Copyright 2013 by Frederick H. Crook
Author’s Foreword:
Campanelli: The Ping Tom Affiar is my fourth short story based on the genre I created for my novels, The Dregs of Exodus, and The Pirates of Exodus. The two novels depict events which occur as the result of a future event called, “The Great Exodus”. This monumental journey takes the vast majority of the Earth’s population to a fantastic and vibrant new planet which I named Alethea, the Greek word for “truth”. As with any great leap forward, whether it occurs within the realms of science and technology, the arts or politics, there is a dark side, or a negative effect. My novels and stories deal with this fallout.
Unlike many stories which deal with an apocalypse or an Armageddon-like catastrophe that brings about the death of billions of people, the world of The Dregs of Exodus is comparable only in the fact that there is anarchy and a failure of technology. In the most positive sense possible, the Earth of my genre simply becomes less interesting and we move on to new adventures on Alethea.
Like my other short stories, Runt Pulse, The Fortress of Albion and Lunar Troll, Campanelli: The Ping Tom Affair takes place in this post-“Great Exodus” world and will be followed by other such stories in the near future. If you are concerned that you have missed something by not having read the novels, do not worry. Each book and each short story are completely independent of one another. While dates are referenced in most of the stories, there is no need to read them chronologically.
Thank you and enjoy!
Frederick H. Crook
For Bryan Carlson
Campanelli: The Ping Tom Affair
by
Frederick H. Crook
Frank awoke to the alert tone of his wired-in telephone. The sound was old-fashioned and almost pleasant, unless one was sleeping when it sounded, then it was murderous torture. When one was trying to sleep off a night of overindulgence, it was hell.
“What the…flying…fu…?” he cursed as he twisted in bed to swing an arm toward the offending device. Pulling the receiver from its base unit, the ringing stopped. He lay on his back for a moment, just breathing as he set the wired handset against his chest. The taste of the previous evening’s bourbon soured his desert dry mouth.
“Campanelli,” he finally answered, sounding more gruff than intended.
“Frank? We got a pair of deceased you’re going to want to see,” Marcus Williams, his unofficial partner said. He was patching into the landline with his cruiser’s radio, turning his baritone rather tinny. Between his words were bits and pieces of other voices in the background. Frank could not tell whether it was the often-faulty phone line or if Marcus was surrounded by other officers. He thought he recognized one of them and if he was right, the crime was a big deal. There were only a few dozen detectives amongst the force of seventy five hundred-or-so officers of the Chicago Police Department and he knew them all well enough to recognize their voices.
“Two so early in the week?” Campanelli asked sardonically. “It’s not even Tuesday, yet,” he went on as he stood and activated his bio-electronic implant, the CAPS-Link.
“Sorry for the call, Frank, but Dimitri wants you here. You’re going to love this. You might even have heard the shots.”
Dimitri Vanek was Chief of Detectives and was the voice Frank had heard, proving that it was a high profile case. Campanelli nearly tripped over the extended phone cord on his way to the bedroom closet as his mind sifted through the possibilities. “Where’d this happen?”
“We’re all over here at Ping Tom,” Marcus explained. “Vanek and Darlington…and myself…all sent you messages.”
“I see that,” Frank confirmed as he scanned through the communiques projected upon his artificial lenses. Vanek’s note was short, emotionless and to the point, while Darlington’s was a little more politically motivated, with ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ included. Marcus’s simply read: “Help!”
“Yeah, get me outta here,” Williams murmured. He was not the type that had ever become comfortable around officers, which was strange as he had spent most of his life as a Navy Seal and had left the now-defunct branch of the Navy as a lieutenant.
“Give me twelve minutes,” Frank said as he set the base of the phone on the sink and started the clunky electric razor.
“No…six.”
“Can’t do six. Ten.”
“Frank,” Williams growled/begged.
“Eight. Best offer.”
“Deal,” Marcus said and dropped the line.
Frank set the receiver down and continued getting ready. While he did this, he accessed the Chicago Police server and scanned through the blotter until he found the report on the Ping Tom shooting. He smirked as he read that it had been called in by a jogger at four-thirty that morning. No one jogged through that area at night. The apartments surrounding the park were run down and many of the buildings were victims of fire. Some had even collapsed completely.
As he showered, he activated the computer in his car, which was parked in the lot closer to the street. He set the crime scene as the waypoint and instructed the vehicle to stand by.
Frank rinsed the soap from his body and pondered the situation. Though the man spent as much time in the car as himself, it took a lot to get Vanek to visit a fresh crime scene. The Chief of Detectives was more of a troubleshooter than a first responder, usually visiting scenes of stalled investigations or cold cases that had received fresh information. Hugh Darlington was chief of the narcotics and gang section, or NAGIS. Frank was much less surprised by his presence.
As Campanelli dressed, he concluded that this double murder, as described in the report, was gang related and that it involved someone in either the Triads or one of the smaller Chinatown street gangs. As with any industry, organization or corporation, the current Triads were a far cry from their predecessors, but they were more effective and diverse than other, much smaller groups.
