“We could thaw a steak.”
“Shrimp’s fine. Daffy was playing matchmaker again. I’d already met her. She’s from Los Angeles. She’s handling, I guess is the word, Stan Colt when he comes to town. His real name is Stanley Coleman.”
“I saw it in the paper. Are you involved with that somehow? ”
“Peter sent me to a meeting to see what Dignitary Protection is going to need to protect Super Cop. Monsignor Schneider-who sitteth at the right hand of the Bishop-was there. I think he’s a cop groupie. He knew all about Doylestown. Anyway, he asked for me by name. When Super Cop, aka Colt aka Coleman comes to town, I’ll be temporarily assigned to Dignitary Protection. Terry said he’s interested in very young women. That ought to make it interesting.”
“Is that the young woman’s name, ‘Terry’?”
“Terry Davis. Two ‘r’s and a ‘y.’ She said her father’s a lawyer with movie connections, and he got her the job with GAM. Which stands for Global Artists Management.”
“I think I know him,” Brewster Payne said. “If it’s the same fellow, he masterfully defends, whenever challenged, the motion picture industry’s amazingly imaginative accounting practices.”
“Interesting,” Matt said. “If you happen to bump into him…"”
“I’m getting the impression that you are somewhat taken with this young lady, and therefore not entirely unhappy with the prospect of protecting… what did you call him? ‘Super Cop’?”
“She’s a blonde. Nice legs,” Matt said. “And she knows how to peel shrimp. What more can one ask for?”
“What indeed?” Brewster Payne said.
“Matt,” Patricia Payne said at the door, “I told you I was going to open a bottle of champagne.”
“I needed a little liquid courage to face Sigmund Freud,” Matt said.
She turned without replying, and after a moment, her son and husband followed her into the kitchen.
The three women were standing around the chopping block in the middle of the kitchen. They each held a champagne glass, and there were two more on the chopping block. And something else, wrapped in a handkerchief.
Matt and his father picked up the champagne stems.
“To Sergeant Payne,” Patricia Payne said, and they all touched glasses.
Matt took a sip and set it down.
“I’ve got something for you,” she said. “I wanted the family to be together when I gave it to you.”
She picked up the handkerchief and handed it to him. Even before he unwrapped it, Matt knew what it was. It was a police badge, and he knew whose.
“Your father’s,” she said.
Matt looked at the sergeant’s badge, Number 471, of the Police Department of the City of Philadelphia.
“When Denny called,” Patricia Payne went on, “he said
that he could arrange for you to be assigned your father’s number if I wanted. I told him I thought you would like that. And he asked me if I happened to still have it, and I told him I’d have to look. I found it. It was in the attic. And your father’s off-duty gun, the snub-nosed. 38.”
He looked at his mother but didn’t say anything.
“Your father was a good man, Matt,” his mother said. “A good police officer.”
“I have two fathers,” Matt said, his voice breaking. “My other father is a good man, too.”
Brewster Payne looked at him.
“Write this down, Matt. Never reply to a heartfelt compliment. You never can come up with something worth saying.”
He put his arm around Matt’s shoulder, and then embraced him.