school at night to study chemistry and electronics and whatever else he thought would be useful, and gradually become an expert in what was called 'scientific crime detection.'
Three years before he had managed to get himself off limited duty, taken and passed the lieutenant's exam, and now the Forensics Lab was his.
Wohl thought, as he always did, that Lomax looked like a sick man (he remembered him as a robust Highway sergeant), felt sorry for him, and then wondered why: Lomax obviously didn't feel sorry for himself, and was obviously as happy as a pig in mud doing what he was doing.
'How are you, Warren?' Wohl said, and handed him the cassette tape from Matt Payne's answering machine with his free hand.
'What's this?' Lomax asked.
'The tape from Officer Matt Payne's answering machine. Payne told me that Chief Coughlin wanted to run them through here. And as I had to come here to face an irate mayor anyhow, I brought it along.'
'Christ, Carlucci even called me, wanting to know if I had heard anything about the-what is it-the Islamic Liberation Army.'
'Had you?'
'The first I ever heard of them was in the newspapers. Who the hell are they, anyway?'
'I wish I knew,' Wohl said. 'You come up with anything on Payne's car?'
Lomax turned and walked stiffly, reminding Wohl that the accident had crushed his hip, to a desk and came back with a manila folder.
'My vast experience in forensics leads me to believe a. that the same instrument was used to slice his tires and fuck up his paint job, and b. that said instrument was a pretty high quality collapsible knife, probably with a six- inch blade.'
'How did you reach these conclusions, Dr. Lomax? And what is a collapsible knife?'
'Aswitchblade,' Lomax said, 'is like a regular penknife, the blade folds into the handle, except that it's spring loaded, so that when you push the button, it springs open. Acollapsible knife is one where the blade slides in and out of the handle. Some are spring loaded, and some you have to push. You follow me?'
Wohl nodded.
'Okay. Switchblades aren't much good for stabbing tires, particularly high-quality tires like the Pirelli's on Payne's car. They're slashing instruments. The blades are thin. You try to stab something, like the walls of tires, the blade tends to snap. Payne's tires were stabbed, more than slashed. The contour of the penetration, the holes, shows that the blade was pretty thick on the dull side. A lot of switchblades are just thin pieces of steel sharpened onboth sides. Hence, a collapsible knife of pretty good quality. Six inches long or so because there's generally a proportion between blade width and length. The same instrument because we found particles of tire rubber in the scratches in the paint. And, for the hell of it, the size and depth of the scratches indicates a blade shape, the point shape, confirming what I said before.'
'I am dazzled,' Wohl said.
'Now all you street cops have to do is find the knife, and there's your doer. There can't be more than eight or ten thousand knives like that in Philadelphia. Forensics is happy to have been able to be of service.'
Wohl slid photographs out of the folder and looked at them.
'I hate to think what it's going to cost to have that car repainted,' he said.
'Well, I have a nice heel print of who I suspect is the doer,' Lomax said. 'Heel and three clear fingers, right hand. Maybe you can get him to pay to have it painted.'
Wohl looked at him curiously.
'It's in a position suggesting that he laid his hand on the hood, left side, when he bent over to stick the knife in the ninety-dollar tire,' Lomax said, and then pointed to one of the photographs. ' There.'
'Well, when we have a suspect in custody,' Wohl said, 'I'm sure that will be very valuable.'
Lomax laughed. Both knew that while the positive identification of an individual by his fingerprints has long been established as nearly infallible-fingerprints are truly unique-it isnot true that all you have to do to find an individual is have his fingerprint or fingerprints. Trying to match a fingerprint without a name to go with it, with fingerprints on file in either a police department or in the FBI's miles of cabinets in Washington, and thus come up with a name, is for all practical purposes impossible.
'What's on here?' Lomax asked, picking up the cassette tape.
'I don't know. I didn't hear it. I don't think anybody has. They're calling there every fifteen minutes or so, so McFadden-one of the guys sitting on Payne-fixed it so that the machine worked silently.'
'You want to hear it?'
'Not particularly,' Wohl said, and then reconsidered. He looked at his watch. 'Maybe I'd better,' he said. 'Let me have the phone, will you, please, Warren?'
Lomax pushed a telephone to him, and Wohl dialed a number.
'This is Inspector Wohl. Have Detective Harris call me at 555-3445.'
When he had put the phone down, Lomax asked, 'He getting anywhere with the Magnella job?'
'Not so far.'
'How's he doing?'
'If you mean, Warren, 'is he still on a bender?' he better not be. Christ, is that all over the Department?'
'People talk, Peter.'
'The word is gossip, and cops do it more than women,' Wohl said.
'I was having my own troubles with good ol' Jack Daniel's for a while,' Lomax said. 'I'm sympathetic.'
'I sometimes wonder if people weren't so sympathetic if the people they feel sorry for would straighten themselves out.'
'He's a good cop, Peter.'
'So I keep telling myself,' Wohl said. 'But then I keep hearing stories about him waving his gun around and getting thrown in a holding cell to sober up.'
'You heard that, huh?'
'Let's play the tape.'
Lieutenant Lomax had methodically made notes on seventeen recorded messages when his telephone rang. He answered it, then handed it to Wohl. 'Tony Harris.'
'Where are you working, Harris?' Wohl asked. There was a pause while Harris told him. Wohl thought a moment, then said, 'Okay. Meet me at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard at noon. If you get there before I do, get us a booth.'
He hung up without waiting for a reply.
'Would you think me a racist if I told you I suspect all of these calls were from those of the Afro-American persuasion?' he asked.
'What did you expect?' Lomax replied. 'Two kinds, though, I think. Some of these sleaze-balls have gone past the sixth grade.'
'Yeah, I sort of noticed that. A little affectation in the diction.'
'And not all of them are black, I don't think.'
'No?'
'At least not on the first tape. There was a very sexy lady on tape one. 'You know who this is,' she said, in a very sultry voice indeed, 'call me in the morning,' or 'after nine in the morning.' Something like that.'
'Now you're a racist. How do you know the sexy lady isn't black?'
'I doubt it. This was a pure Bala Cynwyd, Rose Tree Hunt Club accent. She talked with her teeth clenched.'
Wohl chuckled. 'I think one might reasonably presume that if one is young, good-looking, rich, and drives a Porsche, one might reasonably expect to get one's wick dipped.'
'Even a Porsche with slashed tires?' Lomax quipped, and then started the tape again.
The fifth message next played was, 'Darling, he's gone out again, thankGod, and I'm sitting here with amartini -and youknow whatthey do to me-thinking of all the things I'd like to do to you. So if you get this before eight-thirty, call me, and we can at leasttalk. Otherwise, call me after nineish in the morning.'
Wohl could see the lady, teeth clenched, talking. He even had a good idea of what she looked like. Blond hair, long, parted in the middle and hanging to her shoulders. She was wearing a sweater and a pleated skirt. From