Frank checked the time on his implant, automatically synchronizing it with the CPD server. As he had taken an apartment right across from the District One headquarters on State Street, the connection was always good. Better, in fact, than the connection to the internet provided to his bio-electronics by the satellite service, which often went down for “Software Upgrades” or “Scheduled Maintenance”.
He slipped on his tie in record time and grabbed his overcoat from the back of the chair in the living room. Heading out the door, he patted his pockets. He went back inside and retrieved his NYPD lighter and cigarettes from the end table and slipped them into his coat pocket.
Campanelli was a fifty-year-old man in relatively good condition, but he refused to run unless he absolutely needed to. Nevertheless, he had promised Williams to be at the scene in eight minutes and seven were gone. He all but flew down the stairs and headed to his waiting car at a brisk walk. Outwardly calm and collected, he was known amongst his fellow detectives as the transplanted New York Police Inspector that had seen just about every form of crime. He felt that if anyone had seen him sprinting to the car it would cause undue panic, though there were few inhabitants of the apartment complex and even fewer that knew him. It was however, quite likely that an officer might spot him from across the street and he had a reputation to uphold.
The car noticed his proximity and opened the door for him. Its audible greeting of “Good Morning” was obliterated by the seven a.m. train screeching along the “L” tracks above him. The noise was quieted when the door shut.
“All right, hit it,” Campanelli called out as the restraints trapped him in the driver’s seat. The car instantly responded, backing out of the parking space and turning onto Eighteenth Street. The automobile traffic was light, but th
e cruiser set its blue lights blazing and sent out a few short bursts of the siren and horn to bring what other cars there were to a halt. As a police vehicle, any computer-guided civilian vehicle was alerted to its presence and was steered to the side of the street and slowed or even stopped. The visual and audible cues were for the benefit of pedestrians and manually controlled cars.
The cruiser’s computer calculated the best route to the crime scene and accelerated hard, pressing the detective’s body into the seat. In seconds, the car met with the intersection of South Wentworth and decelerated. The siren sent out a long warbling and hooked a left hand turn. It accelerated again, but only briefly as its next turn came up almost immediately.
Once on Nineteenth Street, the car raced to the southward bend in the road and went straight, onto the paved walkway into the park, squeezing between two posts. The car’s computer followed the slight curve of the expanded sidewalk learning the path visually and correcting the steering so quickly that there were no jerky, awkward or uncomfortable movements detected by the passenger. The cruiser carried the Captain of Detectives under the same set of “L” tracks and slowed to cross a pair of rough and long unused railroad tracks sunk into the pavement and parked behind a blue & white police car.
Frank waited for the removal of the restraints and exited, taking in a deep breath to catch up what he had left behind in the parking lot. The drive had taken just over twenty seconds.
He gave the car door a push to close and set off in the direction of the gathered crowd of officers and detectives. His shoes beat against the pavement, covering the sound of the automatic latch of the car door. Turning his eyes skyward, he noticed it was nearly cloudless. It was a nice spring day, he decided. Too nice a day for this crap.
He turned back to the noise of the passing train upon the “L” tracks his cruiser had driven underneath three times along the way. Frank reached into his pocket, retrieving his pack of cigarettes and lighter.
“Good mornin’, Captain,” one of the uniforms standing guard over the perimeter greeted. Frank returned it as he put a cigarette to his lips.
“Mornin’, Frank,” Williams called out. He was standing next to one of four ornate columns set into the wide concrete platform. Beyond that, Frank could see the pagoda pavilion which had been built near the riverbank. “You made good on the time.”
Campanelli shrugged at the comment as he walked up to the taller man and spoke lowly, hiding his mouth from the breeze as he lit his tobacco. “What’s the deal here, Marcus?”
“The first deceased is an Asian male, late twenties. Identified by the tattoos on his back and upper arms as…get this, Frank,” Williams looked about him as if he were spilling a secret, “It’s Mickey Wong.” He said this last and searched Campanelli’s face for the expression of surprise. He was not disappointed.
“Get the hell outta here,” Frank murmured, making the cigarette bounce. Unconsciously, his body steeled.
“It’s confirmed. It’s Mickey Wong.”
Frank cussed and looked to his feet, letting the smoke flee his lungs to escape into the cool morning air. Mickey Wong was the son of Lei Wong, the head of the Chicago branch of the Triads, the Chinese mob.
“We’ve run the prints of the other deceased and he’s coming back unknown,” Marcus continued as he followed the now quick-stepping Captain of Detectives.
Frank’s face was impassive as he stared at the bodies of the two victims, at least what he could see of them between the feet of everyone gathered around. Someone nearby spoke, but he barely noticed. The dead men lay on their backs underneath the pagoda, near its center. Neither man had much of a face left.
“I said, ‘good morning, Frank’,” the speaker repeated, annunciating in an annoyed tone.
“Uh-huh,” he uttered then turned his eyes from the carnage to the man addressing him. “Mornin’, Chief. Do we know the weapon here?” he asked of Dmitri Vanek.
“Looks like a large caliber handgun. Powerful round. Most likely a Magnum of some kind,” the Chief of Detectives explained.
