Final Justice (Badge of Honor 8)

“Well, there are certain professional privileges,” Matt said.

“For example?”

“For example, when Terry and I leave here for the Four Seasons, my car is parked right outside on the cobblestones of Stockton Place,” Matt said. “If you tried to park there, Stansfield, you’d be towed.”

“Yes, I know,” J. Andrew Stansfield had said, nodding and seeming a bit confused. Terry Davis had squeezed his arm, and when he looked at her, her eyes were smiling.

And Terry had smelled very nice indeed in his Porsche on the way to the Four Seasons, where he was able-because Sergeant Al Nevins of Dignitary Protection was there awaiting the arrival of Stan Colt and wanted to talk to him-to park very near the door.

“We’re playing games later,” Nevins said. “The limo will take Colt and the Bolinskis-”

“Bolinski as in ‘The Bull’?” Matt interrupted.

Nevins nodded.

“-the limo will take them back to the Ritz, where they will go inside, get on the elevator, go to the basement and out into the alley, where they will get into a Suburban and go to La Famiglia.”

“Clever,” Matt said.

“With a little luck it will work,” Nevins said.

Casimir Bolinski, L.L.D., Esq., whom Matt had never met before, turned out to be a very nice guy who would have been perfectly happy to stay in an anteroom off the dining room with Matt and Terry-whom he knew-during the banquet, had not his wife found him.

“Honey, we’re going to La Famiglia after this. I don’t want to eat any of that fancy French food…”

“You’re going to go in there and sit next to the cardinal and the monsignor, you’re going to drink only water, and when they introduce you, you’re going to hand him this.”

She handed him an envelope containing a check.

“Jesus Christ, Antoinette! That much?”

“You graduated West Catholic,” Mrs. Bolinski said. “You owe them. They tossed Mickey and Stan out. They don’t. Anyway, it’s deductible.”

Mrs. Bolinski, looking not unlike a tugboat easing an aircraft carrier down a river, had then escorted her husband into the dining room.

Terry Davis again smelled delightfully in the Porsche on the way from the Four Seasons to La Famiglia, but there he couldn’t park the Porsche in front, and instead had to take it to the adjacent parking lot.

There were red plastic cones-the kind used to mark lanes on highways-in the first half-dozen parking places by the entrance.

But Terry held his hand as they walked from where he finally found an empty slot, which he decided was more than enough compensation for the inconvenience.

At dinner, he found himself seated beside Casimir Bolinski, Esq., and across from Michael J. O’Hara, who, sensing they had an appreciative audience in Terry Davis, entertained her with stories of their time at West Catholic High School.

The cardinal had not come to La Famiglia, but Monsignor Schneider was there, sitting beside Stan Colt.

More than once, during a meal that began with an enormous antipasto and ended with spumoni onto which a shot of Amaretto had been poured, Miss Davis’s knee brushed against Matt’s. Often enough to allow himself to think it wasn’t entirely accidental.

And there was another indication of good things to come at the first of the two goodnight and farewell sessions. The first was held inside the restaurant.

“You’re just going to have to come to the coast, Matt,” Stan Colt said. “You make him come, Terry.”

“I will,” Terry had said, and squeezed his arm again.

Matt was surprised when they actually left the restaurant that the Classic Livery body wagon with darkened windows wasn’t waiting on the sidewalk for Colt and party, but then he saw Sergeant Nevins and half a dozen men he knew to be detectives discreetly lining the path to the parking lot.

When they got there, Matt saw that the body wagon, Mickey O’Hara’s Buick Rendezvous, a black Oldsmobile, and three unmarked cars were in the spaces that had been blocked off by the red lane markers.

There was a second goodnight and farewell session there. Monsignor Schneider seemed reluctant to say good night, making Matt wonder how deep the cleric had gone into the wine.