He had tried from the beginning, and so far successfully, to keep Martha away from his brother officers. Every sonofabitch and his brother in the Police Department seemed to think his relationship with the rich old maid from Chestnut Hill was as funny as a rubber crutch.

Martha, he knew, had sensed that he was keeping their personal life very much separate from his professional life. One of the astonishing things about their relationship was that he knew what she was thinking. The flip side of that was that she knew what he was thinking too.

He had hesitated, and lost.

"Precious, if that would in any way be embarrassing to you, just forget it."

"Don't be silly. How could it be embarrassing? I'll come by the house right from work and pick you up."

"All right, if you think it would be all right," Martha had said, her pleased tone of voice telling him he had really had no choice. "And then we'll go out for dinner afterward? Seafood?"

"Seafood sounds fine," he had said.

He had spent a good deal of time during the day considering his relationship with Martha, finally concluding mat while the way things were was fine, things could not go along much longer unchanged.

Sometimes, he felt like a gigolo, the way she was always giving him things. It wasn't, he managed to convince himself, that he had fallen for her because she was rich, but that didn't make her just another woman. There was no getting away from the fact that she was a rich woman.

How could he feel like a man when she probably spent more money on fuel oil and having the grass cut at her house than he made?

But when he was with her, like now, he could not imagine life without her.

Jesus, just being around her makes me feel good!

"Was that all right, precious, having Evans lay out your blazer?"

"Fine," Captain David Pekach said, putting his arm around Miss Martha Peebles and kissing her again.

"Precious, behave," she said, when he dropped his hand to her buttock. "We don't have time."

The blazer to which she referred was originally the property of her father.

When Evans and his wife (after an initial three- or four-week period during which their behavior had been more like that of concerned parents rather than servants) had finally decided that Dave Pekach was going to be good for Miss Martha, they had turned to being what they genuinely believed to be helpful and constructive.

Dave Pekach now had an extensive wardrobe, formerly the property of the late Alexander Peebles. No one had asked him if he wanted it, or would even be willing to wear what he had at first thought of as a dead man's clothes. It had been presented as a fait accompli. Evans had taken four suits, half a dozen sports coats, a dozen pairs of trousers, and the measurements Martha had made of the new uniform Dave had given himself as a present for making captain to an Italian custom tailor on Chestnut Street.

Only minor adjustments had been necessary, Evans had happily told him. Mr. Alex had been, fortunately, just slightly larger than Captain Pekach, rather than the other way.

The buttons on the blazer, which bore the label of a London tailor, and which to Dave Pekach's eyes looked unworn, had been replaced with Philadelphia Police Department buttons.

"You have no idea what trouble Evans had to go to for those buttons!" Martha had exclaimed. "But it was, wasn't it, Evans, worth it. Doesn't the captain look nice?"

"The captain looks just fine, Miss Martha," Evans had agreed, beaming with pleasure.

It had not been the time to bring up the subjects of being able to buy his own damned clothing, thank you just the same, or being unable to comfortably wear a dead man's hand-me-downs.

And the trouble,Dave Pekach thought, as he walked into the bedroom carrying his drink in one hand and a bacon-wrapped oyster in the other, and saw the blazer hanging on the mahogany clothes horse,is that I now think of all these clothes as mine.

He unbuckled his Sam Browne belt and hung it over the clothes horse, and then stripped out of his uniform, tossing it onto a green leather chaise lounge, secure in the knowledge that in the morning, freshly pressed, it (or another, fresh from the cleaners) would be on the clothes horse.

And that I'm getting pretty used to living like this:When he came out of the glass-walled shower, Martha was in the bathroom. He was a little confused. Sometimes, when she felt like fooling around, she joined him, but not all dressed up as she was now.

"Captain Sabara called," Martha announced. "He wants you to call. I wrote down the number."

She extended a small piece of paper, but snatched it back when he reached for it.

"Put your robe on, precious," she said. "You'll catch your death!"

He took a heavy terry-cloth robe (also ex-Alexander Peebles, Esq.) from the chrome towel warmer, shrugged into it, took the phone number from Martha, and went into the bedroom, where he sat on the bed and picked up the telephone on the bedside table.

Martha sat on the bed next to him.

"Dave Pekach, Mike," he said. "What's up?"

Martha could hear only Dave's side of the conversation.

"They did what?…

"Monahan okay?…

"Anyone else hurt?…

"Where's Wohl?…

"Okay. If you do get in touch with him, tell him I'm on my way to the Roundhouse. It should take me twenty minutes, depending on the traffic. Thanks for calling me, Mike."

He put the telephone back in its cradle and stood up.

He saw Martha's eyes, curiosity in them, on him.

She never pries, he thought. She's pleased when I tell her things, but she never asks.

"When they started to take Monahan, the witness to the Goldblatt job, from Goldblatt's to the Roundhouse, they were firebombed."

"Firebombed?"

"Somebody threw a whatdoyoucallit? A Molotov cocktail, a bottle full of gas."

"Was anyone hurt?"

He looked at the green leather chaise lounge where he'd tossed his uniform. It had already been removed.

Damn!

He started to put on the clothing Evans had laid out for him, and remembered she had asked a question.

"No. Not as far as Sabara knew. I sent a Highway RPC down there. I can't imagine anybody trying to firebomb a Highway car." He looked at her, and added, "I'll have to go down there, to the Roundhouse."

"Of course," she said, and then, a moment later, "I suppose that means I should make arrangements for my dinner? And about seeing the Payne boy?"

"I don't know how long I'll be," he said. "You'd probably have to wait around-"

"I don't mind," Martha said very evenly.

Pekach suddenly realized that a very great deal depended on his response to that.

"On the other hand, if you came along, it would save me coming all the way back out here to get you. You sure you wouldn't mind waiting?"

"I don't have anything else to do," she said. "Why should I?"

Dave Pekach understood that he had come up with the proper response. He could see it in her eyes, and then confirmation came when she impulsively kissed him.

When they went out under the portico, the Mercedes was there. He looked at the garage. Not only had the Department's car been put away, but a snowplow sat in front of the garage door where it had been put.

He went to the Mercedes and put his hand on the door, and then remembered his manners and went around and held the passenger side door open for Martha.

I have been manipulated, he thought. Why am I not pissed off?

As Peter Wohl looked for a place to park at Frankford Hospital, he saw two Highway cars, the first parked by the main entrance, and the second near the Emergency entrance.Jesus Christ, has something happened?

His concern, which he recognized to contain more than a small element of fear for Matt Payne's well-being, immediately chagrined him.