The Vigilantes

[THREE]

The Roundhouse Eighth and Race Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 7:30 A.M.

Lieutenant Jason Washington looked up from reading the front page of the morning’s Philadelphia Bulletin in time to see his boss walking purposefully around a corner, making a beeline for Washington’s glass-walled office. Captain Henry C. Quaire, commanding officer of the Homicide Unit, was a stocky balding man in his late forties. Like Washington he wore khaki slacks, but instead of the white button-down-collar shirt Washington had on, Henry wore a red knit polo under a navy blazer.

Jason glanced at the wall clock and saw that Quaire was fifteen minutes earlier than he had said he would arrive. They’d spoken on the telephone an hour earlier. Quaire had called Washington at home and announced that Frank Hollaran had just called him at home, asking if they could be at the Roundhouse as soon as possible.

Quaire said that Captain Francis Xavier Hollaran, the forty-nine-year-old assistant to First Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis V. “Denny” Coughlin, had told him: “Denny wants us to be prepared before we meet with Mariana and before Mariana’s meeting with Carlucci. Mariana said Carlucci wants damage control, and he needs to know what we know about the pop-and-drops.”

Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariana, a natty Italian, was the top cop with four stars on his uniform. And the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, who had once been the top cop, was Mariana’s boss, the mayor of Philadelphia.

Coughlin, whose three stars made him the number-two cop in the department, reported to Mariana. They were both appointed to their jobs by the managing director of the city, but served at the mayor’s pleasure. Every policeman below them in rank on the force-which, with some seven thousand in uniform, was the fourth largest in the country-was a civil servant.

Washington saw that Quaire was sipping from a heavy china coffee mug that bore the logotype of the Emerald Society, the fraternal organization of police officers of Irish heritage. Washington wasn’t a member, but he knew Hollaran and Coughlin had belonged to “The Emerald” all their long careers.

“Well, Jason, I see you’ve seen the good news,” Quaire said by way of greeting. He motioned at the desk and repeated the quote over the TV: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

The newspaper’s front-page headline at the top of the fold screamed: THE HALLOWEEN HOMICIDES TRIPLE MURDERS TERRORIZE OLD CITY

“Quite the colorful headline, if a bit sensational,” Washington replied. “I have put the arm out for Harris and Payne, Henry. They said they should be here any minute.”

Quaire nodded as he sipped. “Good. We’re going to need everything Tony and Matt have to put out this fire. And no doubt more. They’re good, but this makes-what?-seven or eight unsolved pop-and-drops?”

While Tony Harris had a years-long history in Homicide, Matt Payne’s tenure could be measured only in months. And if Quaire had had any say in it, Payne never would have gotten the job, certainly not ahead of three other sergeants who also wanted in and who Quaire felt were far more qualified.

It was customary for the Homicide chief to pick, or at the very least have veto power over, who got assigned to the unit. But Commissioner Mariana, looking for ways to encourage the best and brightest, had announced that the five officers with the highest scores on the promotion exams got the assignment of their choice in the department. And Matt Payne grabbed the brass ring by being not only in the top five scores, but number one on the list of those who’d earned promotion to sergeant. And Payne picked Homicide.

A less-than-excited Quaire had no say.

One thing Quaire worried about was how Payne would be received. He was only a five-year veteran and newly minted sergeant, and he was getting a supervisor position over guys who had served longer than five years in Homicide alone.

But when he brought that up to Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Tony Harris-among Homicide’s most respected-they’d said that their experience with Matt Payne had been without problem. Both liked him and thought he was smart-“Smart enough to keep his eyes and ears open and learn how Homicide works,” Washington said. And he had.

It didn’t hurt, either, that he was well connected, starting with being the godson of Denny Coughlin, whom he was known to call “Uncle Denny.”

Quaire did have absolute authority to choose which squad in the unit to assign Payne. And because Payne’s score on the sergeant exam proved he was, as the commissioner would have put it, among the best and brightest, and because Harris and Washington already had worked with Payne, and clearly liked him, Quaire naturally put Payne in the squad led by Lieutenant Jason Washington.

“Here comes Coughlin now,” Washington said, looking past Quaire.

Quaire turned and raised his china mug to acknowledge the first deputy police commissioner. Denny Coughlin, a ruddy-faced fifty-nine-year-old, had graduated from the Police Academy nearly forty years earlier. He was tall and heavyset, with a full mouth of teeth and full head of curly silver hair. He wore his usual well-tailored gray plaid double-breasted suit, but no tie.

Washington made the educated guess that Coughlin kept at least two extra neckties-and probably another suit-as backups in his big office on the third floor.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Coughlin said once he was in Washington’s doorway. “Thank you for coming in.”

“Good morning, sir,” Washington and Quaire now said in unison.

