The Traffickers

by W. E. B Griffin

  When Kathleen’s light-brown eyes met Trish’s blue ones, her gentle face glowed.

  Kathleen pointed to say that the shoofly pie was waiting there on the glass display in a white cardboard box. Tricia nodded, then reached into her purse, a purple Pravda knockoff she’d bought the previous weekend from a sidewalk vendor in New York City’s Chinatown. She pulled out a twenty-dollar bill to have it ready when she got to the front of the line.

  That’s so sweet of her.

  If there’s any place in Philly that better exemplifies its motto of the City of Brotherly Love than this market, I just don’t know what it could be.

  Tricia Wynne then heard one of the heavy metal doors to Filbert Street slam shut. It was fifty or so feet down the aisle, beyond Beiler’s. She looked there and saw two businesswomen. They turned and walked down a side aisle.

  Then Tricia saw a young man in black jeans and boots and a navy blue raincoat standing at the door.

  A Latino, Tricia noted approvingly.

  She saw that the black hood of his sweatshirt was pulled over his head. It at first struck her as odd, but then she remembered the rain had just started and the chill it could cause when one entered an air-conditioned room.

  The Latino began moving with a determined stride in her direction.

  Then, behind her, Tricia heard a commotion at the food-prep counter of the Mercado.

  She turned in time to see the Jamaican, now with a stricken expression, quickly moving out from behind the short wall. He went to a table in the corner of the Mercado and pulled out from under it a brown paper grocery bag, its top folded over and stapled shut.

  He began carrying the bag toward the Latino. He forced a smile as he came closer to him, holding out the bag in his left hand.

  The next moment, everything happened so fast that Tricia could not comprehend it all.

  The right side of the Latino’s navy raincoat opened and out came what looked like some sort of firearm. It certainly had what looked like a barrel. Then the Jamaican threw the brown paper bag toward the Latino at the same time that he produced a small black semiautomatic pistol from the waistband behind his white apron.

  She saw that the Jamaican held the pistol awkwardly, as if uncomfortable with it, and not in what one might call a traditional—or even natural—manner, which was to say with the grip of the pistol up and down, vertical. Instead, he held it sideways, the grip horizontal to the floor.

  Then there came two series of deafening gunfire, the sound of which seemed to rattle around the heavy iron beams of the terminal. One series, from the Latino’s weapon, made a steady and pounding stream of braaaaaps; the other, from the pistol, of much slower and irregular bang-bang-bangs.

  Tricia and those who’d been in line with her were on their knees, cowering, as the Latino strode past. He continued toward the Jamaican, who now lay on his right side on the concrete floor of the market with his pistol appearing empty. There were holes pierced in the upper part of his white apron, dark crimson stains spreading between them.

  The brown paper bag had been shredded by bullets. Spread on the concrete near the Jamaican’s feet were its contents, what looked to Tricia to be two bricklike objects wrapped in butcher paper and a lot of small sugar packets, maybe thirty or forty, all scattered.

  With an amazing speed and grace, the Latino effortlessly bent and grabbed the butcher-paper-wrapped objects, then, ignoring the sugar packets, moved to a heavy steel door—and was gone.

  Then there immediately came a woman’s hysterical screams from behind the Beiler’s Bakery counter.

  And it wasn’t until a woman beside Tricia wordlessly pointed to Tricia’s bloody upper left sleeve that she first felt the burning sensation in her arm.

  After exiting the steel door onto Filbert, El Gato began walking purposefully in an effort to blend in with the morning crowd moving along the rain-slickened sidewalk.

  As he went, he peeled off the navy blue vinyl raincoat, balled it up, then stuffed it in the trash receptacle at the corner of Filbert and Twelfth. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt from his head and put on the ball cap he’d tucked in his pants. Then, keeping his face down, he passed through the revolving door at the Market Street Station.

  At the Thirtieth Street Station, El Gato disembarked the train and walked out to the lot where he’d left the white rusty Plymouth minivan. He drove it back to Hancock Street, then, exhausted, took his Tahoe home to Manayunk.

