“I don’t know what to do with you,” Milham said. “On one hand, you still smell like a brewery. On the other hand, so do I. You want to take a chance on going back to the Roundhouse with me, to see what everybody else has come up with?”

“Whatever you think is best,” Matt said, chagrined.

“What the hell, we have to get your car anyway,” Milham said. “Just try not to breathe on anybody.”

“Sergeant, this is Detective Payne,” Milham said. “Payne, this is Sergeant Zachary Hobbs.”

Hobbs offered his hand, and looked at Matt closely.

“We didn’t expect you for a couple of days,” he said.

“You weren’t here,” Milham replied for him, “when he came in. Your memo was in my box, so I took him with me.”

“You find this Foley guy?”

“I think we know where he lives, and that he works for Wanamaker’s.”

“The bartender at the Inferno says there was a guy named Foley in there that night,” Hobbs said. “That’s in your box, too.”

Milham nodded.

“Payne, Captain Quaire knows about your, uh, personal problem. You don’t have to come to work, is what I’m saying, until you feel up to it,” Hobbs said.

“I think I’d rather work than not,” Matt said. “But thank you.”

“You need anything, you let me know. Did Wally show you the memo?”

“Yes, he did.”

“OK. You work with Wally.”

Matt nodded.

“I think you’d better see Lieutenant Natali,” Hobbs said. “Let him know you’re here.” He gestured across the room. Matt saw Lieutenant Natali in a small office.

Jesus, I hope he’s got a cold or something, and can’t smell the booze.

He had met Lieutenant Natali once before. The circumstances flooded his mind.

He had been escorting Miss Amanda Spencer to a prewedding dinner honoring Miss Daphne Soames Brown and Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, at the Union League Club.

No wonder Amanda said I hadn’t seen her at Martha Peebles’s party; she hadn’t wanted me to. I’m trouble, dangerous. If I were her, I wouldn’t have wanted to see me either.

When he had pulled the Porsche onto the top floor of the Penn Center Parking Garage, there had been a body lying in a pool of blood, that of a second-rate gangster named Tony the Zee Dezito, who had been taken out with a shotgun blast in what was almost certainly a contract hit by party or parties unknown for reasons unknown.

Nearby was Miss Penelope Detweiler, a lifelong acquaintance, also lying in a pool of blood. Matt’s original conclusion that Penny, like him and Amanda en route to Daffy and Chad’s party, was an innocent bystander was soon corrected by the facts. She had been in the parking garage to meet Tony the Zee, with whom she was having an affair.

And almost certainly, I know now, to get something from him to stick in her arm, or sniff up her nose. It was that goddamn Dezito who gave Penny her habit.

Narcotics had had a tail on Tony the Zee, and when Matt had gone to Homicide to give them a statement, a Narcotics sergeant, an asshole named Dolan, and another Narcotics asshole had been waiting for him there. They had taken him into the interview room, sat him down in the steel captain’s chair with the handcuffs, and as much as accused him of being involved with either Tony the Zee or Narcotics, or both. And then taken him to Narcotics, if not under arrest, then the next thing to it, to continue the interrogation and to search the Porsche.

Lieutenant Natali had been the tour lieutenant in Homicide that night, hadn’t liked what he had seen, and had called Peter Wohl. Wohl had come to Narcotics like the Cavalry to the rescue and gotten him out.

Natali had bent, if not regulations, then departmental protocol, and thus stuck his neck out, by calling Peter Wohl. He was therefore, by definition, a proven good guy.

Matt walked to the office and stood in the door until Natali looked up and waved him inside. He stood up and put out his hand.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon, Payne,” he said. “I, uh, heard what happened. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Matt said.

It was evident on Natali’s face that he, too, was recalling the circumstances of their first meeting.

“I thought I would rather work than sit around.”

That’s not true. I’m here because I got shitfaced and didn’t want to go to bed. I’m a goddamned hypocrite and a liar.

“Yeah,” Natali said. “I understand.” He paused and then went on. “Payne, some of the people here are going to resent you being here.”

“I thought they would.”

“But they know-Captain Quaire passed the word-that you had nothing to do with it. So I don’t think it will be a problem. If there is one, you come to me with it.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll be working with Wally Milham. There’s a memo…”

“I saw it.”

“OK. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with Milham. And he’s a good Homicide detective. You can learn a lot from him. Homicide works differently. I don’t know how much experience you had at East Detectives…”

“Not much,” Matt said. “Most of it on recovered stolen vehicles.”

Natali smiled understandingly.

“I did a few of those myself, when I made detective,” he said. “We don’t get as many jobs here,” Natali went on. “And when one comes in, everybody goes to work on it. There’s an assigned detective, of course. Milham, in the case of the Inferno Lounge job. But everybody works on it.”

“I understand. Or I think I do.”

“You’ll catch on in a hurry,” Natali said. “If you have any problems, come see me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When he went to Wally Milham’s desk, Milham was working his way through a thick stack of paper forms. He read one of the forms, and then placed it facedown beside the unread stack.

“You better take a look at these,” Milham said, tapping the facedown stack without raising his eyes from the document he was reading.

Matt pulled up a chair and slid the facedown stack to him.

Matt turned over the stack. They were all carbon copies of 75-49s, the standard Police Department Detective Division Investigation Report.

He started to read the first one:

The telephone on the desk rang. Without taking his eyes from the 75-49s before him, Milham reached for it.

“Homicide, Milham,” he said.

Matt looked up in natural curiosity.

“Hello, honey,” Milham said, his voice changing.

The Widow Kellog, Matt decided, and that makes it none of my business.

He turned his attention to the second 75-49:

“Jesus Christ!” Milham said, softly but with such intensity that Matt’s noble intention to mind his own business was overwhelmed by curiosity.

“Baby,” Milham said. “You stay there. Stay inside. I’ll be right there!”

I wonder what the hell that’s all about.

Milham hung the telephone up and looked at Matt.

“Something’s come up,” he said. “I gotta go.”

Matt nodded.

“Tell you what, Payne,” Milham said, obviously having thought over what he was about to say. “Take that stack with you and go home. You all right to drive?”

“I’m all right.”

“I’ll call you about ten tomorrow morning. You read that, see if you come up with something.”

“Right.”

“OK. You’ll find some manila envelopes over there,” Milham said, pointing. “I really got to go.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Yeah, if anybody asks where I went, all you know is I told you to go home.”

“OK.”

“Ten tomorrow, I’ll call you at ten tomorrow,” Milham said, and went to retrieve his pistol from a filing cabinet.