'I'd love to, but I can't. I'm working. Can I have a rain-check?'
'Yeah, sure.'
Charley closed the door after her, and then went around the front and got behind the wheel.
'So what are you going to do today?'
'I got court,' Charley replied. 'Which means I get off at four.'
'I told you, they're paying me double-time.'
'How come?'
'Because it's less than twenty-four hours since my last overtime tour. I got overtime yesterday too.'
'You're not getting enough sleep,' Charley said.
'So tonight, after I meet you in the FOP at seven-fifteen, and we have dinner, I go to bed early.'
The Fraternal Order of Police, on Spring Garden Street, was just a couple of minutes walk from Hahneman Hospital on North Broad Street in downtown Philadelphia.
'Yeah,' he said. 'This isn't a hell of a lot of fun, is it?'
'Most people are broke when they get married, and have to go in debt. We won't be.'
'To hell with it. Let's get married and go in debt.'
She laughed and leaned over and kissed him again.
They had breakfast in the medical staff cafeteria at Temple Hospital. The food was good and reasonable and there was a place to park the Volkswagen. As long as she was wearing a nurse's uniform and her R.N. pin, she could eat there. When she was in regular clothes, for some reason, they wouldn't let her do that.
Charley sometimes felt a little uncomfortable when he was in his Highway uniform and they ate there. He had the feeling that some of the medical personnel had started believing the bullshit the PhiladelphiaLedger had been printing about the cops generally, and Highway specifically. TheLedger had really been on Highway's ass, with that 'Carlucci's Commandos' and 'Gestapo' bullshit, so it wasn't really surprising. People believe what they read.
He thought that if he was really a Highway guy, maybe he wouldn't be so sensitive about it. Nobody in the world knew it but Margaret, but the truth was, he didn't like Highway. What he really wanted to be was a detective.
If I was in here in plainclothes, nobody would give me a second look; they would think I was a doctor, or a pill salesman, or something.
When they finished breakfast, Charley got in the Volkswagen and drove to Highway headquarters at Bustleton and Bowler Streets in Northeast Philadelphia.
There, he met his partner, Police Officer Gerald 'Gerry' D. Quinn, who was thirty-three, had been on the job eleven years and in Highway for five years.
The very first day he and Quinn had gone on patrol together, they had stopped a '72 Buick for speeding. It had turned out to be stolen. The case was finally coming up for trial today.
They stood roll call, and then drew a car, Highway 22, a year-old Chevrolet with 97,000-odd miles on its odometer. If by some miracle the trial went off as scheduled, they could then go on patrol. They drove downtown to City Hall at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets and parked just outside the southeast corner entrance.
Just off the southeast stairwell is Court Attendance, an administrative unit of the Police Department, which tries to keep track of which police officer is to testify at what time in which courtroom. They checked in there, learned where they were supposed to go to testify, and then went to the stairwell itself, where a blind concessionaire brewed what most police agreed was the worst coffee in the Delaware River Basin. They shot the bull with other cops for a while, and then went upstairs to their courtroom to wait for their case to be called.
The day began for Staff Inspector Peter Frederick Wohl at about the same time, a few minutes before six, as it had for Officer Charles McFadden.
Wohl was wakened by the ringing of one of the two telephones on the bedside table in his bedroom in his apartment. His over-a-six-cargarage apartment had once been the chauffeur's quarters of a turn-ofthe-century mansion on the 800 block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill. The mansion itself had been divided into luxury apartments.
'Inspector Wohl,' he said, somewhat formally. The phone that had been ringing was the official phone, paid for by the Police Department.
'Six o'clock, sir. Good morning.'
It was the voice of the tour lieutenant at Bustleton and Bowler. The voice was familiar, and so was the face he could put to it-that of a lieutenant newly assigned to Special Operations-but he could not come up with a name.
'Good morning,' Wohl said, as cheerfully as he could manage. 'How goes the never-ending war against crime?'
The lieutenant chuckled.
'I don't know about that, sir. But I can report your car is back from the garage. Shall I have someone run it over to you?'
For the first time, Wohl remembered what had happened to his car, an unmarked nearly brand-new Ford LTD four-door sedan. The sonofabitch had just died on him. He had been stopped by the red light at Mount Airy and Germantown Avenue on the way home from Commissioner Czernick' s soiree, and when the light changed, the Ford had moved fifteen feet forward and lurched to a stop.
When he tried to start it, the only thing that happened was the lights dimmed. The radio still worked, happily. He had called for a police tow truck, and then asked Police Radio to have the nearest Highway or Special Operations car meet him.
By the time the tow truck reached him, a Highway RPC, a Highway sergeant, and the Special Operations/Highway lieutenant were already there. The lieutenant had driven him home.
Wohl sat up and swung his feet out of bed, hoping to clear his brain.
'Let me think,' he said.
If they sent somebody over with his car, it would be someone who should be out on the street, or someone who was going off-duty, and thus should not be doing a white shirt a favor.
On the other hand, he was reluctant to drive his personal car over to Bustleton and Bowler for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it might get 'accidentally' bumped by a Highway Patrolman who believed Peter Wohl to be the devil reincarnate.
Peter Wohl's personal automobile was a twenty-three-year-old Jaguar XK-120 drophead roadster. He had spent four years and more money than he liked to think about rebuilding it from the frame up.
And even if I did drive it over there, he finally decided, when the day is over I will be back on square one, since I obviously cannot drive both the Jag and the Department's Ford back here at the same time.
'Let me call you if I need a ride, Lieutenant,' Wohl said. 'If you don't hear from me, just forget it.'
'Yes, sir. I'll be here.'
Wohl hung up the official telephone and picked up the one he paid for and dialed a number from memory.
'Hello.'
'Peter Wohl, Matt. Did I wake you?'
'No, sir. I had to get out of bed to take a shower.'
'You sound pretty chipper this morning, Officer Payne.'
'We celibates always sleep, sir, with a clear conscience and wake up chipper.'
Wohl chuckled, and then asked, 'Have you had breakfast?'
'No, sir.'
'I'll swap you a breakfast of your choice for a ride to work. The Ford broke last night. They fixed it and took it to Bustleton and Bowler.'
'Thirty minutes?'
'Thank you, Matt. I hate to put you out.'
'Youdid say, sir,you were buying breakfast?'
