The Vigilantes

by W. E. B. Griffin

  And for reasons he did not understand, particularly considering the circumstances, he suffered not one single flashback.

  Maybe this is what they mean by finding peace through justice.

  “Okay, let’s go, you assholes.”

  Curtis didn’t expect a reply. Under the influence of the Stoli-Rohypnol mixture, Gartner and JC were more or less out cold. Even when he kicked them in the ass with his boot toe, they barely responded.

  For the first ten minutes after he’d forced them to swallow the powerful sedative, he’d watched them slowly get sleepier and sleepier. Gartner faded faster, and Curtis thought that might be because of the cocaine he’d also consumed.

  By the time fifteen minutes had passed, they’d basically become incoherent, slurring their words.

  After the twenty-minute mark, with them curled up babylike on the carpet, Curtis had felt confident that they posed no problem whatsoever and had gone out to move the car behind the building.

  Now, a half hour later, he struggled to get them—very groggy but agreeable, despite their wrists still being bound—one at a time down the corridor and out the back door of the office building.

  He’d parked the Malibu in the dark alley and left its truck open.

  He dumped JC and Gartner inside the trunk, then took the clear adhesive tape and wrapped their heads so that the tape sealed the nose and mouth of both men.

  As he watched their bodies begin to convulse at the blockage of their airways, Curtis wondered, Why don’t I feel bad about this?

  Then—boom!—a vision came of Wendy.

  It was the one of her, spread-eagled, bound to the bed with her nylon stockings.

  Shit! That’s the hell why!

  He looked at JC.

  Because of what you did to my baby and to whoever else, you miserable bastard.

  Then his eyes went to the other bucking body.

  And you, Danny Boy, kept him out of jail so that he could.

  Kept him and who the hell knows how many other miserable shits on the streets.

  Curtis, suddenly furious, shook his head angrily as he took one last look at the pair.

  Then he quickly pulled from his pocket two plastic garbage bags he’d grabbed in Gartner’s office and covered their heads with them. He took the Glock from his jacket and put its muzzle at the base of JC’s skull, angled toward the top of his head, and squeezed the trigger.

  The .45-caliber round fired with a loud bang, JC made a primal groan, his legs kicked out straight, and the garbage bag on his head billowed briefly, the top of it moving violently as bullet fragments flew out, accompanied by bits of brain and blood, and lodged in the trunk floorboard.

  The pistol automatically ejected the empty brass casing, which flew up, hitting the trunk lid, then landed beside JC’s body, near where a dark stream of blood flowed from the bag, staining the white shirt and pooling on the football jersey.

  Now you won’t be going after those high school girls—or any others.

  Then he moved the pistol muzzle to the same place at the base of Gartner’s skull and squeezed off another round.

  This time the ejected spent casing landed on the concrete of the alleyway. The brass made a tinkling sound in the darkness as it tumbled to a stop against a curb.

  Rot in hell, you scum! Will Curtis thought, then slammed down the lid.

  [TWO]

  Loft Number 2180 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Saturday, October 31, 11:10 P.M.

  As Matt Payne looked out of Amanda Law’s penthouse window, thinking about how much damn truth Amanda had written in his would-be obituary, he took a sip from the beer bottle and swallowed hard.

  So then why do I feel the pull to be out there running down those animals?

  Because of what else Amanda said, long before writing the obit? That it takes cops like me and her dad to keep the city as safe as possible from the bad guys loose on the streets.

  Which she’d told me, more than a little ironically, right before those shits snatched her off the street.

  At the memory of finding her bound in the gutted kitchen of that abandoned row house, Payne suddenly felt his throat constrict.

  That place wasn’t a house. It was a slum, and a fucking prison slum at that.

  But there it is: I’ll take the door of any place like that a hundred times over. That may or may not make me a good cop, but bagging bad guys is the right thing to do.

  Proof of that being that Amanda is alive.

  And further proof being that bastard Jiménez is on the fast track to serving a life sentence in Graterford.

