And the upper part of his garment looks like a hospital gown-or Roman-like robe.
“Who does this Cicero guy think he is?” Payne said. “Looks like he’s in a toga, too.”
“All kinds of crackpots in this city try to stand out from the crowd,” Andy Radcliffe said.
“There’s that voice of reason again,” Payne said.
This time Radcliffe didn’t at all feel like he was bring mocked.
Payne read off the screen: “‘Marc James aka Marcus Cicero, age twenty-eight. ’ Looks like a nice guy, if you can just overlook all those unfortunate priors for running meth and roofies. And, for good measure, he racked up a conviction on involuntary deviant sexual intercourse. Guess he wanted to test his product.”
Harris snorted. “Yeah. Really nice guy.”
“Who’s sitting on him now?”
“Charley Bell, in that old PECO van.”
Payne nodded. The Philadelphia Electric Company van was always a good choice, its paint shot but the faded PECO logotype on it easily recognizable.
“Okay,” Payne then said, “it’s no doubt way too soon to have much on this new one that’s got Hizzonor spitting mad. But punch up number twelve on the main bank, please.”
Rapier worked the keyboard and the case sheet for Jossiah Miffin appeared. It showed both his mug shot, in which he had close-cropped hair, and his Medical Examiner’s Office photo, where he had long black hair. Both showed the nasty J-shaped scar on his left cheek.
Name: Jossiah A. MIFFIN
Description: Black Male, age 30, 5'7", 180 lbs.
L.K.A.: 1822 W. Ontario St, Phila.
Prior Arrests: 8 total: possession of marijuana (6); possession of Methamphetamine (1); convicted of Indecent assault amp; corruption of a minor (1) and sentenced to probation of intense sex offender treatments amp; no unsupervised contact with minors.
Call Received: 02 Nov, 0730 hours.
Cause of Death: Gunshots (2) to head (99 percent probability).
Case No.: 2010-81-039617-POP-N-DROP
Notes: Fugitive. Warrants issued for multiple probation violations. Has prominent J-shape scar on left cheek. Takeeta Smith, 14-year-old female witness who claims to be niece of deceased, stated in interview that she saw him killed 01 Nov 2130 hrs by SNU in street at L.K.A. amp; described SNU as a skinny white male approximately 40 years of age wearing delivery uniform. Assailant left Wanted sheet at scene in FedEx envelope that was discarded. Body transported to Lex Talionis, Old City.
“Check out the Notes, Matt,” Harris was saying, looking at the main monitor.
Payne looked up at the main monitor and read it.
“A FedEx delivery there at nine-thirty on a Sunday night?”
Then he turned to Rapier: “Punch up that interview with the girl, the animal’s so-called niece.”
The main bank of screens then showed Homicide Detective Jeff Kauffman-a tall, dark-haired thirty-four-year-old who had a quick laugh when he wasn’t interviewing murder suspects-in Homicide Interview Room II with Takeeta Smith. She was sipping from a plastic bottle of grape-flavored soda. The empty wrapper of a Tastykake lay on the metal table.
They were almost exactly halfway through the interview when Takeeta’s scratchy voice coming through the speakers in the ECC ceiling said:
“It be a FedEx envelope. And dude had a FedEx uniform.”
“You’re positive?”
She looked at Kauffman like he was from another planet, then said:
“Yeah, fool. I be positive. I mean, he be standing in the headlight, clear as damn day. Can’t miss no FedEx sign. It be on every box my cousin’s black tar shit come in from Texas.”
Harris chuckled, then said, “Look at her Oh shit, what’d I just say? expression. Now who’s the fool, Takeeta?”
“What a brain trust,” Payne said. “They just don’t know better. Reminds me of that arrogant Hank Whatshisname, the U.S. congressman from somewhere near Atlanta, who was grilling an admiral on Capitol Hill about the Navy’s plans to station some eight thousand sailors and their families on Guam. He lectured the admiral that the island was only twenty-four miles long, seven ‘at its least widest’-that’s what he said, ‘least widest, shore to shore’-and that he was afraid that with all those extra people, the island would tip over and capsize.”
