Will slammed on the brakes, forcing them both against the shoulder straps of their seat belts. The FedEx cap flew off Michael’s head and landed on the dashboard.
Michael pointed over his shoulder and said, “That way.”
Curtis pointed out the windshield. “This street is one-way.”
Michael looked at him with an expression that suggested the statement was meaningless to him.
“He live that way!” Michael then said, pointing south again.
Well, Curtis thought, he probably only knows how to get there by walking.
If I drive around until I find a street that has southbound traffic, he may not have the first idea where he is.
Oh, hell. “This is a one-way street, Officer? But I was only going one way.”
Will Curtis drove up on the sidewalk, checked his mirror for traffic, then cut the steering wheel hard left to make a U-turn. He had to back up once to make the turn on the narrow street.
Curtis was somewhat surprised that they’d had no trouble driving the wrong way down Mutter, then the wrong way down Colona Street. And at Mascher Street, he was relieved to find that it was a one-way going the right direction, south. But then, a block later, at Susquehanna Avenue, they reached a dead end.
They were looking at a park.
Curtis turned to his navigator, who was pointing straight.
“There,” Michael said.
“Through the park?” Curtis said, incredulous. “Oh, for chrissake!”
“That way!” Michael said.
Well, hell, that’s the way he walks.
Then that’s the way we’ll drive.
Curtis checked for traffic, then drove across Susquehanna Avenue and hopped the curb. There was a concrete walkway crisscrossing the park, and he followed it.
Michael Floyd seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the drive. He scanned the park as they cut across it. About three-quarters through, he suddenly pointed to a small stand of maple trees.
“Gangstas,” he said.
Curtis looked. There in the maples’ shadows were four or five tough-looking teenage boys, hoodlums in baggy jeans and hoodie sweatshirts and sneakers.
Those must be the ones who beat him.
He expected Michael to recoil, or at least hide, but the next thing he knew the kid was rolling down his window and throwing the bird with both fists at the punks.
Then Michael Floyd yelled at the top of his lungs, “Fuck you, gangsta muthafuckas!”
Now what the hell else is going to happen? Will Curtis thought.
That Tourette’s, if that’s what it is, is going to get him killed.
He accelerated, not waiting to find out if there would be any gunshots from the gangsta muthafuckas.
At the far end of the park he picked up Mascher again and, following Michael’s pointing, drove south another nine blocks. Crossing Oxford, Curtis noticed that the block on his left, south of Oxford, was somewhat like the 2400 block of Mutter Street-basically barren but for a clump of the last remaining row houses.
“There,” Michael said, pointing to the end of the block.
Will Curtis followed the direction of Michael’s finger and saw that there were five houses altogether on the southwest corner of the block.
He also saw that there were police squad cars everywhere.
“There?” Will Curtis repeated.
He stood on the brakes and studied the scene.
He saw other emergency vehicles, including a big van with CRIME SCENE UNIT lettered on its side, and a bunch of heavy equipment-a tall demolition crane, a big Caterpillar bulldozer, and heavy-duty dump trucks.
“Wow!” Michael said, pointing at them.
“What the hell?” Will said aloud.
Ahead at the next intersection, Jefferson Street, was a squad car, its every exterior light flashing white or red or blue. It was parked at an angle to force traffic onto Jefferson and away from the other emergency vehicles. A policeman in uniform was beside it directing traffic. He signaled for the FedEx van to keep moving down the street toward him.
“Don’t like no cop,” Michael said. “LeRoi say cop bad news.”
Curtis looked at him.
No surprise there.
And no surprise that generation after generation in the ghetto grows up hating cops-it’s all they know, all they’re taught.
Then Will realized he hadn’t considered what he would do with Michael if they actually caught up with LeRoi.
I can’t let him see me take LeRoi out. Michael’s done nothing to deserve that.
The only lesson he needs to learn from this is: You do bad, you pay a bad price.
Shit. I’ll have to figure that out.