  Following his arrest at the row house, Jesús Jiménez had confessed to killing twenty-seven-year-old J. Warren “Skipper” Olde over what Juan Paulo Delgado claimed was a bad drug debt. In exchange for avoiding the death penalty, Jiménez also ratted out everyone in their small band of thugs in a signed confession.

  Payne drained the beer bottle, which helped ease the constriction. Then he grinned as he thought:

  Too bad the bastard’s about to become somebody’s bitch.

  Jiménez will hope he gets thrown alone in an RHU.

  The door to the bathroom swung open and Amanda Law, still starkers, stood momentarily backlit in the doorway.

  My God, she’s stunning! Matt thought.

  “You take my breath away,” he said. “In more ways than one, it would appear.”

  She flashed a sly smile. “That, Romeo, is my evil plan.”

  She clicked off the bathroom light and said sweetly to the dog, “Good girl, Luna. Lie down.”

  Then she smoothly and swiftly moved across the dimly lit bedroom, completely comfortable in her birthday suit. It reminded Matt of the second time he’d met her, just last month in Liberties Bar, when she seemed to float effortlessly across the well-worn wooden floor. Clothed, of course, but even then he’d been mentally undressing her.

  As she crawled back into bed, Matt smelled the delicate floral scent of her perfume. It became stronger as she moved in closer to put a hand on his chest and kiss him on the forehead. He smoothly turned his head so that his lips were on hers. She moaned softy and appreciatively, and then—hearing a brief familiar vibrating sound—made an unhappy groan.

  Payne’s eyes turned in the direction of the sound, to the bedside table where he’d left his cell phone. It was set to SILENT/VIBRATE. Its color screen was now casting a pulsing bluish-green glow.

  Amanda playfully bit his lower lip and held it as she mumbled, “Don’t you dare get . . .”

  Matt, still in her grips, carefully reached for the phone, then held it more or less behind Amanda’s head so he could clearly see its screen.

  She bit harder.

  Payne grunted as he read the text message on-screen: —BLOCKED NUMBER -

  YO, MATTY . HOPE I’M INTERRUPTING SOMETHING REALLY GOOD AT THIS HOUR!

  GOT ANOTHER POP-N-DROP AN HOUR AGO. TWO ACTUALLY.

  COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED TO NICER GUYS. YOU KNOW ONE. THE BLACK BUDDHA SAID TO GIVE YOU A HEADS-UP.

  CLICK ON FOX29 NEWS. -TH

  Matt sighed, then turned his eyes to meet Amanda’s and raised his hands up, palms out.

  “I surrender,” he muttered as best he could.

  She let loose his lip and slipped back between the sheets.

  Her tone sounding disappointed, Amanda said, “I sure hope that’s not what I’m afraid it is. Especially at this hour. Please tell me it’s not work.”

  He held the phone out for her to read its screen.

  As she did, Matt thought, Someone I know?

  What the hell does that mean?

  “TH” was Tony Harris—age thirty-eight, slight of build and starting to bald—who was widely regarded as a really good guy and a really good Homicide detective. He had worked closely with Matt and Sergeant Jim Byrth of the Texas Rangers last month when they’d tracked down Juan Paulo Delgado.

  And the Black Buddha was their boss, Lieutenant Jason Washington, head of the Homicide Unit. He was a g
reat big bear of a man—six-foot-three and two hundred twenty-five pounds, with very dark skin. Washington, well-spoken, superbly tailored, and highly respected, did not consider the nickname unflattering. “I’m damn sure black, Matthew,” he said in his deep, sonorous voice. “And Buddha, the ‘enlightened one,’ surely is a wise man. I have no problem wearing that badge with pride.”

  “So,” Amanda said softly, “I guess since you’ve been working the pop-and-drops, we’re done for the evening?”

  Someone in the city was shooting fugitives. These particular ones were wanted on outstanding arrest warrants for crimes against women and children. He had not told Amanda that their crimes were sexual in nature.

  After “popping” a sex offender at point-blank range, the shooter then transported the body to the nearest police district headquarters, “dropping” it off in the parking lot with a copy of the perp’s Wanted information—a computer printout downloaded from one of various Internet websites listing fugitives—stapled to some part of his clothing.

