The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

"My name is Payne, sir. Detective Payne."

"I've been trying to reach the inspector. Is he with you?"

Matt could hear the sound of the shower.

"No, sir. But I can get a message to him in a couple of minutes."

'Tell him that Chief Wohl has been trying to get him. That he's to call. He said it was important."

"Yes, sir, I'll tell him."

"Do I know you, Payne?"

"I don't think so, sir."

The phone went dead in Matt's ear.

He replaced the telephone in its cradle, carried the ashtray into the kitchen, emptied it, took another Ortlieb's beer from the refrigerator, and sat on the couch with it and the current copy ofPlayboy until Wohl reappeared.

"Your dad wants you to call," Matt reported. "Lieutenant Wisser said he said it was important."

Wohl sat on the couch beside him and dialed the telephone.

Matt could only guess at what the conversation was, but there was no mistaking that Wohl's attitude changed from concern to annoyance, and then resignation.

"Okay, Dad. Six-thirty, maybe a little later. Okay. Six-thirty,no later," he concluded, and hung up, and turned to Matt: "If you can find the hit man, tell him the mayor will probably be at 8231 Rockwell Avenue from about half past six."

"Oh?"

"It may just be for a friendly evening with old friends, and then again, it may not be," Wohl said.

Matt waited for more of an explanation, but none was forthcoming.

ELEVEN

There was a light-skinned black man in a white coat standing under the portico of the Peebles's turn-of-the-century mansion when Wohl drove up.

"Good afternoon, sir. I'll take care of your car. Miss Peebles is at the barbecue pit."

He gestured toward a brick path leading from the house to a grove of trees.

Peter Wohl did not permit anyone else to drive his car. He had spent three years and more money than he liked to remember rebuilding it from the frame up, and had no intention of having it damaged by someone else.

"I'll park it, thank you. Around the back?"

"Beside the carriage house, if you please, sir."

Matt, who had followed him to the estate, now followed him to the carriage house.

There were two cars already parked there. One, a nearly new Ford four-door sedan both Matt and Wohl recognized as the unmarked Department car assigned to Captain Mike Sabara, Wohl's deputy. The other was a four-year-old Chevrolet with a Fraternal Order of Police sticker in the rear windshield.

They each noticed the other looking at it, and then shrugged almost simultaneously, indicating that neither recognized it.

They walked across the cobblestones past the carriage house (now a four-car garage) to the brick walk and toward the barbecu

e pit. They were almost out of sight of the house when they heard another car arrive.

It was a Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon, and at the moment Matt decided that it looked vaguely familiar, there was proof. The Buick wagon stopped at the portico of the mansion and Miss Penelope Detweiler got out.