“Sure,” Wohl said. “Excuse me a minute, Naomi.”
She smiled uneasily.
Wohl walked to the far side of the Highway Patrol car.
“What’s up, Dannelly?” he asked.
“You’re not answering your phone, Inspector.”
“I’ve got the day off,” Wohl said. “Who’s looking for me?”
“Lieutenant Sabara,” Dannelley said. “He said to send a car by here to see if you were home; that maybe your phone wasn’t working.”
“The phone’s upstairs,” Wohl said. “If it’s been ringing, I didn’t hear it.”
“Okay with you, sir, if I get on the radio and tell him you’re home?”
“Sure.” Wohl wondered what Sabara wanted with him that was so important he had sent a car to see if his phone was working. “Tell him to give me fifteen minutes to take a bath, and then I’ll wait for his call.”
“You want to wait while I do it?”
“No,” Wohl said, smiling. “You get out of here and then you call him.”
“I understand, sir,” Dannelly said, nodding just perceptibly toward Naomi.
“No, you don’t,” Wohl said, laughing. “The only thing I’m trying to hide, Sergeant, is that I’m a cop.”
“Whatever you say, Inspector,” Dannelly said, unabashed, winking at Wohl.
Wohl waited until Sergeant Dannelly had gotten back in the car and driven off, then walked back to Naomi Schneider. Her curiosity, he saw, was about to bubble over.
“I saw an accident,” Peter lied easily. “I have to go to the police station and make a report.”
Sometimes, now for example, Peter Wohl often wondered if going to such lengths to conceal from his neighbors that he was a cop was worth all the trouble it took. It had nothing to do with anything official, and he certainly wasn’t ashamed of being a damned good cop, the youngest Staff Inspector in the department; but sometimes, with civilians, especially civilians like his neighbors—bright, young, well-educated, well-paid civilians—it could be awkward.
Before he had, just after his promotion to Staff Inspector, moved into the garage apartment, he had lived in a garden apartment on Montgomery Avenue in the area of West Philadelphia known as Wynnfield. His neighbors there had been much the same kind of people, and he had learned that their usual response to having a cop for a neighbor was one of two things, and sometimes both. What was a lowlife, like a cop, doing in among his social betters? And what good is it having a cop for a neighbor, if he can’t be counted on to fix a lousy speeding ticket?
He had decided, when he moved into the garage apartment, not to let his neighbors know what he did for a living. He almost never wore a uniform, and with his promotion to Staff Inspector had come the perk of an official car that didn’t look like a police car. Not only was it unmarked, but it was new (the current car was a two-tone Ford LTD) and had white-wall tires and no telltale marks; the police shortwave radio was concealed in the glove compartment and used what looked like an ordinary radio antenna.
When his neighbors in the garage apartment asked him what he did, he told them he worked for the city. He didn’t actually come out and deny that he was a cop, but he managed to convey the impression that he was a middle-level civil servant, who worked in City Hall.
He didn’t get chummy with his neighbors, for several reasons, among them that, like most policemen, he was most comfortable with other policemen, and also because there was no question in his mind that when he was invited to come by for a couple of beers, at least marijuana, and probably something even more illegal, would be on the menu as well.
If he didn’t see it, he would not have to bust his neighbors.
“Oh,” Naomi Schneider said, when he told her about the accident he had seen and would have to go to the station to make a report about.
“Actually,” Peter said, “I’m a suspect in a bank robbery.”
Naomi laughed delightedly, which made her bosom jiggle.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Naomi,” Peter said. “And I thank you for the beer—”
“My pleasure,” Naomi interrupted. “You looked so hot!”
“And I look forward to meeting Mr. Schneider.”
“Mel,” she clarified. “But he won’t be home until Thursday. He went to Pittsburgh, this time.”