“No,” said Donna. “Have you?” “This’ll be my first time.” “Yeah, right, like I believe that.”
“Gimme a break, you think I go around having sex in the back of police cars all the time?”
I almost ran my car off the road. I could just imagine who was listening to this—not only every cop in the district, but supervisors, maybe even commanders. And then all the civilians with scanners—like newspaper reporters listening for shootings, tow-truck drivers waiting for wrecks, retired guys sitting in their living rooms, killing time …
The dispatcher came on again. “All units, we have a hung carrier.”
“No shit,” I said, half aloud. The dispatcher could break in all she wanted, I doubted it would make any difference. When you’re transmitting you can’t receive, so unless Donna and Buster happened to have their portable radios turned on, they wouldn’t be able to hear the warnings of a hung carrier.
“I just don’t want anyone seeing us,” Donna was saying.
“No one’s going to see us—as long as we find the right place.”
If the bosses find out who you are, I said to myself, the only place you two are going is the Front. That was our disciplinary board. So far, though, they were in the clear—they hadn’t called each other by name. Three police districts operated on this radio band, the 18th and 20th in West Philly, and the 12th in Southwest. Despite what a lot of cops thought, there was no way a transmission could be traced back to a particular car.
“How about by Penn’s ice rink?” Buster suggested.
This was great—now they were actually talking about where they were going to go to have sex. I had to hand it to Buster, though, the ice rink wasn’t a bad idea. It was on the eastern edge of the campus, not far from the river, and you could park behind it, on a lower level, and not be seen from the street. Some nights, when it was quiet, we’d go down there and have snowball fights with the snowdrifts of crushed ice dumped from the Zamboni.
“Forget that,” said Donna. “You never know when some hockey team is gonna come by for a practice.”
Good point, I thought. I had forgotten that there were people coming and going at strange hours.
“OK, then you pick a place,” said Buster.
“How about Cobbs Creek Park? That road down there is pretty hidden by the trees.”
Not a good idea, Donna, I said to myself.
“You never heard about that park guard?” Buster was asking.
“What park guard?”
“You never heard about that?”
“What, are you deaf? I just said I never heard about it.”
“I thought everybody knew about that.”
“Well, I ain’t everybody,” said Donna. “You gonna tell me or what?”
“This park guard was down there one night, just sitting in his car, someone just came right up and blew him away.”
“Maybe we should skip that one,” said Donna.
“You think?”
I had been worrying about Michelle all day, but now I was beginning to relax a little. And as diversions went, this one was pretty good. I even wanted to have some fun with it. I got on the radio, and asked to have Nick meet me at the 7-Eleven by Penn. I also called for Jeff and his partner, Mutt.
Mutt’s real name was Alan Hope, but since Jeff was Jeff, he had to be Mutt. He was a big, stocky guy from Mayfair, a working-class white neighborhood, and he only cared about four things in life: the Phillies, the Eagles, the Flyers, and the Sixers. All he wanted to talk about was sports. No matter what the conversation was, he’d always bring it around to what this team or that team was doing.
He’d listen to sports-talk radio in his patrol car, and then pull over to a pay phone and call and start arguing on the air. He had a crewcut and enormous forearms, like Popeye, but he was a lot smarter than most people thought.
I got to the 7-Eleven first and parked along the curb in front of the store. A minute later, Nick pulled up behind me. He could hardly get out of his car he was laughing so hard. “This is fan-fuckin'-tastic,” he yelled. “I hope somebody’s making a recording of this.”
Jeff and Mutt were right behind Nick, and they were cracking up, too. We all gathered in front of my car, half sitting on the hood, listening to the Donna and Buster Show on our handsets.
Mutt couldn’t believe our good fortune. “This is some-thin’ to tell your grandchildren about,” he said. “This is gonna go down in history.”
It was a warm night, and though it was summer, there were still some students around the campus. Two pretty young women in super-short gym shorts and tight T-shirts passed in front of us, heading toward the 7-Eleven. We all paused to admire the scenery.
“I knew I should’ve been a U. of P. cop,” Nick said, as we watched the girls disappear into the store.
We all smiled. This was the old Nick, this was the way he had been before his father died, before Steve died.
I waited until the girls were safely out of sight, then got everyone’s attention again. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said. “When Donna and Buster pick a spot, we get there first. They come around the corner, we turn on our lights and sirens and scare the shit out of ‘em.”
Everyone agreed that this was an excellent plan—though first we had to figure out where the hell Donna and Buster were going. We sat there and listened as they considered and rejected three more places to get laid—the golf course (too out in the open), under the 30th Street train station (too many homeless), and in the parking lot behind the zoo’s giraffe habitat (too weird).
“You know where I’d go,” said Nick. “The parking garage under the Civic Center. No one’s ever down there.”
It was amazing—five seconds later, Buster said, “I got it—under the Civic Center.”
Nick smiled at us knowingly. “Great minds …”
“You’re an idiot, right?” Donna was asking. “You ever been down there?”
“Yeah …?”
“You happen to notice all the little TV cameras?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Buster. “I guess that is pretty dumb.”
“You think?”
