The Traffickers

ONE

Room 52 The Philly Inn Wednesday, September 9, 6:05 A.M.

“Detective, it’s murder, is what it is,” Javier Iglesia said. “No question in my mind.”

Homicide Detective Anthony Harris, standing outside the motel room and looking in through the hole that once held a plate-glass window, was watching the technicians from the Medical Examiner’s Office work the scene.

The masonry walls and ceiling of the interior-and practically everything therein-had been burned at such a high temperature that there were no distinct colors and almost no shades-just the grayish-white hue of ash everywhere. Harris saw that the mattresses had been scorched to such a degree that only their metal frames and coils remained, and these were melted almost to a point of being unrecognizable.

Two shiny black vinyl body-transport bags-open on the floor in the middle of the room, each containing a charred body-were a stark contrast to their surroundings, as were the technicians methodically documenting the scene.

One representative of the Medical Examiner’s Office was a photographer, an attractive black female in her midtwenties wearing slacks and a dark blouse. She had slender features, and stood right at five feet, maybe a hundred pounds. She moved with her camera-a bulky professional-grade Nikon digital model, its strobe firing off flashes that washed the room in a pulsing light that bordered on the surreal-in such a graceful fluid manner that it looked to be a natural extension of her.

Harris had worked crime scenes with Javier Iglesia, the lead technician, and was aware of his well-earned reputation for being somewhat loquacious. He was a beefy but fit thirty-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry. He wore black jeans, a white knit polo, and a frayed and stained white thigh-length lab coat with two big patch pockets on the front. Both he and the photographer had transparent blue plastic booties over their black athletic shoes and tan-colored synthetic polymer gloves on their hands.

“It’s Shakespearean, is what it is,” Iglesia then announced.

Harris shook his head, not understanding. “It’s what, Javier?”

“ ‘Cut his weasand with thy knife.’ From The Tempest. William Shakespeare. Weasand’s another word for the windpipe, which is the trachea.” He paused. “Of course, it’s for Dr. Mitchell to decide if death was ultimately caused by loss of breath. Or by loss of blood. Or by the blast.”

Dr. Howard Mitchell was the medical examiner. Harris knew the balding, rumpled man, usually found in a well-worn suit, likely would be the one performing the autopsy. Or certainly overseeing it.

Iglesia squatted between the body bags. He pointed to the one on his right.

“But I can tell you that that one died from the blast,” he said, then reached over to the body bag on the left. He pulled down on its opening so that Harris, standing outside the window, could have a better view of the remains. “And this one had what I call a circumcision.”

The photographer chuckled.

Harris said, “What the hell are you talking about, a circumcision?”

Iglesia put two gloved fingers under the dead man’s chin and applied pressure. It caused the head to tip back and reveal the grotesque gap that was a slit across the neck.

“See?” Iglesia said with a grin. “A circumcision, ’cause he’s a damned dickhead.”

The photographer snorted her agreement.

The gash was so big that Harris could easily see that the carotid artery had been neatly severed, too.

That certainly meets the Latin meaning of “homicide”-homo for “human being,” caedere for “cut to kill.”

So then the fire was a cover for a murder?

But who did it?

So far as we know, only one person came out alive.

And he’s not looking like he’s going to make it to lunch.

Iglesia pulled back his fingers and the head bobbed back forward.

He then reached into one of the patch pockets of his lab coat.

“I’m betting,” he said, “that the cut pattern of the flesh will be consistent with the wavelike serrations on the blade of this. And of course that makes it murder.”

He held up a heavy clear plastic bag that contained what was left of a folding pocketknife. It was open, and its blade looked to be about three inches long, the sharpened edge serrated the whole length. The intensity of the heat had discolored the metal of the knife and turned the plastic handle into a melted blob of black goo, at least what remained of it.

Good luck getting a print off that, Harris thought.

“Me, personally?” the talkative Latino went on without prompting, “I’d like to see more of them die, is what I’d like. These drug dealers, they’re all scum-”

“Amen to that,” the photographer chimed in as she fired off another series of shots.

“And you know what they’re doing now, man?” Iglesia went on. “These damn dealers?”

Harris realized that Iglesia had paused, and then it occurred to him that the reason for the pause was that Iglesia was trying to engage him. He wanted Harris to answer.

Which I really don’t want to do, because it’ll only encourage Javier to go on.

And on and on…

After a moment, Harris reluctantly said, “What, Javier?”

