The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  Jessica thought about the times she had pointed her weapon at another human being. Most people – with the aid of more than fifty years of television police shows – thought the process was easy, or at least not that difficult. Many believed a police officer could wound or kill a person, then go out to dinner, take a shower, watch a little TV, then hit the sack. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was life-changing. She’d known officers – stable, psychologically sound, family men – who never came back after firing their weapons.

  ‘You make the call, and remember your training,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s all you can do.’

  As soon as the words left her mouth Jessica realized what she sounded like. She sounded like the grizzled old veteran giving words of advice to the fresh young rookie.

  When the hell had that happened?

  At ten o’clock they rotated to the third church on their list, St Simeon’s on Germantown Avenue. A large gothic brownstone with a soaring spire, St Simeon’s had been closed for five years. According to their information, the building had recently been sold to a developer from San Diego.

  A number of streetlights were out on this stretch of Germantown, which provided the detectives with a small amount of cover. Jessica and Maria parked a half-block away from the church, cocooned in shadow. From their vantage point they could see the south side and rear of the building.

  Since the widespread media coverage of the murders had begun, the AV Unit had installed, or was in the process of installing, new pole cameras near the closed churches. It was a slow and expensive undertaking.

  Because of his prowess with all things AV, Sergeant Mateo Fuentes was heading up the task force within the task force. He and two other officers from AV were dedicated to monitoring these cameras. They had a dozen in place, with more than a dozen to go. Teams were going to work all night.

  Ten minutes after the detectives set up position a car pulled to the curb a half-block behind them. Inside a figure settled in, and watched the watchers.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The Egg’s Nest was a cop bar in the northeast, located on Roosevelt Boulevard and Revere Street. The crowd was sparse, mostly married cops and state troopers with their girlfriends, eyes flicking to the front door every time it opened.

  Byrne took a high-top at the back, ordered a double Bushmills straight. He thought about what brought him to this place, and what he was about to do.

  At ten o’clock Vincent Balzano walked in wearing a leather jacket, black T-shirt, jeans, motorcycle boots. He shared a few pleasantries and laughs with the cops at the bar. Vincent then leaned in and gave his order to the barmaid, made his way back.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Vince.’

  ‘Any time, brother.’

  The waitress brought Vincent’s beer, and a second Bushmills for Byrne. The two men clinked glasses.

  ‘Sláinte,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Better days,’ Vincent said. He sipped from his beer, put it down, interlaced his fingers. ‘How can I help?’

  Byrne glanced around at the other patrons. They were mostly cops, but even so he had to be careful with what he had to say. ‘You know a dealer named DeRon Wilson?’

  ‘Know him? We’ve been trying to bury that motherfucker for five years.’

  ‘You heard about my little problem on the news?’

  ‘I did.’

  Byrne told him the specifics, including the detail that it was Wilson he had braced.

  ‘I had no idea it was him,’ Vincent said. ‘Sorry to hear you’re jammed up over that piece of shit.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  Byrne lowered his voice. ‘I need to find him.’

  Vincent Balzano was a veteran detective, not only of the streets, but specifically North Philadelphia. If you were a narcotics cop, there were few places in the country tougher to work.

  ‘I’m not going to ask you why, but I need to know what I’m calling in,’ Vincent said.

  ‘I understand.’

  Byrne told Vincent about Gabriel Hightower. He showed him the picture on his cell phone.

  Vincent took a few seconds to rein back his anger. He drained his beer. ‘I know all of his KAs, but I don’t think they’re going to give him up,’ he said. ‘He’s got a few stash houses, though. Let me make a call.’

  Vincent took his cell from his jeans, stepped out of the bar. Five minutes later he was back. He didn’t sit down. ‘Nobody’s saying where DeRon is holed up, but I reached out to a detective in North. He said he thinks DeRon has been staying with his girlfriend. He’s got triplets with her.’

  ‘Jesus. There’s three more of him?’

