Officers Martinez and McFadden heard him out politely, then left the building and got in the Highway RPC.

"Do you believe that shit?" Jesus Martinez said.

"If I'd have known they were going to have us handing out speeding tickets, I'd have told them to stick their overtime up their ass," Charley McFadden said.

TWELVE

Matt dropped change into the pay phone at the gas station where he parked his car near Special Operations, got a dial tone, and dialed a number from memory.

"Hello?"

The voice of the bridegroom-to-be did not seem to be bubbling over with joyous anticipation or anything else.

"It's not too late to change your mind," Matt said. "I believe that's known as leaving the bride at the altar."

"Where the fuck have you been? Where are you?"

"I just got off work," Matt said. "I'm at Bustleton and Bowler."

"I was getting worried."

"I can't imagine why."

"Can you get a couple of suitcases in that car of yours?"

"Sure."

"Then come get me," Chad Nesbitt ordered. "You can take me by Daffy's with my bags and then to the hotel."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" Matt said emotionally, but he said it to a dead telephone. Chad Nesbitt had hung up.

Second Lieutenant Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV, USMCR, was waiting under the fieldstone portico of the Nesbitt mansion in Bala-Cynwyd when Matt got there. He was in uniform, freshly shaved, and sitting astride a life-size stone lion. Two identical canvas suitcases with his name, rank, and serial number stenciled on them sat beside the lion. A transparent bag held a Marine dress uniform, and there was a box that presumably held the brimmed uniform cap, and another that obviously held Chad's Marine officer's sword.

He held a stemmed glass filled with red liquid in his hand. Another glass, topped with a paper napkin, was balanced on one of the suitcases.

"It took you long enough," he greeted Matt when Matt got out of the car and walked up to him.

"Fuck you."

"Well, fuck you too. Now you don't get no Bloody Mary."

"Is that what that is?" Matt replied, picking up the glass. "Thank you, I don't mind if I do."

They smiled at each other.

"You must have had a good time last night," Matt said. "You look like the finest example of the mortician's art."

"Speaking of that, where the hell were you?"

"Fighting crime, where do you think?"

"'Fighting crime'? Is that what you call it? Daffy said you were shacked up with What's-her-name Stevens."

"Her name is Amanda and we weren't shacked up."

"Methinks thou dost protest too much," Chad said. "Madame Browne is, of course, morally outraged at you."

"So what else is new?"

"I think I'll have another of these to give me courage to face the traffic, and then you can take us over there, and then to the hotel."

"I thought you weren't supposed to see the bride before the wedding."

"All I'm going to do is drop my bags off. Then we go to the hotel and get a little something to quiet my nerves."

"You're already-or maybe still-bombed," Matt said. "I don't want to have to carry you into the church."

"You have always been something of a prig, Payne. Have I ever told you that?"

"Often," Matt said, putting the Bloody Mary down and picking up the suitcases. "Jesus, what the hell have you got in here?"

"Just the chains and whips and handcuffs and other stuff one takes on one's bridal trip," Chad said. "Plus, of course, what every Marine second lieutenant takes with him when going off to battle the forces of Communism in far-off Okinawa."

"The sword and dress blues too?"

"I'll change into the blues at the hotel, and then out of them at Daffy's after the wedding. We don't use swords no more, you know, to battle the forces of Communism."

Matt set the suitcases on the cobblestone driveway and opened the hatch.

"Get in," he said, then, "What are your travel plans, by the way?"

"We're going into New York tonight and flying to the West Coast tomorrow."

"You're not coming back here?"

"I hope to come back, of course, but if you were asking 'after the wedding and before going overseas,' no."

He swung his leg off the stone lion, picked up Matt's Bloody Mary glass, and walked to the car.

"If you were to open the door for me, I think I could get in without spilling any of this on your pristine upholstery," he said.

Matt closed the hatch and opened the door for him. He took his Bloody Mary from him, drained it, and set the glass on the step.

When he straightened, Mrs. Chadwick T. Nesbitt III was standing there.

"I'm not at all sure that's a very good idea, Matt," she said, and then walked around him to the car.

"He insisted, Mother," Chad said. "He said he didn't think he could get through the ceremony without the assistance of a little belt."

"Well, don't let him give you any more," she said. "Have you got everything?"

"Yes, Mother."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Well, then, I guess we'll see you at St. Mark's."

"God willing, and if the creek don't rise," Chad said, and slammed his door shut.

Matt walked around to the driver's side of the Porsche.

"Matt…" Chad's mother said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Just… behave, the two of you."

"We will," Matt said.

He got behind the wheel, made a U-turn, and started down the drive to the gate.

Mrs. Nesbitt waved. Chad waved back.

"Mother, I think, is aware that she may be watching her firstborn leave the family manse for the last time," Chad said. "That somewhat discomfiting thought has occurred to me."

Matt didn't know what to say.

"If I asked you politely, would you give me a straight answer to a straight question?" Chad asked.

Matt sensed that Chad was serious. "Sure," he said.

"What does it feel like to kill somebody?"

"Jesus!"

"At the moment your experience in that area exceeds mine," Chad said, "although, to be sure, I am sure the Marine Corps plans to correct that situation as quickly as possible."

"I haven't had nightmares or done a lot of soul-searching about it," Matt said. "Nothing like that. The man I shot was a certified scumbag-"

"Interesting word," Chad said, interrupting. "Meaning, I take it, someone who has as much value as a used rubber?"

"I really don't know what it means. It's… cop talk. A very unpleasant individual. The same day I shot him, earlier that day I saw what he did to a woman he abducted. He raped her, tortured her, mutilated her, and then killed her. I suppose that's part of the equation. I knew that he was no fucking good."

"In other words, you were pleased that you had killed him?"

"When I saw him, he tried to run me over. He totaled my car. The only emotion I had was fear and anger. He was trying to kill me. I had a gun, so I killed him."

"Courage is defined as presence of mind under stress," Chad said.

"Then,ergo sum, courage was not involved in what I did," Matt said. "He had a woman in the van, another one he had abducted. It was just blind fucking luck that I didn't hit her when I was shooting at him. If I had had'presence of mind,' I wouldn't have shot at him at all."

"The newspapers made quite a hero of you," Chad said thoughtfully. "The Old Man sent them all to me."

"That was all bullshit," Matt said.

"Fuck you.I'm impressed."

"You never were very smart."

"So tell me, Sherlock, who popped Penny Detweiler?"

"We're still looking," Matt said.

"Let me give you a clue," Chad said. "Daffy said Penny knew that Eye-talian."

"Daffy told you that?"

"Surprised?"

"No," Matt said. "She tell you anything else?"

"No. Just that she knew Penny had been seeing him."

" 'Seeing,' as opposed to 'buying cocaine from'?"