The Victim

by W. E. B Griffin

  At five minutes past nine, heading north on the Schuylkill Expressway, Officers McFadden and Martinez spotted a motorist in distress, pulled to the side of the southbound lane.

  “The time of day, prevailing weather conditions, the traffic flow, and other considerations will determine how much assistance you may render to a motorist in distress,” Sergeant Big Bill Henderson had lectured them, “your primary consideration to be the removal or reduction of a hazard to the public, and secondly to maintain an unimpaired flow of traffic.”

  “In other words, Sergeant,” McFadden had replied, “we don’t have to change a tire for some guy unless it looks as if he’s going to get his ass run over changing it himself?”

  Officer Charles McFadden had a pleasant, youthfully innocent face, which caused Sergeant Henderson to decide, after glowering at him for a moment, that he wasn’t being a wiseass.

  “Yeah, that’s about it,” Sergeant Henderson said.

  Officer Martinez, who was then driving, slowed so as to give them a better look at the motorist in distress. It was a two-year-old Cadillac Sedan de Ville. Apparently it had suffered a flat tire.

  The motorist in distress was in the act of tightening the wheel bolts when he saw the Highway Patrol car. He stood up, quickly threw the other tire and wheel in the trunk, and finally the hubcap.

  “Marvin just fixed his flat in time,” Officer McFadden said. “Otherwise we would have had to help the son of a bitch.”

  Marvin P. Lanier, a short, stocky, thirty-five-year-old black male, was known to Officers Martinez and McFadden from their assignment to Narcotics. He made his living as a professional gambler. He wasn’t very good at that, however, and was often forced to augment his professional gambler’s income, or lack of it, in other ways. He worked as a model’s agent sometimes, arranging to provide lonely businessmen with the company of a model in their hotel rooms.

  And sometimes, when business was really bad, he went into the messenger business, driving to New York or Washington, D.C., to pick up small packages for business acquaintances of his in Philadelphia.

  Narcotics had been turned on to Marvin P. Lanier by Vice, which said they had reason to believe Marvin was running coke from New York to North Philly.

  Officers McFadden and Martinez had placed the suspect under surveillance and determined the rough schedule and route of his messenger service. At four o’clock one Tuesday morning, sixty seconds after he came off the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, which is not on the most direct route from New York City to North Philadelphia, they stopped his car and searched it and found one plastic-wrapped package of a white substance they believed to be cocaine, weighing approximately two pounds and known in the trade as a Key (from kilogram).

  The search and seizure, conducted as it was without a warrant—which they couldn’t get because they didn’t have enough to convince a judge that there was “reasonable cause to suspect” Mr. Lanier of any wrongdoing—was, of course, illegal. Any evidence so seized would not be admissible in a court of law. Both Officers Martinez and McFadden and Mr. Lanier knew this.

  On the other hand, if the excited and angry Hispanic Narcotics officer who had jammed the barrel of his revolver up Mr. Lanier’s nostril and called him a “slimy nigger cocksucker” went through with his suggestion to “just pour that fucking shit down the sewer,” Mr. Lanier knew that he would be in great difficulty with the business associates who had engaged him to run a little errand for them.

  If he had been arrested, the cocaine, illegally seized or not, would be forfeited. It would be regarded as a routine cost of doing business. But if the fucking spick slit it open and poured it down the sewer, his business associates were very likely to believe that he had diverted at least twenty thousand dollars worth of their property to his own purposes, and that the Narcs putting it down the sewer was a bullshit story. Who would throw twenty big ones worth of coke down a sewer? That was as much as a fucking cop made in a fucking year!

  A deal was struck. Mr. Lanier was permitted to go on his way with the Key, it being understood that within the next two weeks Mr. Lanier would come up with information that would lead Officers Martinez and McFadden to at least twice that much coke, and those in possession of it.

  Mr. Lanier thought of himself as an honorable man and lived up to his end of the bargain. Officers Martinez and McFadden rationalized the somewhat questionable legality of turning Mr. Lanier and the Key of coke lose because it ultimately resulted in both the confiscation of three Keys and the arrest and conviction of three dopers who they otherwise wouldn’t have known about. Plus, of course, they had scared the shit out of Marvin P. Lanier. It would be some time before he worked up the balls to go back into the messenger business.

