"Mike, how are we fixed for cars?"

"Not good. Worse than not good."

"Matt's going to be doing a lot of running around," Wohl said. "He's going to need a car."

"Let him use mine," Pekach volunteered. "With or without Sergeant O'Dowd. I can get a ride if I need one."

"With your sergeant," Wohl said. "Matt, take the Xerox-before you go, make half a dozen copies-to Amy. Explain what we need, and why we need it yesterday. On the way, explain this to Sergeant O'Dowd, ask him for suggestions. The minute you can get through to him, call Chief Coughlin and ask him if he can meet us, make sure you tell him Mr. Larkin will be there, at Bookbinder's for lunch. I'll see if I can get Chief Lowenstein to come too."

"It's Sunday. There's no telling where Amy might be."

"Find her," Wohl ordered. "And keep me advised, step by step."

"Yes, sir."

FOURTEEN.

"There are some other things I think we can safely say about this guy," Larkin said after Matt had gone. "For one thing, he's intelligent, and he's well educated. The two don't always go together. You'll notice that he correctly capitalizes all references to the deity. 'His instrument,' for example, has a capital 'H.' "

Sabara grunted.

"And there are no typos on either the letter or the envelope, which were typed on an IBM typewriter. One of those with the ball. So he both knows how to type and has access to an IBM typewriter. Which means probably in an office. Which would mean that he would also have access to a blank sheet of paper, and probably an envelope. He used instead a sheet of typing paper from one of those pads you buy in Woolworth's or McCrory's. There are traces of an animal-based adhesive on the top edge. Actually the bottom, which just means that after he ripped the sheet free, he put it in the typewriter upside down. And he used an envelope from the Post Office. Which probably means that he knows somebody was going to take a good close look at both the letter and the envelope and didn't want us to be able to find him by tracing the paper or envelope."

"Then why write the letter in the first place? Take that risk?" Sabara asked.

"Because he believes that he is a Christian, and is worried about the Vice President's soul," Larkin said. "Which brings us back to someone who thinks he's doing the Lord's work being a very dangerous character, indeed."

"We keep saying 'he,' " Wohl said, but it was a question.

"Two things. Both unscientific," Larkin replied. "Women don't normally do this sort of thing. And there is, in my judgment, a masculine character to the tone of the letter. It doesn't sound as if it's written by a female. But I could be wrong."

"Yeah," Wohl said thoughtfully.

"One more speculation," Larkin said. " 'High explosives.' Technically, there are low-yield explosives and high-yield explosives. Maybe he knows the difference. That could suggest that this guy has some experience with explosives. It could just as easily mean, of course, that he doesn't know the difference, but just heard the term."

"But the whole letter suggests that he isn't thinking of taking a shot at the Vice President," Wohl said.

"Presuming, for the sake of argument, that you're right, that's a mixed blessing. Getting close enough to the Vice President to take a shot at him wouldn't be easy. Using explosives-and I don't think we can dismiss military ordnance, hand grenades, mines, that sort of thing-is something else. And since this guy is doing G.o.d's work, I don't think he's worrying about how many other people might have to be 'disintegrated.' "

"I don't suppose there's any chance of having the Vice President put off his visit until we can get our hands on this guy?" Wohl asked.

"No," Larkin said. "Not a chance."

"Has he seen this letter?"

Larkin shook his head, no.

"Well, you tell us, Charley," Wohl said. "How can we help?"

"That's a little delicate . . ."

"You'd rather discuss that in private, is that what you mean?"

Larkin nodded.

"Charley, anything that you want to say to me, you can say in front of these people," Wohl said.

Larkin hesitated, and then said, "You are like your dad, Peter. He once told me he never had anyone working for him he couldn't trust."

"There are some I trust less than others," Wohl said. "These I trust, period."

"Okay," Larkin said. "The word that gets back to me is that there is some bad feeling between the Police Department and the feds, the FBI in particular, but the feds generally."

"I can't imagine why anyone would think that," Wohl said, lightly sarcastic.

Larkin snorted.

"There's a story going around that both you, the Department, I mean, and the FBI were going after a big-time car thief. And the first time that either of you knew the other guys were working the job was when your cars ran into each other when you were picking him up."

"Not true," Wohl said.

Larkin looked at him in surprise.

"The real story is that n.o.body in the Department, except one hard-nosed Irishman, believed that the car thief could possibly be a car thief. We were wrong, and the FBI was right."

"One of your guys, the hard-nosed Irishman?"

Wohl pointed at Jack Malone.

"And I didn't believe him, either," Wohl said. "Walter Davis and I had a long talk to see if we couldn't keep something like that from happening again."

Walter Davis was the SAC, the special agent in charge, of the Philadelphia office of the FBI.

"You get along with Davis all right, Peter?"

"As well as any simple local cop can get along with the FBI," Wohl said.

"Did you almost say 'the feds'?"

"No."

"Out of school," Larkin said. "I hear that part of the problem is a Captain Jack Duffy."

"Out of school, did you hear what Captain Duffy is supposed to have done?"

"What he doesn't do is the problem, is what I hear. Phrased delicately, both Walter Davis and our SAC here . . . Joe Toner, you know him, our supervisory agent in charge?"

Wohl shook his head, no.

". . . tell me that in the best of all possible worlds, Captain Duffy would be a bit more enthusiastically cooperative than he is."

"That's delicately phrased," Wohl said. "But I don't think it's Duffy personally. He takes his guidance from the commissioner."

