"Final justice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Griffin W. E. B.)

SIX

[ONE] The Hon. Alvin W. Martin looked up from his desk when his executive assistant, Dianna Kerr-Gally, a tall, thin, stylish, thirtyish black woman, slipped into his office.thin,

"It's ten past nine, Mr. Mayor."

"Is everybody in the conference room?"

"Just about, but Commissioner Mariani has someone he wants you to meet."

She nodded toward the outer office.

"Sure, send him in," the mayor replied, with an enthusiasm he really didn't feel. He had things to do, and the less time spent on the promotion ceremony the better.

It wasn't only Commissioner Mariani. He had with him Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and a tall, lean, stern-faced, gray-haired woman in a simple black dress and the young detective who had scored number one.

"Good morning, Mr. Mayor," Mariani said.

"Good morning, Ralph."

The mayor smiled at the woman, who returned it with a barely perceptible curling of her lips.

She looks like that farmer's wife in the Grant Wood painting.

What's that on her dress? Miniature police badges. Three of them.

"Mr. Mayor," Coughlin said. "I thought before the program begins that you'd like to meet Mrs. Gertrude Moffitt…"

"I'm delighted. How do you do, Mrs. Moffitt?"

She nodded, her lips curled slightly again, but she didn't say anything.

"Mrs. Moffitt is the widow of a police officer, and two of her sons died in the line of duty as police officers…," Coughlin said.

Well, that explains the three badges.

"… Sergeant John X. Moffitt and Captain Richard C. Moffitt…," Coughlin went on.

"That's a proud tradition, Mrs. Moffitt," the mayor said. "I'm honored to meet you."

She nodded again.

"… and she is Detective Payne's grandmother," Coughlin finished.

"The tradition continues, then," the mayor said. "This must be a proud moment for you."

"If my grandson still carried his father's name, it would be," she said.

What the hell does that mean?

Detective Payne looked pained.

Whatever the hell it is, I'm not going to get into it here and now.

"Since you know full well, Mrs. Moffitt, that police work never ceases, I'm sure you'll forgive me if I ask the commissioner if there have been any developments in the Roy Rogers case."

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Mayor…"

Damn! The press will be in the conference room. It would have been a perfect place and time to announce the cops have finally bagged those animals.

"… but Commissioner Coughlin tells me there was a meeting last night of all the principals of the task force, plus Chief of Detectives Lowenstein."

"Really? Well, I hope something good will come from it."

"I feel sure that it will, Mr. Mayor," Coughlin said. "We all feel there will be developments in the very near future."

"I hope you're right, Commissioner," the mayor said. "Mrs. Moffitt, when we go into the conference room"-he looked at his watch-"and we're going to have to do that right now, I think it would be very appropriate if you were to pin his new badge on your grandson."

And a picture like that will certainly make the evening news.

"All right," she said.

"Here it is, Mother Moffitt," Coughlin said. "That's Jack's badge."

"That's Jack's badge?" she asked, looking at the badge Coughlin was holding out to her.

"Yes, it is."

"You told me, Dennis Coughlin, that it had been buried with him."

"I was wrong," Coughlin said.

"And where was it all these years? She had it, didn't she?"

"Patricia's Jack's widow, Mother Moffitt."

She snatched the badge out of his hand.

"Well, at least she won't have it now," Mother Moffitt said.

"If you will all go into the conference room now?" Dianna Kerr-Gally asked, gesturing at a door. "We can get the ceremony under way."

When the mayor tried to follow the procession into the conference room, Dianna Kerr-Gally held up her arm, palm extended, to stop him.

He stopped.

Dianna Kerr-Gally, using her fingers and mouthing the numbers, counted downward from ten, then signaled the mayor to go into the conference room.

He walked briskly to the head of the table, where a small lectern had been placed. He looked around the room, smiling, attempting to lock eyes momentarily with everyone.

There were five promotees, all of whom looked older than Detective Payne, and all but Payne were in uniform. Two of the promotees were gray-haired. All the promotees were accompanied by family and/or friends. Dianna Kerr-Gally had put out the word no more than four per promotee, and apparently that had been widely ignored. The large room was crowded, just about full.

There were three video cameras at the rear of the room, and at least half a dozen still photographers. One of them was Michael J. O'Hara of theBulletin.

I'll have to remember to thank him for that front-page story about the task force.

Jesus, is that who I think it is? It damn sure is.

Brewster C. Payne in the flesh.

The last time I saw him was on Monday in Washington, in the Senate Dining Room. He was the "something really important has come up" reason our distinguished senior senator was sorry he couldn't have lunch with me.

What's his connection with Detective Payne?

When Dianna Kerr-Gally came to the lectern to hand him the three-by-five cards from which he would speak, he motioned her close to him and whispered, "The tall WASP in the back of the room?"

She looked and nodded.

"His name is Brewster Payne," she whispered back.

"I know who he is. Ask him if he can spare me a minute when this is over."

She nodded.

"If I may have your attention, ladies and gentlemen?" the mayor began, raising his voice so that it could be heard over the hubbub in the room.

The next time we do something like this, there should be a microphone.

"I realize you're a busy man, Mr. Payne," the mayor said, as Dianna Kerr-Gally ushered Brewster Payne into his office. "But I did want to say hello. I don't think we've ever actually met, have we?"

"I don't believe we have. But didn't I see you in Washington on Monday?"

"Across the dining room," the mayor said, waving him into a chair. "I need a cup of coffee. Do you have the time?"

"Thank you very much," Payne said. "I'd love one."

"Dianna, please?"

"Right away, Mr. Mayor."

"Would it be impolitic for me to ask what you and the senator seemed to be talking so intently about?"

"My firm represents Nesfoods," Payne said. "The senator chairs the Agricultural Subcommittee. We were talking about tomatoes, United States and Mexican."

Nesfoods gave me one hundred thousand for my campaign. I wonder how much they gave to the senator?

"The tomato growers here are concerned about cheap Mexican tomatoes?"

"That issue has been resolved by the Free Trade Agreement. What I hoped to do-what I think I did-was convince the senator that it's in everybody's best interests for the Department of Agriculture to station inspectors in Nesfoods processing plants in Mexico, so that we can process the tomatoes there, and ship the pulp in tank trucks to the Nesfoods plants here and in California. That will both save Nesfoods a good deal of money and actually increase the quality of the finished product. Apparently, the riper the tomato when processed, the better the pulp."

"And what was the problem?"

"As hard as it is to believe, there are those who are unhappy with the Free Trade Agreement," Payne said, dryly, "and object to stationing Agriculture Department inspectors on foreign soil."

"But after you had your little chat, the senator seemed to see the light?"

"I hope so, Mr. Mayor."

Dianna Kerr-Gally came into the office with a silver coffee service and poured coffee.