  They had not, in the three months after their encounter with Mr. Lanier, before they had been transferred from Narcotics, unduly pressed him for additional information. They viewed him as a long-term asset, and asking too much of him would have been like killing the goose who laid the golden egg. It would not have been to their advantage if Mr. Lanier had become suspected by those in the drug trade and removed from circulation.

  “Do you think he spotted us?” Hay-zus asked. By then he had brought the RPC almost to a halt, and was looking for a spot in the flow of southbound traffic into which he could make a U-turn.

  “He spotted the Highway car,” McFadden replied. “But he was so busy shagging ass out of there, I don’t think he saw it was you and me.”

  Hay-zus found a spot and, tires screaming, moved into it.

  “Why do you think Marvin was so nervous?” Charley asked excitedly. “Shit, stop!”

  “What for?” Hay-zus asked, slowing, although he was afraid he would lose Marvin in traffic.

  “Marvin forgot his jack,” Charley said. “Somebody’s liable to run into it. And besides, I think we should give it back to him.”

  Hay-zus saw the large Cadillac jack where Marvin had left it. He turned on the flashing lights and, checking the rearview mirror first, slammed on the brakes.

  Charley was out of the car and back in it, clutching the jack, in ten seconds.

  “Marvin will probably be very grateful to get his jack back,” he said as Hay-zus wound up the RPC. “And besides, if Big Bill wants to know how come we left the expressway, we can tell him we were trying to return a citizen’s property to him.”

  “We got no probable cause,” Hay-zus said.

  “All we’re going to ask him is what he heard about Officer Magnella. And/or that guinea gangster, what’s his name?”

  “DeZego,” Hay-zus furnished.

  “I guess he spotted us,” Charley McFadden said. The proof of that was that Marvin’s Cadillac was in the left lane, traveling at no more than forty-six miles per hour in a fifty-mile-per-hour zone.”

  “What do we do?” Hay-zus asked.

  “Get right on his ass and stay there. Let the cocksucker sweat a little. We can stop him when he gets off the expressway.”

  Mr. Lanier left the Schuylkill Expressway via the Zoological Gardens exit ramp.

  “Pull him over now?”

  “Let’s see where he’s going,” Charley said. “If he’s dirty, he’ll try to lose us. If he’s not, he’ll probably go home. He lives on 48th near Haverford, and he’s headed that way.”

  “Why follow the fucker home?”

  “So we can let his neighbors see how friendly he is with the Highway Patrol,” Charley said. “That ought to raise his standing in the community.”

  “You can be a real prick sometimes, Charley,” Hay-zus said admiringly.

  Scrupulously obeying all traffic regulations, and driving with all the care of a school-bus driver, Mr. Lanier drove to his residence just off Haverford Avenue on North 48th Street. As the RPC turned onto 48th, Charley bumped the siren and turned the flashing lights on.

  Mr. Lanier got out of his car and smiled uneasily at the RPC, which pulled in behind him.

  “He didn’t run,” Hay-zus said.

  “He’s nervous,�
� Charley said as he retrieved the jack and opened the door. “Hello there, Marvin,” he called cheerfully and loudly. “You forgot your jack, Marvin.”

  Marvin P. Lanier looked at McFadden and Martinez, finally recognizing them, and then suspiciously at the jack.

  Charley thrust it into his hands.

  “I guess I did,” Marvin said. “Thanks a lot.”

  No one moved for a full sixty seconds, although Mr. Lanier did glance nervously several times at the spick Narc who had once shoved the barrel of his revolver up his nostril.

  “How come you guys are in uniform?” Mr. Lanier finally asked.

  “What’s that to you, shitface?” Officer Martinez said with a snarl.

  “Aren’t you going to put your jack in the trunk, Marvin?” Officer McFadden asked, ignoring him.

  Mr. Lanier put his hand on the rear door of his Cadillac.

