'I hope so,' he said, and turned again and went and had his shower.
When he came out, he sensed movement in his kitchen. He cracked the door open. Mrs. Glover was leaning against the refrigerator. She had a cheese glass in one hand, and a bottle of his cognac in the other.
'I hope you don't mind.'
'Of course not.'
'You want one?'
'No. I don't want to smell of booze when I go to work.'
'When do you have to be at work? Is taking me back to Upper Darby going to make you late?'
'No. I've got until half past one.'
She looked at him, and then away, and then drained the cheese glass.
'What I said before,' she said, 'was what my father told me when Ken and I broke up. That I was a nice girl, that I should be patient, that someone would come along.'
What the hell is she leading up to? Am I the someone?
'I'm sure he's right.'
'Now, you and I are obviously not right for each other…'
Damn!
'…but what I've been thinking, very possibly because I've had more to drink in the last twelve hours than I've had in the last six months, is that, until someone comes along for you, and someone comes along for me…'
'The sky wouldn't fall? There will not be a bolt of lightning to punish the sinners?'
She raised her head and met his eyes.
'What do you think?'
'I think I know how we can kill the time until the Plymouth place opens.'
'I'll bet you do,' she said, and set the cheese glass and the bottle of cognac on the sink and then started to unbutton her blouse.
As Matt Payne was climbing the stairs to his apartment at quarter to seven, across town, in Chestnut Hill, Peter Wohl stepped out of the shower in his apartment and started to towel himself dry.
The chimes activated by his doorbell button went off. They played 'Be It Ever So Humble, There's No Place Like Home.' One of what Wohl thought of as the 'xylophone bars' was out of whack, so the musical rendition was discordant. He had no idea how to fix it, and privately, he hated chimes generally and 'Be It Ever So Humble' specifically, but there was nothing he could do about the chimes. They had been a gift from his mother, and installed by his father.
He said a word that he would not have liked to have his mother hear, wrapped the towel around his middle, and left the bathroom. He went through his bedroom, and then through his living room, the most prominent furnishings of which were a white leather couch, a plateglass coffee table, a massive, Victorian mahogany service bar, and a very large oil painting of a Rubenesque naked lady resting on her side, one arm cocked coyly behind her head.
The ultrachic white leather couch and plate-glass coffee table were the sole remnants of a romantic involvement Peter Wohl had once had with an interior decorator, now a young suburban matron married to a lawyer. The bar and the painting of the naked lady he had acquired at an auction of the furnishings of a Center City men's club that had gone belly up.
He unlatched the door and pulled it open. A very neat, very wholesome-looking young man in a blue suit stood on the landing.
'Good morning, Inspector,' the young man said. His name was Paul T. (for Thomas) O'Mara, and he was a police officer of the Philadelphia Police Department. Specifically, he was Wohl's new administrative assistant.
Telling him, Peter Wohl thought, that when I say between seven and seven-fifteen, I don't mean quarter to seven, would be like kicking a Labrador puppy who has just retrieved his first tennis ball.
'Good morning, Paul,' Wohl said. 'Come on in. There's coffee in the kitchen.'
'Thank you, sir.'
Officer O'Mara was a recent addition to Peter Wohl's staff. Like Peter Wohl, he was from a police family. His father was a captain, who commanded the 17^th District. His brother was a sergeant in Civil Affairs. His grandfather, like Peter Wohl's father and grandfather, had retired from the Philadelphia Police Department.
More important, his father was a friend of both Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin and Chief Inspector (Retired) Augustus Wohl. When Officer O'Mara, who had five years on the job in the Traffic Division, had failed, for the second time, to pass the examination for corporal, both Chief Coughlin and Chief Wohl had had a private word with Inspector Wohl.
They had pointed out to him that just because someone has a little trouble with promotion examinations doesn't mean he's not a good cop, with potential. It just means that he has trouble passing examinations.
Not like you, Peter, the inference had been. You're not really all that smart, you're just good at taking examinations.
One or the other or both of them had suggested that what Officer O'Mara needed was a little broader experience than he was getting in the Traffic Division, such as he might get if it could be arranged to have him assigned to Special Operations as your administrative assistant.
'Now that you've lost Young Payne:' his father had said.
'Now that Matt's gone to East Detectives…' Chief Coughlin had said.
In chorus: 'You're going to need someone to replace him. And you know what a good guy, and a good cop, his father is.'
And so Officer O'Mara had taken off his uniform, with the distinctive white Traffic Division brimmed cap, and donned a trio of suits Inspector Wohl somewhat unkindly suspected were left over from his high school graduation and/or obtained from the Final Clearance rack at Sears Roebuck and come to work for Special Operations.
Peter Wohl was sitting on his bed, pulling his socks on when Officer O'Mara walked in with a cup of coffee.
'I couldn't find any cream, Inspector, but I put one spoon of sugar in there. Is that okay?'
Inspector Wohl decided that telling Officer O'Mara that he always took his coffee black would be both unkind and fruitless: He had told him the same thing ten or fifteen times in the office.
'Thank you,' he said.
'Stakeout got two critters at the Acme on Baltimore Avenue last night. It was on TV,' Officer O'Mara said.
''Got two critters'?'
'Blew them away,' O'Mara said, admiration in his voice.
'Any police or civilians get hurt?'
'They didn't say anything on TV.'
Wohl noticed that Officer O'Mara did not have any coffee.
'Aren't you having any coffee, Paul?'
'I thought you just told me to get you some,' O'Mara said.
'Help yourself, Paul. Have you had breakfast?'
'I had a doughnut.'
'Well, we're going to the Roundhouse. We can get some breakfast on the way.'
'Yes, sir,' O'Mara said, and walked out of the bedroom.
Peter Wohl walked to his closet and after a moment's hesitation selected a gray flannel suit. He added to it a light blue button-down collar shirt and a regimentally striped tie.
Clothes make the man, he thought somewhat cynically. First impressions are important. Particularly when one is summoned to meet with the commissioner, and one doesn't have a clue what the sonofabitch wants.
There was no parking space in the parking lot behind the Police Administration Building reserved for the
