The Vigilantes

[TWO]

Will Curtis, staying in the shadows, walked up the sidewalk on the far side of the street. As he approached a parallel-parked filthy old Ford panel van-one that apparently hadn’t been moved in a month of Sundays, judging by the parking tickets and fast-food restaurant flyers stacked thick under its windshield wipers-he stepped off the curb to cross the street. He turned his head left and checked for any traffic, and just as he saw that there wasn’t anything coming, there came from the opposite direction the sound of a roaring motorcycle engine.

He stopped in his tracks, keeping behind the filthy Ford van, and carefully peered out to look to the right.

And there he saw it: one of those high-end racing-style motorcycles designed to look at once sleek and aggressive.

He saw plenty of them while driving his truck routes-and he hated them.

The idiots on those crotch rockets are always street racing or running in packs like marauding dogs, reckless as hell, causing wrecks in their wake.

Even worse, every now and then splattering themselves on the bumper of some car, making that innocent driver carry that damn memory the rest of his life.

The motorcycle had just turned the corner at Nineteenth, but then suddenly made a fast U-turn, which explained the roaring sound he’d heard.

And then Curtis saw why the rider-Jesus, he’s small for that big bike-had changed direction: Near the end of the block, a group of four girls wearing their parochial-school outfits of dark woolen skirts and white cotton blouses were approaching the corner of Nineteenth and Callowhill. They looked to be about age fifteen or sixteen.

As the motorcycle closed on the group, the girls were lit by the bike’s bright headlight-and they froze there in the beam, staring at the fast-approaching machine.

Scared like damned deer.

One of the girls wore a zippered hoodie athletic jacket, in blue and white, and when she turned away from the beam it lit her back. There Curtis saw the representation of Mickey Mouse stitched on the jacket, the cartoon character’s head partially obscured by the hood.

Curtis had figured-and the jacket confirmed-that the group was from John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls’ High School. A private institution run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Hallahan was just around the corner, between Callowhill and Vine. Blue and white were its school colors, the Disney icon its school mascot.

The motorcyclist slowed, then passed the girls and did another quick U-turn.

He may be small, but the prick can ride.

That’s the “little man syndrome”-insecure guys getting a hot bike or car to help them look tougher.

Or maybe it’s “little dick syndrome.”

As the headlight swept around, it again washed the girls in its beam. Then the motorcycle engine roared loudly and the beam moved upward as the bike popped a wheelie, the front tire rising about three feet off the asphalt. The rider, half standing on the foot pegs, drove the bike on its back tire as he roared past the group of girls.

Fucking showing off, Curtis thought.

Like he owns the street.

And wants to own one of them…

As the motorcycle came closer to where Will Curtis peered out from behind the filthy Ford van, the rider backed off the gas and the front tire returned to the pavement. The headlight beam flashed Curtis in the eyes, momentarily blinding him.

He instinctively dropped back behind the van and went into a crouch. He heard the motorcycle approaching quickly, followed by the sound of skidding tires. The motorcycle’s engine revved twice, then went silent.

The only sound Will Curtis now heard was in the distance, up the street. The school girls were giggling and talking-both nervously and excitedly-as they slowly walked on up Nineteenth.

And-boom!-the sights and sounds of the high schoolers triggered a memory.

This time, though, the flashback wasn’t an unpleasant one.

Wendy had attended Hallahan. And Will remembered the last day of her senior year. She had come home with her blue-and-white athletic jacket dripping wet because, as was traditional at the girls’ school, she and the rest of the senior class had jumped into the Logan Circle fountain, which was just blocks south of the school in front of the Four Seasons Hotel.

And then the Catholic school memory-boom!-filled his mind with scenes of attending Saint Vincent’s Catholic Church with Wendy and Linda.

In addition to worshipping there, near their West Mount Airy home, Will had volunteered his time. Mostly it had been in the capacity of scout-master with a Boy Scout troop that the church sponsored. Never mind that he’d had no sons in the program. He liked what the Scouts did-he’d been one as a kid, working his way up to just two merit badges shy of the top rank of Eagle Scout-and, bending rules a bit, he liked taking his daughter on camping trips and other outings with the boys. He’d treated her like the others. He taught them how to handle knives and how to shoot pistols and. 22-caliber rifles (though, to his disappointment, she never kept any interest in guns).

In Scouts he’d also, of course, taught Wendy how to tie her knots.

And that-boom!-did cause an unpleasant flashback.

Damn it!

An ugly one, a vivid one, because he knew that the morning after Saint Paddy’s, after that evil date-rape drug had worn off, Wendy had awakened to find herself naked and spread-eagled-bound with nylon stockings knotted around all four of the bedposts.

As Will Curtis’s eyes readjusted to the darkness and he could make out his surroundings again, the flashback faded.

He looked across the street and saw that the motorcycle rider had nosed the machine to a stop in front of the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.

The window still pulsed with colored lights from the television.

