The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

When Matt woke up, the first thing he saw was Susan’s brassiere, which he had placed with the other contents of his trousers and jacket pockets on the bedside table.

He sat up in bed and reached for it, feeling more than a little chagrined. Taking it did not seem nearly so much a fine idea in the light of day as it had the night before.

“Jesus,” he said aloud.

He examined the torn buttonhole on the strap.

Was I “mad with passion”? Or did that just happen, because we were like two squirming snakes on the seat of the Porsche?

He raised it to his nose and sniffed it. There was a very faint odor of Susan—or her perfume? Same thing?—on it.

Do I really love her? Or do I have a fatal case of penis erectus?

How could I possibly love her? Christ, I hardly know her. And what we’ve done most of the time is either fight or lie to each other.

But if I don’t love her, where did this Susie-and-me-against-the-whole-goddamned-world feeling come from?

And does she love me? Or is this because she knows I’m onto her and fucking the cop, under the circumstances, seems a more logical thing to do than docilely putting out your wrists to have them cuffed?

And where is Susie now? Waking up and getting ready to go to work, to wait for my call, or already on an airplane headed for San José, Costa Rica, having stopped only long enough to call Chenowith from a pay phone in the airport to tell him the cops are onto him for his bank jobs?

Could she have been faking what happened to us in the car? Or in bed?

Why not? I got my sex education from two sources. Dad telling me about how not to knock up some decent girl, and Amy telling me the important stuff, including that because the female is smaller and weaker than the male, nature has equipped them with superior mental mechanisms to even things up. They lie much better than men, according to Amy. And, Amy said, they are entirely capable of allowing themselves to get knocked up if that’s the only way they see to get the male of their choice to the altar. And to do that, they are entirely capable of pretending a far greater physical fascination with, sexual reaction to, the male than is actually the case. They can and do fake orgasms.

Was that what Susie was up to? Convincing me that I was the greatest thing since Casanova in the sack because that made more sense than getting herself hauled off?

It is entirely possible, Matthew the Innocent, that you have been played like a violin by a really tough female who had trouble not laughing out loud at your naïveté.

Particularly when I wanted to keep her brassiere. Jesus!

Am I that fucking stupid? Face it, you are.

And how am I going to explain this to Peter Wohl? “Sorry, boss. I was thinking with my pecker. You know how it is”?

Will I be allowed to resign? Or are they going to prosecute me for being an accessory? They’ll prosecute me. And they damned well should. I have betrayed that oath I took. What cops are supposed to do is get the bad guys, not help them walk from a multiple murder. I forgot that oath until just now.

And if all this is true, and logic tells me that it is, why don’t I believe it? Why do I think that when, after carefully casing the First Harrisburg Bank & Trust Building to make sure the FBI doesn’t have somebody watching the safe-deposit-box vault, and I call her office, she will be there, waiting for my call to come get the bank loot she’s holding for Chenowith?

Because I am the fucking fool of fame and legend, thinking with my dick?

Or because I think that she loves me, and I love her

, and she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me?

Well, Matthew Payne, if you’re going to go down in flames, you’re really going to go down in flames. You’re going to play this little scenario out to the end, believing what you saw in Susie’s eyes—not only that she didn’t know Chenowith was going to blow up the science building but, more important, that she loves you back—until Special Agent Leibowitz puts the cuffs on your wrists and starts reading you your Miranda rights.

He put Susan’s brassiere back on the bedside table and picked up the telephone. He ordered orange juice, milk, coffee, a breakfast steak, two eggs sunny-side up, hash brown potatoes, and an English muffin.

“Since I know you are going to rush this right up, which means I will be in the shower, I will leave the door ajar,” he said, and hung up. And then he added, aloud, “After all, the condemned man is entitled to the quick delivery of his last meal.”

While he was shaving, he heard the sound of the cart being rolled into the room. He stuck his head out the bathroom door and called to the waiter, “Forge my name and add fifteen percent for the tip.”

When he had finished shaving and combing his hair, he left the bathroom naked, and en route to the chest of drawers for his underwear lifted the cover over the steak and eggs.

“To hell with it,” he announced to himself. “I’m hungry.” >

And then he pulled a chair to the cart and sat down naked.