“Everything’s fine. Aside from the fact that I lost my car and next year’s salary at the craps tables.”
There was a reply, and he chuckled and hung up.
“Why did you call your father?” Penny asked.
“Because I thought he would be better able to deal with a collect call than yours,” Matt Payne replied, then took her arm again. “There’s what I have been looking for.”
He led her to a cocktail lounge and set her down at a tiny table in a relatively uncrowded part of the room.
A waitress almost immediately came to the table.
“Have you got any Tuborg?” Matt Payne asked.
The waitress nodded.
“Penny?” he asked.
“I think a 7UP, please.”
“Sprite okay?”
“Yes, thank you,” Penny said. Then, turning to Matt: “You were kidding, right, about losing a lot of money gambling?”
“As a matter of fact, I made so much money, I don’t believe it.”
“Really?”
He took the Flamingo’s check for $3,700 from his pocket and showed it to her.
“My God!”
“And that’s not all of it,” he said.
“What were you playing?”
“Roulette.”
“Roulette? What do you know about playing roulette?”
“Absolutely nothing, that’s why I won,” Matt said.
She smiled. The anger seemed to be gone. He had a policeman’s cynical thought. Is she charming me?
“When did you get here?” Penny asked.
“A little after ten yesterday morning.”
“Then why didn’t you come get me yesterday?”
“Because I was told to get you this morning,” he said. “Mine not to reason why, et cetera, et cetera.”
“So instead you went gambling.”
“Right. I quit half an hour before the limousine came back for me.” When he saw the look on her face, he went on solemnly, “Las Vegas never sleeps, you know. They don’t even have clocks.”
“I really wouldn’t know. I didn’t get to go to town.”
He did not respond.
“You really gambled all night?” she asked.
“I took a couple of naps and a shower, but yes, I guess I did.”
“Well, I’m glad you had fun.”
“Thank you.”
“You were the last person I expected to see,” Penny said.
“You could have been knocked over with a fender, right?”
She smiled dutifully.
“What are you doing out here, Matt? I mean, why you?”
The waitress appeared with their drinks. Matt handed her a credit card and waited for her to leave before replying.
“My father called me up and asked me to have a drink at the Rittenhouse. When I got there, Chief Coughlin was with him . . .”
“That’s the man you call ‘Uncle Denny’?”
“Right. My father told me it had been decided by your father and Amy that I was the obvious choice to come out here and bring you home. I told him that while the thought of being able to be of some small service to you naturally thrilled me, I would have to regretfully decline, as I had to work. Then Denny Coughlin told me your father had talked to the mayor, and that was no problem. So here I am.”
“You’re still a . . .” Penny asked, stopped just in time from saying “cop,” and finished, “. . . policeman?”
“No, Precious Penny,” Matt said. “I am no longer a simple police officer. You have the great privilege of sitting here with one of Philadelphia’s newest detectives. M. M. Payne, East Detective Division, at your service, ma’am. Just the facts, please.”
She smiled dutifully again.
He smiled back and took a healthy swallow of his beer.
Matt Payne felt nowhere near as bright and clever as he was trying to appear. As a matter of fact, he could recall few times in his twenty-two years when he had been more uncomfortable.
“Then congratulations, Matt,” Penny said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“But that doesn’t answer why you? Out here, I mean?”
“I think the idea, I think Amy’s idea, is that I am the best person to be with you as you begin your passage back into the real world. Amy, I hope you know, is calling the shots.”
“She’s been coming out here,” Penny said.
“Yeah, I know,” Payne said. “For whatever the hell it’s worth, Penny, even if she is my sister, the word on the street is that she’s a pretty good shrink.”
That was the truth: Amelia Payne, M.D., was a highly regarded psychiatrist.
“ ‘The word on the street’?” Penny asked, gently mocking him.
“The consensus is,” he corrected himself.
“I don’t understand . . .” Penny said.
“Neither do I,” he said, “but to coin a phrase, ‘mine not to reason why, mine but to ride into the valley of the hustlers’ . . .”
“Well, thanks anyway for coming out here, even if you didn’t want to.”