Payne and Wohl laughed.
Payne said, “If it’s any consolation, Tank, I’ve been told that, too, and mostly from married guys who also own airplanes or big boats. Classic case of do as I say, not as I do.”
Payne felt his smartphone vibrate.
Maybe Amanda? he thought. Considering the topic of conversation, her timing’s impeccable . . .
“Excuse me,” he said, pulling out the device and scrolling the messages on-screen. He saw that he’d somehow missed two from Tony Harris, time-stamped twenty minutes earlier.
He looked up, and said, “Looks like we’ve found the doers from the shooting yesterday at Rittenhouse Square.”
He then, in a slow, deliberate motion to avoid causing pain to his wound, rose from his seat.
Wohl picked up on it.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Harris says he’s picking me up. I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to it,” Payne said, nodding at Wohl, then holding out his hand to Tankersley. “It’s been a genuine pleasure meeting you.”
“Work never stops—I get it,” Tankersley said, nodding as he took Payne’s hand. “Good to meet you, too. Sorry I rambled on.”
Payne pulled his money clip from his pants pocket. Wohl, just perceptively, raised his right hand, palm out—stop.
“I’ve got this, Matt.”
“Thanks. Next time’s on me, gentlemen,” Payne said, looking back and forth between them.
“You ever get in a bind on a job,” Tankersley said, “feel free to bounce it off me. Like I said, I do miss talking shop. Be careful out there.”
Payne nodded.
“Will do. I appreciate that,” he said, then saw Harris coming through the front entrance. “And there’s my ride.”
Tankersley drained his glass and slid Payne’s untouched martini toward him.
“Waste not, want not,” Tankersley said, flashed an exaggerated smile, and looked at Wohl. “You promised you’d feed me, too.”
VI
[ ONE ]
Office of the Mayor
City Hall
1 Penn Square
Room 215
Philadelphia
Friday, January 6, 4:01 P.M.
“Before we get into the meat of this goddamn meeting,” the Honorable Jerome H. Carlucci said, glancing anxiously around his elegant but cluttered office, “what’s the latest on the Rittenhouse outrage?”
The fifty-nine-year-old mayor, wearing a dark, two-piece suit, leaned back in his leather judge’s chair with his polished black shoes on his massive wooden desk. He held his hands together as if praying, tapping his fingertips together, as he looked at fifty-one-year-old First Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, who sat in a gray-woolen-upholstered armchair on the other side of the desk.
r /> Both ruddy-faced men were tall, heavyset, and large-boned. A casual observer might take them for cousins, or even brothers, and the latter could be considered true in the sense that their relationship was measured by their decades of service since graduating the police academy.