"This is what I was afraid of," Peter said. "That you would start thinking."
"Why shouldn't I think?"
"Because if you do, sure as Christ made little apples, you'll come up with some good excuse to cut it off between us."
"Maybe that would be best, in the long run," she said.
"Not for me, it wouldn't," he said.
" 'He said, with finality,' " Louise said. "Why do you say that, Peter? So… With such finality?"
"I told you before, it was never that way for me. before," Peter said.
"You don't think that might be because you saw a friend of yours slumped dead against the wall of a diner yesterday afternoon? That sort of thing would tend, I would suppose, to excite the emotions. Or that I might be at a high emotional peak myself? I was there, too, not to mention poor little Jerome?"
"I don't give a damn what caused it, all I know is how I feel about what happened," Peter said. "I gather this is not what they call a reciprocal emotion?"
"I didn't say that," Louise said quickly. "Jesus Christ, Peter, I didn't know you existed this time yesterday!" she said. "What do you expect from me?"
He shrugged.
She looked into his eyes for a long moment. "So where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?"
"How would you react to a suggestion that it's a little warm in here, and you would probably be more comfortable if you took the robe off?"
"I was hoping you would ask," she said.
"Where the hell have you been?" Leonard Cohen demanded of Louise Dutton when she walked into the WCBL-TV newsroom. "I called all over, looking for you."
"I was a little upset, Leonard," Louise said. "I can't imagine why. I mean, why should something unimportant like walking into a room and finding someone you knew and liked hacked up like… I can't think of a metaphor- hacked up?"
"It was a story, Lou," Cohen said.
She glared at him, her eyebrows raised in contempt, her eyes icy.
"It was pretty bad, huh?" he said, backing down.
"Yes, it was."
"What I would like to do, Lou," he said, "is open the news at six by having Barton interview you. Nothing formal, you understand; he would just turn to you and say something like, 'Mr. Nelson lived in your apartment building, didn't he, Louise?' and then you would come back with, 'Yes, and I found the body.' "
"Fuck you, Leonard," Louise said.
He just looked at her.
"For Christ's sake," she said. "The address has been in the papers
…"
"And so has your name," he countered.
"I've seen the papers," she said. "There must be ten Louise Duttons in the phone book, and none of the papers I saw made the connection between me and here. If it is made, every creepy-crawly in Philadelphia, including, probably, the animals who killed that poor little man, will come out of the woodwork looking for me."
"Why should that bother you? Aren't you under police protection?"
"What does that mean?"
"Just what it sounded like. I called the Homicide guy, DelRaye, Lieutenant DelRaye, when I couldn't find you, and he said that I would have to talk to Inspector Wohl, that Wohl was 'taking care of you.' "
"I am not under police protection," she said, evenly. "I'll tell you what I will do, Leonard. I'll look at what you have on tape, and if there's anything there that makes it worthwhile, I'll do a voice-over. But I am not going to chat pleasantly with Barton Ellison about it on camera."
"Okay," Leonard Cohen replied. "Thank you ever so much. Your dedication to journalism touches me deeply. Who's Wohl?"
"He's a cop. He's a friend of mine. He's a nice guy," Louise said.
"He's the youngest staff inspector in the police department," Cohen said. "He was also the youngest captain. His father is a retired chief inspector, which may or may not have had something to do with his being the youngest captain and staff inspector. What he usually does is investigate corruption in high places. He put the head of the plumber's local, two fairly important Mafiosi, and the director of the Housing Authority in the pokey just before you came to town."
She looked at him, her eyebrows raised again.
"Very bright young man," Cohen went on. "He normally doesn't schmooze people. I'm sure, you being a professional journalist and all, that you have considered the police department may have a reason for assigning an attractive young bachelor to schmooze you."
"You find him attractive, Leonard, is that what you're saying?" Louise asked innocently. "I'll have to tell him."
His lips tightened momentarily, but he didn't back off.
"You're going to see him again, huh?"
"Oh, God, Leonard, I hope so," Louise said. "He's absolutely marvelous in the sack!" She waited until his eyes widened. "Put that in your file, too, why don't you?" she added, and then walked away.
TEN
Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson was sitting on the sill of a wall of windows that provided a view of lower Market Street, the Delaware River and the bridge to New Jersey.
"So, I went down to Homicide," he said, nearing the end of his story, "and finally got to meet Miss Wells, also known as Dutton."
"Where had she been?" Brewster Payne asked. Mawson had aroused his curiosity. Through the entire recital of having been given a runaround by the police, and the gory details of the brutal murder of Jerome Nelson, he had not been able to guess why Mawson was telling it all to him.
"She wouldn't tell me," Mawson said. "She's a very feisty young woman, Brewster. I think she was on the edge of telling me to butt out."
"How extraordinary," Payne said, dryly, "that she would even consider refusing the services of 'Philadelphia's most distinguished practitioner of criminal law.'"
"I knew damned well I made a mistake telling you that," Mawson said. "Now I'll never hear the end of it."
"Probably not," Payne agreed.
"I have an interesting theory," Mawson said, "that she spent the night with the cop."
"Miss Dutton? And which cop would that be, Mawson?" Payne asked.
"Inspector Wohl," Mawson said. "He took her away from the apartment, and then he brought her in in the morning."
"I thought, for a moment, that you were suggesting there was something romantic, or whatever, between them," Payne said.
"That's exactly what I'm suggesting," Mawson said. "He's not what comes to mind when you say 'cop.' Or 'inspector.' For one thing he's young, and very bright, and well dressed…polished if you take my meaning."
"Perhaps they're friends," Payne said. "When he heard what had happened, he came to be a friend."
"She doesn't look at him like he's a friend," Mawson insisted, "and unless Czernick is still playing games with me, he didn't even know her until yesterday. According to Czernick, he assigned him to the Wells/Dutton girl to make sure she was treated with the appropriate kid gloves for a TV anchorwoman."
"I don't know where you're going, I'm afraid," Payne said.
"Just file that away as a wild card," Mawson said. "Let me finish."
"Please do," Payne said.
"So, after she signed her statement, and she rode off into the sunrise with this Wohl fellow, I came here and put in a call to Wells in London. He wasn't there. But he left a message for me. Delivered with the snotty arrogance that only the English can manage. Mr. Wells is on board British Caledonian Airways Flight 419 to New York, and ' would be quite grateful if I could make myself available to him immee-jut-ly on his arrival at Philadelphia.' "
"Philadelphia?" Payne asked, smiling. Mawson's mimicry of an upperclass British accent was quite good. "Does British Caledonian fly into here?"
"No, they don't. I asked the snotty Englishman the same question. He said, he 'raw-ther doubted it. What Mr. Wells has done is shed-yule a helicopter to meet the British Caledonian air-crawft in New York, don' t you see? To take him from New York to Philadelphia.' "