Deadly Assets

[FIVE]

Rittenhouse Square

Center City, Philadelphia

Sunday, December 16, 8:20 A.M.

Despite the fact that his apartment was in complete disarray, with half-packed moving boxes cluttering every corner, Matt Payne opted for Tony Harris to drop him off in Center City so that he could get his shower and change of clothes there.

While Payne had more or less already moved into Amanda Law’s luxury penthouse condominum in Northern Liberties, going there would have meant him being very careful not to wake her-she had only a couple hours earlier texted him that she’d just returned from some emergency at the hospital.

To Payne, it simply did not seem possible that he could get in the one-bedroom condo, get past Luna without the dog greeting him with happy whines and her tail thumping on the wall, get in and out of the shower, then dig clean clothes out of the closet, and finally get back past Luna and out of the condo-all without making a sound, or sounds, that would disturb Amanda’s rest.

And so it was off to Payne’s tiny apartment, which was in the garret atop the hundred-fifty-year-old brownstone that presently housed the business offices of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society. The building, overlooking what was generally considered to be the most attractive of Philadelphia’s public squares, and certainly was among the most expensive real estate in the city, had been in the Payne family since it was built.

When the brownstone’s three lower main floors had been converted to modern office space, the existing apartment, its small rooms and slanted walls making it practically unleasable as office space, had been left alone. And Matt, because police department rules requiring its members, after a six-month grace period if necessary, to live within the City of Philadelphia, had made it his home.

–

Payne put the contents of his pockets next to his Colt.45 and cellular telephone on one of the glass shelves above the bathroom sink. He then tossed his dirty clothes into one of the cardboard boxes that sat just outside the door.

He poured a dab of face wash that Amanda had bought him into his palm and began scrubbing his stubble. He had immediately decided against shaving because, for one, he was exhausted and just didn’t feel like it was a good idea to risk running a razor-sharp blade across his neck, and, two, because he felt that an unshaven look would be a better fit in the hood.

His cell phone made a Ping! and when he raised his head from the sink he saw an image of a Marine Unit vessel, its emergency lights flashing, holding its position maybe twenty feet off a brush-covered riverbank.

What the hell? Payne thought.

Most likely, the photograph had been taken from above, Payne decided, from a police helicopter.

The message read that it had been sent by Kerry Rapier.

There then came another Ping! and a new photograph from Rapier, a close-up, appeared in place of the first. It was taken from the police boat itself. It showed a large male’s body, clad only in a T-shirt and blue jeans and work boots, laying facedown at the water’s edge along a strip of large rocks that protected the riverbank from erosion.

Payne’s phone then began to ring, and he quickly wiped his face, then took the phone from the glass shelf.

“You got my attention, Corporal.”

“Those images come through okay?” Kerry Rapier said.

“Yeah. What am I looking at?”

“The aerial shot of the scene I got from Tac Air. And the other-sent in from the Marine Unit-shows one of the doers in the O’Brien case. He was pronounced at the scene.”

Payne always found it interesting that most people preferred the shorthand version of “pronounced dead.” He thought it was almost like a superstition that no one liked to actually say the key word.

“No shit? That was fast. .”

“At seven this morning,” Rapier explained, “a maintenance crew-they were working on that train trestle that spans the Schuylkill River just upstream from the Bartram’s Garden property-saw the body. It was below them, along the bank, caught up on that riprap.”

“They get his fingerprints run?”

“In the process. But he had Kevin O’Brien’s credit cards, an AmEx and a PNC Visa debit, in his jeans pocket.”

“The Crime Scene guys confirmed that there were two distinct sets of bootprints,” Payne said. “So, assuming this actually is one of the killers, at least one more is still out there.”

“Maybe one guy whacked the other? Set him up with the credit cards?”

“That can’t be ruled out. But, based on what we know about the killers of the reporter in San Antone, I’m betting that they both got whacked. And that’s what I meant by ‘one more still out there’-that other body will probably pop up next spring.”

“Why next spring? That’s four, five months.”

“In winter, bodies tend to sink and stay down in the cold water.”

“That’s right. I knew that.”

When the river water warmed in the spring, whatever bodies were in it also became warm, and, once warm, the process of decomposition accelerated. The gases that were created by that process then made the corpses buoyant, causing them to rise to the surface.

“That’s always a lovely time of year,” Rapier said. “Wouldn’t want to be in the Marine Unit fishing them out.”

“Yeah. Let me know when there’s a positive ID, Kerry, and anything else,” Payne said, then broke off the call.

Looking absently at the phone, Payne thought: I wonder if there could be any connection with Cross and Hooks and O’Brien’s story about the ring of Mexican nationals pushing black tar heroin in Kensington and Strawberry Mansion?

Or is it simply a case of the streets being flooded with cheap smack?

They just took down a couple cartel guys in the Bronx with almost a hundred keys, all uncut, some of it headed for here.

It’s everywhere. .

Payne then texted Mickey O’Hara: “Just got word that the body of a Hispanic male was found on the shore of the Schuylkill. He had Tim O’Brien’s credit cards in his pocket. More info when I know more. How are you doing?”

He hit SEND, looked a long moment at his phone to see if he would reply, and then put it back on the shelf and finally grabbed a shower.

–

Fifteen minutes later, Payne stepped around boxes in the apartment while pulling on a Temple University sweatshirt. He yawned deeply. He glanced at the couch.

