The Vigilantes

[FOUR]

5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 9:35 A.M.

There were three official emergency vehicles parked at the curb in front of the Bazelon’s row house, all with various doors open and the red-and-blue light bars on their roofs flashing. Two were white Chevy Impala squad cars assigned to the Twelfth District, and the third was a somewhat battered white Ford panel van that had a blue-and-gold stripe running the length of the vehicle and blue block lettering that spelled out MEDICAL EXAMINER.

On the wooden front porch of the row house, two Philadelphia Police Department blue shirts were on either side of a rocking chair, one a male standing and writing notes and the other a female down on one knee. The young woman cop was speaking softly to eighteen-year-old Sasha Bazelon, who sat in the rocker, her face in her hands, her body visibly shaking as she sobbed.

Standing nearby on the sidewalk was a small crowd of fifteen people, mostly adult men and women holding Bibles, all watching with looks of deep sadness or abject helplessness. A couple of the women were dabbing at their cheeks with white cotton handkerchiefs. They wore what Mrs. Joelle Bazelon would have said was their Sunday Go-to-Meeting Clothing.

Any other week, Joelle Bazelon also would have been in her church clothes, usually a dark-colored billowing cotton dress, joining the group as it made the regular walk to worship at the Church of Christ three blocks over, at Warrington and South Fifty-sixth Street.

This morning, however, the sixty-two-year-old widow’s cold dead body, clad in a rumpled housecoat, was about to be removed from her living room couch and placed inside a heavy-duty vinyl bag by two technicians from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

The techs were dressed alike in black jeans, white knit polos, and stained, well-worn white lab coats that were thigh-length with two big patch pockets on the front. They had transparent blue plastic booties covering their black athletic shoes. Their hands wore tan-colored synthetic polymer gloves.

The body bag was on a heavy-duty, metal-framed gurney that had been positioned alongside the couch, its oversize rubber wheels locked to prevent it from rolling.

The tech who was lifting the body by holding the lower legs-just above the swollen and bruised ankles-was Kim Soo. A small-bodied man with short spiked black hair and puffy round facial features, he’d been born in Philly twenty-eight years earlier to parents from South Korea who became naturalized Americans.

Soo had spent the last two hours carefully photographing the row house with a big, bulky, professional-level Nikon digital camera, its body badly scratched and dinged. He’d moved through the residence fluidly with the camera, documenting the scene. The strobe had been so intense that its pulsing flashes were easily seen by the small crowd on the sidewalk.

Soo’s face was stonelike as he looked at the lead technician, Javier Iglesia. Soo had known Iglesia going back to South Philly High, where Kim had been two grades behind him.

Iglesia, a beefy but fit thirty-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry, was normally a very talkative sort, always ready with an opinion on anything. Now, however, holding the body at the shoulders, Iglesia was being unusually quiet.

Finally, Iglesia said, “I knew being a tech for the ME wasn’t going to be all glory, Kim. But days like this, when it gets personal, I honest to God genuinely hate this damned job.”

Iglesia looked at Soo, who said, “I know.”

After getting a stronger grip on the housecoat, Iglesia said, “Ready? On three. One, two, three…”

The lifting took considerable exertion, and they both grunted with effort as the body began to budge. The “lift” was actually more of a slide off the couch, then a slight drop to the black vinyl body bag that was positioned on the gurney.

The big-boned, obese body made for a fairly tight fit in the body bag. It also made the bag more or less droop over the gurney’s tubular frame.

“Principal Bazelon was a good and decent woman,” Javier said then. “I remember the year before she retired-it was my first year at Shaw Middle School. This woman was so strict, but also so kind.”

Soo nodded, his face looking sympathetic.

“I’ll tell you,” he went on, “she was a major influence on me back then. And so many others. She taught me a lot. ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’ That’s Shakespeare. She got me reading him.”

He looked down at the body in the bag. “And now this?”

“I’ll tell you something,” Iglesia said, then glanced around to see if anyone could be listening. He went on in a softer voice: “What I think is, she didn’t just die in her sleep, is what I think.” He paused. “No, I know she didn’t. Just look at her wrists and ankles. Bruised and swollen from something. Tied with something, some rope, something that’s been taken off. And that’s called tampering with evidence.” He paused again, then nodded as he added, “Mitchell will make it. He misses nothing.”

