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“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Then I will say good night.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, sir.”

“God willing, and if the creek don’t rise,” Wohl said solemnly, and walked out of the room.

Matt Payne finished making copies of the documents he had taken from the file, stuffed the copies into a large manila envelope, and then returned the

originals to their filing cabinet.

It was quarter to four. He would still have to see Detective Tony Harris, and then go downtown to Homicide and see if their files contained something he hadn’t found, or would get from Harris. He would not be able to quit at five.

Tony Harris was not in the closet-sized office he shared with Detective Jason Washington. Washington, he knew, had taken the day off; he had a place at The Shore that always seemed to need some kind of emergency repair.

He really should, he thought, talk to Washington about the file Wohl wanted to pass to the FBI. Washington had worked with Harris on the Nelson job. He remembered overhearing Washington telling Wohl he would be back sometime in the afternoon.

The tour lieutenant, Harry Jensen, a Highway guy, said that Harris was out on the street somewhere. Both he and Washington were running down increasingly less promising leads to find whoever had shot down Joe Magnella, the young 22nd District cop. Wohl, Matt thought, had not really been kidding when he had said he had bled enough for the city for one day; the pressure on him to find the Magnella doers was enormous.

Payne went to Special Operations communications and tried to raise Harris on the radio. There was no reply, which meant that Harris was either working and away from his car, or that he had hung it up for the day.

That left Homicide, and opened the question of how to get there. He could go to the sergeant and get keys to one of the Special Operations cars. Or he could see if he could catch a ride downtown in either a Special Operations car or a Highway car. In either case, when he was finished at the Roundhouse, that would leave him downtown and his personal car here.

There was no reason for him to come back here, except to get his car, because it would be long past quitting before he finished at Homicide and finally ran Harris down, if he managed to do that.

He went back to Lieutenant Jensen and told him that if Inspector Wohl called for him, to tell him that he had gone to Homicide in his own car, and was going to quit for the day when he finished there.

“The inspector know where to reach you?”

“I’ll either be home or I’ll call in,” Matt said.

“But you are going to Homicide?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Jensen, Matt suspected, was one of a large number of people, in and out of Highway, who nursed a resentment toward him. That a rookie should have a plainclothes assignment as administrative assistant to a division commander was part of it; and part of it, Matt knew, was that he had about as powerful a rabbi, in the person of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, as they came.

He had once discussed this with Detective Jason Washington, who had said it was clear to him that the only option Matt had in the circumstances was to adopt a “fuck you” philosophy.

“You didn’t ask for the assignment, Matt, the mayor set that up. And it’s not your fault that Denny Coughlin looks on you as the son he never had. If people can’t figure that out for themselves, fuck ’em.”

In time, Matt hoped, the resentment would pass.

He drove downtown via North Broad Street, and was surprised, until he considered the hour, to find a spot in the parking area behind the Roundhouse.

If I were a cynical man, he thought, I might be prone to suspect that not all of the captains, inspectors, and chief inspectors who toil here in The Palace scrupulously avoid leaving their place of duty before fiveP.M.

He entered the Roundhouse by the rear door, waved his ID at the corporal behind the thick plastic window, and the corporal pushed the button that triggered the solenoid in the door to the lobby.

He got in one of the curved elevators and rode it up one floor, and then walked down the curved corridor to the Homicide Bureau.

He had been here often before, and twice under more or less involuntary conditions. The first time, which ranked among the top two or three most unpleasant experiences of his life, had been an eight-hour visit following his shooting of Warren K. Fletcher, aka the Northwest serial rapist.

He had been “interviewed” by two very unpleasant Homicide detectives, under the cold eye of a Homicide captain named Henry Quaire, all three of whom seemed to feel that the shooting was not a good shooting. It had not helped at all that both Peter Wohl and Denny Coughlin had established themselves in Quaire’s office during the “interview.” By the time the “interview” was over, Matt was beginning to wonder whose side the Homicide guys were on.

The second time was when an asshole Narcotics sergeant had actually suspected (with nothing more, really, to go on than the Porsche) that Matt was (a) involved with drugs, and therefore (b) connected with the shotgun slaying of a Mafia guy named Tony DeZego.

That was all the bastard had. And all Matt had done to arouse his suspicion was to have driven onto the crime scene a minute or two after the shooting had taken place. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that if Matt had been involved, he wouldn’t have been the one who had sent his date to call the shooting, hospital case in.