Deadly Assets

[FOUR]

North Twenty-ninth and West Arizona Streets

Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia

Saturday, December 15, 2:40 P.M.

The 2900 block of West Arizona, a single-lane one-way street of cracked asphalt, was lined mostly, except where there were empty lots, with two-story redbrick row houses. The majority of the hundred-year-old homes were inhabited and efforts were made to keep them more or less neat and tidy, despite being in various states of disrepair.

A few, however, with their windows and doors boarded over, were clearly deserted and deteriorating, well on their way to collapsing and creating another gap of an empty lot. (One entire side of the 3000 block was completely barren.)

At the corner where Arizona intersected with two-lane Twenty-ninth Street, two adjoining properties had been converted from residences to a single business space. Their brick fronts had been modified to create the elaborate facade of a pagoda. While the enormous plate-glass window had block lettering in gold paint that boldly stated the property now served as the ministry of the Word of Brotherly Love, the Reverend Josiah Cross presiding, if one looked closely, and in just the right lighting, one could read on the glass a faint CITY BEST CHINESE EGGROLL-WE NEVER CLOSE.

A block up Twenty-ninth, other corner row houses also had been converted to storefronts. One was a check-cashing business, its banners advertising a 99-cent-only fee for each cash withdrawal from its automated teller machines and, in Spanish, a low-cost wiring service for sending money internationally. Next door to it was a bodega, the market’s windows containing more signs in both English and Spanish pushing cigarettes to fresh produce to pre-paid Visa debit cards.

Twenty-ninth, being a wider thoroughfare, provided for parallel parking along the curbs on either side of the street. There were various vehicles parked in spaces up and down Twenty-ninth, but almost directly across the street from the Word of Brotherly Love sat a rusty 198 °Chevrolet panel van. It once had been the property of the Philadelphia Electric Company, the PECO logotype on its sides long faded but still recognizable.

When Detective Harvey Simpson of the Philadelphia Police Department had parked the panel van in the spot not quite three hours earlier, there had been no activity at the Word of Brotherly Love.

Within the last hour, however, Simpson-a ten-year veteran cop who was thirty-two years old, of average build with a very dark complexion, and had grown up just ten miles away, across the Schuylkill River in West Philly-had witnessed more and more happening, beginning with a late-model Ford minivan dropping off a half-dozen young men at the corner, then speeding off.

Digital video cameras mounted in hidden ports on the van’s roof rack captured live feeds. One camera angle was now focused on the front of the church, another looked down Arizona, and two others covered both directions of Twenty-ninth. The images, in addition to being viewed and recorded with notebook computers in the back of the van, could be sent on demand back to the Executive Command Center at the Roundhouse.

The two computers sat on metal shelving that had been welded to the bare ribs of the van body. Beside the computers Simpson had placed his stainless steel thermos of coffee and, wrapped in white wax paper, the second half of a rare roast beef hoagie that he’d started right after his arrival and getting the surveillance equipment set up.

The tallest of the dropped-off young men-Simpson estimated he had to be six-five-had gone directly to the crimson red door of the ministry and unlocked it, opened it, and anxiously motioned for the others to follow him inside.

Watching the new activity, Simpson thought: Should probably test the feed with the Roundhouse.

He clicked on a link on the notebook computer. A small window popped up on the computer screen. It showed Corporal Kerry Rapier in the ECC as his voice came across Simpson’s headset: “Hey, Harv.”

“Hey, Kerry. Finally got some activity. Figured now was a good time to make sure there’s no burps in the system.”

“Good idea,” Rapier said, and Simpson saw his eyes turn to look past the computer screen to the wall of flat-screen monitors as he said, “I’m looking at four males in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, three black, the fourth Hispanic, all wearing dark hoodies and jeans, coming out of the church’s red door with some sort of big heavy black boxes. And. . on the other cameras showing nothing except what looks like normal street traffic.”

“That’s all I’ve got. Looks like we’re good to go then, Kerry.”