  Thus, “pop-and-drop.”

  Not that anyone’s complaining that the scum of society is being swept from the streets for good, Payne had thought.

  But as Jason Washington said, “Murder’s murder, Matthew. And who knows what the shooter might escalate to next?”

  Matt Payne hadn’t figured out how in hell the shooter had been able to get so close to any of the district HQ buildings without being caught in the act of dumping a body. So far it had happened five times in about as many weeks, and the department had been able to keep the incidents quiet—which meant away from the news media—while the brass finally found someone who was available to take the cases and try to piece together who the hell the doer or doers might be. A lucky Sergeant Payne, stuck at his desk assignment, had been chosen.

  Matt turned, kissed Amanda on the forehead, and said, “Hold on, baby.”

  Matt reached back over to the side table and fished around in its drawer until he came up with a remote control. He thumbed the ON button and the sixty-inch flat-screen television mounted on the wall made a humming sound and its screen began to glow.

  He punched in from memory the channel of the local Fox station, and it was clear a live news report was being broadcast. In the bottom left-hand corner was confirmation: A small box alternately blinked the FOX29 logotype and the phrase “News Now, News You Can Use.” A white bar also ran diagonally over the left top corner of the image, and it flashed red text: “REPORTING LIVE at 11:21 P.M. from Old City.”

  As the red and blue emergency lights from the police vehicles flashed, the news camera panned down the narrow tree-lined street. On the red brick sidewalk were curious bystanders—Payne noticed more than a few in Halloween costumes—held back by a length of yellow crime-scene tape.

  Payne’s eyes went to the ticker of text scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen: BREAKING NEWS . . . TWO MEN FOUND BOUND AND SHOT DEAD . . . ONE IS A 25-YEAR-OLD WANTED ON AN OUTSTANDING BENCH WARRANT . . . ARREST WARRANT WAS FOR FAILURE TO APPEAR IN MUNICIPAL COURT ON TWO COUNTS OF INTENT TO DELIVER A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE . . . THE OTHER DEAD MAN IS A CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYER, ABOUT AGE 50 . . . BOTH BODIES DUMPED AT LEX TALIONIS OFFICES . . . POLICE WITHHOLDING NAMES PENDING NOTIFICATION OF FAMILIES OF THE DECEASED . . . BREAKING NEWS . . .

  Then the camera cut away from the shot of the sidewalk and the TV screen suddenly filled with an awkwardly tight shot. It showed the jowly face of an almost bald man wearing a dark rumpled suit coat and a wrinkled white shirt with no necktie. The emergency lights bathed him in pulses of red and blue.

  “Oh, hell!” Matt said. “That’s a bit more of good ole Five-Eff than I’d care to see.”

  Then, in a jerky motion, the camera lens pulled back.

  Amanda looked at the TV screen. She recognized the man, who now was shown head-to-toe in front of a nice but old brick building. He was in his mid-forties, short and stout with a small defined gut. He had a round face and wore, perched at the end of his bulbous nose, tiny round reading eyeglasses.

  He stood addressing a small crowd of news media types. Reporters held microphones to the portly man’s face, almost touching his big nose, as well as camera lenses, both still and video.

  “‘Five-Eff ’?” she repeated. “I thought Frank Fuller was ‘Four-Eff.’”

  Payne turned to her and smiled. He said, “Fucking Frances Franklin Fuller the Fifth. That makes five.”

  [THREE]

  Matt Payne’s family had known Francis Fuller’s as long as Matt could remember. They had many connections, both social and professional, and while Payne did not actively dislike the man, he had on more than one occasion called him Five-Eff to his face—and that almost always had happened when Fuller was being a pompous ass.

  Payne otherwise addressed Fuller as “Francis,” knowing full well (and purposely ignoring) that Fuller preferred the more masculine “Frank.”

