Part 48 (1/2)
His pants are baggy in the seat, Martha thought. And that s.h.i.+rt doesn't fit the way it should. I wonder if that Italian tailor Evans has found on Chestnut Street could make him up something a little better? He has a marvelous physique, and it just doesn't show. Daddy always said that clothes make the man. I never really knew what he meant before.
Pekach walked to the bed and leaned down and kissed Martha gently on the lips.
”Gotta go, baby,” he said.
”Would you like to ride out to New Hope and have dinner along the ca.n.a.l?” Martha asked. ”You always like that. It would cheer you up. Or I could have Evans get some steaks?''
”Uh,” Pekach said, ”baby, Mike Sabara and I thought that we'd try to get Wohl to go out for a couple of drinks after work.''
”I thought Captain Sabara wasn't much of a drinking man,” Martha said, and then: ”Oh, I see. Of course. Can you come over later?''
”I think I might be able to squeeze that into my busy schedule,” Pekach said, and kissed her again.
When he left the bedroom, Martha got out of bed and went to the window and watched the driveway until she saw Pekach 's unmarked car go down it and through the gate.
She leaned against the window frame thoughtfully for a moment, then caught her reflection in the mirrors of her vanity table.
”Well,” she said aloud, not sounding entirely displeased, ”aren't you the naked hussy, Martha Peebles?”
And then walked back to the bed, sat down on it, fished out a leather-bound telephone book, and looked up a number.
Brewster Cortland Payne, Esquire, saw that one of the lights on one of the two telephones on his desk was flas.h.i.+ng. He wondered how long it had been flas.h.i.+ng. He had been in deep concentration, and lately that had meant that the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, visible from his windows on a high floor of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, could have tumbled into the Delaware without his noticing the splash.
It probably means that when I'm free, Irene has something she thinks I should hear, he thought. Otherwise, she would have made it ring. Well, I'm not free, but I'm curious.
As he reached for the telephone it rang.
”Yes, ma'am?” he asked cheerfully.
”Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler are here, Mr. Payne,” his secretary of twenty-odd years, Mrs. Irene Craig, said.
Good G.o.d, both of them?
”Ask them to please come in,” Payne said immediately. He quickly closed the manila folders on his desk and slid them into a drawer. He had no idea what the Detweilers wanted, but there was no chance whatever that they just happened to be in the neighborhood and had just popped in.
The door opened.
”Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler, Mr. Payne,” Irene announced.
Detweiler's face was stiff. His smile was uneasy.
”Unexpected pleasure, Grace,” Payne said, kissing her cheek as he offered his hand to Detweiler. ”Come on in.”
”May I get you some coffee?” Irene asked.
”I'd much rather have a drink, if that's possible,” Detweiler said.
”The one thing you don't need is another drink,” Grace Detweiler said.
”I could use a little nip myself,” Payne lied smoothly. ”I'll fix them, Irene. Grace, will you have something?”
”Nothing, thanks.”
”We just came from the hospital,” Detweiler announced.
”Sit down, d.i.c.k,” Payne said. ”You're obviously upset.”
”Jesus H. Christ, am I upset!” Detweiler said. He went to the wall of windows looking down toward the Delaware River and leaned on one of the floor-to-wall panes with both hands.
Payne quickly made him a drink, walked to him, and handed it to him.
”Thank you,” Detweiler said idly, and took a pull at the drink. He looked into Payne's face. ”I'm not sure if I'm here because you're my friend or because you're my lawyer.”
”They are not mutually exclusive,” Payne said. ”Now what seems to be the problem?”
”If five days ago anyone had asked me if I could think of anything worse than having my daughter turn up as a drug addict, I couldn't have imagined anything worse,” Grace Detweiler said.
”Penny is not a drug addict,” H. Richard Detweiler said.
”If you persist in that self-deception, d.i.c.k,” Grace said angrily, ”you will be compounding the problem, not trying to solve it.”
”She has a problem,” Detweiler said. ”That's all.”
”And the name of that problem, G.o.dd.a.m.n you, is addiction,” Grace Detweiler said furiously. ”Denying it, G.o.ddammit, is not going to make it go away!”
H. Richard Detweiler looked at his wife until he cringed under her angry eyes.
”All right,” he said very softly. ”Addicted. Penny is addicted.”
Grace nodded and then turned to Brewster C. Payne. ”You're not even a little curious, Brewster, about what could be worse than Penny being a cocaine addict?''
”I presumed you were about to tell me,” Payne said.
”How about getting rubbed out by the Mob? Does that strike you as being worse?”
”I don't know what you're talking about,” Payne said.
”Officer Matthew Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department marched into Penny's room a while ago-past, incidentally, the private detective d.i.c.k hired to keep people out of her room-and showed Penny some photographs. Penny, who is not, to put it kindly, in full possession of her faculties, identified the man in the photographs as the man who had shot her and that Italian gangster. And then she proceeded to confess to him that she had been involved with him. With the gangster, I mean. In love with him, to put a point on it.”
”Oh, G.o.d!” Payne said.
”And he got her to sign a statement,” H. Richard Detweiler said. ”Penny is now determined to go to court and point a finger at the man and see him sent to the electric chair. She thinks it will be just like Perry Mason on television. With Uncle Brewster doing what Raymond Burr did.”
”What kind of a statement did she sign?”
”We don't know,” Grace said. ”Matt didn't give her a copy. A statement.”
”I'd have to see it,” Payne said, as if to himself.