“And good timing, Commissioner,” Washington added as he nodded toward the far side of the office. “Here come Sergeant Payne and Detective Harris.”

Both Matt and Tony wore the same clothing that they’d had on when they’d left Liberties Bar with Mickey O’Hara some six hours earlier. And with baggy eyes and five-o’clock beard shadows, both looked as if they’d just awakened from a very short sleep.

“Jesus, you two look like the walking dead,” Coughlin said by way of greeting. “You especially look like hell, Matty.”

“Just call me an overachiever, Uncle Denny,” Payne replied dryly. “I was catching a nap in the car when the long arm of Lieutenant Washington reached out for us. After Tony and I left the scene in Old City, we went to check out a hunch. The dead guy, Reggie Jones, had a sort of to-do list in his coat pocket, and we wound up staking out his house in South Philly. Thought it was a long shot, and boy was it.”

“And I thought,” Coughlin said, his tone suddenly cold as his Irish temper flared, “that we all agreed you would stay the hell off the streets while all that Wyatt Earp of the Main Line business died, if you’ll pardon my choice of words.”

There had been a flurry of new stories-from print to TV to the Internet-after the Bulletin had run the photograph of the tuxedo-clad Payne holding his Colt. 45 above the robber he’d shot in the parking lot of La Famiglia Ristorante. And then those were rehashed when the story broke about Payne’s foot chase and shoot-out with the assassin who fled Temple University Hospital. The mayor, who wasn’t displeased with Payne per se but was tired of constantly defending a good cop doing a good job, simply called Denny Coughlin and suggested Matt stay the hell out of sight-and stay out of the news.

And Coughlin had sent the order down the chain of command, after telling Matt himself.

Coughlin looked from Payne to Washington to Quaire. “Well?”

Quaire began, “I take-”

“It’s my fault, sir,” Detective Tony Harris interrupted. “I should have known better.”

“The hell it is,” Matt Payne said, looking at Tony. He turned to Coughlin and added, “I invited myself along. Me and Mickey O’Hara.”

Coughlin’s eyebrows went up. “What the hell was Mickey doing?”

“We were at Liberties,” Payne said, “when the news came in about the third dead guy. You know you can’t tell Mickey ‘no.’”

“Nor, apparently, you,” Coughlin said to Matt, his ruddy face turning redder by the second. “When I give an order, I damn well expect it to be kept.”

“Yes, sir,” Matt said, his voice tired, its resigned tone sounding like that of a schoolboy who’d just been dressed down by the headmaster. Which, a dozen years ago, he had been on more than one occasion.

“And you, Detective Harris,” Coughlin said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Same applies.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

Coughlin nodded and, with a more gentle voice, added, “I do commend you, Tony, being the low man on the totem pole here, for trying to take the bullet for everyone else, guilty or not.”

Harris shrugged, making his rumpled navy blazer look even worse.

“I do feel responsible, sir. I’ve seen Matt day in and day out at his desk up to his eyeballs with mostly paperwork from the other pop-and-drops. I wanted him to see a fresh crime scene. That thought had occurred to me earlier last night, when the scene for the first two guys who were pop-and-dropped was being worked. But for whatever reason I didn’t call him. Then, when the news came about the third one, and we were having drinks at Liberties, it just made sense for him to come along and see the scene. It’s a helluva lot better than reading statements, sir.”

Coughlin considered that a long moment. He looked between them, then back to Harris, and nodded. “From a homicide investigation standpoint, I do see your point.”

Everyone in the room knew well that, among the many other assignments he’d held, then-Captain Coughlin had been the chief of the Homicide Unit, and Detective F. X. Hollaran had been his right-hand man even back then.

He looked at his wristwatch.

“Okay, Matty, you have ten minutes. Tell me what I need to know before going upstairs to face the wrath of the bosses.”

Payne nodded.

“All of the dead,” he began, looking at Coughlin, then the others, “have been adult males, both the earlier pop-and-drops and the three found last night. That’s where that thread ends.

“Of the first five, all were shot at point-blank range in the head. The ballistics tests on the only two bullets recovered-every other round passed through their bodies-showed them to be 9 millimeter and. 45 caliber. Three were black males, one a white male, and one a Hispanic male. And all were wanted on outstanding warrants, either for parole violation or for jumping bail, for sex crimes committed on kids or women. They got popped somewhere other than where they were dropped.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Frank Hollaran asked. “Is that an assumption due to lack of evidence?”

Payne shook his head and said, “Because they were all dropped, one per week beginning back on September sixteenth, at the nearest police district HQ. Correction. At a police district HQ. ‘Nearest’ is speculative on my part. Reason being: Why would you drive around with a dead body farther than necessary?”

There were chuckles.

“Stranger things have occurred, Matthew,” Jason Washington offered.

