Page 79

Brewster Payne stood up and offered his hand to Matt.

Matt started to take it, but stopped. They looked at each other, and then Brewster Payne opened his arms, and Matt stepped into them, and they hugged each other.

“Dad, you’re great,” Matt said.

“I know,” Brewster Payne said. He thought, I don’t care who his father was; this is my own, beloved, son.

****

When Peter Wohl walked into Homicide, Detective Jason Washington signaled that Captain Henry C. Quaire, commanding officer of the Homicide Division, was in his office and wordlessly asked if he should tell him Wohl was outside.

Wohl shook his head, no, and mimed drinking a cup of coffee. Washington went to a Mr. Coffee machine, poured coffee, and then, still without speaking, made gestures asking Wohl if he wanted cream or sugar. Wohl shook his head again, no, and Washington carried the coffee to him. Wohl nodded his thanks, and Washington bowed solemnly.

“We should paint our faces white,” Wohl said, chuckling, “and set up on the sidewalk.”

“Well, we’d probably make more money doing that than we do on the job,” Washington said. “Mimes probably take more home in their begging baskets every day than we do in a week.”

Wohl chuckled, and then asked, “Who’s in there with him?”

“Mitell,” Washington said. “You hear about that job? The old Italian guy?”

Wohl shook his head no.

“Well, he died. We just found out—Mitell told me as he went in that he just got the medical examiner’s report— of natural causes. But his wife was broke, and didn’t have enough money to bury him the way she thought he was entitled to be buried. So she dragged him into the basement, wrapped him in Saran Wrap, and waited for the money to come in. That was three months ago. A guy from the gas works smelled him, and called the cops.”

“Jesus Christ!” Wohl said.

“The old lady can’t understand why everybody’s so upset,” Washington said. “After all, it was her basement and her husband.”

“Oh, God.” Wohl laughed, and Washington joined him, and then Washington said what had just popped into Wohl’s mind.

“Why are we laughing?”

“Otherwise, we’d go crazy,” Wohl said.

“How did I do with the TV lady?” Washington asked.

“She told me she thought you were a very nice man, Jason,” Wohl said.

“I thought she was a very nice lady,” Washington said. “She looks even better in real life than she does on the tube.”

“I don’t suppose anything has happened?” Wohl asked.

“Gerald Vincent Gallagher’s under a rock someplace,” Washington said. “He’ll have to come out sooner or later. I’ll let you know the minute I get anything.”

“Who’s got the Nelson job?” Wohl asked.

“Tony Harris,” Washington said. “Know him?”

Wohl nodded.

Detective Jason Washington thought that he was far better off, the turn of the wheel, so to speak, than was Detective Tony Harris, to whom the wheel had given the faggot hacking job.

The same special conditions prevailed, the close supervision from above, though for different reasons. The special interest in the Moffitt job came because Dutch was a cop, and it came from within the department. If Dutch hadn’t been a cop, and the TV lady hadn’t been there when he got shot, the press wouldn’t really have given a damn. It would have been a thirty-second story on the local TV news, and the story would probably have been buried in the back pages of the newspapers.

But the Nelson job had everything in it that would keep it on the TV and in the newspapers for a long time. For one thing, it was gory. Whoever had done in Nelson had been over the edge; they’d really chopped up the poor sonofabitch. That in itself would have been enough to make a big story about it; the public likes to read about “brutal murders.” But Nelson was rich, the son of a big shot. He lived in a luxurious apartment. And there was the (interesting coincidence) tie-in with the TV lady. She’d found the body, and since everybody figured they knew her from the TV, it was as if someone they knew personally had found it.

And so far, they didn’t know who did it. Everybody could take a vicarious chill from the idea of having somebody break into an apartment and chop somebody up with knives. And if it came out that Jerome Nelson was homosexual, that would make it an even bigger story. Jason Washington didn’t think it would come out (the father owned a newspaper and a TV station, and it seemed logical that out of respect for him, the other newspapers and TV stations would soft-pedal that); but if it did, what the papers would have was sexual perversion as well as a brutal murder among the aristocracy, and they would milk that for all they could get out of it.