When she had left them alone again, the mayor looked over his coffee cup and said, "I wasn't aware until this morning that your son was a policeman."

"I think of it as the firm's loss is the city's gain," Payne said. "Actually, Matt's my adopted son. His father-a police sergeant-was killed before he was born. I adopted Matt before he could walk."

"You'd rather he would have joined Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester?" the mayor asked.

"Wouldn't your father prefer to see you in a pulpit?" Payne responded.

"Whenever I see him, he shakes his head sadly," the mayor said. "I don't think he's given up hope that I will see the error of my ways."

"Neither have I given up hope," Payne said. "But in the meantime, I am as proud of Matt as I daresay your father is of you."

"I like to think public service is an honorable, even noble, calling."

"So does Matt," Payne said. "He thinks of the police as a thin blue line, all that separates society from the barbarians."

"Unfortunately, he's probably right," the mayor said.

Payne set his cup down.

"I don't want to keep you, Mr. Payne," the mayor said. "But I did want to say hello. Could we have lunch one day?"

"I'd be delighted," Payne said. "And thank you for the coffee."

He stood up, shook hands with the mayor, and walked out of the room.

Commissioner Mariani told me that if I didn't send that young man to Homicide as promised I could expect trouble from the Fraternal Order of Police. He didn't tell me that the FOP would be represented, pro bono, by Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.

[TWO] The Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon, Philadelphia's district attorney, devoutly believed that at least seventy percent of the nurses under fifty in the surgical department of the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania would rush to console Benjamin A. Solomon, M.D., the moment he started to feel sorry for himself because his wife-the-D.A. had become careless about her appearance.

So, although she was always too busy to waste a lot of time in a beauty parlor, she made it to Cathleen's Coiffeurs every Tuesday at 8:00 A.M., watched what she ate, and, weather permitting, jogged on the Parkway for an hour starting at 7:00 A.M. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The result was a rather tall, lithe forty-nine-year-old, who wore her blonde hair cut stylishly but short, and whose husband had no reason to see if the grass was greener in someone else's bedroom.

After graduation-third in her class-from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and passing the bar examination, Eileen McNamara had declined offers to join any of the several more or less prestigious law firms because she suspected she was going to become the Token Female.

Instead, she took a job with the Public Defender's Office, which had the responsibility of providing legal counsel to the indigent. She had quickly proven herself to be a highly competent courtroom lawyer.

But she had always been a little uncomfortable after she had convinced a jury that there was reasonable doubt that some miserable sonofabitch had actually pistol-whipped a grandmother while in the process of robbing her corner grocery, or some other miserable sonofabitch had actually been pushing drugs on grammar school kids.

And she had been unhappy in the company of her colleagues, who almost universally believed that having been born into poverty, or to a drug-addict mother, or of Afro-American /Puerto Rican/Latin/Outer Mongolian/Whatever parentage was an excuse to commit robbery, rape, and murder, and to meanwhile support oneself in outrageous luxury by selling what were known as "prohibited substances" to others.

So she had changed sides. Philadelphia's district attorney was delighted to offer Miss Eileen McNamara a position as an assistant district attorney not only because she was a good-looking blonde, but also because her record of successfully defending people his assistant D.A.s had prosecuted unsuccessfully had made them look even more incompetent than they actually were.

She had been somewhat happier in the D.A.'s office, but not much. The cases she would have liked to prosecute seemed to get assigned to the "more experienced" of her fellow assistant D.A.s, and the cases she was assigned to prosecute were-she quickly figured out-the ones her fellow assistant D.A.s didn't want because the cases were either weak or politically dangerous or both.

But she did her best with the cases she was given, and managed to convince one jury after another that not only was there not any reasonable doubt that some miserable sonofabitch had done what the cops had said he or she had done, but that he or she had done it with full knowledge of what he or she was doing, and in the belief he or she was going to get away with it, and therefore did not deserve much pity from the criminal justice system.

Assistant District Attorney McNamara quickly discovered- as something of a surprise-that as a general rule of thumb, she liked the cops. By and large, they were really what they considered themselves to be, a thin blue line protecting society from the barbarians.

What surprised her in this regard was that they seemed to genuinely share her concern for what she thought of as the other group of innocent victims of a criminal act. The first group was of course those who had been robbed/beaten/ murdered by the criminal. The second group was the wives/ parents/children of the miserable sonofabitch who had committed the crime.

Eileen McNamara had been an assistant district attorney almost three years when she first ran into Benjamin Solomon, M.D., F.A.C.S. More accurately, when Ben ran into her, rear-ending her Plymouth with his Cadillac as she was looking for a parking place in South Philadelphia.

Ben hadn't been going very fast, just not paying attention, but fast enough to do considerable damage to her trunk and right fender. The accident had taken place within, if not the sight, then the hearing, of Officer Martin Shaugnessy.

Officer Shaugnessy had trotted to the scene. He pretended not to recognize the good-looking blonde assistant D.A. who had once made mincemeat out of the public defender who had decided that the best way to get his client off the hook was to paint arresting Officer Shaugnessy as an ignorant, prejudiced police thug who took an almost sexual pleasure in persecuting young men of Puerto Rican extraction.

"How much have you had to drink, sir?" was his first question now to Dr. Solomon, who had just given Miss McNamara his effusive apologies and insurance card.

"Drink? It's eight-thirty in the morning! I haven't even had my breakfast!"

"People who speed and drive as recklessly as you obviously were, sir, are often driving under the influence. Would you please extend your right arm, close your eyes, and try to touch your nose?"

"Officer, I don't think the doctor has been drinking," Miss McNamara said. "I think this was just a simple fender bender."

"You sure?" Officer Shaugnessy asked, dubiously.

"I'm sure," Miss McNamara said. "And I'm sure the doctor and I can work this out between us."

"Well, if you say so, ma'am."

"Thank you," Miss McNamara said.

"Yes, ma'am," Officer Shaugnessy said. He filled out the Form 75-48, which the insurance companies would need, and then went back to walking his beat.

While they were waiting for the wrecker, Eileen became aware that the doctor kept stealing looks at her. For some reason, it didn't make her uncomfortable; usually when men did that, it did.

As the wrecker hauled her Plymouth away, Dr. Solomon looked directly at her. His eyes on hers did make her uncomfortable.

"What was that with the cop all about?" Dr. Solomon asked. "You know him?"

"I know a lot of cops," Eileen said. "That one looked familiar. But do I know him? No."

"How is it you know a lot of cops?"

"I'm an assistant D.A."

"Really? An assistant D.A.?" Ben had asked, genuinely surprised. "Good-looking blondes don't come to mind when I hear that term."

"On the other hand, you do look like a doctor," Eileen heard herself say, adding quickly, "What kind?"

"Chest-cutter," Ben had said. "Thoracic surgeon. What do you mean, I look like a doctor?"