  Police cars rocketed past him, headed toward Center City.

  [FOUR]

  Office of the First Deputy Commissioner Philadelphia Police Headquarters Race and North Eighth Streets, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 7:50 A.M.

  “Okay, gentlemen,” First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin said, his ruddy face showing some displeasure. “So now we would seem to have two problems. Let’s stick with the first one at hand, concerning His Honor the Mayor and Mr. James Henry Benjamin, president and chief executive officer of Benjamin Securities.”

  Coughlin, a tall and heavyset man, sat in the high-back black leather chair at his massive wooden desk and made a note on the leather-bound desk blotter. He was fifty-nine years old, still with all of his curly hair, though now silver, and all his teeth.

  Standing beside him, and pouring coffee from a stainless-steel thermos, was his assistant, Captain Francis Xavier Hollaran. The forty-nine-year-old Hollaran was also a large Irishman who had all of his teeth. His luxurious mop of red hair, however, had thinned out long ago.

  He was pouring into one of two heavy china coffee mugs he held. They bore the logotype of the Emerald Society. Both Hollaran and Coughlin belonged to the fraternal organization of police officers of Irish heritage. Denny Coughlin had joined “The Emerald” right out of the Police Academy. He had since served twice as its president, as the framed certificates behind him on the wall by the flat-screen television—which was muted and tuned to the local FOX newscast—attested.

  Also in Coughlin’s office on the third floor of the Police Administration Building were Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein, commanding officer of the Detective Bureau; Captain Henry Quaire, commander of the Homicide Unit, who reported to Lowenstein; and Lieutenant Jason Washington, whose immediate boss was Quaire.

  They were all white shirts, though not one wore his police uniform; instead, all were in coats and ties or suits and ties. Denny Coughlin had his well-tailored gray plaid double-breasted suit coat on a hanger on the peg on the back side of his office door, which now was closed.

  And while this was a collection of department brass, a meeting of many of its best and brightest to handle a situation that had become a political hot potato, the air was at once serious and somewhat informal. The reason for the ease with which they worked was (a) that the men immensely respected one another and (b) that respect was the result of having a long history of working together.

  In Coughlin’s case, damn near forever—it had been thirty-seven years since he’d graduated from the Police Academy.

  “My phone has been going off constantly all morning,” Coughlin announced. “His Honor the Mayor is breathing down the neck of Commissioner Mariani, who of course has chosen to share said hot air.”

  Ralph J. Mariani, a natty, stocky, balding Italian, was the police commissioner. The image of the mayor leaning on the top cop triggered a couple of chuckles and a derisive snort.

  “Ralph,” Coughlin went on, “put it to me that His Honor had told him: ‘Commissioner, I suggest you suggest to your deputy that he suggest . . .’ ” He paused to let that sink in. “So, you see where this is coming from. Short of a personal visit, it doesn’t get much more direct than that.”

  Not that Coughlin was at all fearful of a personal visit from His Honor the Mayor of Philadelphia.

  If it hadn’t been for the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci following protocol and passing orders down the chain of command, Coughlin knew he’d have damn sure seen Carlucci standing in his office—or, more likely, Coughlin called to
the mayor’s office.

  Because before being elected to public office, Carlucci had, as he liked to brag, held every rank but that of policewoman in the Philadelphia Police Department. And during which time—as a captain, then on up through the ranks—Carlucci had been Coughlin’s rabbi.

  The purpose of a rabbi was to groom a young police officer, mentoring him in preparation for the greater responsibilities of the higher and higher ranks it was expected he would hold down the line.

  His Honor also of course had had a rabbi, Augustus Wohl, who ultimately retired as a chief inspector, one step shy of deputy commissioner. Wohl’s only son—who’d entered the Police Academy at age twenty, only two weeks after graduating from Temple University, and who’d at one point risen to be the department’s youngest staff inspector—was now Inspector Peter Wohl.