With more than a little anger, Iglesia said: “They’re now getting teens, young ones, hooked on horse, is what they’re doing. Kids in my neighborhood doing Mexican black tar heroin, man. And not knowing it, ’cause it’s mixed with candy sugar.” His face showed genuine disgust as he shook his head. “I hope these bastards kill each other, every last one of them. And I can’t think of a better way for them to go down than getting blown up in their own damn meth lab.”

Harris nodded and, not wanting to get into details, said, “I’ve heard something about that.”

“Damn right,” Iglesia said. He sealed the body bags, then looked at Harris. “And you know what else, man?”

Jesus, he’s not going to stop.

Harris suddenly had an inspiration, and held up his left index finger in a Hold that thought one second gesture.

As if responding to the vibrating of his cellular telephone, he pulled it from its clip on his belt, put it to his head, and a little louder than normal said to absolutely no one, “Harris.”

He pretended to listen for a second, then looked at Javier Iglesia, who was watching Harris while he impatiently held his thought a second. Harris mimed that he had to take the call, and Iglesia, looking disappointed, nodded and started to finish up with the job.

As Tony Harris walked away from the motel room window, he realized that pulling out the phone wasn’t exactly a charade. He needed to make a call.

Like all major city police departments, the Philadelphia Police Department was a complex organization. Just its uniformed police numbered nearly 7,000, making it the fourth-largest force in the United States.

The top cop was the commissioner. An appointed position, the commissioner served at the pleasure of the mayor. Under the commissioner were his deputies. Each was responsible for various bureaus-narcotics, special operations, internal affairs, among others-which in turn were commanded by a chief inspector.

There were six patrol divisions, each led by an inspector. And each of the twenty-three patrol districts, commanded by a captain, had four platoons made up of a lieutenant, a pair of sergeants, and some forty officers.

The upper ranks-lieutenant to commissioner-were referred to as “white shirts” because that was the color of their uniform. Likewise, the lower ranks-police recruit to sergeant-were the “blue shirts.”

Their insignia more or less followed that of the military’s. Among the white shirts, the commissioner wore four gold stars, his deputy had three stars, and so on, down to a lieutenant’s single golden bar. And the shoulder of a blue shirt sergeant would bear a patch showing three blue chevrons outlined in silver, while a corporal’s would have two chevrons.

Thus, keeping absolute order was absolutely critical for such a large and complicated department to operate efficiently and effectively. That of course meant the faithful and rigorous following of various protocols and systems and rules, many of which had been in place, or certainly improved upon, since the first foot patrol in the late 1600s.

One such system was the manner in which detectives in the Detective Bureau were assigned a job. The Detective Bureau, as its name suggested, included all the department’s Detectives Units around the city-Central, South, East, et cetera. It also included Special Victims Unit (what in pre-politically correct times had been called Sex Crimes), Major Crimes Unit, and so on.

And it included the Homicide Unit.

The system, known as “The Wheel,” was designed to distribute equitably the jobs that came in to a particular unit. Philadelphia had far more murders than most big American cities. Averaging a killing a day-the wee hours of weekends and full-moon Fridays being especially bloody-there was plenty of Homicide work to go around. Sure as hell, no one wanted to be unfairly assigned another job when they may already have more on their plate than the next guy.

The Wheel wasn’t an actual wheel. It was, instead, a roster listing the detectives on duty at the moment. The detective at the top of the roster was assigned to “man the desk.” When a telephone call came in with a job to investigate, the detective “deskman” got it. Then he consulted the roster to see whose turn it was “next up on the Wheel,” and that detective became the next “deskman.”

It was a logical system. One faithfully followed.

And Detective Tony Harris was about to throw a wrench in the Homicide Unit’s Wheel.

Harris had gone around the corner of the Philly Inn to the line of rooms along the motel’s south side. Next door, near the All-Nite Diner, he could see a large number of the people who’d been evacuated from the motel during the fire.

And that’s where Matt Payne said he is.

And he said he’s got information on this?

What the hell is that all about?

He pressed the key on his cellular phone that caused the device to speed-dial the Homicide office on the second floor of the Roundhouse.

The deskman finally answered the phone on its fifth ring.

“Homicide,” he said with no enthusiasm. “Detective Bari.”

Tony Harris did not dislike Aldo Bari-a heavyset thirty-five-year-old of Italian descent who wore cheap suits with his necktie always loosened and the shirt collar unbuttoned-but he was far from his biggest fan.

Bari was a strict by-the-book type who could quote chapter and verse of police department procedure. It had carried him along just fine on the force. No one could ever accuse Aldo Bari of straying outside the lines of any policy.