“What are those guys doing?”

“I’m guessing probably not setting up for a FOP fund-raiser-”

Rapier made a raspberry sound, then said, “Ping me if it gets interesting.”

Simpson chuckled at his own humor as Rapier and the pop-up window disappeared from the screen.

Simpson then watched the four males carry, with some difficulty, the black-painted four-foot-square plywood cubes, two men per cube, and put them on the snow-covered sidewalk under the ornate curved corner of the pagoda’s roofline. They went back inside and reappeared with two more cubes and then, on a third trip, carried out a lectern and two massive loudspeakers.

They lined up the cubes, creating a sixteen-foot-long stage, on top of which they centered the lectern. The massive loudspeakers then went on either side of the lectern.

Simpson scanned the images captured by the other cameras and realized that with the stage set up in such a manner, there would be ample room for the crowds to fill up and down the streets.

Easily hundreds, Simpson thought, maybe even thousands.

Whoever was onstage speaking would have a clear view of everyone in all directions.

And the PECO van’s cameras would have a perfect angle on everyone.

As the four men began running wires to the stage and the speakers, a rented yellow six-wheeled box truck rolled into view of the camera. It turned off Twenty-ninth onto Arizona, briefly going the wrong way on the one-way street before rolling up onto the sidewalk and parking in front of the former row house next door that had the sign reading FELLOWSHIP HALL over its double wooden doors.

The driver, a wiry young black male who walked with a spring in his step, hopped out, exchanged words with the four assembling the stage, then went back to the box truck and rolled up its door. Simpson, due to the angle, could see only a few feet inside the box, and there was nothing in view.

The driver then climbed up into the box and pulled out what looked at first to Simpson like a roll of a thin white sheet of linoleum flooring, and maneuvered it to the lip of the box’s roof and then slid it completely on top. Then he smoothly hopped to the sidewalk-Simpson half expected him to slip on the snow but he didn’t-and went to the nose of the truck. He then effortlessly climbed from the bumper to the hood, then to the roof of the cab, and finally to the roof of the box. There he unrolled the thin white sheet down the side of the box.

“Aha!” Simpson said, seeing that it was actually a vinyl fabric sign.

It read Word of Brotherly Love Ministry 5th Annual Feed Philly Day Dec. 17th 4 p.m.-Midnight. Proudly Sponsored by Phila City Councilman H. Rapp Badde Jr. YOUR Voice in City Hall.

“Four to midnight?” Simpson said aloud to himself. “Timed to make the five, six, and eleven o’clock news. Go f’ing figure.”

Simpson, sipping from the stainless steel cap of his thermos, then watched the male slide down to the cab and hood and to the sidewalk, then walk to the double wooden doors of the Fellowship Hall. He called back to the four men assembling the stage, then went inside the hall.

After a few minutes, the Hispanic male walked from the stage over to the box truck. He hopped inside and began sliding big cardboard boxes to the outer edge. He popped open the flaps to one, reached in, and came out with a white T-shirt. He held it up to his torso to show the others. Simpson saw that its silkscreened block lettering screamed STOP KILLADELPHIA! on the front and back, the STOP in bright red ink, the KILLADELPHIA in black.

The Hispanic male pulled out more shirts from the box and tossed them to the others as they walked up. Everyone slipped one on over their hooded sweatshirts.

Then the Hispanic male began sliding five-by-three-foot posters to the outer edge, and when he handed them down, Simpson could see the front of them. They were enlarged images of murder victims, posters similar to those used in the Center City demonstrations at JFK Park and the Roundhouse.

The first showed Lauren Childs. She was in the photograph that she had posted online that morning, the one taken at the LOVE artwork with Tony Gambacorta. Her boyfriend had been inelegantly cropped from the frame-his arm, around her neck, was all of him that remained visible-and a white circle with MURDER VICTIM #362 in red text was positioned over where his head would have been. Along the bottom of the poster was her name, followed by “19 Years Young.”