  Fuller boldly and shamelessly touted the fact that he traced his family lineage—and what he called its puritanical ways—back to Benjamin Franklin. Fuller fancied himself a devout Franklinite, mimicking his ancestor from his looks to his philosophical beliefs. Fuller regularly sprinkled his conversations with quotes from Poor Richard’s Almanac and other Ben Franklin sources. And like the multitalented Franklin, Francis Fuller was involved in all kinds of enterprises, private and public.

  Payne somewhat begrudgingly admired Fuller for having built on the wealth he’d been born into, because he himself had enjoyed being raised, as he called it, “comfortably”—though certainly not nearly on the level of the super-wealthy Fullers—and he’d seen many others piss away vast sums of money that they had done nothing to earn and, he believed, thus did not deserve.

  Fuller’s primary company—Richard Saunders Holdings, which he’d taken from the name Franklin had used to write Poor Richard’s Almanac—had many entities. There was KeyCom, the Fortune 500 nationwide telecommunications corporation that he’d built city by city by buying up local community cable television providers. And KeyCargo Import-Exports, which was one of the largest leasers of warehouse space at the Port of Philadelphia, which was easily visible from another of Fuller’s holdings—the Hops Haus Tower—which fell under his KeyProperties.

  With so much financial wealth came a great deal of influence, and Francis Fuller had political connections from Washington, D.C., to Harrisburg to Philly’s City Hall and police department. He was more or less happy to share with all both his wealth and his opinions, though sometimes far more of the latter than the former. And in terms of the latter, Fuller was a devout believer in the Bible’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

  And so Francis Fuller funded and personally promoted a nonprofit organization he called Lex Talionis, from the Latin phrase for the “law of talion,” which more or less translated as “an eye for an eye”—which, of course, was the meting out of punishments that matched the crimes. The logotype of Lex Talionis had the “o” as a stylized eyeball.

  The offices for Lex Talionis took up half of the first floor of a five-story brick building on the tree-lined corner of North Third and Arch Streets. Fuller said he felt the location on Arch, in the historic section of Old City, with the Delaware River just blocks to the east and the Liberty Bell on display just blocks to the west, was more appropriate than any shiny marble-and-glass high-rise office building.

  Francis Franklin Fuller V’s belief in the fundamental philosophy of Lex Talionis was strong and unwavering, and there was a good reason for it: Tragedy had struck him personally.

  Five years earlier, his wife and their eight-year-old daughter had been driving home in the early evening of a rainy Saturday, when she had accidentally exited just shy of the Vine Street Expressway she’d been aiming for.

  My dearest could get lost in a closet, Fuller later lamented, and that GPS street map in the dash of her Benz may as well have been a video game for all she knew how to operate it.

  After getting off the expressway at Spring Garden Str
eet, then driving east and crossing over the Schuylkill Expressway, she’d somehow, maybe because the rain was disorienting, made a wrong turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Shortly thereafter she’d found herself in the North Philadelphia West area, driving down the darkened streets of struggling and failing neighborhoods.

  What had happened next was a matter of great speculation. It could have been because of the luxury convertible automobile she was driving. Or it could simply have been an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  According to two eyewitness statements, as the Mercedes waited for a traffic light to turn green, two vehicles flew up to the intersection and squealed to a stop alongside. The second car actually went up over the curb, striking a garbage can and newspaper dispenser box, knocking them over.

  Angry words were exchanged between the occupants of the two cars—and suddenly a torrent of gunfire filled the air.

  Then the first vehicle ran the red light, followed by the second, both racing off into the night.

  The Fullers’ Mercedes-Benz did not move for a couple of minutes, even as the traffic light cycled to green and back to red. Then the car began to roll into the intersection, running the red traffic light and getting struck by an old pickup truck.

  The truck did not kill them, although it struck the Mercedes-Benz hard enough to trigger its air bags. The Medical Examiner’s Office determined that both mother and daughter had died when struck by multiple hits of single-aught buckshot from a shotgun—or shotguns. The windows of the Mercedes, and certainly the soft fabric of the convertible top, were no match for the fusillade of lead balls.

  The shooters were never caught, despite the extreme pressure Francis Franklin Fuller V placed on everyone from the police department to the offices of the mayor and the governor.