Patricia and Brewster C. Payne had been in the Recovery Room when Matt was taken there from the surgical suite. It was strictly against hospital policy, but the chairman of the board of trustees of Frankford Hospital entrusted his legal affairs to Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester. A telephone call to him had resulted not only in a telephone call to the senior staff physician, but the physical presence of that gentleman himself, three minutes later, to make sure that whatever Brewster Payne thought the hospital should do for his son was being done.
Aside from access to the Recovery Room, the only request Brewster Payne had made was that Matt be given a private room, something the senior staff physician had already decided to provide to spare some other patient from the horde of people who had come to the hospital to see Matt Payne.
The mayor, the police commissioner, two chief inspectors, and their respective entourages, plus a number of less senior police officers, plus representatives of the print and electronic media had begun to descend on the hospital at about the same time screaming sirens on two Highway Patrol cars had announced the arrival of the Payne family.
While the press could be required to wait in the main lobby, the others immediately made it
plain they would wait right where they were, overflowing the small waiting room on the surgical floor, until Officer Payne was out of surgery and his condition known.
And when that had come to pass—the removal of a bullet from the calf musculature was a fairly simple procedure, routinely handled by surgical residents half a dozen times on any given weekend—and Young Payne was taken to the Recovery Room, the Hospital Security Staff was unable to deter the mayor’s driver from carrying out his assigned mission—“Go down and bring the press up here. They’ll want a picture of me with Payne when he wakes up.”
The senior staff physician was able to delay the picture taking until the staff had put Young Payne in a private room, and after the mayor had taken the necessary steps to keep the public aware that their mayor, in his never-ceasing efforts to rid the streets of Philadelphia of crime, was never far from the action, he left, and so did perhaps half of the people who had arrived at about the time he had.
“You’ll need pajamas,” Patricia Payne said to her son. “And your toilet things—”
“I won’t be in here long,” Matt said.
“You don’t know that,” Patricia Payne said, and looked at her daughter, Amelia.
“I don’t know how long they’re going to keep him, Mother,” she replied. “But I’ll find out. I’ll call you at home and let you know. And I’ll go by his apartment and get him what he needs. I have to come back out here anyway. You and Dad go on home.”
“I suppose he should rest,” Patricia Payne gave in. She leaned over her son and kissed him. “Do what they tell you to do, for once.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Matt said.
“If you need anything, Matt,” Brewster Payne said, “I’m as close as that phone.”
“Thank you, Dad. I don’t think I’ll need anything.”
“I’ll call as soon as I have a chance to go home, change, and get to the office.”
“Go on, you two, get out of here,” Amelia Payne said.
They left.
“Thank you,” Matt said when the door had closed.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself, you sonofabitch,” Amy Payne snapped. “I did that for them, not you.”
“Wow!”
“You bastard! Are you trying to drive Mother crazy, or what?” She dipped into an extra large purse, came out with a copy of the Bulletin and threw it at him. “I hope she doesn’t see that!”
The front page showed Matt, bloody-faced, holding his gun on Charles D. Stevens.
“Hey, I didn’t do this on purpose. That bastard was shooting at me.”
“That bastard died thirty minutes ago. You can carve another notch on your gun, Jesse James.”
“He died?” Matt asked, wanting confirmation.
“I didn’t think Mother needed to know that.”
She looked at him. Their eyes met.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked.
“I’m not about to wallow in remorse, if that’s what you’re hoping. He was trying to kill me.”