  Vincent laughed. ‘I think they’re girls. Word is this girlfriend lives in Juniata Park, but nobody knows exactly where. The good news is that DeRon’s brother Carter is going to make a drop tonight.’

  ‘Do we know where?’

  ‘I’m waiting on that text right now.’

  ‘And this Carter is going to give his brother up?’

  ‘Carter likes to pose, but he’s no hardass,’ Vincent said. ‘If we find him, I’ll turn him.’

  Byrne downed his shot, looked over both shoulders. Even though there was no one in earshot, he still lowered his voice. ‘You might need to go off the reservation here, Vince.’

  ‘How far off?’

  ‘Like, maybe, Cleveland.’

  Vincent’s phone buzzed. He checked the text, zipped his jacket, grabbed his car keys, and said, ‘I’ve always liked Cleveland this time of year. Let’s do this thing.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Shane Adams sat watching the two women in the car, his heart racing.

  He had changed the tire in short order – he had learned to change a tire as a boy out of necessity, his mother didn’t know a lug wrench from a pipe wrench – and was back on the road in fifteen minutes.

  He had to hand it to Detective Balzano. She was sharp. He should have known that he was getting played. He had spent only an hour or so going through the trash behind their rowhouse in South Philly. He knew that both Jessica and her husband Vincent were cops, which meant that there were probably a half-dozen weapons in the house, and he didn’t fancy getting shot to death in a pile of garbage.

  He did learn a few things from Jessica Balzano’s trash. He learned that Jessica’s daughter went to Sacred Heart of Jesus, and he had hoped this might be a point of entry for him. He’d found the picture of an eight-year-old in someone’s trash a year earlier, having no idea if or how he was going to use it. He’d then found a picture of Sacred Heart online and, with a little bit of effort, was able to PhotoShop the girl in front of it. It was a passable ruse behind the scuffed plastic laminate in his wallet.

  Or maybe not. It seemed the detective had made him from the start.

  She would not give him the slip again.

  Shane had been doing things like this – shadowing cops, politicians, judges – his entire career. Although it wasn’t technically illegal, he was walking the thin line between journalism – or at least what passed for journalism these days – and interfering with a criminal investigation.

  But, as the saying went, it was easier to get forgiveness than it was to get permission.

  The streets around this part of North Philly were mostly empty at this hour. The occasional car passed by. Each time Shane lowered himself slightly in the seat. Just because the two detectives in the car a block ahead of him were facing the other way didn’t mean they couldn’t see what was happening around the area. Shane Adams was pretty good at covert surveillance, but cops, especially homicide cops, were experts.

  St Simeon’s. He looked it up on his smart phone, but couldn’t find much information about it, except that it had been closed for a long time.

  Shane lifted the opera glasses, scanned the area. Nothing moving. The two detectives were just sitting, watching the church. It was mind-numbingly boring work, but he knew they were watching the church because they thought something might happen there. Th
e very idea was intoxicating.

  Shane Adams was actually at a crime scene before the fact.

  He could barely breathe. In fact, he had left the station so quickly, following the two detectives, he had forgotten to stop for food. And he had most definitely forgotten to take a leak. Ten cups of coffee without a pit stop.

  He checked the immediate area. He saw no one. He eased open his door, ran around the back of his car, then a few feet into an alleyway between a burned-out rowhouse and a closed rib shack. He unzippered, and relieved himself.

  Before emerging from the alley he looked both ways. No traffic. The two detectives were still silhouetted in their car up the street. In his earpiece he heard no new police-scanner activity.

  He crouched low, circled his car, slipped inside. Nothing like the pause that refreshes, he thought. He felt a million percent better.

  Except that he was starving. He reached over, opened the glove compartment. There he found a half-dozen unpaid tickets, the car’s owner’s manual, a pair of nail clippers. Clippers were an essential part of the reporter’s tool kit. If you gripped a microphone on camera, your nails mattered. Shane was hoping for a stale protein bar, a half-eaten bag of pork rinds, something.

