it was currently chic to oppose, worked a sector car, or done any of the things that normally a rookie cop would do in his first couple of years on the job.
“The East Detective captain is a friend of mine, Brewster,” Denny Coughlin said, finally. “I think Personnel will send Matt there. He’ll have a chance to work with some good people, really learn the trade. He needs the experience, and they’ll keep an eye out for him.”
Brewster Payne knew Denny Coughlin well enough to understand that if he said he thought Personnel would send Matt somewhere, it was already arranged, and with the understanding that Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin would be keeping an eye on the people keeping an eye on Matt.
“Thank you, Denny,” Brewster Cortland Payne II had said.
When Matt drove the Bug into the parking garage beneath the Delaware Valley Cancer Building (and the buildings to the right and left of it) he found that someone was in his reserved parking spot. Ordinarily, this would have caused him to use foul language, but he recognized the Cadillac Fleetwood. He knew it was registered to Brewster C. Payne, Providence Road, Wallingford.
When he had moved into the apartment, his father had told him that he had reserved two parking spaces in the underground garage for the resident of the attic apartment, primarily as a token of his affection, of course, and only incidentally because it would also provide a parking space for his mother, or other family members, when they had business around Rittenhouse Square.
Until three weeks before it had never posed a problem, because Matt had kept only one car in the garage. Not the battered twelve-year -old Volkswagen Beetle he was now driving, but a glistening, year-old, silver Porsche 911. It had been his graduation present from his father. From the time he had been given the Porsche, the Bug—which had also been a present from his father, six years before, when he had gotten his driver’s license—had sat, rotted actually, in the garage in Wallingford. He had for some reason been reluctant to sell it.
Three weeks before, as he sat taking his promotion physical, he had realized that not selling it had been one of the few wise decisions he had made in his lifetime.
One of the dumber things he had ever done, when assigned to Special Operations out of the Police Academy, was to drive to work in the Porsche. It had immediately identified him as the rich kid from the Main Line who was playing at being a cop. He would not make that same mistake when reporting to East Detectives as a rookie detective.
The battery had been dead, understandably, when he rode out to Wallingford with his father to claim the car, but once he’d put the charger on it, it had jumped to life. He’d changed the oil, replaced two tires, and the Bug was ready to provide sensible, appropriate transportation for him back and forth to work.
The Porsche was sitting in the parking spot closest to the elevator, beside the Cadillac, which meant that he had no place to park the Bug, since his mother had chosen to exercise her right to the “extra” parking space. He was sure it was his mother, because his father commuted to Philadelphia by train.
There were several empty parking spaces, and after a moment’s indecision, he pulled the Bug into the one reserved for the executive director. With a little bit of luck, Matt reasoned, that gentleman would have exercised his right to quit for the day whenever he wanted to, and would no longer require his space.
He walked up the stairs to the first floor, however, found the rent-a-cop, and handed him the keys to the Bug.
“I had to park my Bug in the executive director’s slot; my mother ’s in mine.”
“Your father,” the rent-a-cop said. He was a retired police officer. “He said if I saw you, to tell you he wants to see you. He’ll be in the Rittenhouse Club until six. I stuck a note under your door.”
“Thank you,” Matt said.
“I’ll take care of the car, don’t worry about it. I think he’s gone for the day.”
“Thank you,” Matt said, and got on the elevator and rode up to the third floor, wondering what was going on. He had a premonition, not that the sky was falling in, but that something was about to happen that he was not going to like.