'You make it sound like an accusation,' Matt said.
'Get off early?' Charley asked.
'Not exactly.'
'What's that mean?'
'I mean, I went in, and they said they really needed me from midnight till six.'
'They told you to come in,' Charley said indignantly.
'And I get an hour, at time-and-a-half, just for coming in,' Margaret said. 'Plus double-time for midnight to six.'
'You're not really going to go in at midnight?' Charley asked incredulously.
'Yes, of course, I am,' Margaret said. 'I told you, it's doubletime.'
'If I were you, I'd tell them where to stick their double-time.'
'Charley!'
'May I make a suggestion?' Matt asked.
'Huh?' Charley asked.
'What, Matt?' Margaret asked, a touch of impatience in her voice.
'If you're going to fight like married people, why don't you go get married?'
'I'm with him,' Charley said.
'We just can't, Matt,' Margaret said. 'Not right now.'
'It is better to marry than to burn,' Matt quoted sonorously. 'Saint Peter.'
'No, it's not,' Margaret said. 'Saint Peter, I mean.'
'It was one of those guys,' Matt said. 'Saint Timothy?'
'So what do we do now?' Charley asked.
'I don't know about you, but I'm going home to get some sleep. You can stay with Matt.'
'I'll take you home,' Charley said flatly. 'He's got a date.'
'You don't have to take me home.'
'I'll take you home,and to work.'
'You don't have to do that.'
'You're not going walking around North Broad Street alone at midnight.'
'Don't be silly.'
'Listen to him, Margaret,' Matt said.
'Oh, God!' she said in resignation.
Charley got off the bar stool.
'Let's go,' he said.
'We'll have to get together real soon, Margaret, and do this again,' Matt said.
'You can go to hell too,' Margaret said, but she touched his arm before she left.
Matt watched as the two of them walked across the room, and then signaled for another drink.
He did not have a date. But when Charley had called, he had realized that he did not want to sit in a bar somewhere and watch television with Charley.
What he wanted to do was get laid. He had been doing very poorly in that department lately. If he was with Charley, getting laid was, now that Charley had found Margaret, out of the question. Charley was a very moral person.
The trouble, he thought, as he watched the bartender take a bill and make change, is that men want to get laid and women want a relationship. Since I don't want a relationship, consequently, I'm not getting laid very much.
As he took his first sip of the fresh drink, he considered the possibility of hanging around the FOP and seeing what developed. There were sometimes unattached women around the bar. Some of them had a connection with either the police or the court establishment, clerks, secretaries, girls like that. And some were police groupies, who liked to hang around with cops.
Rumor had it that the latter group screwed like minks. The trouble there was the groupies, so to speak, had their groupies, cops who liked to hang around with girls who screwed like minks.
The demand for their services, Matt decided, overwhelmed the supply. If I try to move in on what looks to be someone else's sure thing for the night, I'm liable to get knocked on my ass.
And the others, the secretaries and the clerks, the nice girls, some of whom seemed to have been looking at me with what could be interest, were, like the vast majority of their sisters, not looking to get laid, but rather for a relationship.
Back to square one.
And if I have another of these, I am very likely to forget this calm, logical, most importantly sober analysis of the situation and wind up either in a relationship, or engaged in an altercation with a brother officer in the parking lot, or, more likely, right here on the dance floor, which altercation, no matter who the victor, would be difficult to explain when, inevitably, Staff Inspector P. Wohl heard about it.
He finished his drink, picked up his change, and walked across the room to the stairs leading up to the street.
Was that really invitation in that well-stacked redhead's eyes or has my imagination been inflamed by this near-terminal case of lakanookie ?
He got in the Porsche and drove home. There were, he noticed when he drove in the underground beneath the building that housed both the Delaware Valley Cancer Society and Chez Payne, far more cars in it than there normally were at this hour of the night. Ordinarily, it was just about deserted.
Parking spaces twenty-nine and thirty, which happened to be closest to the elevator, had been reserved by the management for the occupant of the top-floor apartment. The management had been instructed to do so by the owner, less as a courtesy to his son, who occupied the topfloor apartment, than, the son had come to understand, because a second parking spot was convenient when the owner's wife or other members of the family had some need to park around Rittenhouse Square.
Tonight, a Cadillac Fleetwood sedan was parked in parking space twenty-nine, its right side overflowing into what looked like half of parking space thirty. The Payne family owned a Cadillac Fleetwood, but this wasn't it.
Matt managed to squeeze the Porsche 911 into what was left of parking space thirty. But when he had done so, there was not room enough between him and the Cadillac to open the Porsche's driver's side door. It was necessary for him to exit by the passenger side door, which, in a Porsche 911, is a squirming feat worthy of Houdini.
He got on the elevator and rode it to the third floor and got off. The narrow corridor between the elevator and the stairs to his apartment was crowded with people.
A woman he could never remember having seen before in his life rushed over to him, stuck something to his lapel, cried, 'Oh, I'm so glad you could come!' and handed him a glass of champagne.
'Thank you,' Matt said. The champagne glass, he noticed, was plastic.
'We're circulatingdownward tonight,' the woman said.
'Are we?'
'Yes, isn't that clever?'
'Mind-boggling,' Matt replied.
The woman walked away.
Nice ass for an old woman; I wonder if there's anybody here under, say, thirty?
'Hello, Mr. Payne.'
It was one of the Holmes Security rent-a-cops. Matt knew he was a retired police sergeant, and it made him a little uncomfortable to be called 'Mr.' by a sergeant.
'I bet you know what's going on here,' Matt said, smiling at him.
The retired cop chuckled. 'I saw the look on your face. This is a party for the people who worked on the Cancer Society Ball.'
'I have no idea what that means, but thanks anyway.'
'You know, the ones who sold tickets, did all the work. And, of course, gave money.'
'Oh,' Matt said.
He saw a very pretty face, surrounded by blond hair in a pageboy. She was looking at him with unabashed
