The Vigilantes boh-10

by W. E. B Griffin

  She shrugged. “Sorry. I can’t…”

  Of course she can’t.

  Damn sure not after what she’s gone through…

  He nodded thoughtfully and kissed her on the forehead.

  The news camera now followed Francis Fuller as he walked inside the office building. Then it panned the cheering crowd, and in the process captured some of the news media.

  Payne said: “Hey, there’s Mickey O’Hara. He’s working the story?”

  A young-looking Philadelphia Police Department patrolman was going back under the yellow police tape next to O’Hara, who Matt noted was standing apart from the pack of reporters quickly scribbling on their pads. O’Hara had a camera of some type hanging from his right shoulder by a thin black strap. He held in both hands what looked like a cell phone, and he was tapping it with both of his thumbs.

  Then Payne felt his phone vibrate again, and a new text message appeared in a box on its screen: MICKEY O’HARA AN OLD SOURCE JUST MENTIONED “POP-N-DROPS” TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW, DAMN IT, AND I’LL TELL YOU WHAT I DO… MEET ME AT LIBERTIES?

  “Old source” my ass-it was that wet-behind-the-ears uniform.

  The kid’s probably starstruck with Mickey and thought he’d show off how important he already is by sharing what’s supposed to be kept quiet.

  Hell, Mickey will keep his mouth shut if I ask, and if he’s on the scene he probably has something good that I can use.

  But Amanda is going to be pissed if I leave now to go work.

  He heard her sigh, and when Matt looked to her, he saw that she’d read the screen.

  He began to apologize: “I’m-”

  “No,” she interrupted. “It’s okay. Really, it is. I can’t agree that bad guys should be off the streets and then expect you not to do your job.”

  He kissed her forehead again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, finishing the apology.

  Then Payne texted “Liberties in 20” back to O’Hara.

  Payne’s phone vibrated once, then again. The first message was from O’Hara, who’d simply texted “OK.” The second was from Tony Harris:

  – blocked number-

  YOU JUST SEE 5-F? I BET JASON IS FIT TO BE TIED. GOT TIME FOR A BEER? -TH

  “My,” Amanda said, “aren’t you the popular one at this hour. Should I be jealous?”

  Payne thought, What the hell, may as well kill two birds with one stone, and texted back: “Liberties in 20.”

  She rolled over and began to slowly rub his belly.

  Matt looked at her and began, “Speaking of killings-”

  “You should go?” Amanda finished his sentence.

  “No. What I was going to say is: I don’t see the rush.”

  As she made another slow circle with her palm, she asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, as far as I can tell, there’s no reason to jump up and race anywhere. Mick can cool his heels with Tony at Liberties for ten minutes. And even if I do get a call about those pop-and-drops”-he reached for his cell phone and pressed a button to turn it off-“which will now go directly into voice mail, it’s my professional opinion that those guys who got popped will probably still be dead ten minutes from now.”

  Amanda’s hand stopped. Matt looked deeply in her eyes.

  “ ‘Just ten minutes’?” she said, her tone suggestive.

  As he smiled and nodded, she pursed her lips.

  After a moment, he felt her warm hand slide down his belly.

  “I know a Ben Franklin saying, too,” she said.

  “Yeah? I’m afraid to ask. Something to do with moderation or saving for a rainy day, or-worse-abstinence?”

  Her warm palm moved smoothly and excitingly slowly until it was just below his belly button, then a bit farther down. He grunted appreciatively in anticipation-until her fingers suddenly gripped him by the short hairs.

  “Ouch!” he cried out a bit dramatically when she pulled them. “What was that for?”

  “Ben said, ‘Love, and be lov’d.’”

  [FOUR]

  5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Saturday, October 31, 11:45 P.M.

  Mrs. Joelle Bazelon long had lived with the dark fear, deep in her big bones, that such a terrible day would come. The dark-skinned, sixty-two-year-old widow-she was of Jamaican descent, five-foot-eight tall, and after a decade of battling diabetes, clinically obese-had prayed literally every night, down on arthritic knees, her Bible before her on the bedspread, that somehow she could figure out a way to run from it. Some way to pack up everything in time and move to a better place for her and Sasha, her just-turned-eighteen-year-old granddaughter.

