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"At eight o'clock, we may or may not take a couple of doors behind which he may or may not be hiding. Not well, in other words."

"I'll handle the Lanza thing myself if it comes down to that. If I haven't forgotten how to surveil somebody."

"I'll send Tony Harris down to you. I'll have him call you. You tell him when and where. I really would like to put one of these Mafiosos in the slam with our dirty cop."

"Thank you," Olsen said.

"I didn't hear anything you said about an illegal tap, Swede. The bacon was burning or something."

"Thank you, Peter."

TWENTY-EIGHT

At 7:25 a.m., as they sat in a nearly new Ford sedan in the 1100 block of Farragut Street, a very large, expensively tailored police officer turned to a somewhat smaller, but equally expensively tailored police officer and smiled.

"You are really quite dapper this morning, Matthew, my boy," Sergeant Jason Washington said approvingly. "I like that suit. Tripler?"

"Brooks Brothers. Just following orders. Sergeant: You told me to dress like a lawyer."

"And so you have. But despite looking like one of the more successful legal counsel to the Mafioso, somehow I suspect that all is not perfect in your world. Is there anything I can do?"

"Things are not, as a matter of fact, getting better and better, every day, in every way," Matt said.

/> "My question, Matthew, my boy, was, 'Is there anything I can do?'"

"I wish there were," Matt said.

"Try me," Washington said. "What is the precise nature of your problem? Anaffaire de coeur, perhaps?"

"A couple of undercover guys from Narcotics arrested Penny Detweiler last night, as she was cruising in the vicinity of Susquehanna and Bouvier."

The joking tone was gone from Washington's voice when he replied, replaced with genuine concern.

"Damn! I'm sorry to hear that. I'd hoped that-what was that place they sent her? In Nevada?-would help her."

"The Lindens. Apparently the fix didn't take."

"What have they charged her with?"

"Nothing. They picked her up for drunk driving before she was able to make her connection. She gave them my name. They couldn't find me, but they knew that Charley McFadden and I are close, so they took her to Northwest Detectives, and he got them to turn her loose to me."

"Aside from trying to make a buy, there is no other reason I can think of that she would be in that area," Washington said.

"No, there's not. She was trying to make a buy. And according to McFadden, if the undercover guys hadn't taken her in, she'd probably have had her throat cut."

"If she was lucky," Washington said. "I'm sorry, Matt. That slipped out. But McFadden is right. Where is she now?"

"I took her to my sister. My sister the shrink."

"Iadmire your sister," Washington said. "That was the thing to do."

"William Seven," the radio went off. "William One."

Matt grabbed the microphone.

"Seven," he said.

"It's that time," Wohl's voice metallically announced.