"Your eyes," Eileen said. "You have intelligent, kind eyes."

When she heard what she had said, she blushed.

"So do you," Ben had said, softly, after a minute. "Can I buy you breakfast?"

"Breakfast?"

"And lunch, and dinner, and whatever else you want to eat for the rest of your life?"

"You're sure you haven't been drinking?"

"I don't drink," he said. "If I sound a little strange, I was at the table all night-until about an hour ago. And then I met you."

Benjamin Solomon, M.D., and Eileen McNamara, L.L.D., were united in matrimony not quite a month later, which caused varying degrees of joy and despair within their respective Eastern European Hebraic and Irish Roman Catholic communities.

They had been married three years when Eileen told Ben the strangest thing had happened the previous afternoon. She had been asked if she would be interested in running for judge in a special election called by the governor to fill two vacancies caused by the incarceration of two incumbent jurists.

"I think you should," Ben had said after a moment. "You've been on both sides of the fence, and I think you'd do a good job straddling the middle. And you already have the name. Judge Solomon the Second."

She won the election handily, primarily, she believed, because nobody had ever heard of her, and there was general contempt for those whose names were known to the voters.

And she liked the bench, at least trying to keep things fair and just.

They hadn't been able to have children-Ben's fault, the gynecologists said, probably because he'd worn Jockey shorts all of his life-and she really regretted that. But she told herself that a child whose parents both had independent careers could not have gotten the attention it deserved, and that made being childless a little easier to bear.

She had been on the bench six years when a delegation of pols came to her and proposed that she run for district attorney. The incumbent had been elected to Congress. Her service as an assistant D.A. and her six years on the bench had taught her that there was considerable room for improvement in the Office of the District Attorney.

She talked the offer over with Ben. She was sure that she would make a hell of a good D.A., but she hadn't been at all sure that she could win, and if she lost, she would be out of a job. She couldn't run for reelection to the bench and for D.A. at the same time.

Ben said she should give it a shot; she would always regret it later if she didn't. And, Ben said, it wasn't as if they were going to have to sell the dog to make the car payments if she found herself unemployed. That was a reference to the fact that Ben's scalpel earned more than ten times as much money for them as the government paid her to wield her gavel.

She ran, and won with fifty-two percent of the vote. The first time she ran for reelection, she got fifty-eight percent, and the last time, she'd garnered sixty-seven percent of the vote.

Eileen McNamara Solomon had two cellular telephones, which, when she was there, she placed in rechargers on her desk beside the office phone with all its buttons. One of the cellulars, which buzzed when called, was her official phone. She made herself available with it around-the-clock.

The second Nokia cellular had a green face, and when it was called, it played "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." This was her private line, its number known to very few people. It had been a gift from Ben, who said that, believe it or not, he had a busy schedule, too, and didn't like to be put on hold.

When the green phone began to play "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" she thought it was probably Ben, and wondered if he was about to ask her to lunch.

"Hi," she said to the telephone.

"You busy, Eileen?" a female voice inquired. She knew the voice.

"Never too busy for you, Martha. How are you?"

Eileen McNamara and Martha Peebles had met in Art Appreciation 101 at the University of Pennsylvania, and the tall, then sort of skinny eighteen-year-old Irish girl and the seventeen-year-old slight, short WASP with an acne condition had been immediately comfortable with each other.

Eileen had told Martha all about her family, then taken her home to meet "King Kong"-her brother-and her father, both bricklaying subcontractors, and her mother. Martha had been visibly reluctant to talk about her family, except to say that her mother had died and she lived with her father and brother, who was a would-be actor.

Martha had not offered to take Eileen home with her, and Eileen wondered if she was maybe ashamed of her father, or her home, and went out of her way to make sure Martha understood she didn't care if her father "had problems" or what her house looked like, or how much money there was.

It was four months before Martha finally took Eileen home, on a Saturday, and Eileen got to meet the brother, Stephen, who was light on his feet, and her father, Alexander.

Martha had shown her around the house and property, which had taken a little time, as there were twenty-eight rooms in the turn-of-the-century mansion set on fourteen acres behind stone walls on Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, plus a guest house, a hothouse, and stables for Alexander Peebles's polo ponies.

"I never saw anything like this," Eileen had confessed, as they left the stables. "Not even in the movies."

Martha had looked at her.

"I really don't want this to change things between us," Martha said. "You're the best friend I ever had."

Eileen had never forgotten the frightened look in Martha's eyes.

"Don't be silly."

"And don't tell anybody else, please."

"Why should I?"

Eileen had never had a best friend in high school, and neither, Martha said, had she. They became and remained best friends and stayed best friends. Martha was the first person Eileen had told about Ben, right after he rear-ended her. And Martha had been her only bridesmaid when she married Ben.

And Eileen really worried about Martha, particularly after her father died, cutting the queer brother out of his will, and leaving everything to Martha. Everything included the Tamaqua Mining Corporation, which owned, among other things, somewhere between ten and twelve percent of the known anthracite coal reserves in the United States.

There had been no man; there never had been one in Martha's life seriously. There were several reasons for this, Eileen thought, the primary reason being that Martha, aware that she was no great beauty, suspected that what few suitors she had had were primarily interested in her money, followed closely by Martha's comparison of her young men with her father, and finding that none of them came close to matching up.

Eileen really thought that maybe her best friend was losing it when she began to complain that her house was being burgled on a more or less regular basis, and that the police weren't paying attention.

Eileen called Denny Coughlin and told him she would appreciate it if he would lean on the commanding officer of the Fourteenth District and get him to send enough uniforms around to 606 Glengarry Lane often enough to convince the inhabitant that her property and person were being adequately protected.

Denny Coughlin had called her back within the hour to tell her she could put her mind at rest about Miss Peebles. He'd called the Fourteenth District commander, as she'd asked him to do, and Captain Jessup had told him he was a little late. It seems Miss Peebles's lawyer, Brewster Payne, had talked with his partner, Colonel Mawson, who'd telephoned Police Commissioner Czernich about Miss Peebles's problem.

The commissioner had called Jessup and told him not to worry about Miss Peebles anymore. He had given the problem to Special Operations, and Highway Patrol would now be rolling by 606 Glengarry on a regular-at least hourly-basis. Special Operations had been told the commissioner didn't want to hear of any more problems at 606 Glengarry Lane.

The next morning, just after Judge Solomon had walked into her chambers at nine, Martha Peebles had called.

"Eileen, it happened."

"What happened?"

"My knight in shining armor. He finally came."

"Martha, are you all right?"

"His name is David Pekach, and he's the captain commanding Highway Patrol. And we did it, Eileen!"

Martha reported that Captain Pekach had called to inform her that her property would now be patrolled by Highway Patrol on a regular, frequent basis, and that she could put her mind at rest.

