The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  DeRon Wilson’s was the last apartment on the right. Byrne opened the window at the end of the hall, checked to see if there was a fire escape. There was, so he left the window open. If Wilson decided to jump out, at least Byrne wouldn’t have to break the window to chase him.

  Byrne stepped up to the door, knocked. He heard the volume of the television lower, footsteps padding to the door. He saw the peephole go from light to dark, then light. Nothing. He knocked again.

  ‘Philly PD,’ he said.

  Byrne was just about to knock a third time when he heard the bolts turn. A girl opened the door. She was light-skinned, pretty, no more than seventeen. She wore a short silk kimono.

  Byrne showed his ID. ‘I’m looking for DeRon Wilson.’

  ‘Don’t know him.’

  She went to close the door, but Byrne got a foot inside the jamb. ‘Miss, it’s very important that I speak to him.’

  ‘I said, I don’t know him.’

  Again she tried to slam the door, but this time Byrne got a shoulder into it. He heard doors open in the hallway behind him. He glanced inside the apartment. The walls were covered in a vinyl, wood-grain wallpaper. A 60-inch plasma TV against the far wall showed an old music video. The floor was littered with brightly colored toddler toys.

  Before the girl said another word a man came out of one of the bedrooms.

  ‘It’s cool, baby,’ the man said.

  DeRon Wilson stepped into the living room. Even though Byrne had the man’s stats, DeRon was a lot smaller than Byrne had anticipated – chiseled hard, late twenties, standing about 5’4”. He couldn’t have weighed more than 125. A real bantam, in all respects. In his most recent mug shot he had short dreads, but now his head was shaved. He was covered in tats. He wore a white wife-beater T, jumbo shorts, slung low. Byrne looked at his hands, the pull on his belt. If he had a gun, it was not tucked into his shorts.

  ‘PPD always welcome here,’ Wilson added. Heavy-eyed, he proffered a smile.

  ‘Are you DeRon Wilson?’

  Wilson stepped fully into the doorway. The girl disappeared into the bedroom. Byrne backed up, giving the man space. All part of the power play.

  ‘What can I do for Philly’s finest?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘You can start by answering my question,’ Byrne said. ‘Are you DeRon Wilson?’

  ‘Everybody knows me.’

  ‘I’m going to take that as a yes,’ Byrne said. ‘Do you know a boy named Gabriel Hightower?’

  Wilson smiled. Three golds in the grill. ‘I know lots of boys.’

  More doors opened. Byrne turned to see a half-dozen people in the hallway. They all had cell phones in hand.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Byrne repeated.

  ‘I might. But why I gotta tell you?’

  ‘Mr Wilson, could we step inside? This will only take a few moments of your time.’

  Wilson did not back up, did not invite Byrne inside. Instead, he moved further into the hallway, making Byrne retreat a few more steps.

  Wilson put a finger into Byrne’s chest. ‘I think you need to get out my face.’

  Byrne looked down at Wilson’s finger, swept the hem of his coat back and unsnapped his holster. ‘You need to take a step back.’

  ‘I don’t need to do a damn thing.’

  ‘Lower your voice and calm down,’ Byrne said.

  ‘I’m calm, motherfucker. I’m JB fuckin’ Smoove. What you need to do is to get the fuck out my house.’

  At this Wilson put his hand into the pocket of his shorts. Byrne couldn’t take the chance. Before Wilson could pull out his hand Byrne exploded across the hallway and threw one of his massive shoulders into Wilson’s chest, all but putting the man through the wall. The drywall split, raining gypsum dust onto the floor. It was as loud as a shotgun blast.

  From his not-too-intimidating perch on the floor, Wilson shook it off, yelled, ‘I’m gonna own you for this, motherfucker.’

  Byrne grabbed Wilson by the front of the shirt and yanked him to his feet.

  ‘You’re gonna own me?’ Byrne drew his Glock, put it to the center of Wilson’s forehead. ‘I might as well buy the whole loaf then, right? How many do you want? Let’s negotiate. Give me a fucking number.’

