“Actually, I came to see my client,” Giacomo said. “How are you doing, Matt?”
“I’m fine.”
“I have been informed, unofficially, of course, but reliably, by both the cops and the D.A.’s office that nothing you did in the La Famiglia parking lot in any way violated any law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In legal terminology, it was a righteous shooting, Matt, and you’re off the hook.”
“Manny, we appreciate how quickly-” Brewster C. Payne began.
Giacomo waved his hand to signal thanks were unnecessary.
“But you will have a taste, Manny, right?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
Next to arrive were Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Joe D’Amata. As Matt was pouring their drinks, the telephone in the niche in the fieldstone wall rang and Brewster C. Payne answered it.
It was Mr. Stan Colt, calling from the Coast. The monsignor had called him, Mr. Colt said, and said he’d heard that Matt was a little under the weather, and “could I talk to him, if he’s up to it?”
Sergeant Payne assured Mr. Colt that he was fine, that he had just been a little exhausted, and that he would make a real effort to go out to the Coast, and soon.
Inspector Peter Wohl appeared next. He was intercepted by Mrs. Patricia Payne and Dr. Amelia Payne as he walked up the now car-clogged drive toward the house.
“Amy told me what you did for Matt the night… it happened, ” Patricia Payne said, “and I just wanted to say, ‘Thank you.’ ”
“Absolutely unnecessary,” Wohl replied. “I was just glad I was there. I think of Matt-I think of all of you-as family.”
“And we do, too, Peter,” Patricia Payne said, emotionally. “Don’t we, Amy?”
“Yeah,” Amy said, looking intently at him. “I guess we all really do.”
Her tone was strange, and Peter looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and as if he was about to say something. But then he saw something else, and smiled instead.
“Look who’s here,” he said. “Mutt and Jeff.”
Detectives Charles McFadden and Jesus Martinez got out of their unmarked Special Operations Crown Victoria and started up the drive.
They stopped, and looked uncomfortable when they saw Wohl.
“Sir,” McFadden said, biting the bullet, “Captain Sabara said it would be all right if we took the rest of the day off- we just took the truck to the impound lot-and came out here and saw how Sergeant Payne was doing.”
Wohl nodded.
“How’s he doing?” McFadden asked.
“He was exhausted, really exhausted,” Amy said. “But he’s fine, and he’ll be glad to see you.”
Detective Martinez unrolled the newspaper he had in his hand and extended it to Dr. Payne.
“My mother saved this for me-Charley and me was driving up from Alabama when this happened,” he said. “I didn’t know if Pa… Sergeant Payne had seen them or not.”
It was the Philadelphia Bulletin, with a three-column picture of Sergeant Matthew M. Payne in a dinner jacket, standing, pistol in hand, over a man on the ground.
With an effort, Mrs. Payne smiled and said,
“No, I don’t think he has. It was very kind of you, Detective, to think of bringing this.”
An hour-and several bottles of spirits-later, everybody had gone, and Matt and Brewster Payne found themselves again alone on the patio.
“Well, I don’t know if that was the rest Aaron Stein prescribed for you, but I don’t see how it could have been avoided, and in the long run, I think it was good for you,” Brewster C. Payne said.
“I’m all right, Dad.”
“What are you going to do for thirty days? Given it any thought?”
“Aside from getting the Porsche fixed… It’s in the impound lot, Peter told me-”
“You’re going to have it repaired?”
“I don’t know. There was a lot of damage.”
“You have time to decide.”
“I may get another car, something less ostentatious, suitable for a starving law student.”
Brewster Payne looked at him for a long moment without saying anything.
“When did you decide that?” he asked finally.
“In the hospital,” Matt said.
“May I comment?”
“I sort of expected ‘Finally, thank God, he’s come to his senses!’ ”
Brewster C. Payne chuckled, then said, “I would be delighted if that’s what you finally decide to do, Matt, but I suggest to you that that’s a very important decision to make, and important decisions should not he made impulsively.”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you go to the Cape May house and take Final Tort out of sight of shore and watch the waves go up and down for a couple of days? That always helps me to think when I really need to.”
Matt thought that over for a moment, then nodded.
“You’re probably right. You usually are. But I really think my days as the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line are over.”
TWENTY-TWO
The theory that using Final Tort V, the Payne fifty-eight-foot Hatteras, as a platform from which, as he watched the waves go up and down, Matt could do some really serious thinking-and, his father hoped, incidentally get some rest- would be an excellent idea did not work out well in practice largely because of her captain.
Her captain, retired Coast Guard chief petty officer Al Bowman, who had been with the Paynes since Matt was ten, when the family boat was Final Tort II, a much smaller Hatteras, was on vacation.
Matt had learned small-boat handling from Chief Bowman, and took not a little pride in knowing he had met Chief Bowman’s criteria in that area. Usually, when they went out on Final Tort V together, the chief would come to the bridge only to hand Matt another beer.
Standing in for him in his absence was another, much younger retired Coast Guard chief petty officer, who was visibly nervous when Matt went to the control console, fired up the engines, and asked him to let loose the lines, with the obvious intent of taking the vessel to sea with himself at the helm.
Even when Matt managed to get the Final Tort V away from the wharf and into the wide Atlantic without running her aground, the stand-in captain never got far from Matt or the controls.
What was worse, however, was that the replacement captain had seen in the Bulletin both the photograph of Matt getting off the Citation with Homer C. Daniels and the photograph of Matt, pistol in hand, in the parking lot near La Famiglia, and naturally presumed Matt would be delighted to tell him all about the murdering rapist, exchanging gunfire with a couple of armed robbers, and what it was really like to be a real-life Stan Colt. And incidentally, what’s Stan Colt really like?
Compounding the problem was that the replacement captain was a really nice guy, the sort of man to whom one could not say, “I wish you’d shut the fuck up!” although that thought did run more than once through Matt’s mind.
And finally, if there were fish in the Atlantic, none of them showed any interest whatever in the bait supposed to tempt them to any of the four lines Matt put in the water.
At 2 P.M., Matt said, “I think we’d might as well call it a day. You want to take her in?”
The replacement captain had been obviously pleased with the request for his professional services.
Matt, sitting in a fishing chair with his feet on the stern rail, watching the churning water, had time for two beers and some private thoughts before he saw that they were nearly at the dock and he would have to go forward
