The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

“And your name is Matt—Matthew—Payne, right?”

“Guilty,” Matt said. “You have the advantage, mademoiselle, on me.”

“Don’t go away,” she said, and then asked. “What is that?”

“Famous Grouse.”

He watched as she went to the bar and returned with another drink for him, and what, to judge by the gin on her breath, was a martini on the rocks.

She handed him the Scotch and took a swallow of her martini.

“I needed that,” she said. “The way they were talking about you—‘Poor Patricia’s Boy’—I thought you’d have acne and wear short pants.”

“Who was talking about me?”

“It was the only interesting conversation I heard here tonight. You’ll never guess who lives upstairs: Poor Patricia Payne’s Boy, they sent him to UP and he paid them back by joining the cops right after he graduated. He’s the one who shot the serial rapist in the head.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s madam, not mademoiselle, by the way. I’m sort of married.”

“What does ‘sort of married’ mean?”

“Among other things, that he’s not here tonight,” she said. “Can we let it go at that?”

“Sure.”

“Did you really?”

“Did I really what?”

“Shoot that man in the head?”

“Jesus!”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, and took another sip of her martini. “Is that the gun you did it with?”

“Does it matter?”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Can we change the subject to something more pleasant, like cancer, for example?”

“So you live upstairs, do you? In what Charles Dickens would call the ‘garret’?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you going to ask me if I want to go to your apartment and look at your etchings, Matthew Payne?”

“I don’t have any etchings,” he said.

“I’ll settle for a look at your gun,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” she said. “You show me what I want to see, and I will show you what you—judging by the way you’ve been looking down my front—want to see.”