"Thank you. That saves me making a phone call," Wohl said. He got to his feet. "Mrs. Payne," he began, and then couldn't think of what to say next.

She looked up at him and smiled.

"Peter-you don't mind if I call you Peter?"

"No, ma'am."

"Peter, as I walked over here with Denny, I thought that I couldn't ask for anyone better than you and Denny to look out for Matt."

"Absolutely," Brewster C. Payne agreed.

"Patty, we'll take care of Matt, don't you worry about that," Denny Coughlin said emotionally.

"Sit down, Peter," Brewster C. Payne said, "and finish your drink. I' m sure that everything that should be done has been done."

"He's right. Sit down, Peter," Chief Coughlin chimed in.

"Right now, both of us would be in the way at the Roundhouse."

Wohl looked at both of the men, and then at Patricia Payne, and then sat down.

The Police Department records concerning Captain David R. Pekach stated that he was a bachelor, who lived in a Park Drive Manor apartment. Captain Pekach had last spent the night in his apartment approximately five months before, that is to say four days after he had made the acquaintance of Miss Martha Peebles, who resided in a turn-of-the-century mansion set on five acres at 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.

Miss Peebles, who had a certain influence in Philadelphia (according toBusiness Week magazine, her father had owned outright 11.7 percent of the anthracite coal reserves of the United States, among other holdings, all of which he had left to his sole and beloved daughter), had been burglarized several times.

When the police had not only been unable to apprehend the burglar, but also to prevent additional burglaries, she had complained to her legal adviser (and lifelong friend of her father) Brewster Cortland Payne, of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.

Mr. Payne had had a word with the other founding partner of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, who handled the criminal side of their practice. Colonel Mawson had had a word with Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick about Miss Peebles's problem, and Commissioner Czernick, fully aware that unless Mawson got satisfaction from him, the next call the sonofabitch would make would be to Mayor Carlucci, told him to put the problem from his mind, he personally would take care of it.

Commissioner Czernick had then called Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the Special Operations Division, and told him he didn't care how he did it, he didn't want to hear of one more incident of any kind at the residence of Miss Martha Peebles, 606 Glengarry Lane, Chestnut Hill.

Staff Inspector Wohl, in turn, turned the problem over to Captain Pekach, using essentially the same phraseology Commissioner Czernick had used when he had called.

Working with Inspector Wohl's deputy, Captain Mike Sabara, Captain Pekach had arranged for Miss Peebles's residence to be placed under surveillance. An unmarked Special Operations car would be parked on Glengarry Lane until the burglar was nabbed, and Highway RPCs would drive past no less than once an hour.

Captain Pekach had then presented himself personally at the Peebles residence, to assure the lady that the Philadelphia Police Department generally and Captain David Pekach personally were doing all that was humanly possible to shield her home from future violations of any kind.

In the course of their conversation, Miss Peebles had said that it wasn't the loss of what already had been stolen, essentially bric-abrac, that concerned her, but rather the potential theft of her late father's collection of Early American firearms.

Captain Pekach, whose hobby happened to be Early American firearms, asked if he might see the collection. Miss Peebles obliged him.

As she passed him a rather interesting piece, a mint condition U.S. Rifle, model of 1819 with a J.H. Hall action, stamped with the initials of the proving inspector, Zachary Ellsworth Hampden, Captain, Ordnance Corps, later Deputy Chief of Ordnance, their hands touched.

Shortly afterward, Miss Peebles, who was thirty-six, willingly offered her heretofore zealously guarded pearl of great price to Captain Pekach, who was also thirty-six, who took it with what Miss Peebles regarded as exquisite tenderness, and convincing her that she had at last found what had so far eluded her, a true gentleman to share life's joys and sorrows.

And so it was that when Captain David Pekach, after first having personally checked to see that there was a Highway RPC parked outside Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc., on South Street, under orders to obey whatever orders Sergeant Jason Washington might issue, left his office at Bustleton and Bowler for the day, he did not head for his official home of record, but rather for 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill.

When he approached the house, he reached up to the sun visor and pushed the button that caused the left of the double steel gates to the estate to swing open. Three hundred yards up the cobblestone drive, he stopped his official, unmarked car under the two-car-wide portico to the left of the house and got out. There was a year-old Mercedes roadster, now wearing its steel winter top, in the other lane, pointing down the driveway.

Evans, the elderly, white-haired black butler (who, with his wife had been in the house when Miss Martha had been born, and when both of her parents had died), came out of the house.

"Good evening, Captain," he said. "I believe Miss Martha's upstairs."

"Thank you," Pekach said.

As Pekach went into the house, Evans got behind the wheel of the unmarked car and drove it to the four-car garage, once a stable, a hundred yards from the house.

There was a downstairs sitting room in the house, and an upstairs sitting room. Martha had gotten into the habit of greeting him upstairs with a drink, and some hors d'oeuvres in the upstairs sitting room.

He would have a drink, or sometimes two, and then he would take a shower. Sometimes he would dress after his shower, and they would have another drink and watch the news on television, and then go for dinner, either out or here in the house. And sometimes he would have his shower and he would not get dressed, because Martha had somehow let him know that she would really rather fool around than watch the news on television.

Tonight, obviously, there would be no fooling around. At least not now, if probably later. Martha, when she greeted him with a glass dark with Old Bushmill's and a kiss that was at once decorous and exciting, was dressed to go out. She had on a simple black dress, a double string of pearls, each the size of a pencil eraser, and a diamond and ruby pin in the shape of a pheasant.

"Precious," she said, "I asked Evans to lay out your blazer and gray slacks. I thought you would want to look more or less official, but we're going out for dinner, and I know you don't like to do that in uniform, and the blazer-with-the-police-buttons seemed to be a nice compromise. All right?"

He had called Martha early in the morning, to tell her that Matt Payne, thank God, was not seriously injured. He knew that she would have heard of the shooting, and would be concerned on two levels, first that it was a cop with whom he worked, and second, perhaps more important, that Matt was the son of her lawyer. He told her that he would be a little late getting home; he wanted to put in an appearance at Frankford Hospital.

"I'd like to go too, if that would be all right," she said.

He had hesitated. He could think of no good reason why she should not go to see Payne. After all, Payne's father was her lawyer, and they probably more or less knew each other, but he suspected that Martha was at least as interested in appearing as Dave Pekach's very good lady friend as she was in offering her sympathy to Matt Payne.