"My God, Eileen. He's so much like Daddy. All man. You just feel safe when you're with him."

"What do you mean you did it, Martha?"

"You know what I mean," Martha said, not even very shyly.

"You're not telling me this cop just walked in the door, and you took him to bed?"

"No, of course not. Not then. What happened was that he said he would swing by at midnight himself, and I said I never went to bed that early, and if he had the time-didn't have to get home to his wife-why didn't he stop in and I'd give him a cup of coffee. And he said he wasn't married, and thank you, he'd like a cup of coffee. And he came back at midnight, and that's when we did it."

"I think you're out of your mind."

"I know. I'm out of my mind with love. His first name is David. And I thought it was going to hurt the first time, and it didn't. God, Eileen, it was wonderful!"

"Denny, tell me about Captain David Pekach of Highway Patrol," was the call that came next.

"What would you like to know, Eileen? And why?"

"The why's my business. Tell me about him."

"What about him? He's a good cop."

"Is he married?"

"No. He's never been married. Before he made captain, and they gave him Highway Patrol, he was a lieutenant in Narcotics. He grew a pigtail, and the dealers thought he was one of them. He's got one hell of an arrest record."

"That's all?"

"When he was a rookie detective in Homicide, just a kid, when the rest of the department didn't think the sainted Fort Festung could possibly do anything like hurt his girlfriend, Dave Pekach finally got a judge to give him a search warrant-"

"I know who he is," Eileen interrupted, remembering him from the trial.

"Like I said, Eileen, he's a very good cop."

"Tell me about him and women. I understand he's quite a swordsman."

"Who told you that?" Coughlin asked. "Eileen, you've seen him. He's a little guy. Looks like a weasel. Women do the opposite of swoon when they see him. I've never even seen him with a woman. What's this all about?"

"Thanks, Denny."

Brewster Courtland Payne, Esq., gave Miss Martha Peebles in marriage to Captain David Pekach three weeks later. The Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon was the matron of honor.

"Eileen, I realize this is short notice, but I'd really like you and Ben to come for supper tonight," Martha Peebles Pekach said now.

"What's up?"

"Brewster Payne's son-Matt?-just made sergeant, and Precious and I are having a little party for him."

"That kid made sergeant?" Eileen asked, surprised. Very privately, she thought of Detective Matt Payne as the Wyatt Earp-or maybe the Stan Colt-of the Main Line. Most cops never draw their weapons in twenty years of service. Brewster Payne's kid had already shot two critters and been involved in an O.K. Corral shoot-out in Bucks County and he hadn't been on the job much over five years.

And now he's a sergeant?

"He was number one on The List. The mayor promoted him this morning."

"I'll have to check with Ben," Eileen said.

"With or without him, Eileen, please? Sixish."

[THREE] Lieutenant Jason Washington, who was sitting in his glass-walled office, his feet resting on the open lower drawer of his desk, deep in thought, became aware that Detective Kenneth J. Summers, a portly forty-year-old, who was on the desk, was waving at him.

He raised his eyebrows to suggest that Summers now had his attention. Summers pointed to the telephone. Washington nodded and reached for it.

"Homicide, Lieutenant Washington."

"Dave Pekach, Jason."

"Dare I to hope that you are calling to tell me two critters have flagged down a Highway car and, overwhelmed by remorse, are asking how they can go about confessing to the Roy Rogers job?"

"You don't have them yet?" Pekach asked, surprised.

"You know where we are, David?" Washington said. "In the absence of a better idea, I have four people running down a somewhat esoteric idea proposed by the newest member of our happy little family."

"Matt?"

"Indeed.Sergeant Matthew Payne. He wondered-causing Tony Harris some chagrins-and between thee and me, me too-for not having had the same thought first-why Doer Number One took the trouble to put his weapon under Kenny Charlton's bulletproof vest instead of simply shooting him in the head."

"Yeah. I wonder why."

"There may be no reason, but for the moment, we are considering the possibility that he knew Kenny, felt some personal animosity toward him, and wanted to make sure the wound was fatal."

"That's possible. That sounds like a deliberate act, not like something that just happened."

"So we are now compiling a photo album of every young African-American critter Kenny ever arrested. And since Kenny spent many years on the street, there is a large number of such critters."

"It may work, Jason," Pekach said, thoughtfully.

"And I have Tony starting all over again from Step One," Washington said.

"Actually, I was calling about Matt," Pekach said. "My Martha wants to wash down his sergeant's badge…"

"Somehow I don't think Your Martha used that phrase."

"She's having a few people in, is the way she put it. You and Your Martha, of course, and Tony. And My Martha asked me to ask you if it would be a good idea to ask the other guys in Homicide."

"What and where are the festivities?"

"Tonight, here. Six, six-thirty. If it stays nice, outside. Like the last one. Which, come to think of it, Lieutenant, was to wash down your new badge."

"I was about to say, David, that tonight is not the best of times. But then I remembered the profound philosophical observation that all work, et cetera, et cetera. Tony will be there, I'll see to that, and so will My Martha and I. And I will put a card on the bulletin board advising everyone that edibles and intoxicants will be available at 606 Glengarry Lane for anyone interested in celebrating Sergeant Payne's promotion."

"You think anyone will come?"

"Edibles and intoxicants may entice one or two. And simple curiosity about Castle Pekach will entice some of the others. I don't want to make it a command performance. Is Henry going to grace the premises?"

Captain Henry C. Quaire was commanding officer of the Homicide unit.

"My Martha called Whatshername."

"Gladys," Washington furnished.

"Gladys and Henry will be there," Pekach said.

"Why am I not surprised?" Washington said.

Gladys Quaire regarded an invitation to 606 Glengarry Lane as the Philadelphia equivalent of an invitation to watch the races at Ascot from the Royal Enclosure.

Pekach chuckled, then said goodbye.

[FOUR] When Dr. and Mrs. Benjamin Solomon drove through the gate at Glengarry Lane, the macadam road to the house was lined with various models of Ford Crown Victoria automobiles. They were in Ben's Cadillac, as Eileen was wearing what she thought of as her Doctor's Wife hat.

But she could not leave her D.A.'s hat very far behind. In the new Ford Crown Victoria that followed the Cadillac into what was still known as the Peebles Estate, Detective Albert Unger of the District Attorney's Squad pushed his microphone button as he rolled past the gate.

"Radio, D-One."

"Go, D-One."

"At 606 Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill until further notice."

"Got it."

Philadelphia provides an unmarked detective-driven police car to its district attorney. The detective, of course, also serves as bodyguard to the D.A. Usually, this made sense, and it was nice to be picked up at the house and dropped off by a car. But sometimes-now, for example-it didn't.

