Hiding Among the Dead

by Chris Bauer

“Yeah.”

  “Anyone else with you?”

  “Older people. A crowd. Don’t know who, sir.”

  “So when was the second time?”

  “Last Thursday night.”

  No—fucking no.

  Thursday was the same day the medical examiners had estimated as date and time of death for the corpse the cops had found. Philo’s wee garden-variety red flag morphed into a Times Square billboard with fireworks and a mushroom cloud chaser on New Year’s Eve. “Thursday? You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Outside on the street, or inside the house?”

  “Um…”

  “Patrick, this is important. Inside or just outside?”

  “Inside the house.”

  Kee-rist. “I don’t fucking believe this. Why…How did you get in?”

  “A lady with a suitcase went in first. She left the door unlocked. I peeked in. She didn’t know I went in after her.”

  “This is not good, Patrick. Why in bloody hell would you go inside someone else’s house?”

  “Ummm…Here.” Patrick leaned over by way of explanation and held up his phone to show a phone number. “A man called me, sir, said he heard about me, said there might be stuff inside that would tell me more about myself, before I was beat up. He said the house was for sale and I could go inside even though nobody was home.”

  Shit just got way too real. Philo screeched the van to a stop at a street corner and put the flashers on.

  “The caller gave you the code for the real estate lockbox?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t need it because of the lady with the suitcase.”

  Philo ran his hand through his rooster comb hair, his look pained. “Jesus, Patrick. Give it to me from the beginning. Now. All of it.”

  “But sir, I don’t want to miss the concert—”

  “You won’t. Tell me everything.”

  Patrick had never sounded so coherent, so determined, a young man on a mission, that mission being a rapid-fire data dump that would get the van back in traffic ASAP, headed over to the Troc for the afternoon concert.

  “…and she went downstairs, and I followed her and peeked in on her, and…Nope, she didn’t see me, sir, she was too busy, and noisy…Power tools…Yeah, I touched stuff, some doorknobs, and I opened some envelopes…Because the man on the phone said the mail would have clues, but it didn’t, sir, they were bills, all of it was bills.”

  “What happened next?”

  His face got puffy, his dark eyes welled. “I sat on a sofa and cried, sir. I don’t remember nothing after that. I woke up outside, waiting for the bus. I called the man back. He didn’t answer. I went home.”

  He had dozed off then sleepwalked himself right out of the house, to the bus stop. Memory of being in the house but no memory of leaving it. One clusterfuck after another.

  “Give me the phone number.”

  Philo dialed it, no answer, no voicemail. It would be a burner phone, a disposable, but he’d have no way of confirming this unless Patrick told the cops about his trespass, then they’d be able to run the number down. But telling the cops would be a mistake.

  One glaring omission in Patrick’s story. “Did you see the body in the sauna?”

  “A body was in the hot tub, sir. I saw her lift it out. A little woman with big holes in her. That’s all I saw, sir.”

  There it was, Philo’s gut feeling explained. A second body, the mess addressed before the police arrived, no traces left behind. While inside the house, Patrick hadn’t gotten as far as the sauna, the room next to the hot tub, where a slaughter had taken place. “Describe this woman for me.”

  “Asian. Two arms, two legs, a head, and a bunch of holes all over her body, sir.”

  “Okay, fine, but I meant the other woman. The one you followed into the house.”

  “She was tall and curvy, with dark brown hair, or maybe it was black, in a skirt with a short jacket. She was dressed like an airplane lady.”

  “You mean like a flight attendant?”

  “Yeah, that’s it, but she was a cleaner, sir, like me. She had the chemicals, the Tyvek, an electric saw, other stuff. Looked like me, too. Dark skin, black hair, but pretty. A pretty Eskimo lady.”

  A good place to mention Hawaii versus Alaska, but that would derail their discussion. “Eskimo’s kind of a bad word, right, buddy?”

  “Oh yeah. Right. Aleut. Sorry.”

  He squeezed Patrick’s shoulder, a friendly, reassuring squeeze, still assessing the impact of this info. Patrick’s observations about the woman’s looks had sealed it. She was likely another Hawaiian, and the only person he could assign responsibility to for the message under the floor.

