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“No, sir. Quiet as a tomb.”

“I’m on my way in,” Pekach said.

“Is something going on?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” Pekach said “Wohl just put the arm on me. I have no fucking idea what he wants.”

He hung up, then looked at Martha, who had a some what pained look on her face. “Sorry, baby.”

“I understand,” she said. “You’re upset.”

“I’m really sorry. I really try to watch my language, but sometimes I just forget.”

“I understand,” she said. “And I know you’re trying.”

“Jesus Christ, I love you!”

“ ‘Jesus Christ’ you love me?”

He threw his hands up helplessly.

“I love you, too, precious,” she said.

TWENTY-TWO

Gertrude—Mrs. Thomas J.—Callis reached over the curled-up body of her husband and picked up the telephone, thinking as she did so, for perhaps the five hundredth time, that if he insisted on having the phone on his side of his bed so he wouldn’t disturb her when the inevitable middle-of-the-night calls came, the least the son of a bitch could do was wake up when the damned thing did ring.

“Yes?”

“Gertrude? Dennis Coughlin. I’m sorry to bother you at this—”

“I’ll see if I can wake him, Denny. He’s sleeping like a log.”

The district attorney for Philadelphia was brought from his slumber by a somewhat terrifying feeling that he was being asphyxiated. He swatted at whatever was blocking his nostrils and mouth, and fought his way to a sitting position.

“What the hell?”

“Denny Coughlin,” Gertrude said, handed him the telephone, and lay back down with her back to him.

“Yeah, Denny.”

“Sorry to wake you up, Tony.”

“No problem, what’s up?” Callis said. He picked up the clock on the bedside table and looked at it. “Christ, it’s twenty-five after three!”

“I didn’t think this should wait until morning,” Coughlin said.

“What wouldn’t wait until morning?”

“We have just found some very dirty cops,” Coughlin said.

“That won’t wait until morning? Nothing personal, Denny, but these are not the first dirty cops you’ve found this year.”

That’s not true. There have been dirty cops, but Denny Coughlin didn’t find them. Peter Wohl did. What’s going on here?

“This is sort of complicated, Tony. What I would like to do—”

“How complicated, Denny?”