“I asked Penny if she knew where you were,” Wohl said. “Got a minute, Matt?”
“Yes, sir. Sure. You know Chad, don’t you?”
“Hello, Nesbitt. How are you?”
“Inspector.”
“Could you give us a minute?”
“Certainly,” Chad said. “I’ll be outside.”
Wohl waited until they had gone and had closed the door behind them.
“You ever see one of these?” Matt asked, holding the Model 1911 out to Wohl.
“I just heard about you climbing out on the ledge at the Bellvue, you damned fool,” Wohl said.
After a just-perceptible hesitation, Matt asked, “Who told you? Harris?”
“Actually, it was the Mayor. Harris told the Mayor and the Mayor told me.”
“The Mayor?”
“The Mayor thinks it makes you a cop with great big balls,” Wohl said. “I wanted to make sure you understand that in my book it makes you a goddamned fool.”
Matt didn’t reply for a moment.
“Inspector—”
“Just when I start to think that maybe you’ve started to grow up, you do something like that. Jesus H. Christ, Matt!”
“Are you willing to listen to me telling you that ledge was eighteen inches wide?”
“Be in my office at quarter to seven in the morning,” Wohl said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You and Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach are going to serve a warrant of arrest on Lieutenant Seymour Meyer.”
“We are? All of a sudden? What happened? Who’s Weisbach?”
“This is in the nature of a reward,” Wohl said. “I have been ordered by the Mayor to let you in on the arrest. He thinks your goddamned fool stunt on the ledge entitles you, because at two A.M., Paulo Cassandro and Meyer had an angry discussion, during which they mentioned names and specific sums and Meyer’s oral sexual proclivities, all of which were recorded by the microphone you put back in place.”
“No crap? We got ’em?”
“If it was up to me, tomorrow morning you’d be back on recovered stolen automobiles.”
“Ah, come on, Inspector!”
“If you had fallen off that ledge, Supercop, or if you had been seen up there, all the time and money and effort we spent trying to get Meyer would have gone down the toilet. The conversation we got, or one just as incriminating, would have been repeated in a day or two. Don’t you start patting yourself on the back. You acted like a goddamned fool, not like a detective with enough sense to find his ass with both hands.”
He locked eyes with Matt until Matt gave in and shrugged his shoulders in chagrin.
“Quarter to seven, Detective Payne,” Wohl said. “Have a nice night.”
He walked out of the gun room.
Matt replaced the Colt Model 1911 in its cabinet, and was trying to put the cabinet lock back in place when Chad, Penny, and Daffy came back in the room.