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Ten minutes later, Wohl dialed a number from memory.
“Tony, I hate to call you at this hour, but this is important. Go out to South Detectives. I’ll call out there and tell them you’re coming. I want you to get a statement from two detectives. One of them is named Cronin, and the other’s name is Chesley. The first thing you say to them is to keep their mouths shut about what happened tonight at the Yock’s Diner on Fifty-Seventh and Chestnut. If they spread the story around the squad room, it’ll be public knowledge in the morning. Then I want you to question them, separately, about what went on at the Yock’s Diner. Payne was there, he followed Atchison there. Frankie Foley was there. Frankie arrived with a package. Atchison left with the package. Payne thinks Atchison gave Foley an envelope, and he thinks there was money in the envelope. Atchison then went to the riverfront in Chester and threw a package in the river. Payne suspects the package contained guns. What I want from the detectives are the facts, not what they think or surmise, something they can testify to in court without getting blown out of the witness chair by Atchison’s lawyer.”
Detective Tony Harris asked a question, during which Inspector Wohl glanced at Detective Payne. Detective Payne’s face bore, in addition to a glistening layer of medicated ointment, a look of smug vindication. Inspector Wohl, tempering the gesture with a smile, extended his right hand toward Detective Payne, the palm upward, all but the center finger folded inward.
Detective Payne was not cowed.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” he said.
Inspector Wohl returned his attention to the telephone.
“I know a couple of people in the Chester Police Department,” he said. “I’m going to call them, and then Payne and I are coming out there. Payne says he can find the pier; he marked the site with an old bumper. I’m going to ask the Chester cops to guard the site until we can get our divers out there at first light. What I’m hoping, Tony, is that Sherlock Holmes, Junior, got lucky again. I think he may have. Call me when you’re finished. I don’t care what time it is.”
He put the phone back in the cradle.
“What we have, hotshot,” he said, turning to Matt, “is a lot of ifs. If the package does contain firearms. If those firearms can be ballistically connected with the weapons used in the Inferno. If we can tie the guns to either Atchison or Foley.”
“If all else fails, we can shake the two of them up,” Matt argued. “What were they doing together in the Yock’s Diner? What did the package Foley gave him contain?”
Wohl could think of no counterargument.
“And when we find your pier, I will drop you off at your family’s home in Wallingford,” he said.
“He can’t go to Wallingford at this hour, looking like that,” Amy announced. “Mother and Dad have gone through enough in the last couple of days without him showing up looking like that.”
“And you can’t go to your apartment, either, can you, with Milham’s girlfriend there? That leaves here, doesn’t it?” Wohl asked.
“I could go to a hotel.”
“No he—” Amy began. Wohl held up his hand to interrupt her. To Matt’s surprise, she stopped.
“If this thing works out, I may have to forgive you
for a large assortment of sins, but I will not forgive you, Matt, for this.”
He gestured around the apartment. Amy took his meaning, and blushed.
Detective Payne smiled.
“Chastity, goodness, and mercy shall follow you all the days of your lives,” he paraphrased piously.
“Why, you little sonofabitch!” Amelia Payne, Ph.D., M.D., said.
The Philadelphia Marine Police Unit occupies part of a municipal pier on the Delaware River just south of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.When Detective Payne arrived at ten minutes to seven, at the wheel of his Porsche, which shuddered alarmingly whenever he exceeded thirty miles per hour, and looking both as if he had fallen asleep on the beach and was suffering from terminal sunburn, and as if his clothing had shrunken (he was wearing a complete ensemble borrowed from Inspector Peter Wohl, who was two inches shorter and twenty-five pounds lighter than he was, there having been no time for him to get his own clothing), the parking lot was crowded with personal and official vehicles.
There were two Mobile Crime Laboratory vans, and a similar-size van bearing the insignia of the Marine Police Unit; two radio patrol cars; two unmarked cars (one of which he recognized as belonging to Wally Milham); a green Oldsmobile 98 coupe (which he knew to be the personal automobile of Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin); a police car bearing the insignia of the Chester Police Department; and an assortment of personal automobiles.
That Denny Coughlin was driving his own car, rather than being in his official car chauffeured by Sergeant Francis Holloran, made it clear to Matt that he was present in his role of Loving Uncle in Fact, rather than as a senior member of the Philadelphia police hierarchy.
Chief Coughlin and Detective Milham were standing on the pier. Coughlin waved him over.
“What the hell did you do to your face, Matty?” he asked, his gruffness not quite masking his concern.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Matt said.
“Amy said it’ll be gone in a couple of days,” Coughlin said, his tone making it clear that he had serious doubts about the accuracy of the diagnosis.
“They’re ready for us,” Milham said, and gestured over the side of the pier. Matt looked down. There was a forty-foot boat down there, festooned with flood- and spotlights, a collection of radio antennae, a radar antenna, and what looked like a standard RPC bubble gum machine.
