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The look of gratitude in your eyes now, Matt, is almost pathetic. What the hell is wrong with you?
****
Jack Malone had two drinks, the second reluctantly, and then said he had to get to bed before he went to sleep at the bar.
"I'm going to call the Schoolhouse, and see what happened to Lanza," Wohl said. "And then I'm going home. Order one more, please, Matt."
Two minutes later, Wohl got back on the bar stool beside Payne.
"Lanza went to the Schermer woman's apartment. The lights went out, and Olsen figures he's in for the night," he reported.
"And you're hoping that somebody will show up at his house for the suitcase?" Payne asked.
Wohl nodded. "We may get lucky."
"Why didn't he take it with him? Isn't that woman involved?"
"I don't know how much she's involved, and I don't know why he left the suitcase at his house. These people are very careful."
Payne nodded.
"And now that Malone has gone home, and I don't have to be officially outraged-as opposed to personally admiring-at your roofjumping escapade, are you going to tell me what's bothering you?"
"Jesus, does it show?"
"Yeah, it shows."
Matt looked at him for a moment, and then at his drink for a longer moment, before finally saying, "Penny Detweiler is in the psycho ward at University Hospital."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Wohl said.
But not surprised. A junkie is a junkie is a junkie.
"I put her there," Matt said.
"What do you mean, you put her there?"
"You really don't want to hear this."
You 're right. I really don't want to hear this.
"I'm not trying to pry, Matt. But, hell, sometimes if you talk things over, when you're finished, they don't seem to be as bad."
****
It was quarter to two when Inspector Wohl, not without misgivings, installed Detective Payne behind the wheel of the unmarked Ford and sent him home with the admonition to try not to run any stoplights or into a station wagon full of nuns.
I believed what I told him, that if it hadn't been the other woman showing up at his apartment, that it would have been something else. That being turned loose from a drug addiction program does not mean the addiction is cured, just that, so far as they can tell, it's on hold.
But clearly, if the horny little bastard wasn't fucking every woman in town, it would not have happened. Taking the Detweiler girl to bed was idiotic. He has earned every ounce of the weight of shameful regret he's carrying.
But his wallowing in guilt isn't going to do anybody any good.
Sometimes, Peter Wohl, you are so smart, so Solomon-like, I want to throw up.
He started home to Chestnut Hill, then suddenly changed his mind, got on first Roosevelt Boulevard and then the Schuylkill Expressway and headed for Ritner Street.
I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to delegate authority. I want to put that dirty cop and the Mafioso he's running around with away. And right now there's nobody who can tell me to butt out.
