Deadly Assets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “C’mon, c’mon, make a hole!” Clarke said, stabbing his right index finger at the control panel button between the seats that added a louder BRAAAAP! BRAAAAAP! horn sound to the Woop-Woop! of the siren.

  At the third BRAAAAP! a delivery van braked hard, creating an opening, and Clarke caused the Ford’s rear tires to squeal as he took it, the engine roaring as he accelerated down Kensington Avenue.

  [ FOUR ]

  Office of the First Deputy Police Commissioner

  The Roundhouse, Philadelphia

  Saturday, December 15, 5:15 P.M.

  “The difference with the murder of the reporter and his wife,” Matt Payne explained to First Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin and Lieutenant Jason Washington, “beyond it being a slaughter—terrible word, but that’s exactly what they did to the O’Briens—is that those responsible wanted everyone to know they did it. They basically left a calling card saying, ‘Hey, we did it before, and we’ll do it again.’”

  Washington shook his head. “Mickey O’Hara said this cartel—”

  “The New Acuña Cartel, Jason,” Payne provided.

  “—this New Acuña Cartel did the same to another reporter who worked for O’Brien in Texas?”

  Payne nodded. “Tomas Rodriguez, thirty-five, a husband and father who fled Acuña with his family after the cartel tortured and killed his photographer, and then hung his body with a note saying, in essence, ‘We warned you. Stop the reporting. Or else.’ The cartel hunted down Tomas and his family in San Antonio. Left his bloody head on his laptop with a note, and I quote verbatim, ‘The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.’ I saw the photograph of it. Those are images you never forget.”

  “My God,” Coughlin said. “The butchering of human beings is beyond simply uncivilized. It’s savage . . . barbaric.”

  “And tragically it’s starting to happen more and more,” Payne said. “I’ve certainly seen more than I ever expected.” He paused. “So we basically know who’s responsible. But, and I’m getting this from Jim Byrth, the cartels are hiring hit squads.”

  “Contract killings?” Coughlin said.

  Payne nodded. “And these squads are more or less expendable. They live or die at the will of the cartel. That’s what Jim Byrth says the Texas Rangers found when they investigated the murder of the Rodriguez family.”

  “I don’t think I follow you,” Coughlin said. “What exactly did they find?”

  “Same as we found here in University City. The doers made no effort to hide any evidence. They didn’t try to cover their tracks—literally, there were bloody boot prints all over the scene. And fingerprints, there and in the truck they stole from the pest control company that was found abandoned blocks away.”

  “And?” Coughlin pursued.

  “And we may very well find these killers, matching them to those bloody fingerprints.”

  “I’m repeating myself, ‘And?’”

  “And, like Byrth said of the killers of the Rodriguez family in San Antonio, they’ll be found dumped on a roadside with a single bullet wound to the back of the head.”

  “Executed.”

  “And so we have the killers positively identified—and can give the families of the O’Briens their closure—but we do not have who hired them to make the hit. So we have closed one case without an arrest—”

  “Some in the business call that solving crimes by eraser,” Washington said.

  “—but wind up with what will no doubt become a cold case on the killers’ killer. Meanwhile, the cartels are still calling in hits. And they have an endless pool of hit men. Byrth said the ones who killed Tomas were in the Tejas Familia prison gang. They’d been recently released, and probably working off debt accumulated while in jail.”

  Payne paused, then added, “This is usually where I make the wisecrack that that’s what’s known as job security in our business. Except the next one they’ve threatened is Mickey O’Hara.”

  “And he said he’s not worried,” Washington said, incredulous.

  Payne shook his head. “He said O’Brien had more material beyond the heroin story, and was going to run it.”

  Payne gestured at the photograph that was on the desk that showed Tyrone Hooks viewing the glass display cases in the casino jewelry store.

