"Thank you."
"You been drinking?"
"I had a couple of drinks," Matt said.
"Wedding, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you always take a couple of drinks at a wedding, don't you? And you made it across the street in a straight line," the cop said.
"Yes, sir."
"You open to a little friendly advice?"
"Sure."
"Dressed up like that, driving a car like this, this time of night, with a couple of drinks in you, maybe stopping in a neighborhood like this isn't such a good idea. You know what I mean?"
"I think so," Matt said. "Yes. I know what you mean."
"Good night, sir," the cop said. "Drive careful."
He walked back across Lancaster Avenue, got in the 19^th District RPC, and drove off.
He had no idea I'm cop. Obviously I don't look like a cop. Or act like one. But I know that, don't I, that I don't act like a cop?
****
As Matt swung wide to turn off Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill and to enter into the driveway that led to Peter Wohl's apartment, the Porsche's headlights swept across a massive chestnut tree and he thought he could see a faint scarring of the bark.
He thought: I killed a man there.
Warren K. Fletcher, 34, of Germantown, his brain already turned to pulp by a 168-grain round-nosed lead bullet fired from Officer Matt Payne's.38-caliber Chief's Special snub-nosed revolver, a naked civilian tied up with lamp cord under a tarpaulin in the back of his van, had crashed the van into that chestnut tree, ending what Michael J. O'Hara had called, in thePhiladelphia Bulletin, "The Northwest Philadelphia Serial Rapist's Reign of Terror.".
Matt recalled Chad asking him what it was like to have killed a man. And he remembered what he had replied: "I haven't had nightmares or done a lot of soul-searching about it. Nothing like that."
It was true, of course, but he suddenly understood why he had said that: It hadn't bothered him because it was unreal. It hadn't happened. Or it had happened to somebody else. Or in a movie. It was beyond credibility that Matthew M. Payne, of Wallingford and Episcopal Academy, former treasurer of Delta Phi Omicron at, and graduate of, the University of Pennsylvania, had been given a badge and a gun by the City of Philadelphia and had actually taken that gun from its holster and killed somebody with it.
He drove down the driveway. There was a Buick Limited parked in front of one of Peter Wohl's two garages. There was nothing on the car to suggest that it was a Department car, and he wondered who it belonged to.
He got out of the Porsche and climbed the stairs to Wohl's door and knocked.
A silver-haired, stocky man in his sixties, jacketless, his tie pulled down, wearing braces, opened the door.
"You must be Matt Payne," he said, offering one hand. The other held a squat whiskey glass. "I'm Augie Wohl. Peter's taking a leak. Come on in."
Matt knew that Peter Wohl's father was Chief Inspector August Wohl, retired, but he had never met him. He was an imposing man, Matt thought, just starting to show the signs of age. He was also, Matt realized, half in the bag.
"How do you do, sir?" Matt said.
"Let me fix you a little something," Chief Wohl said. "What's your pleasure?"
"I'm not sure that I should," Matt said.
"Oh, hell, have one. You're among friends."
"A little Scotch then, please," Matt said.