There were going to be at least thirty-knowing Martha, probably more-police officers at 606 Glengarry Lane, all of them armed, and many senior enough to be accompanied by their own armed drivers. The person of the district attorney was going to be about as safe as it could be. And if something happened that required the immediate presence of the district attorney, any of the white shirts' unmarked cars would be available to take her there with siren howling.

But, because he went where she went, poor Al Unger would just have to hang around the car waiting for the radio to go off while the D.A. was at the party. He wouldn't be alone. Deputy Commissioner Coughlin's driver and the drivers of the other senior white shirts would also have to hang around waiting for their radios to go off. Martha Peebles Pekach would ensure, of course, that the caterer's waiters would make sure they were fed.

Eileen was not surprised-the weather was wonderful- that the party was being held outside the stables. Alexander Peebles's polo ponies were long gone, and the grass field where they had once played was ideal for an outside party.

Tables had been set up, and waiters moved among them serving drinks and steaks and Italian sausage from charcoal stoves.

Their hostess and her husband greeted them as they walked on the field.

"Sorry to be late, Ben had to work," Eileen said, hugging Martha Peebles.

"You're here, that's all that matters," Martha Peebles said. She kissed Dr. Solomon. "I put you with the Paynes," Martha went on, gesturing toward one of the tables.

"Guess who I got a postcard from?" Captain Pekach said.

"When you get a minute, I've got something to tell you about that," Eileen said.

"In a couple of minutes," Pekach said.

Eileen saw Ben smiling, and she saw why. Amelia A. Payne, M.D., was sitting with her parents. Ben not only would have someone to talk to-he really had little in common with the cops, or for that matter with Brewster C. Payne-and he and Amy Payne both liked each other and shared a disdain for some of their fellow healers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and many of UP's bureaucratic procedures, about which they could-and almost certainly would-talk at length.

Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and Brewster C. Payne got to their feet as the Solomons approached the table.

The men wordlessly shook hands. Eileen sat down beside Patricia Payne, and Ben sat down across the table beside Amy.

"Where's the birthday boy?" Eileen asked-and before Patricia could answer, dealt with the waiter. "Irish rocks for me. Diet Coke over there." She pointed at her husband, then added: "Make it a double. I've been a good girl all day."

"One for me, too, please," Patricia Payne said. "Not a double."

"Where isSergeant Payne?" Eileen asked.

Amelia A. Payne snorted.

"I guess you're thrilled, huh?" Eileen asked.

"Not really," Amy said, "truth to tell."

"Matt went into the house for something. He'll be back," Patricia said.

"Is it safe to say you're thrilled?" Eileen asked Patricia.

"Mixed emotions," Patricia replied. "Proud? Sure. Happy for Matt. Sure. But the badge the mayor pinned on him was his father's."

"Ouch," Eileen said. "They kept it all these years?"

"I had it. I thought it was the right-"

"It was," Eileen said, firmly.

"Mother Moffitt showed up at the ceremony," Amy said. "To cast her usual pall on things."

"Amy!" Patricia Payne said.

"Dave got another postcard from our fugitive," Coughlin said, obviously to get off the subject of Mother Moffitt.

"He told me," Eileen said. "There was something today… I'll tell you later, when I tell Dave."

"Am I permitted to ask? 'Our fugitive'?" Brewster Payne said.

"Isaac 'Fort' Festung," Eileen said.

"Oh, that chap."

"That despicable sonofabitch," Coughlin said, and added, immediately, "Forgive the French."

A waiter handed the district attorney a drink. She waited until Patricia Payne had hers, then touched glasses and took a healthy sip.

"To Sergeant Payne," she said.

"Thank you," Patricia Payne said.

"Denny, 'despicable sonofabitch' is an apt description of Fort Festung, so an apology for your language is not necessary, " Eileen said. "But if you're asking for a general pardon for our French brothers,I'm not about to forgive them."

There were chuckles and smiles.

"She's even stopped buying French perfume," Dr. Solomon said.

"See if you can enlist Patricia in your cause, Eileen," Brewster Payne said.

"What they should have done when he showed up in France-he entered France illegally, by the way, and was using a phony name, also illegal-was deport him on the next plane."

"Didn't that have something to do with the death penalty?" Patricia asked.

"That was their first excuse, but when that didn't wash- we didn't have the death penalty at the time of his trial; there was no way I could have sentenced him to death, as much as I might have liked to-they said they wouldn't let us extradite because he'd been triedin absentia."

"I thought the legislature took care of that, and guaranteed him a new trial if he asked for one." Brewster C. Payne said.

"They did. And we so informed the French. Now they're giving us some nonsense about the statute of limitations," Eileen said. "We're appealing that. We expect a decision on that tomorrow, and if it goes our way, we're back to Step One. In other words, we start asking all over again for his extradition. "

She stopped, suddenly becoming aware that two men were seeking her attention.

"And there's Dave Pekach waiting for me to tell him what I just told you," she said, nodding at Pekach, who was standing at the edge of the field. "Excuse me."

She got to her feet and turned to a waiter, "Medium rare," she ordered. "One piece of Italian sausage, a sliced tomato. No potatoes. I'll be back in five minutes, or less." She pointed at her husband. "That handsome gentleman will have the same."

She stood up, and walked to Pekach, and followed him into the stable. They walked almost to the end of it.

"Did I interrupt something important?" Pekach asked. "You and Denny Coughlin looked pretty serious."

"We were talking about Saint Isaac," Eileen said. "What did the new postcard say?"

"The usual. 'Having fine time, wish you were here. Best regards, Isaac.'"

"The arrogant sonofabitch!" the district attorney said, and then went on: "I had a call-Tony Casio did-from the State Department today…"

"I have the feeling I'm about to hear something I shouldn't," Matt Payne said, coming into the passageway from inside one of the stalls.

"What the hell were you doing in there?" Pekach asked, curiously.

"I'm gone," Matt said. "Sorry."

"Stay," Eileen said. "There's no reason you shouldn't hear this. Maybe you should."

"What were you doing in there?" Pekach pursued.

Matt looked between them and decided that when you don't know what the hell to say, tell the truth.

"You remember the scene inThe Godfather, the wedding, where everybody handed the bride an envelope? As a tribute to the Godfather, not because they gave a damn about the bride?"

"Yeah," Pekach said. "So?"

"I felt like the bride," Matt said. "Out of respect to you and Martha and/or my parents and/or Denny Coughlin, everybody was coming to the table and saying, 'Congratulations, Sergeant.' And then Amy would snort. So I came to hide in here."

"You should have waited until Ben and I finally got here," Eileen said. "Our congratulations would have been absolutely sincere."

He looked at her for a moment.

"Thank you," he said, and then added: "Like I said, I wasn't trying to eavesdrop and I'm gone."

"You're not interested in Fort Festung?" Eileen asked.

"I'm becoming fascinated-"

"Okay. Stay. Latest bulletin," Eileen said. "Tony Casio…"

"He's Eileen's fugitive guy," Pekach explained.

