Harris nodded and, not wanting to get into details, said, “I’ve heard something about that.”

“Damn right,” Iglesia said. He sealed the body bags, then looked at Harris. “And you know what else, man?”

Jesus, he’s not going to stop.

Harris suddenly had an inspiration, and held up his left index finger in a Hold that thought one second gesture.

As if responding to the vibrating of his cellular telephone, he pulled it from its clip on his belt, put it to his head, and a little louder than normal said to absolutely no one, “Harris.”

He pretended to listen for a second, then looked at Javier Iglesia, who was watching Harris while he impatiently held his thought a second. Harris mimed that he had to take the call, and Iglesia, looking disappointed, nodded and started to finish up with the job.

As Tony Harris walked away from the motel room window, he realized that pulling out the phone wasn’t exactly a charade. He needed to make a call.

Like all major city police departments, the Philadelphia Police Department was a complex organization. Just its uniformed police numbered nearly 7,000, making it the fourth-largest force in the United States.

The top cop was the commissioner. An appointed position, the commissioner served at the pleasure of the mayor. Under the commissioner were his deputies. Each was responsible for various bureaus-narcotics, special operations, internal affairs, among others-which in turn were commanded by a chief inspector.

There were six patrol divisions, each led by an inspector. And each of the twenty-three patrol districts, commanded by a captain, had four platoons made up of a lieutenant, a pair of sergeants, and some forty officers.

The upper ranks-lieutenant to commissioner-were referred to as “white shirts” because that was the color of their uniform. Likewise, the lower ranks-police recruit to sergeant-were the “blue shirts.”

Their insignia more or less followed that of the military’s. Among the white shirts, the commissioner wore four gold stars, his deputy had three stars, and so on, down to a lieutenant’s single golden bar. And the shoulder of a blue shirt sergeant would bear a patch showing three blue chevrons outlined in silver, while a corporal’s would have two chevrons.

Thus, keeping absolute order was absolutely critical for such a large and complicated department to operate efficiently and effectively. That of course meant the faithful and rigorous following of various protocols and systems and rules, many of which had been in place, or certainly improved upon, since the first foot patrol in the late 1600s.

One such system was the manner in which detectives in the Detective Bureau were assigned a job. The Detective Bureau, as its name suggested, included all the department’s Detectives Units around the city-Central, South, East, et cetera. It also included Special Victims Unit (what in pre-politically correct times had been called Sex Crimes), Major Crimes Unit, and so on.

And it included the Homicide Unit.

The system, known as “The Wheel,” was designed to distribute equitably the jobs that came in to a particular unit. Philadelphia had far more murders than most big American cities. Averaging a killing a day-the wee hours of weekends and full-moon Fridays being especially bloody-there was plenty of Homicide work to go around. Sure as hell, no one wanted to be unfairly assigned another job when they may already have more on their plate than the next guy.

The Wheel wasn’t an actual wheel. It was, instead, a roster listing the detectives on duty at the moment. The detective at the top of the roster was assigned to “man the desk.” When a telephone call came in with a job to investigate, the detective “deskman” got it. Then he consulted the roster to see whose turn it was “next up on the Wheel,” and that detective became the next “deskman.”

It was a logical system. One faithfully followed.

And Detective Tony Harris was about to throw a wrench in the Homicide Unit’s Wheel.

Harris had gone around the corner of the Philly Inn to the line of rooms along the motel’s south side. Next door, near the All-Nite Diner, he could see a large number of the people who’d been evacuated from the motel during the fire.

And that’s where Matt Payne said he is.

And he said he’s got information on this?

What the hell is that all about?

He pressed the key on his cellular phone that caused the device to speed-dial the Homicide office on the second floor of the Roundhouse.

The deskman finally answered the phone on its fifth ring.

“Homicide,” he said with no enthusiasm. “Detective Bari.”

Tony Harris did not dislike Aldo Bari-a heavyset thirty-five-year-old of Italian descent who wore cheap suits with his necktie always loosened and the shirt collar unbuttoned-but he was far from his biggest fan.

Bari was a strict by-the-book type who could quote chapter and verse of police department procedure. It had carried him along just fine on the force. No one could ever accuse Aldo Bari of straying outside the lines of any policy.

Nor, Tony Harris knew, would anyone ever suggest that Bari actually stuck his squat fat neck out for anything. Bari found comfort within the established boundaries. He put in his hours, and not a nanosecond more than he absolutely had to.

“Good morning, Al. Tony Harris.”

“Hey, Harris. What can I do you out of?”

“You’re up on the Wheel?”

“Yeah. Lucky me. I’m off the clock in under two hours, though. What cha got?”

“There’s a job coming in. I’m already on the scene-”

“That’s not exactly kosher, is it?” Bari interrupted.

“-I’m on the scene watching from a distance the guys from the Medical Examiner’s Office. This one’s really got my attention.”

“Really. What is it?”

“You know the Philly Inn on Frankford?”

“That old motel?”

“Right. A meth lab blew up in a room on the back side of the place about two o’clock this morning. The blast rocked my house, damn near blowing me out of bed.”

“An alleged meth lab? No fooling?”

“Alleged” my ass, Harris thought. Go ask the HazMat guys what toxic soup of caustic chemicals they had to clear out of there, Bari.

But Harris ignored him and went on: “When I looked out the window, I saw the glow of flames. So, I drove over to see what’d happened.”

“And?”

“And cutting a long story short, a white female got nailed outside the room that went ‘boom.’ She’d been waiting in one of those really fancy Mercedes SUVs. Apparently she’s hurt pretty badly.”

“Damn drugs.”

“Yeah. Then, as the fire department was battling the blaze, a white male, surprising hell out of everyone, came staggering out of the burning motel room. He and the girl were taken to the Temple ER.”

“That’s it?”

“No. When they got the motel room fire put out, inside they found two bodies, white Hispanic males, charred to a crisp.”

“Nice.”

“One of the critters had his throat slit.”

“Ah. Very nice. But wait. The white guy was the doer? Then he torched the place?”

“I don’t know, Al. If he did, it sure as hell backfired on him.”

Bari chuckled. “ ‘ Backfired.’ ”

Harris ignored him again. “Anyway, Al, there’s a lot of very interesting questions, all unanswered. Which is why I want the job.”

There was a perceptible pause as Bari considered what he’d just heard.

Tony Harris imagined Aldo Bari checking the black Casio watch on his fat wrist, looking at its oversize digital readout to see how close it now was to quitting time and wondering if he could dodge this bullet of a complicated case.

Bari’s probably breaking into a sweat trying to decide which desire to go with-play by the rules, or avoid a new job.

After a moment, Bari said, “Gee, I don’t know, Harris.”

Harris could hear real ambivalence in Bari’s tone.