mansion to Norwood Street, and turned right.
“No flashing blue lights and screaming siren?” Amy asked.
“We’ll probably get to Internal Affairs before he does,” Wohl said.
He reached under the dash and came up with a microphone.
'S-1,” he said.
“Go ahead, S-1,” Police Radio-this time a masculine voice-replied.
“On my way from my home to Internal Affairs,” Wohl said.
“Got it.”
He dropped the microphone on the seat.
“Can you get Denny Coughlin on that?” Amy asked.
He picked up the microphone.
“Radio, S-1. Have you got a location on Commissioner Coughlin?”
'S-1, he’s at Methodist Hospital.”
“What’s going on there?”
“An officer was shot answering a robbery in progress on South Broad. And be advised, there’s a new assist officer, shots fired on Front Street. Just a couple of minutes ago.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
He put the microphone down.
“If the root of your question was ‘Does he know?’, the answer is if he doesn’t, he will in a matter of minutes.”
“He does a much better job of telling Mother and Dad about things like this than I do.”
“They’re almost certainly asleep at this hour. You really want to wake them up?”
“No,” she said after a moment. “But they’ll be hurt and angry if someone doesn’t tell them.”
“You really want to wake them up?” he asked again, and went on. “All you’re going to do is upset them. You-or Coughlin-can do it in the morning, when things have settled down.”
“Good morning, Mom!” she said, sarcastically. “Guess what happened, again, last night?”
He chuckled.
“Was it a good shooting, Peter?” she asked, almost plaintively.
“From the way Matt talked, it was,” he said. “We’ll soon find out.”
Mickey O’Hara beat the first police unit-a marked Sixth District car-and the second-Lieutenant Gerry McGuire’s unmarked Dignitary Protection Crown Victoria-to the parking lot by a good thirty seconds.
He was well into the parking lot, camera at the ready, before the uniformed officer, McGuire, and Nevins got of their cars, drew their weapons, and cautiously entered the lot.
O’Hara saw Matt Payne long before Matt Payne saw him-or, perhaps more accurately, acknowledged O’Hara’s presence.
Matt was standing at the far end of the lot, pistol drawn, looking down at what after another second or two O’Hara saw was a man writhing on the ground.
“Matt! Matty! You all right?”
O’Hara decided that the crescendo of sirens was so loud Matt couldn’t hear him.
But finally, just when O’Hara was close enough to be able to hear the anguished moans of the man on the ground, Matt turned and looked at him.
O’Hara instantly-and certainly not intentionally-turned from concerned friend to journalist.
Jesus, that’s a good picture! A good-looking young cop in a tuxedo, tie pulled down, gun in hand, looking down at the bad guy! Justice fucking triumphant!
He put the digital camera to his eye and made the shot. And three others, to make sure he got it.
“What took you so long, Mickey?” Matt asked.
“What the hell happened, Matt?”
“These two guys…” He raised the pistol and indicated the second body. Then he waited patiently while Mickey took images of the dead man before going on:
“These two guys mugged a nice middle-class black couple out for dinner. The guy gave him his wallet, and one of these bastards knocked his teeth out with a gun anyway. I walked up on it, tried to grab them, and they let fly with a sawed-off shotgun and what looks like a. 380 Browning-”
“Jesus, Payne,” Lieutenant McGuire asked. “What went down here?”
“-and shot the shit out of my car and almost killed my girlfriend, and I put them down,” Matt finished, almost conversationally.
O’Hara, Nevins, and McGuire looked at him curiously.
“Are you all right?” McGuire asked in concern.
“I’m fine. They missed,” Matt replied. “The victims are over here.”
Sergeant Nevins squatted beside the man on the ground, who glared hatefully at him.
“It looks like you’re off the ballet team,” he said. “But you’ll live. Fire Rescue’s on the way.”
He stood up.
“They had guns?” he asked. “Where are they?”
Matt carefully took the Browning from his hip pocket and held it out. McGuire took it.
“I put the shotgun on the roof of my car,” Matt said.
“Mickey, get the hell out of here!” McGuire ordered.
O’Hara ignored him.
“Around here, Matt?” he asked.
“Just around the corner,” Matt said. “Two angry females. The victim’s wife, who wanted to know where I was when I was needed, and my girlfriend-perhaps ex-girlfriend would be more accurate-who just described me as a cold-blooded sonofabitch for shooting these two.”
'O’Hara, I told you to get the hell out of here!” McGuire shouted after him.
“I presume the firemen are on their way?” Matt said to McGuire. “In addition to the other damage, they apparently shot out a fuel line. There’s gas all over the ground. Or maybe they got the tank.”
McGuire approached him warily.
“Why don’t you let me have your weapon, Payne?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, of course. I forgot.”
He handed the Colt to McGuire butt-first as three uniforms and two men who were dressed much like those they hoped to arrest for illegal trafficking in controlled substances ran up to them, pistols in hand.
McGuire removed the clip, counted the rounds it held, then worked the action and ejected the round in the chamber.
Matt reached into the breast pocket of the dinner jacket, came out with another magazine, and handed it to McGuire.
“This is the magazine, now empty, that was in my weapon,” he said. “And somewhere over there is a live round I inadvertently ejected when this started.”
“The crime scene people will find it,” McGuire said.
Holding Matt’s pistol carefully by the checkering on the wooden grips, he started to put it in the pocket of his suit coat.
“I think you’re supposed to give that back to me,” Matt said.
“What?”
“Regulations state that the first supervisor to reach the scene of an incident like this is to take the weapon used from the officer who used it, remove the magazine, count the remaining rounds, take possession of that magazine, then return the weapon to the officer, who will then load a fresh magazine into his weapon and return it to his holster.”
“Sergeant, this is evidence,” McGuire said.
“With all respect, sir, that is not what the regulations say.”
“Shut up, Sergeant,” McGuire said.
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Payne said.
A Fire Rescue ambulance began backing into the parking lot.
A Sixth District lieutenant, a very large man, came running up.
