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Only minor adjustments had been necessary, Evans had happily told him. Mr. Alex had been, fortunately, just slightly larger than Captain Pekach, rather than the other way.

The buttons on the blazer, which bore the label of a London tailor, and which to Dave Pekach’s eyes looked unworn, had been replaced with Philadelphia Police Department buttons.

“You have no idea what trouble Evans had to go to for those buttons!” Martha had exclaimed. “But it was, wasn’t it, Evans, worth it. Doesn’t the captain look nice?”

“The captain looks just fine, Miss Martha,” Evans had agreed, beaming with pleasure.

It had not been the time to bring up the subjects of being able to buy his own damned clothing, thank you just the same, or being unable to comfortably wear a dead man’s hand-me-downs.

And the trouble, Dave Pekach thought, as he walked into the bedroom carrying his drink in one hand and a bacon-wrapped oyster in the other, and saw the blazer hanging on the mahogany clothes horse, is that I now think of all these clothes as mine.

He unbuckled his Sam Browne belt and hung it over the clothes horse, and then stripped out of his uniform, tossing it onto a green leather chaise lounge, secure in the knowledge that in the morning, freshly pressed, it (or another, fresh from the cleaners) would be on the clothes horse.

And that I’m getting pretty used to living like this.

When he came out of the glass-walled shower, Martha was in the bathroom. He was a little confused. Sometimes, when she felt like fooling around, she joined him, but not all dressed up as she was now.

“Captain Sabara called,” Martha announced. “He wants you to call. I wrote down the number.”

She extended a small piece of paper, but snatched it back when he reached for it.

“Put your robe on, precious,” she said. “You’ll catch your death!”

He took a heavy terry-cloth robe (also ex-Alexander Peebles, Esq.) from the chrome towel warmer, shrugged into it, took the phone number from Martha, and went into the bedroom, where he sat on the bed and picked up the telephone on the bedside table.

Martha sat on the bed next to him.

“Dave Pekach, Mike,” he said. “What’s up?”

Martha could hear only Dave’s side of the conversation.

“They did what?…

“Monahan okay?…

“Anyone else hurt?…

“Where’s Wohl?…

“Okay. If you do get in touch with him, tell him I’m on my way to the Roundhouse. It should take me twenty minutes, depending on the traffic. Thanks for calling me, Mike.”

He put the telephone back in its cradle and stood up.

He saw Martha’s eyes, curiosity in them, on him.

She never pries, he thought. She’s pleased when I tell her things, but she never asks.

“When they started to take Monahan, the witness to the Goldblatt job, from Goldblatt’s to the Roundhouse, they were firebombed.”

“Firebombed?”

“Somebody threw a whatdoyoucallit? A Molotov cocktail, a bottle full of gas.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

He looked at the green leather chaise lounge where he’d tossed his uniform. It had already been removed.

Damn!