Payne nodded. “I know. Anyway, the other consistency among these first five pop-and-drops is that they each had their Wanted poster attached to them.”

“Their Wanted poster?” Coughlin repeated.

“Yes, sir. Like the ones we post on the police department website? Nice color mug shot with their full name and aliases, last known address, crimes committed, et cetera.”

Coughlin nodded, motioning with his hand for Matt to go on.

Payne said: “Two of the five-both rapists-were printed from our Special Victims Unit page on the Internet. The rest were from the listing of Megan’s Law fugitives on O’Hara’s CrimeFreePhilly-dot-com.”

“That’s Mickey’s?” Coughlin asked, his face brightening.

“That’s where he went after he quit the Bulletin,” Payne said.

“It’s had some growing pains,” Coughlin said, “but what I’ve seen I’ve mostly liked. Anyway, continue.”

For a moment, Payne was impressed that Coughlin paid attention to the Internet. But then he realized it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Coughlin was smart as hell, and while he could be old school, he was also always embracing whatever might aid him in his duties.

With maybe one exception: Denny Coughlin had told Matt he wasn’t crazy about carrying the new department-issued Glock 17 semiautomatic 9-millimeter pistol. Mariana had successfully lobbied the city for the cops to have more firepower than the. 38-caliber revolvers they’d carried almost since the Ice Age-Philly’s first foot patrol began in the late 1600s.

And he said Coughlin needed to carry the Glock “to set an example.”

Denny, who had never drawn his service weapon his entire career, didn’t think he needed on his hip what he called “a small cannon”-and especially not one of the Alternative Service Weapons, Glock models chambered for. 40-caliber and. 45-caliber rounds that were more powerful than the 9 millimeter. But he followed the order nonetheless.

Payne went on: “Each dead guy had his rap sheet stapled to him. Usually to the clothing. But on one bad guy-a really despicable bastard, on the run from a charge of raping a ten-year-old girl-the doer stapled the Wanted poster multiple times to the guy’s wang.”

There were groans.

“Jesus!” Hollaran exclaimed.

Coughlin, now somber-faced, shook his head. “Could’ve been worse. I worked a case maybe two decades ago where a guy who thought that he quietly-and successfully-had ratted out a mobster was found dead on his front porch for all the world to see.”

“That’s worse?” Payne said.

“In his mouth, looking like a droopy third eye, was his severed penis.”

There was a mix of grunts and chuckles from the group.

“So,” Payne then said, “those are the ones I’ve been trying to connect the dots on. I have more details on each one.”

“Not for now, thanks,” Coughlin said.

Payne looked at Harris and said, “Tony knows about last night’s batch.”

Coughlin said, “Detective, it appears you have the floor.” He looked at his watch. “And a little less than ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir. As Matt said, all the dead are male adults. We got the call on the first two-Danny Gartner and his longtime client?”

Coughlin grunted derisively. “I know who Gartner was. No great loss to mankind there.”

Harris went on: “That call came in at precisely ten-oh-two last night, and the call on the third guy at twelve-twelve this morning.

“Both Gartner-white male, age fifty-five-and John ‘Jay-Cee’ Nguyen-Asian male, age twenty-five-were shot point-blank at the base of the skull”-Tony mimed the shooting with his hand again, as he’d done at Liberties Bar-“with a large-bore round. We believe it was a Glock. 45 caliber, as a shiny spent casing-with ‘. 45 GAP’ for Glock Automatic Pistol stamped on the base-was found behind Gartner’s office. Cause of death, though, may not be by gunshot. Both men had their mouth and nose wrapped with clear plastic packing tape, and both also had a plastic garbage bag covering the head and taped tightly at the neck. The same tape was used to bind both men at their ankles and wrists.”

“No Wanted posters like the others?” Coughlin asked.

Tony thought, How did he know that?

Simple answer: Because he didn’t become the second most important white shirt in the building by being a lazy cop.

The uniform shirt for all ranks sergeant and above was white, thus the expression “white shirt”; those in ranks of corporal down to police recruit wore blue shirts, and were referred to accordingly.

Now, his well-honed investigative mind has been putting together the pieces, and one piece is that Gartner wasn’t wanted for any crime.

“No, sir,” Tony Harris said after a moment. “None of the three last night.”

“Tell them about the piss,” Payne said.

“What?” Hollaran blurted.

Everyone looked at Matt, then at Tony.

“When we got the search warrant for Gartner’s office-outside of which was parked Nguyen’s motorcycle-we found no obvious signs anybody’d been whacked inside. But we did find piss poured all over the place.”

“Tony said it had to be gallons,” Payne added lightly. “We’re guessing some animal’s. I mean, four-legged animal.”

Coughlin shook his head in wonder.