Will Curtis reached over, grabbed the FedEx cap from the dashboard, and put it on the boy’s head.
“That’ll keep you hidden from the cop, Michael.”
Michael considered that, then nodded once.
As they rolled up to the intersection, the traffic cop waved for the van to take the turn. Curtis did so, and avoided making any eye contact.
Michael suddenly yelled: “Don’t like no cop, muthafucka!”
“Michael!” Curtis barked.
He checked his mirror and saw the cop look at the van, but only for a second before he turned back to directing traffic.
If the cop heard that, probably wasn’t the first time.
At least the kid didn’t throw him the bird, too.
Curtis, his heart beating fast, shook his head.
That was close…
He looked over at Michael, who now was pointing down Jefferson to the next intersection, Hancock Street.
“There LeRoi house!” he said, indicating the boarded-up row house on the corner. “Got wood window.”
And just beyond the house, Curtis saw someone peer out from around the corner.
He drove on, and as they came to the corner, Curtis saw that there was more than one person. Standing in an alleyway behind the boarded-up row house were three young black men, including a great big one with droopy eyes and a trimmed goatee.
“And there LeRoi!” Michael said excitedly.
Well, I’ll be damned.
He’s been standing and watching those cops work that scene back there. Just hiding in plain sight.
And the cops don’t have any idea that there’s a fugitive living just fifty yards away.
But then, how could they? So damned many punks in this city, there’s no way to keep track of them all.
Michael suddenly moved quickly, rolling down his window again. He stuck out his head, the hat hitting the top of the car’s frame and falling to the floorboard.
“Lookit me, LeRoi!” Michael shouted, pumping his right fist. “I be riding, muthafucka!”
LeRoi Cheatham was momentarily caught completely off guard. He did not immediately know how to react to the sight of his twelve-year-old nephew hanging out of a FedEx delivery vehicle and yelling his name at the top of his lungs. Especially with who the hell knew how many cops only a block or so away.
But the two other teenage punks standing with LeRoi were more quickwitted. In a flash, they hauled ass across Hancock Street and disappeared into a wall of huge, thick bushes that had grown wild on the deserted lot.
Curtis saw LeRoi watching his buddies run away. Then LeRoi looked back at the van, then back to the bushes. As LeRoi started to cross Hancock to follow his buddies, Curtis held up the big square envelope to the windshield and tried to mime that it was intended for him.
It didn’t work. LeRoi kept walking.
“Michael,” Curtis said as he turned the minivan onto Hancock and drove up on the cracked sidewalk, “tell your uncle he’s got a package.”
Michael yelled, “You gots a package, LeRoi!”
LeRoi slowed and warily looked over his shoulder.
Curtis motioned again with the envelope, stopping the minivan at the alleyway and putting it in park. He rolled down his window and with a raised voice said, “This is my last try to find you. You don’t sign for it,
the check gets sent back today!”
At the mention of money, the expression on LeRoi’s face changed.
As LeRoi Cheatham started back toward the alley, Curtis felt for his Glock under his shirt, then opened the driver’s door. He walked around to Michael’s door and opened it.
“What up?” Michael said.
Curtis took a ten-dollar bill from his wad of cash and showed it to Michael as he watched LeRoi coming closer.
“You know what a lookout is?” Curtis asked.
“For cops?” Michael said. He nodded. “Yeah. LeRoi pay me to say if I see one.”
“Right,” Curtis said, folding the ten-spot and handing it to the kid. “Go stand around the corner and let me know if any cop comes this way. I will come tell you when we’re finished here.”
Michael nodded once, took the money, and ran back to Jefferson Street.
Will Curtis turned in time to see LeRoi Cheatham come around the front of the minivan.
“What this shit about a check?” LeRoi said, looking at him hard.
Those are some seriously bloodshot eyes, Curtis thought.
Wonder what he’s on?
“You’re LeRoi Cheatham, right?”
