The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

"Have you got someone?"

"No," he said.

"I didn't think so," Penny said. "Otherwise you would have taken her to the Poconos."

She looked at him, and she was close enough to kiss, and he did so, tenderly.

The phone rang.

"Damn!" Penny said.

Please God, don't let that be Evelyn!

"Payne," Matt said to the telephone.

"We have a name," Peter Wohl said, without any preliminaries. " Just a name. Do you know where Tiny Lewis lives?"

"Yes, sir."

"Go pick him up, he'll be waiting, and then come to Chief Lowenstein's office in the Roundhouse."

"Yes, sir."

Wohl hung up.

Matt put the telephone down.

"I've been called."

"So I gathered."

He swung his legs out of the bed and went searching for underwear in his chest of drawers.

Penny watched him get dressed.

"You want to take me to the movies again, sometime?"

"Why not?" he asked.

"Would it be all right with you if I hung around here until the movie would be over?"

"Of course. There's anInquirer in the living room. Go look up what we saw, so we can keep our stories straight."

She got out of bed with what he considered to be a very attractive display of thighs and buttocks and went into the living room.

When he had tied his tie and slipped into a jacket he went after her.

"They're showingCasablanca for the thousandth time. How about us having seen that?"

"'Round up the usual suspects,'" he quoted. "Sure. Why not?"

He went to the mantelpiece and picked up his revolver and slipped it into a holster.

"I suppose that's what cops' wives go through everyday, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Watching their man pick up his gun and go out, God only knows where."