  Maybe in the backseat, he thought. Sometimes he left half-eaten Subway sandwiches when a story called. He got up on his knees, spun around.

  And came face to face with a killer.

  ‘Shane Adams reporting,’ the killer said with a smile.

  Shane felt a pinprick on the side of his neck. It felt exactly like the time he had been hit with a pellet from a BB gun when he was six years old. But this was no BB. Within seconds he felt his legs fail him, then his arms.

  As the warmth spread over him, through him, he felt the waters of the Ohio River, heard his mother’s voice calling him to supper. But it wasn’t his mother’s stern voice, it was the darkness itself beckoning with a final call:

  ‘It seems you have one more story to tell.’

  FORTY-NINE

  The building was a twenty-four-story high-rise near the corner of Fourth and Washington. It was one of the few remaining old high-rise buildings in the area. It had recently been converted into a senior living facility. On the way over, Vincent explained to Byrne that one of DeRon Wilson’s dodges was to use the place as a stash house. He said Wilson’s grandmother had passed away in 2009, but Wilson kept the place.

  At nine o’clock Carter Wilson left the building, and headed down Fourth Street to his car. He rounded the corner and was just about to open the door when two men walked up behind him. Instinctively Carter’s hand went to the 9mm pistol in his belt.

  Vincent Balzano stopped him.

  Where DeRon Wilson was small and wiry, Carter Wilson was of average height, but flabby. Too much junk food, too much sampling of the product. Vincent easily pushed the man to the top of the dead-end alley.

  ‘You know who I am?’ Vincent asked.

  Nothing. Just Carter Wilson’s version of a jailhouse stare.

  ‘Coulda swore I asked you a question,’ Vincent added.

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Good,’ Vincent said. ‘That saves me a lot of time.’

  Carter nodded in Byrne’s direction. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Him? He’s the angel of fucking death, Carter. Believe me, you don’t want to deal with him.’

  Carter continued to stare at Byrne.

  ‘Time to look at me,’ Vincent said.

  Carter took a half-second too long to follow directions. Vincent turned Carter roughly around, slammed him into the wall. He emptied the man’s pockets, put the contents onto the top of a fifty-gallon drum, one of three in the alley: a few dollars, some loose change, car keys, an empty condom wrapper, a cell phone, and a disposable lighter.

  ‘Put your hands down and turn around,’ Vincent said.

  Carter slowly did as he was told.

  ‘Where are you coming from?’ Vincent asked.

  ‘The store.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Which store is that?’

  ‘I don’t know, man.’

  ‘You don’t know? You were just there, how could you not know? Are you talking about that Rite-Aid on the corner?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. That’s the one.’

  ‘There’s no Rite-Aid up there.’

  Carter shook his head. ‘Man. Why you playin’ me like this?’

  Vincent smiled. ‘I’m not playing, Carter. Truth is, we have somewhere to be. Do you know where we’re going?’

  Carter remained silent.

  ‘That was a question,’ Vincent said.

  ‘How would I know where y’all going?’

  ‘We’re going to see your brother.’

  Carter pulled a face, like he’d never heard the word before. ‘My brother?’

  ‘Yeah. Your real brother, not your play brother, or your cousin-brother. The one called DeRon. We can’t seem to locate him.’

  ‘Did you try his house?’

  ‘Damn,’ Vincent said. He looked over at Byrne, and back. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? Yeah. We tried his house, Carter. We also hit all his spots, all his corners, so we’re pretty sure the word is out that we want to have a little chat with him. That’s why we came to you, my man.’

  Stone cold silence.

  ‘Okay. Look. I’m not going to insult your intelligence – such as it is – by asking you the question again.’

  Vincent reached into his jacket pocket with one leather-gloved hand and pulled out a neatly wrapped package, a clear plastic baggie of what looked like two ounces of cocaine. He handed it to Carter, who took it.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s yours,’ Vincent said. ‘I just found it on you when I patted you down.’

