going with an interior decorator at the time he'd taken the apartment, and willing to acknowledge that he knew next to nothing about decorating. Dorothea had decorated it for him, free of charge, and got the furniture and carpet for him at her professional discount.
Dorothea was long gone, they having mutually agreed that the mature and civilized thing to do in their particular circumstance was to turn him in on a lawyer, and so was much of what she had called the'unity of ambience.'
A men's club downtown had gone under, and auctioned off the furnishings. Peter had bought a small mahogany service bar; two red overstuffed leather armchairs with matching footstools; and a six-byten-foot oil painting of a voluptuous nude reclining on a couch that had for fifty odd years decorated the men's bar of the defunct club. That had replaced a nearly as large modern work of art on the living room wall. The artwork replaced had had a title(!! Number Three.), but Peter had taken to referring to it as 'The Smear,' even before Love in Bloom had started to wither.
Dorothea, very pregnant, had come to see him, bringing the lawyer with her. The purpose of the visit was to see if Peter could 'do anything' for a client of the lawyer, who was also a dear friend, who had a son found in possession of just over a pound of Acapulco Gold brand ofcannabis sativa. Dorothea had been even more upset about the bar, the chairs, and the painting than she had been at his announcement that he couldn't be of help.
'You've raped the ambience, Peter,' Dorothea had said. 'If you want my opinion.'
When Peter went into the bedroom, the red light was blinking on his telephone answering device. He snapped it off and picked up the telephone. 'Hello?'
'We're just going out for supper,' Chief Inspector (Retired) August Wohl announced, without any preliminary greeting, in his deep, rasping voice, 'and afterward, we're going to see Jeannie and Gertrude Moffitt. Your mother thought you might want to eat with us.'
'I was over there earlier, Dad,' Peter said. 'Right after it happened.'
'You were?' Chief Inspector Wohl sounded surprised.
'I went in on the call, Dad,' Peter said.
'How come?'
'I was on Roosevelt Boulevard. I was the first senior guy on the scene. I just missed Jeannie at Nazareth Hospital, but then I saw her at the house.'
'But that was on the job,' August Wohl argued. 'Tonight's for close friends. The wake's tomorrow. You and Dutch were friends.'
'It won't look right, if you don't go to the house tonight.' Mrs. Olga Wohl came on the extension. 'We've known the Moffitts all our lives. And, tomorrow, at the wake, there will be so many people there
…'
'I'll try to get by later, Mother,' Peter said. 'I'm going out to dinner.'
'With who, if you don't mind my asking?'
He didn't reply.
'You hear anything, Peter?' Chief Inspector Wohl asked.
'The woman who shot Dutch is a junkie. They have an ID on her, and on the guy, another junkie, who was involved. I think they'll pick him up in a couple of days; I wouldn't be surprised if they already have him. My phone answerer is blinking. A Homicide detective named Jason Washington's got the job-'
'I know him,' August Wohl interrupted.
'I asked him to keep me advised. As soon as I hear something, I'll let you know.'
'Why should he keep you advised?' August Wohl asked.
'Because the commissioner, for the good of the department, has assigned me to charm the lady from TV.'
'I saw the TV,' Wohl's father said. 'The blonde really was an eyewitness?'
'Yes, she was. She just made the identification, of the dead girl, and the guy who ran. Positive. I was there when she made it. The guy's name is Gerald Vincent Gallagher.'
'White guy?'
'Yeah. The woman, too. Her name is Schmeltzer. Her father has a grocery store over by Lincoln High.'
'Jesus, I know him,' August Wohl said.
'Dad, I better see who called,' Peter said.
'He's going to be at Marshutz amp; Sons, for the wake, I mean. They're going to lay him out in the Green Room; I talked to Gertrude Moffitt,' Peter's mother said.
'I'll be at the wake, of course, Mother,' Peter said.
'Peter,' Chief Inspector Wohl, retired, said thoughtfully, 'maybe it would be a good idea for you to wear your uniform to the funeral.'
'What?' Peter asked, surprised. Staff inspectors almost never wore uniforms.
'There will be talk, if you're not at the house tonight-'
'You bet, there will be,' Peter's mother interjected.
'People like to gossip,' Chief Inspector Wohl went on. 'Instead of letting them gossip about maybe why you didn't come to the house, let them gossip about you being in uniform.'
'That sounds pretty devious, Dad.'
'Either the house tonight, with his other close friends, or the uniform at the wake,' Chief Inspector Wohl said. 'A gesture of respect, one way or the other.'
'I don't know, Dad,' Peter said..
'Do what you like,' his father said, abruptly, and the line went dead.
He's mad. He offered advice and I rejected it. And he's probably right, too. You don't get to be a chief inspector unless you are a master practitioner of the secret rites of the police department.
There was only one recorded message on the telephone answerer tape:
'Dennis Coughlin, Peter. You've done one hell of a job with that TV woman. That was very touching, what she said on the TV. The commissioner saw it, too. I guess you know-Matt Lowenstein told me he saw you-that the commissioner wants you to stay on top of this. None of us wants anything embarrassing to anyone to happen. Call me, at the house, if necessary, when you learn something.'
While the tape was rewinding, Peter glanced at his watch.
'Damn!' he said.
He tore off his jacket and his shoulder holster and started to unbutton his shirt. There was no time for a shower. He was late already. He went into the bathroom and splashed Jamaica Bay lime cologne from a bottle onto his hands, and then onto his face. He sniffed his underarms, wet his hands again, and mopped them under his arms.
He stripped to his shorts and socks, and then dressed quickly. He pulled on a pale blue turtleneck knit shirt, and then a darker blue pair of Daks trousers. He slipped his feet into loafers, put his arms through the straps of the shoulder holster, and then into a maroon blazer. He reached on a closet shelf for a snap-brim straw hat and put that on. He examined himself in the full-length mirrors that covered the sliding doors to the bedroom closet.
'My, don't you look splendid, you handsome devil, you!' he said.
And then he ran down the stairs and put a key to the padlock on one of the garage doors, and pulled them open. He went inside. There came the sound of a starter grinding, and then an engine caught.
A British racing green 1950 Jaguar XK-120 roadster emerged slowly and carefully from the garage. It looked new, rather than twenty-three years old. It had been a mess when Peter bought it, soon after he had been promoted to lieutenant. He'd since put a lot of money and a lot of time into it. Even his mother appreciated what he had done; it was now his 'cute little sporty car' rather than 'that disgraceful old junky rattletrap.'
He drove at considerably in excess of the speed limit down Lancaster Avenue to Belmont, and then to the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute. Barbara Crowley, R.N., a tall, lithe young woman of, he guessed, twenty-six, twenty-seven, who wore her blond hair in a pageboy, was waiting for him, and smiled when the open convertible pulled up to her.
But she was pissed, he knew, both that he was late, and that he was driving the Jaguar. She contained her annoyance because she was trying as hard as he was to find someone.
'We're being sporty tonight, I see,' Barbara said as she got in the car.
'I'm sorry I'm late,' he said. 'I will prove that, if you give me a chance.'