I looked at Nick, he gave a shrug and a half smile. “Well,” he said, “maybe not-so-great minds.”
The dispatcher cut in again. “Twenty-C-Charlie.”
I keyed the mike on my shoulder. “Twenty-C-Charlie.”
“Requesting assistance in identifying and locating the hung carrier.”
We all looked at each other and laughed. I recognized the dispatcher as Debbie, one of the regulars on the Southwest Division band. She didn’t have to ask who was on the air—she had been around for years, she knew the voices of all the cops. Which meant there was probably an angry captain or two standing over her shoulder.
“What are you going to tell her?” Jeff asked.
“The truth, of course,” I said, and keyed my mike. “Radio, I don’t think the hung carrier is in the Twentieth, you might want to check the other districts.”
“OK, C-Charlie,” Debbie said.
Nick and Mutt were smiling at me. Jeff wasn’t sure quite what to think. Didn’t matter—my job was to protect my cops, not dime them out.
We hadn’t heard anything from Buster or Donna for a couple of minutes, and Nick started to get a little worried.
“They better not be off the air,” he said. “This is too good to waste.”
“I got it!” Buster almost yelled. “The perfect place we can go.”
But he didn’t say where, he just drove on in silence. So we just sat there, listening to dead air, our dreams of the big surprise fading fast.
Then Donna came on again. “I forgot to tell you, I ran into Michelle today.”
My heart took a nosedive into my stomach.
“Michelle?” Buster asked.
“At least I think it was her. She really looked different, she had a perm, her curly hair was all over her face. Jeez, where you goin'?”
“I told you, it’s the perfect place. Wher
e’d you see Michelle?”
“I was driving through Westmount on my way to work, I stopped by that fruit store, you know, on Locust? She was coming out as I was going in, I think she was pretending not to know me.”
I was having trouble breathing. I didn’t know who might be listening to this.
“That’s strange,” said Nick. “I thought I saw Michelle in Westmount, too, the other day. But I wasn’t sure it was her.”
I looked at Nick, Jeff, and Mutt. “We got to find these jokers before the bosses do. Let’s split up, start looking.”
Nobody moved.
“Let’s go,” I said impatiently.
“Go where?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know, just get in your fucking cars and go.”
They glanced at each other, and moved away from my car. They knew something was going on, but they didn’t know what it was.
I was just about to get in my car—though I had no idea which way to go—when my pager went off. It was Doc’s number, with 911 after it—an emergency. I was only a few steps from a pay phone, and I called the number.
“You listenin’ to this?” Doc asked in a low voice, like he didn’t want to be overheard. There was real worry in his voice.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to try to find them.”
“Well, you better do it quick. Lanier’s in his office, listenin'. He’s got this funny look on his face.”
“Do something to distract him. Shoot him or something.”
As I hung up, Donna was saying, “You sure about this? I don’t want anyone seein’ us.”
“Look around,” said Buster. “Ain’t no one gonna see us.”
It was quieter in the background, Buster had probably stopped the car, maybe even turned the engine off.
“See?” said Buster. “I told you I was a fuckin’ genius.”
Nick, Jeff, and Mutt were looking at me, waiting to see what was next.
“I told you guys to get on the fucking street. Now go!”
They didn’t argue, they got in their cars, and we all took off at the same time.
“So I went up to Michelle,” said Donna.
“Let’s talk about her later,” said Buster.
I stepped on the gas, pushing past the campus bookstores and coffeehouses. But where was I going? Where the hell was I supposed to turn?
They were quiet again, they were probably kissing. Good, I thought, let ‘em kiss, let ‘em fuck, just keep Donna’s mouth shut.
“Michelle was so nervous,” Donna broke in, a little out of breath. No, I thought, Donna’s the one who’s nervous, so all she wants to do is talk.
“Aw, c’mon, relax,” said Buster. You could hear the frustration in his voice. He wasn’t any more happy than I was.
“You know what was weird about Michelle?” Donna was asking. “It was like she was trying to be someone else.”
I felt sick. This was not happening. There was a sound in the background over the radio, getting louder. It was a deep, rapid thumping.
“What do you mean, someone else?” asked Buster, curious now. “Like she was working undercover?”
“Thought you weren’t interested.”
The thumping noise seemed familiar, what was it? Then I realized—that was the sound of a helicopter passing over. But it wasn’t passing over, the noise level stayed exactly the same. Which meant that if it was a helicopter it would have to be hovering right over Donna and Buster’s car. That didn’t make sense, what would a helicopter be doing hanging around in West Philadelphia?”
“Chopper Alley!” Nick shouted over the air.
That was it—the medevac copters coming into HUP usually had to wait for clearance, sometimes you could see them hovering over the railroad tracks that ran between the river and Penn. We all called it Chopper Alley. I wasn’t happy Nick had just told the world where Donna and Buster were, but at least now I knew.
It wasn’t far from where I was—just down Civic Center Boulevard to the parking lot where we had our after-work summer keg parties. A dirt road led up an embankment to the railroad tracks, and once you were up there, the trees were tall enough so you couldn’t be seen from below. Buster was right, it was perfect.
