Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [221]
With an effort, Mrs. Payne smiled and said,
"No, I don't think he has. It was very kind of you, Detective, to think of bringing this."
An hour--and several bottles of spirits--later, everybody had gone, and Matt and Brewster Payne found themselves again alone on the patio.
"Well, I don't know if that was the rest Aaron Stein prescribed for you, but I don't see how it could have been avoided, and in the long run, I think it was good for you," Brewster C. Payne said.
"I'm all right, Dad."
"What are you going to do for thirty days? Given it any thought?"
"Aside from getting the Porsche fixed . . . It's in the impound lot, Peter told me--"
"You're going to have it repaired?"
"I don't know. There was a lot of damage."
"You have time to decide."
"I may get another car, something less ostentatious, suitable for a starving law student."
Brewster Payne looked at him for a long moment without saying anything.
"When did you decide that?" he asked finally.
"In the hospital," Matt said.
"May I comment?"
"I sort of expected 'Finally, thank God, he's come to his senses!' "
Brewster C. Payne chuckled, then said, "I would be delighted if that's what you finally decide to do, Matt, but I suggest to you that that's a very important decision to make, and important decisions should not he made impulsively."
"Okay."
"Why don't you go to the Cape May house and take Final Tort out of sight of shore and watch the waves go up and down for a couple of days? That always helps me to think when I really need to."
Matt thought that over for a moment, then nodded.
"You're probably right. You usually are. But I really think my days as the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line are over."
TWENTY-TWO
[ONE]
The theory that using Final Tort V, the Payne fifty-eight-foot Hatteras, as a platform from which, as he watched the waves go up and down, Matt could do some really serious thinking--and, his father hoped, incidentally get some rest-- would be an excellent idea did not work out well in practice largely because of her captain.
Her captain, retired Coast Guard chief petty officer Al Bowman, who had been with the Paynes since Matt was ten, when the family boat was Final Tort II, a much smaller Hatteras, was on vacation.
Matt had learned small-boat handling from Chief Bowman, and took not a little pride in knowing he had met Chief Bowman's criteria in that area. Usually, when they went out on Final Tort V together, the chief would come to the bridge only to hand Matt another beer.
Standing in for him in his absence was another, much younger retired Coast Guard chief petty officer, who was visibly nervous when Matt went to the control console, fired up the engines, and asked him to let loose the lines, with the obvious intent of taking the vessel to sea with himself at the helm.
Even when Matt managed to get the Final Tort V away from the wharf and into the wide Atlantic without running her aground, the stand-in captain never got far from Matt or the controls.
What was worse, however, was that the replacement captain had seen in the Bulletin both the photograph of Matt getting off the Citation with Homer C. Daniels and the photograph of Matt, pistol in hand, in the parking lot near La Famiglia, and naturally presumed Matt would be delighted to tell him all about the murdering rapist, exchanging gunfire with a couple of armed robbers, and what it was really like to be a real-life Stan Colt. And incidentally, what's Stan Colt really like?
Compounding the problem was that the replacement captain was a really nice guy, the sort of man to whom one could not say, "I wish you'd shut the fuck up!" although that thought did run more than once through Matt's mind.
And finally, if there were fish in the Atlantic, none of them showed any interest whatever in the bait supposed to tempt them to any of the four lines Matt put in the water.
At 2 P.M., Matt said, "I think we'd might as well call it a day. You want to take her in?"
The replacement captain had been obviously pleased with the request