Nor, Tony Harris knew, would anyone ever suggest that Bari actually stuck his squat fat neck out for anything. Bari found comfort within the established boundaries. He put in his hours, and not a nanosecond more than he absolutely had to.

“Good morning, Al. Tony Harris.”

“Hey, Harris. What can I do you out of?”

“You’re up on the Wheel?”

“Yeah. Lucky me. I’m off the clock in under two hours, though. What cha got?”

“There’s a job coming in. I’m already on the scene-”

“That’s not exactly kosher, is it?” Bari interrupted.

“-I’m on the scene watching from a distance the guys from the Medical Examiner’s Office. This one’s really got my attention.”

“Really. What is it?”

“You know the Philly Inn on Frankford?”

“That old motel?”

“Right. A meth lab blew up in a room on the back side of the place about two o’clock this morning. The blast rocked my house, damn near blowing me out of bed.”

“An alleged meth lab? No fooling?”

“Alleged” my ass, Harris thought. Go ask the HazMat guys what toxic soup of caustic chemicals they had to clear out of there, Bari.

But Harris ignored him and went on: “When I looked out the window, I saw the glow of flames. So, I drove over to see what’d happened.”

“And?”

“And cutting a long story short, a white female got nailed outside the room that went ‘boom.’ She’d been waiting in one of those really fancy Mercedes SUVs. Apparently she’s hurt pretty badly.”

“Damn drugs.”

“Yeah. Then, as the fire department was battling the blaze, a white male, surprising hell out of everyone, came staggering out of the burning motel room. He and the girl were taken to the Temple ER.”

“That’s it?”

“No. When they got the motel room fire put out, inside they found two bodies, white Hispanic males, charred to a crisp.”

“Nice.”

“One of the critters had his throat slit.”

“Ah. Very nice. But wait. The white guy was the doer? Then he torched the place?”

“I don’t know, Al. If he did, it sure as hell backfired on him.”

Bari chuckled. “ ‘ Backfired.’ ”

Harris ignored him again. “Anyway, Al, there’s a lot of very interesting questions, all unanswered. Which is why I want the job.”

There was a perceptible pause as Bari considered what he’d just heard.

Tony Harris imagined Aldo Bari checking the black Casio watch on his fat wrist, looking at its oversize digital readout to see how close it now was to quitting time and wondering if he could dodge this bullet of a complicated case.

Bari’s probably breaking into a sweat trying to decide which desire to go with-play by the rules, or avoid a new job.

After a moment, Bari said, “Gee, I don’t know, Harris.”

Harris could hear real ambivalence in Bari’s tone.

Bari went on hesitantly: “I’d have to get it cleared first. And the Black Buddha won’t be here for another hour. Or more.”

Lieutenant Jason Washington-the highly respected, articulate, superbly tailored, and very black detective who stood six-foot-three and 225 pounds-was known in Homicide, usually behind his back, as the Black Buddha.

Harris shook his head, more in disappointment than disgust. The clock already was ticking on the first forty-eight hours; outside that window, homicides got harder and harder to solve.

“I understand, Al. Look, the call itself probably won’t come in for at least another hour, anyway. I just need someone to wind up the machine-get the paperwork started for a search warrant, run the pair who’re in Temple Hospital for priors, get their backgrounds. You know, the usual. I just want to get moving on this while it’s fresh.”

Aldo Bari now did indeed check his watch. And he thought: With any luck, that call won’t come till after eight, and then it won’t be my problem.

It’ll belong to the next guy up on the Wheel.

Bari cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, sure. Let me get back to you when either the Black Buddha gets here or the call comes in on the job. We’re talking only an hour, right?”

Tony Harris shook his head again.

Jesus! He’s stalling, which means he’s playing by the rules and avoiding the job.

What a chickenshit.

After a moment, he said, “Okay, Al. Just let me know either way, right away, okay?”

“Absolutely,” Bari said a little too eagerly.

Tony Harris shook his head a final time as he looked at the phone and angrily broke off the call with a stab of his thumb.

I won’t hear from him again for a month of Sundays…

To hell with it. And him.

Tony Harris decided to proceed as if he had the job, if only by starting with making notes on the small spiral-top pad he kept in his blazer’s inside pocket.

He put his phone back in its belt clip, then pulled out the pad.

As he looked up and glanced across the parking lot, he saw a familiar face approaching the POLICE LINE yellow tape from the direction of the diner.

“And so the mystery thickens…”