“Can you talk?” Detective Olivia Lassiter inquired.
“Yeah.”
“They have a positive ID on one of the doers in the Roy Rogers job-”
“I heard,” Matt interrupted. “And they’re running an around-the-clock surveillance, which is why they threw us out of Homicide.”
There was a silence.
“How’s your hand?” Olivia asked after a long moment.
He looked at it.
“Fine,” he said. “I had just about forgotten about it.”
“Oh.”
Another silence.
“I thought maybe you needed the bandage changed,” she said, finally.
“No. It looks fine.”
“Oh.”
Jesus Christ, Matthew, you are the dumbest sonofabitch in Philadelphia!!!
“Where are you, Mother?”
“I’m not your mother.”
“Where are you, Not My Mother?”
“In the Starbucks at Twelfth and Market.”
“What are you doing there? I thought you went to Homicide?”
“I hung around Homicide for a while, made a few more calls. Then I came here and waited until I thought you’d probably put Colt to bed. Then I called.”
“I’m at Nineteenth and Walnut. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“No.”
“For Christ’s sake, I’ll take you home.”
“If you come here, somebody who knows one or both of us will see us.”
“Then go stand in the dark around the corner on Twelfth and Filbert. I’ll pick you up there and take you home.”
There was a long pause again, before she asked, “If I took a cab to Rittenhouse Square, how could I get in the building this time of night?”
Another pause, this one on Matt’s part, and shorter.
“When you get out of the cab, I’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”
And one final pause before she said, “The way you were talking before, I thought you didn’t want me to come over there.”
"Oh, baby!”