“Both men were shot from very close up,” Hugh Darlington took up.
“That explains the lack of face,” Campanelli returned dryly and stepped nearer to the bodies. Looking about the surrounding concrete floor and the structure of the pagoda itself, he puffed his cigarette and frowned. “Where’s the blood?”
“Umm, Frank, if you look at the ground surrounding their heads, you would find it,” Darlington said, dripping in sarcasm. He raised an eyebrow and gave a shrug while shaking his head for the apparent benefit of the two underlings with him. It was an expression of the man’s arrogance that Campanelli loathed and loved to make disappear quickly.
“Where’s the spatter? The blood spatter, Mister N-A-G-I-S man,” Frank shot back as he stepped closely to his colleague. He exhaled smoke into Darlington’s face as he went on. “There should be blood from the exit wounds sprayed all over the place. Where is it? Have you had any detectives search these buildings for witnesses?”
“Yeah, I did,” Darlington answered defensively. “No one heard anything.”
“Did you check all the apartments?”
“I’ve got men on it!”
“Frank,” Dmitri Vanek interrupted.
“They weren’t killed here, Chief,” Campanelli said as Darlington stepped away with a sour expression as he swiped at the air with a hand. “They were dumped here.”
Darlington and the two young detectives accompanying him swiveled their heads like birds looking for bread crumbs. None could argue the point. Vanek nodded and gave a smile.
“You got this, Frank,” the Chief said. “Report what you find.” With that he gestured to a few of his adjutants and walked away. There was clearly other business to attend to.
“Yeah, well, I’m having a diver check the river for the gun and shells,” Darlington said indignantly.
Frank merely nodded in agreement. It was a logical step in the investigation.
Marcus sent a text message, implant to implant. “He’s not going to find anything.”
“He might,” Campanelli sent back as he looked to his partner. “Mickey’s murder is a big deal. The gun might have been dumped.”
Gun manufacturers were scarce in this “Post-Exodus” world. While firearms were not hard to find, there were very few new ones, so older firearms were held in high regard. In the current state of the industry, new guns were poorly made and maintenance of the old ones was extremely expensive. Even a successful professional assassin would hesitate to discard such a murder weapon.
“Has Lei Wong been informed of this, yet?” Campanelli asked of those around him.
“Not yet, Frank,” Darlington said.
“I’ll handle that,” he returned. To Williams, he said, “Where’s your ride?”
“Back at the station. I rode with uniforms.”
Frank nodded and turned to the forensic investigator, a young woman by the name of Wilkins. “What was the time of death?”
“About six, maybe seven hours ago, given the temperature of the corpses,” she answered.
“Would you guys put a rush on the report?”
“Sure thing,” she agreed.
“Williams, you’re with me.”
Campanelli turned in the direction of his car and walked slowly, allowing Williams to fall into step quickly. “Keep your eyes on the windows,” he sent to his partner.
As they stepped slowly, with Frank appearing to concentrate on his dwindling cigarette, Marcus watched for movement at the windows of the surrounding apartment buildings. It was not unheard of for a killer to remain in the area and watch the scene of the investigation. Further, it was common to encounter anti-government wackos that would love to take a shot at policemen, which was the reason behind outfitting the uniformed officers with helmets, vests and automatic weapons.
From both apartments that faced the park, a few heads peeked out over the scene. Frank commanded his optics to zoom in on their features, as he knew
Williams was doing. Most were curious children or young adults. None of them appeared to be hardened criminal types. As they approached Campanelli’s car, it recognized both men and opened the doors.
“Jesus, Frank,” Williams shook his head when he sat down.
“What?” he answered while stamping out his spent smoke. He entered the car and pulled the door behind him.
“You didn’t have to stomp on Darlington so hard.”
“He shoulda noticed that kinda thing by now. He’s no rookie.”
“Yeah, but…”
“’But’ my ass!”
Williams began laughing lightly, causing Campanelli to gaze over at him. The much larger and genetically engineered ex-Navy Seal cleared his throat to quiet down, but his smile remained.
“What’dya think he’s doing right now?” Marcus asked.
“Darlington’s a decent detective, despite not knowing the difference between a spatter pattern and the pimples on his ass. He’s probably had the park’s fieldhouse searched by now, witnesses interviewed that sort of stuff.”
“You think he might find the weapon?”
“Probably not, but it’s worth the look. If someone from the apartments comes forward having seen the men that placed the bodies, then we’ll have something.”
Both men were quiet for a time as they thought.
“How are the eyes, Frank?”
“Hmm? Oh, fine. Not as good as the old ones, but they work okay.”
“That’s good. Expensive?”
Campanelli snorted. He would be paying monthly for a decade for the new bio-electronic wonders, but they were worth it. Unlike most people who were equipped with implants for entertainment or ease of communications, his were of necessity. Without them, Captain of Detectives Frank Campanelli was absolutely blind.
“I see you stayed with the pale blue,” Williams commented.
Campanelli turned his head ever so slowly and looked into his unofficial partner’s eyes. “Are you hittin’ on me?”
Marcus burst out laughing.
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