Christ, I'm going seventy-five in a fifty-five zone!

Sorry to be speeding, Officer. What it was, when I passed the Crossroads Diner, was that I naturally recalled my girlfriend with the back of her head blown out in the parking lot…

Terry Davis has long legs. Nice long legs.

Why do long legs turn me on?

Why do some bosoms, but not others, turn me on?

Why did Terry Davis turn me on like that?

She really does have nice legs.

And she smelled good, too.

He recognized where he was. What he thought of as "the end of Straight 611 out of Doylestown." The concrete highway turned into macadam, made a sharp right turn, then a sharp left turn, and then got curvy.

Right around the next curve is where we pick up the old canal.

I'll be damned! I'm not going to throw up.

And I'm not sweat-soaked.

Thank you, God!

He made the left turn and shoved his foot hard against the accelerator.

[ONE] Johnny Cassidy's Shamrock Bar was on The Hill in Easton, near-and drawing much of its business from-Lafayette College. Even at four in the afternoon, there were a lot of customers, mixed students and faculty and other staff of the college.

Matt took a stool at the bar and ordered a beer, a pickled egg, and a Cassidy Burger-"Famous All Over The Hill"- and struck up a conversation with the bartender, who had a plastic nameplate with a shamrock and "Mickey O'Neal Manager" printed on it pinned to his crisp, white, open-collar, cuffs-rolled-up shirt. Matt thought he was probably thirty-five or forty, and was not surprised that he was talkative.

When Matt asked how Johnny Cassidy was, O'Neal shook his head sadly and said the Big C had gotten him, five, no six, months before. Johnny kept feeling tired, and he finally went to the doctor, and six weeks later he was dead. Died the same week as his mother, in fact.

"So what's going to happen to the bar?"

"It's going to stay open," Mickey O'Neal said, firmly, and then went on to explain that he'd worked in the place for fifteen years before Johnny died, starting out as an afternoon bartender and working his way up to assistant manager, and got to know him real well. Johnny had been godfather to two of his kids. "They called him Uncle Johnny."

When Johnny knew his time was up, he made a deal with Mickey and his brother-Johnny's younger brother, nice guy, who's a cop in Philadelphia, and who had cared for their mother until she died; Johnny had never married-which gave twenty-five percent of the place to O'Neal and the rest to his brother.

"We're talking about me buying him out, over time, you know, but right now, I'm just running the place for the both of us. Once a month, I write him a check for his share of what we make. It's a pretty good deal all around. The bar stays open, which means I have a job, and his brother gets a check-a nice check, I don't mind saying-once a month. Which is nice, too. Johnny figured he owed his brother-did I say he's a cop in Philly?-for taking care of their mother all those years."

There were now answers to the questions raised by what Detective Payne had learned at the Northampton County Court House: Seven months before, for one dollar and other good and valuable consideration, all assets, real estate, inventory and goodwill of the property privately held by John Paul Cassidy at 2301 Tatamy Road, Easton, had been sold to the Shamrock Corporation. The building at 2301 Tatamy Road housed both Johnny Cassidy's Shamrock Bar and, above it, four apartments on two floors.

It would appear on the surface-he would nose around a little more, of course-that there was a perfectly good reason for Captain Cassidy's sudden affluence. If the brother had insurance, which seemed likely-and the mother did, which also seemed likely-that would explain where he had gotten the cash to buy the condominium at the shore. And it seemed reasonable that getting a check every month for his share of the profits would explain why Captain Cassidy felt he could afford to give his old Suburban to his daughter and buy a new Yukon XL, no money down, to be paid for with the monthly check.

Detective Payne had a third beer "on the house" and another pickled egg, and then got back in his Porsche to return to Philadelphia.

[TWO] The temptation to take the very interesting winding road beside the old Delaware Canal was irresistible. But he didn't want to go back through Doylestown-past the Crossroads Diner-so he turned off Route 611 onto Route 32 a few miles south of Riegelsville, and followed it along the Delaware.

A few miles past New Hope, his cellular phone tinkled. He looked at his watch and saw that it was quarter to five.

That's probably Peter. Despite what he said about filling him in in the morning, he wants to know what I found out.

"Yes, sir, Inspector, sir. Detective Payne at your service, sir."

"Hey, Matt," a familiar voice said. It was that of Chad Nesbitt. They had been best friends since kindergarten.

"The Crown Prince of tomato soup himself? To what do I owe the honor?"

"Where are you?" Chad asked, a tone of exasperation in his voice.

"About five miles south of picturesque New Hope on Route 32. I presume there is some reason for your curiosity?"

"What are you doing way up there?"

"Fighting crime, of course. Protecting defenseless citizens such as yourself from evildoers."

"Daffy wants you to come to supper. Can you?"

Daffy was Mrs. Nesbitt.

"Why does that make me suspicious?"

"Matt, for Christ's sake, make peace with her. It gets to be a real pain in the ass for me with you two always at each other's throat."

"What's the occasion?"

"There's a girl she wants you to meet."

"Not only no, but hell no."

"This one's nice. I think you'll like her."

"She's a nymphomaniac who owns a liquor store?"

"Sometimes, Matt, you can be a real pain in the ass," Chad said.

There was a perceptible silence.

"Come on, Matt. Please."

"If you give me your solemn word that when I get there, we can go directly from 'How do you do?' to carnal pleasures on your carpet without-"

"Fuck you. Come or don't."

"When?"

"As soon as you can get here."

"Okay," Matt said. "Take me half an hour, depending on the traffic on Interstate 95."

The Wachenhut Security guards who stood in the Colonial-style guard shack at the entrance to Stockton Place in Society Hill were chosen by Wachenhut with more care than their guards at the more than one hundred other locations Wachenhut protected in the Philadelphia area.

Not only was Wachenhut's regional vice president for the Philadelphia area resident in one of the luxury apartments behind the striped-pole barrier, but so were executives of other corporations, which employed large numbers of Wachenhut Security personnel.

Number 9 Stockton Place, for example, a triplex constructed behind the facades of four of the twelve pre-Revolutionary brownstone buildings on the east side of Stockton Place, was owned by NB Properties, Inc., the principal stockholder of which was Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt III and was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV.

Mr. Nesbitt IV was working his way upward in the corporate ranks-he had recently been named a vice president-of Nesfoods International, of which his father was chairman of the executive committee. Four of Nesfoods International's Philadelphia-area manufacturing facilities employed the Wachenhut Corporation to provide the necessary security, as did many other Nesfoods establishments around the world.

It therefore behooved Wachenhut to put its best security foot forward, so to speak, on Stockton Place.

It wasn't only a question of providing faultless around-the -clock security-Wachenhut had learned how to do that splendidly over the years-but to do so in such a manner as not to antagonize those being protected, and their guests.