  “Meanwhile, we have this bastard casing the place approximately fifteen minutes before the robbery. And there’s video, sharp and clear, of the whole thing going down. But these guys were very good. First, they entered from four different directions, and as they did, they (a) kept their hoodies up and (b) kept their heads down so that their faces were not visible to cameras, then (c) quickly converged at the retail mall and pulled bandannas over their faces. So all we’ve got is four guys in black outfits robbing the jewelry store.”

  “And this Tyrone Hooks character,” Coughlin said, gesturing at a photograph on his desk.

  Payne nodded.

  “Who,” he said, “is now pretty much a dead man walking, according to Tony Harris. If Sully O’Sullivan is to be believed, and I see no reason not to. We need to bring Hooks in—if only for his own safety—except we don’t dare try to grab him at the rally with this crowd around.”

  He motioned in the direction of the Executive Command Center and added, “Looking at the rally site, we’ve gone over every viable scenario, and it would be suicide to try.”

  Next door, two of the three banks of flat-screen monitors in the ECC showed various views of the Stop Killadelphia Rally at the Word of Brotherly Love Ministry in Strawberry Mansion. The vast majority of these were proprietary feeds from police department cameras—from those on the undercover PECO van to the tiny ones affixed to the helmets of the four Mounted Patrol Unit officers watching the crowd. The third bank of nine monitors showed the live feeds of the news media covering the event.

  “While you can’t slay the dragon until you lure it from its cave,” Payne said, “no one can touch Hooks in that contentious crowd.”

  “Which is why I’m glad you decided not to attend the rally, Matty,” Coughin said. “Wise decision.”

  “The last thing I intend to do is give Skinny Lenny the satisfaction of me backing down,” Payne said, “but I faithfully took heed of Jason’s warning that Public Enemy Number One being there would probably be the spark that ignited the powder keg—or words to that effect. And that igniting that keg would play right into Lenny’s hand, which would be worse than me backing down.”

  He paused, then added, “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what, Matty?” Coughlin said.

  Payne shrugged. “All the posters of dead bad guys, all the protesting over dealers taking each other out.”

  “You don’t?” Coughlin almost snapped, his tone incredulous.

  Payne shook his head. “They’re making it out like it’s a bad thing. The miscreants all had long lists of priors. You’d think they’d be thanking us.”

  Coughlin grunted. Washington silently shook his head.

  “The innocent victims, the anger over their loss, that I get,” Payne said. “But here’s Lenny lumping them all together—and sharing the stage with this thug Hooks. That I really don’t get. Anyway, all our guys are in position to grab Hooks—but right after the rally, and away from the view of the crowd.”

  “What’s the latest estimate of crowd size?” Washington said.

  “Between twenty-five hundred and three thousand. And growing.”

  “Carlucci suggested we send up Tac Air,” Denny Coughlin said. “It took some doing, but I talked him out of it. We don’t need the presence of a helicopter giving the suggestion of an occupying force. I told him that the helos are on standby and if necessary can be there in minutes.”

  The Aviation Unit’s tactical aircraft—“Tac Air”—had added, with the help of Department of Homeland Security federal dollars, a pair of Airbus
AStar helicopters to its fleet of Bell Rangers.

  “Good idea,” Payne said. “Ghetto birds hovering overhead screams police militarization, which would only give Lenny something else to scream about.”

  Coughlin made a sour face.

  “‘Ghetto birds’?” he parroted. “So now we have heard from the peanut gallery. Thank you for your colorful input, Sergeant Payne.”

  Payne grinned.

  “My pleasure, Uncle Denny.”

  “For being Public Enemy Number One, you certainly seem terribly cheery,” Coughlin added. “And your use of that term suggests to me that you might actually be spending some time walking the beat.”

  Payne shrugged. “A little.”

  “Community policing,” Washington said. “Winning one heart and mind at a time?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Speaking of which, Matty,” Coughlin said. “Is there any truth that there’s some new mentoring program—an underground program—in Kensington?”

  “Rumor has it,” Washington added, “that there’s a certain Homicide sergeant who’s quietly funding it.”

