where the bones were buried. He knew where evil walked.
Sometimes, he walked with it.
10
For all that Vincent Balzano was not, he was a damn good cop. In his ten years as an undercover narcotics officer, he had put together some of the biggest busts in Philadelphia's recent history. Vincent was already an undercover legend due to his chameleon-like ability to move through drug circles on all sides of the table-cop, junkie, dealer, snitch.
His Rolodex of informants and garden-variety skeeves was as thick as anyone's. Right now, there was one particular skeeve Jessica and Byrne were interested in. She hadn't wanted to call Vincent-their relationship teetered on the wrong word, the casual reference, the misplaced emphasis-and the marriage counselor's office was probably the best place for them to interact at this point.
Still, there was a case on the wheel, and sometimes you had to overlook personal issues for the job.
As she waited for her husband to come back to the phone, Jessica thought about where they were in this strange case-no body, no suspect, and no motive. Terry Cahill had run a VICAP search, which yielded nothing similar to the MO of the Psycho tape. The FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a nationwide data center designed to collect, collate, and analyze crimes of violence, specifically murder. The closest hits on Cahill's search were videotapes made by street gangs that recorded initiation rites of new recruits making their bones.
Jessica and Byrne had interviewed Emily Trager and Isaiah Crandall, the two people besides Adam Kaslov who had rented Psycho from The Reel Deal. Neither interview yielded much. Emily Trager was well over seventy and walked with an aluminum walker-a little detail Lenny Puskas had neglected to tell them. Isaiah Crandall was in his late fifties, short, and Chihuahua-jumpy. He worked as a short-order cook at a diner on Frankford Avenue. He nearly fainted when they showed him their badges. He didn't strike either detective as the type with the kind of stomach needed to do what was done on that tape. He certainly wasn't the body type.
Both had said that they watched the movie, start to finish, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. A call back to the video store revealed that both had returned the film well within the rental period.
The detectives ran both names through NCIC and PCIC, retrieving nothing. Both were clean. Ditto on Adam Kaslov, Lenny Puskas, and Juliet Rausch.
Somewhere between the time Isaiah Crandall had returned the film and the time Adam Kaslov took it home, someone had gotten the tape and replaced the famous shower scene with one of their own.
The detectives did not have a lead-without a body, a lead was not likely to fall into their laps-but they did have a direction. A little digging revealed that The Reel Deal was owned by a man named Eugene Kilbane.
Eugene Hollis Kilbane, forty-four, was a two-time loser, a petty thief and pornographer, an importer of hard- core books, magazines, films, and videotapes, along with various and sundry adult sex toys and devices. Along with The Reel Deal, Mr. Kilbane owned a second independent video store as well as an adult bookstore and peep show on Thirteenth Street.
They had paid a visit to his 'corporate' headquarters-the back of a warehouse on Erie Avenue. Bars on the windows, shades down, door locked, no answer. Some empire.
Kilbane's known associates were a Who's Who of Philly scumbags, many of whom plied the drug trade. And in the city of Philadelphia, if you sold drugs, Detective Vincent Balzano knew you.
Vincent came back to the phone in short order with a location that Kilbane was known to frequent, a Port Richmond dive bar called The White Bull Tavern.
Before hanging up, Vincent offered Jessica backup. As much as she hated to admit it, and as weird as it might sound to anyone outside law enforcement, an offer of backup was, in its way, kind of sweet.
She declined the offer, but it went into the reconciliation bank.
The White Bull Tavern was a stone-front hovel near Richmond and Tioga streets. Byrne and Jessica parked the Taurus and approached the tavern, with Jessica thinking: You know you're entering a tough place when the door is held together with duct tape. A sign on the wall next to the door proclaimed CRABS ALL YEAR!
I'll bet, Jessica thought.
Inside they found a cramped, dark bar, dotted with neon beer signs and plastic light fixtures. The air was thick with stale smoke and the high-sweet redolence of cheap whiskey. Beneath that was something reminiscent of the primate reserve at the Philly Zoo.
As she stepped in and her eyes adjusted to the light, Jessica mind- printed the layout. A small room with a pool table to the left, fifteen- stool bar to the right, a handful of rickety tables in the center. Two men sat on stools, midbar. A man and a woman talked at the far end. Four men played nine-ball. She had learned her first week on the job that the first order of business upon entering a snake pit was to ID the snakes, and plot your exit.
Jessica immediately made Eugene Kilbane. He stood at the other end of the bar, sipping coffee, talking to a bottle blonde who, a few years ago, and in some other light, might have had a shot at pretty. In here, she was as pale as the cocktail napkins. Kilbane was thin and rawboned. He had dyed black hair and wore a wrinkled gray double-breasted suit, a brassy tie, pinkie rings. Jessica made him based on Vincent's description of his face. She noted that about a quarter of the man's upper lip, on the right side, was missing, replaced by ridged scar tissue. It gave him the appearance of a constant snarl, surely something he didn't have any desire to renounce.
As Byrne and Jessica made their way to the rear of the bar, the blonde slid off her stool and walked into the back room.
'My name is Detective Byrne, this is my partner, Detective Balzano,' Byrne said, holding up his ID.
'And I'm Brad Pitt,' Kilbane said.
Due to his partial lip, Brad came out Mrad.
Byrne ignored the attitude. For the moment. 'The reason we're here is that, in the course of an investigation we're working on, we ran across something in one of your establishments we'd like to talk to you about,' he said. 'You are the owner of The Reel Deal on Aramingo?'
Kilbane said nothing. He sipped his coffee. Stared straight ahead.
'Mr. Kilbane?' Jessica said.
Kilbane turned his gaze to her. 'I'm sorry, what did you say your name was again, honey?'
'Detective Balzano,' she said.
Kilbane leaned a little closer, running his eyes up and down her body. Jessica was glad she wore jeans and not a skirt today. Still, she felt like she needed a shower.
'I mean your first name,' Kilbane said.
'Detective.'
Kilbane smirked. 'Cute.'
'Are you the owner of The Reel Deal?' Byrne asked.
'Never heard of it,' Kilbane said.
Byrne kept his cool. Barely. 'I'm going to ask you one more time. But you should be aware that three is my limit. After three, we move the party to the Roundhouse. And my partner and I like to party well into the evening. In fact, some of our preferred guests have been known to stay in that cozy little room overnight. We like to call it Hotel Homicide.'
Kilbane took a deep breath. There was always a moment with tough guys when they had to weigh the posture against the outcome. 'Yeah,' he said. 'That's one of my businesses.'
'We believe that one of the tapes available at that store might contain evidence of a rather serious crime. We believe that someone may have taken the tape off the shelf within the past week or so and recorded over it.'
Kilbane did not visibly react to this at all. 'Yeah? And?'
'Can you think of anyone who might have done something like that?' Byrne asked.
'Who, me? I wouldn't know anything about that.'
'Well, we'd appreciate it if you'd give this matter some thought.'
'Is that right?' Kilbane asked. 'What could possibly be in it for me?'
Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Jessica could see the muscle working on the side of his jaw. 'You would have the gratitude of the Philadelphia Police Department,' he said.