  Like his father, Peter Wohl was damn smart, damn honest, and a damn good cop. Which was why His Honor the Mayor had damn sure seen to it that Wohl had been made commander of the Special Operations Bureau, reporting directly to Coughlin.

  And everyone in the room knew Inspector Wohl was the rabbi to one then-Detective and now-Seargeant Matthew Payne.

  “Carlucci breathing on Mariani to breathe on you, Denny,” Francis Hollaran, who had over the years followed Coughlin up through the ranks, said, “I believe that’s called ‘the shit flowing downhill.’ ”

  The others in the room chuckled.

  Coughlin glared at him. “Yes, it is, Frank. And would you care to wager a guess as to where, to use your crude phraseology, that shit’s going to land next?”

  “With any luck,” Hollaran said, raising his Emerald Society mug to gesture toward the commander of the Detective Bureau, “right past me, and smack into Matt’s lap.”

  Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein laughed out loud. He also was a large, stocky, ruddy-faced, barrel-chested man with a full head of curly silver hair. However, he did not belong to The Emerald. He was Jewish.

  The very big and very black Jason Washington then intoned in his deep voice, “I pray that I am profoundly in error, but I suspect the flow of said fecal matter will wind up on my desk—thereon hitting the proverbial fan.”

  Denny Coughlin chuckled.

  “Jason, your astute suspicions aside,” Coughlin then said, “let’s take it from the top. Beginning with what we know. Would you care to bring everyone up to speed?”

  “Certainly. As I’ve shared with the captain and the chief inspector,” he said, making eye contact with Quaire and Lowenstein as he said their ranks, “what we know is that at one-fifty this morning, there was an explosion at the Philly Inn on Frankford Avenue. Specifically, room fifty-two, which appears to have been actively used for the manufacture of the Schedule II controlled substance methamphetamine. We have two dead Hispanic males and two others, a white male and a white female, who suffered grave injury. The deceased were taken to the morgue, of course. The latter pair was transported to Temple Hospital, where they were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit, their conditions last listed as ‘critical.’ ”

  “Clearly the girl being Benjamin’s daughter,” Coughlin said.

  Washington nodded.

  “We’re told,” he went on, “but are awaiting positive ID, that the white male is one J. Warren Olde, Jr., of the custom homebuilder family. We’re also told, but are awaiting verification, that he’s the owner of the motel.”

  “And we’re told this by whom?” Coughlin said. “A reliable source?”

  Washington nodded again.

  “Absolutely reliable,” he said. “We have Anthony Harris on the scene, and after some initial confusion of the deskman on the Wheel, he now has the job—”

  “Confusion?” Coughlin interrupted. “What’s that all about?”

  “Just an administrative matter that has been taken care of, sir.”

  Coughlin raised an eyebrow, nodded, then gestured for Washington to continue.

  “Harris got the job in part because he’s one of the best. But also because he has been on the scene since just about the time the motel blew up. He lives only seven, eight blocks away, and the blast rocked him out of bed.”

  “Jesus!” Denny Coughlin blurted.

  “It was a significant explosion,” Washington said.

  “What do we know about the dead ones?” Coughlin said. “Anything yet?”

  “Beyond the fact that one had his throat cut, not much. No IDs. They were severely burned, clearly. Practically everything in that room was consumed by the fire. The technician from the Medical Examiner’s Office put their ages between twenty-five and thirty-five. The autopsy should narrow that.”

  Coughlin nodded in serious thought.

  “Nothing else?” he then said.

  Quaire grinned ever so slightly and made eye contact with his boss. Matt Lowenstein shrugged and grinned, too, his face saying Why not?

  It wasn’t lost on Coughlin, who barked, “What the hell is it?”

  “The tech from the Medical Examiner’s Office,” Quaire said, and in his peripheral vision saw Washington cringe, “said that the critter making the meth got circumcised in the room.”

  “He got what?” Coughlin said incredulously, and wondered if he was having his chain pulled.

