The law firm, its practice heavily vested in real estate law, would assist Chairman Badde and his committee-in effect, only Badde and his executive assistant-in the exploratory steps for two major gentrification projects: Volks Haus and Diamond Development.
The latter created what was termed “a multipurpose professional entertainment venue.” It would be an indoor coliseum with a retractable roof and convertible flooring. It could house sixty thousand fans of everything from sports (football, basketball, hockey, soccer, motocross racing, et cetera) to music concerts. It was planned to be built just west of Interstate 95 in the upper end of Northern Liberties. Thus, it would displace thousands of residents in order to demolish a vast chunk of city.
The former, Volks Haus, was to serve as one solution for the relocation of those residents. The “People’s House” would be low-income housing constructed on ten square blocks a few miles to the west, in the Fairmount area, reclaiming what Chairman Badde called “a damned unsightly black hole of money-losing federal government property”-otherwise known as the Eastern State Penitentiary, which happened to be a United States Natural Historic Landmark smack dab in the middle of a struggling residential neighborhood.
The exploratory process was completed within twenty-four hours-although on paper the period was listed as three months-and two minority-owned construction firms were awarded contracts conditioned on federal dollars fully funding PEGI and the completion of the eminent-domain process.
Janelle Harper looked over the upper rim of her Gucci eyeglasses at Rapp Badde.
She said, “Those additional fed monies, I was told, after I finally got my calls returned from Commonwealth-”
Badde interrupted. “Why can’t you just say her name?” He paused and shrugged, and with a weak smile said, “Wanda’s not that bad.”
“Why? I’ll tell you why: Because your wife treats me like your little girlfriend-actually, sometimes more like your little ‘ho’-and not like your goddamned executive assistant.” She pulled at the spandex at her hips, adjusting it, then added, “I’m damned tired of it. She’s not the only one with a law degree from Beasley.”
Temple University, and its Beasley School of Law, was a couple miles west of the condo tower, on North Broad.
Jan met Rapp’s eyes and said, “She needs to be your ex-wife.”
Badde suddenly sat up, almost spilling his coffee.
“Are you kidding?” he said, his voice almost squeaking. “Do you know what the hell that would cost me? I mean, not only in money. I’d lose political capital, too!”
“So? You don’t want to do right by me? Make me an honest woman?”
“Yes! I mean, no!”
Jan put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “Well, which is it?”
He sighed. “It’s not that simple, honey.”
“Don’t goddamn ‘honey’ me, Rapp.”
“It’s just better this way. If I sued for divorce, a lot of things would change.” He knew how much Jan liked living in the luxury high-rise, especially for free. “This condo would go away, for one.”
She considered that a long moment.
“What if she sues you for divorce?”
“For what?”
“For infidelity. Everyone saw that photograph of us in Bermuda.”
With more than a little confidence, if not arrogance, he shot back: “Pennsylvania courts don’t give a shit about cheating. And my wife knows it. How do you think I got away with that photo being run?”
He saw Jan eye him more carefully.
Suspiciously.
Like that was painful proof that she ain’t the first regular piece I’ve had on the side.
Or maybe not the last…
“I know because I asked,” Rapp went on, more evenly. “My lawyer told me.”
“Even if the photos are in flagrante delicto?”
“In what?”
“In the act, Rapp. Screwing.”
“Oh. Yeah. Even that. I asked.”
Now, why the hell did she ask that?
Would she go that low-send Wanda photos of us fucking-thinking she could become Mrs. Mayor instead?
“But she could sue for other reasons. Could even say you beat her, if she got mad enough to go after you.”
He didn’t say anything.
Jan quoted, “‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’”
Badde sighed and said, “She won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She’s got the Badde name, got all that money, and everything that comes with it. Why change?”
“What if she blows the whistle on PEGI?”
“Oh, now, that won’t happen. She likes the money too much. Once you been broke, you don’t ever want to go back. If all the padded payments from PEGI go, so do all those billable hours the Commonwealth Law Center gets from handling the business that will come from Volks Haus and Diamond Development. And she can kiss goodbye those big steady retainer checks Kwame Construction has paid from the start.”
Jan looked at him a long moment and shook her head.
“Rapp, I’m telling you that wives get revenge for a lot of reasons. And they’re not thinking about money when they do it.”
“I’m telling you, she won’t,” he said smugly. “Look, we’re kind of like the U.S. and Russia were with that Mutual Asset Deduction.”
“The what?”
“You know, with missiles aimed at each other. To knock each other out. One fires, both sides are toast.”
After a moment Jan figured it out, and corrected him: “Mutually Assured Destruction.”
He looked at her and shrugged. “Same difference. If she tells on me, I tell on her, and away goes all her money and her license to practice law or anything else. It’d be suicide.”
Their met eyes again.
Badde thought: And if you haven’t realized it yet, honey, you and I are now in the same boat.
You know that kickbacks are funneled through Commonwealth, which also happens to be a nice contributor to my campaign for mayor.
And you’re helping funnel them.
After a moment, she nodded. After a moment, she nodded.
