“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up at all,” McFadden said, not critically. “Where’d you go with Washington?”
“He went out to Bucks County, where they found the Woodham woman’s body,” Matt said. “He needed an errand boy.”
“Well, all tho
se Homicide guys think they’re hotshots,” McFadden said, not understanding him. “Don’t let it get you down.”
“What am I supposed to do here, Charley?”
“This is mostly bullshit,” McFadden said. “Most of it is to scare the creep off. Wohl don’t want another burglary here on the Overnight Report. And some of it is because he’s pissed at me.”
“What for?”
“He somehow has the idea I took you out and got you shitfaced last night,” Charley said. He looked at Matt’s face for a reaction, and then went on: “Hay-zus thinks you told Wohl that.”
“No,” Matt said. “I told Inspector Wohl that I got drunk.”
“With me?”
“No,” Matt said. “And if he formed that impression, I’ll see that I correct it.”
“Fuck it, don’t worry about it,” Charley said. “Now, about here. I don’t think this asshole will show up again. If he does, he’s not stupid, he’ll spot your car, and disappear. But if he does show up, and he is stupid—in other words, if you see somebody sneaking around the bushes, call for a backup. Don’t try to catch him yourself. Highway cars will be riding by here every half hour or so, so what you’ll do is sit here and try to stay awake until Hay-zus relieves you at midnight.”
“How do I stay awake?”
“You didn’t bring a thermos?”
Matt shook his head.
“I should have said something,” Charley said. “I’ll go get you a couple of containers of black coffee before I leave. Even cold coffee is better than no coffee. Get out of the car every once in a while, and walk around a little. Wave your arms, get the blood circulating….”
“I get the picture,” Matt said.
“Every supervisor around is going to be riding past here tonight,” McFadden said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Wohl himself came by. So for Christ’s sake, don’t fall asleep, or your ass will be in a crack.”
“Okay,” Matt said. “Thanks, Charley.”
“Ah, shit,” McFadden said, and started his engine. “You want something with the coffee? An egg sandwich, hamburger, something?”
“Hamburger with onions, two of them,” Matt said, digging in his pocket for money. “They give me gas. Maybe that’ll keep me awake.”
Two hamburgers generously dressed with fried and raw onions (Charley McFadden, not knowing Matt’s preference, had brought one of each) and two enormous foam containers of coffee, while they produced gas, did not keep Officer Matthew Payne awake on his post.
Neither did half a dozen walks down the street and up the driveway of the Peebles residence. Neither did getting out of the car and waving his arms around and doing deep knee bends.
At five minutes after eleven, while he was, for the tenth or fifteenth time, mentally composing the letter of resignation he would write in the morning, striving for both brevity and avoiding any suggestion that he would entertain any requests to reconsider, his head dropped forward and he fell asleep.
Five minutes after that, he twisted in his sleep, and slid slowly down on the seat.
Five minutes after that, as Officer McFadden had predicted, a senior supervisor did drive by the Peebles residence. He spotted the car, but paid only cursory attention to it, for he had other things on his mind.
Captain David Pekach thought the odds were about twenty-to-one that he was about to make a complete fool of himself. He was imagining that the fingers of Miss Martha Peebles had lingered tenderly and perhaps even suggestively on his when he had damned near dropped the Ludwig Hamner Remington rolling-block Schuetzen, and it was preposterous to think that he really saw what he thought he saw in her eyes when she had seen him to the door.
What he was going to do, he decided, as he turned into the Peebles driveway, was simply perform his duty, that given to him by Peter Wohl; to assure the lady that everything that could conceivably be done by the Philadelphia Police Department generally and the Highway Patrol, of which he was the commanding officer, specifically, to protect her property from the depredations of Walton Williams; and to apprehend Mr. Williams; was being done. His presence would be that proof.
The odds are, he thought, that she went to bed long ago, anyway.
But there was a light in the library, and the light over the entrance was on, so he went on the air and reported that Highway One was out of service at 606 Glengarry Lane, checking the Peebles residence.