The Vigilantes

I
[ONE]

1834 Callowhill Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Saturday, October 31, 7:30 P.M.

Will Curtis, a frail fifty-four-year-old, was sitting slumped against the driver’s door of his rusty Chevrolet Malibu when the thoughts suddenly hit again, causing him to wince and grunt. He quickly pulled his right hand from the. 45 GAP Glock Model 37 semiautomatic pistol beside him on the seat, stabbed at the dash to turn off the radio, then smacked at the brim of his grease-smeared red-and-blue FedEx cap, knocking it from his head. With the fingers of both hands, he began rubbing his sweaty temples.

Goddamn these flashbacks! he thought.

The fingertips pressed harder and deeper in a futile attempt to make the mental images vanish.

Damn them all to hell!

Only six months earlier, Curtis had been what he’d thought of as bulky, standing at five-eleven and weighing two-ten. But now he had withered to a sickly one-sixty. His jeans, T-shirt, and denim jacket were ill-fitting, hanging on him so loosely they looked as if they belonged to someone far bigger. His close-cropped silver hair was damn near disappearing, and his formerly warm gray eyes were becoming more and more hollowed and distant in his slight if somewhat hard face.

Curtis felt he was fast becoming a miserable shell of the man he’d been. He had gone from fearing nothing and no one to being scared shitless to, now, just not giving a good goddamn anymore.

He wasn’t sure what was most responsible for that-the constant stress from the mental anguish that caused the flashbacks, or the aftereffects of the intense chemotherapy treatments to slow the aggressive cancer they’d first found in his prostate.

Probably both.

Easily one or the other-especially that fucking chemo that makes me shit my shorts like some sorry bedridden invalid-but probably both.

The flashback scenes torturing Will Curtis were of the brutal sexual assault of his only child, Wendy. After leaving a pub late on the night of Saint Patrick’s Day almost eighteen months ago, his beautiful, bubbly, twenty-four-year-old daughter had been attacked in her apartment.

She was just two years out of college!

Just beginning to enjoy a full life!

Triggered by the slightest of things-for example, hearing a song she liked, which had just happened as he sat listening to the radio in the Malibu, or driving past Geno’s and smelling her favorite cheesesteaks-the flashbacks would suddenly hammer him. They were grotesquely lit and viciously vivid, showing the attack in her bedroom again and again from damn near every possible angle.

And they haunted him all the more because he hadn’t actually witnessed the attack-rather, his imagination ran with possibilities of what had happened to her.

And what had happened to her was what the legal system termed “involuntary deviant sexual intercourse.”

“Involuntary”? he thought, putting his hand back on the pistol.

Fucking-A it was involuntary!

Which of course meant rape. There’d been absolutely no question of that. The exam given by the doctors at Hahnemann University Hospital-not a dozen blocks from where he now sat parked, waiting-had determined unequivocally that that had happened. And not only vaginally, which was without doubt bad enough to have happened to his baby girl, but also what was termed in the legalese as “sexual intercourse per os and per anus.”

The pervert drugged her so she passed out, then abused her body-even gave her the goddamned clap!

The revelation of all that had driven the normally levelheaded Curtis to a point of desperation he’d never believed possible.

And-boom!-his mind hammered with the garish image of the bastard on top of Wendy in her bed.

“Dammit!” Will Curtis said as he sat up in the dark and slammed the pistol against the dashboard.

His left hand rubbed his temples more vigorously. He shook his head.

What kind of miserable fucking animal does that?

Who takes advantage of an innocent girl like that?

He glanced out the window and looked across Callowhill Street at the office with the frosted plate-glass window. More or less centered on the window-which had a crack that ran jagged across its upper-right corner-were faded black vinyl peel-and-stick letters that spelled out

LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.

And I’ll never understand why that bastard defends perverts.

Just for a lousy dollar?

But that assistant district attorney had said, “Only a matter of time before Gartner gets busted himself and goes down just like one of his clients.”

So, yeah, some kind of payout, or payoff, that’s for sure, because there’s no shortage of scumbag lawyers like him.

He squeezed the Glock’s grip.

