During his military service Staff Inspector Peter F. Wohl had learned that rubber gloves were what smart people wore when applying cordovan shoe polish to foot wear, otherwise you walked around for a couple of days with brown fingernails. When the last pair had worn out, the only rubber gloves he could find in the Acme Supermarket had been the ones he now wore, which were flaming pink in color and decorated in a floral pattern. At the time, their function, not their appearance, had seemed to be the criteria.

Now he was not so sure. Mrs. Samantha Stoddard, the 230-pound, fiftytwo-year-old Afro-American grandmother who cleaned the apartment two times a week had found them under the sink and offered the unsolicited opinion that he better hope nobody but her ever saw them. "I knowyou like girls, Peter. Other people might wonder."

Mrs. Stoddard felt at ease calling Staff Inspector Wohl by his Christian name because she had been doing so since he was four years old. She still spent the balance of the week working for his mother.

When the telephone rang, at ten past seven in the morning, Wohl was standing at his kitchen sink, wearing his pink rubber gloves, his underwear, an unbuttoned shirt, and his socks, examining with satisfaction the shine he had just caused to appear on a pair of loafers. At five past seven, as he prepared to slip his feet into them, he had discovered that they were in desperate need of a shine.

From the sound of the bell, he could tell that it was his official telephone ringing. He headed for the bedroom, hurriedly removing the flaming pink rubber gloves as he did so. The left came off with no difficulty; the right stuck. Before he got it off, he had cordovan shoe polish all over his left hand.

"Shit!" he said aloud, adding aloud. "Why do I think this is going to be one of those days?"

Then he picked up the telephone.

"Inspector Wohl."

"Matt Lowenstein, Peter. Is there some reason you can't meet me at Tommy Callis's office at eight?"

"No, sir."

"Keep it under your hat," Lowenstein said, and hung up.

Wohl replaced the handset in its cradle, but, deep in thought, kept his hand on it for a moment. Thomas J. Callis was the district attorney. He could think of no business he-that is to say Special Operations, including Highway Patrol-had with the district attorney. If something serious had happened, he would have been informed of it.

A wild hair appeared-Tony Harris was on a spectacular bender; he could have run into a school bus or something- and was immediately discarded. He would have heard of that too, as quickly as he had learned that they had held Tony overnight in the 9^th District holding cell.

He shrugged, and dialed the Special Operations number. He told the lieutenant who answered that he would be in late. He did not say how late or where he would be. Lowenstein had told him to keep the meeting at the DA's office under his hat. He looked at his watch, then shook his head. There was no time to go somewhere for breakfast.

He returned to the kitchen, put a pot of water on the stove to boil, and got eggs and bread from the refrigerator. He decided he would not make coffee, because that would mean having to clean the pot, technically a brewer his mother had given him for Christmas. It made marvelous coffee, but unless it was cleaned almost immediately, it turned the coffee grounds in its works to concrete and required a major overhaul.

When the water boiled, he added vinegar, then, with a wooden spoon, swirled the water around until it formed a whirlpool. Then, expertly, he cracked two eggs with one hand and dropped them into the water. By the time they were done, the toaster had popped up. He took the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon, put them onto the toast, and moved to his small kitchen table. Time elapsed, beginning to end: ten minutes.

"If I only had a cup of coffee," he announced aloud, "all would be right in my world."

Then it occurred to him that if he was to meet with the district attorney, a suit would be in order, not the blazer and slacks he had intended to wear. And if he wore a suit, shoes, not loafers, would be in order.

The whole goddamn shoe-shining business, including the polish-stained left hand, had been a waste of time and effort.

He returned to the sink, and washed his hands with a bar of miracle abrasive soap that was guaranteed to remove all kinds of stain. The manufacturers had apparently never dealt with cordovan shoe polish.

Or, he thought cynically, they knew damned well that very few people would wrap up a fifty-cent bar of soap and mail it off to Dubuque, Iowa, or wherever, for a refund. Particularly since they wouldn't have the address in Iowa, having thrown the wrapping away when they took the soap out.

He took his pale blue shirt off, replaced it with a white one, and put on a dark gray, pin-striped suit.

"Oh, you are a handsome devil, Peter Wohl," he said as he checked himself in the mirror. "I wonder why you don't get laid more than you do?"

He arrived downtown at the district attorney's office with five minutes to spare, having exceeded the speed limit over almost all of the route.

As he looked at his watch, he thought the hour was odd. He didn't think the district attorney was usually about the people's business at eight A.M. Had Callis summoned Lowenstein at this time? Probably not. If Callis had wanted to see them, somebody would have called him too. The odds were that Lowenstein had called Callis and told him he had to see him as soon as possible, and then when Callis had agreed, Lowenstein had called him.

Why?

Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein, Detective Joe D'Amata of Homicide, and another man, obviously a detective, were in Callis's outer office when Peter walked in.

"I was getting worried about you," Lowenstein greeted him.

"Good morning, Chief, I'm not late, am I?"

"Just barely," Lowenstein said. "You know Jerry Pelosi, don't you?"

"Sure. How are you, Pelosi?"

They shook hands.

The mystery is over. Pelosi's the Central Detectives guy working the Goldblatt job. This is about that.

There was no chance to ask Chief Lowenstein. A large, silver-haired, ruddy-faced man, the Hon. Thomas J. Callis, district attorney of Philadelphia, swept into his outer office, the door held open for him by Philadelphia County Detective W.H. Mahoney. The district attorney had in effect his own detective bureau. Most of them, like Mahoney, were ex-Philadelphia Police Department officers. A detective bodyguard-driver was one of the perks of being the district attorney.

"Hello, Matt," Callis said. "How the hell are you?"

A real pol,Wohl thought. Wohl did not ordinarily like politicians, but he was of mixed emotions about Callis. He had worked closely with him during his investigation In those happy, happy, days when I was just one more staff inspector -of Judge Findermann and his fellow scumbags, and had concluded that Callis was deeply offended by the very notion of a judge on the take, and interested in the prosecution for that reason alone, not simply because it might look good for him in the newspapers.

"And Peter," Callis went on, "looking the fashion plate even at this un-godly hour."

"Good morning, Mr. Callis."

"Tommy! Tommy! How many times do I have to tell you that?"

"Tommy," Wohl said obediently.

"Detective D'Amata I know, of course, but I don't think I've had the pleasure-"

"Detective Jerry Pelosi," Lowenstein offered, "of Central Detectives."

"Well, I'm delighted to meet you, Jerry," Callis said, sounding as if he meant it, and pumping his hand.

Callis turned and faced the others, beaming as if just seeing them gave him great pleasure.