The Traffickers

ONE

Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 5:10 A.M.

After Matt Payne had gently lowered the screen of his notebook computer, closing it to put it in sleep mode, he’d gotten up from the desk and crossed the room to go into his bedroom. It had been a short trip.

“Small” didn’t begin to describe the apartment, which actually was the garret of a brownstone mansion, 150 years old and recently renovated. The first three floors had been converted to office space, the current occupant being the Delaware Cancer Society. The garret had been turned into an apartment-no more than a bedroom barely able to contain its king-size bed (and nothing more, the few lamps and shelves wall-mounted), a bath not large enough for a bathtub, a kitchen separated from the dining area by a sliding partition stuck half-open, and a living room from which a small area of historic Rittenhouse Square could be seen if one stood high on tiptoe and squinted through one of its two eighteen-inch-wide dormer windows.

Payne pulled on a pair of lightweight khakis, a black T-shirt, and then a short-sleeved striped cotton shirt that he left unbuttoned down the front and the shirttail untucked. He slipped his wallet and badge into the back pockets of his pants, and his cellular phone and two magazines of.45 ACP ammo in the front ones. His bare feet went into a well-worn pair of boater’s deck shoes. Then he pulled back the tail of his striped cotton shirt. He snugged his loaded Colt Officer’s Model semiautomatic pistol-six rounds in the mag, one in the chamber-inside the waistband of his khakis so that it rested comfortably on his right hip. He felt the cold of the stainless-steel pistol through his clothing.

That won’t last long.

There’ll be a sweaty spot there the second I step out of the air-conditioning.

He then took the stairs down to the third-floor landing, where he pushed the button to summon the elevator.

Getting off the elevator in the basement garage, he walked toward his rental car. It was a nondescript Ford midsize sedan that he had come to loathe for its utter blandness, the car’s only redeeming quality being that it was so nondescript, and so white, that no one tended to notice it, making it an unlikely candidate for key-scratched doors and other such abuse afforded nicer cars in the city. He wasn’t sure if the New York State license plates were a plus or a minus. But he had decided that the best thing about the rental car was that his insurance company was paying for it while they decided what to do with-which meant how much they were going to cough up to fix or replace-his shot-up Porsche.

Payne looked somewhat wistfully at the empty parking spot that normally held his 911. He really missed the car-it was a helluva lot of fun driving it hard on Bucks County’s two-lane country roads. Yet even if he had it now, he sure as hell would not use it, as where he was going was not the place for a nearly new sports car of any kind. While Rittenhouse Square had some of the oldest and most expensive real estate in Philadelphia, if not all of Pennsylvania, Frankford Avenue-though only miles away-cut through some rough neighborhoods that were a world removed.

Matt pulled out of the garage, cursing the sloppy feel of the Ford’s front-wheel drive as he drove to Eighteenth Street, deciding at the last moment to take Eighteenth and not Broad Street north, the latter of which would have submitted him to the circle jerk of traffic that was around City Hall. He’d long ago decided it was best to avoid that, even at this very early hour.

His mind wandered as he drove north on Eighteenth through the heart of Center City. Force of habit almost had him turn right on Race Street, his usual route when driving from Rittenhouse Square to the Roundhouse-the decades-old Philadelphia Police Headquarters, at Eighth and Race, which was built in a circle design and was said not to have a single straight wall, including in the elevators.

Payne stopped himself from turning just as he’d flipped the flimsy turn-signal stalk-If it wasn’t for me noticing that, I’d have automatically made the turn, and I really don’t feel like seeing the Roundhouse right now in my frame of mind-then jerked the wheel back left to stay in his northbound lane. This act earned him the wave of the driver in the Chevy sedan behind him-the “wave” consisting of but a single digit and complemented with a burst of horn.

Chalk another one up to Ford.

And maybe score one for the New York tags.

That guy probably thinks I’m just a poor schmuck lost in his rental car.

If I’d been in the Porsche, he’d have ridden my bumper and his horn forever.

Two blocks later, he turned east on Vine Street and followed it to Broad, then hung a left on Broad. A few blocks later, crossing Spring Garden, he glanced to the right at Lodge No. 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police-the cops’ labor union-and wasn’t surprised to see the building dark and the parking lot empty.

Farther north on Broad, however, he was surprised to see that another building was being more or less renovated-residents trying against the odds to seed some good in another neighborhood that long had been and, if history was any indicator, probably would remain blighted.

The decay of the city depressed him, and that caused him to think about the reason why he lived in Philly anyway.

Matt Payne, who had grown up in the wealthy comfort of Wallingford, outside Philadelphia proper, lived in Philly because he had to: It forever had been a rule that in order to apply to be a member of the Philadelphia Police Department you had to show proof that you had been a legal resident of the City of Philadelphia for at least one year prior.

But recently that fifty-year-old rule had been changed somewhat. And there were at least a couple very good reasons for that, not the least of the which was that the Thin Blue Line was getting thinner and thinner in Philly. The city needed not only to recruit more cops-and, it went without saying, more good cops, “good” clearly meaning candidates who were best qualified-but needed to actually hire those recruited and then retain them after their probationary period. Preferably for twenty or more years, until retirement.

When cops did quit the force, the City of Philadelphia Office of Human Resources approached them with a one-page form, “No. HR-106-B, Questionnaire, Upon Separation of Civil Service Employee,” the ultimate purpose of which was to learn of any possible problems that existed and, it was hoped, could be corrected. While it certainly was too late to stop the man or woman from quitting, the information from the completed form might help fix what had caused their decision to leave the force in the first place.