  “Really?” Payne said. “Well, you know what President Truman said, ‘It’s amazing what you can get done if you don’t care who gets the credit.’”

  Washington’s eyes looked warm and thoughtful as he nodded. He’s always up to something, living by the motto It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission he thought, and was reminded of the previous week, when he went with Payne to the Executive Command Center.

  And some things he’s up to play out better than others . . .

  —

  When Washington and Payne had entered the ECC, Kerry Rapier had greeted them, then pulled off his jacket.

  “Thanks for the shirt, Marshal,” Rapier told Payne.

  “They came!” Payne said, then looked at Washington to explain. “I had T-shirts made with this on the back . . .”

  Washington looked at the bold print on the shirt. It read There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it never care for anything else thereafter.

  “I saw the quote when we took a tour of Hemingway’s house in Key West. Apparently ol’ Ernie wrote that in a magazine essay in 1936.”

  Payne motioned again for Rapier to turn, and when he had, Payne pointed and said, “And had that printed on the front.”

  Over the left breast was the silhouette of a grim reaper shouldering a scythe and, circling it, the words PHILLY PD HOMICIDE UNIT—OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN YOURS ENDS.

  Washington met Payne’s eyes.

  “Matthew, pray tell, when you have your wild ideas, is there any type of filtering process that occurs before you act? Some method of vetting that, perhaps, evaluates the pros and cons? Or is it simply the result of a stream of consciousness?” He paused, made a thin smile, then added, “Not that that query is to mean that I am suggesting anything . . .”

  “Do I detect a modicum of dissatisfaction?” Payne said, his tone mock-indignant. “Stream of consciousness—as I would expect one known respectfully as the Black Buddha to recognize—is given credence in the earliest Buddhist scriptures, notably Theravada, ones dating back to long before the birth of Christ. It was passed down the ages with the scriptures, first orally then as written text in the Pali language. Personally, I feel anything that survives that long must have its merits. So, yes, I do indeed embrace stream of consciousness.”

  “Here’s more of that stream of consciousness,” Rapier then said, reaching under the desk and producing a cardboard shipping box. “This also came for you while you were gone.”

  “This what I think it is?” Payne said, looking at the mailing label. “It is!”

  He pulled out a tactical folding knife from where he had it clipped inside the right front pocket of his pants. Then, in rapid fluid motions, he flipped open the knife’s blade with his thumb, slit the packing tape, then closed the knife and clipped it back in his pocket. He opened the box flaps and removed a half-dozen cellophane-wrapped decks of playing cards.

  He handed one pack to Washington.

  “There,” Payne said, smiling. “Now the Black Buddha cannot say I never gave him anything. And perhaps this will allow you to look favorably, if only a little, at my unfiltered wild ideas.”

  Washington looked at the pack for a moment. On the front of the box was the logotype of the Philadelphia Police Department, and under that: HOMICIDE UNIT COLD CASES.

  He pursed his lips and nodded approvingly as he glanced at Payne, then peeled off the cellophane wrapper.

  “Read the back,” Payne said.

  Washington flipped over the pack, and saw:

  THIS DECK OF CARDS FEATURES FIFTY-TWO HOMICIDE COLD CASES AT THE PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT. THESE CASES REMAIN UNSOLVED. IF YOU RECOGNIZE ANYONE AND CAN PROVIDE INFORMATION ON THEM, PLEASE CONTACT US. YOU CAN REMAIN ANONYMOUS, AND YOU COULD BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CASH REWARD UP TO $20,000.

  CALL US AT 215-686-TIPS (8477) OR TEXT PPDTIP (773847) OR TIPS@PHILLYPOLICE.COM OR PHILLYPOLICE.COM/SUBMIT-A-TIP.

  “Interesting,” he said, then opened the top flap and pulled out the stack of cards and picked one.