“Damn right.” He nodded his head once.
So that’s where Michael got that nod from.
“Need to see some government ID…”
“Shit, man,” he said, staring at Curtis with a look of disgust. Then he turned and spat behind him into the alley. He turned back and, as he began digging in the front pocket of his pants, said, “Just gimme my damn check.”
Curtis remembered what he had thought when Shauna Mays realized there was no money in the envelope. This time, as Curtis pulled the Glock from his waistband and aimed it at LeRoi’s chest, he said it.
“Sure. Here’s your reality check.”
Then he squeezed the trigger. Twice.
LeRoi fell backward into the alleyway.
Not thirty seconds after that, Michael Floyd came running back and called out, “Cop!”
After putting the warm pistol back under his shirt, Curtis walked to intercept him. He tore open the envelope and pulled out LeRoi’s Wanted sheet.
Michael looked around.
“Who got shot?” he asked. “Where LeRoi?”
“In the alley,” Curtis said. “But don’t go in there.”
Curtis put the Wanted sheet on the van window, then took his FedEx ballpoint pen and wrote “Lex Talionis, Third amp; Arch, Old City, $10,000 reward” on the back. He handed the sheet to Michael.
“Give this to your mother. And do what the cops say. Cops are good. They will get you back home. Okay?”
Michael Floyd, looking confused, took the sheet and stared at the mug shot of his Uncle LeRoi. After a moment, he pointed to the Last Known Address.
“My house,” he said.
“Right, Michael. That’s from when LeRoi lived there. That sheet says he did very bad things. And when you’re bad, you have to be punished.” Curtis paused to let that sink in.
“That what Mama said.” He was still looking at the sheet. “That why LeRoi live here.”
“You be good, Michael.”
Michael Floyd looked up at Will Curtis, then finally shrugged and nodded once.
As Will Curtis drove two blocks north, he heard sirens coming from the vicinity of where LeRoi Cheatham lay dead.
His pulse racing, he quickly stopped the minivan and got out. He peeled off the magnet-backed FedEx signs from both front doors, then hid them under the floor mat in the rear cargo area. Back in the car, he pulled on his denim jacket to cover his FedEx uniform shirt, buttoning it up as he drove.
He turned left on Cecil Moore Avenue and, still hearing sirens, had another idea. After two blocks, he turned down Second Avenue and followed it five blocks to where Second fed into the new Schmidt’s Brewery entertainment complex.
As calmly as possible, Curtis pulled the minivan into the line of other cars waiting at a red traffic light to enter a parking garage.
The traffic light turned green. But the brake lights of the vehicles in line stayed lit as their drivers waited for a police car-an unmarked gray Ford sedan with its emergency lights flashing from behind the top of the windshield-to come flying past, its horn honking a warning.
Five minutes later, Will Curtis had parked the minivan in an open slot between a pair of full-size SUVs and begun walking toward the complex’s multiscreen movie theater.
[FOUR]
S. Sixtieth and Catharine Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 5:01 P.M.
A frustrated H. Rapp Badde, Jr., at the wheel of the black Range Rover registered to his Urban Venture Fund, squealed its tires as he pulled a fast U-turn on Sixtieth and parked at the curb in front of the rented row house that served as his West Philly campaign headquarters.
It took for damn ever to get here-and I really don’t want to be here.
City Councilman Badde tried to keep at least two levels of separation from those who worked in his various campaign offices. The separation afforded him a godlike persona, so that when he finally went to the offices and met with his worker bees, he was looked upon as the all-powerful one coming down from the holy temple that was Philadelphia City Hall.
More important, though, the levels of separation gave the ass-covering politician a buffer for when something invariably went sour. Badde had plausible deniability that he had knowledge of any lower-level act, which could easily and credibly be blamed on “a well-meaning but unfortunately overzealous campaign volunteer.”
Ever wary, he knew that coming to the campaign headquarters effectively removed that buffer and that he had to be careful. The last thing he wanted to do was face the media’s questions of “What did you know, and when did you know it?”