That DA was close to right. Gartner may never have got busted, but he is about to go down…

Before their world went to hell, Will Curtis and his wife, Linda, were more or less comfortably middle class. Will had driven package-delivery trucks all his career, first for the U.S. Postal Service, the last eleven years for FedEx, and Linda was a teller at First National Bank. Their idea of an exciting weekend night usually meant taking a BYOB of cheap California red wine to the $9.99 all-you-can-eat pasta and salad at Luigi’s Little Italy, around the corner from their row house of twenty years on Mount Pleasant Avenue in Philly’s West Mount Airy section.

They had known little about what went on in the nightclubs of Philadelphia, and damn sure absolutely nothing about any illegal activities. That was, until the toxicology tests taken on Wendy Curtis at Hahnemann had come back and Will and his wife had gotten an immediate and in-depth education into what the doctors called club drugs-Rohypnol (known on the street as “roofies” or “Mind Erasers”), Ketamin (“K-Hole,” “Special K”), and GHB.

Wendy’s blood had tested positive for far more than a trace of GHB, which was shorthand for gamma hydroxybutyric, and called the “date-rape drug” and “easy lay,” among other street names. It was a powerful pharmaceutical widely prescribed as a sleep aid and a local anesthetic. The doctors told Will and Linda that when consumed with alcohol, GHB became even more powerful. It came in the form of a quick-dissolving pill, liquid, or powder, and was odorless and colorless, sometimes with a slightly salty taste. Commonly it was slipped into the drink of a young woman at some bar-though the illicit drug was no stranger among males in the homosexual community-or even at her apartment if she made the mistake of letting a date “come up for a drink, just one only.”

And just one was all it took.

Within fifteen minutes of entering the bloodstream, GHB could leave the victim completely powerless for up to four hours, during which time they had no conscious knowledge of what was happening to them. In most cases, for better or worse, it also left them afterward with no memory of what had been done to them.

Almost, the doctors explained, as if they’d had a very vague, very tragic dream.

Which, Will had tried to console himself and his wife, explained why Wendy would not talk about the attack.

She couldn’t remember.

Or maybe-probably?-didn’t want to…

But that doctor’s exam sure as hell found the physical damage.

And that’s what really put her momma over the edge, screaming hysterically at the news of her baby girl hurt so badly.

Not even the damned priest could talk to her, calm her down…

And then this scumbag lawyer turned it all the worse. Getting the case tossed on a technicality with the rape-kit evidence-a goddamn broken “chain of custody” in the property room.

The pervert was guilty as hell… then he just walked.

Sonofabitch!

Tonight made the third time in a week that Will Curtis had been parked in the 1800 block of Callowhill Street. Each time he’d been in a different car and in a different spot, but all with a clear view of

LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.

Callowhill was two blocks north of the Vine Street Expressway. To the south of Vine spread the great wealth of modern skyscrapers and well-preserved historic buildings that was the bustling Center City. Here, however, on this block of Callowhill, the majority of addresses were deserted. Signs in the dirty vacant windows of the decaying strips of storefronts-mostly three-story offices sharing a common brick facade-announced to the occasional passersby that they were for sale or lease.

Of the few that were occupied, not one was particularly noteworthy. Five addresses to the right of Gartner’s law office, almost up to North Nineteenth Street, stood a soul food restaurant and bar-Curtis thought of it as “that soulless restaurant,” complete with vagrants loitering nearby-and a couple addresses to his left were two other low-rent law offices, one of which had lettering on its window stating that the firm offered immigration-law services. And finally, across the street, next to a large grassy lot surrounded by chain-link fencing, was a struggling establishment named Tattoo U.

That, Curtis had thought with a morbid chuckle, was probably where Gartner’s clients went to acquire “I’m a Loser Gangbanger” body art after Gartner, their loser of a lawyer, had told them their turn-in date to report to jail.

Other than that, there was damn near nothing here.

And that served his purpose tonight just fine.

It had been a little more than three hours since Will Curtis had pulled the Chevy sedan into the parallel parking space across the street from Gartner’s office. In that time, he’d come to feel comfortable that the patterns he had noted on his previous two nights of surveillance were similar to what was playing out tonight.

First, most workers in the nearby offices had headed for home-or probably a corner bar, he’d thought-the great rush of them at the stroke of five o’clock. There were even a few who’d worn Halloween outfits. If black tights and cat whiskers and a headband with pointy furry ears counted as a costume.