  DeRon Wilson closed his eyes, waited for the pain.

  ‘This is how it’s going to be,’ Byrne said. ‘You come near that kid again, you even look his way, and I will make it my personal fucking mission in life to make sure you never sleep again. You feel me?’

  Wilson remained silent. Byrne pushed the weapon harder into the man’s forehead.

  ‘Answer me or I will drop you where you stand.’

  Wilson opened his eyes and said, ‘Yes.’

  Byrne took a few moments, backed off. DeRon Wilson sagged to the floor.

  Byrne held his weapon at his side and slowly walked down the hallway, accompanied by shouts of ‘police brutality’ and the like.

  A few minutes later, as Byrne walked out the front door of the apartment building, he turned to look at the second floor. Every window was filled with a tenant, leaning out, each with a camera cell phone in hand.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Shane had followed Kevin Byrne at a discreet distance, watched as he left his apartment in South Philly, then to the Roundhouse, then down to the river in Port Richmond. He watched him sit in the parking lot for what seemed like an hour.

  Shane had felt himself drifting off, until he heard the screech of tires, and looked up to see Byrne’s car fishtailing out of the lot. He headed up Allegheny.

  As he tailed the detective, Shane checked his rearview mirror and side mirrors every few seconds. He saw no one else from another TV station, at least anyone in a car with the station logo on the side. Shane had learned long ago that, if you were going to work in a television market – especially a top ten market – the first thing to find out was what kind of cars the police department used, then get that same make and color. More than once he had been able to park among a group of departmental vehicles unnoticed. If you didn’t check the plates, you would think they all belonged to the police. He had gotten inside the tape on many occasions this way.

  When Byrne took a right on D Street, Shane got caught at a light, and lost him.

  He banged a fist on the steering wheel, pulled over a block away from where he had last seen Byrne’s car, turned up the volume on the scanner. Something was happening. Something was definitely happening. Byrne had taken off like a bat out of hell.

  Shane thought about calling the TV station, getting a shooter, but he didn’t need Cyn or anyone on this. He had his own rig in the trunk, and there was no better one-man-bander in Philly.

  He found himself right in front of a coin laundry, so he rolled back about thirty feet, taking himself out of the electric glow of the fluorescent lights. He berated himself for staying too far away, for not being better at shadowing a subject.

  Did this have something to do with the ritual killing of the baby?

  Shane had to laugh. He was already categorizing what happened to the baby and the other victim as a ritual killing.

  He listened to his scanner. Nothing that sounded relevant. The police band in Philadelphia was rarely silent for long. Shane was just about to go into the trunk when he saw a shadow coming up on him. Fast. He spun around.

  The kid was on top of him before he knew it. Black kid, thirteen or so, dark hoodie. He had a small face, tiny, fold-down ears. He rode a mountain bike that looked new.

  Shane did a quick inventory of his possessions. He always kept a hundred-dollar bill in his wallet. He liked to think it was for emergencies – which it was – but he wanted to think the urgent situation would come in the form of a midnight tryst with a beautiful woman, and he needed it to pay cash for a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Hey,’ Shane said. ‘What’s up?’

  The kid looked away, around, back. ‘You that guy on TV?’

  Shane felt a cold wave of relief. ‘Yeah. Shane Adams.’

  The k
id nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. He chucked a thumb at the apartment complex. ‘I saw what happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was there.’

  Shane had to play along, like he knew all the details. ‘You saw that, huh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He wasn’t being mugged after all. ‘You saw all of it?’

  The kid nodded again. ‘Saw po-po beating on DeRon.’

  Shane had to take a shot here. ‘You mean DeRon Jefferson?’

  The kid rolled his eyes. ‘DeRon Wilson.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Right, right.’

  ‘I got it all. All of it.’

  Shane’s pulse began to spike. Got all of it. Was he hearing what he thought he was hearing? ‘So, are you saying you have video of what happened?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I got it.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  The kid recoiled. ‘I’ll sell it to you.’

  ‘Well, I have to see it first. If it’s something I think I might be able to use, we’ll talk.’

