The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

"Your father's in the lounge, Mr. Payne," the porter said to him.

"Thank you," Matt said.

Brewster Cortland Payne II, a tall, angular, distinguished-looking man who was actually far wittier than his appearance suggested, saw him the moment he entered the lounge and raised his hand. Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, a heavyset, ruddy-faced man in a wellfitting pin-striped suit, turned to look, and then smiled. They were sitting in rather small leather-upholstered armchairs between which sat a small table. There were squat whiskey glasses, small glass water pitchers, a silver bowl full of mixed nuts, and a battered, but wellshined, brass ashtray with a box of wooden matches in a holder on it on the table.

"Good," Brewster Payne said, smiling and rising from his chair to touch Matt softly and affectionately on the arm. "We caught you."

"Dad. Uncle Denny."

"Matty, I tried to call you at East Detectives," Coughlin said, sitting back down. "You had already gone."

"I left at fiveafter four, Uncle Denny. The City got their full measure of my flesh for their day's pay."

An elderly waiter in a white jacket appeared.

"Denny's drinking Irish and the power of suggestion got to me," Brewster Payne said. "But have what you'd like."

"Irish is fine with me."

"All around, please, Philip," Brewster Payne said.

I have just had a premonition: I am not going to like whatever is going to happen. Whatever this is all about, it is not "let's call Good Ol' Matt and buy him a drink at the Rittenhouse Club."

THREE

"Are we celebrating something, or is this boys' night out?" Matt asked.

Coughlin chuckled.

"Well, more or less, we're celebrating something," Brewster Payne said. "Penny's coming home."

"Is she really?" Matt said, and the moment the words were out of his

mouth, he realized that not only had he been making noise, rather than responding, but that his disinterest had not only been apparent to his father, but had annoyed him, perhaps hurt him, as well.

Penny was Miss Penelope Alice Detweiler of Chestnut Hill. Matt now recalled hearing from someone, probably his sister Amy, that she had been moved from The Institute of Living, a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut, to another funny farm out west somewhere. Arizona, Nevada, someplace like that.

Matt had known Penny Detweiler all his life. Penny's father and his had been schoolmates at Episcopal Academy and Princeton, and one of the major-almost certainly the most lucrative-clients of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, his father's law firm, was Nesfoods International, Philadelphia's largest employer, H. Richard Detweiler, president and chief executive officer.

After a somewhat pained silence, Brewster Payne said, "I was under the impression that you were fond of Penny."

"I am," Matt said quickly.

I'm not at all sure that's true. I am not, now that I think about it, at all fond of Penny. She's just been around forever, like the walls. I've never even thought of her as a girl, really.

He corrected himself: There was that incident when we were four or five when I talked her into showing me hers and her mother caught us at it, and had hysterically shrieked at me that I was a filthy little boy, an opinion of me I strongly suspect she still holds.

But fond? No. The cold truth is that I now regard Precious Penny (to use her father's somewhat nauseating appellation) very much as I would regard a run-over dog. I am dismayed and repelled by what she did.

"You certainly managed to conceal your joy at the news they feel she can leave The Lindens."

The Lindens, Matt recalled, is the name of the new funny farm. And it's in Nevada, not Arizona. She's been there what? Five months? Six?

There was another of what Matt thought of as "Dad's Significant Silences." He dreaded them. His father did not correct or chastise him. He just looked at the worm before him until the worm, squirming, figured out himself the error, or the bad manners, he had just manifested to God and Brewster Cortland Payne II.

Finally, Brewster Payne went on: "According to Amy, and according to the people at The Lindens, the problem of her physical addiction to narcotics is pretty much under control."

Matt kept his mouth shut, but in looking away from his father, to keep him from seeing Matt's reaction to that on his face, Matt found himself looking at Dennis V. Coughlin, who just perceptibly shook his head. The meaning was clear:You and I don't believe that, we know that no more than one junkie in fifty ever gets the problem under control, but this is not the time or place to say so.