“Of course it wasn’t,” she snapped. “I want to talk about Matt. Nothing else.”
“We tried the other, right, and it didn’t work?”
“It didn’t seem to, did it?”
“I’ll meet you in your lobby,” Peter said. “I hate to follow people.”
“Thank you,” she said, and got back on the elevator. By the time she turned around, he was already out the door.
“How are you holding up, Matthew?” Jason Washington asked as he reached the top of the steep flight of stairs.
“Most often by leaning against the wall,” Matt replied.
“He said, masking his pain with humor. I am your friend, Matthew. Answer the question.”
“You know the old joke: ‘How is your wife?’ and the reply, ‘Compared to what?’ I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”
“Try a one-word reply.”
“Empty,” Matt said after a moment.
Washington grunted.
“I would suggest that is a normal reaction,” he said. “I would have been here earlier, Matthew, but I was about the King’s business, protecting our fair city from assorted mountebanks, scoundrels, and scalawags.”
Matt chuckled. “Thanks for coming.”
“I’m very sorry about Penny, Matt,” Washington said.
“Thank you.”
“It was originally my intention, and that of my fair lady, to come to add our voices to the chorus of those telling you that you are in no way responsible for what happened.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean that. I am not just saying it.”
“I know,” Matt said.
“My lesser half-who is a bitch on wheels when awakened from her slumber in the wee hours-is going to be mightily piqued when I finally show up at home and tell her I have been here alone.”
Matt chuckled.
“Considering that sacrifice I have made-you have seen the lady in a state of pique and should be sympathetic-do you think you could find it in your heart to offer me one of whatever it is you’re drinking?”
“Sorry,” Matt said. “This is Irish. Is that all right?”
“Gaelic chauvinist’s scotch will do nicely. Thank you,” Washington said.
“You’ve been on the job?” Matt asked as he walked toward the kitchen.
“Indeed.”
“I thought you’d be taking some time off, going to the Shore or something.”
“There have been several interesting developments,” Washington said. “What opinion did you form of Staff Inspector Weisbach?”
“I liked him. He’s smart as hell.”
“That’s good, because he’s our new boss.”
“Really?”
“Would you be interested in his opinion of you?”
“Yeah.”
“He said you need to be held on a tight leash.”
“Is that what he said?”
“That’s what he said.”
“You said ‘our new boss.’ Are we going to be involved in this Ethical Affairs business?”
“I think we are the Ethical Affairs Unit.”
“That sounds like Internal Affairs by another name.”
Matt walked back into his living room and handed Washington the drink.
“Not precisely. Wohl and Weisbach have elected to lend a broad interpretation to their mandate.”
“Wohl was here.”
“I saw him in the lobby.”
“He didn’t say anything to me about…anything.”
“Under the circumstances…”
“He did mention half a dozen times that what I have to do is put…what happened to Penny…behind me, and get on with my life.”
“And so you should. Anyway, Armando C. Giacomo had Wohl and Weisbach as his guests for lunch at the Rittenhouse Club.”
“He’s representing Cassandro?”
“Uh-huh. And Mr. Cassandro really does not wish to go to jail. Mr. Giacomo proposed a deal: Cassandro testifies against Cazerra, Meyer, and company, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.”
“They’re not going to deal, are they? They don’t need his testimony. We have the bastard cold.”
“What Peter and Weisbach find interesting is why the deal was proposed. Giacomo can, if he can’t get him off completely, delay his trial for forever and a day, and then keep him from actually going to jail, with one appeal or another, for another couple of years. So, what, in other words, is going on?”
“What is?”
“Weisbach and Wohl, taking a shot in the dark, told Giacomo that the only thing we’re interested in, vis-a-vis Cassandro, that might accrue to his advantage would be help with the murder of Officer Kellog and what happened at the Inferno Lounge. According to Weisbach, Giacomo acted as if something might be worked out.”
“The mob would give us one, or both, doers in exchange for Cassandro?”
Washington nodded. “Which, since that would constitute a gross violation of the Sicilian Code of Honor, again raises the question, Why is Cassandro not going to trial so important? And that is what Weisbach and I have been trying to find out.”
“And?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Anything turn up on the Inferno Lounge job?”
“No. But I suspect there may be a connection there. Rather obviously, it was a hit, not a robbery. If it was a contract hit, it was expensive. If they give us that doer, that means Cassandro not going to jail is really important, and we’re back to why.”
Matt grunted.
“Anyway, you’ll be close to that one. You’re still going to Homicide. Whenever you feel up to coming back on the job.”
“If I had my druthers, I’d come back tomorrow morning. I really dread tomorrow.”
“At something of a tangent,” Washington said, “I have something to say which may sound cruel. But I think I should say it. My first reaction when I heard what happened was relief.”
Matt didn’t reply at first.
“I’ve also felt that,” he said finally. “It makes me feel like a real sonofabitch.”
“I’ve seen a good many murders, Matt. And more than my fair share of narcotics addicts. I hold the private opinion that a pusher commits a far more heinous crime than-for example-whoever shot Officer Kellog. Or Mrs. Alicia Atchison and Mr. Anthony J. Marcuzzi at the Inferno. For them, it was over instantaneously. It was brutal, but not as brutal as taking the life of a young woman, in painful stages, over a long period of time.”
Matt did not reply.
“The point of this little philosophical observation, Matt, is that Penny was murdered the first time she put a needle in her arm. When you…became romantically involved…with one another, she was already dead. The man who killed her was the man who gave her her first hard drugs.”
“I loved her.”
“Yes, I know.”
“We had a fight the last time I saw her. About me being a cop.”
“If you had agreed to become the Nesfoods International Vice President in Charge of Keeping the Boss’s