“Okay. I guess you’re right, Rapp. I sure hope so.”
She pointed at a thin sheaf of papers stapled at the top left corner.
“The fed funds for PEGI, at least the low-income-housing matching dollars, were due here last week. As was the paperwork that turns over possession of the prison to PEGI and the Volks Haus Initiative. We need those funds before the next step there. We’ve already cut checks for the first empty properties in Northern Liberties-bulldozers began some demolition last week-and then we’ll be cutting checks for those holdouts. Maybe the bulldozers will convince them it’s time to take the money and move on, and we won’t have to evict.”
“And tell me again: What’s the next step at Volks Haus?”
“Same as it was for the Diamond project.” She handed him the thin sheaf of papers.
He glanced at the cover sheet. It had the expected familiar letterhead:
Commonwealth Law Center 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 840 Philadelphia, PA 19103
The law center office, he knew, was two floors below his accountant’s office.
Below that was printed in large lettering: TITLE 26 EMINENT DOMAIN
Just Compensation and Measure of Damages
“Eminent domain has two stages,” Jan said. “The first is to prove that it’s legal to take property and, meeting that, the second is to determine a fair price for the property.”
He nodded, then turned to page two of the document, a table of contents, and began reading:
26 Pa. C.S.A. # 701 Just compensation; other damages
26 Pa. C.S.A. # 702 Measure of damages
26 Pa. C.S.A. # 703 Fair market value
He felt his eyes start to glaze over, then scanned the rest, stopping at the last one:
26 Pa. C.S.A. # 716 Attempted avoidance of monetary just compensation
&nbs
p; He tossed the papers back onto the table.
“Jesus, I’m glad I hired you to deal with this bullshit.” He smiled at her, and when she smiled back, he added: “Hope we don’t have any trouble with that last one. I mean, what’s a fair price for abandoned buildings?”
“Condemned buildings,” she corrected him. “The Supreme Court fixed that for us with the Kelo vs. City of New London decision. There won’t be any Fifth Amendment problems with the properties.”
Badde then motioned at a long cardboard tube on the table.
“Has the Russian seen the architect’s drawings?”
“Yuri had his assistant personally messenger them over from the Diamond Development office in Center City.”
She grinned slyly, then added, “You know, I think that messenger boy of his is really his concubine.”
“His what?”
“His young lover, his concubine.”
Rapp stared at her with an incredulous look. “You shitting me? What’s a billionaire Russian businessman doing with something like that? I mean, I’ve seen him with some incredibly hot women.”
She shrugged. “Female intuition.”
“Maybe. Just don’t say anything to him. He has a mean goddamn temper.”
“Guess that’s how you get to be a billionaire,” Jan said as she pulled the large sheets of architectural drawings from the cardboard tube.
Badde got up from the chair and walked around the marble-topped table. As he stood behind Jan, looking over her shoulder at the architect’s renderings for Volks Haus, his hands slipped down to her waist. He rested his chin on her shoulder as he squeezed her hips.
“Pay attention,” she said.
“I am paying attention,” he said as he buried his nose in her neck and inhaled her lightly scented perfume. “Attention to you. I’ll pay even better attention with this fancy outfit of yours off…”
She giggled, then let her head drop back toward his. Just as she said, “I surrender,” Badde’s Go To Hell cell phone started ringing.
“Dammit!” Badde said, grabbing it and quickly checking the caller ID. It read UNKNOWN CALLER. “Dammit!”
He stepped back from Jan and started walking toward the sliding glass door to the balcony. “Yes?” he said into the phone.
The caller was yelling so loudly that Badde had to hold the phone away from his ear.
Jan could almost clearly hear what the caller was telling Badde: “Reggie’s dead! They’re coming after me!”
VI
[ONE]
5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 12:45 P.M.
Javier Iglesia parked his silver Dodge Avenger across the street from the Bazelon row house.
He counted at least a dozen teenagers and slightly older thuggish types milling about on the sidewalk-a handful of whom he’d seen earlier-and almost that many teens, mostly girls, sitting on the wooden porch and steps. Sasha Bazelon sat in the same rocker she’d been in when he’d wheeled away her grandmother three hours earlier.
At first glance, he mused, someone could easily think that a crowd of troublemakers had swooped in to take advantage of a poor teenage girl right after the death of her only kin.
But Javier now knew they weren’t troublemakers, at least not all of them, because he was very well acquainted with at least one person on the porch-his baby sister, nineteen-year-old Yvette-and was familiar with a handful of the others, including Keesha Cook, who was sitting between Sasha and Yvette.
They’re here supporting Sasha, is what they’re doing.
And not trying to take advantage of her during this dreadful time.
Even these punks, who are looking at me suspiciously.
Javier got out of the car and made eye contact with Yvette. As he started walking across the street, she popped up out of her chair and went quickly down the steps toward him.
He was surprised. What the hell is up with her?
But knowing his baby sister as well as he did, nothing she did should ever have come as a surprise to Javier Iglesia.
