Chason started out of the office.
“Phil, you want to get out of that piece of shit you’re driving, I’ll make you a deal on something better.”
“Not right now, Joey, but I’ll consider that an open offer.”
“It’s an open offer,” Joey said.
Chason left the office. Joey went to the venetian blinds and watched through them until Chason had left the lot.
Then he left his office.
“I’ve got to see a man about a dog, Helene,” he said.
He went out and got into a red Cadillac Eldorado convertible and drove off the lot. Six blocks away, he pulled into an Amoco station and stopped the car by an outside pay phone.
He dropped a coin in the slot and dialed a number from memory.
“This is Joey. I need to talk to him,” he said.
“Yes?” a new voice responded a minute later.
“This is Joey, Mr. S.,” Joey said. “I just left the retired cop. I think we had better talk, if you have time.”
“Come right now, Joey,” Vincenzo Savarese said.
TWELVE
Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin looked up from the mountain of paper on his desk and saw Michael J. O’Hara sitting on his secretary’s desk.
“How long have you been out there, Mickey?” Coughlin called.
“You looked like you were busy,” O’Hara said.
“I told him I’d let you know he was out here,” Veronica Casey, Coughlin’s secretary, said.
“Never too busy for you, Mickey,” Coughlin said, motioning for O’Hara to come into his office.
“Oh, you silver-tongued Irishman, you,” O’Hara said, and slumped into one of the two armchairs in the room. “What’s going around here you don’t want me to know about?”
“There’s a long list of things like that,” Coughlin said. “You have something specific in mind?”
“Actually, what I had in mind was that you and I should go somewhere and have a little sip of something. Maybe two sips. Maybe even, if you don’t have something on, dinner. You got plans?”
“No,” Coughlin said. He looked at his watch. “I didn’t realize it was so late.” He raised his voice. “Go home, Veronica!”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Put this stuff away, and we’ll start again in the morning.”
“Okay,” she said, coming into the office and gathering up the papers on Coughlin’s desk. “He skipped lunch,” she said to O’Hara, “so eat first before you do a lot of sipping.”
“Okay,” O’Hara said. He waited until she had left the office, and then said, “She’s in love with you. Why don’t you marry her?”
“She has a husband, as you damned well know.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Go to hell, Mickey,” Coughlin said, laughing. “But she’s right. I didn’t have any lunch. I need to put something in my stomach.”