  “I’m running a little late,” he said. “I think I’ll just put it in the backseat for now.”

  “You don’t want to do that, Marvin,” Officer McFadden said. “You’d get grease and shit all over the carpet. Why don’t you put it in the trunk?”

  “I don’t think I want to do that,” Mr. Lanier said.

  “Who gives a flying fuck what you want, asshole?” Officer Martinez inquired.

  “Why are you guys on my ass?” Mr. Lanier inquired.

  “You know fucking well why!” Officer Martinez, now visibly angry, flared. “Now open the fucking trunk!”

  Mr. Lanier opened the trunk of his vehicle, Officers Martinez and McFadden standing on either side of him as he did so.

  “Well, what have we here?” Officer McFadden asked, leaning over and picking up a Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a short barrel.

  “Marvin must be a deer hunter,” Officer Martinez said. “You a deer hunter, Marvin?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Lanier said without much conviction.

  “You got a license for this, of course?” Officer McFadden asked, although he was fully aware that not only was such a license not required; there was no such thing as a license to possess a shotgun, as there was for possession of a pistol. Neither did it violate any laws for a citizen like Mr. Lanier, who had not been convicted of a felony and was not, at the moment, under indictment or a fugitive from justice to transport such a weapon unloaded and not immediately available, such as in a locked trunk.

  “No,” Mr. Lanier said resignedly, confirming Officer McFadden’s suspicion that Mr. Lanier was not fully conversant with the applicable law.

  “Goddamn, Marvin, what are we going to do with you?” Officer McFadden asked almost sadly.

  “What’re you doing with the shotgun, Marvin?” Officer Martinez snarled again.

  “I just had it, you know?”

  “You been picking up coke in Harlem again, Marvin?” Officer McFadden asked sadly, as if he were very disappointed. “And the shotgun was a little protection?”

  “Maybe,” Officer Martinez said, getting a little excited, “if we wasn’t right on your ass all the time so you couldn’t get to that shotgun, you would have used it on us? Is that what you were doing with that fucking shotgun, you slimy nigger asshole?”

  “No!” Mr. Lanier stated emphatically.

  “You used that shotgun on Tony the Zee DeZego, didn’t you, Marvin?” Officer McFadden suddenly accused.

  “No!” Mr. Lanier proclaimed. “Honest to God! Some other guinea shot that motherfucker!”

  “Bullshit!” Officer Martinez said, spinning Mr. Lanier around, pushing him against his Cadillac, kicking his feet apart and patting him down.

  “I was in Baltimore with my sister when that happened,” Mr. Lanier said. “I drove my mother down. My sister had another kid.”

  Officer Martinez held up a small plastic bag full of red-and-yellow capsules.

  “Look what Marvin had in his pocket,” he said.

  “You got a prescription for these, Marvin?” Officer McFadden asked. “I’d hate to think you were using these without a prescription.”

  “You’re not going to bust me for a couple of lousy uppers,” Mr. Lanier said without much conviction.

  “We’re going to arrest you for the murder of Tony the Zee,” McFadden said. “You have the right to remain silent—”

  “I told you, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. Some guinea shot him!”

  “Which guinea?” Officer McFadden asked.

  “I don’t know his name,” Mr. Lanier said.

  Officers McFadden and Martinez exchanged glances.

  They had worked together long enough that their minds ran in similar channels. Both had independently decided that Marvin had probably not shot Tony the Zee. There was no connection, and if there had been, the detectives or somebody would have picked up on it by now. It was possible, however, that Marvin had heard something in his social circles, concerning who had blown away Tony the Zee, that had not yet come to the attention of the detectives.

  They knew they had nothing on Mr. Lanier. He had broken no law by having an unloaded shotgun in his trunk. The search of his person that had come up with the bag of uppers had been illegal.

  “Maybe he’s telling the truth,” Officer McFadden said.

  “This shit wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the ass,” Officer Martinez replied. “Let’s take the son of a bitch down to the Roundhouse and let Homicide work him over.”