Harris laughed. “You’re kidding.”
Payne shook his head. “I shit you not, my friend. That’s the kind of brilliant example of the ‘geniuses’ in our government that kids like her get to look up to as role models.”
He looked over at Radcliffe. “Andy, who’ve been your role models in life?”
“Well, my momma, of course,” he said immediately, clearly without thought. “She taught me hard work, discipline, never to give up. And there’s Will Parkman, that really good cop who was a Marine and helps me go to school so I can eventually get a job here.” He paused and thought, then added, “And you, Marshal.”
Payne looked at Radcliffe, thinking that he now was being mocked. But when Matt saw Andy’s face, he knew Andy was sincere.
Payne said, “I’d be damned careful about that last guy. He’ll only lead you to trouble.” He sighed. “And damn sure not to catch any bad guys.”
“What’s up with the bad-guy pop-and-drops having histories of sex crimes,” Radcliffe said, “and STDs?”
“Where’d you get that?” Payne said, impressed.
He pointed at his laptop screen. “From the master file case notes.”
“You’ve gone all the way back to the beginning?”
“Sure. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when trying to turn over a rock under a rock?”
Payne nodded. “Yes, indeed it is. And, to answer your question, there’s not any single answer-with the exception of what Kerry recently suggested. None apparently knows what the hell a condom is.”
Radcliffe said, “I’ve been feeding key data into my skunk-works search engine.”
Radcliffe had managed to get his hands on an early version of a super-powerful software program developed at MIT, and Payne had seen him use it before.
“And?” Payne said.
“All the pop-and-drops who’d been shot had either been charged with or served time for a sex crime, all but the lawyer and his client.”
“Right.”
“Jay-Cee,” Harris put in, “had charges against him of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse and rape of an unconscious or unaware person in one case that Gartner got tossed.”
“Tossed on a technicality,” Radcliffe said. “The chain of evidence of the rape kit was broken. It was deemed inadmissible in the trial. But the results still are on file. They state that the blood test from the girl he raped showed that she had really early stages of the bacterial disease gonorrhea.”
“And?” Payne said.
Radcliffe shrugged. “Nguyen’s master case file from those charges says that he was undergoing treatment for gonorrhea.”
“So Nguyen gave the girl the clap,” Payne said.
“Would appear that way.”
“Nothing new. Kerry has a story about one where the rape victim got whatever disease in her throat,” Payne said. He then appeared to be in deep thought. He said: “Which puts Nguyen in line with the other pop-and-drops, leaving only Gartner with no sex-crime link. He may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Jay-Cee got popped.” He paused, then added, “Lucky us.”
“You didn’t like Gartner?”
“Nobody liked that slimy sonofabitch.”
Andy Radcliffe raised his eyebrows, nodded once, then looked back to the laptop screen. “Maybe I can find a link with Gartner and some sex crime…”
“Kerry, let’s take another look at the interview I had with Shauna Mays.”
Rapier worked his control panel, and the image of Matt with the malnourished and badly bruised woman in Homicide’s Interview Room II came on the monitor. In the right-hand bottom corner was a small date stamp: 01 NOV, 13:20:01.
“Run it up to about 13:30,” Payne said.
Rapier fast-forwarded to that point on the clock, hit play, and shortly thereafter the sound of Payne exhaling came through the speakers in the ceiling. Then his voice, slightly frustrated, said:
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Who had the gun?”
“A delivery guy. He come in with Kendrik’s paper. That paper I had that the cop took?”
“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!”
In the ECC, there was a chorus of chuckles from Harris, Radcliffe, and Rapier.
As they watched Payne in the video nodding while writing in his notepad, Kerry said, “Gee, Marshal, I thought everyone knew crack houses didn’t have clocks.”
Payne gave him the finger as his voice came through the speakers:
“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.”
