and Sergeant Washington were waiting for you,” Henkels said. “When you didn’t show up, they went to Intelligence. He wants you to meet him there.”
“I just transferred in this morning. . . .”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“. . . and the administrative sergeant said I had to report to Captain Sabara before I came here.”
“You should have called me,” Sergeant Henkels said. “You’re to let me know where you are all the time, understand?”
Oh, shit!
Matt nodded.
“Did Lieutenant Malone say anything about a car for me?”
“No.”
“I’d better get going.”
Sergeant Henkels snorted.
Matt went down the corridor, the oiled wooden boards of which creaked under his footsteps, to another former classroom, this one now the office space provided for the Special Investigations Section of the Special Operations Division. He knew he could both use the phone there and receive a friendly welcome.
This time the uniformed sergeant behind the door was smiling genuinely.
“I told you he’d show up here,” Sergeant Jerry O’Dowd said to Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., who was even larger than Sergeant Jason Washington, and thus had inevitably been dubbed “Tiny.”
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Matt said. “You guys know each other?”
“His dad was my first sergeant on my first job out of the Academy, ” O’Dowd said. “I knew him before he ate the magic growth pills.”
“Hey, Matt,” Tiny Lewis said, “welcome home.”
They shook hands.
“Sergeant Rawlins just introduced me to Inspector Wohl,” Matt said.
“Introduced you to Wohl?” Tiny asked.
“That was after my ‘welcome to Special Operations’ speech from Sabara. And then I met Sergeant Henkels.”
Lewis and O’Dowd chuckled.
"Which is why I decided to hang out up here,” O’Dowd said.
“Was . . . is . . . Malone and/or Washington looking for me?” Matt asked.
“Was,” Tiny said.
“They went down to Intelligence,” Jerry O’Dowd explained. “What they wanted to tell you was that I’m now working for Malone, and we’re going to work together.”
Well, that’s good news. And I really appreciate “work together”; he had every right to say “you’ll be working for me.”
“Doing what?”
“Right now, we’re waiting for the phone to ring,” O’Dowd said, pointing to a desk with a brand-new telephone on it. “That’s new. That’s the number we’re asking people to call in case they think they have a line on our lunatic. If it sounds at all . . . what? credible? possible? . . . we’re to go talk to the guy who called it in, and then, if it still looks promising, call Washington and/or Sabara and/or Pekach.”
“In that case, I guess I’ve got time for a cup of coffee.”
“You’ll have to make it,” Tiny said, pointing at the coffee machine. “Unless you want to drink that black whatever from the machine. ”
“I’ll make it,” Matt said.
“Rough night, Detective Payne?” O’Dowd asked.
“At half past one,” Matt said, more to Tiny Lewis than to O’Dowd, “Detective McFadden and Officer Martinez paid a social call.”
“What did Mutt and Jeff have on their minds, so-called?” Tiny asked.
I cannot tell either of them what Hay-zus has in mind. Is that deceit or discretion?
“Not much,” Matt said. “I think they simply decided that I should not be asleep while they were awake.”
“Tough about Hay-zus failing the detective exam,” Tiny said.
“Yeah, that surprised me,” Matt said.
He went to the coffee machine, picked up the water reservoir and went down the corridor to the door with BOYS lettered on it, and filled it.
Matt Payne, mostly privately, was very much aware of his inadequate capabilities to be a detective. It was a long list of characteristics he didn’t have, including experience, but headed by impatience. He had learned, even before Jason Washington had made the point aloud, that a good detective absolutely has to have nearly infinite patience.
The special line telephone did not ring, after either the Highway patrols had come off their seven P.M. to three A.M. tour, or the district patrols had come off their midnight-to-eight tours. Neither did Malone nor Washington call.
His new assignment as one of the inner circle of Special Operations people looking for the lunatic who wanted to disintegrate the Vice President was turning out to be just as thrilling as his assignment as recovered stolen car specialist in East Detectives had been.
His mind began to wander.
His relationship with Evelyn came quickly to mind, with all its potential for disaster, long and near term, and specifically what he was going to do about her tonight, when he got off work, and she would be waiting by her phone for him to call, and if he didn’t call, circling