The Traffickers

FOUR

7701 Brocklehurst Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 8:56 P.M.

Stanley Dowbrowski took a sip of his bourbon, then cocked his head as he looked at his computer screen.

Something there’s not right, he thought.

Stanley Dowbrowski was sixty-five years old and in March had become a widower. He stood five-foot-eight, weighed 225 pounds, and kept his salt-and-pepper hair closely cropped; it looked almost like the three days’ growth of his white beard. He wore thick bifocal eyeglasses and, for their comfort and ease of care, a two-piece athletic warm-up suit with a white cotton sleeveless T-shirt.

Stanley Dowbrowski had once been more or less physically fit. He’d worked out regularly. Now, however, he was in failing health, mostly due to having spent nearly the last half-century burning through pack after pack of cigarettes. The resulting scar tissue on his lungs had reduced their capacity to only thirty percent, which meant that getting around took him great effort, and when he did get around, it was with the aid of an aluminum walker, and with an asthma inhaler in his pocket.

Consequently, Stanley Dowbrowski rarely left the nice comfortable four-bedroom house just off Roosevelt Avenue in Northeast Philly. It was where he and his Betty had reared their two children.

He now, of course, was what people called an empty-nester. The kids were adults with young kids of their own, and living in nearby suburbs. He was grateful that over the years Betty had been able to win most of her many battles against the different cancers. Not only had she been able to spend time with her kids’ kids, but the grandchildren had gotten to know-and have memories of-their wonderful “Grandmama.”

Since Betty’s passing six months before, Stanley Dowbrowski’s kids had begun regularly dropping by to check on Grandpapa. Once a week they brought him food from the grocery and precooked dishes that had been frozen so all he had to do was thaw and warm them.

And they brought their pleas that he sell the old house and come out to live with them in suburbia.

But Stanley Dowbrowski wouldn’t hear of it. He told them that he was far too set in his ways. He was not going to become a bother to them. They had their families, and he had his home and all its dear memories.

“I’ll leave when the boys from the Philly ME’s office tie a tag on my big toe,” Stanley Dowbrowski dramatically announced more than once, “and carry me out in a body bag.”

Which, of course, always triggered the desired reaction.

“Dammit, Dad!” his daughter yelled. “Don’t talk like that-especially in front of the kids!”

Stanley Dowbrowski still knew some of the people at the Medical Examiner’s Office. (He also knew they wouldn’t tie a toe tag on him; he just liked the black humor of the metaphor… and the response it elicited.) But not as many people as he used to.

He had retired from the Philadelphia Police Department fifteen years earlier.

Yet he’d never really left the police department. He kept up with old friends from there, also retired or, like the one in Homicide who lived by the middle school a few blocks away, still on the force. And he read cop books and watched cop movies. He lived and breathed-albeit sometimes on an oxygen tank now-everything about being a law-enforcement officer.

And high on his list of proud cop-related moments involved his sister’s daughter. Police Officer Stephanie Kowenski had joined the cops six years before-after telling him she’d first gotten the idea of going out for the police department from listening to “Uncle Stan’s cop stories.”

Stanley Dowbrowski had many memories. Even the bedroom that he’d converted from his oldest child’s bedroom into an office occasionally triggered one.

It had damn near taken an act of Congress for the conversion to happen. His beloved Betty had practically turned the boy’s bedroom into a shrine to her son-who was now married, he and his bride happily living on their own. It had taken his son’s help to convince Betty that it was fine if his father moved his office from the small corner of the basement into the old bedroom.

The office soon became packed with all of the stuff that Stanley Dowbrowski had collected over the course of his service to the citizens of Philadelphia. On the walls he’d hung black wooden frames holding diplomas and commendations and uniform patches and old photographs and newspaper clippings. He had added a wall of bookshelves, and on these were all his cherished books, arranged alphabetically by author, and a healthy collection of movies. Most were on VHS videotape, but he had a growing number of DVDs, too. His kids brought him a lot of movies with the weekly food deliveries.

The one thing that Stanley Dowbrowski considered the real gem of his office, however, was his desktop computer. It was a brand-new tower model, and he’d bought it with all the bells and whistles. These included a lightning-fast processor, more memory than he could believe, a home-theater audio system, and a pair of twenty-four-inch LCD monitors.

Of the latter, he used one LCD panel for his main screen. The other held all the different screens of whatever he was working on-an Internet browser window, say, showing a police scanner website, another with his e-mail in-box, and so on. He had even started watching some of the DVDs on the computer.

Stanley Dowbrowski used his mouse to scroll back up the browser window that had caused him to look askance at the screen.