  But that hadn’t happened.

  And now, standing at the kitchen sink on what so far had been a fairly pleasant Halloween, looking out the window as she finished drying and putting up the dinner dishes, Joelle Bazelon suddenly realized that time had run out.

  Earlier in the evening, she’d heard the doorbell ring again and again, the excited choruses of young children shouting, “Trick or treat!” and seen Sasha, her beautiful, slender, five-foot-seven teen, rushing enthusiastically to the door with the large plastic bowl of candies, then bending at the waist and complimenting each child on his or her costume as she put treats in their bags.

  The sequence of sounds had repeated until about nine o’clock, when the kids-even the older ones, a few in their middle teens who knew they really were too old to be trick-or-treating-had stopped ringing the doorbell.

  Sasha had then told her grandmother that she was going down the street to hang out with Keesha Jones, her friend since they were ten. Joelle was never completely comfortable with Sasha being out at night, especially late, but she reminded herself that the child was now eighteen, too old to be kept home, and Keesha lived just at the end of the block.

  About the only thing that Joelle could do was tell her to be safe. And, as an added precaution-so that when Sasha came home it would be easier, and quicker, to come inside the house-leave the heavy wrought-iron outer door unlocked.

  And now, from the sound of it, Sasha was coming home very quickly.

  Too quickly.

  Joelle heard the wooden front door fling open, making a stunning thud as its heavy brass doorknob smacked an interior wall.

  Then she heard a clearly terrified Sasha cry out, “Grammy!”

  Joelle got the chills. And when she heard a familiar male voice call out, “Trick or treat!”-the tone deeply threatening-her knees buckled.

  Xavier Smith! she thought, clinging to the lip of the sink to keep from falling to the linoleum floor.

  Ridgewood Street was in the Kingsessing area of southwest Philadelphia. Joelle Bazelon had lived there going on forty years, graduating from South Philly High, then LaSalle University with her teacher’s certificate, and ultimately being assigned to Anna H. Shaw Middle School, from which she’d now retired as principal.

  The school, at 5400 Warrington Avenue, was only a three-block walk from her row house on Ridgewood. She’d moved to the row house with her husband, Ray, whom she’d met at LaSalle, and later they’d reared their only daughter, Rachel, there.

  About the same time that Joelle retired from teaching, Rachel, then age eighteen, had become pregnant with Sasha. The father, a year older, had stuck around for about half the length of time it had taken him to cause the actual moment of conception.

  The Bazelon house-a modest thirteen hundred square feet total-became quite full.

  That had lasted for only just shy of a year, however.

  Ray and Rachel had been driving up from Delaware on Interstate 95 when their car’s front left tire blew out, causing the vehicle to roll over and strike a bridge support. They were killed on impact.

  Among many things, Joelle was tough. She had to be. And, as she had already reared one daughter and over the years taught countless other children, she had no problem with the idea of bringing up Sasha on her own.

  Yet over the years, despite Sasha proving to be both as sweet and as smart a
s her mother had been, rearing a granddaughter hadn’t been easy. As any single parent knew, the constant one-on-one time with a child exhausted energy and emotion. There had also been a money problem-Ray’s income went away shortly after his burial, and Joelle’s pension did not go as far as she’d have liked. Then came her health issues, including the diabetes and, because of her excessive weight, a heart condition, which not only further sapped her strength but also drained the savings account to pay for doctor’s bills and medications.

  And what put a painfully fine point on their problems was that southwest Philadelphia simply was no longer the same place that Joelle and Ray had first moved to twenty years before to raise a family.

  At first glance, Kingsessing appeared to be the same somewhat comfortable middle-class neighborhood. Most of the residents tried to keep the row homes tidy, the small yards trimmed and free of trash.

