The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

"You were always a tough little girl, Penny," Matt said after a moment. "I think you're going to be all right."

Did I mean that, or did I just say it to be kind?

"I wish I was sure you meant that," Penny said.

He shrugged, and then looked around for the waitress and, when he had caught her eye, signaled for another beer.

"On the way to the airplane, we're going to have to get you some Sen-Sen or something. I don't want Amy or your mother to smell booze on your breath."

"Did they tell you to make sure I didn't get…anything I wasn't supposed to have?"

"They knew I wouldn't give you, or let you get, anything to suck up your nose."

"Detective Payne, right?"

He nodded.

"And what did they say about talking to me about…about what happened?"

"About what, what happened?"

"You know what I mean," she said, somewhat snappishly. "Aboutwho I mean. Anthony."

The waitress delivered the beer.

"Get me the bill, please," Matt said.

Penny waited until the waitress was out of earshot.

"I loved him, Matt."

"Jesus Christ!" he said disgustedly.

"I'd hoped you would understand. I guess I should have known better."

"DeZego, Anthony J., 'Tony the Zee,'" Matt recited bitterly, " truck driver, soldier in the Savarese family. I'm not even sure that he had made his bones. And incidentally, loving husband and beloved father of three."

"You're a sonofabitch!"

"For Christ's sake, Penny. He's dead. Let it go at that! Be glad, for Christ's sake!"

She glowered at him. He picked up his beer glass and as he drank from it met her eyes. After a moment she averted hers.

"I don't know what that means," she said softly, after a moment, " what you said about bones."

"In order to be a real mobster, you have to kill somebody," Matt said evenly. "They call it 'making your bones.

"In other words, you really think he was a gangster?"

"Mobster. There's a difference. He was a low-level mobster. We can't even find out why they hit him."

"And the people who did it? They're just going to get away with it?"

He looked at her for a long moment before deciding to answer her.

"The bodies of two people with reputations as hit men, almost certainly the people who hit your boyfriend, have turned up, one in Detroit and one in Chicago. The mob doesn't like it when innocent civilians, especially rich ones with powerful fathers like you, get hurt when they're hitting people."

"They're dead?" she asked.