"I didn't know that."
"So Brewster Payne came to me and said he'd be delighted to get you in, provided you never found out that Matt asked him, or that it wouldn't get you in trouble with the department. For being too big for your britches, in other words. There's a lot of chief inspectors who don't get to join. As a matter of fact, it's only me and Lowenstein. He said that he's been thinking about it, aside from Matt and Amy, for some time. He said there's a lot of people, including him, who think that somewhere down the pike, you should be police commissioner…"
"Jesus!" Peter blurted.
"… and he wondered if getting you in here, now, would help or hurt that. He also said he didn't want you to get the idea he was doing it to make points with you about Matt. He asked me to think it over and get back to him. So I thought it over, and I got back to him, and told him I thought it was a good idea, and that I felt sure you would come to me, ask me about it, and I would tell you that."
"Chief…"
"It's a good idea, Peter," Coughlin said.
"I didn't want to put you on a spot," Wohl said.
"I gave you the benefit of that doubt. So far I've seen no signs that you're getting too big for your britches. But I think there are-I know there are-some people in the department who do, and will take you being in here as proof of that."
He sliced off a piece of his lamb chop and put it in his mouth.
"Before you tell me what you want to tell me, Peter, did you hear this Chenowith character has got himself a sawed-off fully automatic carbine?"
Wohl nodded. "I heard."
"Presumably Matty has been told?"
"He's been told."
"You think he's going to obey his orders?"
"You read the riot act to him, I read the riot act to him, and Washington read the riot act to him. I've been telling myself we are the three people whose orders he's most likely to obey."
Coughlin nodded.
"He called Washington first thing this morning," Wohl went on, "and told him he had just seen Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of Five Squad going into the safe-deposit box vault of the First Harrisburg Bank and Trust."
"I… I was about to say I don't think Calhoun's about to take a shot at him, but remembering that telephone call to the Widow Kellog, maybe I shouldn't. I'm more concerned about this Chenowith character. He knows he's facing life anyway, so why worry about shooting a cop? And he's crazy."
"So far as I know, Matt is still trying to gain the Reynolds woman's confidence. I think he understands the situation. "
"I hope you're right. What happens next with Calhoun? "
"Matt's supposed to call later with the name of the safe-deposit box number. Jason's going to do everything about a search warrant but hand it to a judge for his signature."
Coughlin nodded.
Wohl handed him the sheet of paper on which Dr. Martinez had written, "Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic."
Coughlin's eyebrows went up, and he looked at Wohl for amplification.
"Amy gave me that this morning," Wohl said.
Coughlin went off on a tangent.
"You've been seeing a lot of Amy, haven't you?"
"How do you define 'a lot'?"
"You know how to define 'a lot,' " Coughlin said. "Does Amy believe this?"
Wohl nodded.
"This is a patient of hers?"
Wohl nodded again, and added, "And she's Vincenzo Savarese's granddaughter."
"I heard his daughter had married a Main Line guy," Coughlin said "but I didn't make the connection until just now. Longwood is the builder, right?"
Wohl nodded.
"You think Savarese knows about this?"
"I think that message-it was phoned in to the hospital for Amy in the wee hours this morning-came from Savarese. "
"Savarese called the hospital?"
"More likely one of his goons. I talked to the doctor and the nurse who talked to them. Both agreed the guy on the phone didn't use the kind of vocabulary in the message. "
"Anything else?"
"Amy is concerned about violating medical ethics, and when I told her I was going to talk to you about this, asked me to tell you this girl is about to get shoved off the cliff into schizophrenia, and please be careful."
"That's all?"
"She found traces of hard stuff in the girl's blood, making her-and me-think there's a drug connection."
Coughlin grunted, read the message again, then raised his eyes to Wohl.
"You thinking what I'm thinking, Peter?"
"I hope so," Wohl said.
Coughlin made a "give it to me" gesture with his hand.
"There was a drug bust. That's the 'already traumatic circumstances.' Then this animal did this to her, and let her go. What is she going to do? Walk into a district and tell the desk sergeant, 'I was making a buy, and one of your cops'…?"
"You think Savarese has also figured that out?"
"No one has ever accused Savarese of being slow."
"Anybody but you know about this?"
"Washington."
Coughlin's eyebrows rose in question.
"There's a boyfriend. He has not called the hospital. I told Jason to find out who he is."
"But not to talk to him?"
"Not to talk to him."
"And next?"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Chief. How do I handle this?"
"You talk to the boyfriend. Do you think Washington has anything yet?"
"He's had two hours. Let me find a phone, and I'll find out."
He started to push himself away from the table. Coughlin waved him back into it.
"Now that you've joined the upper crust, Peter," Coughlin said smiling at him, "let me show you how the upper crust finds a telephone."
He twisted around in his chair, caught a waiter's eye, and put his balled fist next to his ear, miming someone holding a telephone. The waiter nodded and immediately brought a telephone to their table, plugging it into a socket on the table leg.
"Thank you," Coughlin said smiling at Wohl, then dialed a number from memory.
Wohl thought it interesting that Coughlin had not found it necessary to ask for Washington's number.
He either has a great memory-which is of course possible-or he has been calling that number frequently.
"How much were you able to learn about the boyfriend? " Coughlin began the conversation without any other opening comment.
Wohl smiled. He knew that Jason Washington had begun his police career walking a beat in Center City under Lieutenant Dennis V. Coughlin. They had been friends-and mutual admirers-ever since. Polite opening comments were not necessary. Washington would immediately recognize Coughlin's voice and know what Coughlin wanted to know.
Coughlin, in an automatic action, had taken a small leather-bound notebook and a pencil from his pocket. He scribbled quickly on it as Washington replied.
"Sit on it until I get back to you. I'm with Wohl," Coughlin said and hung up.
Now it was Peter Wohl's turn to look at Coughlin with a question on his face.
"One boyfriend," Coughlin said. "Ronald R. Ketcham, twenty-five, five-ten, brown hair, 165 pounds, no record except for traffic violations, lives in one of the garden apartments on Overbrook Avenue near Episcopal Academy…"
He looked at Wohl until Wohl indicated he knew the garden apartment complex, and then went on:
"… works for Wendell, Wilson, the stockbrokers in Bala Cynwyd. Has not been to work for three days, and has not been seen around his apartment. His car, a Buick coupe, is locked up in the garage. There are no signs of forcible entry into his apartment, and no signs of any kind of a struggle inside the apartment. He could, of course, be in Atlantic City."
"Or passed through Atlantic City on his way to swim with the fishes," Peter said.