  It was the queen of spades and, as was common to standard playing cards, the card’s back was identical to all the other cards in the deck. In this case it was the blue uniform patch with gold stitching in the shape of a badge that read PHILADELPHIA POLICE, HONOR, INTEGRITY, SERVICE.

  The face of the card, as also was common to standard playing cards, had a black “Q” and a black spade in the upper-left and bottom-right corners. But instead of an image of a queen in royal garb, the center of the card had text and a color photograph.

  Under the headline UNSOLVED HOMICIDE was the picture of an attractive brunette, under which was written “Jennifer Ann Dusevich, White Female, 32 years old, found 11/10/81 deceased in a wooded area of Point Breeze near the Delaware River just north of O’Maddie’s Pub on State Road.” And then it repeated the cash reward and the police department contact information.

  “Quite clever, Matthew,” Washington said, tucking the card back in the deck and the deck back in its box.

  “Thanks. While modesty of course overwhelms me, I do think it is a brilliant idea. People with a lot of time on their hands—oh, say, bad guys, and people who associate with same—like card games, and while they’re playing, they just might have their memories jarred. I’m having boxes of these shipped to our jails and prisons and to our parole officers, getting them literally into the hands of those who would know. The hard part was which of the hundreds of cold cases from over the years to feature. I’ve got another two sets of fifty-two cases ready to go to print.”

  Washington nodded.

  “I was about to ask,” he said, “if you paid for this. But here we have the small print: ‘This project funded as a community service by CrimeFreePhilly.com and PhillyNewsNow.com.’”

  Payne said: “The families like that Dusevich girl’s deserve knowing. She deserves it.”

  Washington nodded solemnly.

  “To coin a phrase,” he deeply intoned, “we do speak for the dead, don’t we?”

  Payne reached in the box and produced more cards.

  He handed a stack to Washington, who saw that they were approximately the size of the playing cards but distinctly different.

  “And I got the printer to throw in a bunch of Miranda cards for the unit,” Payne said. “After reading from them—‘You have the right to remain silent,’ et cetera, et cetera—the miscreant then signs and dates it. And on the back, it’s in Spanish. This way the rights can be read word for word off the card, then the suspect acknowledges that by signing off on it. No defense attorney would have a chance accusing one of our officers taking the stand that he hadn’t read the doer his rights.”

  Washington nodded, then said,
“Very thorough. Excellent ideas. Your other stream of consciousness notwithstanding.”

  —

  And now, Washington realized, Payne was again explaining what else he had working that was above and beyond what the job required.

  “First, Uncle Denny, I would not call the mentoring program ‘underground,’” Payne said. “Maybe a better description would be ‘below the radar,’ which, for now at least, lessens the chance of retaliation from those who think, with their warped reasoning, that those trying to better themselves are traitors to those in the hood who don’t.”

  He paused, then went on: “And it’s not about the money. It’s about reaching the individual. These kids are terrified to go to school—if they even make it there. Fights break out if someone looks crossways at another, on a sidewalk or in a school hallway. And the troublemakers don’t care if there’s an officer there—getting hauled out of class in handcuffs just adds to their street cred. So, we give those who want to break the cycle a second, even third chance. Help them live to see age twenty—and hopefully thirty and beyond.”

  “You’re right, Matthew. We’re doing more—have to do more, especially in today’s lawless environment—than simply fighting crime.”

  “And last thing I want is to take credit for it,” Payne said. “Lots of others are involved. Everyone just trying to reach out to those who have nothing, give them some hope.”

  “Would these others involved include Francis Fuller?” Coughlin said.

  Payne grunted.

  He said: “Why would Five-Eff—”

  “‘Five-Eff’?” Washington interrupted, raising his eyebrows. “Where have I heard that?”

  Payne grinned and nodded, then explained, “I’ve never been a big fan of Fuller. I admire his ability to seemingly mint money, but not his method of doing it. He and I have had our differences for years. So while some call him Four-Eff, shorthand for Francis Franklin Fuller the Fifth, I added one more—”