Then, for the next hour, out came the stragglers. They disappeared one by one down the cracked sidewalk until, easily by six, Callowhill Street-not counting an occasional patron for the restaurant or the tattoo parlor-was more or less deserted.

Right about seven-thirty, a woman left Gartner’s office, returning fifteen or so minutes later with some sort of fast food. Each night it was the same chunky woman, about age thirty and black and overweight but with a pleasant face. The first time she had carried two flat cardboard boxes with pies from the pizza joint on the corner of Callowhill and North Twenty-first Street. Tonight she’d gone a block up to Hamilton Street and come back with a couple of greasy white sacks that had Asian-looking lettering: TAKIE OUTIE TASTY CHINESE.

The thought of smelling, let alone tasting, greasy egg rolls made Will’s stomach grumble. Not because he was hungry-he had almost no appetite these days-but because the chemotherapy treatments had made his gut easily upset.

Even before they found the cancer, his prostate had caused him to have to take leaks far more often than he liked. Particularly because finding a pisser was not always easy, especially while driving a FedEx truck on its delivery route schedule. He couldn’t keep stopping continuously-his boss would wonder why he was constantly late-so in Center City he’d swung by Goldberg’s Army-Navy on Chestnut Street and bought a couple of surplus gallon canteens. The plastic containers weren’t the most sanitary solution, but they worked. He could do his business while seated, then later simply crack open the door and dump out the canteen onto the street.

And that had damn sure come in handy the nights he watched the law office.

Now, for the third time tonight, Will Curtis picked up the canteen, unscrewed its top, unzipped the fly of his blue jeans, and relieved himself into the half-full container. Then he screwed the top back on tightly and dropped the canteen to the floorboard.

And heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Ten minutes later, Curtis saw the battered heavy metal door of Gartner’s office swing open. The doorway opening filled with a harsh white glow of fluorescent light.

He checked his well-worn gold-toned Seiko wristwatch.

Eight o’clock on the nose.

Then, as he’d seen happen the other times here, out walked the overweight black woman. Tonight she wore a gray knee-length woolen overcoat, which only made her obesity more pronounced, and slung a black patent-leather purse over her shoulder.

Right on time.

He guessed that she was Gartner’s part-time help, one who came in maybe after attending college classes or another job and worked for him till eight. Gartner’s full-time assistant, a bony white woman of maybe forty, was one of the ones who left the office at five o’clock on the dot.

That meant, to the best of Curtis’s knowledge, that Gartner was now alone. Which was how Curtis wanted it. He held no animosity whatever toward any of the office help. Everyone had to work for a living, he reasoned, and no one should be held accountable for what their bosses did.

Which was why he did not mind waiting so long in the car and pissing in canteens. While he knew that the spreading cancer wasn’t going to give him all the time in the world-Sure as hell not much more time left on the top side of the turf-he felt that he did have enough time to settle some scores with the ones who deserved it.

Curtis glanced down at the Glock. The matte-black gun reminded him of the semiautomatic Colt Model 1911. 45 ACP with which he’d first learned to shoot. That had been during his short stint-two years, ten months, and twenty-two days during the 1970s, discharged honorably during a postwar Reduction in Force-in the Pennsylvania National Guard.

And that caused him to shake his head in disgust.

I joined up to fight for freedom-but damn sure not so our legal system would allow these worthless shits to do what they want to innocent girls.

No one is going to miss him.

And there’s not a damn thing that’s going to happen to me for taking him out-that is, if I get caught.

Then he chuckled.

Like that saying goes, “You can’t kill a man born to hang.”

Or, in my case, hang dead at the end of a chemo IV drip…

He slipped the Glock into the right pocket of his denim jacket and opened the driver’s door. As he shuffled his feet to get out, he accidentally kicked the full canteen across the floorboard. He looked down at it and made a face.

Oh, what the hell. May as well dump it out now.

Then he smirked.

And I know exactly how.

He looked over at the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ. He saw a couple of overhead white lights go off behind it, then there began a pulsing of different-colored lights. He’d seen that happen on the other nights he’d sat watching the office, and decided that Gartner liked to watch a little television, maybe a movie, after the help had left.

He picked up the canteen and swung open the door.