'No. He's not. Her grandfather is Vincenzo Savarese.'
'The gangster?'
'That has been alleged.'
'Is this important to you, Daddy?'
'I don't really know how to answer that. He came here-Armando Giacomo brought him-which must have been difficult for both of them, and appealed to me as a father. I thought the decent thing to do was call you.'
'Where is she?'
'University Hospital.'
'Okay, I'll see her,' Amy said simply.
'Thank you.'
'It would be dishonest of me to say 'you're welcome, ' ' Amy said. 'What this is is pure curiosity. I wonder why Aaron didn't tell me who she was?'
'I don't think Dr. Stein knows who her grandfather is.'
'Got to run, Daddy,' Amy said, and the line went dead.
Payne returned to his office.
'I've just spoken to my daughter, Mr. Savarese,' he said. 'She will see your granddaughter.'
Vincenzo Savarese rose slowly from the couch and walked to Payne. He put out his hand, and when Payne put out his, held it with both hands.
There are tears in his eyes!
'I am very much in your debt, Mr. Payne,' Savarese said.
'Not at all.'
'I am very much in your debt, Mr. Payne,' Savarese repeated. 'And now I will not take any more of your valuable time.'
Savarese walked to Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, politely shook his hand, and then walked out of the office.
'I owe you a big one, Brewster,' Armando C. Giacomo said softly, winked at Payne, and followed Savarese out.
Walter Davis, a tall, well-built, nearly handsome man in his middle forties, had, while taking luncheon at the Rittenhouse Club, what he considered to be a splendid idea. Actually, it was the second time he had the same idea, and now he wondered why he hadn't followed up on it before.
Davis, who was the Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was not a voting member of the Rittenhouse Club. By virtue of his office, however, he enjoyed all the privileges of membership. Similar ex officio memberships were made available to certain other public servants-the mayor; the admiral commanding the Philadelphia Navy Yard; the police commissioner; the president of the University of Pennsylvania, et cetera-highly successful practitioners of their professions whom the membership felt would, had they been in the private sector, not only have been put up for membership but would have been able to afford it.
It was said that full membership in the Rittenhouse Club was something like Commodore Vanderbilt's yacht: if you had to ask how much it cost, you couldn't afford it.
Davis did not often use the Rittenhouse Club's facilities, which included an Olympic-size swimming pool, a fully equipped gymnasium in addition to its bar, lounge, and dining facilities. For one thing, it was expensive. For another, Davis was a shade uneasy about taking anything for nothing.
He tried to limit his visits to those that, at least, had a connection with the FBI. A monthly luncheon with Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich, for example, was usually on his schedule. There were exceptions, of course. When Mrs. Davis was climbing the walls about something, dinner in the elegance of the Rittenhouse Dining Room- the only room in the building where the gentle sex was welcome-did wonders to calm her down.
And today was another exception. Andrew C. Tellman, Esq.-known in their days at the University of Michigan Law School as 'Randy Andy'-was in town from Detroit and had called suggesting they get together.
Randy Andy was now a senior partner-he had sent Davis the engraved announcement-of the enormous Detroit law firm he had joined right out of law school, when Davis had gone to Quantico to the FBI Academy.
The stiff price of taking Randy Andy to lunch at the Rittenhouse seemed justified, as sort of a statement that he hadn't done so badly himself, and the proof of that seemed to have come immediately.
'Oh, you belong to the Rittenhouse, do you?' Randy Andy had asked when Davis had suggested 'one-ish at the Rittenhouse.'
Davis had taken this further, arriving at the club on Rittenhouse Square a few minutes after 12:30. He wanted Randy Andy to have to ask the porter-a master of snobbery-to ask for him, and then be led into the oak- paneled lounge where he would be sitting at one of the small tables.
'I'm expecting a guest,' he said to the porter, a digni fied black man in his sixties.
'Yes, sir. And who are you, sir?'
'Walter Davis.'
'Ah, yes, Mr. Davis. And your guest's name, Mr. Davis? '
'Tellman. Andrew C. Tellman.'
'You'll be in the lounge, Mr. Davis?'
'Yes.'
'I'll take care of it, sir,' the porter said.
He then went to a large board behind his porter's stand. On it were listed, alphabetically, the names of the three-hundred — odd members of the Rittenhouse Club. Beside each name was an inch-long piece of brass, which could be slid back and forth in a track. When the marker was next to the member's name, this indicated he was on the premises; when away from it, that he was not.
He moved the piece of brass to indicate that Davis, W. was now on the premises.
Davis examined the board. The names listed represented the power structure of Philadelphia. And their children. Both Nesbitt, C. III and Nesbitt, C. IV had small brass plates. As did Payne, B. and Payne, M.
Davis knew Payne, B. only by reputation, that of a founding partner of the most prestigious law firm in Philadelphia, Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.
Payne, M. he had met. Payne, M. was a policeman. Davis had once taken Inspector Peter Wohl to lunch. They had gone in Wohl's car, which had been driven by a Philadelphia police officer-Payne-in plainclothes. Officer Payne had played straight man to Wohl, while Wohl vented his annoyance at being kept waiting for Davis with 'witty' remarks, and by taking him to a closet-size Italian greasy spoon in South Philadelphia for lunch, instead of to the elegant Ristorante Alfredo in Center City.
Davis had subsequently learned, from Isaiah J. Towne, his ASAC (Assistant Special Agent in Charge) for counterintelligence, just who Payne was. Not only that he was Brewster Cortland Payne's son, or that he was the policeman who had, in Towne's somewhat admiring description, 'blown the brains of the Northeast Serial Rapist all over the inside of his van with his service revolver,' but why he had become a policeman instead of following in his father's prestigious footsteps in the practice of law.
Towne, a tall, hawk-featured, thirty-nine-year-old balding Mormon, who took his religion seriously and who had once told Davis, dead serious, that he regarded the Communists as the Antichrist, was in charge of what were called, somewhat confusingly, FBIs. The acronym stood for Full Background Investigation. FBIs were run before the issuance of federal security clearances, and before young men were commissioned into one of the Armed Forces.
An FBI had been run on Matthew Mark Payne during his last year at the University of Pennsylvania. He had then been enrolled in the USMC Platoon Leaders' Program, which would see him commissioned a second lieutenant on his graduation.
At the last minute, young Payne had failed the precommissioning physical, and had not gone into the Marine Corps.
Towne's FBI on him, however, had already been run, and it had provided some very interesting details about Payne, Matthew Mark. For one thing, he was a very wealthy young man, largely because of an investment program established for him at age three and administered-and generously contributed to-by his father thereafter.
It also revealed that he was not Brewster Cortland Payne II's biological son. He was the biological son of Sergeant John Francis Xavier Moffitt, of the Philadelphia Police Department, who had been shot to death answering