“Okay, you can stop it, Kerry,” Payne said. He looked at Harris. “So, a delivery guy. A FedEx delivery guy? And Mudd said the blue shirt had seen a FedEx minivan rolling through right before Cheatham took a bullet.”
“But that kid, his nephew, told Mudd that he didn’t see one. Which of course, as Mudd pointed out, could’ve been a straight-out lie.”
They were quiet a long moment, each in deep thought.
Then Harris said: “You have any idea how many FedEx trucks there are in Philadelphia?”
“But it was on a Sunday, not a normal day for deliveries.”
“I’ll say it again, Matt. You have any idea how many FedEx trucks there are in Philadelphia? And just because they may not be delivering, they’re still moving around the city for logistical and other reasons, like maintenance. And, then again, for all we know, this one was stolen.”
Matt nodded. “Agreed. But it’s a rock to look under. Maybe we’ll find another under it.”
Looking at the image of Marc James, Payne said, “Whoever he is, our mystery shooter’s bright. He’s doing the reverse of a sweepstakes sting.”
“A sweepstakes sting?” Radcliffe repeated.
Payne explained: “You mail out, say, a thousand letters to the LKA of people wanted on outstanding warrants. The letter says the recipient is guaranteed a prize worth up to a couple hundred bucks, and the first fifty people who show up have a chance to win a car. The official-looking but bogus letterhead has the address of some empty store in a strip center you get a civic-minded owner to let you borrow. The day of the ‘event,’ you furnish it with a couple desks and some chairs, then put signs in the window that say ‘Keystone State Sweepstakes Headquarters.’ And you borrow a nice new luxury sports car or SUV to park in front with a sign saying ‘Win This!’ Then, when the wanted ones show up, an undercover posing as a secretary matches the letter to the warrant list to make sure it’s still outstanding, then sends the idiot back to another room for his photograph and prize-a nice shiny pair of handcuffs.”
Radcliffe grinned. “Sounds like it works.”
“Not as good as it used to, but yeah, there’s still plenty of stupid critters out there. One really bright one even brought his court papers as his proof of ID.”
“So,” Radcliffe said, “instead of the guy sending out letters to the LKAs, he went to them individually, saying he was delivering FedEx envelopes containing checks?”
“That appears to be it,” Payne said.
Everyone was silent a moment.
Then Radcliffe went back to his keyboard and stared at the screen, then quickly typed something and smacked the enter key.
“There,” he said, pointing at the screen. “I don’t know if it means anything, but in Nguyen’s file?”
“Yeah?” Payne said.
“The district attorney’s case notes say that William Curtis is employed by FedEx here. Says he lives on Mount Pleasant.”
Payne casually sipped from his Homicide coffee mug, then said, “Who the hell is William Curtis?”
Twenty minutes later, Harris returned the receiver to the cradle of the multiline phone on the conference desk. He looked at Payne.
“This Will Curtis called in sick today. His supervisor”-he looked at his notes-“a guy named Jeff Allan, said he’s in a bad way. Curtis has been out sick most of the month. And he said that, judging by the look of him, it’s the real deal. He guessed it’s something terminal. He asked, but Curtis wouldn’t own up to it.”
Payne and Harris looked at each other.
“And there’s no answer at his house on Mount Pleasant,” Payne said.
Harris’s cell phone started ringing.
He checked the caller ID, then answered the phone with: “Whatcha got, Charley?”
Payne looked at Harris and saw his expression brighten.
“How many?” Harris said. Then: “Okay, got it. Let me know if anything changes. We’re on our way.”
He looked at Matt as he broke off the call.
“Bell says two black males just entered the James place on Richmond carrying a black duffel bag.”
Payne quickly stood up. “Kerry, you and Andy run things here and call me the minute you find anything else on this Curtis guy.”
As Payne pulled on his blazer and dug in his pocket for the Crown Vic keys, he said to Harris, “Let’s roll.”
