Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [208]
"It looks that way, I'm afraid," Wohl said.
"What happened?"
"Matt said--right after the Colt party--he was in the parking lot next to La Famiglia Restaurant?"
She nodded. She knew the restaurant well.
"And he walked up on an armed robbery. They shot at him, and he shot back, and put both of them down--one for good."
"Why the hell couldn't he have just, for once, for once, looked the other way?"
"He's a cop, honey," Wohl said.
"Is he all right?"
"He sounded all right to me."
She jumped off the bed and looked around the room.
"Where the hell is my damned bra?" she asked softly, more of herself than of him.
"It's probably in the living room," Wohl said.
She looked at him, then picked up her skirt and stepped into it.
"I gather you won't be here when I get back?" Wohl asked.
"I'm going with you," she said.
"I don't think you want to do that," he said.
"Don't think you know what I want to do, please," she said. "What it is, is that you don't want me to go with you."
"Okay," he said. "I don't. And I don't think Matt will want to see you right now, either."
She slipped her feet into her shoes, then went out of the room, returning in a moment in the act of putting her brassiere on.
She backed up to him.
"Fasten it, will you, please?"
"Funny," he said after fussing with the catch for a moment. "I didn't have this much trouble opening it."
She didn't reply until she was sure he had fastened the catch, and then she turned and faced him.
"I can't believe that you're as unaffected by this as you're trying to make out," she said. "You know what this is going to do to him."
"I'm really unhappy about it, if that's what you mean," he replied. "But no, I don't know what this is going to do to him. I hope that it was a good shooting, and I'd like to think he's already worked his way through the questions something like this brings up."
"You mean, after the first couple of good shootings it gets easier?" she asked, more than a little sarcastically.
He didn't reply for a moment.
"I hope, for Matt's sake, it does," he said, finally.
She looked at him for a long moment, then walked out of the room again and came back pulling a sweater over her head.
"Your call," she said. "We can take two cars, or I can go with you."
He looked at her in the mirror--he was tying his tie--but didn't say anything until he was finished.
Then he turned around and looked directly at her. "Thank you," he said.
"What for?"
"You know what for," he said.
He took a tweed sports coat from his closet, then followed her out of the bedroom, and through the living room to the door.
His apartment had once been the servants' quarters above what had once been the stables, and then the five-car garage of the turn-of-the-century mansion now divided into "luxury apartments."
They went down the outside stairs and to his unmarked Crown Victoria. He unlocked her door for her, and she reached up and kissed him.
"Sorry to have been such a bitch," Amy said.
"Hey, I understand."
He closed the door after her and went around the front and got in the car, and drove up to the drive, past the mansion to Norwood Street, and turned right.
"No flashing blue lights and screaming siren?" Amy asked.
"We'll probably get to Internal Affairs before he does," Wohl said.
He reached under the dash and came up with a microphone.
"S-1," he said.
"Go ahead, S-1," Police Radio--this time a masculine voice--replied.
"On my way from my home to Internal Affairs," Wohl said.
"Got it."
He dropped the microphone on the seat.
"Can you get Denny Coughlin on that?" Amy asked.
He picked up the microphone.
"Radio, S-1. Have you got a location on Commissioner Coughlin?"
"S-1, he's at Methodist Hospital."
"What's going on there?"
"An officer was shot answering a robbery in progress on South Broad. And be advised, there's a new assist officer, shots fired on Front Street. Just a couple of minutes ago."
"Okay. Thank you."
He put the microphone down.
"If the root of your question was 'Does he know?', the answer is if he doesn't, he will in a matter of minutes."