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It would be nice, Officer O'Mara thought, to have a place like this to bring a girl to. He had thought of getting an apartment, but every time he brought the subject up, his mother had a fit. There would be enough time to get his own apartment later, when he was married. The thing he had to do now was learn to save his money, and renting an apartment when there was a perfectly good room for him to use at home would be like throwing money down the toilet.
He wondered if Payne brought the Detweiler girl here. She seemed to be a nice girl, even after what he'd heard about her being on drugs.
"I like your picture," O'Mara said. "The inspector's got one like it."
"Yeah, I know," Payne said. "Mrs. Washington gave me that one."
"Sergeant Washington's wife?"
"Yeah," Payne said, walking to the fireplace mantel and picking up his Chief's Special snub-nosed revolver and slipping it into a holster that fit inside his waistband.
"Is it hard to get through the qualification?" O'Mara asked.
"What?"
O'Mara pushed his coat aside to reveal his standard-issue Smith amp; Wesson Military and Police revolver, which had a six-inch barrel and was time and a half as large as the snubnose.
In order to carry anything but the issue revolver, it was necessary to go through a test-"the qualification"-at the range at the Police Academy.
"The Range guys make a big deal of it," Payne said. "It helps if you know one of them."
"I got a cousin works out there," O'Mara said.
"Then talk to him," Payne said as he shrugged into his jacket. " Where are you parked?"
"Out in front."
"I should have told you to come around the back, there's a garage in the basement. Sorry."
"No problem."
"How'd you get in?"
"I rang the doorbell. A rent-a-cop let me in."
"The guy who usually works the building on Sundays is a retired cop," Matt said.
"He told me."
The telephone rang.
O'Mara saw that Payne was reluctant to answer it, that he was really making up his mind whether or not he would, and he wondered what that was all about. Finally, Payne shrugged and picked it up.
"Hello."
"You sound grumpy," Evelyn said. "Did I wake you up?"
"Hi. No. As a matter of fact, I was just about to walk out the door." There was a silence, and then Matt added: "Hey, I mean that. I' ve got to work. Women work from sun to sun, a policeman's work is never done."
"I was going to ask you to dinner. Is that out of the question?"
"I'll have to call you. I don't know how long this will take."
"How long what will take? Or is it bad form to ask?"
"I've got to pick up a VIP at 30^th Street Station and drive him to see my boss."
"Oh."