The medical examiner, their boss, was Dr. Howard H. Mitchell, a very busy bald man with a dark sense of humor. He was usually found in a well-worn rumpled suit and tie, either performing an autopsy or dealing with the paperwork of a place that had to deal with an average of a murder a day, plus the questionable deaths, such as that of Mrs. Joelle Bazelon.

Iglesia shook his head, then closed the top flap and began working the web straps over the bag that would secure the load to the gurney.

That done, he and Soo grabbed the tubular handles at each end of the height-adjustable gurney and lifted, once again grunting under the weight. They raised the top of the gurney to about the level of their waists. They wanted it high enough to have better control while wheeling it, but not so high that the center of gravity could cause the gurney to become ungainly and top-heavy and dump onto its side.

Kim Soo unlocked the rubber wheels, and he pushed as Javier Iglesia began pulling the gurney toward the open front door.

As they went, Javier shook his head and quietly said, “I was there when they threw Principal Bazelon’s big retirement go-away thing. It was a big deal, it was. She was a big deal. And whatever happened to her, this just isn’t right. What I think is that girl of hers isn’t saying what really happened.”

After Iglesia and Soo had first arrived at the house and were processing the scene before preparing to remove the deceased, Javier had overheard a good bit of what Sasha Bazelon had been telling the two blue shirts.

Iglesia had been impressed with her-at eighteen, she was a year younger than his baby sister-and while she was just shy of hysterical, it was clear that on any other day, the slender, light-brown-skinned young woman would be absolutely beautiful.

The five of them had all been in the living room, the two cops interviewing the girl while the techs did their work.

Officer Geoffrey Pope, nineteen years old, was a rail-thin five-nine with closely cropped blond hair and a youthful face. Javier knew he had exactly one year on the Philadelphia Police Department.

Corporal Charlene Crowe was a black, stout thirty-year-old with a friendly face and warm smile. She stood a head shorter than Sasha, and she had to look up at the girl while asking questions. The shoulder patches of Crowe’s blue uniform shirt had two blue chevrons outlined in silver.

In fits and starts, interspersed with crying jags, Sasha had told Corporal Crowe, “I came home late last night from my friend’s house down the street. Grammy was sound asleep on the couch, snoring. So I quietly went to my room. When I came downstairs this morning, she was still there. But no longer breathing. When I checked for a pulse, her body felt cold and hard.”

And then came the waterworks.

And then she’d basically repeated what she’d said.

And then came the waterworks again.

Javier found it curious that Sasha almost never looked Corporal Crowe in the eyes, and when she did it was for only a split second-then she’d bury her face in her hands and sob.

It wasn’t that he felt the tears were not authentic.

The girl was clearly in deep emotional distress, and damn near inconsolable.

She’s shaking to her core, she’s crying so much.

But… there’s something that’s just not right, something that’s missing, not being said.

Yet when asked if anything at all suspicious had happened in the last days, weeks, even months, she’d said there’d been nothing.

She said, “Grammy got sick a lot, mostly from her diabetes. And her weight. I guess… I guess her heart just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Kim Soo and Javier Iglesia rolled the gurney out the front door and the wooden boards of the porch creaked under all the weight. The two uniforms talking with Sasha Bazelon looked over their shoulders and made eye contact with the medical examiner techs.

Sasha looked up from her hands, saw the packed body bag strapped to the gurney, and let out a wail.

“Officer Pope,” Javier Iglesia said, “when you get a moment?”

Javier dipped his head once sideways, in the direction of the white Ford panel van.

Pope nodded.

Soo and Iglesia wheeled the gurney past the small crowd, trying to remain professional and not make eye contact. But then a tiny, ancient-looking black lady-Javier thought she easily could be in her nineties-held her Bible up to her forehead and cried, “Go with God, sweet Joelle. Rest in peace. Praise be the Lord!”

Javier saw that she was clearly upset, but unlike the other younger women had her crying under control.

A strong and brave lady, Iglesia thought as they made eye contact, and with sad eyes and thin pensive lips, he nodded. Far braver than I.

“Amen,” he said softly to her.

As Kim swung open the two rear doors of the white Ford panel van, Javier said, “You know, this and South Philly have been my home all my life. And it’s all changing. It’s all slowly going to shit.”

“Mine, too. The whole city is,” Kim replied. “So, what’s your point?”

“My point is, good people are getting hurt. And someone needs to step up, is my point. I mean, I know we did pot and stuff at South Philly High. But now dealers are selling to middle schoolers, and not just pot, but bad stuff like candy smack.”

