Matt woke instantly at the first ring of the telephone, and was instantly wide awake, and aware that he was in his armchair in the living room. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was quarter past eleven.
The telephone rang a second time. On the third ring, the answering machine would kick in.
Evelyn, of course. Who else? And Jesus, I don't want to talk to her!
He picked up the telephone a half second after the answering machine began to play his message.
He spoke over it. "I'm here. Hang on until the machine does its thing."
"Did I wake you up?" Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd asked.
"Yeah, but it's all right. What's up?"
"I thought if you didn't have anything better to do, you might want to put in some unpaid overtime."
No, as a matter of fact, I would not want to put in some overtime, paid or otherwise. But he wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.
"Sure. What's up?"
"Not to be repeated, okay?"
"Sure."
"I was not impressed with the two guys Olsen sent to relieve us at the airport. I know one of them, and he couldn't be trusted to follow an elephant down Broad Street."
"You want me to go out there? Lanza knows me."
"I thought about that. And decided it was worth the risk. But I wouldn't drive the Porsche."
Wohl doesn't know about this. If he did, he would tell me to stay at least five miles away from the airport.
As if he had read Mart's mind, O'Dowd said, "If there is any static, from Wohl especially, I'll take the heat. With a little bit of luck, no one will ever know about this but you and me. I'll be proven wrong about the guy I know."
"You'll have to explain that."
"If I'm wrong, and I hope I will be, the guys on Lanza will be able to follow him. If they can follow him, wherever he's going, fine, we'll hang it up. But if they lose him, which wouldn't be surprising, at midnight in that area, I want to be on him. Then I'll get on the radio and tell the other guys where he is."
"You want me to go with you?"
"No. I want both of us to follow him. That would have three people following him. I don't think all three of us would lose him. But if they did, and I did, and you didn't…"
"Okay. Where do I meet you?"
"There's an all-night diner on South Broad right across from the stadium. You know it?"
"Uh-huh."
"Twenty minutes?"
"I'll be there."
"Thanks, Matt. I've got one of those feelings about tonight."
"Twenty minutes," Matt repeated. "You still have Tony Harris's car?"
"Yeah," O'Dowd said, and hung up.
At ten minutes after eleven, Corporal Vito Lanza came out of the Airport Unit, went to the parking lot, unlocked his Cadillac, and entered the sparse stream of traffic leaving the airport in the direction of Philadelphia.