  But if one looked closely, the signs of quiet despair were present.

  Practically all the residences had something not one of them had been built with: burglar bars. The heavy racks of black wrought iron had been added house by house over the last ten or twelve years.

  Some of the chain-link fences were even topped with razor wire.

  There was a creeping blight on almost every block: When houses burned down-not always by accident-the owners took whatever money the insurance company paid out and got the hell out of town. The city was stuck with the task of finishing off the destruction of the property, which more times than not left a dirt lot littered with rubble. A lot that oddly still had the five-tier set of concrete steps coming up from the sidewalk but leading to nowhere.

  When that happened to the house next door to Joelle Bazelon’s, she saw the writing on the wall. She planted a FOR SALE sign in the small ten-foot-square patch of grass that was her front yard.

  Joelle Bazelon found that she was not the only one who saw that the neighborhood was going to hell in a handbasket. Three other row houses were on the market within just two blocks of her address. They all offered essentially the same property, give or take a bath or bedroom.

  She’d listed the property through a realtor, setting the asking price at ninety-nine thousand dollars. And she never got a single offer. When she asked the realtor why not, Joelle was told that the price on one of the other row houses for sale nearby was being reduced by five thousand dollars every two weeks. Worse, it still wasn’t getting any reasonable offers.

  Joelle Bazelon had suddenly felt terribly trapped.

  She now knew that she’d seen the start of all this decline years before, back when she’d been principal of the middle school. She’d seen kids who were on the path to no good-and parents who didn’t care. And in the time since then, she’d seen plenty of punks from Shaw, from the neighborhood, who had gone on to cause trouble in high school or, worse, in one of the disciplinary schools that served as their last stop in the School District of Philadelphia.

  The worst of the worst had gone straight to the temptations of the street, and there drawn the real-world version of a Monopoly game card: GO STRAIGHT TO JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO.

  Punks such as Xavier “Xpress” Smith, who got his nickname selling crystal methamphetamine, and delivering it fast.

  Except they didn’t always stay in jail.

  III

  [ONE]

  Loft Number 2180 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Saturday, October 31, 11:48 P.M.

  The irony was not lost on Matt Payne. Here, at almost the stroke of midnight on All Hallows’ Eve, he was headed for Liberties Bar to spend time talking about some goddamn bad guys who were stupid enough to get themselves murdered.

  What a shitty way to spend a holiday.

  Even more to the point: especially when my other option was staying in that wonderful bed with the goddess.

  Who, all things considered, would really rather have me there than here.

  He felt his phone vibrate twice, and when he looked at the screen, there were two text messages, the first from Amanda-“Be safe out there, baby”-and the second from Mickey O’Hara-“Where the hell are you?”

  He had a mental image of Amanda walking Luna on the leash out to the grassy area that the Hops Haus Tower called “the Pet Run.” Matt had started calling it “Piss Park,” which was the nicer of the two nicknames that had come to mind. He was convinced that the tower’s four-legged residents outnumbered the two-legged ones-the vast majority of the latter, it appeared, by both sight and smell, choosing to ignore the Pet Run’s garbage can, roll of disposable plastic bags, and sign reading PLEASE PICK UP AFTER YOUR PET.

  As he texted “See you soon, sweetie” back to Amanda, he was reminded again of the “obituary.”

  She’s always going to be concerned.

  It’s sweet. And it’s somewhat worrisome-because what happens if she doesn’t get over that?

  Then again, what the hell happens if she’s right?

  He texted a reply to O’Hara: “5 mins out… order me a Macallan 18.”

  If nothing else right now, Payne did find himself enjoying the energy of those celebrating Halloween. The infectious laughter and vibrant music coming out of the bars along Second Street could be heard damn near all the way back to Amanda’s place.

