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“People might get the idea, that if I went there with you, I was your girl friend.”

“I don’t think that’s much of a secret, is it?” Peter said. “But I’m not really up to going there. I suppose this makes me a moral coward, but I don’t want to look at Jeannie’s face, or the kids’,” he said. “But thank you, Barbara.”

“What it makes you is honest,” Barbara said, and laid her hand on his. Then she added, “We could go to my place.”

Barbara lived in a three-room apartment on the top floor of one of the red-brick buildings at the hospital. It was roomy and comfo

rtable.

She really thought the reason I wasn’t going over to the house was because taking her there would be one more reluctant step on our slow, but inexorable march to the altar. I squirmed out of that, and now she is offering me comfort, in the way women have comforted men since they came home with dinosaur bites.

“What I think I will do is take you home, apologize for my lousy attitude—”

“Don’t be silly, Peter,” Barbara interrupted.

“And then go home and get my uniform out of the bag so that I will remember to get it pressed in the morning.”

“Your uniform?”

“Dutch was killed in the line of duty,” Peter said. “There will be, the day after tomorrow, a splendiferous ceremony at Saint Dominic’s. I will be there, in uniform, which, my mother and dad hope, will be accepted as a gesture of my respect overwhelming my bad manners for not joining the other close friends at the house tonight.”

He saw a question forming in her eyes, but she didn’t, after a just perceptible hesitation, ask it. Instead, she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in your uniform.”

“Very spiffy,” he said. “When I wear my uniform, I have to fight to preserve my virtue. It drives the girls wild.”

“I’ll bet you look very nice in a uniform,” Barbara said.

He looked for and found the waiter and waved him over and called for the check.

There would be no check, the waiter said. It was Mr. Savarese’s pleasure.

****

Barbara insisted in going home in a cab. She wasn’t mad, she assured him, but she was tired and he was tired, and they both had had bad days and a lot to do tomorrow, and a cab was easier, and made sense.

She kissed him quickly, and got in a cab and was gone. He went to the parking garage and reclaimed the Jaguar.

As soon as he got behind the wheel, Peter Wohl began to regret not having gone to her apartment with Barbara. For one thing, he had learned that turning down an offer of sexual favors was not a good way to maintain a good relationship with a female. They could have headaches, or for other reasons be temporarily out of action, but the privilege was not reciprocal. He had probably hurt her feelings, or angered her (even if she didn’t let it show), or both, by leaving her. He was sorry to have done that, for Barbara was a good woman.

Less nobly, he realized that a piece of ass would probably be just what the doctor would order for what ailed him. Seeing Dutch slumped dead against the wall had affected him more than he liked to admit. And looking down Louise Dutton’s dressing gown, even if she had caught him at it, and made an ass of him, had aroused him. Whatever else could or would be said about the TV lady, she really had a set of perfect teats.

He had been driving without thinking about where he was going. When he oriented himself, he saw he was on Market Street, west of the Schuylkill River, just past Thirtieth Street Station. That wasn’t far from Barbara’s place.

What the hell am I doing ? I really don’t want to see her any more tonight.

He was also, he realized, just a couple of blocks away from the Adelphia Hotel.

There was a bar off the lobby of the Adelphia Hotel, in which, from time to time, he had found females sitting who were amenable to a dalliance; often guests of the hotel who, he supposed, were more prone to fool around while in Philadelphia than they would back in Pittsburgh; and sometimes what he thought of as Strawbridge & Clothier women, the upper crust of Philadelphia and the Main Line, who, if the moon was right, could as easily be talked out of their fashionable clothing.

And even if there were no females, the bar was dark, and he was not known to the bartenders as a cop, and there was a guy who played the piano.

He would see what developed naturally. The worst possible scenario would be no available women. In which case, he would have a couple drinks and listen to the guy play the piano and then do what he probably should have done anyway, go home. He really did have to remember to get his uniform out of the zipper bag in the closet and get it pressed tomorrow.

His eyes had barely adjusted to the darkness of the bar when a male voice spoke in his ear. “Can I buy you a drink?”

He turned to see who had made the offer. The face was familiar, but he couldn’t immediately put a name, or an identification, to it.

“It is you, Inspector? I mean . . . you are Inspector Wohl, aren’t you?”