The Vigilantes boh-10

by W. E. B Griffin

  “The Wanted sheet?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. He come in and-No, wait. First he say he got a check for Kendrik. And when I let him in, he give me the paper. The sheet. Said there was no check.”

  “This began at what time?”

  She cocked her head. “Time? This morning, all I know. Ain’t no clocks in a crack house!”

  Payne nodded as he wrote that on his notepad and thought, Right.

  If something’s not nailed down, it’s sold for drugs.

  My God, what a way to live.

  “What did this guy look like? And was he alone, anyone else in the house?”

  “Just him. Old white guy, maybe my age. Tall. Kinda skinny.”

  Payne wrote that down and asked, “He give you a name? You ever see him before?”

  “Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I think Kendrik did something bad to this guy. Or maybe to his family. Robbery, rape, something. Once my boy got in the drugs, he was no good.”

  Payne noted that on his pad, then said, “This old white guy your age-anything unusual about him? Anything at all special or different you remember about him?”

  She thought about that for a moment. Then she grinned.

  “He give me money. A hundred dollars, he did! How many times that going to happen? Some white guy come in your house and give you a hundred dollars, then tell you how to get ten thousand more!”

  She’s almost giddy.

  The sugar must really be kicking in.

  She squinted her eyes at Payne and wagged her right index finger at him. “And I want my reward!”

  “This man had a gun?”

  She looked at Payne with an expression that suggested he was nuts. “How else Kendrik get shot? Had to! I never saw it. But it made a loud noise. Sounded like a cannon boom in the basement.”

  “That’s where Kendrik was shot, in the basement? Do we have your permission to go through it and search your whole house?”

  She nodded, then snickered. “If you want. Sure. Just try not to make a mess.” She looked at Payne and said, her tone flat, “That was a joke.”

  Now she’s feeling so good she’s a damn comedienne.

  Payne nodded, then said, “You do know it’s against the law to tamper with the scene of a crime, remove or otherwise alter evidence?”

  She shrugged.

  Payne raised an eyebrow, then went on: “Okay, do you know the cabbie who helped you?”

  She shook her head. “No. He just the first one who’d help me. Had to walk four blocks till I found him on Reed Street. Only charged me twenty bucks. Said he was sorry for me but glad to see Kendrik got what he deserved. Nobody liked that boy.”

  Payne wrote that as he asked, “And this cabbie helped you do what?”

  “He’s a really big guy. He took that rug and rolled Kendrik up in it, then carried him to the car.”

  “Ms. Mays, that’s the tampering with evidence I’m referring to. You should’ve called 911 and-”

  She laughed. “Call 911? What? I ain’t got no phone. And I sure as hell wouldn’t call no police if I did.”

  Payne stared at her.

  Amazing. You get beat to hell and back, someone blows away your son in your basement, but whatever you do, don’t call the good guys.. ..

  He went on: “Are you also aware it’s against the law to harbor a fugitive?”

  “Harbor?”

  “Let him live with you.”

  She sat up in the chair, puffed up her chest, and in as loud and angry a voice as she could muster said, “I didn’t let him live with me! I throwed him out over and over. But he come back. And when I try throwing him out again, after he been in jail, that’s when he beat me really bad. What can I do? I got no money to move out, so I just deal with it all…” Her voice trailed off. She reached for the soda bottle and drained it.

  Then she crossed her arms and glared at Payne. “I want my reward!”

  Payne looked back at her, then glanced at his watch and said to the recorder, “Interview paused at one-forty P.M.”

  He stood, stuck his notepad in his pocket, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  He left the handcuff off her but, using the sliding bolt, locked the interview room door from the outside.

  Only Jason Washington was in the small observation room when Payne entered.

  “The minute you got her permission,” Washington said, his deep, sonorous voice answering the unasked question, “Tony went to get a Search and Seizure warrant signed by the judge and sent the Crime Lab to her house.”

  “If that house is anything like its resident, I doubt we’re going to get anything of real use. Other than maybe a bullet fragment. The shooter probably collected his shell casings.”

  Washington nodded and said, “You’re probably correct, Matthew. But you know to ‘never say never.’”

