of the corporals there got himself killed driving home from the shore.
It was a good job. All he had to do was keep on top of the paperwork, and everybody left him alone. The lieutenants and the sergeants and the other corporals knew how good he got along with Captain Schnair. If he came in a little late, or left a little early, no one said anything to him.
It never entered Corporal Vito Lanza’s mind to ask permission to leave his desk in the Airport Unit office at 11:15. He simply told the lieutenant on duty, Lieutenant Ardell, that he was going to lunch.
He would get back when he got back. He was going to have a real lunch, not a sandwich or a hot dog, which meant getting out of the airport, where they charged crazy fucking prices. Just because he had a bundle of Las Vegas money was no excuse to pay five dollars for something worth two-fifty.
The Buick surprised him by starting right off. Now that he was going to dump the sonofabitch, it had decided to turn reliable. It was like when you went to the dentist, your teeth stopped hurting.
Thinking of dumping the Buick reminded him that he was supposed to meet Antoinette after work and go see her uncle, who had a car lot. He’d told her, of course, that he’d had a little luck in Vegas and was going to look around for a Caddy, and she told him her uncle had a car lot with a lot of Caddys on it.
He hadn’t been sure then whether she had been trying to be nice to him, or just steering her uncle some business. After she’d taken him to her apartment, he decided that she really did like him, and maybe this thing with her uncle would turn out all right.
It also made him feel like a fool for slipping that bimbo in Vegas two hundred dollars. He didn’t really have to pay for it, and now he couldn’t understand why he had. Except, of course, that he was on a high from what had happened at the tables.
Antoinette had told him her uncle’s car lot was one of those in the “Auto Mall” at 67th Street and Essington Avenue. Just past the ballpark on South Broad, he decided that it wouldn’t hurt to just drive past the uncle’s car lot, it wasn’t far, to see what he had. If he was some sleaze-ball with a dozen cars or so, that would mean that Antoinette was trying to push some business his way, and when he saw her after work, he would tell her he had made other arrangements. Tell her nice. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was piss her off. She was really much better in the sack than the bimbo in Vegas he’d given the two hundred dollars to.
Fierello’s Fine Cars, on Essington Avenue, was no sleaze operation. Vito thought there must be a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty cars on the lot, which was paved and had lights and everything and even a little office building that was a real building, not just a trailer. And there were at least twenty Caddys, and they all looked like nearly new.
He drove past it twice, and then started back to the airport. He didn’t get the real lunch he started out to get—he stopped at Oregon Steaks at Oregon Avenue and Juniper Street and had a sausage and peppers sandwich and a beer—but he was in a good mood and it didn’t bother him. Not only was he probably going to drive home tonight in a new Caddy, but on the way, the odds were that he might spend some time in Antoinette’s apartment.
He was still on a roll, no question about it.
Marion Claude Wheatley, the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, and Detective M. M. Payne all had lunch at the Union League Club on South Broad Street, but not together.
Mr. Wheatley was the guest of Mr. D. Logan Hammersmith, Jr., who was a vice president and senior trust officer of the First Pennsylvania Bank & Trust Company and who, like Mr. Wheatley, held an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Hammersmith did not really know what to think of Mr. Wheatley beyond the obvious, which was that he was one hell of an analyst; not only was his knowledge of the petrochemical industry encyclopedic, but he had demonstrated over the years a remarkable ability to predict upturns and downturns.