  Everything seemed to hit Carter all at once. Instead of flailing, railing, or running, he seemed to implode. He just stood there, wide-eyed and shocked. Vincent took the package back.

  ‘That ain’t mine, man!’

  ‘Of course it is. Got your prints all over it. And with your record, I’m pretty sure you’re looking at federal time.’

  Vincent tossed Byrne the keys to Carter’s car. Byrne opened the trunk, found a zippered canvas pouch, opened it. Inside was what looked like thirty or forty thousand dollars.

  ‘Oh, Carter, Carter,’ Vincent said. ‘We add that money into the mix and you are looking at a deep, dark hole.’

  Carter started to vibrate. Byrne had seen it many times. It was the involuntary muscle reflex that always preceded supersonic felony flight. Carter was getting ready for liftoff.

  Vincent casually pulled back the hem of his leather jacket. There in a holster was a massive .45 auto. ‘Feel free to run.’

  ‘Why, man? Why you doin’ this?’

  ‘Because I need your brother, and I need him now.’

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Done fucking with you.’ Vincent pulled his weapon, cocked the hammer, put it to Carter’s right kneecap. ‘You’ve now got ten seconds.’

  ‘Elbow,’ Byrne said.

  Vincent looked over. ‘Elbow?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Byrne said. ‘If you shoot them in the elbow, they can still walk. Hurts like a motherfucker, but we won’t have to carry him down to the river.’

  ‘The river?’ Carter yelled.

  ‘Good point,’ Vincent said. He turned back to Carter. ‘You now have two seconds.’

  ‘Wait!’ Carted said. ‘I page him. Then he texts me back with the place I gotta go.’

  Vincent took a moment, then picked up the disposable cell phone. ‘This is the phone he texts you on?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And he doesn’t call, or leave a voicemail?’

  ‘No,’ Carter said. ‘He don’t want his voice on nothin’.’

  ‘Who else has this number?’

  ‘Nobody. Just DeRon.’

  ‘Page him.’ Hands shaking, Carter did as he was told. Twenty seconds later, as promised, a text message came across the screen. It was an address.

&
nbsp; ‘See how easy that was?’ Vincent asked.

  Carter said nothing.

  Vincent tossed the cell phone to Byrne. Carter opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it.

  ‘We can’t have you tipping your brother now, can we?’ Vincent said.

  ‘I ain’t gonna call him.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Vincent laughed. He turned the man around, muscled him over to the open trunk.

  ‘Get in,’ Vincent said.

  ‘What the fuck, man? I tole you where he is.’

  ‘I know,’ Vincent said. ‘And on behalf of the entire PPD let me say that we really appreciate your cooperation. Now get in the fucking trunk.’

  Reluctantly, Carter got in the trunk. Before Vincent slammed it shut, he took the baggie out of his pocket. ‘I’ll just put this in the back seat.’

  ‘You can’t leave that out like that!’ Carter yelled. ‘What if the cops come by?’

  ‘If they do you can make them some pancakes,’ Vincent said. ‘It’s Bisquick, asshole.’

  Vincent slammed the trunk lid, threw Carter’s keys into a sewer.

  Ten seconds later the two detectives headed to North Philly.

  FIFTY

  The voice on the handset belonged to Josh Bontrager. When Jessica heard it she nearly jumped.

  ‘Jess,’ Bontrager said. ‘Please tell me you’re on radio.’

  Jessica keyed her handset. ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘What is it, Josh?’

  ‘I’ve got Mateo on my cell. He’s monitoring the camera behind St Simeon’s.’

  Jessica glanced over at Maria Caruso. They had been lulled into that torpor that happens when you stare at something so long you no longer see it. It was a common – and dangerous – malady that occurred on long stakeouts.

  ‘What about it?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘He’s got activity behind your church.’

  This got Jessica’s undivided attention. She took her phone from her pocket, put it on silent. If there was something coming down, it would be better to do this off police band. ‘Have him call me.’

  A few seconds later Jessica’s phone vibrated. ‘What do we have, Mateo?’