"Okay. Confession time," Larkin said. "Joe Toner found out somehow that Dignitary Protection had been given to something called Special Operations, which was under an Inspector Wall. So, when I began to suspect that this vice presidential visit was going to present serious problems, I decided I was going to bypa.s.s Captain Duffy. I called the Dignitary Protection sergeant . . . you know who I mean, the caretaker sergeant?"

"Henkels," Wohl furnished.

"Sergeant Henkels. And I told him that I wanted to see the supervisor in charge in our office. There, I was going to make sure he found out that Denny Coughlin and I are old pals. The logic being that Henkels and the lieutenant were going to be more impressed with, and more worried about annoying, Chief Coughlin than they would about Duffy. In other words, they would enthusiastically cooperate. "

"You think the danger this guy poses is worth really p.i.s.sing off Duffy and the commissioner?"

"I would rather have both love me, but yes, I do."

"And if getting Henkels and Malone to circ.u.mvent normal channels incidentally got them in deep trouble, too bad?"

"My job is to keep the Vice President alive, Peter. If I have to step on some toes . . ."

"You can't simply cut Duffy out of the picture, even if you wanted to," Wohl said.

"Joe Toner's deputy has an appointment with Duffy at eight o'clock Monday morning. We will go through the motions. But what I hoped to get first from Malone, and then from you, was more cooperation than I'm liable to get from Duffy. This is not one of those times when it would be all right for you to say, 'f.u.c.k the feds.' We've got to find this guy before he has a chance to 'disintegrate ' the Vice President, and in the process probably a bunch of civilians."

Wohl's face was expressionless, but obviously, Mike Sabara decided, he was giving his response a good deal of thought. Finally, Wohl reached for his coffee cup, picked it up, and then looked directly at Larkin.

"How, specifically, do you think we could help?"

"Some cop in this town has a line on this guy. Either somebody in Intelligence, s.e.x Crimes, Civil Affairs, something else esoteric, or a detective somewhere, or a beat cop. He's done something suspicious. If we're lucky, done something really out of the ordinary, like buying explosives, maybe. Had some kind of trouble with his neighbors. Done something that would make a good cop suspicious of him, but nothing he would make official."

"If you gave Jack Duffy," Wohl replied, "or, better yet, the commissioner himself what you've just given us, it would be brought up at the very next roll call."

"And laughed at," Larkin said. "But that's what Toner's deputy is going to do tomorrow morning, tell Duffy everything. I told you, we're going to go through the motions. And maybe we'll get lucky. But maybe lucky won't cut it."

"So what do you want from us?" Wohl asked.

"I thought maybe you could tell me what you could do," Larkin said.

The question surprised Wohl; it was evident on his face.

"My dad was not a fan of police vehicles," he said after a moment. "He always said the beat cop, who knew everybody on his beat, could usually stop trouble before it happened. Unfortunately, we don't have many beat cops these days. But that strikes me as the way to go."

"Excuse me?" Larkin said.

"We'll need a good profile, written in simple English, not like a psychiatrist's case record, of this guy. We spread that around the Department, into every district, every unit. 'Does anybody think they know this guy?' And I'll have Dave distribute it, using the Highway Patrol. They're in and out of districts all over the city; they have friends everywhere, in other words. Make it look like a job, not like the bra.s.s in the Roundhouse are smoking funny cigarettes. "

"Could you do that?" Larkin asked.

"Not without stepping on Duffy's toes, and a lot of other people 's," Wohl said. "Do you know Chief Lowenstein?"

"Only that he runs the Detective Division."

"As a fiefdom," Wohl said. "How soon are you going to have the psychological profile you mentioned?"

"Ours, probably tomorrow, the day after. And the FBI's a day or two after that."

"Can that be speeded up?"

"I can have them in your hands, hand carried, within an hour of their delivery to my office in Washington," Larkin said. "Sooner, if you want it read over the phone. But I can't rush our shrink, and certainly not the FBI's."

"Okay. Then we'll have to go with Amy," Wohl said.

"Who?" Larkin asked.

"Dr. Payne. Detective Payne's sister."

"Oh, yeah."

"She'll give us a profile. I'll translate it into English."

The doorman of the large, luxurious apartment building in the 2600 block of the Parkway in which Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., lived paid only casual attention to the blue Ford as it dropped a pa.s.senger, a nicely dressed young man, outside his heavy plate-gla.s.s doors.

But then, as the young man stepped inside the lobby, the doorman saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the Ford, instead of driving onto the road leading to the parking lot and/or the Parkway had moved into an area close to the door where parking was prohibited to all but the management of the building and those tenants whose generosity to the doorman deserved a little reward.

"Hey!" the doorman called after the nicely dressed young man. "Your friend can't park there."

Matt Payne's childhood and youth had been punctuated frequently by the parental folklore that hay was for horses, and was not a suitable form of address for fellow human beings, the result of which being that he did not like to be addressed as "Hey!"

He turned to the doorman.

"Oh, I think he can," he said.

"Hey, he either moves the car, or I call the cops."

"There's a cop," Matt said helpfully as Jerry O'Dowd, in the full regalia of a sergeant of the Highway Patrol, got out of the car and strode purposefully toward the door.

"What's going on here?" the doorman asked.

"We're finally going to close the floating c.r.a.ps game on the tenth floor," Matt said. "Gambling is illegal, you know."

Sergeant Jerry O'Dowd, who was by nature a very cordial person, at that moment came through the plate-gla.s.s door, smiled at the doorman, and said, "Good morning. Nice day, isn't it?"

He then followed Matt to the bank of elevators and into one of them.

The doorman went to the elevator the moment the door closed and watched in some fascination as the indicator needle over the door moved in an arc and finally stopped at ten.