Page 83

“When two homosexuals get into something like this, they usually don’t steal anything, too. I mean, not the boyfriend. They work off the anger and run. So maybe it wasn’t the boyfriend.”

“Or the boyfriend might be a cold-blooded sonofa-bitch,” Wohl said.

“Yeah,” Harris said, and made the balancing gestures again. “We got people looking for Mr. St. Maury,” he went on. “And for the Jaguar. We’re trying to find if he had any jewelry that was good enough to be insured, which would give us a description. Captain Quaire said you were going to see his father?”

“I’m going there as soon as I leave here,” Wohl said. “I’ll ask.”

“I’d like to talk to him, too,” Harris said.

“I think I’d better see him alone,” Wohl thought out loud. “I’ll tell him you’ll want to see him. Maybe he can come up with some kind of a list of jewelry, expensive stuff in the apartment.”

“You’ll get the list?”

“No. I’ll ask him to get it for you. This is your job, Tony. I’m not going to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

Harris nodded.

“But I would like to look around the apartment,” Wohl said. “So when I see him, I’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“Sure,” Harris said. He started toward the door. “I’m really sorry, Inspector, about sitting on your car.”

“Forget it,” Wohl said.

ELEVEN

The building housing the Philadelphia Ledger and the studios of WGHA-TV and WGHA-FM was on Market Street, near the Thirtieth Street Station, and built, Wohl recalled as he drove up to it, about the same time. It wasn’t quite the marble Greek palace the Thirtieth Street Station was, but it was a large and imposing building.

He had been in it once before, as a freshman at St. Joseph’s Prep, on a field trip. As he walked up to the entrance, he remembered that very clearly, a busload of boisterous boys, horsing around, getting whacked with a finger behind the ear by the priests when their decorum didn’t meet the standards of Young Catholic Gentlemen.

There was a rent-a-cop standing by the revolving door, a receptionist behind a marble counter in the marble-floored lobby, and two more rent-a-cops standing behind her.

Wohl gave her his business card. It carried the seal of the City of Philadelphia in the upper left-hand corner, the legend POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF PHILADELPHIA in the lower left, and in the center his name, and below that, in slightly smaller letters, STAFF INSPECTOR. In the lower right-hand corner, it said INTERNAL SECURITY DIVISION FRANKLIN SQUARE and listed two telephone numbers.

It was an impressive card, and usually opened doors to wherever he wanted to go very quickly.

It made absolutely no impression on the receptionist in the Ledger Building.

“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Nelson, sir?” she asked, with massive condescension.

“I believe Mr. Nelson expects me,” Wohl said.

She smiled thinly at him and dialed a number.

“There’s a Mr. Wohl at Reception who says Mr. Nelson expects him.”

There was a pause, then a reply, and she hung up the telephone.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you don’t seem to be on Mr. Nelson’s appointment schedule,” the receptionist said. “He’s a very busy man, as I’m sure—”

“Call whoever that was back and tell her Inspector Wohl, of the police department,” Peter Wohl interrupted her.

She thought that over a moment, and finally shrugged and dialed the phone again.

This time, there was a longer pause before she hung up. She took a clipboard from a drawer, and a plastic-coated “Visitor” badge.

“Sign on the first blank line, please,” she said, and turned to one of the rent-a-cops. “Take this gentleman to the tenth floor, please.”

There was another entrance foyer when the elevator door was opened, behind a massive mahogany desk, and for a moment, Wohl thought he was going to have to go through the whole routine again, but a door opened, and a well-dressed, slim, gray-haired woman came through it and smiled at him.