"Very well," Lieutenant Lewis said. "Do so. I don't think I have to tell you to express the regret of the Police Department that something like this has happened, do I?"

"No, sir."

"As I understand the situation, we don't know what happened here, do we?"

"No, sir," Matt Payne said.

"I'm sure that you will not volunteer your opinions, will you, Payne?"

"No, sir."

"And then come back here," Lieutenant Lewis said. "I'm sure Detective D'Amata, and others, will have questions for you."

"Yes, sir."

Lieutenant Lewis turned to Amanda Spencer.

"I didn't get your name, miss," he said.

"Amanda Spencer."

"Are you from Philadelphia, Miss Spencer?"

"Scarsdale," Amanda said, adding, "New York."

"You're in town for the wedding?"

"That's right."

"Where are you staying here?"

"With the Brownes, the bride's family," Amanda answered. "In Merion."

That would be the Soames T. Brownes, Lieutenant Lewis recalled from an extraordinary memory. Soames T. Browne did not have a job. When his picture appeared, for example, in a listing of the board of directors of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, the caption under it read "Soames T. Browne, Investments." The Brownes-and for that matter, the Soames-had been investing, successfully, in Philadelphia businesses since Ben Franklin had been running the newspaper there.

There was going to be a lot of pressure on this job, Lewis thought. And a lot of publicity. People like the Nesbitts and the Brownes and the Detweilers took the termpublic servant literally, with emphasis onservant. They expected public servants, like the police and the courts, to do what they had been hired to do, and were not at all reluctant to point out where those public servants had failed to perform. When a Detweiler called the mayor, he took the call.

Lieutenant Lewis thought again that Jerry Carlucci had been invited to the wedding and the reception and might even be at the Union League when the Payne kid walked in and told them that Penelope Detweiler had just been shot.

"Ordinarily, Miss Spencer, we'd ask you to come to the Roundhouse-"

"The what?" Amanda asked.

"To the Police Administration Building-"

"The whole building is curved, Amanda," Matt explained.

"-to be interviewed by a Homicide detective," Lieutenant Lewis went on, clearly displeased with Matt's interruption. "But since Officer Payne was with you, possibly Detective D'Amata would be willing to have you come there a little later."

"No problem with that, sir," D'Amata said.

And then, as if to document his prediction that the shooting was going to attract a good deal of attention from the press, an antennabedecked Buick Special turned out of the line of traffic and pulled into the exit ramp, and Mr. Michael J. O'Hara got out.

Mickey O'Hara wrote about crime for the PhiladelphiaBulletin. He was very good at what he did and was regarded by most policemen, including Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Sr., as almost a member of the Department. If you told Mickey O'Hara that something was off the record, it stayed that way.

"Hey, Foster," Mickey O'Hara said, "that white shirt looks good on you."

That made reference to Lieutenant Foster's almost brand-new status as a lieutenant. Police supervisors, lieutenants and above, wore white uniform shirts. Sergeants and below wore blue.

"How are you, Mickey?" Lewis said, shaking O'Hara's hand. "Thank you."

"And what are you doing, Matt?" O'Hara said, offering his hand to Officer Payne. "Moonlighting as a waiter?"

"Hey, Mickey," Payne said.

"What's going on?"

"Hold it a second, Mickey," Lewis said. "Miss Spencer, you'll have to make a statement. Payne will tell you about that. And you come back here, Payne, as soon as you do what you have to do."

"Yes, sir. See you, Mickey."

O'Hara waited until Matt Payne had politely loaded Amanda Spencer into the Porsche, gotten behind the wheel, and was fed into the line of traffic by the Traffic sergeant before speaking.

"Nice kid, that boy," he said.

"So I hear," Lieutenant Lewis said.

"What does he have to do before he comes back here?"

"Tell H. Richard Detweiler that his daughter was found lying in a pool of blood on the roof of this place; somebody popped her with a shotgun," Lewis said.

"No shit? Detweiler's daughter? Is she dead?"

"No. Not yet, anyway. They just took her to Hahneman. There's another victim up there. White man. He got his head blown off."

"Robbery?" Mickey O'Hara asked. "With a shotgun? Who is he?"

"We don't know."

"Can I go up there?" Mickey asked.

"I'll go with you," Lewis said, and gestured toward the stairwell.

Between the third and fourth floors of the Penn Services Parking Garage, Lieutenant Lewis and Mr. O'Hara encountered Detective Lawrence Godofski of Homicide coming down the stairs.

Godofski had a plastic bag in his hand. He extended it to Lieutenant Lewis.

"Whaddayasay, Larry?" Mickey O'Hara said.

"How goes it, Mickey?"

The plastic bag contained a leather wallet and a number of cards, driver's license, and credit cards, which apparently had been removed from the wallet.

Lieutenant Lewis examined the driver's license through the clear plastic bag and then handed it to Mickey O'Hara. The driver's license had been issued to Anthony J. DeZego, of a Bouvier Street address in South Philadelphia, an area known as Little Italy.

"I'll be damned," Mickey O'Hara said. "Tony the Zee. He's the body?"

Detective Godofski nodded.

"This is pretty classy for Tony the Zee, getting himself blown away like this," O'Hara said. "The last I heard, he was driving a shrimp-and-oyster reefer truck up from the Gulf Coast."

"Godofski," Lieutenant Lewis said, "have you thought about bringing Organized Crime in on this?"

"Yes, sir. I was about to do just that."

"You find anything else interesting up there?"

Godofski produced another plastic bag, this one holding two fired shotshell cartridges.

"Number seven and a halfs," he said. "Rabbit shells."

"No gun?"

"No shotgun. Tony the Zee had a.38, a Smith and Wesson Undercover, in an ankle holster. I left it there for the lab guys. He never got a chance to use it."

"What the hell has H. Richard Detweiler's daughter got to do with a second-rate guinea gangster like Tony the Zee?" Mickey O'Hara asked rhetorically.

Lieutenant Lewis shrugged and then started up the stairs again.

The Union League of Philadelphia is a stone Victorian buildingsome say a remarkably ugly one-on the west side of South Broad Street, literally in the shadow of the statue of Billy Penn, which stands atop City Hall at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets.

South Broad Street, in front of the Union League, has been designated a NO PARKING AT ANY TIME TOW-AWAY ZONE. Several large signs on the sidewalk advertise this.

Traffic Officer P. J. Ward, who was directing traffic in the middle of South Broad Street, was thus both surprised and annoyed when he saw a silver Porsche 911 pull up in front of the Union League, turn off its lights, and stop. Then a young guy in a monkey suit got out and quickly walked around to the other side to open the door for his girlfriend.

Ward quickly strode over.

"Hey, you! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The young guy in the monkey suit turned to face him.

"I won't be long," he said. "I'm on the job."

There was a silver-colored badge pinned to his jacket, but Officer Ward decided he wasn't going to take that at what it looked like. There was a good chance, he decided, that when he got a good look at the badge, it would say PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR or OFFICIAL U.S. TAXPAYER, and that the young man in the monkey suit driving the Porsche would turn out to be a wiseass rich kid who thought he could get away with anything.