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“Yes, sir,” Office Aquila said. It was obvious that he approved of Wohl’s tactics. He had certainly heard that DelRaye had sent for a wagon to haul a drunken and belligerent Louise Dutton off. This would be one more proof that Staff Inspector Peter Wohl knew how to turn an unpleasant situation into a manageable one.
They got in Louise’s Cadillac.
“There’s a thing in the floor that you run over, and the door opens,” Louise said, and then, “What are you looking for?”
“How do you get the parking brake off?”
“It comes off automatically when you put it in gear,” she said.
“Oh,” he said.
As they approached the exit, she laid down on the seat with her head on his lap. The door opened as she said it would, and he drove through. A reporter and a couple of photographers moved toward the car, but without great interest. And then he was past them, heading up Arch Street.
“We’re safe,” Wohl said. “You can sit up.”
She pushed herself erect.
“I am not going to the ‘Roundhouse’!” Louise said. “Not tonight.”
She had not moved away from him. When she spoke, he could feel and smell her warm breath.
“We can go somewhere and get a cup of coffee,” Wohl said.
“Hey, Knight in Shining Armor, when I say something, I can’t be talked out of it,” Louise said.
“Where would you like to go, then?” Peter asked.
There was a perceptible pause before she replied.
“I don’t want to go to a hotel,” she said. “They smirk, when you check in without luggage. What would your mother say if you brought me home with you, Peter?”
“I don’t live with my mother,” he said, quickly.
“Oh, you don’t? Then I guess you have an apartment?”
“I’m not so sure that would be a good idea,” he said.
“I don’t have designs on your body, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m wide open to other suggestions.”
“I’ll make you some coffee,” Peter said.
“I don’t want coffee,” she said.
“Okay, no coffee,” Peter said.
Ten minutes later, as they drove up Lancaster Avenue, she said, “Where the hell do you live, in Pittsburgh?”
“It’s not far.”
“All of my life, my daddy told me, ‘If you’re ever in trouble, you call me, day or night,’ so tonight, for the first time, after the matinee idol told me he was sending for a battering ram, I called him. And his wife told me he’s in London.”
“Your stepmother?”
“No, his wife,” Louise Dutton said, as if annoyed at his denseness. He didn’t press the question.
“But you came, didn’t you?” Louise asked, rhetorically. “Even if you didn’t know I’d sent for you?”
Peter Wohl couldn’t think of a reply. She half turned on the seat and held on to his arm with both hands.
