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“Come on, Matt, out with it.”

Payne met his eyes.

“Did you tell Malone to lay off trying to catch Bob Holland?”

“Not specifically,” Wohl replied. “I’m sure he got the message, though.” And then he understood the meaning of Payne’s question. “What do you know that I don’t, Matt?”

“I promised him if I decided to tell you, I would tell him first.”

“This isn’t the Boy Scouts. You can’t have it both ways.”

“Charley caught him surveilling Holland’s body shop, the one up by Temple.”

“What do you mean, caught him?”

“McFadden—off duty, he had just dropped Margaret off at work at Temple—”

“Margaret being his girlfriend?”

“Right. So he saw this old car with somebody in it parked near Holland’s body shop. And he checked it out. It was Malone. He, Malone, told Charley not to tell anybody about it.”

“Which proves what?”

“The night you had me measuring the school building, Malone showed up there. Charley was with me. He offered to buy us a cheese-steak, and I brought him here. Both of them. And he admitted that what he was trying to do was catch Holland.”

“And you decided not to tell me, right?”

Matt nodded.

“I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gone to play Dick Tracy and gotten myself shot, but that night, I told Malone I was going to sleep on it, that I would probably decide I had to tell you, but if I did, I would tell him first.”

“You must have had a reason,” Wohl said, more than a little annoyed. “You work for me, getting back to that loyalty business.”

“He convinced the both us that Holland is a thief,” Matt said.

“You and McFadden, of course, being experts in the area of car theft.”

“Open the goddamn door!” the intercom speaker erupted. “Michael J. O’Hara is gracing these crummy premises with his presence.”

“Oh, shit!” Wohl said, even though he had to smile. “The last guy in Philadelphia I want to see is Mickey.”

“You want to hide in the bedroom while I get rid of him?”

“No,” Wohl said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve always thought, said, Mickey can be trusted. Let’s put it to the test.”

He walked quickly to the stairwell, and down it, to let O’Hara in.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“I must be getting old,” Michael J. O’Hara said to Inspector Peter Wohl as Wohl handed him a bottle of Tuborg. “I should have guessed you would be here.”

“I’m not here, Mickey. You didn’t see me.”

O’Hara looked at him intently for a moment, and then shrugged and nodded his agreement.

“Okay. Neither of us are here. But if we were here, and I asked you, on or off the record, ‘How do you think you’re going to like Harrisburg?’ what would be your off-the-record, just-between-us-boys reply?”

“On the record, I’m not going to Harrisburg.”