Or, at least, so went the logic of the HR midlevel bureaucrat who had come up with the idea of the form, which had come to be known as the Don’t Let the Doorknob Hit You in the Ass Exit Interview. It was arguable if the form had effected any genuinely helpful changes in policy, or if it just created some paper-pushing, number-crunching bureaucrat-or bureaucrats, plural-with job security.

Matt had heard time and again that it cost the city significant money to train the new cops. Particularly during the recruits’ time in the academy, where it still managed to surprise even the most hardened of the veteran instructors how many recruits only six months prior had not, for example, ever had a driver’s license, or had not handled a firearm-or both. Thus, the particular recruits had to be taught the basics of driving an automobile and firing a pistol before moving on to more refined skills required of a Philadelphia Police Officer in the execution of his or her duties when using a vehicle or a loaded weapon.

Maybe even, Matt thought with a grin, when using a car and gun at the same time.

Matt also had heard that more than a few of those who either had quit or had turned down offers to join the force, when polled for their reason or reasons why, had said that chief among them was having to live-and try to raise a family-in, as one wrote, “the very crime-infested cesspool of a city” they would have been sworn to protect.

That sort of description was hard to hear, particularly for one who loved Philadelphia as much as Matt did. But hearing the truth often was hard, and Matt knew that the crime-infested cesspool was not limited to the ghettos. There was plenty of crime to go around. People were being robbed and raped and stabbed from South Philly to Far Northeast, even in Center City.

Bad guys are equal-opportunity offenders.

And so the city officials in their sage way found it within themselves to change that requirement for joining the police department-yet, in their usual half-assed manner, went only so far as to waive the one-year prior-residence requirement, allowing the applicant a six-month period after being hired to become a resident.

So every cop still has to reside in the city.

And I’ve never understood that.

A lot of cities allow you to live elsewhere than in the actual city you serve, say within a half hour of your assignment.

That forty-grand salary a Philly police officer recruit gets could stretch further in the suburbs.

Then again, a lot of cities like Philly wanted their cops close and handy to their crime-infested cesspool…

Matt’s mind, as he continued northbound on Broad, wandered back to his conversation with Chad Nesbitt.

Hell, there’re a lot of things I don’t understand.

Starting with what’s going on now with Chad?

And it was Skipper-J. Warren Olde-who jumped into that pool at the Philly Inn. One helluva cannonball.

Now, there’s a real dipshit. Always had some con going, thinking he was more clever than he really was, and sometimes getting bit in the ass because of it.

Not a bad guy, and could be funny, especially drunk, which lucky for him was often.

And he’d really been boozing it up at the motel when he jumped off the roof.

Or, maybe, when he fell.

But his biggest problem was that he couldn’t stick with anything. First they blamed it on his trust fund taking away any motivation. Then they found out he had some slight mental imbalance that pills would fix-if he just took the damned meds and stopped self-medicating with booze and whatever else.

And Chad, for whatever reason, maybe because they were the hotshots on the academy squash team, was always bailing him out.

Always.

Like after that time Skipper drove into the reservoir with that really nice Audi-and that gorgeous Becca Benjamin.

Dad said he’d heard Skipper’s lawyer say that it’d cost a small fortune to make that go away.

An absolutely gorgeous girl.

Still hurts to remember the day I heard they were dating…

Matthew Mark Payne had known Rebecca Stockton Benjamin longer than J. Warren Olde had, though certainly not as intimately. The Paynes and Benjamins had worshipped at the same small Episcopal Church in Wallingford. Its sanctuary physically was more chapel-like than church-size, and its parishioners numbered no more than five hundred. Thus, while growing up, Matt and Becca had seen each other practically every Sunday. They often were in the same youth group meetings, retreats, camps, and the like. Matt had always liked the spunky, outgoing girl-few didn’t-and even thought that there had been some sort of mutual interest.

A crush?

Then, when Skipper took up with the blossoming sixteen-year-old, Matt had been really pissed. Especially when he saw the direction Skipper was taking her… and she was blindly following.

At Cecil Moore Avenue, Matt hung a right, skirting Temple University, then about a mile later he picked up Frankford and followed it north another mile or so-until he saw the flashing emergency lights.

Jesus! Look at all the fire trucks.

Even a HazMat unit.

To the side of that heavy-duty red Ford truck, a fireman was using a fire hose to wash down two men wearing bright orange HazMat “moonwalker” bodysuits, rubber boots, and full-face hoods. Another was respooling smaller HazMat hoses onto the roof of the truck’s equipment box.

What HazMats are at a motel?

And judging by all the cruisers, there can’t be a cop left at the Roundhouse.

His pulse quickened at the sight.

Is my heart beating faster because I want to rush in?

Or because it wants me to run away as fast as my feckless rental Ford can go?

A pair of police cruisers, their roof light bars flashing, was parked at an angle across the northbound lanes of Frankford just south of the Philly Inn. A cop stood in the street beside them directing traffic to detour onto a side street.

Payne looked ahead and saw the neon sign for the All-Nite Diner, then the diner itself and the crowd gathered in front of it. He hit his turn signal to go into the diner parking lot, and when the cop saw it blinking, he motioned approval for the nondescript Ford sedan to take its turn.