  “And ‘always check the rock under the rock,’” Payne said with a smile, citing Washington’s well-known rule of thumb for conducting thorough investigations.

  “I learned you well, Young Matthew,” Washington said mock-seriously.

  Payne looked at Shauna Mays through the window and parroted her: “‘I want my reward.’”

  Washington chuckled, but then in a serious tone said, “And she should get it, considering the hell she went through.”

  Payne looked at him, then back at her.

  After a long moment he said, “Jason, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “She didn’t do it,” Washington immediately answered. “She’s arguably guilty of a whole host of other mistakes in life. But murder isn’t one of them. And after one look at her physical condition, the DA isn’t going to go after her for harboring a fugitive.”

  Payne nodded. “We could throw tampering with evidence charges at her, or even accessory to murder. But why?”

  “I doubt the DA would press charges if they caught her jaywalking,” Washington said. “We’ll hold her till we see what, if anything, they find at the scene. Then let her loose to collect her reward.”

  They looked at her again.

  After a moment Payne said coldly, “I’m betting this won’t be the last we hear of Shauna Mays. And not alive.”

  “Great minds follow similar paths, Matthew. I agree. There’re ten thousand reasons why.”

  “The whole ’hood will be after her money.”

  Matt Payne then felt his phone vibrating again. When he pulled it out, he saw the call was from the same number as the call he’d ignored earlier.

  He looked at Washington, shrugged, and said, “Excuse me.” He answered it: “Payne.”

  After a moment he said, “Hold on,” then hit the SPEAKERPHONE key.

  “You still there, Sergeant Payne?” Javier Iglesia’s voice came over the speaker.

  “Yeah, Javier,” Payne said. “I’m here with Lieutenant Jason Washington-”

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” Javier interrupted. “Haven’t seen you in quite a while.”

  “How are you, Javier?” Washington asked.

  “Not real good. I was just telling Sergeant Payne that I’m near my home in Kingsessing-southwest Philadelphia?”

  “We know it,” Payne said. “What’s this you just said about a Principal Bazelon being murdered?”

  “We got the call from Twelfth District this morning that she’d died in her sleep,” Iglesia began. “But I just found out she really died during a home invasion by a really bad dude named Xpress Jones. ..”

  “… and now part of that crowd is taking Xpress down to collect that ten-grand reward,” Iglesia finished some five minutes later. “It being a homicide and all, I thought you’d want to be the ones who grabbed him.”

  “Give me this animal’s name again, Javier,” Payne said, pulling out his notepad and flipping to a clean page.

  “Xpress Smith. Xavier Smith, aka Xpress. Black male, twenty-four.”

  Payne wrote it down. “Okay. Got it. Any unusual features to look for to ID him?”

  Javier snorted. “Ot
her than being attached to an angry mob of wannabe gangbangers? And the ten-g price tag on his head? Don’t worry, Sergeant. You can’t miss him. Xpress is pretty messed up.”

  “Thanks, Javier. We’ve already got someone down there. I’ll give him a heads-up.”

  “Later,” Javier said.

  Payne broke the connection, then slipped the cell phone back in the left front pocket of his pants.

  Matt Payne looked at Jason Washington and said, “So we have a mother bringing in her dead son, and now we have street-justice punks cashing in a really bad guy? And those first eight pop-and-drops. Killadelphia, indeed. The vigilantes-and now we know there’s at least one-are everywhere. Worse, I’m beginning to think Operation Clean Sweep has been commandeered by Five-Eff.”

  “Well, Francis Fuller’s reward system is certainly superior to ours in attracting attention,” Washington said. “To start with, he’s not a cop. And, as we well know, nobody on the street wants to talk to cops.”

  Payne grunted.

  He said, “Carlucci is really going to blow his cork when he hears about the street vigilantes turning in this thug and that Kendrik’s doer is still loose and, we can presume, still active. Next time you see my head, it’ll probably be on a platter.”

  Payne looked at Washington a long moment, then sighed. He said, “You’re smarter than I am, Jason. What the hell do I do next?”

