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But after he’d cut it out he realized that might not be too smart. If the cops got his name somehow, and got a search warrant or something, and found it, it would be awkward explaining what he was doing with it.
Not incriminating. What the fuck could they prove just because he’d cut a story out of the newspaper? He could tell them he’d cut it out because he drank in the Inferno. Shit, if they pressed him, he could say he cut it out because he had fucked Alicia Atchison.
But it was smarter not to have it, so he had first crumpled up the clipping and tossed it in the toilet, and then, when he thought that the front page now had a hole in it where the story had been, tore off the whole front page and sliced it up with scissors and flushed the whole damn thing down the toilet. He really hated to throw the story away, but knew that it was the smart thing to do.
And anyway, the word would get out who’d done the hit among the people who mattered. That was what mattered.
He knew he’d done the right thing, not keeping the clipping, when Tim McCarthy, who ran Meagan’s Bar for his father-in-law, called him up and told him that a couple of cops had been in the bar, asking about him, and giving Tim some bullshit that one of them was a cousin from Conshohocken.
What that meant, Frankie decided professionally, was that his name had come up somehow. That was to be expected. He drank at the Inferno, and he had been in there the night he’d made the hit. The cops probably had a list of two hundred people who drank in the Inferno. They probably got his name from the bartender. Which was the point. He was only one more name they would check out. And the bartender, if he had given the cops his name, would also have told them that he had left the Inferno long before the hit.
The cops didn’t have a fucking thing to connect him with the hit, except Atchison, of course, and Atchison couldn’t say a fucking word. It would make him an accessible, or whatever the fuck they called it.
He hadn’t been too upset, either, when Sonny Boyle had called him to tell him two detectives had been to see him about him. He had been sort of flattered to learn who they were. One of them was the cop that had caught up with the guy who shot the Highway Patrol captain, and the other detective was the guy who had shot the pervert in Northwest Philly who was cutting the teats off women. What that was, Frankie decided professionally, was that the ordinary cops and detectives was having trouble finding him. He didn’t have no record, for one thing, and the phone was in his mother’s name. So when the ordinary cops couldn’t find him, the hotshots had started looking for him.
Well, fuck the hotshots too. They would eventually find him—it would be kind of interesting to see how long finding him took—and they would ask him questions. Yeah, I was in the Inferno that night. I go in there all the time. I been talking to Mr. Atchison about maybe becoming his headwaiter. Where was I at midnight? I was home in bed. Ask my mother. No, I don’t have no idea who might have shot them two. Sorry.
The dinge ahead of him in line finally figured out how to get his time card punched and Frankie stepped to the time clock, punched out, put the card in the rack, and walked out of the building.
He had gone maybe thirty feet down the street when there was a guy walking on each side of him. The one on his right had a mustache, one of the thin kind you probably have to trim every day. The other one was much younger. He didn’t look much like a cop, more like a college kid.
“Frank Foley?” the one with the mustache asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“We’re police officers,” the guy with the mustache said.
“No shit? What do you want with me?”
“You are Frank Foley?”
“Yeah, I’m Frank Foley. You got a badge or something?”
The guy with the mustache produced a badge.
“I’m Detective Milham,” he said. “And this is Detective Payne.”
Frankie took a second look at the kid.
“You the guy who shot that pervert in North Philly? The one who was cutting up all them women?”
“That’s him,” Milham said.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Frankie said, putting out his hand. “I thought you’d be older. Let me shake your hand. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
The kid looked uncomfortable.
Modesty, Frankie decided.
Frankie was genuinely pleased to meet Detective Payne.
This guy is a real fucking detective, Frankie decided, somebody who had also shot somebody. Professionally. When you think about it, what it is is that we’re both professionals. We just work the other side of the street, is all.
“Detective Payne,” Milham said, “was also involved in the gun battle with the Islamic Liberation Army. Do you remember that?”
Payne looked at Milham with mingled surprise and annoyance.
“The dinges that robbed Goldblatt’s?” Frankie asked. “That was you, too?”
