The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

“Yeah,” Daffy said, and changed the subject: “Well, since we all can’t fit in your car, I’d better see about ours.”

“Either this child has terminal B.O., or it needs a diaper change,” Matt said.

Daffy picked up her baby and walked out of the room with her. Chad appeared a moment later, walked to the bar, poured whiskey in a glass and tossed it down, then held his finger in front of his lips in a signal that Daffy was not to know he had a little predinner drink.

Daffy reappeared, and they went down the stairs. The rent-a-cop was not in sight, and Matt wondered where he was.

When they went outside, the rent-a-cop was standing beside an Oldsmobile 98 sedan, the doors of which were open.

Daffy and Chad got in the backseat, the rent-a-cop got behind the wheel, and Matt got in the front passenger seat beside him.

“You know the La Bochabella restaurant?” Chad asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’d you get this?” Matt asked when they were inside. “It’s new, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Chad said. “Tell him, Mr. Frazier.”

“The statistics show,” Frazier announced, very seriously, “that there are far fewer incidents involving Olds mobiles and Buicks than there are involving Cadillacs and Lincolns. Presumably, they don’t attract the same kind of attention from the wrong kind of people.”

“You’re telling me your old man is going to turn in his Rolls Royce on an Olds?” Matt asked. “To avoid an incident ?”

“No.” Chad laughed. “But he’s stopped going anywhere in it alone.”

“You seem to feel this is funny, Matt,” Daffy said. “I don’t. We don’t.”

“Straight answer, Daffy?”

“If you can come up with one.”

“As a cop, I’m a little embarrassed that Chad’s father, and your mothers, and you really feel it’s necessary.”

“That brings us back to my ounce of prevention,” Chad said.

Matt confessed to the maître d’ of La Bochabella that he didn’t have a reservation, and asked how much of a problem that was going to be.

The maître d’ consulted his reservations list at length, frowning, and shaking his head.

If this son of a bitch is waiting for me to slip him money, we’ll be here all night.

“I’m afraid, sir . . .” the maìtre d’ began.

A chubby, splendidly tailored man in his late twenties walked up to the maître d’s stand.

“Ricardo,” he announced, “Mr. Brewer just phoned and canceled his reservation.” He looked at Matt. “If you’re willing to wait just a few minutes, sir, we’ll be happy to accommodate you.”

“Thank you,” Matt said.

“And your name, sir?”

“Payne,” Matt said. The maître d’ wrote that at the head of his list of reservations.

“Initial?” the splendidly tailored chubby fellow said.

“M,” Matt said.

“Perhaps you’d like to wait at the bar,” the splendidly tailored chubby fellow suggested. “It will be a few minutes.”