"… had a call from the State Department this afternoon. The French are going to rule on the statute of limitations tomorrow, and their 'legal counsel,' read FBI guy, heard that it'll go our way."

"Which leaves us where?"

"We start the extradition business all over again. If the decision comes down tomorrow in our favor, we start the extradition process again tomorrow."

"And this time?" Pekach asked.

"The French can stall only so long, David," Eileen said. "We'll get him."

Pekach looked at her a long moment but didn't say anything.

"Okay, birthday boy," Eileen said. "Back to the table. And smile nice when somebody says 'congratulations.' "

"Yes, ma'am," Matt said.

[FIVE] At just about the time the last of the unmarked Ford Crown Victorias was leaving the Peebles Estate-somewhere around 1:15 A.M.-Homer C. Daniels, a six-feet-one-inch, 205-pound, thirty-six-year-old Caucasian male, who had once been a paratrooper and still wore his light brown hair clipped close to his skull, was standing in the shadow of a tree in the 600 block of Independence Street in Northeast Philadelphia, in the area known as East Oak Lane.

He was looking up at the second-story windows on the right side of what had been built as a single-family home- not quite large enough to be called a mansion-not quite a century before. It had been empty for a while after World War II, and then had been converted to a "multifamily dwelling" with two apartments on the ground floor, two on the second, and a third in what had been the servants' quarters on the third.

Daniels, who was wearing a black coverall, thought of himself as a businessman rather than a truck driver, although in each of the past several years he had driven a Peterbilt eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer rig 150,000 miles all over the country.

For one thing, he was a partner in Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars, Inc., the company that owned the Peterbilt. And he almost always had the same partner's interest in the truck's cargo, and sometimes he owned all of the cargo.

Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars, Inc., as the name implied, dealt with what they referred to as the "Grand Marques" of automobiles, ranging from the "vintage"-such as Duesenbergs and Pierce-Arrows, no longer manufactured-to the "contemporary"-such as Ferrari, the larger Mercedes-Benz, and Rolls Royce.

As a general rule of thumb, if an automobile was worth less than $75,000, Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars, Inc., was not interested. A boat-tailed Dusey, in Grand Concourse condition and worth, say, $1,250,000, had the opposite effect.

They bought and sold some cars themselves, and accepted some cars on consignment. Often they would buy a "decent" classic, and spend up to $100,000 rebuilding it from the frame up to Grand Concourse condition before offering it for sale. They also provided "frame up" restoration for owners of classic cars, and had earned an international reputation for the quality of their work.

Cars of this sort were genuine works of art, and as one would not entrust a Rodin sculpture or an Andy Warhol painting of a tomato can to the Acme Trucking Company, or even the United Parcel Service, one could not move, for example, a Grand Concourse-condition 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL "Gull Wing" coupe worth $275,000 to or from Las Vegas without taking the appropriate precautions.

Dragging such a motorcar along behind a car or truck on one of the clever devices available from U-Haul was obviously out of the question. So was loading such a vehicle on a flatbed trailer, chaining it in place, and covering it with a tarpaulin.

The solution was to ship such a vehicle within a trailer, and for a while Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars, Inc., had done just that. Then it had occurred to the partners that contracting for the transport, "direct, sole cargo" of vehicles, was costing them a lot of money. They crunched the numbers, and concluded the expense of buying and operating their own truck was justified.

They bought the Peterbilt, had a trailer specially modified- essentially the installation of padding and means to hold the vehicles immobile while being transported-and hired a professional truck driver.

That had proved to be a disaster. The driver had hit something-he said-on the road, causing him to lose control, go into a ditch, and turn over. The devices installed to keep the 1939 Packard Le Baron bodied convertible in place had not been strong enough to hold the massive car when the trailer had turned over, and massive damage had resulted.

The partners had suspected that what had really happened-truck drivers like to "make miles"-was that the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. The insurance company had similar suspicions, and although they had-finally-paid up, they had immediately informed the partners that their rates in the future would regrettably have to be raised significantly.

That was when the idea of Homer driving the rig had come up. For one thing, Homer had been an over-the-road tractor-trailer driver immediately after leaving the service. For another, Homer and his wife had finally had enough of each other, and it wouldn't be much of a hardship for him to spend a week or ten days away from Vegas.

And other benefits came to mind. If there was a motor vehicle in Saint Louis, say, of interest to Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars, Inc., and Homer was there-or near there-with the truck, he could both have a good look at it-without the cost of an airplane ticket to get there and back-make a recommendation to the partners, and if they decided to make the deal, just load the new acquisition on the truck right then and there.

And then there was the restoration business. Homer could look at a car someone wanted to have Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars, Inc., restore, quote the owner a price, and if a deal was struck, just load the car right then and there and haul it back to Vegas.

The original trailer, of course, was shot. They bought another, and really customized it. The new trailer was heated and air-conditioned, and would hold three cars, instead of two-five, if they were all Porsches, which happened several times. In addition, cabinets were built for tools, and there was what looked very much like an old-timey railroad sleeper compartment, which held a toilet, a bed, a shower, a tiny desk for Homer's computer, and a closet for Homer's clothes.

When Homer was trying to make a deal for, say, a 1940 Buick Limited spares-in-the-fenders convertible touring sedan worth, say, 150 large, he should look like a businessman, not a truck driver. And if he was going coast-to-coast-for that matter, anywhere overnight-and needed some sleep, he could just pull into a truck stop, go in the back, get a couple of hours of shut-eye, and then get back on the road without the hassle of having to find a motel where he could park the rig, and then pay fifty, sixty bucks-sometimes more-for just using the bed for a couple of hours.

The whole arrangement-traveling all over the country included-had proven ideal for Homer's hobby, which was to find some young bitch who looked like the bitch he had wasted ten years of his life on, who lived by herself, and then being very careful about it, when everything fell into place, get into her apartment, scare the living shit out of her-a man in a black ski mask waving a Jim Bowie replica knife with a polished, shiny twelve-inch blade in her face did that very nicely-cut her clothes off with the knife, tie her to her bed, and take before-during-and-after slipping the salami to her pictures with his digital camera.

This was the fourth time Homer had stood in the shadow of a tree looking up at the apartment of Miss Cheryl Anne Williamson, who at twenty-three looked very much like Mrs. Bonnie Dawson Daniels had looked when she was that age. That is to say, she was tall, slender, blonde, had very fair skin, and even, Homer thought, that deceptive look of sweetness and innocence that Bonnie had.

Deceptive because Bonnie the Bitch was anything but sweet and innocent.

The first time Homer had stood in the shadow of the tree, he had followed Cheryl home from Halligan's Pub, where he had seen her cock-teasing the guys at the bar. It had been immediately apparent to Homer that Cheryl had not gone to the bar to maybe meet somebody she could get to know really well, maybe even someday marry, much less to get laid.