[THREE]
3118 Richmond Street, Philadelphia Monday, November 2, 10:45 A.M.
Allante Williams saw an open parking spot one block south of 3118. He liked it for two good reasons: It was close enough to reach if the deal went sour and he had to run, and his black Dodge Charger would be well hidden by the old PECO truck right in front of it.
He shut off the car, looked at Kenny Jones sitting in the passenger seat, then reached back and pulled the black duffel from the backseat. He unzipped it and took out a monster of a stainless-steel pistol. Even Kenny appeared impressed at the sight of the Ruger Redhawk, a double-action revolver chambered for. 44 Magnum.
“You ever shoot a wheel gun?” Allante asked. “Any gun?”
“Damn right, Big Al!”
Allante wasn’t sure if he believed him.
“This Redhawk is a cannon,” Allante said, handing it to him. “It’s mine, dude, and I want it back, so don’t get any goddamn ideas.”
“Yeah, sure, man,” Kenny said, wrapping his hand around its big black grip and aiming it out the windshield.
“Keep it down, dammit!”
“Okay,” Kenny said, putting it on his lap and swinging out the cylinder to check if all the bullets were live rounds.
“There ain’t no damn bullets in this gun!” Kenny blurted. “What the hell’s it good for if it ain’t got no bullets?”
“Calm down, dude. You saw how it looked when you first saw it. That’s all you need to do with Cicero. Door opens, you move inside with the bag of money first, then hold the tip of this badass barrel in his face.”
And with no bullets you won’t be able to shoot me later.
“Besides, I’ll be backing you up with this going in,” Allante said, pulling back his jacket to reveal the Ruger 9-millimeter semiautomatic in a holster on his belt.
Kenny clearly looked as if he didn’t like the idea, but then shrugged. He reached in his pocket and pulled out five or six foot-long white zip ties.
“Not gonna shoot the bastard, anyway,” Kenny said, pointing to the zip ties. “Gonna do to him what he did to Reggie.”
With Allante Williams just to the right of the door at 3118 Richmond Street, Kenny Jones banged on the door.
What are the fucking odds that some hothead inside is going to look out the peephole, see this dumbass holding the sack of cash, then drill the door-and him-with lead?
Damn good, that’s what the odds are.
This better be worth forty Gs…
The door opened a crack, and Kenny said, “Cicero, I got it like I said, man.”
He held up the bag with his left hand. The hand cannon was in his right, hidden by the bag.
The door closed, and there was the clanking sound of its two chains being removed, then the door swung open.
And Kenny, surprising the hell out of Allante, did exactly as he’d been told.
Allente went in behind him.
“What’re you doing, Kenny?” Cicero said, staring at the business end of the barrel.
Then Kenny swung the heavy stainless-steel Ruger, fiercely pistol-whipping Cicero’s mostly bald head.
Cicero quickly backed up, shielding his head from the blows with his arms.
“Kenny! Wait!” Allante yelled. “Stop!”
Cicero then turned and tried to run down the basement steps-but Kenny got one last hard swing in.
And Cicero went tumbling down the steps.
In the basement were two small dirty rooms, one with a twin-size bed and a wooden table. There were bags of pills stacked two feet high.
Kenny dragged the limp but breathing body to the bed, then pulled the zip ties from his pocket and cinched them tightly around Cicero’s neck. Cicero’s body began to convulse. But within a minute, it went slack.
Damn, that was fast, Allante thought.
Kenny turned and said, “I’m gonna look for some acid. Be right back.”
And he ran back up the stairs.
After Allante was sure Kenny was out of earshot, he called Rapp Badde.
“Hey, man, I know you were worried. Everything’s under control. The Cicero guy is gone and-”
“Look,” Badde interrupted, “you don’t have to do Kenny, too. We got back everything that he stole. All’s good. Just turn him in for the reward, too.”
“Okay, man. You’re the boss,” he said, but realized that he was talking to a broken connection.
Badde had already hung up.
Then Allante, starting to paw the bags of pills, wondering what they might be, heard banging on the front door upstairs.
What the-?
The Vigilantes boh-10 Page 31