On the second poster was Jimmy Sanchez, his serious face pockmarked with acne. He was wearing not a green elf costume but, instead, a shirt and tie and blazer. He sat staring at a chess-board, his right hand hovering over a white rook. Under his image was “Jaime A. Sanchez, 15 Years Young.” The white circle in the upper corner had MURDER VICTIM #363.

The next poster showed a grinning black male with MURDER VICTIM #360 in the white circle. At the bottom was “Dante Holmes, 20 Years Young.”

These were carried to the stage and leaned against its front.

When Simpson saw the next poster getting moved to the back of the truck, he muttered, “I’ll be damned.”

The poster was an enlargement of a digital image originally taken by police department closed-circuit cameras and then picked up by the media.

The image showed one of the PPD Aviation Unit’s Bell 206 L-4 helicopters hovering over the Ben Franklin Bridge, the eighty-year-old steel suspension bridge that spanned the Delaware River. Traffic was stopped around wrecked vehicles, and everywhere were ambulances and fire trucks and police cruisers.

And standing in the middle of the mayhem-in front of a sheet that covered a human form-was Matt Payne.

He wore gray trousers, a pale blue starched shirt with a red-striped tie, navy blazer, and shiny black loafers. The slacks had been soiled and the shoes scuffed during the chase. He had his Colt.45 in hand, and was giving the helicopter a thumbs-up gesture.

Bright red lettering at the top of the poster read SGT. MATTHEW PAYNE, and PUBLIC ENEMY #1 was along the bottom.

Simpson clicked on the ECC button.

“Yeah, Harv,” Kerry Rapier’s voice came over Simpson’s headset. “Saw it on the monitor here. I’ve sent word up the chain of command.”

“Payne didn’t shoot that guy, if I remember right.”

“You’re right. That guy-something Jones. . Kenny Jones-had just fled the scene of a shooting. He stole a minivan, and Matt pursued him in an unmarked Crown Vic. Jones managed to get on the bridge going the wrong way-into seven lanes of oncoming traffic. Payne caught up in the Police Interceptor and executed a textbook PIT maneuver, bumping the minivan so that Jones spun out and hit the zipper barrier.”

“Who knows how many lives he saved doing that. But you get no points for that, huh?”

“No kidding. And then Jones ditched the minivan and made a run for it-with Payne on foot in hot pursuit. It was anyone’s guess what the hell the guy would do next-probably carjack someone headed toward Camden-but then he blindly ran into the path of a bus.”

“At least there’s not a poster of Jones.”

“I wouldn’t speak too soon, Harv.”

Simpson grunted as the screen then showed the men placing another poster at the back of the van, this one of a pudgy, balding, middle-aged white male wearing a coat and tie.

“Who is Cairns?” Simpson said, reading the poster.

“The casino jewelry store manager shot this morning. Guess he wasn’t ‘young’ enough.”

“Huh?” Simpson said, then added, “Oh.”

He saw that, while the poster had listed the name, Malcolm Cairns, and the white circle with a red MURDER VICTIM #361, there was no age mentioned. It was clear, however, he was long past his twenties and thirties.

The next three males shown on the posters were labeled as murder victims 350, 351, 352. Ricardo Ramírez was a chunky twenty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican, Héctor Ramírez a swarthy forty-year-old Cuban, and Dmitri Gurnov a tall, wiry, thirty-year-old Russian with sunken eyes and a three-day growth of beard.

“Aren’t those guys from Payne’s shoot-out last month on the casino boardwalk, Kerry?”

“Yeah, but it was the Russian who whacked the Cuban Ramírez, and maybe five minutes later Ricky Ramírez killed Gurnov. Then when Ricky Ramírez started shooting at Jim Byrth-”

“That Texas Ranger who was up here?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Ramírez shot at Byrth and then took shots at the helo that came on station and was lighting up the scene. When Matt ordered Ramírez to drop the weapon, the bad guy made the mistake of getting in a shoot-out with the good ol’ Wyatt Earp of the Main Line. That poster attests to the fact that it didn’t turn out too good for Ramírez.”