“Candy smack?”

“Yeah. I mean black tar heroin, is what I mean. Cheap deadly shit from Mexico, mixed with sugar. And other junk. And then the kids get hooked, then need money to go score more, so then they go rob some old lady, maybe tie her up and kill her. That’s what I mean, man!”

Kim Soo looked wide-eyed at Javier Iglesia.

“You don’t know that’s what happened to her,” Soo said, glancing at the body bag.

Iglesia glanced up at the row house porch, then turned and stared Soo in the eyes and said, “I know two things. One, that girl knows something that she isn’t telling about Principal Bazelon. And two, I’m not going to sit around while my neighborhood goes to hell.”

He gazed down the block. Across the street, three houses down, he noticed that another group had gathered. Five boys. They were sitting on a short brick wall and watching the activity at the Bazelon house. They looked to be teenagers, a couple maybe a little older, and in their baggy jeans, oversize gangster jackets, and hoodie sweatshirts, they did not appear to be on their way to church.

The only thing they worship is trouble.

“See these punks?” Iglesia said as he nodded at the group. “I guarantee you they’re up to no good. Ten bucks says they’re using, five says selling. And who knows whatever the hell else.”

Kim Soo turned to look, then faced Iglesia and said, “Aw, hell, Javier. You don’t know that. A lot of kids do that gangsta-from-the-’hood look. We used to hang out in high school wearing tough looks, too.”

“Uh-uh,” Iglesia said, shaking his head. “It’s different now, is what it is.”

Soo shrugged his shoulders.

After a moment, Iglesia added, “You see any of the speech that Ben Franklin rich guy gave last night on the news? While Jimmy’s team was at the Old City scene of the first two pop-and-drops?”

“Pop-and-drops?”

“Yeah, that’s what a sergeant I know in Homicide says they’re calling them. There was five to start. Now there’s eight. And they’re all stacked up in the meat locker, waiting for Mitchell and his buzz saw. The Homicide sergeant came by the office one day and took a look at them.”

“Yeah, I saw that eye-for-an-eye guy’s speech right before I hit the sack. He’s paying ten grand for anyone bagging a bad guy-‘evildoers,’ he called them!”

“Yeah!” Javier Iglesia said, his face lighting up.

Soo realized that Javier was quickly getting his talkativeness back.

Javier went on: “Now, that’s what I’m talking about! I mean, someone has finally had enough of the city going to hell and they’re stepping up to help fix it, is what I mean. Ten large per ‘evildoer’ is some seriously high stepping up.”

He paused and looked down at the body bag.

“Too damn bad it’s too late for Principal Bazelon.”

Javier then softly repeated, “Rest in peace. Praise be the Lord.”

He shoved the gurney, causing its framework to collapse as it rolled up and inside the rear of the van. Then he gently, respectfully, closed the left door, then the right one.

Police Officer Geoffrey Pope was standing on the curb, behind where the right door had been open, making Javier wonder how long he’d been there and how much he’d heard.

“Hey, Geoff,” Javier said to him. “You standing there long?”

“Long enough to hear the news flash that the city’s going to hell. And your short prayer for the deceased.” He paused, then added, “You don’t look too good, Javier.”

“I’m-”

He stopped as he glanced at the small crowd on the sidewalk. A few were watching the conversation between the cop and the tech with rapt interest.

“Step around here,” Javier said, walking around to the far side of the van to block the view of the curious.

Javier pulled out his wallet and from it extracted a business card. He held it out to Officer Pope.

“Here’s my card, Geoff. It’s got my cell phone number on it. I live eight blocks away, the other side of Warrington, over where the middle school is.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And if there is anything I can do to help get this girl to talk, as a citizen, as a concerned neighbor, whatever, you let me know.”

“I’m not sure I should share anything-”

“Who the hell am I going to tell anything?”

Pope held up his hands chest high, palms out. “Hold up, Javier. I’m just-”

“Look, Geoff. My baby sister is her age, and I know when she’s holding something back. And I’m telling you, that poor girl is holding something back.”

“You don’t think she did it, do you? What’d be her motive?”

“Maybe she gets the house?”

“That banshee cry of hers is deep. It’s not contrived.”

“Whatever it is, she’s lying.”

Pope shrugged.

Javier said, “I mean, I don’t think it’s a malicious lie, I don’t. But there’s something not being said.”

“There always is, Javier. Welcome to police work.”

W. E. B. Griffin

The Vigilantes