Special Operations

"It's a little soggy," Matt called a moment later, "but I can read it."

He reappeared in the kitchen with a grease-stained sheet of newspaper. When he laid it on the table, his father picked it up and read the story again.

"May I redispose of this?" he asked, when he had finished, holding the newspaper distastefully between his fingers.

"Sorry," Matt said. "That offers a lot of food for thought," he added. "This ACT, whatever it is, makes more sense than putting me in Highway. But it still smacks of special treatment."

"I think you're going to have to get used to that."

"What do you mean?"

"How many of your peers in the Academy had gone to college?" Brewster Payne asked.

"Not very many," Matt said.

"And even fewer had gone on to graduate?"

"So?"

"Would it be reasonable to assume that you were the only member of your class with a degree? Acum laude degree?"

"You think that's it, that I have a degree?"

"That's part of it, I would guess," Brewster Payne said. "And then there's De

"I think that has more to do with this than my degree," Matt said.

"De

"I never thought about that," Matt said. "I wonder why he never got married?"

"I thought you knew," Brewster Payne said, after a moment. "He was in love with your mother."

"And she picked you over him?" Matt said, genuinely surprised. "I never heard that before."

"He never told her; I don't think she ever suspected. Not then, anyway. But I knew. I knew the first time I ever met him."

"Jesus!" Matt said.

"Would you like to hear my theory-theories-about this mysterious assignment of yours?"

"Sure."

"I think De

"I met him the night of Uncle Dutch's wake," Matt said. "In a bar. When I told him that I was thinking of joining the Department, he told me I would think better of it in the morning; that it was the booze talking."

"Theory Three," Brewster Payne said, "or perhaps Two (a), is that De

Matt considered that a moment, then exhaled audibly. "Well, I won't know will I, until I get there?"

"No, I suppose not."

Matt wolfed down his Taylor ham on toast, then started to put on his shoulder holster.

"They issue you that holster?" Brewster Payne asked.

"No, I bought it a week or so ago," Matt said. "When I wear a belt holster under a jacket, it stands out like a sore thumb."

"What about getting a smaller gun?"

"You can't do that until you pass some sort of examination, qualify with it," Matt said. "I wasn't that far along in the Academy when I was-I suppose the word is 'graduated.' "

"There's something menacing about it," Brewster Payne said.

"It's also heavy," Matt said. "I'm told that eventually you get used to it, and feel naked if you don't have it." He shrugged into the seersucker jacket. "Now," he said, smiling. "No longer menacing."

"Unseen, but still menacing," his father responded, then changed the subject. "You said you were having headlight trouble with the bug?"

The bug, a Volkswagen, then a year old, had been Matt Payne's sixteenth-birthday present, an award for making the Headmaster's List at Episcopal Academy.

"I don't know what the hell is the matter with it; there's a short somewhere. More likely a break. Whenever I start out to fix it, it works fine. It only gives me trouble at night."

"There is, I seem to recall, another car in the garage," Brewster Payne said. "On which, presumably, both headlights function as they should."

The other car was a silver, leather-upholstered Porsche 911T, brand new, presented to Matthew Payne on the occasion of his graduation,cum laude, from the University of Pe

"Very tactfully phrased," Matt said. "Said the ungrateful giftee."

He had not driven the Porsche to Philadelphia, or hardly at all, since he had joined the Police Department.

His father read his mind: "You're afraid, Matt, that it will… set you apart?"

"Oddly enough, I was thinking about the Porsche just now," Matt said. "Hung for a sheep as a lion, so to speak."

"I think you have that wrong; it's sheep and lamb, not lion," Brewster Payne replied, "but I take your point."

"I am being-what was it you said?-being 'set apart' as it is," Matt said. "Why not?"

"I really do understand, Matt."

"If I am sexually assaulted by one or more sex-crazed females driven into a frenzy when they see me in that car…"

"What?" his father asked, chuckling.

"I'll tell you how it was," Matt said, and smiled, and went out of the kitchen, pausing for a moment to throw an affectionate arm around Brewster C. Payne.

Payne, sipping his coffee, went to the kitchen window and watched as Matt opened one of the four garage doors, then emerged a moment later behind the wheel of the Porsche.

He should not be a policeman, he thought. He should be in law school. Or doing almost anything else.

Matt Payne tooted "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits" on the Porsche's horn, and then headed down the driveway.

TEN

Officers Jesus Martinez and Charles McFadden arrived together, in Officer McFadden's Volkswagen, at Highway Patrol headquarters at quarter to eight, determined to be on time and otherwise to make a good first impression. They were both wearing business suits and ties, McFadden a faintly plaided single-breasted brown suit, and Martinez a sharply tailored double-breasted blue pinstripe.

He looked, McFadden accused him, not far off the mark, like a successful numbers operator on his way to a wedding.

The available parking spaces around the relatively new building were all full. There were a row of Highway motorcycles parked, neatly, as if in a military organization, at an angle with their rear wheels close to the building; and a row of Highway radio cars, some blue-andwhites identifiable by the lettering on their fenders, and some, unmarked, by their extra radio ante

There were also the blue-and-whites assigned to the Seventh District, the Seventh District's unmarked cars, and several new-model cars, which could have belonged to any of the department's senior officers.

And there was a battered Chevrolet, festooned with radio ante

"That's Mickey O'Hara's car," Charley McFadden said. "I wonder what he's doing here?"

"There was a woman kidnapped last night," Hay-zus said. "It was on the radio."

"Kidnapped?" McFadden asked.

"Couple of people saw some nut forcing her into a van, with a knife," Hay-zus said.

They had driven through the parking area without having found a spot to park. McFadden drove halfway down the block, made a U-turn, and found a parking spot at the curb.