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"W-William One."
"Inspector, I'm at City Hall. Can I meet you somewhere?"
"I'm headed for Bustleton and Bowler. Did Payne find you?"
"Yeah. But I would rather talk to you before you get to the office."
"Okay. I'm at Broad and 66^th Avenue at the Oak Lane Diner. I'll wait for you there."
"On my way. Thank you," Washington said, and put the microphone away. He looked at Payne. "You ever readThrough the Looking Glass!"
Matt nodded.
"Profound book, although I understand he wrote it stoned on cocaine. Things really are more Curiouser than you would believe. If I lose you in traffic, Wohl's waiting for us in the Oak Lane Diner at Broad and 66^th Avenue."
He pulled the door closed and started the engine.
Matt ran across the interior courtyard to the Porsche. There was an illegal parking citation under the windshield wiper.
He didn't see Washington in traffic, but when he got to the Oak Lane Diner, Washington's car was parked beside Wohl's. When he went inside, a waitress was delivering three cups of coffee to a booth table, on which Washington was spreading out the eight-by-ten photographs he had shown Sergeant Dolan.
Wohl looked up.
"Mr. Payne, well-known tracer of lost detectives," he said, "sit." He slid over to make room.
Washington was smiling.
"Okay, I give up," Wohl said. "What am I looking at?"
Matt looked at the photographs. A neatly dressed man carrying an attache case and looking in the window of the cocktail lounge of the Warwick Hotel. A bald-headed man driving a Pontiac. The first man getting into the Pontiac. There were a dozen variations.
"Your FBI at work," Washington said.
"What?"
"They were apparently-what's the word they use, surveilling?surveilling Mr. DeZego."
"Where'd these come from?"
"Sergeant Dolan."
"Why haven't we seen them before?"
"You're not going to believe this," Washington said.
"Try me."
"Sergeant Dolan does not like the FBI."
"So what? I'm not all that in love with them myself," Wohl said.
"So he decided to zing them," Washington said.
"What does that mean?"
"He wanted to make them squirm, to let them know that their surveillance was not as discreet as they like to think it is."
"You've lost me."