The bike was indeed an aggressive-looking racing machine. It had bright neon green plastic body panels and a neon green fuel tank, a sleek, swept-back windscreen, and bold decalcomania that damn near screamed in black lettering: KAWASAKI NINJA.

The rider dramatically swung his right leg over the seat as he dismounted. He then began loosening the chin strap of his matching neon green helmet, a full-face model with its silver-mirrored visor pushed up.

Then, suddenly, the battered metal door of the office opened.

The motorcyclist turned to look toward it.

Will Curtis thought, All that engine roaring and rubber burning got someone’s attention.

And then he saw a familiar face in the doorway.

Curtis had amused himself the first time he’d seen the criminal defense lawyer’s name listed on court papers as: COUNSELOR, DEFENSE-GARTNER, DANIEL O. He’d begun by calling him “Danny O.” Then he’d switched that around.

Well, hello, O Danny Boy.

You sleazy sonofabitch…

Curtis thought of Gartner, with a beak of a nose and squinty dark eyes, as a pale-faced prick. He was medium-size and in his early to mid fifties. He tried to appear much younger by dying the gray of his thinning hair, though the dye job, full of blotches, was badly done. He wore tight faded black jeans, a gray T-shirt stenciled with black arty lettering that read PEACE LOVE JUSTICE, and tan suede shoes that were open at the heel.

As his squinty eyes darted back and forth, Curtis recalled his first impression of Gartner: that he not only looked like a weasel, but projected a greasy sleaziness.

Gartner then said something to the motorcyclist as he was rocking his helmet side to side to slide it from his head. When he’d finally gotten it off and turned to lock it to the rear of the bike, Curtis saw yet another familiar face, a smug one.

Well, I will be goddamned! All the waiting really has paid off.

I’m going to get a twofer!

Jay-Cee, you miserable shit. You won’t be smug long, not for what you did to Wendy…

John “JC” Nguyen was a cocky twenty-five-year-old-half Caucasian, half Asian, small-boned, five-two, and maybe one-ten soaking wet-who didn’t walk but strutted. His thick black hair was combed straight back and hung to his collar. He wore baggy blue jeans that barely clung to his hips, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, and, over the T-shirt, a Philadelphia Eagles football jersey.

The green jersey had a big white number 7 on the back and, in white block lettering across the shoulder blades, the name VICK.

Small surprise that the punk worships an overpaid jock who likes making dogs fight to the death.

But what the hell kind of justice is it that Michael Vick sat almost two years in the slam for that crime while this miserable shit abused my baby and never spent a single fucking night behind bars?

By the time he reentered the court system for the assault on Wendy Curtis, JC had had a long list of priors-more than a dozen arrests over as many years, mostly for either possession of, or possession with intent to distribute, pot and speed and other controlled substances. His first bust had been when he’d just turned fourteen, and it earned him the street name “JC,” for John Cannabis, a nod to the homegrown marijuana he first sold to his South Philly High schoolmates.

Curtis had learned, primarily from the prosecutors in the Repeat Offenders Unit of the district attorney’s office, that in all but Nguyen’s very first cases, he had been represented by Gartner.

Curtis also had been told that that did not necessarily mean Gartner was a good lawyer. In fact, one assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute Nguyen’s case said that the opposite was true.

“The one thing commonly said of Daniel O. Gartner, Esquire,” the prosecutor told Curtis, quietly but bitterly, “is that he’s the worst fucking lawyer in all the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

He’d then added, “If there existed a book titled The Dictionary of Dirt-bags, and in it was a definition of a lawyer who not only graduated at the bottom of his class but was as dirty as his clients, Gartner’s ugly mug would be beside it.” He’d exhaled audibly and added, “He’s always working the system.”

He explained that Gartner almost never really won a case for a client. Practically all them were negotiated with some sort of plea bargain to get the charges reduced, working the system so that the sentence left the scum with a very short term in the slam. Thus, it wasn’t unusual for Gartner to watch a less-than-ecstatic client in handcuffs and a faded orange jumpsuit being hauled out of court to go back behind bars.

Sometimes-thanks to the already overloaded justice system, its dockets packed, its prisons full-he managed to get only a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of probation.

And, on very rare occasions, Gartner got a case tossed out on a technicality.

Curtis had learned that the hard way in Wendy’s case, with Nguyen. Gartner got the guilty bastard off scot-free. All it had taken was for him to find a breach in how the evidence had been handled.

The animal didn’t even get probation. Nothing.

In the DA’s office, after giving the bad news to Will and Linda Curtis, then deeply apologizing for the administrative mistake, the prosecutor sighed and said, “It’s the reality of what we deal with every day. The system is broken. But like a broken watch that gets the time right twice a day, we eventually do get ’em. Meanwhile, guys like Gartner take advantage of the weaknesses to get their clients to walk.”

Will Curtis saw Gartner motion for JC to come inside. JC nodded in reply, then pulled a small nylon bag from under the weblike netting on the rear end of the motorcycle’s black seat.

Strutting like a rooster, he carried the bag to the open metal door, went through it, and closed the door behind him.

Will Curtis checked for traffic again and started across the street.