“Doesn’t matter if it turns out to be from a human,” Quaire said. “Urine is mostly worthless for our purposes.”

“Really?” Payne said.

“Uh-huh,” Quaire said. “I thought you knew it doesn’t have enough traceable DNA to make it useful. It’s just… well, piss.”

There were chuckles.

“At the risk of repeating myself, Matthew,” Jason Washington offered, “we do come across strange things in our business.”

Coughlin then said, “Okay, and what about the third guy?”

“One Reginald ‘Reggie’ Jones. Black male, age twenty. A great big boy, maybe goes two-forty, two-fifty. And with one of those round baby faces. Well, before he got beaten up. Someone kicked the living shit out of him. Brutal beating. He could have died from that, or from strangulation. Two of those plastic zip ties-two short ones put end to end to make one long one-were cinched tight around his throat.”

He paused as they considered that.

Then Harris said, “Jones was a small-time dealer. What he had was more of a consumption habit. But he did have a couple busts for selling coke. He was on probation for possession. Word is that… this is not exactly PC-”

“Oh, no,” Payne gasped dramatically, “we’ve never heard something that was politically incorrect uttered in the Roundhouse!”

There were grins, including Tony’s.

“Say it, Tony,” Coughlin said, his face serious. “We need to know e verything.”

“Reggie Jones was backward.”

“Backward?”

“More or less retarded,” Tony said.

“And now he’s deceased,” Payne said, “making him number eight.”

“No warrants?” Coughlin went on.

His investigator’s mind is still on high speed.

“No, sir. Not on the deceased. His brother, however, is in the wind.”

“How’s that?”

“Kenneth J. ‘Kenny’ Jones, black male, age twenty-two, skipped out on a charge of possession with intent to distribute. Jumped his two-thousand-dollar bail after getting picked up in Germantown. Like his brother Reggie, Kenny’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Tried to sell crack cocaine to a couple of our guys working an undercover task force.”

Coughlin snorted, thought a moment, then said, “Maybe the doer popped the wrong brother by mistake?”

“Possible.”

“And the others who’d been pop-and-dropped all had some sexual crime component?”

“Yes, sir. All but the lawyer. And all the others had been shot.”

“But not the Jones boy? He was strangled.”

Harris nodded. “Correct.”

Coughlin looked at Hollaran. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”

Frank Hollaran had worked with Denny Coughlin so many years he could finish his sentences.

“That it’s possible?” Hollaran asked. “Sure, boss. If somehow they’d heard about the pop-and-drops. But I doubt it’s happened in this case. Not enough time has elapsed. It can happen, probably will happen, especially with the cash rewards being offered.”

“What’re we talking about?” Payne asked.

“Copycats. Folks who mimic crimes they see in the news. That fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol talked about.”

Quaire, gesturing again at the newspaper on Washington’s desk, put in: “And now we have-cue the dramatic music-the Halloween Homicides.”

Payne offered: “Playing devil’s advocate, maybe it’s not so much a copycat as it is someone taking up Frank Fuller on the hefty bounty he offers for-what’s his phrase?-the evildoers.”

“Think that through, Matthew,” Washington said. “Who is going to claim those rewards? At least for the dead critters? They’d be admitting to murder.”

Payne shrugged.

“Regardless,” Coughlin said, “Jerry Carlucci is going to want to know what we’re doing about the problem. He’s planning on having a press conference at noon in the Executive Command Center. What he talks about depends on what he hears from us. And I’m sure he will denounce Fuller’s bounty.”

“Isn’t denouncing the bounty a bit hypocritical?” Payne asked.

“In what way?” Coughlin said.

“The Philadelphia Police Department is in bed with, for example, the FBI and the DEA, which do offer big rewards for fingering bad guys. And that nationwide Crimestoppers program pays five or ten grand for information leading to a conviction-just call their toll-free number. It pays up even if you remain anonymous. It’d make my job a helluva lot easier if someone called with something on these pop-and-drops.”

“We do ask for tips on catching criminals, Matty,” Coughlin said reasonably, “but we don’t encourage killing. There’s a difference, one somebody needs to point out to Frank Fuller.” He sighed deeply. “But good point. Carlucci will have to spin it in a positive way.”

He glanced at his watch. “Okay, everyone follow me upstairs. This was just the dress rehearsal.”

Payne didn’t move, causing Coughlin to raise an eyebrow in question.

“ ‘Everyone’ as in everyone?” Matt asked. “Am I allowed to leave the office?”

Coughlin, his voice taking an official tone, then said, “As of this moment, Sergeant Payne, assuming you can at some point soon get a decent shower and shave, I hereby order your release from desk duty.”

Coughlin looked around the office.

“Everyone think they can follow that order?”

There was a chorus of “Yes, sir.”