“Who is that guy?” he asked.
“That is Sergeant Jason Washington. He just told me he used to walk this beat.”
“He doesn’t have any authority here.”
“You tell him that,” Matt said, chuckling as he continued down the alley.
The sound of dying sirens and the squeal of tires announced the arrival of other police vehicles.
The alley between the buildings was pitch dark, and twice Matt stumbled over something he hadn’t seen. There was more light when he reached the end of the alley, coming down what had been in Colonial times a cobblestone street but was now not much more than a garbage-littered alley.He found the Inferno Lounge’s garbage cans. As Jason had said they would be, they were filled to overflowing with kitchen scraps and beer bottles.
He went to a metal door and tried it. It opened.
If there was somebody in here, they’re probably gone. The door would ordinarily be locked.
He stepped to one side, hiding, so to speak, behind the bricks of the building, and then pulled the door fully open.
“Police officers!” he called.
There was no response.
He looked very carefully around the bricks. There was no one in sight, but he could see a corridor dimly illuminated by the lights burning in the kitchen, and beyond that, in the public areas of the bar, or restaurant, or whatever the hell this place was.
“Stay here,” he ordered Officer Daniels, and then entered the building and started down the corridor. Halfway down it, he saw a flight of stairs leading to the basement, and saw lights down there. It was possible that someone was down in the basement; he was pleased with himself for having told the wagon uniform to stay at the back door.
He went carefully through the kitchen, and then into the public area of the restaurant. There was banging on the closed front door of the place, and someone—not Jason, but to judge by the depth of his voice, not the young guy in the wagon, either—was calling, not quite shouting, “Police, open up.”
The door was closed with a keyed dead bolt. There were keys in it. It was hard to unlock. Matt had shoved his pistol in his hip pocket and used both hands to get it open.
There was a uniformed sergeant standing there, and two Highway Patrolmen. Behind them Matt could see Jason Washington looking for all the world like a curious civilian.
“What have you got, Payne?” one of the Highway Patrolmen said. Matt recalled having met him somewhere. He couldn’t recall his name.
“Nothing yet. I figured I’d better let you guys in.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Back door was unlocked. The wagon guy’s covering it.”
“Who are you?” the uniformed sergeant asked.
“He’s Detective Payne of Special Operations,” Jason answered for him. “And I am Sergeant Washington. Nothing, Matt?”
“Nothing on the floor. There’s a basement, I didn’t get down there.”
“I think we should have a look,” Washington said, and moving with a quick grace, suddenly appeared in front of the two Highway Patrolmen and the uniformed sergeant. “Lead on, Matthew!”
Matt turned and walked quickly back through the bar, the restaurant, and the kitchen to the corridor, then started down the stairs. Washington stopped him with a massive hand on his shoulder.
“Announce your arrival,” he said softly. “You don’t know what you’re going to find down there, and if the proprietor, for example, is down there, you want to be sure he knows the man coming down the stairs is a police officer.”
“Police!” Matt called.
“Down here!” a male voice called.
The stairs led to a narrow corridor, and the corridor to a small office.
The first thing Matt saw was a somewhat stocky man in his forties sitting behind a battered desk, in the act of taking a pull from the neck of a bottle of Seagram’s VO. There was a Colt Cobra revolver lying on the desk.