  Philo needed to go after the craziness that was Patrick’s trespassing snafu. “You entered a house where murders were committed. You were in there before the cops got there, and you don’t remember leaving. You know what that means?”

  “I’ll be a suspect, sir.”

  “Bingo.”

  “But I didn’t do nothing, sir. That’s the truth, sir.”

  “They’ll check for fingerprints, Patrick.”

  “The Eskimo lady probably cleaned them all up, sir.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. And it doesn’t matter what the truth is. It’s what it looks like. This isn’t good, Patrick.”

  “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “She had a gun.”

  Too much to process. Mob executions, then a mob cleaner who sanitized the scene for only one of the victims, eliminating traces of another execution; it was some kind of set-up. Then a cop forensics team, then a commercial crime scene cleaner to make the place presentable again, then Philo and Detective Ibáñez.

  There’d be no volunteering of Patrick’s trespass to the police. Maybe the evidence of his trespass actually was gone. Let them come to him.

  Philo had more to discuss, like Hawaii versus Alaska, but screw it, he would let Patrick enjoy his concert. Plus, Philo was already late for a meeting with a pisser of an old friend, Hump Fargas, at a North Philadelphia address that was familiar to him, though he wasn’t sure why.

  A mess that could get messier. No matter; business as usual for now. People to see, places to go, and a fifty-thousand-dollar fight to train for.

  “Let’s get you over to the Troc in time for you to see your dope rapper buddy Lazlo make some noise. We can talk later.”

  “Tassho, sir. His name is Tassho Fearce. That would be great, sir. Thank you.”

  18

  Kaipo poured the purple contents of her juicer into a large cup and sat at the counter in her kitchen. An afternoon pick-me-up before her next massage appointment. She clicked on the philly.com headline.

  No Suspects Yet in Old City Cannibalism Homicide

  Good; Ka Hui remained unidentified as a player. A strong nod to her cleanup work, although an unnamed source in the article did speculate about possible mob activity. It was also good news as a headline because after weeks of investigation, there’d been no mention of a second body.

  On the bad news side, however, there was still Olivier.

  She’d had only one other assignment since the car dealership snafu, and she remained wary of his longer-term intentions regarding her future as a contractor for Ka Hui, or, worse yet, her future as a living, breathing human being. He’d texted her overnight about her replacement pressure cooker, that it would be available in a few days.

  Saturday eight pm in Bristol for the swap.

  Can’t tell a book without its cover.

  She understood the fractured cliché. They would meet at a closed publishing warehouse on Radcliffe Street, where remaindered paperbacks with stripped covers intended for recycling still lay rotting years after its publisher who used it had ended its presence there. She’d go there prepared either way, would bring her passport, a large amount of cash, and firepower, plus the old pressure cooker, hedging that the meeting might actually be legit.

  The second murder at the Elfreth’s Alle
y house, the maid, had been collateral damage, but it had also been opportunistic. Another undocumented alien available for harvesting, the surgical team already on site.

  Ka Hui’s newest business model, from what she’d pieced together: illegal gaming that targeted high-rolling compulsives, the provision of unlimited credit, then Ka Hui’s drop-the-hammer strong-armed tactics, as in to suddenly call the debt and suggest a way to work it off, “or else.” Multiple doctors plus other professionals had fallen prey. The few who hadn’t cooperated became gangland PSAs following their disappearances; examples of how not to act in the face of extortion. Blackmailed surgeons on site for one gig might gladly stick around for a piggybacked second gig if it helped pay off their debts sooner.

  Also on her mind, Blessid Trauma Services and Patrick Stakes, the screaming, whirling-dervish, Hawaiian-war-dance-stomping amnesiac. Poor kid.

  She sipped her juice, pondering the Blessid Trauma website on her screen. Some new testimonials about service, all good, plus notes mentioning Grace Blessid by name from various law enforcement types, encouraging her in her fight against her terminal lung disease. There’d been no updates to the page on the amnesiac. Kaipo’s message inside the Elfreth’s Alley sauna and the other crime scenes had apparently gone undelivered, or was misunderstood, or had been ignored. Plus, the website made no mention about the company being under new management. She’d do one more search online before she headed out for her appointment.