  “I swear to Christ, I was in Baltimore with my mother when that motherfucker got himself shot!”

  “Who told you some guinea did it?” McFadden asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Mr. Lanier said.

  “Yeah, you don’t remember because you just made that up!” Officer Martinez said.

  There followed a full sixty seconds of silence.

  “Marvin, if we turn you loose on the shotgun and the uppers, do you think you could remember who told you a guinea shot Tony the Zee?” Officer McFadden finally asked. “Or get me the name of the guinea he said shot him?”

  “You are not going to turn this cocksucker loose?” Officer Martinez asked incredulously.

  “He ain’t lied to us so far,” Officer McFadden replied.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Lanier said righteously. “I been straight with you guys.”

  “I think we ought to give Marvin the benefit of the doubt,” Officer McFadden said.

  Officer Martinez snorted.

  “But if we do, what about the shotgun and the uppers?” McFadden asked.

  “What uppers?” Mr. Lanier said. “What shotgun?”

  “What are you saying, Marvin?” Officer McFadden asked.

  “Suppose the uppers just went down the sewer?” Mr. Lanier asked.

  “And the shotgun? What are we supposed to do with the shotgun?”

  “You mean that shotgun we just found laying in the gutter? That shotgun? I never saw it before. I guess you would do what you ordinarily do when you find a shotgun someplace. Turn it in to lost and found or whatever.”

  “What do you think, Hay-zus?” Officer McFadden asked.

  “I think we ought to run the son of a bitch in, is what I think,” Officer Martinez said, and then added, “But I owe you one, Charley. If you want to trust the son of a bitch, I’ll go along.”

  Officer McFadden hesitated a moment and then said, “Okay, Marvin. You got it. You paid your phone bill? Still got the same number?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be home at four tomorrow afternoon. Have something to tell me when I call you.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You better do more than try, you cocksucker. You better have something!” Officer Martinez said.

  He picked up the shotgun and walked to the RPC and put it under the front seat.

  “Marvin, I’m trusting you,” McFadden said seriously. “Don’t let me down.”

  Then he walked to the RPC and got in.

  “We didn’t ask him about Magnella,” Hay-zus said as he turned right on Haverford Avenue and heade
d back toward the Schuykill Expressway.

  “I think he was telling the truth,” Charley said. “About what he heard, I mean, about some guinea popping Tony the Zee. I wanted to stay with that.”

  “I think his sister had a baby too,” Hay-zus said. “But we should have asked him about Magnella, anyway.”

  “So we didn’t,” Charley said. “So what do we do with what we got?”

  “You mean the shotgun?”

  “I mean, who do we tell what he said about who shot DeZego?”

  “Shit, I didn’t even think about that. Big Bill will have a shit fit and have our ass if we tell him what we done.”

  Sergeant Big Bill Henderson, in his little pep talk, had made it clear that, except in cases of hot pursuit, or in responding to an officer-needs-assistance call, they were not to leave their assigned patrol route; in other words, since they were not real Highway Patrolmen, they could not, as real Highway cops could, respond to any call that sounded interesting, or head for any area of their choosing where things might be interesting.

  “Well, we can’t just sit on it,” Charley said.

  “Captain Pekach,” Hay-zus said thoughtfully after a moment.

  “He’s not on duty and he’s not at home. We saw him and the rich lady, remember?”

  “In the morning,” Hay-zus said. “We’ll ask to see him first thing in the morning.”

  “He’s liable to be pissed. You think about that?”

  “Well, you said it, we can’t just sit on what Marvin told us.”

  “Maybe we could just tell Washington.”

  “And he tells somebody what we told him, like Big Bill, or even the inspector? It’s gotta be Captain Pekach.”

  Charley’s silence meant agreement.

  A moment later Charley asked, “What about the shotgun?”

  “We run it through the NCIC computer to see if it’s hot.”

  “And if it is?”

  “Then we turn it in.”

  “And burn Marvin? Which means we have to explain how we got it.”

  “Maybe it ain’t hot.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll flip you for it,” Hay-zus said. “I always wanted a shotgun like that.”