CCTV ID number there?”
He took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and, not quickly locating any paper, awkwardly held the phone to his ear with his shoulder while he wrote the code on his left palm.
“Thanks. I’ll get right back to you.”
He held out his left hand in front of Corporal Rapier.
“Kerry, please punch up the feed from this CCTV on the main screen.”
Payne nodded at that bank of TVs, which had a real-time feed of the front facade of City Hall.
As Corporal Rapier’s fingers flew across the keyboard, the main screen went to snowlike gray pixels.
“What is it, Matt?” Carlucci asked.
“You are not going to believe this. Looks like Five-Eff has received another charitable donation at his doorstep.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Matty?” Coughlin blurted.
“Not ten minutes ago, a woman arrived at the offices of Lex Talionis in a gypsy cab. It was a minivan-an older-model tan Toyota-and when the side door opened onto the curb, the woman got out. She met the driver at the rear door of the van, and together they wrestled a rolled-up carpet out of the back. They rolled it onto the sidewalk. Then the woman handed the driver his fare like it was something she did every day, and he sped away.”
Gypsy cabs-their drivers unlicensed, unregistered, and usually uninsured-were illegal. But they were plentiful because they charged far less than legit cabbies. And they were everywhere, making them hard as hell to crack down on.
The TV screen came alive with the all-too-familiar view in Old City: the office building at Arch and North Third that housed Lex Talionis. Everyone looked to it.
They saw that on the sidewalk by the front door four uniforms had formed a perimeter of sorts around a blood-soaked ratty carpet. It had been unrolled-and on top of it was the motionless body of a naked black male.
Just to the left of the carpet and its perimeter of cops was a frail-looking black woman. She was gesturing wildly with a sheet of paper at the office building’s front door while another uniform, both hands shoulder high with palms out, tried calming her.
Payne, to no one in particular, announced: “Well, that makes pop-and-drop number nine. Shall we assume the old lady is our doer?”
Harris said, “You can’t be serious. You don’t really think-”
Payne turned and looked at him.
“Hell no, Tony. Not all nine, anyway. All I know is that my uniform in the unmarked just now said that that paper she’s waving is a Wanted sheet, and she’s screaming at that uniform on the sidewalk, ‘I want my reward!’”
“Is that Mickey?” Jason Washington suddenly asked.
Matt and Tony turned and saw the wiry Irishman with a video camera in his hands. He was holding it high above his head, clearly recording the confrontation between the uniform and the woman. He now wore the blue T- shirt with the white handcuffs and MAKE HIS DAY: KISS A COP AT CRIMEFREEPHILLY. COM.
Payne grinned.
Sonofabitch must have been staking out the place, too.
Going to take some doing to get him to sit on that video-if that’s even likely.
Then he felt his cell phone vibrate, and he looked at the text message on its screen:
AMANDA LAW “ARMED amp; DANGEROUS”? WHEN WERE YOU PLANNING ON TELLING ME, MATT? LAST I HEARD WAS THAT YOU WERE GOING TO LIBERTIES TO “TALK” ABOUT THE POP-AND-DROPS. NOW I HAVE TO FIND OUT FROM THE MAYOR ON THE NOON NEWSCAST THAT YOU’RE NOT ONLY BACK ON THE STREET, BUT IN CHARGE OF A TASK FORCE? -A
“Oh, shit!” Matt said again.
“I have to agree with Matt,” Carlucci said. “‘I want my reward’? Oh, shit!”
[FIVE]
Loft Number 2055 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 12:14 P.M.
H. Rapp Badde, Jr., wearing baggy blue jeans and a red sweatshirt with TEMPLE LAW across the chest in white lettering, was seated at the large, rectangular, marble-topped table in the breakfast area adjacent to the gourmet kitchen. He had the television remote control in his right hand and was aiming it at the flat-screen that was mounted to the living room wall. He stabbed at the MUTE button as he looked with some disgust at the image of a solemn-faced Mayor Jerome Carlucci.
Keep it up, Jerry, and you’ll make it even easier for me to kick your Italian ass out of office.
Badde turned his attention to Janelle Harper, who stood across the table from him, skimming a mass- produced flyer titled “Pennsylvania’s Property Rights Protection Act amp; You.” She was wearing a spandex sport outfit, black with purple accents, that clung to her curvy frame like a second skin, and athletic shoes. She had her hair pulled back and wore a pair of black-framed Gucci designer eyeglasses.
“More murders,” he said almost happily. “I can probably run on the crime issue alone and get elected mayor.”
She looked away from the flyer and at him. “You’re not really taking any joy out of those people being killed, are you?”
“Sorry, honey. But only because they’re already dead. Hell, if nothing else, I’ve probably lost a voter.”
Or not, if whoever takes over for Kenny can register their names to vote absentee.
Speaking of Kenny, I wonder what the hell happened to him.
He glanced back at the television, and there was now a live shot from Old City showing policemen stringing up yellow crime-scene tape. The text at the bottom of the screen read: FOURTH HALLOWEEN HOMICIDE. .. MOTHER TURNS IN FUGITIVE SON’S DEAD BODY AT LEX TALIONIS OFFICES FOR $10,000 REWARD… MOTHER SAYS SON’S DEATH WAS DRUG-RELATED..
“Jesus Christ!” Badde said.
Jan looked at him, then at the TV. “Oh my God! How awful!”
“They’re animals out there,” Badde said, then was quiet a moment. “Hell, look at the silver lining. At this rate, the outcry over all these killings might get so bad that Carlucci resigns and I get appointed to take his place.”
Jan looked at him. “Don’t hold your breath.”
Badde gestured at the massive three-ring binder thick with loose-leaf pages at her elbow. Its cover had in black block lettering the title PHILADELPHIA ECONOMIC GENTRIFICATION INITIATIVE.
“When are we supposed to get the second wave of fed funds for PEGI?” Badde asked, pronouncing the acronym “Peggy.”
PEGI was a special program devised by the Housing and Urban Development Committee, one of dozens of such committees of the Philadelphia City Council. The city council had seventeen members: ten elected in their respective districts, the remainder elected at large in the interest of balanced racial representation. The seventeen chose a council president from among themselves, and the president then decided which council members would serve on which committees.
As the number of committees far exceeded the number of council members, it was common for the president to appoint each member to six or eight committees, occasionally even more.
Ask any council member, though, and they’d quietly admit that the sheer workload of serving on just one damn committee was daunting; serving on many others became a logistical impossibility. Thus, it was common for council members simply to choose a favorite committee and pay only lip service to all the others to which they’d been appointed.
Not surprisingly, any oversight by fellow council members within the committees was replaced by an unspoken agreement: You pay attention to the business of your committee, and I’ll pay attention to mine.
