"There's a couple of them outside, too," Aquila said. "But only a couple. You can probably get past them before they know what's happening. You want to use my car?"

"We'll take Miss Dutton's car," Wohl said. "When we're gone, would you tell Lieutenant DelRaye we've gone, and that I'm taking Miss Dutton to the Roundhouse?"

"Yes, sir," Office Aquila said. It was obvious that he approved of Wohl's tactics. He had certainly heard that DelRaye had sent for a wagon to haul a drunken and belligerent Louise Dutton off. This would be one more proof that Staff Inspector Peter Wohl knew how to turn an unpleasant situation into a manageable one.

They got in Louise's Cadillac.

"There's a thing in the floor that you run over, and the door opens," Louise said, and then, "What are you looking for?"

"How do you get the parking brake off?"

"It comes off automatically when you put it in gear," she said.

"Oh," he said.

As they approached the exit, she laid down on the seat with her head on his lap. The door opened as she said it would, and he drove through. A reporter and a couple of photographers moved toward the car, but without great interest. And then he was past them, heading up Arch Street.

"We're safe," Wohl said. "You can sit up."

She pushed herself erect.

"I am not going to the 'Roundhouse'!" Louise said. "Not tonight."

She had not moved away from him. When she spoke, he could feel and smell her warm breath.

"We can go somewhere and get a cup of coffee," Wohl said.

"Hey, Knight in Shining Armor, when I say something, I can't be talked out of it," Louise said.

"Where would you like to go, then?" Peter asked.

There was a perceptible pause before she replied.

"I don't want to go to a hotel," she said. "They smirk, when you check in without luggage. What would your mother say if you brought me home with you, Peter?"

"I don't live with my mother," he said, quickly.

"Oh, you don't? Then I guess you have an apartment?"

"I'm not so sure that would be a good idea," he said.

"I don't have designs on your body, if that's what you're thinking. I'm wide open to other suggestions."

"I'll make you some coffee," Peter said.

"I don't want coffee," she said.

"Okay, no coffee," Peter said.

Ten minutes later, as they drove up Lancaster Avenue, she said, " Where the hell do you live, in Pittsburgh?"

"It's not far."

"All of my life, my daddy told me, 'If you're ever in trouble, you call me, day or night,' so tonight, for the first time, after the matinee idol told me he was sending for a battering ram, I called him. And his wife told me he's in London."

"Your stepmother?"

"No, his wife," Louise Dutton said, as if annoyed at his denseness. He didn't press the question.

"But you came, didn't you?" Louise asked, rhetorically. "Even if you didn't know I'd sent for you?"

Peter Wohl couldn't think of a reply. She half turned on the seat and held on to his arm with both hands.

"Why did they do that to him? Keep stabbing him, I mean? My God, theyhacked him!"

"That's not unusual with murders involving sexual deviates," Peter Wohl said. "There's often a viciousness, I guess is the word, in what they do to each other."

She shuddered.

"He was such anice little man," she said. She sighed and shuddered, and added, "Bad things are supposed to come in threes. God, I hope that isn't true. I can't take anything else!"

"You're going to be all right," Peter said.

When they were inside the apartment, he turned the radio on, to WFLNFM, the classical music station, and then smiled at her.

"I won't ask you if I can take your jacket," he said. "How do you like your coffee?"

"Made in the highlands of Scotland," she said.

"All right," he said. "I'll be right with you."

He went in the kitchen, got ice, and carried it to the bar. He took his jacket off without thinking about it, and made drinks. He carried them to her.

"Until tonight, I always thought there was something menacing about a man carrying a gun," she said. "Now I find it pleasantly reassuring."

"The theory is that a policeman is never really off duty," he said.

"Like Dutch?" she said.

"You want to talk about Dutch?" he asked.

"Quickly changing the subject," Louise said. "This is not what I would have expected, apartment-wise, for a policeman," she said, gesturing around the apartment. "Or even for Peter Wohl, private citizen."

"It was professionally decorated," he said. "I once had a girl friend who was an interior decorator."

"Had?"

"Had."

"Then I suppose it's safe to say I like the naked lady and the red leather chairs, but I think the white rug and most of the furniture looks like it belongs in a whorehouse."

He laughed delightedly.

She looked at her drink.

"I don't really want this," she said. "What I really would like is something to eat."

"How about a world-famous Peter Wohl Taylor ham and egg sandwich?"

"Hold the egg," Louise said.

He went into the kitchen and took a roll of Taylor ham from the refrigerator and put it on his cutting board and began to slice it.

He fried the Taylor ham, made toast, and spread it with Durkee's Dressing.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"Milk?" she asked.

"Milk," he replied. He put the sandwiches on plates, and set places at his tiny kitchen table, then filled two glasses with milk and put them on the table.

Louise ate hungrily, and nodded her head in thanks when he gave her half of his sandwich.

She drained her glass of milk, then wiped her lips with a gesture Peter thought was exquisitely feminine.

"Aren't you going to ask me about me and Dutch?"

"Dutch is dead," Peter said.

"I never slept with him," Louise said. "But I thought about it."

"You didn't have to tell me that," he said.

"No," she said, thoughtfully. "I didn't. I wonder why I did?"

"I'm your friendly father figure," he said, chuckling.

"The hell you are," she said. "Now what?"

"Now we see if we can find you a pair of pajamas or something-"

"Have you a spare T-shirt?"

"Sure, if that would do."

"And then we debate who gets the couch, right? And who gets the bed?"

"You get the bed," he said.

"Why are you being so nice to me?"

"I don't know," he said.

"No pass, Peter?" she asked, looking into his eyes.

"Not tonight," he said. "Maybe later."

He walked into his bedroom, took sheets and a blanket from a chest of drawers, carried them into the living room, and tossed them on the couch. Then he went back into the bedroom, found a T-shirt and handed it to her, wondering what she would look like wearing it.

"I'll brush my teeth," he said. "And then the place is yours. I shower in the morning."

Brushing his teeth was not his major priority in the bathroom, with all he'd had to drink, and as he stood over the toilet trying to relieve his bladder as quietly as possible, the interesting fantasy that he would return to the bedroom and find her naked in his bed, smiling invitingly at him, ran through his head.

When he went back in the bedroom, she was fully dressed, and standing by the door, as if she wanted to close it, and lock it, after him as soon as possible.

"Good night," he said. "If you need anything, yell."

"Thank you," she said, almost formally.

As if, he thought, I am the bellhop being rushed out of the hotel room.

He heard the lock in the door slide home, and remembered that both Dorothea and Barbara were always careful to make sure the door was locked; as if they expected to have someone burst in and catch them screwing.

He took off his outer clothing, folded it neatly, and laid it on the armchairs.

Then he remembered that he had told the cop in the basement garage to tell Lieutenant DelRaye that he was taking her to the Roundhouse. He would have to do something about that.