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“That’s what I told your mother, that you were probably working. First, when you didn’t show up for dinner as promised, and again when you didn’t show up by bedtime, and a third time when Amanda Spencer called at midnight.”
“Amanda called out there?”
“She was concerned for you,” Matt’s father said. “Apparently, she called the apartment several times. A woman answered one time, and then she called back and there was a man, who either didn’t know where you are or wouldn’t tell her.”
“God!”
“Your mother said it must have been very difficult for Amanda to call us.”
“Oh, boy!”
“I wasn’t aware that you and Amanda were close,” Matt’s father said, carefully.
Matt met his eyes.
“That’s been a very recent development,” Matt said after a moment. “I don’t suppose it makes me any less of a sonofabitch, but…there was nothing between us before Penny killed herself.”
“I didn’t think there had been,” his father said. “You’ve never been duplicitous. Your mother, however, told me that she saw Amanda looking at you, quote, ‘in a certain way,’ unquote, at Martha Peebles’s party.”
> “Jesus, that’s the second time I heard that. I hope the Detweilers didn’t see it.”
“So do I,” his father said. He came around from behind his desk and handed Matt a small sheet of notepaper.
“Your mother told Amanda that she would have you call her as soon as we found you,” he said. “The first number is her office number, the second her apartment. I think you’d better call her; she’s quite upset.”
“What does Mother think of me?”
“I think she’s happy for you, Matt,” Brewster Cortland Payne II said, and walked toward his door. “I am.”
He left the office and closed the door behind him.
Matt reached for the telephone.
TWENTY-ONE
There are a number of City Ordinances dealing with the disposition of garbage and an equally large number of City Ordinances dealing with the setting of open fires within the City. A good deal of legal thought has gone into their preparation, and the means by which they were to be enforced.
In theory, citizens were encouraged to place that which they wished to discard in suitable covered containers of prescribed sizes and construction. The containers were to be placed according to a published schedule in designated places in such a manner that garbage-collection personnel could easily empty the containers’ contents into the rear collection area of garbage trucks.The ordinances spelled out in some detail what was “ordinary, acceptable” garbage and what was “special types of refuse” and proscribed, for example, the placing of toxic material or explosive material or liquids in ordinary containers.
The setting of open fires within the City was prohibited under most conditions, with a few exceptions provided, such as the burning of leaves at certain times of the year under carefully delineated conditions.
Violation of most provisions was considered a Summary Offense, the least serious of the three classifications of crimes against the Peace and Dignity of the City and County of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The other, more serious, classifications were Misdemeanors (for example, simple assault and theft of property worth less than $2000) and Felonies (for example, Murder, Rape, and Armed Robbery).
It was spelled out in some detail what malefactors could expect to receive in the way of punishment for littering the streets with garbage, for example, with small fines growing to potentially large fines, and growing periods of imprisonment for second, third, and subsequent offenses.
Similarly, there were pages of small type outlining the myriad punishments which could be assessed against malefactors who were found guilty of setting open fires in violation of various applicable sections of the ordinances, likewise growing in severity depending on the size and type of fire set, the type material set ablaze, under what circumstances, and the number of times the accused had been previously convicted of offending the Peace and Dignity of the City, County, and Commonwealth by so doing.
As a general rule of thumb, the residents of Officer Woodrow Wilson Bailey’s beat were not cognizant of the effort that had been made by their government to carefully balance the rights of the individual against the overall peace and dignity of the community insofar as garbage and setting fires were concerned. Or if they were aware of the applicable ordinances in these regards, they decided that their chances of having to face the stern bar of justice for violating them was at best remote.
If they had a garbage can, or a cardboard box, or some other container that could be used as a substitute, and if they remembered what day the garbageman came, they often—but by no means always, or even routinely—put their garbage on the curb for pickup.
It had been Officer Woodrow Wilson Bailey’s experience that a substantial, and growing, number of the trash—white, brown, and black—who had moved into the neighborhood had decided the least difficult means of disposing of their trash was to either carry it into (or throw it out the window into) their back-yards and alleys when the garbage cans inside their houses filled to overflowing, or the smell became unbearable.
There was little he could do about this. The criminal justice system of Philadelphia was no longer able to cope with many Summary Offenses, and issuing a citation for littering was nothing more than a waste of his time and the taxpayers’ money. He would show up in court, the accused would not, and the magistrates were reluctant to issue a bench warrant for someone accused of littering a back street in North Philadelphia. The police had more important things to do with their time.
He privately thought that if the trash wanted to live in their own filth, so be it.
At a certain point in time, however, backyards became filled to overflowing with refuse. Just about as frequently, the piles of garbage became rat-infested. When either or both of these circumstances occurred, the trash’s solution to an immediate problem was to set the garbage on fire. This both chased the rats away and reduced the height of the garbage piles.