What the very petite Yvette Iglesia lacked in physical height-she stood four-feet-ten-she more than made up for with a bubbly, oversize personality. She spoke almost nonstop, mostly in rapid-fire bursts, gesturing wildly with her hands to make her points. She had straight black shoulder-length hair framing a pretty face that clearly showed her Puerto Rican heritage. Her dark eyes were full of life. And her small mouth was impressive not only for its dazzling smile, but also for the raw expletives that came out of it when she was angry, ones that Javier said “would embarrass a Port of Philly longshoreman.”
“Don’t forget,” Yvette often said with a smile, almost as a provocation, “that dynamite comes in small packages.”
Three hours earlier, just as Javier had backed up the van carrying Principal Bazelon’s body to the Medical Examiner’s Office, his cell phone had pinged, alerting him to a new text message.
When he had looked at the phone’s screen, the message surprised him: YVETTE HEY, BIG BRO… SO SAD ABOUT PRINCIPAL BAZELON MUST BE VERY UPSETTING FOR YOU TO HAVE PICKED HER UP YOU’RE IN MY THOUGHTS amp; PRAYERS LOVE YOU!
His first thought: What a sweetheart.
Then: How the hell did she find out so fast?
After processing the body of Mrs. Joelle Bazelon into the system that was the Medical Examiner’s Office-putting the body bag in one of the stainless-steel refrigerator compartments, then entering the report and photographs taken at the scene into the computer filing system-Javier had called his sister.
“Hey, I got your text. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, her usual bubbly tone gone. “It’s.. . it’s all just so awful…”
“Yeah. She was a terrific lady. How’d you find out so fast? And that it was me? I mean, I’d barely left the scene”-he paused and thought, Wrong word-“that is, Principal Bazelon’s house, when you sent that.”
“Some guys walking around the neighborhood saw the ME van and stopped to watch.”
She knows those thugs watching from across the street?
Maybe Kim Soo was right. They were wannabe gangstas-from-the-’hood.
“You know those guys?”
“No, not really. They think they’re bad news. Jorge’s little brother, Paco, he hangs with them, which makes Jorge mad.”
Then I was right and Soo was wrong.
I knew I had that gut feeling they were up to no good…
Yvette went on: “Anyway, Paco told Jorge he saw you at the Bazelons’, and Jorge texted me about the ME van and Principal Bazelon dying and all.”
Javier knew only vaguely of either Ramirez brother.
“And then Keesha called crying.”
“Keesha?”
“Keesha Cook.”
“Oh, that Keesha. How’s she connected?”
“She and Sasha live on the same street. Longtime neighbors and friends. And you know Keesha used to come over and hang out.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Okay, it all makes sense now.”
“Word’s gotten out fast, Javier. I mean there’s already a big memorial at the middle school by the back door. People coming by and leaving flowers and stuffed animals. There’s these big white bedsheets that they’re drawing on and writing poems and memories and stuff about her. And there’s already a memorial page dedicated to her on the Internet. People from around the world-and I mean around the world, Javier, like China and shit-are writing about what an influence she was to them. Someone’s even made a page with a map of the world, and every time someone writes one of those notes or posts a photo of them, one of these red pushpins pops up on the map showing where these people are in the world-Africa, Europe, all over. Most of them are in Philly, though, real thick red here, then it gets thinner going out.”
“That’s amazing. All in-what?-just two hours? Amazing, is what that is.”
“I just texted Keesha, and she’s headed over to Sasha’s. I’m going to go over, too. Talk her up, you know? I remember how terri
ble I felt when we lost our abuela, and even then we had each other to lean on. Sasha’s so very alone now.”
“Yvette, you know Sasha real good?”
“Sort of. Sure. Why?”
“Is she in any kind of trouble that you know of?”
“Sasha? No! Never. Why?”
“While I was there, I heard her answering questions from the police. What she told them wasn’t much. Just that she came home late last night, saw her grandmother was asleep on the couch, then went to bed. When she came down next morning, her grandmother was dead.”
“Yeah? And?”
“Look, I think there’s more. I know there’s more.”
“Like what, Javier?”
“Somebody had tied Principal Bazelon’s hands and wrists-”
He heard Yvette gasp.
He went on: “But when we got there, whatever they’d been tied with was gone. Just bruises left.”
“You think Sasha did something to her? I can’t imagine-”
“No. But I do think something happened that she won’t tell anyone, especially the cops.”
“Nobody talks to the man, Javier. Not if they’re smart and don’t want no trouble. No offense, big bro.”
“I know that. Look, I’m not saying Sasha did anything wrong. But something is not right about those bruises on her grandmother, ones Dr. Mitchell is going to see and question. If he thinks the death wasn’t as simple as just an old lady going to sleep and never waking up, he’ll have to tell the police. And then Sasha might get in real trouble.”
“Oh my God, Javier. That’s terrible!”
“I’m not saying she did anything to hurt her. Just that she’s not telling everything that happened to her grandmother. Sasha is deeply hurt. No question she’s hurt. But there’s more than just sadness in her eyes. There’s… fear, is what there is.”
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