“Stan,” Olivia said. “I’m not working Dignitary Protection. I have to do one of two things: go back to the phone in Homicide, or go home, so I can start off first thing in the morning.”
“You’ve already put a lot of hours in today,” Matt said. “We’ll take you home…” And then he had a second thought. “Why don’t we drop you at Homicide, and you see what the Captain or Washington wants you to do?”
It took her a moment to understand what he really meant.
“If anything interesting has come up, I could call you,” she said.
“Great idea!” Colt said.
“Hay-zus, you got the number of the sergeant downstairs? ” Matt asked.
Martinez took out his telephone, punched in numbers, and handed the phone to him.
“Sergeant Nevins.”
“Matt Payne,” Matt said. “Mr. Colt wants to ride around town a little. Is that going to pose any problems for you?”
“You want to take a couple of uniforms with you?”
“No. I was thinking about the press. They still there?”
“Yeah. We can handle them. Just give a couple of minutes’ notice.”
“We’ll be down in five minutes,” Matt said.
“I really appreciate this, buddy,” Stan Colt said.
When officers commanding, for example, the Impact Unit and Internal Affairs get an order directly from the first deputy commissioner, they tend to drop whatever they might have been doing and start to comply with the order. The same is true when the commanding officer of a detective division gets any kind of an order from the chief inspector of detectives.
This being the case, Inspector Wohl had been more than a little surprised that the first person to respond to the summons issued was Steven J. Cohen, Esq., head of the District Attorney’s Homicide Unit, a dapper, tanned, well-dressed forty-year-old.
“That was quick, Steve,” Wohl greeted him. “Thank you.”
“I would say I heard my mistress’s voice, but that would be subject to misinterpretation,” Cohen said. “I was in Center City. Please don’t ask me why.”
“Why were you in Center City, Steve?” Wohl asked.
“Would you believe my wife is a Stan Colt fan? And/or that I paid a hundred dollars each for two tickets entitling us to stand in a long line in the Bellvue-Stratford to shake his hand, and two very watery drinks? And that when Al called me, I was in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton, where he is staying, and where, my wife hoped, he would appear?”
“I believe you,” Wohl said. “If you can’t believe a lawyer, who can you believe?”
Cohen gave him the finger.
“What’s up, Peter?”
“We’ve identified one of the doers in the Roy Rogers job,” Peter began.
He had just about finished when Inspector Michael Weisbach of Internal Affairs walked into Homicide. Weisbach was a slightly built man who wore mock tortoise-frame glasses and always managed to look rumpled. Weisbach and Wohl were longtime friends.
He nodded at Cohen and looked expectantly at Wohl, but didn’t say anything.
“So how’s by you, Michael?” Wohl asked, finally, in a creditable mock-Yiddish accent.
Cohen chuckled.
“What the hell is this all about, Peter?” Weisbach asked, not able to resist a smile.
“I would deeply appreciate your patience, Inspector, until Captain Mikkles of Impact and Captain Calmon of Southwest Detectives get here,” Wohl said. “I’ve just explained the whole thing to the shyster here, and I’d rather do it only once more, when everybody is here.”