“Wohl?”
“Well, he is your boss, and he was the first one who knew.”
“Yeah, I guess he was.”
“And he’s not married, and I suspect that he’s under terrible pressure—”
“You can say that again.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Would you ask him?”
“For when?”
“For tonight.”
“I’ll ask him.”
“And maybe Captain and Mrs. Sabara?”
“I can ask.”
And I will think of one more couple. Somebody who can do David some good. I would like to ask Brewster and Patricia Payne, but with their boy in the condition he is, that probably isn’t a good idea. I’ll think of someone. Since my husband-to-be wants to be a policeman, it is clearly the duty of his wife-to-be to do everything in her power to see that he becomes commissioner.
“You ask the minute you get to work, and call me and tell me what they said.”
“That sounds like a wifely order.”
“Yes, I guess it does. Do you want to change your mind about anything?”
Smiling broadly, he shook his head no.
She got up and went to his end of the table and stood behind his chair and put her arms around him.
And so it was that when Assistant District Attorney Farnsworth Stillwell finally managed to get Staff Inspector Peter Wohl on the telephone at half past one that afternoon, Wohl was able to make the absolutely truthful statement, “Well, that’s very kind of you, Farnsworth, but I have previous plans.”
He was to take cocktails and dinner with Miss Martha Peebles and her fiancé at Miss Peebles’s residence, primarily because when Dave Pekach asked him, Pekach took him by surprise, and he could think of no excuse not to accept that would not hurt Pekach’s feelings.
Until Stillwell had called, he had taken some consolation by thinking that the food would probably be good, and even if that didn’t happen, he would be able to satisfy his curiosity about what the inside of the mansion behind the walls at 606 Glengarry Lane looked like.
Now he was extremely grateful to have been the recipient of Miss Peebles’s kind invitation.
I may even carry her flowers.
“Can’t you get out of it?” Stillwell insisted. “Peter, this is important. Possibly to both of us.”
You for sure, and me possibly. Fuck you, Stillwell.
“I just can’t. One of my men is having a little party to celebrate his engagement. I have to be there. You understand.”
“Which one of your men?”
You are a persistent bastard, aren’t you?
“Captain David Pekach, as a