Will nodded.
He walked toward the door, then paused.
What the hell. I can’t take it with me. And Linda’s set for life.
He reached in his pants pocket and came up with a wad of cash folded over and held together with a rubber band. He peeled off five twenties and a one-dollar bill.
“This is for you,” he said, handing her the twenty-dollar bills.
Then he pulled a FedEx ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and on the one-dollar bill wrote, “Lex Talionis, Third amp; Arch, Old City.”
“You find someone to help you get Kendrik down to here. There’s a ten-thousand-dollar reward”-he paused to let that sink in-“for criminals like him. You won’t go to jail; if I have to, I’ll call and say I did it. But you make sure you get the reward money. Maybe it will help you start a new life.”
Then Will Curtis turned and went through the front door.
Behind the wheel of the rented Ford minivan, Will Curtis pulled the next envelope from the top of the stack on the dashboard. He read its bill of lading. Under “Recipient” was:
LeRoi Cheatham 2408 N. Mutter Street Philadelphia, PA 19133
Kensington-what a lovely part of town!
As least when the damn drug dealers aren’t having shoot-outs on the street corners…
He put the rented Ford minivan in gear and accelerated off the busted sidewalk.
[THREE]
Executive Command Center The Roundhouse Eighth and Race Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 12:04:01 P.M.
“You’re on in fifty-nine seconds, Mr. Mayor,” Kerry Rapier said.
The master technician was seated in a wheeled nylon-mesh-fabric chair behind a black four-foot-wide control bank, also on wheels, that had a series of panels with buttons and dials, its main feature a keyboard with a joystick and a color video monitor. A fat bundle of cables ran from the control bank to the wall and, ultimately, to a rack of video recording and broadcasting equipment, including the soda-can-size digital video camera that, suspended at the end of a motorized boom, seemed to float overhead.
Rapier, a police department blue shirt whose soft features and impossibly small frame made him look much younger than his twenty-five years, had shoulder patches on his uniform bearing two silver outlined blue chevrons. He manipulated the joystick and the camera overhead zoomed in to tightly frame the face of the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, who stood at a dark-stained oak lectern.
Carlucci, his brown eyes smiling, said, “Son, are you sure you’re even old enough to be a policeman, let alone a corporal?”
Corporal Rapier grinned.
“With respect, Mr. Mayor, that’s not the first I’ve heard that.”
Carlucci’s brown eyes, depending on his mood, could be warm and thoughtful or intense and piercing. Large-boned and heavyset, he was a massive fifty-one-year-old with dark brown hair. He wore an impeccably tailored dark gray woolen two-piece suit with a light blue, freshly pressed dress shirt and a navy blue silk necktie that matched the silk pocket square tucked into his coat.
Standing shoulder to shoulder behind Mayor Carlucci was a veritable wall of white shirts: Police Commissioner Ralph Mariana, wearing his uniform with four stars, and Denny Coughlin, with the three stars of the first deputy police commissioner, were directly behind the mayor. And standing on opposite ends of them were Homicide Commander Henry Quaire, whose uniform bore the captain’s rank insignia of two gold-colored bars, and Homicide Lieutenant Jason Washington, with the insignia of one butter bar on his uniform.
Looming on the wall behind all of them was a grid of flat-screen TVs. The screens alternately displayed either an official seal of the City of Philadelphia-the newly designed one, a golden Liberty Bell ringed by CITY OF PHILADELPHIA LIFE LIBERTY AND YOU in blue lettering-or the blue Philadelphia Police Department shield, which bore the older seal of the city and HONOR INTEGRITY SERVICE in gold lettering.
(Earlier official city phrases had been “The City of Brotherly Love” and “The Place That Loves You Back,” the latter falling into disfavor after some wits in the populace reworded the slogan to read “The Place That Shoots Your Back”-and worse variants thereof.)
Carlucci was about to give a prepared statement concerning the previous night’s triple murders and the first five pop-and-drops. In order to lend weight to his speech, the mayor of the City of Philadelphia was borrowing from the playbook of the police commissioner by using the Executive Command Center.
