Pekach and Sabara walked over to him. Officer O’Mara, Matt thought, looked like he had just been told the Big Boys didn’t want to play with him. And then Wohl saw the look on O’Mara’s face too:
“And, of course, you too, O’Mara. You’re supposed to be able to remind me of what I said.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wohl pointed to the phone. Malone took a notebook from his pocket, opened it, and found the number he had.
“Person to person, Jack,” Wohl ordered.
The call went through very quickly. Malone put his hand over the microphone.
“They’re ringing him.”
Wohl took the telephone from Malone, and held it slightly away from his ear so the others would be able to hear both sides of the conversation.
“Larkin,” a somewhat brusque voice said.
“Mr. Larkin, this is Inspector Peter Wohl of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department.”
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“That’s what I intended to ask you. You called one of my people, Lieutenant Malone, an hour or so ago.”
“Oh, yeah. I asked him to come by our Philadelphia office in the morning. Is there a problem with that?”
“I’m afraid there is. I’m not free at that time.”
“Is there sort of an inference in that that I should have called you, not this lieutenant?”
“That would have been nice. Dignitary Protection is under Special Operations. I run Special Operations.”
“I thought it was run out of the commissioner’s office.”
“Not anymore.”
“Oh, shit,” Larkin said. “Okay, Inspector. You tell me. How do I make this right?”
“Are you open to suggestion?”
“Wide open.”
“I was going to suggest . . . I understand you’re coming by train?”
“Right. Arriving at 30th Street at nine-oh-five.”
“I was going to suggest that I have one of my men, Detective Payne, pick you up at 30th Street and bring you by my office. By then, with a little luck, I can have my desk cleared for you.”
There was a long pause before Larkin replied.
“That’s very kind of you, Inspector,” he said, finally.
“Detective Payne will be waiting for you at the information booth in the main waiting room,” Wohl said.
“How will I know him? What does he look like?”
Wohl’s mouth ran away with him: “Like a Brooks Brothers advertisement. What about you?”
Larkin chuckled. “Like a Brooks Brothers advertisement? Tell him to look for a bald fat man in a rumpled suit. Thanks for the call, Inspector.”
There was a click on the line.
Wohl took the handset from his ear, held it in front of him, and looked at it for a moment before replacing it in its cradle.
“Tom,” he said to Officer O’Mara as he tossed him a set of keys, “either tonight or first thing in the morning go get a car from the Schoolhouse, drop it at my apartment, and take my Department car. Pick Payne up at no later than eight-fifteen at his apartment. He lives on Rittenhouse Square, he’ll tell you where.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jack, I want you in uniform tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I would be grateful if you two,” he said, nodding at Pekach and Sabara, “could just happen to drop by the Schoolhouse a little after nine. You in uniform, Dave.”
Pekach nodded.
“And between now and nine tomorrow morning, I want the more lurid graffiti removed from the men’s room walls. Supervisory Special Agent Larkin may experience the call of nature, and we don’t want to offend him.”
“I’ll drop by the Schoolhouse on my way home,” Sabara said, “and be outraged at what I find on the toilet’s walls.”
“We are not about to start a guerrilla war against the Secret Service, ” Wohl said. “But on the other hand, I want to make sure that Larkin understands that Special Operations is a division of the Philadelphia Police Department, not of the Secret Service.”
“I think you made that point, Peter,” Sabara said.
Matt saw H. Richard Detweiler and Brewster C. Payne II sitting at a cast-iron table on the flagstone area outside the library of the Detweiler mansion, dressed in what Matt thought of as their drive-to -the-golf-club clothes when he drove up.
There goes any chance I had of just dropping Penny off. Damn!
“Your dad’s here,” Penny said.
“I saw them,” Matt said, and turned the ignition off and got out of the car and started up the shallow flight of stairs to the front door.
Miss Penelope Detweiler waited in vain for Matt to open her door, finally opened it herself, got out, and walked after him.
Grace Detweiler came into the foyer as they entered. Behind her, in the “small” sitting room, he saw his mother, who saw