The Last Witness

[TWO]

New Hope House

Hazzard Street, Philadelphia

Monday, November 17, 6:01 P.M.

“Next block make a right,” Matt Payne said, as Jim Byrth drove the rental Ford SUV through Kensington. When they had made the turn, it was not difficult, even in the shadows, to make out the flophouse and the small crowd outside it midway down the snow-crusted street.

Byrth saw Payne looking at his cell phone, which he had put in the right cup holder of the console.

After going into the phone’s mobile multi-line application and activating a new number-giving him a third line, in addition to his personal and office ones-Payne had used it to call the number on the grease-stained note, then to send it a text massage.

“Like Jason said, Matt, it was worth the chance. There could be any number of reasons why there’s been no reply yet.”

Payne shook his head. “It just makes me wonder what-if any-dominoes it started toppling. My call going right into voice mail and then no reply to the text could mean the phone is out of range or dead or. .”

“Or it could mean nothing. Maybe it’s just because the badass-‘Yo, talk to me’-didn’t recognize the number and didn’t want to answer. At some point he will get the text.”

“Meaning no news is good news. . You’re probably right. But something needs to break with this.” He looked up ahead. “What makes me think our luck here will be just as crappy?”

New Hope was in a two-story row house that had seen some really bad days-not unlike the neighboring properties that were in even worse shape-and certainly far better ones in its hundred years. Its brick exterior looked as if it had been painted in the last year or so. Faint graffiti was still visible through the whitewash, and there was new graffiti tagging the sign that read “New hope-for a new life.” Industrial steel roll-up doors, painted canary yellow, covered the two first-floor windows and the front door. The ones over the windows were rolled up, and the tall one over the door was halfway open, and moving upward.

“Well, look at that,” Payne then said, “at least we’re just in time for high tea.”

Byrth pulled to the curb across the street from the flophouse. As he put the SUV in park and turned off the engine, they took in the scene.

Ten women, standing close together on the snow-packed sidewalk, formed a crooked single-file line that began at the door of the house. They appeared to range in age from their late teens to maybe early forties. Some were smoking, some talking-all of them clearly bitter cold despite wearing multiple layers of ill-fitting thrift shop clothing.

A ragged group of a half dozen men-mostly brown-skinned and gaunt, with sullen looks-milled near the end of the line.

A few of them glanced at the dirty SUV. They quickly lost interest. They were focused on the opening door, obviously more concerned with getting inside, out of the cold.

“First come, first served?” Byrth said.

“Yeah, some places will give women priority. But if they don’t get here early, and before they later lock the door, they’re going to have to find another place, even if they’ve paid for the month. Demand for an empty bed far outstrips supply.”

“Like that guy?” Byrth said.

Just up the street a gray-haired man, his clothes filthy, was curled up on the stoop of a row house. He clutched a brown liquor bottle to his chest. On the front door above the uneven hand-painted lettering that read “House of Lord Fellowship” there was a simple golden crucifix.

“A church across the street from a flophouse?” Byrth then said. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Amen to that, Brother Byrth,” Payne said. He pointed over his shoulder, adding, “And there’s a middle school two blocks thataway. Think any of these pillars of the community ever stagger past the playground? Is it any wonder the kids growing up here think that crackheads, drunks, and hookers are the norm of society?”

Matt pushed back the tail of his coat and pulled his.45 off his right hip.

Like Byrth, he was sitting on his seat belt, its tang inserted in the buckle behind him. The practice of securing the belts in such a way-which of course violated Section 4581 of the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code requiring the wearing of passive restraints, and accordingly was “officially” prohibited by the department-not only stopped the damn seat sensor from incessantly sounding its annoying ding-ding-ding warning. It more importantly also allowed them faster access to their pistols and to exiting the vehicle.

With a shooter fast approaching, being “safely” strapped to a seat could turn a vehicle into a coffin.

Payne, aiming at the floorboard, thumbed the hammer back, then flipped up the lever to lock it, then slipped the pistol back behind his waistband.

Looking out the windshield and studying the crowd, Matt said, “You ever hear that a pistol is like a parachute?”

Byrth grinned. “Tell me. How?”

“When you need one, and you don’t have one, you’ll never have the need for one again.”

Byrth chuckled.

“Pabody,” he said, “the sheriff who found this Cusick girl’s ID in that trailer in the woods? He served in Special Forces and had his share of jumps-he’ll appreciate that one.” He looked at the group of men. The tallest one-who wore a multicolored knit cap and had thick dreadlocks and a scraggly beard-was jabbing his finger in another man’s face. “It’s like having to deal with the pissed-off Rastafarian there. Pabody’s always saying, ‘We’re trying to win hearts and minds, but we’re willing to splatter ’em if necessary.’”

At the end of the line were two Latinas who looked about thirty but could have been younger. One had on an oversized faded blue sweatshirt, the hood covering her head. The heavier one wore a patched black knee-length woolen coat. They were passing a stub of a joint between them. After a moment, the heavier of the two took the last toke, a very short one, and tossed the sliver of glowing paper to the ground, crushing it into the snow with the toe of her once white sneaker.

The Jamaican walked over and said something to the girl in the sweatshirt. She impatiently waved him off and turned her back to him. He had the last word, an angry one, then went back to the other men.

Byrth glanced at Payne.

“Call me a skeptic,” he said, “but I’m guessing neither girl-or any of them, for that matter-is going to be rushing across the street to confess their sins of the day. . ”

Payne grunted. “If you mean the pot, the times they are a-changin’, as someone once said. They know nothing’s going to happen. These days the SOP for that would be to charge them with personal possession. Less than thirty grams. That would get them a night in jail, and they’d just pay the fine.”