She had gone to the bar to cock-tease some dummy, get him all worked up, and then let him know she wasn't at all interested in fucking him. What she got her kicks from-just like Bonnie the Bitch-was humiliating some poor bastard, letting him know he wasn't good enough for her.

The first night when Cheryl had left Halligan's Pub, he had followed her home. That time he was driving a year-old Cadillac De Ville, used as a loaner by Willow Grove Automotive, where he had parked the rig. Las Vegas Classic Motor Cars did a lot of business with Willow Grove-on that trip, he had dropped off two Porsches from California, and would leave with a really nice Rolls Royce-and the guy who ran it always loaned him a car overnight when he was in town.

That first time, Homer had watched her park her Chrysler Sebring, watched as she entered the apartment building, and then stood in the shadow of the tree until lights went on in a second-floor apartment. Then he went to the Sebring- Homer had once spent six months working for Las Vegas Towing and Repossession, and getting into the Sebring was no problem-and got Cheryl's name, address, and phone and social security numbers from documents in her glove compartment.

Then he got back in the De Ville and went back to Willow Grove Automotive, parked the De Ville, gave the keys to the security guy, went to the rig, made sure the current had been plugged in, and then went to the compartment in the trailer, locking it from the inside.

He took off all his clothes and sat down in front of the computer, turned it on, took one of the good CDs from its hiding place, slipped it in the drive, looked at the index, thought a moment, and then decided Saint Louis was what he wanted, transferred the Folder STL to the computer, decrypted it, then ran Photo-Eaze, which allowed him to run a slide show of the digital images in STL.

The girl in Saint Louis-Karen-didn't look as much like Bonnie the Bitch as the one tonight did, but he'd had his good times with her. As the slide show ran, he dropped his hand to his groin and played with himself. He ran the slide show again-there were twelve pictures-and then pushed Hold on Number 11, which showed Karen tied to the bed immediately after he'd slipped her the salami. He'd really shown her she wasn't as high and mighty as she thought. She looked soiled and humiliated.

It'll really be great to get this new one, this Cheryl, like that!

That thought had been so exciting that he ejaculated before he intended to.

Couldn't be helped. Goddamn, this Cheryl's really going to be a good one!

He cleaned himself up with Kleenex, then took the CD from the drive and put it back in the hiding place, erased Folder STL from the hard drive, and then started the U.S. Government Approved Slack Wipe Program. That would run for a couple of hours. What the program did was overwrite and overwrite and overwrite again the slack space on the hard drive, so there would be no chance of anybody ever being able to recover the images of Karen he had just looked at.

Then he took a shower and went to bed.

At seven the next morning, he got behind the wheel of the Peterbilt, got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and headed west. There was a guy in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, who collected Rollses, and there was a good chance he'd be interested in some kind of a deal with the one now in the rig.

Three weeks, more or less, later, Homer had again stood in the shadow of the tree outside Cheryl Williamson's apartment. He had gone to Halligan's Pub in hopes of seeing her there, and when she hadn't shown, he'd gone to the apartment complex.

By then, primarily because of a credit check he had run on her, he knew a good deal about her. He knew where she worked, for one thing, and where she had gone to school, and that she had never been married, and that she owed fifteen payments of $139.50 on the Chrysler Sebring, and thirty-three payments of $105.05 on the furniture in her apartment.

The lights were on in her apartment, which meant that she was there, and that he could probably take the coveralls and face mask and Jim Bowie knife from his briefcase and get the job done. It was a temptation. He'd thought of her a lot.

But it was also possible that she wasn't alone in the apartment, and there was no sense taking any chances. All things come to he who waits. He had decided to wait.

It was a month after that that he stood for the third time in the shadow of the tree looking up at her apartment. This time, Cheryl had been in the Harrison Lounge, cock-teasing some poor slob who had no idea what a bitch she was, and when she'd left-alone, of course-he'd followed her home again. That night, he was sure, was going to be the night. He even went back to his car-this time a Plymouth Voyager loaner from Willow Grove, there being nothing better on the lot-and changed into the costume.

When the lights went out in Cheryl's apartment, he decided he would wait five minutes before climbing the back stairs to her apartment. Thirty seconds later, Cheryl came out of the building, got into the Sebring, and drove off.

There was no way of telling, of course, where the bitch was going. Or when-even if-she was coming back. If he continued to wait in the shadow of the tree, somebody might see him. And if he went back and waited in the Voyager, the cops might drive by and wonder what someone was doing sitting in a car at quarter to three in the morning.

When he got back to Willow Grove and the rig, he loaded DEN into the computer, and watched the sixteen pictures he'd taken three months before of an arrogant bitch named Delores in Denver. A not-so-arrogant bitch anymore, which was nice to look at and remember. But Delores was not nearly as pretty as Cheryl, and Delores didn't look nearly as much like Bonnie the Bitch as Cheryl did.

Tonight, Homer had the feeling everything was going to fall into place. Willow Grove Automotive had loaned him a dark gray De Ville-not the one he'd had before-and when he got to Halligan's, the minute he pulled into the parking lot, he saw Cheryl's Sebring, and didn't even have to go into the lounge.

He just sat in the De Ville and waited for her to come out. When she did, a guy came out after her, and they had a little argument in the doorway. The bitch was obviously telling the guy she'd been cock-teasing for the last hour, at least, that he had it wrong, that not only was she not that kind of girl, but even if she was, she wouldn't give any to a jerk like him.

The guy went back in Halligan's Pub, Cheryl got in her Sebring, and when she was out of sight, Homer started the De Ville. He knew where she lived and he didn't even have to follow her. And when he got near Independence Street, he saw-on Sixty-seventh Avenue, North-a dark place where he could park the De Ville where it wouldn't attract attention, and where he could change into the costume without being seen.

And when he got to the tree and looked up at Cheryl's apartment, the lights were on. He figured she had been there no more than four, five minutes at most.

The light came on a minute or so later in a little window he was sure was the bathroom, and he thought about what Cheryl would look like in the shower while he waited for the light to go out.

Ten minutes later, it went out, and no more than a minute after that, so did the lights in her bedroom.

Homer checked the pockets of the coveralls to make sure he had the Jim Bowie replica knife, the camera, and the plastic thingamajigs he would use to tie her spread-eagled on her bed.

As he pulled on a pair of disposable rubber gloves, Homer started to get a hard-on thinking about what he was going to do, and told himself to cool it. He didn't want it to be over too soon.

Outside wooden stairs, with a narrow platform, had been added to the old building to provide a rear entrance to the second-floor apartments.

He went up them quickly, putting his feet on the outside of each step. If you stepped in the middle, sometimes the stairs would squeak, and the last thing he wanted to do was to have some yapping dog hear him and start barking.

