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“I see a lot of practical problems,” Wohl said, coming to Coughlin’s aid. “Presuming Chief Coughlin would go along with this. For one thing, Payne says the Reynolds girl was not . . . at all receptive to his charms. Even if she was, this is a long way from Harrisburg. Does she know you’re a cop, Matt?”

“Yes, sir. Her eyes just sort of glazed over when she heard that.”

“You didn’t think that was a little odd?” Jernigan asked.

“Unfortunately, it happens to me all the time,” Matt said.

“On the other hand,” Davis said. “She might decide what better cover could she have when making frequent trips to Philadelphia than a cop boyfriend?”

Wohl thought: He’s right. Why am I surprised? You don’t get to be the FBI Philadelphia SAC if you’re stupid.

Then he saw something on Matt’s face.

“What, Matt?” he asked.

“You know why I went to the Roundhouse last night?” Matt asked.

Wohl had to think a moment before recalling that Matt had been sent to Personnel by Staff Inspector Weisbach.

“There was some sort of a Harrisburg connection?” Wohl asked.

Coughlin’s face indicated that he was having a hard time holding his questions about that until later.

Matt nodded.

“Something that would justify you being in Harrisburg on police business?” Davis asked.

“What Matt is working on is sensitive,” Coughlin said. “There are people we don’t want to know he’ll be going to Harrisburg.”

Walter Davis confirmed Wohl’s realization that stupid people do not get to be senior FBI officers:

“An internal matter, eh?” Davis said. “Well, I can probably help you there a little, if you like. The chief of police there is not only an old friend, but he owes me a couple of favors. You tell me what sort of a cover story you’d like for Payne to have, and I’ll see that it’s leaked from the chief’s office.”

“That could be very useful,” Wohl said, thinking out loud.

“There is something else,” Davis said. “Payne can move easily in the same social circles as the Reynolds woman; that could be very useful, I would suspect.”

“I’d have to clear Matt working with you on this with the commissioner,” Coughlin said. It was his last line of defense.

“I don’t think that will pose a problem, Denny,” Davis said. “The last time I had lunch with the mayor—here, as a matter of fact—he gave me quite a speech about these people who blow up medical-research facilities because they use animals. He called them something I wouldn’t repeat in mixed company. He said they were more dangerous to the country than most people realized. I have the feeling that if he knew about this, he would ‘suggest’ to Commissioner Czernich that it was a splendid idea.”

You may be an ass, Walter Davis, Peter Wohl thought, but you are not a stupid ass.

TEN

When the telephone rang in the elegantly furnished study of his South Philadelphia residence, Mr. Vincenzo Savarese, his jacket removed, his stiffly starched cuffs turned up, his eyes closed, was playing along from memory with a tape recording of the Philharmonica Sla vonica’s recording of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor, Opus 26, on a circa 1790 G. Strenelli violin for which he had paid nearly fifty thousand dollars.

Mr. Pietro Cassandro, a very large, well-tailored forty-year-old who faithfully paid federal and state taxes on his income as vice president of Classic Livery, Inc., where his duties were primarily driving the Lincolns and Cadillacs in which Mr. Savarese moved about town, frowned when the telephone rang. Mr. S. did not like to be disturbed when he was playing the violin.

Cassandro looked at Mr. Savarese to see his reaction to the ringing telephone. Only a very few people had the number of Mr. Savarese’s study.

Mr. S. stopped playing and looked at Cassandro. Then he pointed with the bow at the telephone.

Cassandro picked it up. “Yeah?” he said, listened a moment, then spoke to Mr. S.: “It’s the lawyer.”

“Mr. Giacomo?” Cassandro nodded. “Tell him I will be with him directly.”

Mr. Savarese walked to the reel-to-reel tape recorder and turned it off, and then to a Steinway grand piano on which he had placed the Strenelli violin’s case, carefully placed the violin, and the bow, in the case, and then closed it. He then pulled a crisp white handkerchief from his shirt collar and laid that upon the violin case.