Goddamned cops!

Amy Payne, a slight, just this side of pretty, brown-haired twenty-seven-year-old, peered through the peephole in her door, and then, somewhat reluctantly, opened it just wide enough to look out.

"You are really the last person I expected to see here this morning, Matt," she said.

There was absolutely no suggestion that she intended to open the door.

"I've got to talk to you, Amy," Matt said.

"You've heard of the telephone? People get on the telephone and say, 'Would it be convenient for me to drop by?'"

"This is important," Matt said.

"How did you get past the doorman, come to think of it? Flash your badge at him?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact. I'm on business, Amy. May we come in?"

She shrugged, and stepped out of the way.

"Amy, Jerry O'Dowd."

"How do you do, Doctor?"

"Why do I suspect you've been talking about me?" Amy said. "I hope you have a sister of your own, Sergeant, so that you will understand that despite the way I talk to him, I really loathe and detest him."

Jerry O'Dowd laughed. "He said you were feisty," O'Dowd said.

Amy realized that she was smiling back at him.

"I'll be with you in a minute," she said. "Go in the living room, Matt, you know where it is. I've got a little surprise for you too."

The surprise was Miss Penelope Detweiler, who was standing by the expanse of glass opening onto the Parkway and the Museum of Art.

"I thought that was your voice!" she said, seemingly torn between surprise and pleasure.

"What are you doing here?"

"That's none of your damned business, Matt!" Amy called from her bedroom. "Who do you think you are, asking a question like that?"

"Oh, I just dropped in to see Amy," Penny said, somewhat lamely.

Yeah, like hell. Your relationship is professional. Doctor and patient. The only thing personal about it is that you get to come here to Amy's apartment because you are a friend of the family.

"Penny, this is Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd," Matt said. "Jerry, this is Penny Detweiler, an old buddy of mine and my sister's."

"Hi," Penny said.

"Hello," O'Dowd said. Matt watched his face to see if he made the connection between the pretty blonde and Tony the Zee's junkie girlfriend. There was nothing on his face to suggest that he did.

"We were just having coffee," Penny said. "Real coffee. Amy even grinds the beans just before she makes it. Would you like some?"

"Please," Matt said.

Penny headed for the kitchen, probably, Matt thought, to get cups and saucers. Matt went and looked out the window. O'Dowd followed him.

"Nice view!" he said enthusiastically.

"Yeah, it is."

"Is that who I think it is?"

"Yeah."

"Pretty girl."

And you're a good cop. I was trying to read your face and couldn' t.

"Where were you before you went to work for Pekach?" Matt asked.

"Central Detectives, until I made sergeant, and before that in Narcotics. When Pekach was a lieutenant."

"And now Highway? You like riding a motorcycle?"

"You'll notice I'm not riding one. Pekach told me that if Highway was going to be good for his career, it should be good for mine."

"If I have to go to Wheel School and spend time in Highway, I think I'll stay a detective."

"You haven't been a detective long enough, have you, to make that kind of a judgment?"

"No, I haven't."

Amy came into the room, stopping their conversation.

"Okay, Matt," Amy said, "now what's this all about?" She didn't give him time to reply before she noticed that Penny was not in sight. "Where's Penny?"

"She went to get cups and saucers," Matt said. "What did you think?"

Amy ignored the question.

"What is that you're waving around like a field marshal's baton?" she asked.

O'Dowd chuckled. Amy found herself smiling at him again.

"There's nobody nicer anywhere than someone who thinks you're a wit," Matt said.

"Dad said that, not you," Amy said.

Matt peeled one of the Xeroxes from the roll of them he had been carrying in his hand.

"What's this…" Amy asked as she took a quick glance, and then she broke off in midsentence. Almost absently, she backed away from Matt and Jerry and sat down on the side arm of her couch.

"My God!" she said, finally. "This is a sick man."

"We'd sort of figured that out," Matt said. "What we need from you is a profile."

"Who's 'we,' you and the sergeant?"

"Peter Wohl, for one. The head of the Vice President's Secret Service detail, for another."

"The Secret Service have their own psychiatrists," Amy said. "I met one of them at Menninger one time. Why me?"

"Wohl said to tell you we need a profile yesterday," Matt said. " We won't get one from the Secret Service until tomorrow. If then."

"Secret Service?" Penny said, coming back into the room with cups and saucers. "That sounds interesting!"

"That's right," Amy said, ignoring Penny, "he is coming to town, isn't he? Next week?"

"Right," O'Dowd said.

"I think I have just been more or less politely told that what's going on here is none of my business," Penny said.

Matt looked at her, saw the hurt in her eyes, and surprised himself by handing her one of the Xeroxes.

"Not to be spread around the Merion Cricket Club, okay, Penny?"

"Thank you," Penny said, and Matt understood that it was not simply ritual courtesy for having been handed a piece of paper. He glanced at O'Dowd and saw in his eyes that he did not approve of what he had done.

And you 're right, Sergeant. I should not have passed that official document to a junkie three days out of the funny farm. And I thank you for not saying so, and humiliating me in front of my sister.

"You have no idea who this man is?" Amy asked.

"None. That's why we need the profile."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Circulate it in the Department, 'Do you know someone who fits this description?'"

"Not in public? Not in the newspapers?"

"That didn't come up," Matt said.

"Probably not," O'Dowd said. "That would tend to set off the copycats."

"Yes," Amy said thoughtfully. She looked directly at O'Dowd. "This letter doesn't give me much to go on, you understand?"

"I understand, Doctor," O'Dowd said. "But whatever you could tell us would be helpful."

He sounds like Jason Washington, Matt thought. Stroking the interviewee.

Jason Washington, late of Homicide, now a sergeant heading up Special Operations Division's Special Investigation Section, considered himself to be the best detective in the Philadelphia Police Department. So did Peter Wohl and Matt Payne.

And then as Matt watched Jerry O'Dowd skillfully draw from his sister a profile of the looney tune who wanted to blow up the Vice President, he had another series of thoughts, which ranged from humbling to humiliating:

Wohl didn't send Pekach 's driver with me so that I could ask him questions. He sent me with Jerry O'Dowd because I could get O'Dowd in to see Amy. My sole role in this was to get him into her presence. She might have, probably would have, told anyone else to call her office and arrange an appointment.

Pekach didn't pick this guy to be his driver for auld lang syne, but rather because Jerry O'Dowd is a very bright guy, an experienced detective, and now a sergeant. Both Pekach, when he volunteered O'Dowd to "drive me," and Wohl, when he accepted the offer, knew damned well O'Dowd would take over this little interview sooner or later, probably sooner, and in any event the instant Rookie Detective Payne started to fuck it up.

Penny handed him a cup of coffee.

"Black, right?"

"Right. Thank you."

"Sergeant?"

"Black is fine with me."