When he got to the platform and her back door, he pulled the black ski mask from his pocket and pulled it over his head, then took a close look at the door. There were actually two doors, an outer combination screen and winter door. The screen thing was in place.

He put the blade of the Jim Bowie replica in the crack between the screen and the frame, and carefully pried it open wide enough so that he could get his hand inside to unlatch it. Then he very carefully pulled it open. It came easy, without squeaking.

Once he had the screen door open, he made sure that the screen was back in place. He was pleased when he saw that he hadn't even scratched the sonofabitch.

The inner door wasn't much more trouble. There was a pretty good lock, but the construction was cheesy, and all it took to pop the lock was to force the blade of the Jim Bowie replica into the frame and lean on it a little.

Homer opened the door wide enough to get the blade inside and ran it up and down, checking for a chain or whatever, and when there was none, opened the door all the way, stepped into the kitchen, and then closed it behind him.

After a minute, there was enough light for him to see pretty good. He was glad he'd waited. There was a little table in the kitchen he probably would have bumped into.

This was the hairy part of the operation, making it from just being inside into the bedroom and to the bed itself without making any kind of racket.

Homer made his way slowly and carefully through the kitchen, into the living room, and then to a door he was pretty sure was the bedroom door. This sometimes was a problem; if there was a lock on the bedroom door and it had to be popped, it sometimes woke the bitches up.

No lock.

The door opened smoothly inward.

There was more light in the room, two of those go-to-the-bathroom little lights plugged into sockets near the floor.

Cheryl was in bed, lying on her stomach. She was wearing pajamas.

Homer walked to the bed, very carefully reached out for Cheryl's shoulder, and then suddenly grabbed it, jerked her over on her back, then pushed her hard down on the bed with his hand on her throat.

"One fucking sound and you get your throat cut!" he said, waving the Jim Bowie replica in front of her face.

Cheryl whimpered.

"Please don't hurt me," she said. Scared shitless.

"I'm going to fuck you, bitch," Homer said. "It's up to you whether you get hurt or not."

He grabbed Cheryl's left wrist, put a plastic tie on it, jerked it tight, and then tied it to the bed.

The headboard was wrought iron. Sometimes when the headboard was material-or there was no headboard at all; that had happened twice-there was a problem. You had to tie the bitch to the springs, which meant tying a couple of the ties together to make one long enough.

No problem like that tonight. He tied the left tie to a curve in the wrought iron, then reached across the bitch for her right hand.

Cheryl started to sob.

Homer slapped her, hard.

"Not a sound, bitch!" he said.

Once he had the second plastic tie in place, he jerked on it to make sure it wouldn't come loose, then jerked on the other one.

Then he knelt on the bed, sat back on his heels, and ran the blade of the Jim Bowie replica down Cheryl's body, from the neck between her boobs to her crotch.

She whimpered again.

He tied her right ankle to the wrought iron at the foot of the bed, and then the left ankle. Then he ran the blade up her body again.

"Not a peep, you fucking bitch!"

He went to the light switch by the door and flipped it on.

Cheryl's eyes were wide with terror.

He leaned over the bed and put the blade of the Jim Bowie replica under her pajama top, and one by one cut the buttons off so that it could be easily opened when it came time for that.

He took the digital camera from the coveralls and took Cheryl's picture.

Then he leaned over her and pushed the left side of her pajama top off her breast and took a picture of that.

Very nice. Her nipples had become erect.

Homer became aware that he had a hard-on. A real hard-on.

He reached into the coveralls and took it out and waved it at her.

"This is for you, bitch!" he said.

He walked to the bed and pushed Cheryl's pajamas off her right breast, and then took a picture of her like that.

Then he went and knelt on the bed so that he could rub the head of his penis on her nipples.

That was very exciting, so exciting that he knew he was going to have an orgasm, and since that was the case, he might as well have a good one, so he put his hand on it and pumped rapidly until he ejaculated onto her breasts and face.

She turned her head and whimpered.

As fast as the camera would permit, Homer took three pictures of that, and then had an artistic inspiration. He took the Jim Bowie replica and carefully scraped some of the semen from Cheryl's breast on it, and then laid it between her breasts, with the tip just under her chin. And he took two pictures of that, looked at them in the camera's built-in viewer, and then put the camera on the bedside table.

"I'll be right back," Homer said. "We're just getting started."

He went into the bathroom, and first urinated, and then, standing over the washbasin, washed his genitals, toying with them, thinking that when he went back in the bedroom, he would be able to get a shot of his sperm on her breasts and face.

That was an exciting thought, so exciting that he felt himself begin to grow hard again, and he thought that's what he would do, get it up again, so that when he went back in the bedroom, she would see it and get a hint of what was in store for her.

When he went back in the bedroom, the goddamn bitch had somehow got her right hand free from the plastic tie. That had given her enough movement to twist onto her side, and to pull her telephone from the bedside table. She was punching in a number.

"You goddamn fucking bitch!" Homer said, angrily. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

He moved quickly to the bed, made a fist, and punched her as hard as he could in the face. He turned her on her back again and punched her again. He reached for the telephone, to pull the line free from the socket. It wouldn't come at first and he pulled harder, and then the line snapped, and the phone came out of his hand and flew across the room and smashed into the mirror mounted on the wall. The mirror broke into three large pieces, and two of them fell to the floor, where they shattered into small pieces.

Jesus Christ, that made enough noise to wake the fucking dead!

"That's going to cost you, bitch!" he said, menacingly.

He realized he was breathing heavily and took a moment to calm down.

Then he looked down at Cheryl.

There was a little blood on her face, running down over her lips, and she was looking at something on the ceiling.

He looked up to see what she was looking at. There was nothing but the ceiling and the light fixture. He looked back down at her, and she was still looking at the ceiling.

He waved his hand in front of her eyes. There was no reaction.

"Jesus Christ!" Homer said, softly.

He reached down and slapped Cheryl on both cheeks.

"Goddamn you, wake up!" he said.

There was no reaction.

"Oh, shit," Homer said, softly, and waved his hand in front of her open eyes again.

"Shit, shit, shit," Homer said.

Then he went to the door, turned the lights in the bedroom off, and made his way back through the apartment to the kitchen, and let himself out, taking care to make sure the screen door's latch had automatically locked after he pushed it shut.

He went quickly to the De Ville, and was halfway down the block before he remembered to take the black ski mask off.

And then Homer had an at first chilling thought.

I don't have the fucking camera!

He patted his pockets to make sure.

Shit, shit, shit!

Oh, fuck it! I never took the rubber gloves off, so there won't be any fingerprints, and they can't trace it to me. I bought it in that store with the Arabs in Times Square in New York, the time I picked up the silver-gray Bentley. I paid cash. I'll just have to get another one. It was getting pretty old, anyway.