Part 47 (1/2)
”h.e.l.lo, Precious,” she said. ”What's the matter?”
”Nothing,” he said. ”What are you going to do with that thing?”
She pointed the clippers in the general direction of his crotch and opened and closed it. Both of his hands dropped to protect the area.
”Oh, come on,” she said. ”You know I wouldn't want to hurt that.”
”I don't know,” he said. ”I hope not.”
”Something is wrong,” she said. ”I can tell. Something happen at Bustleton and Bowler?”
”Nothing that anybody can do anything about,” Pekach said.
”Well,” she said, taking his arm. ”You can tell me all about it over lunch. I made French onion soup. Made it. Not from one of those packet things. And a salad. With Roquefort dressing.''
”Sounds good,” he said.
”And there's n.o.body in the house,” she said. ”Which I just happen to mention en pa.s.sant and not to give you any ideas.”
”I always wonder when I eat this stuff,” Jason Was.h.i.+ngton said as he skillfully picked up a piece of Peking Beef with chopsticks and dipped it in a mixture of mustard and plum preserves, ”if they really eat it in Peking, or whether it was invented here by some Chinaman who figured Americans will eat anything.”
”It's good,” Peter Wohl said.
”They use a lot of monosodium glutamate,” Was.h.i.+ngton said. ”To bring the taste out. It doesn't bother me, but it gets to Martha. She thought she was having a heart attack-angina pectoris.”
”Really?”
”Pain in the pectoral muscles,” Was.h.i.+ngton explained, and pointed to his pectorals.
”She went to the doctor and told him that whenever she had Chinese food, she had angina pectoris. He said, in that case, don't eat Chinese food. And then, when she calmed down, he told her that making diagnoses was his business, and about the monosodium glutamate.”
”I didn't know that,” Wohl said, ”about monosodium glutamate.”
In his good time, Wohl thought, Jason will get around to telling me what's on his mind. He didn't ask if I was free for lunch because he didn't want to eat Peking Beef alone.
”I feel really bad about Matt Payne,” Was.h.i.+ngton said. ”If I had any idea he was going to see that Detweiler girl, I would have stopped him.”
So that's what's on his mind.
”I know that,” Wohl said. ”He went over there to help me.”
”He thinks you're really something special,” Was.h.i.+ngton said.
”He thinks you make Sherlock Holmes look like a mental r.e.t.a.r.d,” Wohl replied.
”If I was Matthew M. Payne and they put me back in uniform and in a 12th District wagon or handed me a wrench and told me to go around and turn off fire hydrants, I would quit.”
”I think he probably will.”
”We need young cops like that, Peter,” Was.h.i.+ngton said.
”So?”
”I have a few favors owed me,” Was.h.i.+ngton said. ”How sore would you be if I called them in?''
”You'd be wasting them,” Wohl said. ”Czernick decided the way to cover his a.s.s was to jump on the kid before the mayor told him to. He knew that would p.i.s.s off a lot of people. Denny Coughlin, for one. If Coughlin goes to the mayor, and I really hope he doesn't, it would make the mayor choose between him and Czernick. I'm not sure how that would go. And while I agree, I would hate to see Matt resign, and I would really hate to see Denny Coughlin retire. I'd like to see Coughlin as commissioner.”
”So you're saying, just let the kid go, right? 'For the good of the Department'?”
”Pekach and Sabara say they know people in the 12th. They'll put in a good word for him.”
”You won't?”
”Feldman is the captain. When I was working as a staff inspector, I put his brother-in-law away.”
”Christ, I forgot that. Lieutenant in Traffic? Extortion? They gave him five to fifteen?”
Wohl nodded. ”I really don't think Captain Feldman would be receptive to anything kind I would have to say about Matt Payne.”
”Interesting, isn't it, that Czernick sent Payne to the 12th?”
Wohl grunted.
”You think I could talk to Payne, tell him to hang in?”
”I wish you would. I think you might tip the scales.”
”Okay,” Jason Was.h.i.+ngton said, nodding his head. And then he changed the subject: ”So what's the real story about DeZego and the pimp getting hit?”
”It's your job, you tell me,” Wohl said.
”You haven't been thinking about it? That something smells with Savarese pointing Pekach at the pimp? Doing it himself?”
”I've been thinking that it smells,” Wohl replied.
”Intelligence has a guy, I guess you know, in the Savarese family.''
Wohl nodded.
”I talked to him about an hour ago,” Jason Was.h.i.+ngton said.
”Intelligence know you did that?''
”Intelligence doesn't even know I know who he is,” Was.h.i.+ngton said. ”He tells me that the word in the family is that Tony the Zee ripped off the pimp, the pimp popped him, and Savarese ordered the pimp hit. I even got a name for the doer, not that it would do us any good.”
”One of Savarese's thugs?”
”One of his bodyguards. Gian-Carlo Rosselli, also known as Charley Russell.”