'They're worried about Penny's safety,' Daffy said. 'And mine, too.'
'Did something happen?' Matt asked, now concerned.
'You ever hear, 'an ounce of prevention,' et cetera?' Chad said.
'You're really worried?' Matt asked. 'In here?'
'Daffy's alone a lot,' Chad said, a bit defensively. 'With the baby.'
'And a nanny, and at least one maid,' Matt said. 'Not to mention the rent-a-cop at the gate keeping the riffraff out.'
'And now a security guy from the company,' Chad said. 'All right? It makes the Old Broads feel better and it makes me feel better, too, okay?'
'That guy's going to be here around the clock?' Matt asked.
'Not that guy,' Chad said. 'He's a supervisor. He's a retired Jersey state trooper. He used to bodyguard the governor. What he's doing is seeing what has to be done. But yeah, there will be security people here around the clock.'
'You should know better than most people, Matt,' Daffy said, 'what goes on in the city. And that the police can't stop things from happening.'
'There's only so many cops, Daffy,' Matt said, now defensively. 'They can't be everywhere at once.'
'My point exactly,' Chad said.
'I like the idea of La Bochabella,' Daffy said. 'Exercise makes me hungry.'
She handed the baby back to her husband.
'I'll shower first,' she said.
'Give me the urchin,' Matt said mischievously, 'and you can shower together.'
Chad took him seriously.
'Yeah,' Chad said, and handed him the baby. 'Good thinking. One of the perks of married life. You should try it, buddy.'
'Don't drop her, Matt!' Daffy said.
'She will be a good deal safer with me, madam, than she would be in her mother's arms,' Matt said solemnly.
'You're up to something, Matt,' Daffy said. 'I don't trust you.'
'I have no idea, madam, of what you're accusing me.'
'Fix yourself a drink,' Chad said. 'You know where it is.'
'Yeah.'
Fixing himself a drink proved more difficult than he thought it would be. When he went to the bar, holding the baby, it became immediately apparent that he could not easily, one-handed, either open a scotch bottle or get ice from the refrigerator.
He walked to the couch and, with infinite tenderness, laid his goddaughter down on it, far enough away from the edge so there was no chance of her falling off.
He was halfway back to the bar when Penelope Alice Nesbitt expressed her displeasure at being laid down by howling with surprising volume for someone her size.
She stopped howling the moment she was picked up again, and he carried her back to the bar, where, with great difficulty, he made himself a drink. Then he carried the baby back to the couch and sat down.
After a moment, he propped the baby up at the junction of the back and arm of the chair, and watched to see if she would start to howl again. She didn't. She liked that. She smiled and made a gurgling noise.
'Would Penny and I have made something like you, sweetheart?' Matt asked softly as he extended his finger to the baby. She took his finger in her hand.
Matt became aware that his eyes were tearing and his throat was very tight.
'Shit!' he said, and took a deep swallow of his scotch on the rocks. The emotional moment passed.
Surprising him, Daffy returned first, dressed to go out.
'You should have gotten yourself a date,' she said. 'It would be like old times.'
'You mean, you and Chad in the backseat of the car, making elephants-in-rut-type noises?'
'Screw you, you know what I mean,' Daffy said. 'Are you seeing much of Amanda these days?'
He shook his head, 'no.'
'Why not? She's a really nice girl.'
'We never seem to be free at the same time,' Matt said.
'Yeah,' Daffy said, and changed the subject: 'Well, since we all can't fit in your car, I'd better see about ours.'
'Either this child has terminal B.O., or it needs a diaper change,' Matt said.
Daffy picked up her baby and walked out of the room with her. Chad appeared a moment later, walked to the bar, poured whiskey in a glass and tossed it down, then held his finger in front of his lips in a signal that Daffy was not to know he had a little predinner drink.
Daffy reappeared, and they went down the stairs. The rent-a-cop was not in sight, and Matt wondered where he was.
When they went outside, the rent-a-cop was standing beside an Oldsmobile 98 sedan, the doors of which were open.
Daffy and Chad got in the backseat, the rent-a-cop got behind the wheel, and Matt got in the front passenger seat beside him.
'You know the La Bochabella restaurant?' Chad asked.
'Yes, sir.'
'Where'd you get this?' Matt asked when they were inside. 'It's new, isn't it?'
'Yeah,' Chad said. 'Tell him, Mr. Frazier.'
'The statistics show,' Frazier announced, very seriously, 'that there are far fewer incidents involving Oldsmobiles and Buicks than there are involving Cadillacs and Lincolns. Presumably, they don't attract the same kind of attention from the wrong kind of people.'
'You're telling me your old man is going to turn in his Rolls Royce on an Olds?' Matt asked. 'To avoid an incident?'
'No.' Chad laughed. 'But he's stopped going anywhere in it alone.'
'You seem to feel this is funny, Matt,' Daffy said. 'I don't. We don't.'
'Straight answer, Daffy?'
'If you can come up with one.'
'As a cop, I'm a little embarrassed that Chad's father, and your mothers, and you really feel it's necessary.'
'That brings us back to my ounce of prevention,' Chad said.
Matt confessed to the maоtre d' of La Bochabella that he didn't have a reservation, and asked how much of a problem that was going to be.
The maоtre d' consulted his reservations list at length, frowning, and shaking his head.
If this son of a bitch is waiting for me to slip him money, we'll be here all night.
'I'm afraid, sir…' the maиtre d' began.
A chubby, splendidly tailored man in his late twenties walked up to the maоtre d's stand.
'Ricardo,' he announced, 'Mr. Brewer just phoned and canceled his reservation.' He looked at Matt. 'If you're willing to wait just a few minutes, sir, we'll be happy to accommodate you.'
'Thank you,' Matt said.
'And your name, sir?'
'Payne,' Matt said. The maоtre d' wrote that at the head of his list of reservations.
'Initial?' the splendidly tailored chubby fellow said.
'M,' Matt said.
'Perhaps you'd like to wait at the bar,' the splendidly tailored chubby fellow suggested. 'It will be a few minutes.'
'Thank you,' Matt said, and led the way to the bar, which occupied most of the left side of the corridor leading from the door to the dining room. When he had slid onto a stool, he saw Frazier sitting at the end of the bar, near the door.
