The Victim (Badge of Honor 3)

Matt had met Amanda only four days before, at the beginning of what they were now calling "the wedding week." He had not at first been pleased with the prospect. When informed by the bridegroom-to-be that it had been arranged that he serve as escort to Miss Spencer throughout the week, his response had been immediate and succinct: " Fuck you, Chad, no goddamn way!"

Chad was Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV (University of Pennsylvania '73) of Bala-Cynwyd and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he was a second lieutenant, United States Marine Corps Reserve. Matt Payne and Chad Nesbitt had been best friends since they had met, at age seven, at Episcopal Academy. No one was surprised when Chad announced that Matt would be his best man when he married Miss Daphne Elizabeth Browne (Bennington '73) of Merion and Palm Beach.

"I told you," Mr. Payne had firmly told Lieutenant Nesbitt, "the bachelor party and the wedding, and that's it."

"She's Daffy's maid of honor," Chad protested.

"I don't give a damn if she's queen of the nymphomaniacs, no, goddammit, no."

"You don't like girls anymore?"

"Not when more than two or three of them are gathered together for something like this. And I've got a job, you know."

"Tell me about it, Kojak," Chad Nesbitt had replied.

"Chad, I really don't have the time," Matt Payne said. "Even if I wanted to."

"I'm beginning to think you're serious about this, buddy."

"You're goddamn right I'm serious,"

"Okay, okay. Tell you what. Show up for the rehearsal and I'll work something out."

"All I have to do is show up sober in a monkey suit and hand you the ring. I don't have to rehearse that."

"It's tails, asshole, you understand that?Not a dinner jacket."

"I will dazzle one and all with my sartorial elegance," Payne said.

"If you don't show up for the rehearsal, Daffy's mother will have hysterics."

That was, Matt Payne realized, less a figure of speech than a statement of fact. Mrs. Soames T. Browne was prone to emotional outbursts. Matt still had a clear memory of her shrieking "You dirty little boy" at him the day she discovered him playing doctor with Daphne at age five. And he knew that nothing that had happened since had really changed her opinion of his character. He knew, too, that she had tried to have Chad pick someone else to serve as his best man.

"Okay," Matt Payne had said, giving in. "The rehearsal, the bachelor dinner, and the wedding. But that's it. Deal?"

"Deal," Lieutenant Nesbitt had said, shaking his hand and smiling, then adding, "You rotten son of a bitch."

Matt Payne had been waiting inside the vestibule of St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church on Locust Street, between Rittenhouse Square and South Broad Street in central Philadelphia, when the rehearsal party arrived in a convoy of three station wagons, two Mercurys, and a Buick.

Mrs. Soames T. Browne, who was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a flowing light blue silk dress briefly offered Matt Payne a hand covered in an elbow-length glove.

"Hello, Matthew. How nice to see you. Be sure to give my love to your mother and father."

"I'll do that, Mrs. Browne," Matt said. "Thank you."

She did not introduce him to the blonde with Daffy.

"Come along, girls," Mrs

. Browne said, snatching back her hand and sweeping quickly through the vestibule into the church.

"I'm Matt Payne," Matt said to the blonde, "since Daffy apparently isn't going to introduce us."

"Sorry," Daffy said. "Amanda, Matt. Don't be nice to him; he's being a real prick."

"Who is Daffy Browne and why is she saying all those terrible things about me?"

"You know damn well why," Daffy said.