Ralph Mariana held almost all of his press conferences in the ECC, a state-of-the-art facility that held an impressive display of the latest high-tech equipment. The electronics made for terrific photo opportunities-and more important, as Mariana said, helped give the public a sure sense of confidence that the police department had the best tools to safeguard its citizens.
During a crisis, the ECC’s main objective was to collect, assimilate, and analyze during a crisis a mind-boggling amount of wide-ranging raw information-people and places and events and more-in a highly efficient manner.
And then to act on it-instantly, if not sooner.
“And that’s exactly what the hell we’re doing this morning,” Carlucci had bluntly told Mariana when he’d asked for everyone to gather in the ECC. “If this goddamn situation escalates, it has the potential to turn the city into something out of the Wild West.”
The bulk of the ECC was given over to a massive pair of T-shaped conference tables. Each dark gray Formica-topped table seated twenty-six. And each of these fifty-two seats had its own multiline telephone, outlets for laptop computers, and access to secure networks for on-demand communications with other law-enforcement agencies-from local to federal to the international police agency, Interpol-as necessary.
Along the back walls were more chairs to accommodate another forty staff members.
The focal point of the room, however, were three banks of sixty-inch, high-definition LCD flat-screen TVs. There were nine TVs per bank on the ten-foot-high walls. Mounted edge to edge, the frameless TVs could create a single supersize image, or could display individual pictures-each TV could even be used in split-screen mode.
Usually, when the screens were not showing live feeds from cameras mounted in emergency vehicles at the scene of an accident or crime, they showed continuously cycling images from closed-circuit TV cameras that were mounted all over the city-in subways, public buildings, and main and secondary roadways-and the broadcasts from local and cable TV news stations. Images could be pulled from almost any source, even a cell phone camera, as long as the signals were digitized.
The ECC fell under the purview of the Science amp; Technology arm of the Philadelphia Police Department, which included the Forensic Sciences, Information Systems, and Communications Divisions. Its two-star commander, Deputy Police Commissioner Howard Walker, reported to Denny Coughlin.
Acting on an order issued that morning by the mayor, Walker had alerted the local news media that a live feed of Mayor Carlucci would begin at precisely 12:05 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. The timing gave the TV news programs the opportunity to start their noon newscasts with the announcement that an important statement by the mayor of Philadelphia concerning the rash of recent murders was coming up in five minutes.
“Stay tuned. We’re back with that breaking news right after this commercial break.”
“Thirty seconds, gentlemen…,” Corporal Rapier said.
Four hours earlier, when Coughlin had led his group into the Executive Command Center, he’d found the mayor and the police commissioner already seated at Conference Table One. They had heavy china mugs steaming with fresh coffee before them on the table. Mariana’s mug read : SCIENCE amp; TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE COMMAND CENTER. The mayor’s mug read GENO’S STEAKS SOUTH PHILLY, PENNA.
Everyone in the ECC was casually dressed. Even the usually stiffly buttoned-down Carlucci wasn’t wearing a necktie, and he had his shirt collar open. And Matt Payne and Tony Harris still looked rumpled and messy, the result of having been up
most of the night running down leads in the death of Reggie Jones.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Carlucci said in a solemn tone suggesting he meant that it was anything but a good morning. He did not move from his chair except to grab his coffee mug handle.
There was a chorus of “good morning”s in reply.
Mariana added, “Fresh coffee in there.” He waved with his mug across the room, indicating a door that led to a kitchenette.
Carlucci then said, “Sergeant Payne, no offense, but you and Detective Harris look like hell.”
“Considering what we’ve been through, Mr. Mayor,” Payne said dryly, “hell sounds like an absolute utopian paradise. I enjoy the thrill of the chase as much as the next guy, but this one’s a real challenge. Right now we don’t know if we’re dealing with a single shooter-slash-strangler, or if there are others-that is, as someone put it earlier, Halloween Homicide Copycats.”