  The kid sized him up again. After a few long seconds he reached into his baggy jeans, fished out a cell phone. He opened it, scrolled down. Before starting the video he looked up. ‘How much could I get?’

  ‘That all depends on the footage.’

  The kid made a face. He had no idea what footage was. Cell phone video wasn’t measured in feet.

  ‘The video,’ Shane said. ‘It all depends on what you have on the video.’

  Another face. ‘I said, I got it all, man.’

  Shane glanced at the kid’s phone. It wasn’t an iPhone 4, or any of the higher end Android smart phones, so the footage wasn’t going to be that good, quality-wise. No 720p here. Still, in the past few years, stations had broadcast absolutely terrible quality video, if the subject matter was compelling. Many times when it was not. If it came down to broadcasting sub-VHS quality video or getting scooped, there was no argument at all. Visuals were everything.

  The kid moved slowly. Shane wanted to say something, but he realized he was in the kid’s world, not his own. He couldn’t visualize Anderson Cooper in some back alley in Tikrit rushing some Iraqi kid with cell-phone footage. He waited.

  Finally the kid held up the phone and pressed the button.

  At first the video was just a blurry image, moving along dirty carpeting. Then there was shouting. The words were unintelligible, but that could be cleaned up. Shane instinctively glanced at his watch. Plenty of time. He looked back at the camera phone, and now saw the image of a long, sparsely lit hallway. A few of the doors were open. People stepped out of them. The camera moved down the hall, shaky as hell, but that just added to the immediacy.

  Then he saw Kevin Byrne brace a man against the drywall so hard that the drywall cracked. Shane found he was holding his breath.

  ‘That’s DeRon, right?’

  ‘Um-hmm,’ the kid replied.

  Shane then saw Byrne pull out a gun and put it to the man’s forehead. Shane did his very best not to make a sound. At that instant he thought about his acting classes, and what this moment called for. It called for an action, and that action was indifference. Hardest thing he had ever done.

  When the video cut to black Shane took a deep, yoga breath, said, ‘I don’t know man. The lighting’s pretty bad.’

  Shane didn’t expect the kid to discuss lumens, but he did expect a response. The kid didn’t say anything.

  ‘Ain’t exactly hi-def, you know what I mean?’ Shane added.

  Cold silence from the kid.

  ‘Tell you what. I’ll give you twenty for it.’

  The kid snorted. It seemed Shane’s offer was beneath contempt. Which, of course, it was. Shane, on the other hand, expected a counter offer. The kid turned to leave.

  ‘Hang on.’

  The kid stopped, but still kept his bike headed in the other direction.

  ‘I could maybe go fifty,’ Shane said, and immediately realized that he had only the hundred-dollar bill in his wallet, and maybe six singles in his pocket. Did he expect the kid to have change? He looked down the street, saw an all-night deli. Maybe he could crack the C-note there. ‘But that’s coming out of my pocket. My station doesn’t pay for this shit. Ever.’

  The kid just shook his head.

  Fucking thief.

  ‘Okay,’ Shane said. ‘A hundred is the best I can do. Anything more than that, and I have to do paperwork. Take it or leave it. The video ain’t all that, believe me.’

  The kid stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time. Maybe this was a mugging after all. Maybe the kid just showed him the footage to keep him around until his friends showed up. The kid then looked over at Shane’s car.

  ‘That your whip?’ he asked.

  Shane was glad that his bag – including the Panasonic camera, digital still camera, and lenses – was in the trunk, and not visible through the passenger side window. ‘Yeah.’

  The kid smirked. Shane soon realized why the kid had asked. The car was a piece of shit. If he had been driving a BMW or a Lexus, the kid would have either held out for more, or walked. Or worse.

  Shane had him. Saved by a shitty car.

  ‘Let me see the money.’

  Shane fished out his wallet, peeled out the long creased C-note. He unfolded it, but didn’t hand it over. ‘How do I get the footage? Can you email it to me right now?’

  The kid handed him the cell phone.

  Shane was dumbfounded. ‘What, are you just giving this to me?’

