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He didn't recognize the drivers, but there was little doubt in his mind that the cars were those assigned to Chief Inspectors Matt Lowenstein and Dennis V. Coughlin.

I am about to get one of three things, good news, bad news, or a Dutch Uncle speech. I don't know of anything I've done, or anyone else in Special Operations has done, that should have me on the carpet, but that simply means I don't know about it, not that there is nothing. And the reverse is true. I can't think of a thing I've done that would cause the mayor to show up to tell me what a good job I've been doing.

He pulled the Jaguar to the curb behind the limousine and got out.

The two drivers who had been leaning on the Cadillac pushed themselves erect.

"Good evening, Inspector."

"I guess the party can start now," Wohl said, smiling, "I'm here."

"They been in there the better part of an hour, Inspector," one of the drivers said.

That was immediately evident when his mother opened the door to his ring. There was hearty laughter from the living room, and when he walked in there, the faces of all four men were unnaturally, if slightly, flushed.

There were liquor and soft drink bottles and an insulated ice bucket on the coffee table, and the dining-room table was covered with cold cuts and bowls of potato salad.

"Well, here he is," Chief Inspector Augustus Wohl, retired, said. "As always, ten minutes late and a dollar short."

"Mr. Mayor," Wohl said, and then, nodding his head at Lowenstein and Coughlin in turn, said "Chief."

"Always the fashion plate, aren't you, Peter?" the mayor said as he shook Wohl's hand. "Even when you were a little boy."

"I've been out hobnobbing with the hoi polloi, Mr. Mayor."

"Which hoi polloi would that be?" the mayor asked, chuckling.

"Captain Pekach's fiancee."

"Oh, yes, Miss Peebles."

"And Miss Penelope Detweiler was there too," Wohl said.

"Is Pekach doing a little matchmaking?" the mayor said, and then went on without waiting for a reply. "You could do worse, Peter. It's about time you found a nice girl and settled down."

"Miss Peebles is doing the matchmaking, but her target, I think, is Detective Payne. The Detweiler girl is a little young for me."

"He was there too?"

"He was at my place when Dave Pekach called. He said to bring him along. He came to tell me he had been reassigned to Special Operations."

"Oh, yeah. That was one of the things I was going to mention to you. I heard the commissioner was thinking of sending him back over there."

Do you really expect me to believe that was Czernick 's idea, and you knew nothing about it?

And "one of the things" you were going to mention to me? What else, Mr. Mayor?

Wohl's father handed him a drink.

"Thank you," Peter said, and took a sip.

"Jerry was just telling me that Neil Jasper's going to retire," Chief Wohl said.

It took a moment for Wohl to identify Neil Jasper as an inspector working somewhere in the Roundhouse bureaucracy.

Christ, is he going to tell me "the commissioner is thinking " of making me Jasper's replacement?

"A lot of people, Peter, including the commissioner," the mayor said, looking directly at him, "think Special Operations is getting too big to be commanded by a staff inspector."