  She mouthed the words while typing them: “New…owner…Blessid…Trauma…”

  Mt. Airy Small Business Association News. Germantown’s own Blessid Trauma Services was sold to Mr. Tristan Trout of Philadelphia, retired Navy…VA-Backed Business Loan Opportunities for Military Veterans…

  “Let’s try ‘Tristan Trout,’” she said to herself, then entered a new search.

  Three hundred seventy thousand search results. Aside from the one-liner about Blessid Trauma on the first page, the rest were mostly about fish.

  19

  Philo deposited Patrick in slushy curbside snow at the Troc Theater, then drove the van up Broad Street into North Philadelphia, on the lookout, per Hump’s description, for a single building in the middle of a block empty of everything else but a gas station. The Amtrak train overpass loomed on the horizon, below an overcast sky. Was the building before the overpass or after? Hump had told him, but he couldn’t remember.

  What he did remember was the rest of Hump’s over-the-top description: “Clean, classy storefront that takes up a quarter of the block. Inside them walls, Philo, the glory of bygone days. The best years of Philly boxing, the sixties, the seventies. The doors will open again, my friend, you just watch. You say you don’t know the address, well that’s too bad, but I ain’t gonna ruin a pisser of a surprise for you. Maybe someday everyone will know it.

  “So much heart inside that place, so much energy, and magic…”

  On the right was a Speedway Gas station a hundred yards before the Amtrak overpass. Philo coasted past the gas pumps then slowed the van. “You have arrived at your destination,” the GPS lady told him.

  He stopped in a traffic lane with no one behind him, put on the van’s flashers and stepped out. He craned his neck. Carved into the exterior between the first and the second stories, all caps: JOE FRAZIER’S GYM.

  “No. Shit. Ha!”

  The first story and a half had a fascia of stamped concrete free of graffiti, with tall front windows still intact from the building’s last incarnation as a commercial storefront, and two plate-glass entrance doors. Recently pointed red brick continued above the concrete the rest of the way up, the building’s third story windows cinder-blocked in and smartly finished with more concrete.

  Hump appeared out of nowhere, hobbled up alongside him, a bit unsteady. He got shoulder-to-shoulder with Philo. “Whaddya think?”

  Gimpier than Philo remembered him from fifteen years ago, Hump’s cheeks still looked soft as a baby’s ass. When most men his age were more wrinkle than face, the years hadn’t cost Hump much from the chin up, still bright-eyed and cheerful, tan with a dust of rose, and skin that was pinch-worthy. His hobbling, however, showed it was a different story from the waist down.

  Philo leaned into a hug and a handshake. “Hump, you bastard, you should have said something. Smokin’ Joe’s Gym? This is great.”

  Here was the mecca for Philly boxers during Joe Frazier’s reign as heavyweight champion and the years following his retirement from boxing. It fell on hard times after Frazier’s passing in 2011 and closed, soon morphing into back-to-back furniture and mattress stores “with knockout prices.” After neither store prospered, the building fell into decline and suffered a slow, shameful death. Local fighters, from Philly, upstate Pennsylvania and Jersey, even New York, fought for and earned its preservation as a historic landmark. In progress was publicity for more funding, to reopen it as a working gym and a permanent memorial to Smokin’ Joe, all this info according to Hump.

  “She’s a real find, ain’t she, this building? Getting her cleaned, all us volunteers…It’s turned into a movement, Philo.”

  From the front, yes, it looked presentable, but the structure was a full block deep. “Sides and rear need some work,” Hump said, “maybe need to slap on a few coats of paint. I just hope the dinero to get it all done shows up before I cash in my own chips, know what I’m saying? Move your van off the street and we’ll go inside.”

  With the van parked, Hump unlocked the front door and shouldered it open. The floor was slippery as an ice-skating rink. “Watch your step, Philo, else you’ll end up on your ass.”