Ordinarily, a lowly police sergeant speaking so bluntly to the highest elected official of a major city would be cause for disciplinary-if not more drastic-measures.
But Carlucci’s relationship with Payne, and most everyone else in the group, was anything but ordinary.
Back when he’d been a cop, Carlucci had known and liked Matt’s biological father. And that went way back, to when Sergeant John F. X. Moffitt had been the best friend of a young Denny Coughlin before being killed in the line of duty.
Mayor Carlucci was also well acquainted with Matt Payne’s adoptive father, whom he also liked very much, and not only because Brewster Cortland Payne II was a founding partner of Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm.
And there was another connection between Matt and Hizzonor.
Carlucci had been Coughlin’s “rabbi”-his mentor-and had groomed the young police officer with great potential for the larger responsibilities that would come as he rose in the ranks of the department.
Denny Coughlin had gone on to groom Peter Wohl, son of Augustus Wohl, Chief Inspector (Retired). And then Peter Wohl-indeed among the best and brightest, having at twenty graduated from Temple University, then entered the Police Academy and, later, become the youngest staff inspector on the department-had been in recent years Matt Payne’s rabbi.
And, more or less completing the circle, the elder Wohl had in his time been the rabbi of an up-and-coming police officer-a young man by the name of Jerry Carlucci.
“If I didn’t know better, Matt,” Mayor Carlucci now said, his face and tone suggesting more than a little displeasure, surprising Payne, “I’d say you were on the street working all night.” He paused to make eye contact with the white shirt he’d mentored decades earlier, then went on: “But I do know that must not be the case, because we’d all agreed that the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line would stay the hell out of sight for a certain cool-down period.” He looked again at Denny. “Or am I mistaken?”
Mariana, Quaire, and Washington-the direct chain of command also somewhat directly responsible for seeing that Payne drove a desk so as to stay out of the news-looked a little ill at ease.
Payne saw that Howard Walker was more than a little interested to see Denny Coughlin in the mayor’s crosshairs.
But Coughlin, while deeply respectful of Carlucci, and cognizant of Carlucci’s iron fist and occasional temper, was not cowed by him. Over the years he’d learned a lot from his rabbi, and one of the most important lessons was to make a decision, then come hell or high water to stand by that decision.
Time and again, Carlucci had told him: “One’s inability to be decisive gets people killed. Make up your goddamn mind-based on the best available information, or your gut, or better both-and move forward.”
Denny Coughlin now said evenly, almost conversationally, “Jerry, I had the same initial reaction earlier this morning. But in light of what we’re dealing with, I decided to end the cool-down period as of today. Matt’s been all over the paperwork on these pop-and-drops, and if we have any chance of quickly figuring out who’s doing what-and we need to, or it’s likely going to get ugly very fast-we need to be able to put him back on the street.”
Carlucci looked thoughtfully at Coughlin a long moment, then at Payne, then back at Coughlin. He grunted and put down his china mug with a loud thunk.
“For the record, Denny, color me not completely convinced. Maybe it’s because I recently spent so much time trying-key word ‘trying’-to dissuade the media that we have a loose cannon in our police department.” He exhaled audibly. “But I do know better than to micromanage the people in whom I have absolute trust.”
With a deadly serious face, he looked at Payne.
“Just try not to add to the goddamn body count. Got that, Marshal? I don’t want to have to answer any more questions from the damned press about you.”
Payne nodded. “Yessir. Duly noted, sir.”
Carlucci met his eyes and added, “That doesn’t mean that I don’t support you in what were righteous shootings. You were doing your job, and you did it well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Okay, everybody have a seat,” Carlucci then said. “Let’s hear what you’ve got on the pop-and-drops, Matt.”
“Yes, sir,” Payne said. “But, as you noticed, Tony and I have been up all night. I can’t speak for Tony, but I could use some caffeine.”
“I’ll get ’em,” Harris said, heading across the room as the others sat down at the conference table.