  “Applying for the monastery ever cross your mind?”

  [THREE]

  Jefferson and Mascher Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 1:55 P.M.

  “Bobby, what the hell does five fucking minutes matter?” Thomas “Little Tommie” Turco glanced at his wristwatch and anxiously tapped his steel-toed work boot. “The permit says two o’clock start time. We’re wasting daylight, not to mention burning rental money. Go on and swing it.”

  Puffing on a stub of a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, the bulky, thirty-eight-year-old Turco-who was anything but little-stood on the step outside the cab of a red-and-white Link-Belt crane he’d rented two hours earlier. A weathered cardboard sign, cut somewhat square, was taped to the door of the cab. It was poorly hand-lettered with a black permanent-ink marker: TURCO DEMOLITION amp; EXCAVATION. NOT FOR HIRE. UNDER CONTRACT WITH CITY OF PHILA HUD.

  “You got it, boss,” said Bobby “the Ballbuster” Bucco, who was sitting at the controls. He fired up the Link-Belt’s diesel engine.

  Little Tommie then gave a thumbs-up to Jimmy “Dirtball” Turco. His cousin was at the controls of a massive Caterpillar D3K bulldozer that sat next to a pair of Bobcats with front-end loading buckets and a line of five heavy-duty dump trucks waiting to haul away debris. The bright yellow, nine-ton dozer roared to life. Then its twin tracks and giant front blade began kicking up clouds of dust as the dozer started pushing into piles the scattered, busted debris of the onetime residential neighborhood.

  This was the second time in the last ten days that Turco’s beefy crew-not one of the men weighed an ounce under two-fifty-had worked this Northern Liberties job site.

  The first time, during a solid week of working dawn to dusk every day but Sunday, they had taken almost the entire block down to bare earth. Little Tommie himself would have admitted that it wasn’t really all that impressive an accomplishment, if only because over the years almost half of the row houses had burned and their shells had been removed by crews from the City of Philadelphia. Turco’s equipment only had to scrape up and truck off the concrete footings, and sometimes not even those were left, just weed-choked dirt.

  The reason Turco’s crew had not been able to finish the job all at once-and had to return today-could be explained in part by the signs recently posted on the property.

  There were four shiny new large ones, four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood painted bright white and nailed to four-by-four-inch posts, each erected on a corner of the block. Lettered in black was: MOVING PHILLY FORWARD! COMING SOON TO NORTHERN LIBERTIES: 3,000 NEW JOBS! PROJECT COST TO TAXPAYERS: ZERO! ANOTHER FINE DEVELOPMENT FOR YOUR FUTURE FROM THE PHILADELPHIA ECONOMIC GENTRIFICATION INITIATIVE A PROJECT OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA HOUSING amp; URBAN DEVELOPMENT COUNCILMAN H. RAPP BADDE, JR., CHAIRMAN

  And there were a score or more smaller signs that had been made with a stencil. They had been spray-painted on the exterior doors and walls of the last five standing row houses on the block, all of which were in a group at the southwest corner of the job site.

  The stencils read: OFFICIAL NOTICE! CONDEMNED PROPERTY! CERTIFIED UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION UNDER STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA URBAN REDEVELOPMENT LAW NO TRESPASSING!

  Forty-five days earlier, the entire block had officially been declared a blight and then condemned.

  Every owner of the individual properties had been served a notice of condemnation that week, and all-except for the five holdouts-had let expire the thirty-day period for challenging the condemnation.

  They had taken their checks-most of the owners grumbling that PEGI paid them only pennies on the dollar for their properties, never mind that many of the houses had been genuine hazards and public nuisances, or damn close to it-and moved on.

  They understood that they were powerless to fight the inevitable. And change was inevitable. They’d spent at least the last year looking at the looming twenty-one-story Hops Haus complex just three blocks to the south and right next to the fancy new Schmidt’s Brewery development.

  The five holdouts, however, were not easily persuaded. They had protested every day, marching with signs and chanting, even as Turco’s crews and their heavy equipment created an intimidating environment while tearing down the rest of the block right up to their doorsteps.

