“There has been at least one applicant for that job that I know about. As I recall, you didn’t seem interested.”

“Damn you, Peter, you’re not making this easy.”

“I don’t know if you appreciate it, but I am actually rather sensitive,” Wohl mockingly paraphrased what she had said about Matt.

“You bastard!” she said, but laughed. “Honest to God, Peter, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

He shrugged.

“I lied,” Amy said.

“Not returning calls, not being in, having ‘previous plans’ when I finally got you on the phone is not exactly lying.”

“I mean tonight,” Amy said. “Certainly to you, and probably to myself. I knew that you, the Ancient and Honorable Order of Cops, were going to gather protectively around Matt and do more for him than I could.”

Wohl looked at her, waiting for her to go on.

“I wanted somebody, to hold my hand. Penny Detweiler was my patient. I failed her.”

He looked at her a moment.

“Somebody? Anybody? Or me?”

“I knew you would be there,” Amy said.

Peter held his arms open. She took several hesitant steps toward him, and ultimately wound up with her face on his chest.

“Amy, you did everything that could be done for that girl,” Peter said, putting his hand on the back of her head, gently caressing it. “Some people are beyond help. Or don’t want it.”

“Oh, God, Peter! I feel so lousy about it!”

He felt her back stiffen under his hand, and then tremble with repressed sobs.

“Tell you what I’m going to do, Doc,” he said gently. “On one condition, I will accept your kind invitation to breakfast.”

She pushed away from him and looked up at his face.

“I made no such invitation.”

“That I cook breakfast. The culinary arts not being among your many other accomplishments.”

“You think that would help?”

“I don’t think it would hurt.”

“I don’t even know if there’s anything in the fridge.”

“So I’ll open a can of spaghetti.”

Amy tried to smile, failed, and put her head against his chest. She felt his arms tighten around her.

“Would you rather tear off my clothes here, or should we wait until we get into the bedroom?”

It was half past seven when the ringing of his door buzzer woke Matt Payne.

He fumbled on his bedside table for his wristwatch, saw the time, muttered a sacrilege, and got out of bed.

The buzzer went off again, for about five seconds.

“I’m coming, for Christ’s sake,” Matt said, although there was no possibility at all that anyone could hear him.

There was ten seconds of silence as he looked around for his discarded underpants-it being his custom to sleep in his birthday suit-and then another five seconds of buzzer.

He was halfway through the kitchen when the buzzer sounded again.

He found the button that activated the door’s solenoid, pushed it, and then continued through the kitchen and the living room to the head of the stairs. When he looked down, the bulk of Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., attired in a nicely cut dark-blue suit, nearly filled the narrow stairway.

“Tiny, what the hell do you want?” Matt asked, far less than graciously.

“What I want to do is be home in my bed,” Tiny Lewis replied. “What I have been told to do is not let you out of my sight.”

“By who?”

“Wohl,” Tiny said as he reached the head of the stairs. “God, are you always that hard to wake up? I’ve been sitting on that damned buzzer for ten minutes. I was about to take the door.”

“I didn’t get to bed until three,” Matt said.

Tiny looked uncomfortable.

“Matt, I don’t think booze is the solution.”

“I was with Washington at the Mall Tavern.”

“Doing what?”

“Ostensibly, it was so that he and I could listen to Homicide gossip. About the time he went home, I decided it was to introduce me socially to the Homicide guys; he was playing rabbi for me.”

“My father said they’re really going to be pissed that the Mayor sent you over there.”

“I think their reaction, thanks to Washington, has been reduced from homicidal rage, pun intended, to bitter resentment by Washington’s act of charity. Actually, they seemed to understand it wasn’t my doing.”

“I would have been here yesterday,” Tiny said. “Personally, not because Wohl would have sent me. But Washington said there would be enough people here then, and I should come today.” Tiny paused. “I’m sorry about what happened, Matt.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, you’re stuck with me,” Tiny said. “And apropos of nothing whatever, I haven’t had my breakfast.”

“See what’s in the refrigerator while I have a shower,” Matt said.

Matt came back into the kitchen ten minutes later to the smell of frying bacon and percolating coffee, and the sight of Tiny Lewis neatly arranging tableware on the kitchen table. He had taken off his suit jacket and put on an apron. It was a full-sized apron, but on Tiny’s massive bulk it appeared much smaller. He looked ridiculous, and Matt smiled.

“I’ll bet you can iron very well, too,” he said.

“Fuck you, you don’t get no breakfast,” Tiny replied amiably.

“When you’re through with that, you can vacuum the living room.”

“Fuck you again,” Tiny said. “Tell me about the double homicide at the Inferno.”

Over breakfast, Matt told him.

“This Atchison guy is very good,” he concluded. “Smart and tough. And his lawyer is good, too. Just when Milham was starting to get him, the lawyer-”

“Who’s his lawyer?”

“A guy named Sidney Margolis.”

Tiny snorted. “I know who he is. A real sleazeball. My father told me he’s been reported to the bar association so often he’s got his own filing cabinet.”

“He’s smart. He saw Milham was getting to Atchison, and said, ‘Interview over. My client is in great pain.’”

“Was he?”

“After Margolis told him he was, he was. And that was it.”

“I wish I could have seen the interview,” Tiny said.

“Milham is very good.”

“You heard about his lady friend’s husband?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he had anything to do with it?”

“No,” Matt said immediately.

“Neither does my father,” Tiny said. “He said it’s two-to-one it’s something to do with Narcotics. Heading the long list of things I was absolutely forbidden to do when I came on the job was accept an assignment to Narcotics. He said those guys roll around on the pigsty floor so much, and there’s so much money floating around that he’s not surprised how many of them are dirty, but how many are straight.”

“Charley and the Little Spic were undercover narcs, and so was Captain Pekach. They’re straight.”

“The exceptions that prove the rule,” Tiny said. “So what do we do today?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going out to Chestnut Hill in half an hour. Jesus, I hate to face that! The funeral is this afternoon.”

“You mean, we’re going to Chestnut Hill. I have heard my master’s voice, and it said I’m not to let you out of my sight.”

“Family and intimate friends only,” Matt said. “I think it will be my family, the Detweilers, and the Nesbitts. And that’s it.”

“So what do I tell Wohl, since the riffraff aren’t welcome?”

“I’ll call him.”

“Matt, I don’t mind feeling unwelcome. With a suntan like mine, you get pretty used to it. If I can help some way…”

“You’d make a lousy situation worse, Tiny, but thanks,” Matt said. He got up from the table and started toward the telephone, then stopped. He touched Tiny’s shoulder, and Tiny looked up at him. “I appreciate that, pal,” Matt said.

“Somehow saying I’m sorry about what happened doesn’t seem to be enough.”

Matt picked up the telephone and dialed Wohl’s home number. When there was no answer, he called the headquarters of the Special Operations Division to see if, as he often did, Wohl had come to work early. When Wohl’s private line was not answered by the fifth ring, the call was automatically transferred to the line of the tour lieutenant.