“Sorry, I forgot how important being a policeman is to you,” she said, sarcastically.
There was a long pause.
“We’re fighting, and saying things we won’t be able to take back,” she said. “That’s not what I wanted.”
“I love you,” Peter said.
“One of the interesting thoughts my father offered was that people tend to confuse love with lust. Lust comes quickly and eventually burns itself out. Love has to be built, slowly.”
“Okay,” Peter said. “I lust you, and I’m willing to work on the other thing.”
She laughed, but stopped abruptly.
“I don’t know why I’m laughing,” she said. “I’m not sure whether I should cry or break things, but I know I shouldn’t be laughing. I want you to come here, Peter. I want to look at you when we’re talking.”
“I can’t come,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“When can you come?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Three, four days, maybe.”
“Why not now?” Louise demanded plaintively.
“Because I’m liab
le to lose my job if I come back right now.”
There was a long pause. When Louise finally spoke, her voice was calm.
“You know what you just said, of course? That your goddamned job is more important in your life than me.”
“Don’t be silly, Louise,” Peter said.
“No, I won’t,” she said. “Not anymore.”
The phone went dead in his ear.
When he dialed again, he got her answering device. He tried it three more times and then gave up.
When he tried to call her at WCBL-TV the next day, she was either not in, or could not be called to the telephone, and would he care to leave a message?
****
Staff Inspector Peter Wohl paid lip service to the notion that he was in Atlantic City working on the Nelson homicide job. He went to the hospital where the autopsy on Errol F. Watson, also known as Pierre St. Maury, was performed, and looked at the corpse, and read the coroner’s report. Errol F. Watson had died of destruction of brain tissue caused by three projectiles, believed to be .32 caliber, of the type commonly associated with caliber .32 Colt semiautomatic pistols.
That didn’t mean he had been shot with a Colt. There were a hundred kinds of pistols that fired the .32 ACP cartridge. No fired cartridge cases had been found, despite what Wohl believed had been a very thorough search of the area where the body had been found. They had found blood and bone and brain tissue.
Very probably, whoever had shot Errol F. Watson also known as Pierre St. Maury had marched him away from the Jaguar, and then shot him in the back of the head. And then twice more, at closer range. God only knew what had happened to the ejected cartridge cases. If they had been ejected. There were some revolvers (which do not eject fired cases), chambered for .32 ACP. Whatever the pistol was, it was almost certainly already sinking into the sandy ocean floor off Atlantic City, or into the muck of a New Jersey swamp, and the chances of recovering it were practically nil.
He also spent most of a day at the state trooper garage, watching, with professional admiration, the lab technicians working on the Jaguar. They knew their business, and they lifted fingerprints and took soil samples and did all the clever things citizens have grown to expect by watching cop stories on television.
Lieutenant Bob McGrory, who had taken him to the garage, picked him up after work there and then insisted he come home with him for supper. He had been at first reluctant and uncomfortable, but McGrory’s wife, Mary-Ellen, made him feel welcome, and McGrory produced a bottle of really good scotch, and they sat around killing that, and telling Dutch Moffitt stories, and Peter’s mouth finally loosened, and he told McGrory why he really had been sent to Atlantic City.
He left then, aware that he was a little drunk, and not wanting to confide in Bob McGrory the painful details of his romance with Miss Louise Dutton.
On his arrival in Atlantic City, in a fey mood, he had taken a room in the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, a thousand-room landmark on the boardwalk, rather than in a smaller hotel or a motel. He had told himself that he would endure his time in purgatory at least in luxury.
It was, he decided, faded grandeur rather than luxury. But it did have a bar, and he stopped there for a nightcap before he went to his room. He had just had another one-way conversation with Louise Dutton’s answering machine, the machine doing all the talking, when there was a knock at his door.