  The place was a mess, crowded with rotting, waterlogged mattresses. The building’s two most recent commercial busts had been late-night cable TV’s advertisers North Philly’s King of Mattresses, then the Mattress Maven, Mary Queen of Cots, also defunct, whose ad still appeared on the rooftop billboard. The damage came from a nearby water main that had burst two nights ago, below a fire hydrant used to fight a midnight blaze in the strip mall across the street. The mattress at the bottom of each pile was frozen solid to the floor, recent extreme temperatures and the level of flooding the causes. A few of the discarded mattress piles almost reached the ceiling.

  “The businesses that used to be in here, those wall posters tell you, were run by a king first, then by a queen, and now the only royalty it’s good for is”—Hump gave Philo a wait-for-it elbow while pointing at the tall mattress piles—“storybook princesses! The kind who don’t want to feel no peas under their asses! Get it? Haw!”

  Philo sniffed Hump’s breath. Okay, so maybe he was a tad drunk. “Hump. Buddy. Tell me you didn’t drive here.”

  “Hell no, I live near here now, around the corner. And no, I ain’t drunk, if that’s what you’re thinking. Had one beer at lunch. I’m on some meds and just a little under the weather.”

  “You’re weaving, dude. Under the weather with what?”

  “ALS.”

  Lou Gehrig’s disease. “What the fuck, Hump, why didn’t you say something? I never would have had you—”

  “Look—Philo—when I fess up to people about my condition, I don’t get no action no more. No taking me out for cheesesteaks or a beer, no chess games in the park, no sex, no nothing. You show up, you tell me what you got planned, and now I’m feeling like a million bucks, like I’m gonna get to take a little heavy-hands ride with you like we did in the old days. So don’t you be giving me no puppy-dog eyes and try to cut me out of this. I’m here to help you any way you’ll let me. This old man needs this, so don’t try to cut me out—”

  “Fine. Calm down, Hump, I hear you. Sorry. It’s all good.”

  “Great. Settled then. Oh. Got another surprise for you.”

  Hump cleared his throat, faced the door they came through, and projected his voice. “Miñoso! Come on in here, son.”

  A sepia-skinned man entered and quickly shut the door behind him. “Hiya, boss,” he said. He put his hands in front of his mouth and blew int
o his fingers. “Is cold out there, boss,” he added. “Is cold in here, too.”

  “Yeah, to tropical-blooded mutts like you just off the fucking boat it is. Get used to it, concho, there’s plenty more cold where this came from.”

  Miñoso leaned into the old man’s face, feigning upset. “Get used to these, viejo,” he said, gripping his own junk, “all the women you ain’t been getting with lately been keeping my pito warm, so how’s about that?”

  Hump grabbed the back of Miñoso’s neck and surrounded him with a bear hug. “Wise guy. Don’t mind us, Philo, we’re in each other’s shit every day. Philo, this is Miñoso. Miñoso, this is Philo, or ‘campeón,’ which is how you said you’d like to address him, right, Miñoso?”

  “Si. The campeón. Sesenta y cuatro y nada, with puños de piedra.”

  Sixty-four and oh, the champ with the heavy hands.

  With fifteen years in the military, Philo had learned his way around a few languages, Spanish one of them. Miñoso beamed, was close to genuflecting in Philo’s presence. Philo might have even blushed a little. The two shook hands.

  “Miñoso will spot you while you train, do some sparring. He can take a pretty good punch. Maybe not your punch, so we’ll keep him head-geared up, but he’s good for it.”

  “Hump.” Philo beckoned him closer with his fingers. “Your guy’s maybe five-eight, and he’s lucky if he goes one fifty. How the hell—”

  “Rocky Balboa and the chicken, Philo; you’ll need to catch him first. The ring’s upstairs, plus some bags and other equipment. And heaters. Let’s go.”

  Another mess upstairs, this one more like the woman-haters clubhouse from The Little Rascals, with secondhand sofas and chairs and tables and exposed white brick the color of smoker’s teeth, but the boxing equipment was there as advertised: a small ring, a heavy bag, a double-end striking bag, speed bags, and electric space heaters, with electricity. No Joe Frazier memorabilia other than one torn wall poster for “The Fight of the Century,” Frazier–Ali #1, and a plastic replica of Frazier’s Olympic gold medal affixed to a crooked plaque on the wall.