Page 37

.

“Jerry Pelosi, Central Detectives, Matt Payne, Special Operations, also known as ‘Dead Eye.’”

“I know who he is, I just never met him. How are you, Payne?” Pelosi said, offering Matt a large, muscular hand and a smile.

“Hi,” Matt said, and then, to keep D’Amata from making further witty reference to the shooting, he asked, “What’s this ‘OK Corral’ business?”

“‘High Noon at the OK Corral,’” D’Amata corrected him. “The current count of bullets fired and found at Goldblatt’s, not counting what the medical examiner will find in Mr. Cohn—three, maybe four—is twenty-six.”

“Jesus,” Captain Quaire said.

“And they’re still looking.”

“What’s Goldblatt’s?” Matt asked.

“Furniture store on South Street,” Pelosi explained. “Robbery and murder. Early this afternoon.”

“And a gun battle,” Matt offered.

“No,” D’Amata said, as much to Captain Quaire as to correct Payne. “Not a gun battle. Nobody took a shot at them. Nobody even had a gun. The doers just shot the place up, for no reason that I can figure.”

Quaire looked between the two detectives. When his eyes met Pelosi’s, Pelosi said, “What I can’t figure, Captain, is why they hit this place in the first place. They never have much cash around, couple of hundred bucks, maybe a thousand tops. They could have hit any one of the bars around there, and got more. And why did they hit it now? I mean, right after the holidays, there’s no business?”

“You have any idea who the doers are?” Quaire asked.

“No, but we’re working on that,” D’Amata said. “The victims are still a little shaky. I want them calm when I show them some pictures.”

Quaire nodded.

“I’d better get out of here,” Matt Payne said, suspecting he might be in the way. “Thank you for your help, Captain. And it was nice to meet you.”

“Same here,” Pelosi replied.

“Anytime you want to sell that piece of shit you drive around in, Payne, cheap, of course, call me,” D’Amata said, punching Matt’s shoulder.

Matt got as far as the outer door when Captain Quaire called his name. Matt turned.

“Yes, sir?”

“If you manage to find him,” Quaire said. “Give our regards to Mr. Harris. Tell him we miss his smiling face around here.”

“Yes, sir,” Matt said. “I’ll do that.”

On the way to the lobby in the elevator, Matt thought first, If they didn’t like me, they would not tease me. Teasing, he had learned, was not the police way of expressing displeasure or contempt.

And then he thought, Shit, I’ll be out all night looking for Harris.

And then a solution to his problem popped into his mind. He crossed the lobby to the desk and asked the corporal if he could use the telephone.

“Business?”

“No, I’m going to call my bookie,” Matt said.

The corporal, not smiling, pushed the telephone to him. Matt dialed, from memory, the home telephone of Detective Jason Washington.

SEVEN

Detective Jason Washington was sitting slumped almost sinfully comfortably in his molded plywood and leather chair, his feet up on a matching footstool, when the telephone rang. The chair had been, ten days before, his forty-third birthday gift from his daughter and son-in-law. He had expected either a necktie, or a box of cigars, or maybe a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. The chair had surprised him to begin with, and even more after he’d seen one in the window of John Wanamaker’s Department Store with a sign announcing that the Charles Eames Chair and Matching Footstool was now available in Better Furniture for $980.