The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

“Mr. Callis personally. Not one of his assistants, not even Harrison J. Hormel, Esquire.”

“You have a reason for saying that?” Coughlin asked.

“The same reason you gave Danny Justice here when you suggested he delay informing the deputy commissioner of the situation—to reduce the risk that the wrong people might learn of our activity.”

“And what, Jason, would you suggest we do about Mayor Carlucci?” Wohl asked. “When do we tell him?”

“I am but a lowly sergeant, Inspector,” Washington said. “I don’t have to make dangerous decisions like that.”

Coughlin looked at Wohl.

“The minute we tell him what this Prasko did, he’ll go ballistic,” he said. “Unless we have a plan, a detailed plan, one that he can’t find fault with, he’ll tell us what to do. So let’s come up with one—a damned good one—before we call him.”

Wohl grunted his agreement.

“Have we heard anything from Harrisburg?” Washington asked.

“The last I have is that Matt doesn’t have anything except that Officer Calhoun went into a safe-deposit at the bank, and that the woman in charge says she has no record of his doing so.”

“That’s the last I had,” Washington said. “But that suggests to me there’s something there.”

Wohl grunted his agreement again.

“When are we going to find out more?” Coughlin asked.

“Probably in the morning,” Wohl replied. “Why are you asking?”

“Calhoun may be the key to this, is what I’m thinking,” Coughlin said. “Presuming there is something in the safe-deposit box. We arrest him first—”

“We don’t know if he’s still in Harrisburg,” Washington interjected. “If, presuming he did put something incriminating in the safe-deposit box, I think it’s likely that he would immediately return to Philadelphia after having done so.”

“This is hanging by a thread, isn’t it?” Wohl said. “So let’s see what we do have, and do this one slow step at a time.”

He reached for the telephone.

“Operator, person-to-person, Matthew Payne, Penn-Harris Hotel, Harrisburg . . .”

He stopped when Washington held his hand out for the telephone, then gave it to him.

From memory, Washington gave the operator the number of the Penn-Harris Hotel, and then the number of Matt’s room.

“Make that station-to-station, please, Operator,” he said, and handed the telephone back to Wohl.

Until the third ring, Matt Payne seriously considered not answering the telephone, and even specifically—by picking it up, immediately hanging up again, and then leaving it off the hook, so that if they called back there would be a busy signal—how not to answer it.

Susan was asleep in his arms, really out. She was exhausted, he had decided, both by the intensity of their coupling—couplings—and by her emotional state. They had screwed, he had somewhat ungallantly decided, as if it might be the last time, and when he thought that it was a genuine possibility, the ramifications of it had brought him back to wakefulness.

She stirred but did not waken when he moved to pick up the telephone.

I’m going to have to wake her and send her home soon.

“Payne,” he said softly into the telephone.

“It’s Peter, Matt.”

“What’s up?”

“There’s been a couple of unexpected developments,” Wohl said. “Things are going much more quickly than anyone expected.”