I flipped on my siren, praying its whoop-whoop-whoop would cut far enough through the night air for Donna and Buster to hear.
“Somethin’s going on,” Donna said.
It was working.
“Whatever it is,” said Buster, “they’re comin’ this way.”
I sped past the parking lot and bounced up the embankment through the darkness. When I reached the tracks, my foot was still all the way down on the gas pedal, but I was going too fast, Donna and Buster’s car was right there in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel, and then I was heading back down the embankment, not on any road now, just through trees and thick brush, and big rocks were banging and scraping on the bottom of my car.
“Holy shit,” I heard Buster say.
It lasted only a few moments—I came out onto another dirt road at the bottom of the embankment, and I was finally able to stop. I jumped out of my car and saw Donna and Buster running down the hill toward me.
“Sarge!” Buster yelled. “You all right?”
I took a deep breath and waited until they reached me. “Your mike’s been on for the last twenty minutes,” I said. “Everything you’ve said has gone out over the air.”
Even in the darkness, I could see them both turn pale.
“Everything?” Donna asked.
“Yep. And now everyone knows where you are. So get back up to your car, shut off your mike, and get the fuck out of here before the fucking Commissioner or someone shows up.”
Buster was already jogging back up the hill, and Donna turned and followed. “Meet me at the Shop-Now,” I yelled after them. “We gotta talk.”
On the way, I stopped at a pay phone near the Civic Center and called Doc.
“I couldn’t get him away from the radio. Eddie, I’m real sorry, I tried everything.”
“You think he knows?”
“It’s hard to tell. I could see the gears in his head turnin'. He’s been real quiet in there.”
A few minutes later we-were all at the supermarket parking lot—me, Donna and Buster, Nick, Jeff and Mutt. I told them that Donna was right, that it was Michelle she had run into. And she had also guessed right about Michelle working undercover.
“I didn’t want to tell you guys about it, for obvious reasons. But you’ve seen her once, you may see her again, maybe hanging around Mickey Bravelli.”
“That’s what she’s doin'?” Donna asked in astonishment.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s trying to find what Bravelli knows about Steve.”
“That lady has brass balls,” said Buster.
“If any of you see her.” I said, “you don’t know her. OK?”
They all nodded. Donna lit a cigarette, and I noticed her hand was shaking.
“Did I say too much about Michelle, you think?” she asked me.
“Maybe not. But there’s no way to know.”
Donna grimaced. That wasn’t the answer she wanted.
When I reached Michelle by phone later that night, and told her about Lanier, she shrugged it off.
“I’ll just have to take my chances,” she said.
“Michelle, he’s been watching you for two weeks. He’s going to figure out who you are, sooner or later. If he hasn’t already.”
“But maybe he won’t.”
“That’s a very big maybe.”
“Eddie, I’m making too much progress to stop now. I have to keep going.”
“He may already know who you are.”
“Fine. Then so be it. I’m just going to have to take that risk.”
THIRTEEN
As worried as I was about Michelle, I couldn’t ignore what was happening to Nick. He seemed to be getting worse. One moment he’s OK, the next he’s walking up to a house with bullets coming out the window at hi
m, like he’s on some kind of suicide mission.
I had been avoiding talking to his mother, hoping things would change. But I finally concluded it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Aunt Janet was a smart woman, she’d know what to do.
I went over to her house around noon the next day. She lived by herself on 80th Street in Westmount, in the row house where Nick and his brothers had grown up. I felt bad that I hadn’t stopped by more than a couple of times in the two months since Uncle Jimmy’s funeral. But when Aunt Janet opened the door she screamed my name with delight, and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. She immediately sat me down at the kitchen table and made me a ham sandwich on white bread. She even gave me some milk in one of the tall, blue-metal glasses that I remembered from when I was a kid. I’d spent a lot of time in that kitchen, downed a lot of milk and ham sandwiches.
Aunt Janet was a tall woman, and had a very dignified bearing. People who didn’t know her well thought she was a little aloof, but she was just the opposite—warm, open, understanding. Her short hair was getting gray, but Aunt Janet was still full of life, always trying new things. A couple of months before Uncle Jimmy died she took an art class in which they sketched nude models. When Uncle Jimmy found out that some of the models were male, he ordered her not to go, but she just laughed and went anyway.
She seemed so different from my own mother, who had become just another neighbor lady in fluffy house slippers whose kids have long since grown. No expectations, no surprises, just a comfortable life of bus trips to the casinos and plenty of air conditioning in the front room where the TV was, and getting Uncle Jimmy to put in a powder room on the first floor last year so she wouldn’t have to always walk up the stairs.
I ate my sandwich while Aunt Janet washed some dishes. Something was different about her, and it took me a minute or two to realize what it was. She wasn’t singing. Usually when she did the dishes she sang some tune very softly. It was one of the things that had always made me feel so comfortable here.
“How you doin’ these days?” I asked. “You doin’ OK?”
She turned and smiled. “That’s sweet of you to worry about me. You ever see Patricia anymore?” They had always gotten along, and Aunt Janet often told me she was very sorry we split up.
Sons of the City Page 15