  Most everyone he’d seen up and down the sidewalks, pub crawling, was having one helluva Halloween. In the elevator and the lobby of the Hops Haus Tower, Payne had come across quite a few twenty- and thirtysomethings in Halloween costumes, some of which were quite interesting-if not totally wild. Such as the one worn by the cute, well-built blonde in her early thirties who was having difficulty opening one of the big glass doors at the lobby’s main entrance. She was dressed as Little Bo Peep. But her scant, frilly, white-and-baby-blue outfit, the ruffled skirt cut high and the push-up top cut low, was anything but G-rated. The costume gave the character a whole new meaning, especially when she kept bending over to pick up her sheepherder’s staff and the outfit revealed far more than an eyeful of lovely flesh.

  Bo Peep, indeed, Payne thought with a grin.

  Then, as he walked down Second Street toward Liberties, Payne had also gotten a chuckle when he saw two guys more or less staggering out of a bar wearing T-shirts that, while not technically Halloween costumes, were appropriately dark-humored.

  One T-shirt had a representation of the Liberty Bell with the words COME TO PHILADELPHIA FOR THE CRACK.

  The other showed a white chalk outline of a human and the words: A FRIEND WILL HELP YOU MOVE BUT A GOOD FRIEND WILL HELP YOU MOVE THE BODY.

  Either of which, Payne thought, would be appropriate to wear into Liberties for tonight’s discussion on pop-and-drops with Tony Harris and Mickey O’Hara.

  It certainly would not be the first time such topics had been broached in Liberties. The bar was the unofficial preferred watering hole of the Homicide Division, as well as cops from other divisions who’d discovered the comfortable old neighborhood bar that served stiff drinks and great food and-some would argue-occasionally more than a little gruff attitude.

  The place has real character.

  Payne then idly wondered how much longer such older establishments would survive. Because there was no doubt that this section of the city, thanks to the new Hops Haus complex and its fancy new neighbor, the Schmidt’s Brewery development, was seeing its real estate prices pushed up. And that, in turn, was forcing out the longtime residents who couldn’t afford to live there anymore, everybody from older retirees to young bohemian artists.

  The more expensive properties that attracted young professionals were replacing the low-rent row houses and abandoned industrial areas, and the newcomers generated new jobs for others. And money spent meant money taxed, which translated to more revenue to fill the city’s coffers.

  Such is the rejuvenation of Philadelphia.

  And Lord knows so much of it needs renovation.

  Too many parts are a living hell.

  That gave some hope to a lot of people-including Matt-who feared that
Philly, with all its crime, corruption, and broken infrastructure, was circling the goddamned drain.

  Payne knew that supporting the gentrification was one of the reasons Amanda Law bought a place in Hops Haus Tower rather than one in Center City, where Payne had his small apartment. She liked the idea of renewal and rebuilding. The location wasn’t any closer to her work-the difference would have been only minutes-but she believed that it was a vibrant place where for too long there had been little more than misery.

  And the fact that Philadelphia-the city Matt loved but knew so many others loved to hate-had been allowed to reach such depressing depths was something that frustrated him.

  How in hell does the city that’s the birthplace of the most important law of our land-the United States Constitution-become one of our nation’s most lawless?

  And one of our nation’s most fucked up?

  How does that get fixed?

  How do we get back that honor and pride?

  He shook his head.

  Could the answer be found here?

  Two major speculators, one who built Hops, the other who developed Schmidt’s, had both denied for nearly a decade that they were at all interested in a lost cause like Northern Liberties.

  But once one of the speculators had quietly pieced together enough property to begin a development, the renovation had begun on the Schmidt’s Brewery building. Then, like a Phoenix rising above the ashes of Philly’s Northern Liberties, additional two-story buildings went up, filled with expensive apartments, stores, restaurants, and, of course, office space.

  Then, when that development had proved a success, the owner of the Hops Brewery site began his renovation project. And soon the twenty-one-floor Hops Haus Tower also had risen, well above Schmidt’s.

  People want to save this city, want to preserve its history.

  And there’s damn sure plenty of it. All over Philly.

  But throwing all kinds of money at a problem is no guarantee of success-just look at Center City, Philly’s shining star, of all places. It has parts that still look like ghetto.