  The holdouts had even plastered home-printed handbills all over the neighborhood, including on the brand-new bright white signs at the four corners of the block. The handbills displayed a crude image of a black politician wearing a tiny black bow tie above the words: COUNCILMAN RAPP BADDE WANTED! FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE POOR amp; DISADVANTAGED OF PHILLY! LAST SEEN STEALING HOMES amp; TEARING DOWN NEIGHBORHOODS! HELP STOP HIM, OR YOURS IS NEXT!

  But then Little Tommie had gotten the call that the holdouts had finally been dealt with, and that Turco Demolition and Excavation had the green light to reduce the remaining properties to rubble.

  That call had come in two days earlier, after office hours on Friday afternoon, and it had been from some fellow who announced to Little Tommie that he’d been “tasked at HUD as the new expediter for PEGI projects.”

  “He said we’re all good to go,” Little Tommie had told Bobby the Ballbuster after he’d hung up the phone. They were sitting in Turco’s office cutting the dust of the day with a couple glasses of Scotch whisky. “But I just turned that damn crane back in to the rental shop!”

  Turco had then had to call and reserve another crane, a slightly smaller one that at least was cheaper than the one he’d just turned in. But he wasn’t overjoyed with the news that the earliest it could be available was Sunday noon.

  “I hate working Sundays,” he’d said when he’d slammed down the receiver.

  Now, from his seat in the cab of the rental crane, Bobby the Ballbuster could see a few of the protest signs the holdouts had carried. One that he could clearly see read: “Eminent Domain = Theft by Gov’t!” Another said “5th Amendment Yes!” and had the international symbol for “no”-a red circle with a red backslash-across the words “Philly HUD” and “PEGI.”

  The signs were in the dirt beside the first two-story row house he was about to tear down using a four-thousand-pound forged-steel wrecking ball.

  The pear-shaped ball was on a rusty hook at the end of the thick, heavy steel cable that hung from the tip of the crane’s sixty-foot-high boom. A secondary steel line attached to the top of the wrecking ball ran laterally to a drum right beneath the cab. The drum had a clutch that, when released, would allow the drum to turn freely-and the two-ton ball to swing like a pendulum. After the ball struck the building, the drum would reel it back so it could be released ag
ain to knock another hole in the structure.

  And so on, until nothing remained but rubble.

  Now aimed at the brick siding of the faded-red row house, the ball was positioned ten feet above the ground and directly in front of the cab’s windshield. Bucco could almost reach out and touch it.

  Instead, he put his hand on the lever that worked the clutch on the lateral drum.

  “What’re you waiting for?” Little Tommie said as he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat out a piece of tobacco leaf.

  Bobby the Ballbuster threw the lever, and there came an ear-piercing metallic screech as the drum spun and the wire cable unspooled. The two tons of forged-steel wrecking ball swung toward the row house. The ball struck more or less on target-and sailed right on through the brick siding. The impact caused the ground to shake.

  Bucco then threw the lever to engage the lateral line drum’s clutch. The crane’s huge diesel engine roared. There came another screech as the wire cable wound back on the drum. The pear-shaped ball appeared in the pear-shaped hole it had made, then slowly returned to its position in front of Bucco.

  “Go again!” Turco said impatiently.

  Bucco threw the lever. The drum screeched and the ball swung, and the row house shook on impact.

  This time, though, the kinetic energy punched a hole in the wall that was three times the size of the ball itself. Wood splinters flew. Turco dodged one of the small pieces that managed to fly all the way to the crane.

  The crane’s diesel engine roared again as Bucco retracted the ball.

  As it came out, they suddenly saw a small tan mongrel dog peering out of the big hole on the second floor. It had no collar. It looked around nervously, then jumped down to the ground, tumbling when it hit. The dog got to its feet, shook its head, and ran off as if it were on fire.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Bucco said. “I thought these houses were finally cleared!”

  “Looked like a damn stray,” Turco said reasonably. “And now the mutt’s gone.”

  Bucco looked at him and said, “I don’t know, Tommie. I’m getting a bad vibe. Maybe I’d better go and double-check.”