Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [36]
"Damn you, you're embarrassing Terry!"
"Are you embarrassed, Terry?" Matt asked.
"I'm still having trouble getting used to the idea that you're a policeman," she said. "And that you showed up here. Did you know I was here?"
"Of course. I had you under surveillance from the time you left the Savoy-Plaza. That man in the overcoat who exposed himself to you on Broad Street? One of my better men."
Terry laughed.
"Baloney!" she said.
"I'll prove it to you. He has a camera . . . delicacy forbids my telling where. I'll send you a print."
He mimed opening an overcoat, focused his hips, and then mimed pushing a shutter cord.
"Say 'Cheese.' Click. Gotcha!"
Chad laughed.
"Oh, God!" Terry said.
"I can't believe you did that!" Daffy said.
"But you're smiling, Daffy darling!"
"We thought we'd eat in," Daffy said, quickly changing the subject. "Terry has to be at the airport at eleven-thirty. I bought some shrimp at the Twelfth Street Market, but Monday the cook is off."
"That's Daffy's way, Terry," Matt said, "of asking whether I will be good enough to prepare my world famous Wild Turkey shrimp."
"Wild Turkey shrimp?"
"Over wild rice," Matt said. "Yes, Daffy, I will. But you'll have to peel the slimy crustaceans. That's beneath the dignity of a master chef such as myself."
"I've got to give Penny her bath," Daffy complained.
"I'll peel the shrimp," Terry said. "I have to see this. Wild Turkey--you're talking about the whiskey? . . ." Matt nodded. ". . . shrimp?"
"Bring your glass, I'll bring the bottle. The kitchen for some unknown reason is on the ground floor."
Matt led Terry into the kitchen, turned on the fluorescent lights, and then took his jacket off and laid it on a counter. Then he took his pistol from its shoulder holster, held it toward the floor, away from Terry, removed the clip, and then ejected the round in the chamber.
"I'm impressed," Terry said. "If that was your intention."
He gave her a dirty look but didn't reply. He reloaded the ejected round in the magazine, put the magazine in the pistol, the pistol in the shoulder holster, then shrugged out of that and hung it on an empty hook of the pot rack above the stainless-steel stove.
Then he looked at her.
"I wasn't trying to impress you. I don't like leaving guns around with a round in the chamber."
"Sorry," she said, and then asked, "What kind of a gun is that?"
He looked at her for a moment before deciding the question was a peace offering.
"It's an Officer's Model Colt," Matt said. "A .45. A cut-down version of the old Army .45."
"That's what all the cops carry?"
"No. Most Philadelphia cops carry Glocks. They're semiautomatic, like this one, but nine-millimeter, not .45."
"Then?"
"I think this a better weapon."
"And they let you do that?"
"With great reluctance. I had to go through a lot of bureaucratic bullsh--difficulty before I got permission to carry this."
"What is it with Colt?" Terry asked.
"Excuse me?"
"There's some sort of significance, obviously. Stan actually changed his name legally to Colt. And he always carries a Colt automatic in his films."
"What was his name before?"
"Coleman."
"Stan Colt, nee Stanley Coleman?"
"Yeah."
"Whatever works, I guess," Matt said, chuckling. "To answer your question, I suppose there is a certain romance to 'Colt.' They call the old Colt .44 revolver 'The Gun That Won the West,' and then the Colt Model 1911--the big brother of my pistol--was the service weapon right through Vietnam. Now the services use a nine-millimeter Beretta."
"You ever shoot anybody with that pistol?"
"Not with that one."
"But you have shot someone?"
"Why don't we just drop this subject right here?" Matt flared.
"Sorry," she said, offended and sarcastic.
He found a plastic bag of shrimp in the refrigerator, took it to the sink, tore the bag open, and started to peel them.
After a long moment, Terry went and stood beside him and took a handful of shrimp.
He glanced at her but said nothing.
They peeled shrimp in