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“Yes, sir,” Detective Lassiter said, and then, raising her voice, called out, “Charley, you loose enough to go with me?”

“What’s the job?” Detective Charley Touma, a plump forty-four-year-old, asked.

“That’s not an answer, Charley, that’s another question,” Lieutenant Vincent answered for Detective Lassiter.

“I am at your disposal, Detective Lassiter,” Touma said. “What’s the job?”

“Homicide, possible rape, young white female,” Detective Lassiter said, as she opened the drawer of her desk, took from it her Glock 9-mm semiautomatic pistol, and slipped it into its holster.

Lieutenant Vincent was pleased that Detective Touma would be working with Detective Lassiter. Touma was a good man, a gentle man. The job was probably going to be messy, and although he knew he wasn’t supposed to let feelings like this intrude in any way in official business, the truth was that Lieutenant Vincent looked upon Detective Lassiter as, if not a daughter, then as a little sister.

Immediately after talking to the desk man at Northwest Detectives, the Police Radio operator pushed the button that automatically dialed the number of the man on the desk in the Homicide Unit, which was, physically, almost directly under him in the Roundhouse.

Detective Joe D’Amata, a slightly built, natty, olive-skinned forty-year-old, who was next up on the Homicide wheel, answered the phone: “Homicide, D’Amata.”

“This is Radio,” the operator said, and then proceeded to repeat almost verbatim what he’d reported to Detective Lassiter at Northwest Detectives. And Detective D’Amata, as Detective Lassiter had done, carefully wrote everything down, then said, “Got it, thanks.”

He looked around for Lieutenant Jason Washington and saw that he was in his office talking with-almost certainly telling him the way things worked-Sergeant Matt Payne.

The only problem Joe D’Amata had with Payne as a sergeant in Homicide was that it made him reconsider the decision he’d made years before, when he’d been in Homicide a year, and there was a sergeant’s exam coming up, and he had decided not to take it.

It was pretty clear by then that he’d cut the mustard and wouldn’t be asked to “consider a transfer.” He realized that he would much rather be a Homicide detective than a sergeant, or a lieutenant, or even a captain, somewhere else. For one thing, with all the overtime, he was taking home as much-or more-dough as an inspector. But the money wasn’t all of it. He liked Homicide.

Homicide was special, and it paid well. Who needs to be a sergeant?

So he hadn’t taken the exam, and hadn’t thought about getting promoted since. And he knew that many-perhaps most-of the Homicide detectives had made the same decision at some time in their careers.

Another trouble with taking the exam and making sergeant was that he’d have to leave Homicide, the personnel theory there being it was bad policy to have somebody who last week was one of the boys this week be their supervisor. Even if he went to a regular detective district-South, for example-as a sergeant, he wouldn’t be doing any investigations himself, just supervising detectives who were investigating retail thefts, stolen autos, and the occasional more exciting aggravated assaults, or bank robberies. And, if you turned up a good suspect on a bank job, the FBI would immediately take over. If he were sent to a uniform district, a very distinct possibility in today’s “career-development-minded” department, then he would be devoting his investigatory skills to “Disturbance, House” calls.

There were exceptions, of course. There were exceptions to everything. Jason Washington had taken the lieutenant’s exam with the understanding that if he made it, he would stay in Homicide. And the word was out that with a couple of belts in him, after he’d heard Payne was coming to Homicide, Tony Harris had gone to Washington and asked if he couldn’t do the same thing, and Washington said he would work on it.

There was something else, too. The reason Payne was the new sergeant was the nutty “First Five Get Their Choice of Assignment” decision Commissioner Mariani had come up with.

That could have come out worse. Payne was a youngster, but he was a good cop. He’d been doing in critters from the time he’d come on the job. Denny Coughlin had gotten him assigned as Peter Wohl’s administrative assistant to keep him out of trouble until he realized that rich kids from the Main Line really shouldn’t be cops just because their father and uncle got blown away as cops.

He had been working for Wohl hardly any time at all when he’d popped the Northwest serial rapist and taken him permanently off the streets without putting the Commonwealth to the expense of a trial.

Maybe it was in his blood. Who the hell knew? But the point was Payne was a good cop. What if the Number One guy had been somebody else? Some dickhead out of Community Relations, some other candyass good at taking exams but who, on the street, couldn’t find his butt with both hands and who would piss his pants if he had to stare down some critter? What then?

Joe D’Amata pushed himself out of his chair and walked to Lieutenant Washington’s door. He waited until he had Washington’s attention.

“We got one, Jason,” he said. “White female, twenty-three, probably involved with a rape.”

“Dare I hope the culprit is in custody?” Washington asked.

D’Amata shook his head.

“No. Thirty-fifth District uniform is holding the scene,” he said.

“Sergeant Payne will accompany you to the scene,” Washington said, smiling broadly, “checking to make sure everything you know has to be done is done. You will explain each step in the procedure to him, so that he will be assured you know what you’re doing.”

In other words, show the rookie the ropes.

“Anytime you’re ready, Sergeant,” Joe said.

“Let me know what happens, Sergeant,” Washington said.

“Yes, sir.”