“If this thing works out, I may have to forgive you for a large assortment of sins, but I will not forgive you, Matt, for this.”

He gestured around the apartment. Amy took his meaning, and blushed.

Detective Payne smiled.

“Chastity, goodness, and mercy shall follow you all the days of your lives,” he paraphrased piously.

“Why, you little sonofabitch!” Amelia Payne, Ph. D., M.D., said.

The Philadelphia Marine Police Unit occupies part of a municipal pier on the Delaware River just south of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

When Detective Payne arrived at ten minutes to seven, at the wheel of his Porsche, which shuddered alarmingly whenever he exceeded thirty miles per hour, and looking both as if he had fallen asleep on the beach and was suffering from terminal sunburn, and as if his clothing had shrunken (he was wearing a complete ensemble borrowed from Inspector Peter Wohl, who was two inches shorter and twenty-five pounds lighter than he was, there having been no time for him to get his own clothing), the parking lot was crowded with personal and official vehicles.

There were two Mobile Crime Laboratory vans, and a similar-size van bearing the insignia of the Marine Police Unit; two radio patrol cars; two unmarked cars (one of which he recognized as belonging to Wally Milham); a green Oldsmobile 98 coupe (which he knew to be the personal automobile of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin); a police car bearing the insignia of the Chester Police Department; and an assortment of personal automobiles.

That Denny Coughlin was driving his own car, rather than being in his official car chauffeured by Sergeant Francis Holloran, made it clear to Matt that he was present in his role of Loving Uncle in Fact, rather than as a senior member of the Philadelphia police hierarchy.

Chief Coughlin and Detective Milham were standing on the pier. Coughlin waved him over.

“What the hell did you do to your face, Matty?” he asked, his gruffness not quite masking his concern.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Matt said.

“Amy said it’ll be gone in a couple of days,” Coughlin said, his tone making it clear that he had serious doubts about the accuracy of the diagnosis.

“They’re ready for us,” Milham said, and gestured over the side of the pier. Matt looked down. There was a forty-foot boat down there, festooned with flood- and spotlights, a collection of radio antennae, a radar antenna, and what looked like a standard RPC bubble gum machine.

The rear deck was crowded with diving equipment and people, including a neatly uniformed sergeant of the Chester Police Department. His dapper appearance contrasted strongly with the appearance of officers of the Marine Police Unit, who had reported for duty prepared to go to work, which meant that their badges were pinned to work clothing.

There was a lieutenant (presumably the Marine Police Unit commander) standing by the wheel, and a sergeant actually at the boat’s controls.

Matt followed Milham down a flight of stairs onto a floating pier and then jumped aboard the boat after him.

“Chief,” the Inspector called up to Coughlin. “Would you like to ride along with us, sir?”

It was a pro forma question, asked because lieutenants generally recognize the wisdom of being very courteous under any circumstances to chief inspectors. The expected response would normally have been, “No, thank you. But thank you for asking.”

Chief Coughlin looked at his watch, looked thoughtful, then said, “What the hell, there’s nothing on my desk that won’t wait a couple of hours.”

He then quickly came down the flight of stairs onto the floating pier and jumped onto the boat.

“Don’t let me get in your way, Lieutenant,” he called, then went to the Chester police sergeant. “I’m Chief Coughlin,” he said, offering his hand. “We appreciate your courtesy, and especially you coming in here like this.”

“Anything we can do to help,” the Sergeant said. “I thought I might make it easier to find the site.”

“We appreciate it,” Coughlin said.

The diesel engines roared, and the boat moved away from the pier and headed downstream. To his left, Matt could see the Nesfoods International complex on the Camden shore, and to his right, on Society Hill, he thought he could make out the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV.

I wonder what Vice President Nesbitt is doing at this hour of the morning? Trying to come up with some clever way to sell another ten billion cans of chicken soup?

Matt watched as Denny Coughlin made his way among the other police officers and technicians. Matt was impressed, but not particularly surprised, that Coughlin knew most of their names. Somewhat unkindly, knowing that it would offend Coughlin if he knew what he was thinking, Matt thought he was working the crowd of cops just about as effectively as Jerry Carlucci worked a crowd of voters.

Then the Sergeant from the Chester Police Department embarrassed him.

“You’re Detective Payne, right?”

“Right,” Matt said, shaking the Sergeant’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“I don’t mean to put down what you did. It was good work,” the Sergeant said. “But you know what I was just thinking?”

Matt smiled and shook his head.

“I was thinking it must be nice to work for a police department where there’s enough money to surveil somebody like this guy Atchison. We just don’t have the dough to pay for twenty-four-hour surveillance, even on a murder job. How many officers did you have on the detail?”

“I really don’t know,” Matt said.

That is far from the truth. I know precisely how many. Zero. And the surveillance of Mr. Atchison will cost the Philadelphia Police Department zero dollars, because it was not only not authorized, but as Peter pointed out with some emphasis, another manifestation of what’s wrong with me; that I am an undisciplined hotshot who goes charging off in all directions without thinking.

The cost of whatever it’s going to cost to fix the Porsche, and I don’t like to think how much that’s going to be, plus the cost of a new jacket, shirts, pants, necktie, and loafers, is going to be borne personally by Detective Matt Payne. I don’t even dare to put in for overtime.

It didn’t take as long to reach the pier along the Chester waterfront as Matt expected it would.

And finding the pier was easy. There was a Chester police car sitting on it, and it could be seen a half-mile away.

Thirty minutes after the Marine Police Unit boat tied up to the pier, a police diver, wearing a diving helmet, bobbed to the surface with a package. It was a white plastic garbage bag, wrapped in duct tape.

“That it, Matty?” Denny Coughlin asked.

“That looks like what I saw Atchison carry out of the Yock’s Diner.”

“Good job, Matty.”

Unless, of course, it contains something like the records of the loan-shark operation Atchison was operating, and not guns.

A police photographer recorded the diver in the water, the package on the deck, and then as a laboratory technician carefully cut the duct tape away. Inside the plastic garbage bag was a paper bag. Inside the paper bag, wrapped in mechanic’s wiping cloths, were three guns. A large revolver, which a ballistics technician identified for another technician to write down as a. 44-40 single-action six-shot revolver, of Spanish manufacture, a. 38 Special Caliber six-shot Colt revolver, and a Savage. 32 ACP semiautomatic pistol.

Officer Woodrow Wilson Bailey, Sr., woke to the smell of brewing coffee and fried ham. It pleased him. He didn’t complain or feel sorry for himself most days that he didn’t get to eat breakfast with Joellen and Woodrow Junior. Policing was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and everybody had to take their fair turn working the four-to-midnight tours, and the midnight-to-eight-in-the-morning tours. And truth to tell, he sort of liked the last-out tour; there was something he liked about cruising around the deserted streets, say, at half past three or four, when all the punks had finally decided to go to bed.