He closed the door in the face of the rent-a-cop and went after Amanda, carefully averting his eyes so that she wouldn’t have any reason at all to suspect he was looking up her skirt as she went up the stairs.
She waited for him at the top of the stairs.
“You know what he thought, don’t you?” Amanda asked.
“No. What did he think?”
“He thought I was a call girl.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly. He as much as accused me in the elevator. And why not? Who else would be going to a bachelor apartment at this hour?”
“A friend,” Matt said.
“God, I’m sorry I ever got started on this!”
“I’m not.”
“I meant it, Matt, when I said I’m here as a friend.”
“Absolutely. I know that.”
She met his eyes, and then quickly averted hers.
“Do you know how to warm up a hamburger?” Matt asked. “I put the coffee in a pot, and we can heat that. But the hamburgers are cold.”
“You put the meat patty in a frying pan,” Amanda said. “You have a frying pan?” He nodded. “And-you said french fries?” Matt nodded again. “You put french fries in the oven.”
“I’ve got one of those, too,” Matt said.
“Good,” she said. “Show me.”
“I’m glad you came,” Matt said. “Thank you.”
“Just as long as you understand why I came,” she said. “OK?”
“Absolutely. I told you that.”
She went in the kitchen. He turned the oven on and handed her a frying pan.
When she bent over to put the french fries in the oven, he looked down her blouse and told himself he was really a sonofabitch.
When she stood up, he could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew he had looked down her blouse.
He backed two steps away from her and smiled uneasily.
“If anybody finds out I came here,” Amanda said, “they wouldn’t understand.”
“Nobody will ever find out,” Matt said. He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s Honor.”
“Oh, God,” Amanda groaned.
“Bad joke,” he said. “Sorry.”
“And they would, of course, be right,” Amanda said. “Oh, hell! ‘In for a penny’- oh, God! -‘in for a pound.’”
“Excuse me?”
“You know what my reaction was when I heard Penny was dead?”
“What?”
“Thank God. She was going to suck Matt dry and ruin his life.” She looked intently at his face, then moaned. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have told you!”
“Isn’t that why you came here, to tell me that? Amanda, that’s really-decent-of you. And it really took balls.”
“Balls?” she parroted, gently mocking.
“It took courage,” he corrected himself. “But you’re not the only one who felt that way. Penny…Penny apparently did not enjoy the universal approval of my friends. Half a dozen people told me exactly, or paraphrased, what you just did.”
“That’s not why I came,” Amanda said. “I wanted to be with you.”
“You’re a good friend,” Matt said.
She met his eyes, then looked away, and then met them again.
“Maybe that, too,” Amanda said softly.
“Jesus, Amanda.”
“Does that come as such a surprise? Am I making as much of a fool of myself as I think I am?”
He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.
She moved her head away and looked to the side.
“For God’s sake, don’t feel sorry for me,” she said.
“What I’m doing is wondering what would happen if I tried to put my arms around you.”
She turned her face to look at him. She looked into his eyes for a long moment.
“Why don’t you try it and find out?” Amanda asked.
SEVENTEEN
Matt Payne rolled over in bed, grabbed the telephone on the bedside table, and snarled, “Hello.”
“Good morning,” Amanda Spencer said, a chuckle in her voice. “Somehow I thought you’d be in a better mood than you sound like.”
Still half asleep, Matt turned and looked in confusion at where he expected Amanda to be, lying beside him. He was obviously alone in his bed.
“Where are you?”
“Thirtieth Street Station,” she said.
“Why?”
“You have to come here to get on a train.”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“I have a job, Matt.”
“Call in and tell them you were run over by a truck.”
“It was something like that, wasn’t it? How do you feel this morning?”
“Right now, desolate.”
She chuckled again.
“Don’t call me, Matt. I’ll call you.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“This is what I think they call the cold, cruel light of day,” Amanda said. “I need some time to think.”
“Second thoughts, you mean? Morning-after regrets?”
“I said I need some time to think. But no regrets.”
“Me either,” he said.
He was now fully awake. He picked his watch up from the bedside table. It was ten past eight.
“You could have said something,” he said, somewhat petulantly.
“I’m saying it now,” Amanda said. “I have a job, I have to go to work, and I need some time to think.”
“Damn!”
“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t really want to leave. But it was the sensible thing to do.”
“Screw sensible.”
“Have you got any morning-after regrets?”
“I’m still in shock, but no regrets.”
“We both got a little carried away last night.”
“Anything wrong with that?”
“That’s what I want to think about,” Amanda said. “I’ll call you, Matt. Don’t call me.”
The phone went dead in his ear.
“Damn!”
“Push the damned button, Matt,” Inspector Peter Wohl said into the microphone beside Detective Payne’s doorbell. “The Wachenhut guy told me he knows you’re up there.”
A moment later the solenoid buzzed, and Wohl pushed the door open and started up the narrow flight of stairs.
“I didn’t know who it was,” Matt said from the head of the stairs. He was wearing khaki trousers, a gray, battered University of Pennsylvania sweatshirt, and was obviously fresh from the shower.
He looks more than a little sleepy, Peter thought. Probably still feeling the pill Amy gave him.
“How are you doing?”
“I was just about to go out and get some breakfast.”
“Not necessary,” Wohl said, handing him a large kraft paper bag. “Never let it be said that I do not take care of my underlings.”
Matt sniffed it.
“Smells great. What is it?”
“Western omelet, bagels, orange juice, and coffee.”
“Thank you, Peter,” Matt said.
“I expected to find you still in bed,” Wohl said.
“Huh?”
“Amy said that the pill she gave you…” Wohl stopped. He had followed Matt into the kitchen and seen the stack of Forms 75-49. “What’s this?”
“75-49s on the Inferno job,” Matt said. “Milham told me to read them.”
“When did you see Milham?”
“Last night. Early this morning. I went over there-”
“You didn’t take Amy’s pill?” Wohl asked, but it was a statement rather than a question.
“No, I didn’t,” Matt confessed. “I had a couple of drinks here, decided going to the FOP was a good idea, started out for there, changed my mind, and went to Homicide.”
“Why?” Wohl asked, a tone of exasperation in his voice.
“At the time it seemed like a good idea,” Matt said.
Wohl reached into his jacket pocket and came out with an interoffice memorandum. He handed it to Matt.
“One of the reasons I came here was to show you this. I guess you’ve seen it.”
Matt glanced at it.
“Yeah. Milham had a copy.”
“Lowenstein sent me one,” Wohl said, taking the memorandum back and then crumpling it in his fist. He looked around, remembered the garbage can was under the sink, and went to it and dropped the memorandum in it.