Then he dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt that had WILDWOOD BY THE SEA and a representation of a fish jumping out of the water painted on it. He slipped his feet into loafers and completed dressing by unpinning his badge from his leather jacket and pinning it to a leather badge and ID case and putting that in his left hip pocket, and by slipping the spring clip of the Colt holster inside his trousers just in front of his right hip.

He went down the stairs three at a time, grabbed a quilted nylon zipper jacket from a hook by the front door, and, quickly, so there would be no opportunity for challenge, called out, "I'm going down to Flo amp; Danny's for a beer, Ma. And then out for supper."

Flo amp; Danny's Bar amp; Grill was on the corner. He slid onto a bar stool and Danny, without a word, drew a beer and set it before him.

"How they hanging, kid?"

"One lower than the other."

Charley looked at his watch. It was quarter to six. He had to meet Margaret at the FOP at seven. It would take fifteen minutes to drive there. There was plenty of time.

Maybe too much. She doesn't like it when I smell like a beer tap.

"Danny, give me an egg and a sausage," he said.

Harry fished a purple pickled egg and a piece of pickled sausage from two glass jars beside the cash register and delivered them on a paper napkin. Charley took a bite of the egg, and walked to the telephone and put the rest of his egg in his mouth as he dropped a dime in the slot and dialed a number.

"Hello."

"You and your goddamn wiseass answer machine messages. Where have you been?"

"Running errands."

"You want to have a beer or something?"

"Just one. I got a date."

"Me too. At seven."

"You want to come here? Where are you?"

"Home. FOP?"

"Fifteen minutes?"

"Good."

Matt Payne hung up.

Charley paid for the beer, the egg, and the sausage, and got in his car and drove to the FOP. Matt Payne's Porsche was already in the parking lot, and he found him at the bar.

There was just time to order a beer and have it served when he heard Margaret's soft voice in his ear.

"Hi!"

"Well, as I live and breathe, Florence Nightingale," Matt said, smiling.

"Hello, Matt."

"You're early," Charley said.

"You make it sound like an accusation," Matt said.

"Get off early?" Charley asked.

"Not exactly."

"What's that mean?"

"I mean, I went in, and they said they really needed me from midnight till six."

"They told you to come in," Charley said indignantly.

"And I get an hour, at time-and-a-half, just for coming in," Margaret said. "Plus double-time for midnight to six."

"You're not really going to go in at midnight?" Charley asked incredulously.

"Yes, of course, I am," Margaret said. "I told you, it's doubletime."

"If I were you, I'd tell them where to stick their double-time."

"Charley!"

"May I make a suggestion?" Matt asked.

"Huh?" Charley asked.

"What, Matt?" Margaret asked, a touch of impatience in her voice.

"If you're going to fight like married people, why don't you go get married?"

"I'm with him," Charley said.

"We just can't, Matt," Margaret said. "Not right now."

"It is better to marry than to burn," Matt quoted sonorously. "Saint Peter."

"No, it's not," Margaret said. "Saint Peter, I mean."

"It was one of those guys," Matt said. "Saint Timothy?"

"So what do we do now?" Charley asked.

"I don't know about you, but I'm going home to get some sleep. You can stay with Matt."

"I'll take you home," Charley said flatly. "He's got a date."

"You don't have to take me home."

"I'll take you home,and to work."

"You don't have to do that."

"You're not going walking around North Broad Street alone at midnight."

"Don't be silly."

"Listen to him, Margaret," Matt said.

"Oh, God!" she said in resignation.

Charley got off the bar stool.

"Let's go," he said.

"We'll have to get together real soon, Margaret, and do this again," Matt said.

"You can go to hell too," Margaret said, but she touched his arm before she left.

Matt watched as the two of them walked across the room, and then signaled for another drink.

He did not have a date. But when Charley had called, he had realized that he did not want to sit in a bar somewhere and watch television with Charley.

What he wanted to do was get laid. He had been doing very poorly in that department lately. If he was with Charley, getting laid was, now that Charley had found Margaret, out of the question. Charley was a very moral person.

The trouble, he thought, as he watched the bartender take a bill and make change, is that men want to get laid and women want a relationship. Since I don't want a relationship, consequently, I'm not getting laid very much.

As he took his first sip of the fresh drink, he considered the possibility of hanging around the FOP and seeing what developed. There were sometimes unattached women around the bar. Some of them had a connection with either the police or the court establishment, clerks, secretaries, girls like that. And some were police groupies, who liked to hang around with cops.

Rumor had it that the latter group screwed like minks. The trouble there was the groupies, so to speak, had their groupies, cops who liked to hang around with girls who screwed like minks.

The demand for their services, Matt decided, overwhelmed the supply. If I try to move in on what looks to be someone else's sure thing for the night, I'm liable to get knocked on my ass.

And the others, the secretaries and the clerks, the nice girls, some of whom seemed to have been looking at me with what could be interest, were, like the vast majority of their sisters, not looking to get laid, but rather for a relationship.

Back to square one.

And if I have another of these, I am very likely to forget this calm, logical, most importantly sober analysis of the situation and wind up either in a relationship, or engaged in an altercation with a brother officer in the parking lot, or, more likely, right here on the dance floor, which altercation, no matter who the victor, would be difficult to explain when, inevitably, Staff Inspector P. Wohl heard about it.

He finished his drink, picked up his change, and walked across the room to the stairs leading up to the street.

Was that really invitation in that well-stacked redhead's eyes or has my imagination been inflamed by this near-terminal case of lakanookie ?

He got in the Porsche and drove home. There were, he noticed when he drove in the underground beneath the building that housed both the Delaware Valley Cancer Society and Chez Payne, far more cars in it than there normally were at this hour of the night. Ordinarily, it was just about deserted.

Parking spaces twenty-nine and thirty, which happened to be closest to the elevator, had been reserved by the management for the occupant of the top-floor apartment. The management had been instructed to do so by the owner, less as a courtesy to his son, who occupied the topfloor apartment, than, the son had come to understand, because a second parking spot was convenient when the owner's wife or other members of the family had some need to park around Rittenhouse Square.

Tonight, a Cadillac Fleetwood sedan was parked in parking space twenty-nine, its right side overflowing into what looked like half of parking space thirty. The Payne family owned a Cadillac Fleetwood, but this wasn't it.

Matt managed to squeeze the Porsche 911 into what was left of parking space thirty. But when he had done so, there was not room enough between him and the Cadillac to open the Porsche's driver's side door. It was necessary for him to exit by the passenger side door, which, in a Porsche 911, is a squirming feat worthy of Houdini.