Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [181]
"After you fell down twice."
"I fell over a goddamn wire."
She snorted.
"And the Highway sergeant gave you mints. He saw you were drunk."
"Isn't that what they call the pot calling the kettle black?"
"At least I admit it."
"Okay. I admit it. I was drunk. Happy?"
"And we never should have gone to the hotel in the first place. You should have thought what it would mean to me if it ever got out."
"I wasn't aware that our going to a hotel--in which, by the way, we have separate rooms--was going to see you branded forever with a scarlet A on your forehead."
"It would damned sure keep me from staying in Homicide, " Olivia said.
"Look, you better be prepared, Olivia--Christ, you're naive--for all sorts of clever remarks from the guys in Homicide about our 'vacation' in Alabama. Whether we move into some dump of a motel or not, there are going to be suggestions that we fooled around."
"What they're going to think, is (a) I walked into Homicide, and (b) took one look at the hotshot sergeant, who calls the first deputy commissioner 'Uncle Denny,' and (c) jumped into his bed. And you know it, and you know that'll keep me from staying in Homicide. And you don't care."
"As much as I would like it to be otherwise, I think you have absolutely no chance of staying in Homicide."
"Is that so?"
"That's so. The only reason I'm in Homicide is because Mariani had that brainstorm about giving the top-five guys on the sergeant's exam their choice of assignment."
"It had nothing to do, right, with your 'Uncle Denny' Coughlin?"
"No, goddamn it, it didn't. He tried to talk me out of it, as a matter of fact."
She snorted again.
"And he was probably right. There is no one more aware of my limitations as a Homicide investigator than I am."
"Amazing! That's the first modest thing I've ever heard you say."
"Oh, screw you!"
"Fat chance!"
The doorman of the Grand Hotel opened the door for Olivia.
"Olivia, would you like to have dinner with me?"
"I think I'll have a sandwich in my room. But thank you just the same."
She smiled at the doorman and walked into the hotel.
[TWO]
Matt drove back into Fairhope and had linguini with Italian sausage and a bottle of Merlot--all of a bottle of Merlot--in La Trattoria, while considering the differences of the mental processes of the opposite sexes.
And then he drove very carefully back to the Grand Hotel, asked for any messages--there were none--and then went into the hotel's Bird Cage Lounge, where he sat all by himself in an upholstered chair at a table and had the first of five drinks of Famous Grouse on the rocks. The prospect of a scotch--or even an Irish--martini did not have much appeal.
Between drinks three and four, he used the house phone on the bar to call Miss Olivia Lassiter. The hotel operator said she was sorry, but Miss Lassiter had left word that she didn't wish to take any more calls tonight.
Between drinks four and five, his cellular buzzed.
It was Detective Joe D'Amata.
"The Black Buddha said to call, Matt. Meet Delta 311 at the Mobile airport--"
"Mobile?"
"That's what he said. Mobile. Arriving at twelve-thirty-five. "
"They pronounced that 'Mow-beel,' not 'Mow-bile,' by the way."
"No shit?"
"Tell him I'll be at the 'Mow-Beel' airport. Who's Mrs. Solomon sending down? Did she make up her mind?"
"I dunno," Joe said. "This is the doer, huh?"
"It sure looks like it, Joe."
"Good for you, Matt. Having a good time?"
"Absolutely, Joe."
"Yeah, I bet you are," D'Amata said, chuckled, and hung up.
After drink five, Matt signaled for the waitress and signed the bill.
"I've had all the fun I can stand for one night," he said to her.
He left a call for half past seven and went to bed.
He woke with a hangover and a clammy undershirt.
He wondered about that and sniffed, and when he first encountered a really foul odor, remembered he had had a nightmare.
I always smell like death warmed over when I have one. And this was one of the better ones:
A Ford van driven by Warren K. Fletcher, white male, five feet ten, thirty-one, of Germantown was backing