“That’s what happened with the Cusick girl?”

“Yeah. Twice, as I recall. But she skipped the option of being sent to SAM-Small Amount of Marijuana program. It’s another couple hundred bucks to take a one-day drug class, and then the charge is expunged from the record.”

“All but decriminalized.”

“All but. In these austere times, the powers-particularly the DA, who’s pretty outspoken about it-have decided that spending thousands to prosecute someone with twenty bucks of weed isn’t exactly efficient. They say it’s a money-saver. Frees up courts for bigger cases. Keeps cops on the street, not filling out paperwork or waiting to testify in court and collecting overtime.”

“A couple hundred? These people don’t look like they have a couple bucks.”

“No argument.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and grabbed the door handle. “Come on. Let’s see what they have to say. If anything.”

Byrth cocked and locked the.45 from his hip holster, then pulled his Stetson from the backseat.

As they crossed the street, Payne wasn’t surprised that now all eyes were on them.

“Damn, this cold is miserable!” Byrth muttered.

Like Payne, he had left his coat unzipped. Suffering the wicked weather-like not wearing a seat belt in the event of a wreck-was the trade-off for faster access to their weapons.

Toward the front of the line, they walked past a pale-skinned girl with dark hair. She looked maybe eighteen and, though it took a little imagination to see it, had a pretty face. Across her white cheeks was a disturbing pinkish brown web of scarring that looked not quite healed. The lines cut from near her temples to her chin, and from ears to nose. She lowered her head and turned away.

After they passed, Payne looked at Byrth and answered the unasked question: “That’s called a ‘buck-fitty.’ She pissed off someone, probably by saying no to some gangbanger’s girlfriend who was trying to recruit her as fresh meat for her gangbanger buddies. Or maybe to pimp her out. Probably both.”

“She dissed them?” Byrth asked, but it was more a statement.

Payne nodded. “And to make the point you don’t disrespect the gang, they disfigured her. Held her down so the dissed gangbanger’s girlfriend could carve her up with a box cutter razor blade. Buck-fitty is a hundred fifty, the number of stitches they hope it will take to close the wounds.”

Byrth exhaled audibly. “I’ve heard of that happening in Houston’s Third Ward and in south Dallas, just not called that. Barbaric beyond belief. .”

Payne and Byrth reached the two young women bringing up the end of the line. They reeked of marijuana. Expressionless, they looked numb from the cold, if not the pot, and seemed slow to focus when Payne held out his badge. He saw that under the blue hoodie the woman had a black eye, one that was almost faded.

“Evening, ladies,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Payne. Need to ask you a couple quick questions.”

They did not answer and made no eye contact.

No surprise, Payne thought. No one talks to cops.

But we have to go through the motions. .

Byrth already had his cell phone out and was holding it up, showing them Elizabeth Cusick’s photograph on the Department of Transportation ID.

“Do you know this girl?” Byrth said, then added in Spanish, “?Conoces a Elizabeth?”

They both glanced at it, then at each other, then shrugged and slowly shook their heads.

“How long have you been coming here?” Payne pursued.

They shrugged again. Then the line moved forward. They wordlessly turned and quickly shuffled across the snow to close the gap.

Payne looked at Byrth, and nodded toward the door.

“Let’s just work the line. We know where they’re going if we need them.”

Ten minutes later, they had reached the door. Not a single person acknowledged knowing the girl in the ID photograph.

“Let’s see how much worse our luck can get in here,” Payne said, and stepped through the doorway.

The house was warm but had a stale, musty odor.

Just inside the door, a folding table was set up, behind which an obese black woman sat in a folding chair. Her weight stressed the flimsy chair to the point it leaned left. She had her head down and was writing on a yellow legal pad. When she looked up she immediately looked right past Payne, then farther up, at the Hat. The white of her eyes grew impossibly large. Then she tried to recover from the initial surprise.

“What you two want?” she blurted, finally finding her voice as her big eyes darted between them.

“I’m guessing you’re in charge?” Payne said.

“Guess all you want. Who’s asking?”

Matt showed her his badge.

“No offense,” she then said, “but you don’t look like you walk no beat. Never can trust who’s who coming round here.”

“I’m with the Homicide Unit,” Payne said, as he saw Byrth surveying the area.

The dirty living room, with a flight of stairs along the left wall leading to the upstairs bedrooms and baths, had a wooden floor worn bare. A mismatched pair of sagging threadbare sofas faced each other in the middle. A dozen plastic stackable chairs were scattered around a low table that held an old television with an antenna of aluminum-foil-wrapped rabbit ears and a picture that flickered between color and black and white. On the right wall, beyond one of the sofas, a dusty hand-printed poster with faded lettering read: NO SMOKING, NO DRINKING, NO DRUGGING, NO DAM EXCUSE!

“Someone dead?” the woman said, her tone matter-of-fact.

“From the looks of it. .” Byrth muttered, looking toward the back of the room.

The woman’s eyes went to him, and not pleasantly.

Payne forced back a grin.

“We’re looking into that,” Payne said, “and need to ask some questions.”

She glanced over her shoulder toward the open doorway at the back wall.

“Eldridge!” she called out.

A moment later a muscular black male stood backlit in the doorway that obviously led to the kitchen. Eldridge wore a stained chef’s apron. With a practiced rhythm he was working a large carving knife up and down a foot-long sharpening rod. He had very short gray hair and looked to be in his forties. His bulging biceps stretched the sleeves of his black T-shirt.

The enormous black woman looked at Payne.

“He the man. Talk to him.”