I can get a coffee and be okay, he thought.

Then there came another yawn, this one deeper and long.

He looked at the couch again and realized that his eyes were so tired they felt rough as sandpaper.

Or. . I can just lay down for five minutes, recharge-which will help me think more clearly-and then get the coffee.

He tossed a box that was on the couch to the floor, laid down, put his feet up on a pillow-and was almost instantly snoring.

–

Payne was startled awake by a banging sound.

What the hell?

He felt very groggy.

The banging came again. After a moment, he realized it was someone at his door.

Who the hell?

It was not common knowledge that there was an apartment in the garret. And of those who did know about it, only a select few knew the code to the door on the third floor that gave access to the steps that led up to the apartment door.

He checked his watch.

I slept. . Jesus!. . four hours?

From the other side of the door came Harris’s voice: “Matt? You okay?”

“Coming!”

As he shuffled across the small room, he checked his phone. The screen was packed with a long list of voice and text messages. He scrolled through it quickly and saw the usual that he’d expect to see.

Then one caught his eye. It was from Kerry Rapier: “The blue shirt sitting on O’Hara’s mother got a gut feeling and knocked on her front door. She didn’t answer. He went to the back door. It was unlocked. He cleared the house. Said it looked like she had just cleaned it. But she was gone. And her car.”

Jesus!

Then more knocking.

“I’m coming!”

Payne flipped the dead bolts and opened the door.

He greeted Harris: “Not dead yet, pal.”

–

“McCrory said he was going to see Pookie,” Harris explained once he was inside the apartment, “then tried to reach you. But when he could not get you, he called me.”

“Sorry for the trouble. I just crashed. And hard.”

“No trouble. I got a little sleep, too. You want to catch up with McCrory? He said the house is on Clementine, down the street from where Dante Holmes got whacked. Said to just let him know when you want to meet.”

“Yeah. But hold on.”

Payne scrolled through his messages.

“Nothing new here on Cross or Hooks. You hear anything?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Something needs to break,” Payne said. “Let me grab a hat. You want to tell McCrory we’re en route?”

“Sure.”

–

As Payne was locking his apartment door, his phone vibrated.

Mickey. About time. .

Payne thumbed the glass screen and the complete text of O’Hara’s message came up: “Got it. Thanks. Sadly, that death doesn’t bring back Tim and Emily. Remember me telling you about the EB-5 visas? There’s more to that story. But, first, tomorrow I’m running O’Brien’s next story-about the Cartel del Nuevo Acuña laundering its dirty money into gold. Erring on the side of caution, I’ll be out of pocket for a few days after this story breaks. Be safe, Matty.”

Gold? My God! Payne thought, then shook his head, recalling the conversation about the visas:

“Matty, you know that high-rise on Arch that you blew a gasket over?”

“The one the Poster Boy for Billionaires got the hundred million in tax breaks for? What about it?”

“You ever hear about EB-5 visas?”

“Yeah. And I remember hearing on a Philly News Now broadcast that Rapp Badde’s PEGI is using them for some of the funding of that new sports complex.”

“Well, ol’ Willie Lane greased the skids for Fuller’s company to get EB-5 funding to build his project.”

“Why not Badde?”

“Two reasons. One, Center City isn’t suffering economically like the hard-hit areas and thus does not meet standards under the Philadelphia Economic Gentrification Initiative.”

“And two?”

“Two, Lane is council president and can yank Badde’s chairmanship of HUD at any time-actually, officially ‘reassign’ his duties where he believes they best could be utilized-say, on the Parking Meter Coin Collecting Committee. .”

Payne chuckled.

“. . and thus Badde doesn’t want to rock the boat.”

“But,” Matt said, “as damn disgusting as that ‘fund a visa, get a fast green card’ program is, it’s legal.”

“The problem is where the money is coming from. That’s a different story-a big one, according to O’Brien.”

Payne then remembered how O’Hara had replied when he asked how O’Hara squared working for Francis Fuller-to wit, by quoting Sun Tzu’s “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

—

Now, Payne thought, the lesson learned here is: Don’t piss off an Irishman.

O’Hara is not afraid of Five-Eff.

Or the cartels.

–

Tony Harris was behind the wheel of the unmarked Crown Victoria waiting at the curb. He had his cell phone to his ear.

Payne pulled open the front passenger door.

“Okay, Dick, we will see you in a few,” Harris said as Payne settled in the seat.

Harris broke off the call and placed the phone in the dashboard mount.

“I’m starved, Matt. You hungry?”

“What the hell?” He pointed at Harris’s phone. “Wasn’t that just McCrory? What did he say about him-us-meeting Pookie?”

“There’s no rush.”

“Why?”

“Pookie’s instead gone to meet his maker.”

Payne slowly shook his head.

Harris went on: “Got whacked about a half hour ago. Dick’s at the scene waiting for the M.E. to arrive. Happened right down the street from where Dante got whacked.”

Payne stared out the windshield.

“Shit,” he said, then sighed.

After a long moment, Payne then looked at Harris, raised his eyebrows, and said, “It’s a bit out of the way, but I could really go for a Dalessandro’s cheesesteak. I’ll even let you buy.”

Harris smirked, and dropped the gear selector into drive.

“You’re the best, Marshal Earp.”