Who the hell is buying them?
He took a sip of his coffee.
Stupid question. Who the hell else?
All the goddamned drug-runners.
It had been then that his cellular had started to vibrate, flash Soup King-and cause him to worry.
Matt Payne looked at the cellular phone and said aloud, “What’s he want at this hour?”
Payne told himself that it wasn’t the time of day that bothered him; rather, it was what it suggested. For as long as he could remember, certainly since his early teen years, his parents had told him that calls in the late of night or early morning almost never announced good news. And his experience as a Philly cop sure as hell had only proved their point, time and again.
Maybe he accidentally hit my auto-dial number?
And if that’s the case, and if I’d been sound asleep, I’d be pissed he’s waking me up.
Payne had been pals with the “Soup King”-Payne’s nickname for Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV-since they were in diapers, when Chad was merely the Soup Prince-in-Waiting. Later, they attended prep school together before both graduating from the University of Pennsylvania.
Had Payne’s cellular phone volume not been muted, the phone, having linked “Soup King” with the audio file Matt had saved to its memory chip, would have blared from the speaker their alma mater’s marching band playing:
Tell the story of Glory
Of Pennsylvania
Drink a highball And be jolly
Here’s a toast to dear old Penn!
The Soup King crack came from the fact that Chad’s family was Nesfoods International-his father, Mr. Nesbitt III, was now chairman of the executive committee-having succeeded his father, who’d succeeded his-and Chad was recently named a vice president, having worked his way up in the corporate ranks, just as his father and Grandfather Nesbitt had.
And Matt’s father and Chad’s father were best friends.
Chad never had lacked in the self-esteem department, and Matt often found it his duty to help keep him grounded.
Payne grabbed the phone from its cradle, which automatically answered the call. He put it to his head and by way of greeting said: “My telephone tells me that the Soup King is calling at four forty-six in the morning. Why, pray tell, would anyone-friend or foe or vegetable royalty-wish to awaken a fine person such as myself from a peaceful slumber at this ungodly hour?”
“Matt? Are you awake, Matt?”
Payne pulled the phone from his head and looked at it askance; it was as if Nesbitt hadn’t heard a word he’d said. He put the phone back to his head and replied: “Such a query calls into question the intelligence of one who asks it. Because, it would follow that if one were to telephone a person, and said person were to answer, then, yes, it could be presumed that that person was awake. Or perhaps rudely awakened.”
Nesbitt didn’t reply.
“Actually, you’re lucky,” Payne went on. “I wasn’t rudely awakened. I was, instead, accomplishing multiple tasks, from plotting my future to looking for a new car. All with the wonders of this miraculous thing called the Internet that’s ready at any hour of the day or night. I don’t know about you, but I think this Internet thing might be around for a while. Wonderfully handy. And you can go anywhere on it, even in just your underwear.”
Nesbitt either ignored the ridiculous sarcasm or again didn’t hear what he’d said.
“Look, Matt. I need your help. This is bad.”
Payne thought that Nesbitt’s voice had an odd tone to it, and that caused a knot in his stomach.
“What’s bad, Chad?”
Nesbitt did not address the question directly. “I’d heard-Mother said at dinner last week-are you still a cop or not?”
“Well, the days of the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line very well may be numbered. I’m thinking of taking a road trip. Any interest in-”
“So,” Chad interrupted, “does that mean no?”
“No. It means technically, yes, I’m still a cop. The real question, though, is: ‘Will I continue to be a cop?’ I’ve been put on ice to take time and consider just that-”
“Dammit, yes or no?” he interrupted.
“Yes. What the hell’s got you upset? And at this hour?”
“Can you meet me?”
“Now?”
“Now. Remember the Philly Inn? On Frankford?”
Remember it?
No way in hell could anyone forget a party like we had that night-what?-ten, eleven years ago.
Damn. Has it been that long? “Sure, Chad, I remember. Who could forget Whatshisface diving off the roof into the pool?”
“What? Oh, right.” His voice tapered off. “Skipper did that…”
“Yeah, that’s who it was. So, what happened? Did Daffy finally have enough and throw you out?”
Daphne Elizabeth Browne Nesbitt was wife to Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, and Matt was godfather to their baby girl, Penelope Alice Nesbitt, named after the late Penelope Alice Detweiler, with whom, before she shot up her last vein of heroin, causing her to breathe her last breath, Matt had fancied himself in love.
Payne heard only silence, then said, “What’s the room number?”
“No. I’m at the All-Nite Diner, by the shopping strip just south of it. Thanks, pal.”
“Be there in-” Matt began but stopped when he realized the connection had been broken.
[FIVE] 2512 Hancock Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 5:01 A.M.
Hancock, off Lehigh Avenue, was only a couple miles southwest of the Philly Inn. It was in the section known as North Philly, which of course was due north of Center City-downtown proper-hence North Philly’s name. If the area around the Philly Inn could be described as seedy and sliding to worse, then it would be no less than a kind and charitable act to call North Philly, particularly the more and more Latino neighborhood containing Hancock Street, a miserable godforsaken slum with zero to zilch chance of redemption.
And in a dilapidated row house on Hancock, Ana Maria Del Carmen Lopez-a petite pretty seventeen-year-old Honduran with light-brown skin, long straight black hair, dark eyes, and soft facial features, including a smattering of freckles across her upper cheeks and pixie nose that made her appear even younger-was startled awake from an uneasy sleep by sounds outside her open second-story bedroom window.
Ana was lying with two younger girls from Mexico on a dirty mattress on the wooden floor of the bedroom. She first heard the familiar rattling of a lawn care utility trailer, then the squeaking springs of the dirty tan Ford panel van pulling it over the curb, across the sidewalk, and through the open gate of the vacant lot next door-where two abandoned row houses once stood before burning and being torn down-and then the white rusty Plymouth minivan with its darkened windows that followed the van and trailer into the lot.
Ana’s pulse quickened as she then heard Latin music coming from another vehicle that was accelerating up Hancock Street. While she was not surprised, she was scared. This had happened nearly every night for the two months she’d been here: One of two vans would bring the girls and others back to the house-she wasn’t sure why they had the trailer of lawn mowers out so late-and El Gato would be right on their heels to collect the cash. If everyone was lucky, he then would just take the money and drive off into the dark humid night.
At five feet eleven inches tall and 180 pounds, twenty-one-year-old Juan Paulo Delgado moved with the grace and power of a big cat-thus his nickname, “El Gato.” He had the toned, muscular body of one who worked out regularly with gym weights, which he’d learned to perfect during a short stint in the prison system. He was as fastidious as a cat in his appearance, keeping his black hair cut short and neat, his face clean-shaven, his body-with one exception-absolutely unmarked.
The exception was a small black tattoo-a gothic block letter D with three short lines on either side representing whiskers-at the base of his palm. The location made it more or less unnoticeable to the casual observer unless El Gato chose to show it. It was the same tattoo he convinced each of the girls to get when he first