Since Betty’s passing, Dowbrowski had established a daily routine. Most of it was centered in this room and around the computer. It was something he knew Betty would have frowned upon had she still been alive. But she wasn’t there. And he had decided his life-at least what was left of it-was his to live in any way that he wanted. Or, considering his failing health, any way that he could manage.

And if the ME boys have to pull my cold body out of this office chair to tie on that toe tag, so be it.

Metaphorically speaking…

Every night around nine o’clock, Stanley Dowbrowski poured himself his usual nightcap of a double Buffalo Trace bourbon over three ice cubes. Sometimes, he might even slip and pour three shots. Then he would bring the cocktail into the office and make one last check of his e-mail. He also usually clicked on the website of his local newspaper to see what the forecast was for the next day’s weather. And he’d run the program that backed up the files on his computer’s internal hard drive to an external drive that he kept in his fireproof safe.

Then he would grab a book from the bookshelf-tonight he was excited about a new novel by a Florida cop named James O. Born-then take it and his bourbon down the hall to his bedroom. And there he’d climb in between the sheets and read till the nightcap kicked in.

He stared at the screen now, which showed the news story on the hospital shooting:

ARMED MAN MURDERS BURN VICTIM BEFORE FLEEING HOSPITAL, FIRING AT POLICE

While police remain mum on details of the murder, witnesses claim gunman fired shots at man who shouted “Police!” while chasing gunman from hospital.

He scrolled down to see if the story had been updated.

And he found that there was something new. It was a single-sentence paragraph at the end of the article:

Update (5:44 p.m.): According to the anonymous source inside the hospital, the patient who was shot to death was J. Warren Olde, Jr.

Then Dowbrowski scrolled down to the comments section. His comment was there, of course:

From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (2:56 p.m.):

I talked to an inside source, too, and was told that this was a hit job. Maybe not a professional one, but the burn victim (there?s more to that story that I cannot share) was targeted. So sad to see this happening in Philly. I?ll say it again: Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.

And below it there were five new postings, including one that seemed vaguely familiar:

From Death.Before.Dishonor (3:20 p.m.):

What about “Thou Shalt Not Steal”??

The only sad thing about what happened is the gun didn?t empty all of its bullets into that pendejo! Skipper deserved every damn bullet!

Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse And he repeated to himself: “Something there’s not right.”

At three twenty, that article had not ID’d who got shot.

And it sure as hell hadn’t said “Skipper.”

I only know the guy’s name was Skipper Olde because Stephanie told me. And that he was the son of that McMansion builder.

He glanced over at the secondary LCD screen, where he could see the e-mail in-box. The list of e-mails included Stephanie’s.

Maybe this guy knew him, too?

But how did he find out?

And that screen name, “Death.Before.Dishonor,” rings a bell.

Where the hell else I have seen it?

He sipped his bourbon, then clicked around the newspaper site, trying to remember.

He saw a link in the box that read TODAY’S MOST READ ARTICLES.

In the box was: 2 DEAD AFTER METH LAB EXPLODES, BURNS PHILLY INN MOTEL.

He felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

That’s it!

Death.Before.Dishonor had posted a comment at the end of that article that said, “Fuck you!” and something else.

It was listed right after mine.

He clicked on the link, then scrolled down. He found his comment and the one after it:

From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (9:50 a.m.):

Amen to both of you, Indy1 amp; WWBFD. I spent enough time walking the beat to see everything at least once. And nothing is as insidious as what these drugs do to families of every walk of life. I say, Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.

Recommend [4] Click Here to Report Abuse From HowYouseGuysDoin’ (9:22 a.m.):

And amen to that! I?ll provide the ammo! This nonsense has got to stop. The inmates are running the asylum!

Recommend [1] Click Here to Report Abuse He scrolled farther down the list. There were four other comments.

But not one from Death.Before.Dishonor.

And clearly not the one that ranted about “fuck you!”-oh, and said that drugs were no different from booze and hookers.

It’s gone now.

Huh. Guess someone reported it as abuse, and they pulled it off.

Stanley Dowbrowski quickly clicked back to the article on the Temple University Hospital murder.

He scrolled down and saw that the Death.Before.Dishonor comment was still there.

He clicked on the printer icon, and in a minute his color printer was spitting out sheets with the article and all of its comments on it.

Then he reached over and picked up the phone. He punched in a number.

Great.

Got his answering machine.

“Yo, Tony,” he said to the answering machine. “Stanley Dowbrowski here. Sorry to bother you this late at home. But I got something weird here. Not sure what. Or even if it’s really anything. But it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It’s about that shooting at the hospital. And the motel that blew up over on Frankford. That damn thing rattled the hell out of my windows this morning. Thought the world was coming to an end. Anyway, give me a call when you can. 555-1840. Later.”

Stanley Dowbrowski then picked up his James O. Born cop novel and wheezed his way down the hall to the bedroom.