When Wohl’s cell phone-in a charging cradle on his bedside table-chirped, he was not wearing any clothing at all, and was engaged in chasing a twenty-eight-year-old female around his bedroom with the announced intention of divesting her of her sole remaining article of clothing, black nylon underpants.
When the cell phone tinkled, Wohl said “Shit” and the young woman-having only moments before decided to let Peter work his wicked way with her-softly said, “Amen.”
Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., knew Inspector Peter Wohl well enough to know that not only was he going to answer the phone, but that the odds were that it was something that would keep them from ending what had been a delightful evening in what she had thought was going to be a delightful way.
The look on Peter’s face as he listened to what the caller was saying confirmed her worst fears, as did his almost conversational response to what the caller had said:
“Was it a good shooting?”
Amy had been Peter Wohl’s on-and-off girlfriend, lover, and the next-thing-to-fiancee long enough to have acquired an easy familiarity with police department cant.
She knew, in other words, that “a good shooting” was one in which the police shooter was not only fully justified in having used deadly force in the execution of his duties, but in circumstances such that his justification would be obvious to those who would investigate the incident, which was officially the Internal Affairs Division of the police department and the Office of the District Attorney, and unofficially Philadelphia’s newspapers, radio and television stations, and more than a dozen civil rights organizations.
“Well, you know the drill,” Inspector Peter Wohl said to his caller. “They’ll take you to Internal Affairs.”
He clicked the cell phone off and tossed it on the bed, then raised his eyes and looked at Amy, who was still where she had been when the phone tinkled, standing on his mattress, holding on to the right upper bedpost.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Fuck you, Peter!” she said, furiously.
“Maybe we can work that in a little later,” Wohl said. “But right now I have to go to Internal Affairs.”
“No you fucking well don’t!” Amy went on. A part of her brain-the psychiatrist part-told her that she had lost her temper, which disturbed her, while another-purely feminine- part told her she had every justification in the world for being angry with the male chauvinistic sonofabitch for choosing duty over hanky-panky with her, particularly at just about the precise moment she had decided to let him catch her.
He looked at her with a smugly tolerant smile on his lips, which added fuel to her anger.
“I ‘fucking’ well don’t?” he parroted, mockingly.
“Peter, you’ve got a deputy,” she said, when she thought she had regained sufficient control. “Under you and your deputy, there are three captains, and probably four times that many lieutenants.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“There is a thing known in management as delegation of authority and responsibility,” Dr. Payne went on reasonably.
“I agree. I think what you’re asking is why do I, as the Caesar of my little empire, have to personally rush off whenever one of my underlings has need of a friendly face and an encouraging word?”
“That’s just about it, yeah,” she said.
“Ordinarily, I would agree with you, having given the subject some thought after your last somewhat emotional outburst. ”
She felt her temper rising again, and with a great effort kept her mouth shut, as Peter found clean linen and started to put it on. Only when she was sure that she had herself under control did she go on.
“Let me guess. This is an exception to the rule, right?”
“Right.”
“Fuck you, Peter. It will always be ‘this is an exception to the rule.’ ”
“That was Matt on the phone,” he said.
“Oh, God!” she said, her anger instantly replaced with an almost maternal concern. “Oh, God, not again!”
“It looks that way, I’m afraid,” Wohl said.
“What happened?”
“Matt said-right after the Colt party-he was in the parking lot next to La Famiglia Restaurant?”
She nodded. She knew the restaurant well.
“And he walked up on an armed robbery. They shot at him, and he shot back, and put both of them down-one for good.”
“Why the hell couldn’t he have just, for once, for once, looked the other way?”
“He’s a cop, honey,” Wohl said.
“Is he all right?”
“He sounded all right to me.”
She jumped off the bed and looked around the room.
“Where the hell is my damned bra?” she asked softly, more of herself than of him.
“It’s probably in the living room,” Wohl said.
She looked at him, then picked up her skirt and stepped into it.
“I gather you won’t be here when I get back?” Wohl asked.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” he said.
“Don’t think you know what I want to do, please,” she said. “What it is, is that you don’t want me to go with you.”
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t. And I don’t think Matt will want to see you right now, either.”
She slipped her feet into her shoes, then went out of the room, returning in a moment in the act of putting her brassiere on.
She backed up to him.
“Fasten it, will you, please?”
“Funny,” he said after fussing with the catch for a moment. “I didn’t have this much trouble opening it.”
She didn’t reply until she was sure he had fastened the catch, and then she turned and faced him.
“I can’t believe that you’re as unaffected by this as you’re trying to make out,” she said. “You know what this is going to do to him.”
“I’m really unhappy about it, if that’s what you mean,” he replied. “But no, I don’t know what this is going to do to him. I hope that it was a good shooting, and I’d like to think he’s already worked his way through the questions something like this brings up.”
“You mean, after the first couple of good shootings it gets easier?” she asked, more than a little sarcastically.
He didn’t reply for a moment.
“I hope, for Matt’s sake, it does,” he said, finally.
She looked at him for a long moment, then walked out of the room again and came back pulling a sweater over her head.
“Your call,” she said. “We can take two cars, or I can go with you.”
He looked at her in the mirror-he was tying his tie-but didn’t say anything until he was finished.
Then he turned around and looked directly at her. “Thank you,” he said.
“What for?”
“You know what for,” he said.
He took a tweed sports coat from his closet, then followed her out of the bedroom, and through the living room to the door.
His apartment had once been the servants’ quarters above what had once been the stables, and then the five-car garage of the turn-of-the-century mansion now divided into “luxury apartments.”
They went down the outside stairs and to his unmarked Crown Victoria. He unlocked her door for her, and she reached up and kissed him.
“Sorry to have been such a bitch,” Amy said.
“Hey, I understand.”
He closed the door after her and went around the front and got in the car, and drove up to the drive, past the
