Unless it turns out that the girl was raped or something—which might damned well be the case—in which case the cops would have an unlawful death by castration to deal with.
“I just don’t see where any of the people who work for me would be any good at that sort of investigation. I could ask—”
“That won’t be necessary, thank you just the same, Mr. Giacomo. And thank you for returning my call. I’m grateful to you.”
“I’m glad things seem to be working out for your granddaughter,” Giacomo said.
“Thank you. I very much appreciate your interest,” Vincenzo Savarese said, and hung up.
He looked at Pietro Cassandro.
“Mr. Giacomo does not seem to feel that any of the investigators with whom he has experience would be useful,” he said.
Cassandro did not know how to interpret the remark. He responded as he usually did in similar circumstances. He held up both hands, palms upward, and shrugged.
When Vincenzo Savarese’s daughter had told him how kind Dr. Payne was, even calling to tell her to bring Cynthia’s makeup and decent nightclothes to her in the hospital, she also said that Cynthia had told her that Dr. Payne had told her she was not to tell her mother, or her father, for that matter, anything that made her uncomfortable to relate.
Savarese hadn’t said anything to his daughter, but he’d thought that while that might be—and probably was—good medical practice, it also suggested that there was something that Cynthia would be uncomfortable telling her mother about. He was naturally curious about what that might be.
There was something else Savarese thought odd. The young man Cynthia had been seeing a lot of—his name was Ronald Ketcham, and all Savarese knew about him was that he was neither Italian nor Catholic, and Cynthia’s mother hoped their relationship wasn’t getting too serious—had not been around since Cynthia had started having her emotional trouble.
“Tell Paulo to put the retired cop to work,” Mr. Savarese ordered.
Paulo Cassandro, Pietro’s older and even larger brother, was president of Classic Livery, Inc., in which Mr. Savarese had the controlling—if off the books—interest.
“Right, Mr. S.,” Pietro Cassandro said. “What do you want me to do with the cognac?”
“Send it back to the restaurant,” Mr. Savarese said, making reference to Ristorante Alfredo, one of Philadelphia’s most elegant establishments, and in which he also had the controlling—if off the books—interest.
“Right, Mr. S. I’ll do that on my way home.”
Mr. Savarese changed his mind.
“Keep out two bottles,” he said. “No. Three bottles. Drop them off at Giacomo’s office.”
“Got it, Mr. S.”
Mr. Savarese looked as if he was searching his mind for something else that had to be done, and then, that he had found nothing.
He walked to the Steinway grand piano, took the handkerchief from the top of the violin case, and tucked it into his collar. Then he opened the violin case, took out the bow, tested the horsehair for proper tension, took out the Strenelli, and, holding it by the neck, walked to the reel-to-reel tape recorder and turned it back on.
Then he tucked the Strenelli under his chin, raised the bow to its strings, and began to play along with the Philharmonica Slavonica’s rendition of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor, Opus 26.
During the briefings given to Detective Matt Payne by the Philadelphia Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to prepare him for his role in the apprehension of the fugitives Bryan C. Chenowith, Jennifer Ollwood, Edgar L. Cole, and Eloise Anne Fitzgerald (known to the FBI as “The Chenowith Group”), Matt had a number of thoughts he was aware would annoy or confound (probably both) both the FBI and his fellow officers of the Philadelphia Police Department.
The first of these was his realization that Sir Walter Scott had been right on the money when he proclaimed, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!”
Chief Inspector Coughlin, Inspector Wohl, Staff Inspector Weisbach, and Sergeant Jason Washington were responsible for bringing this conclusion to Payne’s mind.
They had spent the better part of an hour, starting at 8: 15 A.M. in Denny Coughlin’s Roundhouse office, conducting a discussion of the cover story Matt would use in Harrisburg. Detective Payne had been present, but it had been made immediately clear to him that his participation had not been solicited and was not desired.
The three senior police supervisors decided that so far as the members of the Special Operations Division Investigation Section were concerned, they would