The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

Lari dipped into an enormous purse and held up a plastic bag full of bandages and antiseptic.

“I don’t know him as well as you do, Doctor,” she said. “But that’s why I’m here too. He is that category of patient best described as a pain-in-the-you-know-what. I was filling in on the surgical floor at Frankford when they brought him in.”

“Well, that was certainly nice of you,” Amy said. “Apparently, you don’t know my brother very well. If you did, you would encourage gangrene.”

“No,” Lari said. “That would put him back in the hospital. Anything to prevent that.”

They smiled at each other.

Matt came into the room, supporting himself on a cane.

“Oh, good!” he said. “Everybody’s here. Choir practice can begin.”

“I promised Mother I would see that you were eating,” Amy said. “What are your plans for that?”

“We’re going out for the worst food in Philadelphia,” Matt said. “You’re welcome to join us, Amy.”

“I know I shouldn’t ask, but curiosity overwhelms me. Where are you going to get the worst food in Philadelphia?”

“At the FOP,” Matt replied. “As a special dispensation, because I have been a very good boy, I have permission to go there, providing I don’t drink too much and I come directly home afterward.”

“Actually, I’m looking forward to it,” Jack Matthews said. “I’ve never been there.”

“I think I’ll pass, thank you just the same,” Amy said.

“You’re a cop, and you’ve never been to the FOP?” Lari Matsi asked.

“Oh, come on, Amy,” Matt said. “I’ll even buy you a chili dog.”

“I haven’t had supper,” Amy said. “For some perverse reason, a chili dog has a certain appeal to me.”

“How is it,” Lari pursued, “that you’ve never been to the FOP?”

“He’s not a real cop,” Charley said. “More like a Junior G-man.”

“In deference to the ladies, Officer McFadden,” Jack Matthews said. “I will not suggest that you attempt a physiologically impossible act of self-impregnation.”

Matt laughed. After a moment, Amy did too, and then Lari.

“Then what’s the gun for?” Lari asked.

“I work for the Justice Department,” Jack replied.

“He’s an FBI agent, Lari,” Matt said.

“Oh, really?”

Matt saw the way Lari was looking at Jack Matthews, and knew that whatever chance there might have been for him to know Lari Matsi in the biblical sense had just gone up in smoke.

“Are you here officially?” Amy asked. “I mean, are you part of Matt’s bodyguard, or whatever it’s called?”

“Actually, I came to play chess,” Jack said. “But these evil people pressed intoxicants on me. Have I shattered your faith in the FBI?”

“Yeah,” Amy said, smiling.

Yeah, you are here officially, Matt thought, or at least quasi-officially. You came here, under cover of playing chess, to tell me that yes, indeed, the rumors are true. I am to be investigated by the FBI regarding formal charges made that I violated the civil rights of Charles David Stevens, Esq., by shooting the murderous sonofabitch.

“Has any thought been given to how we’re going to get Matt—I guess I mean all of us—from here to the FOP?” Amy asked. “I don’t have my car.”