  “It’s true, Denny,” Lowenstein offered. “But, I’m sorry, it’s far beneath my dignified station to explain.”

  Coughlin looked at Quaire, who rose to the challenge: “The tech said anybody involved in drugs was a dickhead, and so deserved to have his throat circumcised.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Coughlin blurted, but he was smiling.

  “What we don’t know,” Washington went on, “among other things, is: Who cut his throat? That may be something we never learn, considering the conditions of the only other two people who were there.”

  After a moment, Quaire asked in a serious tone: “What I’m curious about is, how did Benjamin find out?”

  “That’s a good question, Henry,” Hollaran said. “We wondered that, too. Turns out the vehicle Benjamin’s daughter drives has one of those satellite systems. In the event of an accident, a crash sensor on the vehicle activates a communications module that uses the cellular telephone tower system—or maybe it’s the global positioning system, or both—to triangulate the vehicle’s location and then telephone an emergency number and pass along the details. Everything from whether the air bags deployed—how many of them, to determine the severity of the accident—down to the air pressure in the tires.”

  “I heard those calls go to some call center in Bombay, India,” Washington offered. “Making it an even more impressive system. Excuse me, that should be Mumbai, India. They changed it.”

  Hollaran nodded and a little disgustedly said, “That would not surprise me; Lord knows there’s no one in Philadelphia—or Brooklyn or Iowa—who could be taken off the unemployment line and trained to do that. Why the hell keep jobs here? Anyway, this operator”—he glanced at Washington—“in Mumbai, India, could not get anyone in the Benjamin vehicle to respond when she or he dialed the vehicle’s cellular telephone system connected to its high-fidelity sound system. So the operator then called the local 911 emergency number here. And, after that, started going down the list of emergency contacts that the owner of the vehicle had submitted when the vehicle was purchased.”

  “And the girl had her father as the first to contact in case of emergency, air bag deployment, et cetera,” Washington said.

  “Exactly,” Hollaran said.

  “And,” Coughlin put in, “because her father has the mayor’s personal cellular telephone number—it’s my understanding that quite a few city bond-issuance programs have been managed by Benjamin Securities—His Honor knew all about whose SUV that was before we could even get there and run the plates or VIN.”

  “Ah, the miracles of modern technology!” Lieutenant Jason Washington intoned.

  “In addition to the team of detectives Tony Harris is running,” Matt Lowenstein offered, “we’ve got men sitting on the
hospital in case either the Benjamin girl or the Olde boy is able to start talking. We’ve got a lot of manpower already on it, Denny. Unless you can think of something else?”

  Coughlin considered that, then said, “No, not at this point. It sounds as if all the wheels are turning on this.” He paused, then added, “I never doubted that, of course. It’s just that this has become an extraordinary case.”

  He exhaled audibly.

  “Okay, that was the first problem,” Coughlin went on. “Now, as to Matty. I would like to hear everyone’s thoughts on what we should do with Detective Matthew Payne.”

  He looked at Washington.

  “I’m sorry, Jason. But it seems that proverbial fan you spoke of is attracting more for you. I’d like your opinion first, then Henry’s, then Matt’s, and then Frank’s.”

  Everyone nodded, recognizing what Denny Coughlin was doing. It was the military method of beginning with the junior officer and working up to the most senior. It was an effective way of getting an opinion that was original—not something from someone who for self-preservation or other purposes simply agreed with what their boss had just said.

  “Unequivocally, I think Detective Payne should stay on the case,” Lieutenant Washington immediately said.

  “What do you mean, ‘stay on the case’?” Coughlin said.

  “He’s our absolutely reliable source. The one you asked about earlier?”

  “How the hell is that?” Coughlin said. He looked at Hollaran. “Is that why he’s on the way here, Frank?”

  Hollaran shrugged. “He didn’t get into that. He just said the heads-up was that he wanted to come back to work.”

  “Matthew went to school with the two in the hospital and is close to another who has a financial interest in the motel,” Jason Washington explained, then went into the background he had on that from Tony Harris.