The redYou Have Messages light was blinking. He pushed the PLAY button. There were four buzz and click sounds, which meant that four other people had called, gotten hisI'm Not Home message, and hung up.
Evelyn, he thought. It has to be her.
Why are you so sure it's her? Because the gentle sex, contrary to popular opinion, does not have an exclusive monopoly on intuition, and also because everybody, anybody, else would have left a message.
If you call her back, there is a very good chance that you can wind up between, or on top of, the sheets with her. Why doesn't that fill you with joyous anticipation?
The answer came with a sudden, very clear mental image of Professor Harry Glover outside the house in Upper Darby, specifically of the look in his eyes that said, "I know you have been fooling around with my wife."
Jesus Christ, could it be him? "Stay away from my wife, you bastard!"
Conclusions: You did the right thing, Matthew, my boy, because God takes care of fools and drunks, and you qualify on both counts, in not picking up the telephone. You neither want to discuss with Professor Glover your relationship with his wife, or diddle the lady.
And why not? Because he knows? Or because Precious Penny has made it quite clear that she would be willing, indeed pleased, to roll around on the sheets with you?
Oh, shit!
He turned on the television, sat down in his armchair, flicked through the channels, got up, and went to the refrigerator for a beer.
The telephone rang again.
He walked to the chair-side table, looked down at the telephone, and picked it up on the third ring.
"Payne."
"This is your friendly neighborhood FBI agent," a familiar voice said. "We have a report of a sexual deviate living at that address. Would you care to comment?"
"The word is 'athlete,' not 'deviate.' Guilty. What are you up to, Jack?"
Jack Matthews, a tall, muscular, fair-skinned man in his late twenties, was a special agent of the FBI. When Matt had been wounded by a member of the so-called Islamic Liberation Army, Jack had shown up to express the FBI's sympathy, and, Matt was sure, to find out what the Philadelphia Police knew about the Islamic Liberation Army and might not be telling the FBI. In addition, Lari Matsi, a nurse in the hospital who had raised Matt's temperature at least four degrees simply by handing him an aspirin, had suddenly found Matt invisible after a thirty-second look at the pride of the Justice Department.
Despite this, however, Matt liked Jack Matthews. He watched what he said about police activity when they were together, but they shared a sense of humor, and he had become convinced that there was a certain honest affection on Jack's part for him and Charley McFadden, whose fiancee and Lari Matsi were pals.
"I'm sitting at the FOP bar with a morose Irish detective," Jack said. "Who is threatening to sing, 'I'll take you home again, Kathleen.' McFadden wants you to come over here and sing harmony."
"You sound like you've been there for a while."
"Only since it opened," Jack said. "The girls are working."
"Did you call before, Jack?"
"No. Why?"
"No reason. Yeah, give me twenty minutes."
"Bring some of that Las Vegas money with you," Jack said, and hung up.
Matt went into his bedroom and changed into khakis and a sweatshirt. As he was reclaiming his pistol from the mantelpiece, the telephone rang again. He looked at it for a moment, and then went down the stairs.
****
Jack Matthews and Charley McFadden, a very large, pleasant-faced young man, were sitting at a table near the door of the bar in the basement of the Fraternal Order of Police Building on Spring Garden Street, just off North Broad Street, when Matt walked in.
There was a third man at the table, Jesus Martinez, in a suit Matt thought was predictably flashy, and whom he was surprised to see, although when he thought about it, he wondered why.
Charley McFadden and Jesus Martinez had been partners, working as undercover Narcs. When their anonymity had been destroyed when they ran to earth the junkie who had shot Captain Dutch Moffitt, they had been transferred to Special Operations. Charley and Martinez had been friends and, more important, partners, since before Matt had come on the job.
"How are you, Hay-zus?" Matt said, offering his hand and smiling at Officer Jesus Martinez of the Airport Unit.