Yet when Roger Wynne called-“You need to get here as soon as possible to see what’s happened and deal with this Kareem situation before it blows up in our faces”-he was really left with no option.
He couldn’t get across town fast enough.
But just getting out of the Hops Haus Tower had turned into one helluva challenge.
First, he’d had to try convincing Janelle Harper that she hadn’t heard anyone screaming over his cell phone about somebody getting killed, and that he wasn’t rushing off to see his wife or another woman.
He’d been completely unsuccessful in persuading her on either count.
Then, to reach his Range Rover, he’d had to wait an eternity for one of the three elevators to ride down to the multilevel parking garage in the belly of the building. Then he had to drive the luxury SUV around and around, circling seemingly forever to reach street level. And then he’d had to wait for the metal overhead security door to slowly clank-clank-clank up and out of the way.
The sign affixed to the door told drivers to wait until the door was completely raised before exiting. But Badde, after some smug self-congratulating, had used the maddeningly long wait to hit the lever that caused the air suspension to lower the vehicle’s height. And as soon as the SUV barely had cleared the rubber gasket on the door’s bottom lip, he floored the accelerator pedal.
Only then to have to hit the brakes for a variety of other delays.
Driving from the far eastern side of Philly-the Delaware River was only blocks from the Hops Haus complex-to far West Philly was only a matter of five or so miles. But it was a Sunday. And that meant that Sunday drivers were out-and in no particular hurry. It also meant that there were Sunday pedestrians, among them tourists to the City of Brotherly Love who apparently were unclear on the concept of using crosswalks at the appropriate times.
Badde had felt compelled to help educate them all and freely laid on the Range Rover’s very loud “by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen” British horn.
The horn did not help after he picked up the Vine Street Expressway and immediately hit stop-and-go traffic due to road construction. But crawling along had given him time to think before speaking privately with Roger Wynne.
> As far as Badde was concerned, the “Kareem Abdul-Qaadir/Kenny Jones situation” had kicked into damn high gear very early that morning when Kenny had called his Go To Hell phone and tried extorting him for thirty grand.
Then it became even more dire when Kenny had called just after noon-time, screaming that Reggie had been killed.
After Jan Harper had heard that, Rapp had gone out on the condo’s balcony with his Go To Hell phone and slid the door shut.
He’d said, “Okay, Kenny. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Reggie’s dead!” he’d repeated.
“You made that perfectly clear the first time. How?”
“Jack called and said that the police came by the house. He had to go down to wherever they take killed people-”
“The Medical Examiner’s Office,” Badde had provided.
“-yeah, that was it. He had to go down, say if it was Reggie or not. It was. And Jack said he’d been beat up really bad. And choked to death.”
“I’m sorry, Kenny,” Badde said, trying to sound like he meant it.
“And now they gonna come after me, man!”
“Listen to me, Kenny-”
“Rapp, they gonna do the same to me!”
“Kenny-”
“I need that money bad, man! And now it’s thirty-five.”
Thirty-five thousand dollars? Badde had thought. Damn!
“I thought you said it was thirty large!”
“It was. Now they added more interest. And a penalty for having to deal with Reggie.”
“Where are you now?”
“Uh, in West Philly.”
“How soon do you need the money?”
“Like yesterday?”
Badde had taken a long time to consider all that, then he’d said, “Listen to me carefully, Kenny. I’ll start working on the money. You stay there out of sight.”
And that’s when Badde had tried to call Roger Wynne. He planned to tell Wynne to make sure Kenny stayed in the row house basement. But he’d been routed to Wynne’s voice mail, and instead left a terse message: “Call me immediately. Extremely important.”
And then Badde had called an old acquaintance, saying he knew the whereabouts of a fugitive who could easily be grabbed and asking if maybe the acquaintance had a friend who might be interested in making ten grand for turning in the bastard.
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