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“Are you there, Inspector?” Jason Washington’s deep, resonant voice came from the speaker.

“Just putting the phone in the whatchamacallit, Jason.”

“Lieutenant Washington reporting for duty, sir.”

“Do I have to tell you this wasn’t my idea, Jason?”

“I understand it was the mayor’s inspiration of the day,” Washington said.

“Well, just for the record: Lieutenant, you are designated the senior investigating officer for the mayor’s task force investigating the murders at the Roy Rogers. You will report directly to me. Now, is there anything you feel you need to facilitate your investigation?”

“No, sir.”

“If there is, you will promptly let me know?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We now go off the record,” Wohl said. “Who told you?”

“The commissioner. Off the record. He also told me about Matt. I thought Matt would have called me.”

“Me, too,” Wohl said. “Detective Payne, why didn’t you telephone Lieutenant Washington and inform him of your spectacular performance?”

“He’s there?” Washington asked.

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Well, Detective Payne?”

“I thought,” Matt said, raising his voice so the microphone on Wohl’s desk would pick it up, “Tony would tell you.”

“As indeed he did. When can we expect your services, Sergeant?”

“Homicide’s wastebaskets need emptying, do they, Jason?” Wohl asked, innocently.

“I’m not a sergeant yet.”

“You will be, as I understand it, at approximately nine-thirty tomorrow morning. May I assume that you will report for duty immediately thereafter?”

“Your wastebaskets must be overflowing,” Wohl said.

“I have nothing so mundane in mind for Sergeant Payne, Inspector. His first duty will be to supervise Detective Harris, and Harris’s team.”

Matt thought: That will be a blind man leading the guide dog around.

“Tony’s somehow fallen from grace?” Wohl asked.

“Actually, Peter, it was Tony’s idea. He figures Matt can keep other people from looking over his shoulder. And we all know what a splendid typist Sergeant Payne is.”

Wohl considered that-the problem of how rookie Sergeant Payne will fit into Homicide has been solved. Jason said it was Tony’s idea, but I suspect Jason was involved. Matt will follow Harris around, relieve him of as many administrative details as possible, and since he is both bright and aware of his massive ignorance of Homicide procedures, he will keep his mouth shut, do whatever Tony “suggests”-which will include making sure that the rest of Tony’s team does what Tony wants them to do, and when-and in the process learn a hell of a lot-and grunted his agreement.

“Tony hasn’t come up with anything on the doers?” Wohl asked.

“They’re out there somewhere, Peter,” Washington said. “I think it highly unlikely that the mob imported two professionals from New York to stick up a Roy Rogers.”

Wohl chuckled.

“One distinct possibility, Peter, is that these two master criminals, once they have gone through the-best estimate- less than fifteen hundred dollars they earned on this job, will do it again.”

“Yeah,” Wohl agreed, seeing both the likelihood of a second or third or fourth robbery before they were-almost inevitably-caught, and the likelihood that once they were arrested, they could be identified in a lineup as the Roy Rogers doers.