“Why the hell do they get included in this? Because Payne took out one? An active shooter who’d just killed a guy? That’s pure horseshit.”

“Well, technically they all are homicides and made the list. But I take your point.”

The next poster was of an attractive, petite nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican. Krystal Angel Gonzalez was listed as MURDER VICTIM #348.

Rapier said: “And there’s the poor girl who made the mistake of getting involved with Ricky Ramírez.”

“That’s the girl who was killed in the home invasion in Old City last month, right?”

“Yeah. Tragic story. Spent most of her life in and out of foster homes, then got conned by Ramírez. All the details haven’t come out, but what we do know is that Ramírez was running drugs and hookers out of a dive bar in Kensington. He made the Gonzalez girl think she was his girlfriend, then tried to pimp her out, and beat her when she wouldn’t do it.”

Simpson grunted again. “Same old story. You’re right-tragic.”

“Same story but with a twist. After he began beating her, she got her hands on his books-contacts, schedules, everything-”

“And passed them to the woman who ran the foster home,” Simpson finished. “I heard that. And the woman went into hiding when she found the girl killed in her fancy house, the place set afire with Molotov cocktails.”

“And the woman who went into hiding used the books as leverage to get to Ricky Ramírez and the Russian, who owned the dive bar.”

“Nice guys. And now all dead guys. Sergeant Payne should get credit for all three.”

They watched as the final posters were being put up-with Payne’s Public Enemy #1 poster being affixed to the front of the lectern.

“Those bastards,” Rapier said. “Harv, if you knew Matt, you’d know he’d rather not get credit for even one. It’s why this all stinks. Anyway, I’ll check back in a bit.”

“I’ll be here with bells on,” Simpson said, reaching for the thermos.

–

Five minutes later, Simpson watched over the lip of his stainless steel cup as a new shiny black Lincoln Navigator came flying up Twenty-ninth and then, tires screeching, pulled up onto the sidewalk behind the rental box truck. The driver of the SUV slipped a paperboard sign on the dash that had a facsimile of a crucifix and the wording CLERGY-ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS.

Simpson saw the SUV’s right rear door swing open. Out stepped Josiah Cross. The tall, skinny, bearded forty-year-old African-American wore a black cloak with a white clerical collar.

Bingo, Simpson thought.

He zoomed in for a close-up as Cross, dodging traffic, then walked out into the middle of Twenty-ninth Street. Cross put hands on his hips as he looked up at the banner on the yellow rental truck, then surveyed the stage and its posters, and nodded appreciatively.

He turned to start walking back toward the sidewalk-and almost stepped right in front of a car.

As the driver stood on the horn, and then the accelerator, Cross quickly stepped backward out of the path of the roaring car. Then, before he could catch himself, Cross pumped his right arm above his head, his fist in a ball, middle finger extended.

Simpson let out a loud laugh that filled the van.

Cross composed himself, then turned and made it to the sidewalk without further incident.

He went to the stage, hopped on it, and then surveyed the view from there. This time he raised both hands above his head, all fingers extended, turning right and then left, addressing an imaginary crowd. He then, apparently satisfied, nodded and lowered his arms, then hopped down from the stage.

As he walked purposefully toward the open red front door, a short, heavyset black male came out with a cordless phone handset and extended it toward Cross. He wore black jeans and a long-sleeved yellow T-shirt on the front of which was what at first glance looked like the logotype of the Warner Brothers movie studio.

But it wasn’t.

Nice, Simpson thought.

“WarnaBrotha.”

Keeping the no-snitching real in the hood.

How many of these murders can be directly connected to that bullshit? Nobody talking about who the doers are?

He watched Cross take the phone and follow the male back inside.

Simpson shook his head as he reached down and poured another cup of coffee.