him.
“Tail her, you mean? The way you tailed me? If she spots you as quickly as I did—and I suspect she’d be looking for a tail, and I wasn’t—this is all going to be an exercise in futility.”
Davis glowered at him. Wohl looked amused.
“We will have assets in place, Detective Payne,” Leibowitz said, “that will permit us—providing you give us enough time to deploy those assets—to keep the Reynolds woman under surveillance without being detected.”
“I hope so,” Matt said.
“Matty,” Chief Coughlin said. “I hope you heard what Mr. Davis and Leibowitz said about how they want to arrest these people?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They don’t want to run any risk of these people being injured, or their resisting arrest,” Coughlin went on. “You understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Consider that an order from me,” Coughlin said. “If you should run into this Chenowith fellow and the other man and the two women skipping down North Broad Street at high noon, all you are to do about it is tell the FBI. You take my meaning?”
“Yes, sir.”
If I see any of these scumbags, Detective Payne thought, his mind full of the faces of the eleven innocent people who had been killed, and I think I can put the arm on one of them—or all of them—without getting myself hurt, I will, and no one will ever remember that I got that order.
ELEVEN
When Matt rang the bell at Number 9 Stockton Place, it was opened by a muscular man in his late thirties. Matt was startled, not so much by the man opening the door instead of Daffy herself, or one of the ever-changing parade of maids, but because the man smelled of cop. That instant reaction was immediately confirmed when Matt saw the unmistakable bulge of a pistol in a shoulder holster.
“Who are you?” Matt blurted.
“Who are you, sir?” the man said with exaggerated courtesy that rubbed Matt the wrong way.
“Are you on the job?” Matt demanded.
“Who was that at the door?” Chad Nesbitt called down from the second floor.
“The gentleman was just about to give me his name, sir,” the man said, offering Matt a patently insincere smile. That was enough to tell Matt that he was facing a rent-a-cop.
“Household Finance, Mr. Nesbitt,” Matt called, raising his voice. “We want our money or the television.”
“Shit.” Chad chuckled. “Let him in.”
“Yes, sir,” the rent-a-cop said, and stood back to let Matt pass.
“Let him in anytime,” Chad added. “He’s safe. As a matter of fact, he’s a cop. Forgive me, a detective. Which probably means, come to think of it, that we’ll have to count the silver after he leaves.”
“You can go up, sir.”
“Wachenhut?” Matt asked the man.
The Wachenhut Security Corporation provided the rent-a-cops for the Stockton Place complex.
“Nesfoods Security, sir,” the man said.
“You’ve got a permit to carry, concealed?”
“Of course, sir.”
Matt started up the stairs.
“Your name, sir?” the security man asked, and before Matt could reply, explained, “For your next visit, sir.”
“Payne,” Matt said. “Matt Payne.”
“Did I understand Mr. Nesbitt to say you are a police officer, sir?”
“Yes, he did, and yes, I am,” Matt said.
“Thank you, sir.”
Matt went up the stairs.
Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, in a sweat suit, was holding Penelope Alice Nesbitt in his arms.
“I have trouble believing you are responsible for that,” Matt said.
“For what?”
“That beautiful child,” Matt said. He leaned close to the baby and touched her cheek with his finger. “Fear not, sweet child, your godfather will protect you from these terrible people.”
“Fuck you,” Chad said. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“I thought I would take you out and buy you dinner,” Matt said. “I had La Bochabella in mind.”
La Bochabella was an upscale Italian restaurant in the 1100 block of South Front Street, not far from Stockton Place.
“What did you do, get into it with Daffy again?” Chad asked suspiciously.
“Her, too, if she wants to go,” Matt said.
Chad laughed.
“If she wants to go where?” Daffy said, walking into the room. She was also wearing a gray sweat suit.
“He wants to take us to La Bochabella,” Chad said.
“By way of making up for what?” Daffy said, taking the baby from her husband.
“Actually, I hoped that by the time they came around with the check, your husband would figure, after what you did to me, Daffy, with the virgin’s mother, that the least he could do was buy me dinner.”
“For all you know, wiseass, Susan may be a virgin,” Daffy said. “Why not? I’ll need to shower first, of course.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Matt said. “What’s with the sweat suits?”
“She’s trying to