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“No problem, I told you that,” Malone said. “But I don’t want this on the record. You call it in?”
“No, sir. I’m in my own car. No radio.”
“Just keep this between ourselves. What did you say your name was?”
“McFadden, sir.”
“You work this district?”
“No, sir. I’m Highway.”
“Well, I’ll certainly tell Captain Pekach how alert you were. But I don’t want anyone else to know you saw me here. Okay?”
“Yes, sir. I understand. Good night, sir.”
Charley stuffed his pistol back in its holster and walked back up the alley.
Nice guy. I really could have got my ass in a crack doing that. But he understood why I did it. Malone was his name. I wonder where he works. He said he knows Captain Pekach.
And then he got back in the Volkswagen, and there was still a faint smell of Margaret’s soap, and he started to think about her, and her in the shower, and what she had said about her having those kinds of thoughts too, and Lieutenant Malone and the rusty piece of shit he was driving were relegated to a far corner of his mind.
TEN
The time projected on the ceiling by the clever little machine that had been Amelia Payne, M.D.’s birthday present to her little brother showed that it was quarter past eleven.
It should be later than that, Matt thought, considering all that’s happened.
He bent one of the pillows on the bed in half and propped it under his head. Then he reached down and pulled up the blanket. The sheet that covered him wasn’t enough; he felt chilled.
He could hear the shower running in the bath, and in his mind’s eye saw Helene at her ablutions, and for a moment considered leaping out of the bed and getting in the shower with her.
He sensed that it would be a bad idea, and discarded the notion.
Three times is a sufficiency. At the moment, almost certainly, the lady is not burning with lust.
Well, two and a half, considering the first time was more on the order of premature ejaculation than a proper screw.
With an effort, she had been very kind about that. He was not to worry. It happened sometimes. But she had been visibly pleased at his resurgent desire, or more precisely when El Wango had risen phoenixlike from the ashes of too-quickly burned passion.
And clearly done his duty: There is absolutely no way that she could have faked that orgasm.
Orgasms?
Passion followed by sleep, followed by slowly becoming delightedly aware that what one is fondling in one’s sleep is not the goddamn pillow again, but a magnificent real live boob, attached to a real live woman.
One who whispered huskily in the dark “Don’t stop!” when, ever the gentleman, I decided that copping a feel was perhaps not the thing to do under the circumstances.
And El Wango, God bless him, had risen to the occasion, giving his all for God, Mother, and Country, as if determined to prove that what good had happened previously was the norm, and that “oh, shit” spasm earlier on a once-in-a-century aberration.
She had said, “I’ll be sore for a week,” which I understand could be a complaint, but which, I believe, I will accept as a compliment.
The drumming of the shower died, and he could hear the last gurgle as the water went down the drain, and he could hear other faint sounds, including what he thought was the sound of his hairbrush clattering into the washbasin.
And then she came out. In her underwear, but still modestly covering herself with a towel.
“You’re not leaving?” Matt said. “The evening is young.”
“The question is what about the Opera Ball people?”