[FOUR]
Sergeant Matt Payne drained his second cup of coffee, then made a grand sweeping gesture at one of the banks of TVs.
On its screens were images of the first five dead fugitives-both their Wanted sheets and crime-scene photos from where they’d been “dropped”-as well as detailed maps and lists of data showing where the bad guys had lived, where they had committed their crimes, and, ultimately, where they had been found dead.
He looked at Mayor Jerry Carlucci and said, “And that is essentially what I put together from the files of the first five pop-and-drops. There’s no question that they were targeted killings by the same doer. But the new ones from last night don’t quite fit the profile.”
“ ‘Targeted killings’?” the mayor repeated.
Payne nodded. “Today’s buzzword for ‘assassination.’”
Carlucci made a sour face. “Let’s stick with ‘targeted killings,’ in the statement and elsewhere. Or even just ‘murders by perps unknown.’ At least for now.”
He looked around the ECC conference table, and everyone nodded agreeably.
“You said,” Carlucci went on, “that with the exception of one of the first five, all were dropped by the same doer at the district PD closest to the critter’s Last Known Address. And all had the same MO?”
Payne pointed to one of the TVs. “Yes, sir. That’s shown on Number 8. All were bound at their ankles and wrists. All shot either in the chest or head. And all with the same doer’s fingerprints. Which makes us”-he glanced at Tony Harris-“believe that we will find he’s also responsible for at least two of the three dropped last night. He left prints everywhere. Prints and piss.”
Carlucci cocked his head. “Did you say piss?”
When Payne explained about the “gallons” of piss all over the lawyer’s office, Carlucci shook his head and said, “If I’d known, I might have contributed. Never did like that Gartner.”
Matt chuckled.
Carlucci went on, “So, piss and prints. Could be the doer’s just careless or stupid-or worse.”
“Or maybe he wants to get caught?” Harris offered.
Payne raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. He’s damn sure leaving ample opportunity for that to happen. Just a matter of time…”
“So,” Carlucci said, “again, all we have for sure is one doer linked to the first five pop-and-drops-”
“That’s correct,” Payne said.
“-and maybe at least two of last night’s three-the two who were shot-if we find that the prints on them match those prints on the first five. Same for the third,
even though he wasn’t shot.”
“Exactly,” Payne said.
“Strangled and beaten,” Carlucci then wondered aloud. “What could be the significance of that?”
Payne shrugged. “Maybe the doer ran out of bullets.”
Carlucci snorted.
“Let’s hope so,” he said. “If not, then we have two or more goddamn doers to collar. So when do you get the prints that were taken last night back from IAFIS? Before noon, in time for the statement?”
IAFIS, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, was the largest biometric database in the world. It held the fingerprints and other information collected from local, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies on more than fifty-five million people. Law-enforcement agencies could access it at any time and run a search with the fingerprints they lifted from a crime scene. It wasn’t uncommon, provided the submitted print or prints were clean, to get a response in a couple hours as to whether there was a match in the database.
Payne shook his head. “We’re still waiting for Forensics to process the prints that were lifted. You know what their motto can sometimes be…”
“Enlighten me,” Carlucci said dryly.
“ ‘If we wait until the last minute to do it, it’ll only take a minute.’”
There suddenly was a cold silence in the room, and Payne then realized from the furious look on Walker’s face that, given difference circumstances-say, the absence of Walker’s three immediate bosses-he would have reamed the hotshot Homicide sergeant a new one.
Nice job, Payne ol’ boy, Matt thought. Forensic Sciences belongs to Walker.
Screw it. Maybe this will get them moving faster.
Payne remembered one night at Liberties Bar when, more than a couple of stiff Irish whiskeys under both their belts, Coughlin had let slip that he was not a fan of Walker’s. Walker, who spoke with a cleric’s soft, intelligent voice, cultivated a rather pious air. Coughlin felt that Walker used all the bells and whistles of Science amp; Technology as smoke and mirrors to disguise his incompetence.
The Vigilantes boh-10 Page 14