  The kid dug into his pocket, pulled out four or five other phones in a rainbow of colors.

  Shane shook his head, handed him the bill. The kid held it up to the light streaming from the coin laundry’s windows. Then, apparently having confirmed that the bill was genuine US currency, turned his bike around, started pedaling, and disappeared into the darkness.

  Shane stood there for a moment, a bit paralyzed by what had just happened. He soon snapped out of it, glanced at his watch. He had time to get this to the station, edit the video, and get it on at eleven. He sprinted to the driver’s side, unlocked the car, got in, and sped off.

  Fifteen minutes later, when he made the turn onto Broad Street, his heart still racing, he pulled to the curb. He picked up the kid’s phone, and soon made sense of the menu. He navigated to the footage. In the confines of the car, the phone’s tinny speaker was too loud. He dialed it back.

  He watched the footage. It was beautiful. No, it was beyond beautiful. He saw no other reporter or shooter in the hallway, or even in the neighborhood for that matter.

  What did he have in his hand?

  He had a white Philadelphia police detective threatening an unarmed black man with a gun. Not just threatening. He had the gun up to the man’s forehead.

  Not quite the Rodney King footage, but damned close. And he got it for a hundred bucks.

  Shane pulled back into the traffic, already thinking of how soon he would be sending his reel to CNN.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Byrne sat at the bar in the Quiet Man pub on the lower level of Finnigan’s Wake complex, named for the famous John Ford film starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.

  He wanted to be all right with what he had done, but wasn’t. He had lost his cool. Pure and simple. The fact that he had a relatively short fuse was no secret, but the point of it all was to never let it control your behavior. He had felt the rage building all day. When he heard the fear in Gabriel’s voice it had all come out.

  Good work, Kevin.

  When Margaret, one of the best bartenders in the city of Philadelphia, saw Byrne sit down, she knew it was a Bushmills night. There was a glass in front of him before he’d gotten his coat off.

  Halfway through his first drink, he allowed himself to think about what had really happened in that dilapidated hallway, the real message he’d received when he laid hands on DeRon Wilson, the feeling of –

  – cold stone walls, the expression of The Boy in the Red Coat as he looks up in si
lence –

  – the coming confrontation.

  Byrne drained his glass. Before he could call for the next drink a shadow spilled across the bar next to him. There were four open stools to his right, so it was not someone looking for a spot.

  ‘Crazy days, huh?’ a female voice said.

  Byrne turned to look. The woman was in her early thirties, dark-haired, pretty. She wore a black turtleneck sweater, tight jeans. Around her neck was a delicate silver chain. Byrne had the feeling they had met before. He couldn’t place her.

  ‘Well, we live in interesting times,’ he said. It sounded like the right response. He hoped it was, considering how pretty this woman was.

  She smiled, and Byrne realized she was a little older than he had originally thought. He placed her in her mid- to late thirties.

  ‘We didn’t get to meet properly the other day,’ she said. ‘I’m Faith.’

  The other day? How could he not remember this woman?

  And it hit him. She was F. CHRISTIAN. She was the female paramedic who had come to the scene at St Adelaide’s. On that day she’d had her hair in a ponytail, had no makeup on, and wore glasses. Not to mention a bulky parka. He had hardly noticed her that day, but that was not unusual, considering the circumstances.

  ‘Kevin Byrne.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. They shook hands. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Byrne moved his coat to the stool on his left. Faith slipped onto the stool, and Byrne caught her full profile. She was beyond attractive. She had a ring on her right-hand ring finger in the shape of a cross.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Byrne said. ‘Your name is Faith Christian?’

  She smiled, rolled her eyes at what had to be the ten-thousandth time she’d heard this. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘See, now I have to know,’ he said.

  ‘We just met. We’ll probably get to it.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘In that case, what are you drinking?’ Byrne asked.

  She smiled again, gave it a moment’s thought. ‘I think I’ll have an Old Fashioned tonight.’

  Margaret, standing a few feet away, topping a Guinness, nodded her head. She’d heard. Margaret heard everything.