“It happened just once,” Matt said. “She was at a party downstairs. She saw my gun and got turned on by it. She was a little drunk.”
“Are you going to pursue it?” Wohl asked, and then, before Matt coul
d reply, asked, “What do you mean she got turned on by your gun?”
“It was a little frightening. She wanted to know if it was the gun I used on the serial rapist. It aroused her.”
“Well, are you going to pursue it?”
“What do you do to get out of something like this?”
“You thank God the lady’s leaving town. In the meantime, don’t answer your telephone.”
“Anything like this ever happen to you?”
“You mean a gun fetishist?”
“I mean a married woman.”
“Yeah. Once. It was very painful.”
Matt picked up his glass and leaned back in the leather armchair, looking thoughtfully into his beer.
I wonder why I told him that? Wohl thought. I damned sure never told anybody else.
“I don’t want to sound like I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t actually seduce her,” Matt said.
“No man has ever seduced a mature woman,” Wohl said. “And probably very few virgins have ever been seduced. The way it works is that they decide who they want to have take them to bed, and then they arrange to be seduced.”
Matt looked up at him.
“You really believe that?”
I don’t know if I do or not. It sounds plausible. But what I was really trying to do was cheer him up. More than that, to point him onto Ye Olde Straight and Narrow.
Why the hell am I doing that? What the hell am I doing here, anyway? I could have told him about the FBI investigation on the phone.
The answer, obviously, is that I am very fond of this kid. He is, I suppose, the little brother that I never had. So what’s wrong with that?
“It sounds plausible,” Wohl said with a grin.
“So I’m not on your shit list?”
“You’re not on mine, but I’m apparently on everybody else’s.”
“They’re not blaming you for what happened?”
“It’s a question of who had the responsibility. That’s spelled WOHL.”
“You couldn’t be expected to sit outside his house yourself,” Payne argued. “If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s Jack Malone’s.”
“Malone works for me,” Wohl said. “Whatever he does, or doesn’t do, is my responsibility.”
“Loyalty down and loyalty up, huh?”
“Is something wrong with that?”
Matt shrugged and looked uncomfortable.