a wagon is?"

"Yes, sir, a paddy wagon."

"Be careful where you say that," Wohl said. "To some of our brother officers of Irish extraction, paddy wagon is a pejorative term, dating back to the days when Irishmen were known as 'Paddys' and were hauled off to jail in a horse-drawn vehicle known as the 'Paddy Wagon.'

"Sir, I'm half-Irish."

"Half doesn't count. It's not like being a little pregnant. My mother's Catholic. But neither you nor I are products of the parochial school system, or alumni of Roman or Father Judge or North Catholic High. Neither are we Roman Catholics. Half-Irish or ex-Roman Catholic doesn't count."

"Yes, sir," Matt said, smiling. "I'll say 'wagon.' "

"As I was saying, broad-backed young rookies like yourself generally begin their careers in a District with a couple of years in a wagon. That gives them practical experience, and the only way to really learn this job is on the job. After a couple of years in a wagon, rookies move on, either, usually, to an RPC, or somewhere else. There are exceptions to this, of course. Both Charley McFadden and Jesus Martinez went right from the Academy to Narcotics, as plainclothes, undercover. The reasoning there was that their faces weren't known to people in the drug trade, and that, presuming they dressed the part, they could pass for pushers or addicts. But that sort of thing is the exception, not the rule."

"Yes, sir."

"Speaking of our Irish-American friends, when was the last time you saw Chief Coughlin?"

"I had dinner with him one night last week," Matt said.

"Would you be surprised to learn that Chief Coughlin sent you to Special Operations?"

"Chief Matdorf told me that he had arranged for me to be sent to Highway," Matt said, hesitated, and then went on, "but Chief Coughlin didn't say anything to me about it."

"He told me he was sending you over," Wohl said, "but he didn't tell me what he expected me to do with you. What would you like to do?"

The question surprised Matt; he raised both his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"I don't think he had in mind putting you on a motorcycle," Wohl said. "And since, for the moment at least, I'm not even thinking of any kind of undercover operations, I really don't know what the hell to do with you. Can you type?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well?"

"Yes, sir. I think so."

"Well, I don't think Chief Coughlin wants me to turn you into a clerk, either," Wohl said, "but we're going to start generating a lot of paperwork to get Special Operations up to speed. More than Sergeant Frizell can handle. More than he can handle while he does things for me, too, anyway. The thought that occurs to me is that you could work for me, as sort of a gofer, until I can sort this out. How does that sound?"

"That sounds fine, sir."

"And, for the time being, anyway, I think in plainclothes," Wohl said.

He looked around, caught the waitress's eye, and gestured for the check.

He turned back to Matt. "Jason Washington was right," he said. "You should get yourself a snub-nose and an ankle holster. You'll have to buy it yourself, but Colosimo's Gun Store offers an alleged police discount. Know where it is?"

"No, sir."

"The-nine-hundred block on Spring Garden," Wohl said.

"Sir, I thought you had to qualify with a snubnose," Matt said.

"How did you do on the pistol range in the Academy?" Wohl asked.

"All right, I think," Matt said. "Better than all right. I made Expert with the.45 at Quantico."

"That's right," Wohl said. "You told me that the night I first met you, the night of Dutch's wake. You were planning to be a Marine, weren't you? And then you busted the physical."

"Yes, sir."

"Is that why you came on the cops? To prove you're a man, anyway?"

"That's what my sister says," Matt said. "She says I was psychologically castrated when I flunked the physical, and that what I'm doing is proving my manhood."