“No, sir.”
“Damn,” Wohl said. “What are you drinking?”
Drinking on duty, Matt saw, was not the absolute no-no he had been led to believe, from watching Dragnet and the other cop shows on television. Both Wohl and Washington had small glasses dark with whiskey in front of them, obviously something-on-the-rocks, and Harris had a taller glass of clear liquid with a slice of lime on the rim, probably a vodka tonic.
“Have you any ale?” Matt asked the waitress.
She recited a litany of the available beers and ales and Matt picked one.
“You going to eat, too?” the waitress asked. “I already got their orders.”
Matt took a menu, glanced at it quickly, and ordered a shrimp salad.
From the look—mixed curiosity and mild contempt—he got from Detective Washington, Matt surmised that both the ale and the shrimp salad had been the wrong things to order.
When the waitress left, Peter Wohl picked up his glass, and with mock solemnity said, “I would like to take this happy occasion to welcome you aboard, men.”
“Shit,” Jason Washington said, unsmiling.
“Jason, I need you,” Wohl said, seriously.
“Oh, I know why you did it,” Washington said. “But that doesn’t mean I agree that it was necessary, or that I have to like it.”
Wohl looked as if he had started to say something and then changed his mind.
“I told Tony in the Roundhouse lobby, Jason, that if it’s overtime you’re worried about, you can have as much as you want.”
“I should have drowned you when you were a sergeant in Homicide,” Washington said, matter-of-factly. “Inspector, you know what Homicide is.”
“Yeah, and I know you two guys are the best detectives in Homicide. Were the best two.”
“When he’s through shoveling the horseshit, Tony,” Washington said, “hand the shovel to me. It’s already up to my waist, and I don’t want to suffocate.”
Harris grunted.
“What you’re doing, Inspector, is covering your ass, and using Tony and me to do it.”
“Guilty, okay?” Wohl said. “Now can we get at it?”
“Now that the air, so to speak, is clear between us,” Washington said, “why not?”
“Special Operations has the Northwest Philadelphia rapist job,” Wohl said. “That came from the Commissioner, and I think he was following orders.”
Jason Washington’s eyebrows rose.
“This is the file,” Wohl said. “I borrowed it from Northwest Detectives.”
They were interrupted by the waitress, who set a bottle of ale and a glass in front of Matt, and then a shrimp cocktail in front of each of the others.
“I want it handled like a homicide,” Wohl said.
“It’s not a homicide,” Washington said. “Yet. Or is it?”
“Not yet,” Wohl said.
Tony Harris, who had been sitting slumped back in his chair, now leaned forward and pulled the manila folder from under Wohl’s hand. He laid it beside his plate, then picked up his seafood fork. He stabbed a shrimp, dipped it in the cocktail sauce, put it in his mouth, and started to read the file.
“Who had the job at Northwest Detectives?” Jason Washington asked.