The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

“What, Matt?” Margaret asked, a touch of impatience in her voice.

“If you’re going to fight like married people, why don’t you go get married?”

“I’m with him,” Charley said.

“We just can’t, Matt,” Margaret said. “Not right now.”

“It is better to marry than to burn,” Matt quoted sonorously. “Saint Peter.”

“No, it’s not,” Margaret said. “Saint Peter, I mean.”

“It was one of those guys,” Matt said. “Saint Timothy?”

“So what do we do now?” Charley asked.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going home to get some sleep. You can stay with Matt.”

“I’ll take you home,” Charley said flatly. “He’s got a date.”

“You don’t have to take me home.”

“I’ll take you home, and to work.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“You’re not going walking around North Broad Street alone at midnight.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Listen to him, Margaret,” Matt said.

“Oh, God!” she said in resignation.

Charley got off the bar stool.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“We’ll have to get together real soon, Margaret, and do this again,” Matt said.

“You can go to hell too,” Margaret said, but she touched his arm before she left.

Matt watched as the two of them walked across the room, and then signaled for another drink.

He did not have a date. But when Charley had called, he had realized that he did not want to sit in a bar somewhere and watch television with Charley.

What he wanted to do was get laid. He had been doing very poorly in that department lately. If he was with Charley, getting laid was, now that Charley had found Margaret, out of the question. Charley was a very moral person.

The trouble, he thought, as he watched the bartender take a bill and make change, is that men want to get laid and women want a relationship. Since I don’t want a relationship, consequently, I’m not getting laid very much.

As he took his first sip of the fresh drink, he considered the possibility of hanging around the FOP and seeing what developed. There were sometimes unattached women around the bar. Some of them had a connection with either the police or the court establishment, clerks, secretaries, girls like that. And some were police groupies, who liked to hang around with cops.

Rumor had it that the latter group screwed like minks. The trouble there was the groupies, so to speak, had their groupies, cops who liked to hang around with girls who screwed like minks.

The demand for their services, Matt decided, overwhelmed the supply. If I try to move in on what looks to be someone else’s sure thing for the night, I’m liable to get knocked on my ass.

And the others, the secretaries and the clerks, the nice girls, some of whom seemed to have been looking at me with what could be interest, were, like the vast majority of their sisters, not looking to get laid, but rather for a relationship.

Back to square one.