Jason ignored the question.
“I wanted to bawl him out for that. And alone.”
“So you went to the bar at the Rittenhouse Club?”
“That was after I bawled him out.”
“After you bawled him out, you felt sorry for him?”
“I felt sorry for myself. I wanted a drink, and he didn’t have anything.”
“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Martha said, “and accept that story.”
“Thank you.”
“Do want something to eat? Coffee? Another drink?”
“If I told you what I really want, you’d accuse me of…”
“Oddly enough, I was thinking along those lines myself,” Martha said. “Why don’t you get one of those champagne splits from the fridge, while I turn off the lights.”
When Detective Wallace J. Milham walked into the Homicide Division, he saw Detective Matthew M. Payne sitting at an unoccupied desk reading the Daily News. When Payne saw him, he closed the newspaper and stood up.Wally beckoned to him with his finger and led him into one of the interview rooms, remembering as he passed through the door that he had the previous morning given a statement of his own in the same goddamn room.
Milham sat down in the interviewee’s chair, a steel version of a captain’s chair, firmly bolted to the floor, with a pair of handcuffs locked to it through a hole in the seat.
He motioned for Payne to close the door.
Payne handed him two sheets of typewriter paper.
“I didn’t know how you wanted to handle this,” Payne said. “But I went ahead and typed out this.”
Milham read Matt’s synopsis of what had happened at the Inferno Lounge. It wasn’t up to Washington’s standards, but he was impressed with the clarity, organization, and completeness. And with the typing. There were no strike-overs.
Why the hell am I surprised? He works for Washington.
“What do you do for Washington?” he wondered aloud.
Payne looked uncomfortable.
“Whatever he tells me to do,” he said. “That wasn’t intended to be a flip answer.”
He doesn’t want to talk about what he does for Washington. That shouldn’t surprise me either. I don’t know what they’ve got Jason doing, but whatever it is, somebody thinks it’s more valuable to the Department than his working Homicide. And this guy works for him.
“Payne, I’m sorry I jumped on your ass at the Inferno. I had a really bad day yesterday, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“No. I was out of line. You were right.”
There was a knock at the door. Wally pushed himself out of the steel captain’s chair and went to it and opened it.
A portly detective Matt recognized stood there.
“Mr. Atchison and his attorney, Mr. Sidney Margolis, are here,” he said formally, and then he recognized Matt. “Whaddayasay, Payne?”
Summers shrugged, a gesture Milham interpreted to mean Fuck you, too, and went out of the interview room.
“You know Summers?”
“The sonofabitch and another one named Kramer had me in here when I shot Stevens. The way they acted, I thought they were his big brothers.”