The Vigilantes

[THREE]

Jefferson and Mascher Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 1:55 P.M.

“Bobby, what the hell does five fucking minutes matter?” Thomas “Little Tommie” Turco glanced at his wristwatch and anxiously tapped his steel-toed work boot. “The permit says two o’clock start time. We’re wasting daylight, not to mention burning rental money. Go on and swing it.”

Puffing on a stub of a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, the bulky, thirty-eight-year-old Turco-who was anything but little-stood on the step outside the cab of a red-and-white Link-Belt crane he’d rented two hours earlier. A weathered cardboard sign, cut somewhat square, was taped to the door of the cab. It was poorly hand-lettered with a black permanent-ink marker: TURCO DEMOLITION amp; EXCAVATION. NOT FOR HIRE. UNDER CONTRACT WITH CITY OF PHILA HUD.

“You got it, boss,” said Bobby “the Ballbuster” Bucco, who was sitting at the controls. He fired up the Link-Belt’s diesel engine.

Little Tommie then gave a thumbs-up to Jimmy “Dirtball” Turco. His cousin was at the controls of a massive Caterpillar D3K bulldozer that sat next to a pair of Bobcats with front-end loading buckets and a line of five heavy-duty dump trucks waiting to haul away debris. The bright yellow, nine-ton dozer roared to life. Then its twin tracks and giant front blade began kicking up clouds of dust as the dozer started pushing into piles the scattered, busted debris of the onetime residential neighborhood.

This was the second time in the last ten days that Turco’s beefy crew-not one of the men weighed an ounce under two-fifty-had worked this Northern Liberties job site.

The first time, during a solid week of working dawn to dusk every day but Sunday, they had taken almost the entire block down to bare earth. Little Tommie himself would have admitted that it wasn’t really all that impressive an accomplishment, if only because over the years almost half of the row houses had burned and their shells had been removed by crews from the City of Philadelphia. Turco’s equipment only had to scrape up and truck off the concrete footings, and sometimes not even those were left, just weed-choked dirt.

The reason Turco’s crew had not been able to finish the job all at once-and had to return today-could be explained in part by the signs recently posted on the property.

There were four shiny new large ones, four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood painted bright white and nailed to four-by-four-inch posts, each erected on a corner of the block. Lettered in black was: MOVING PHILLY FORWARD! COMING SOON TO NORTHERN LIBERTIES: 3,000 NEW JOBS! PROJECT COST TO TAXPAYERS: ZERO! ANOTHER FINE DEVELOPMENT FOR YOUR FUTURE FROM THE PHILADELPHIA ECONOMIC GENTRIFICATION INITIATIVE A PROJECT OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA HOUSING amp; URBAN DEVELOPMENT COUNCILMAN H. RAPP BADDE, JR., CHAIRMAN

And there were a score or more smaller signs that had been made with a stencil. They had been spray-painted on the exterior doors and walls of the last five standing row houses on the block, all of which were in a group at the southwest corner of the job site.

The stencils read: OFFICIAL NOTICE! CONDEMNED PROPERTY! CERTIFIED UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION UNDER STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA URBAN REDEVELOPMENT LAW NO TRESPASSING!

Forty-five days earlier, the entire block had officially been declared a blight and then condemned.

Every owner of the individual properties had been served a notice of condemnation that week, and all-except for the five holdouts-had let expire the thirty-day period for challenging the condemnation.

They had taken their checks-most of the owners grumbling that PEGI paid them only pennies on the dollar for their properties, never mind that many of the houses had been genuine hazards and public nuisances, or damn close to it-and moved on.

They understood that they were powerless to fight the inevitable. And change was inevitable. They’d spent at least the last year looking at the looming twenty-one-story Hops Haus complex just three blocks to the south and right next to the fancy new Schmidt’s Brewery development.

The five holdouts, however, were not easily persuaded. They had protested every day, marching with signs and chanting, even as Turco’s crews and their heavy equipment created an intimidating environment while tearing down the rest of the block right up to their doorsteps.

The holdouts had even plastered home-printed handbills all over the neighborhood, including on the brand-new bright white signs at the four corners of the block. The handbills displayed a crude image of a black politician wearing a tiny black bow tie above the words: COUNCILMAN RAPP BADDE WANTED! FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE POOR amp; DISADVANTAGED OF PHILLY! LAST SEEN STEALING HOMES amp; TEARING DOWN NEIGHBORHOODS! HELP STOP HIM, OR YOURS IS NEXT!

But then Little Tommie had gotten the call that the holdouts had finally been dealt with, and that Turco Demolition and Excavation had the green light to reduce the remaining properties to rubble.

That call had come in two days earlier, after office hours on Friday afternoon, and it had been from some fellow who announced to Little Tommie that he’d been “tasked at HUD as the new expediter for PEGI projects.”

“He said we’re all good to go,” Little Tommie had told Bobby the Ballbuster after he’d hung up the phone. They were sitting in Turco’s office cutting the dust of the day with a couple glasses of Scotch whisky. “But I just turned that damn crane back in to the rental shop!”

Turco had then had to call and reserve another crane, a slightly smaller one that at least was cheaper than the one he’d just turned in. But he wasn’t overjoyed with the news that the earliest it could be available was Sunday noon.

“I hate working Sundays,” he’d said when he’d slammed down the receiver.

Now, from his seat in the cab of the rental crane, Bobby the Ballbuster could see a few of the protest signs the holdouts had carried. One that he could clearly see read: “Eminent Domain = Theft by Gov’t!” Another said “5th Amendment Yes!” and had the international symbol for “no”-a red circle with a red backslash-across the words “Philly HUD” and “PEGI.”

The signs were in the dirt beside the first two-story row house he was about to tear down using a four-thousand-pound forged-steel wrecking ball.

The pear-shaped ball was on a rusty hook at the end of the thick, heavy steel cable that hung from the tip of the crane’s sixty-foot-high boom. A secondary steel line attached to the top of the wrecking ball ran laterally to a drum right beneath the cab. The drum had a clutch that, when released, would allow the drum to turn freely-and the two-ton ball to swing like a pendulum. After the ball struck the building, the drum would reel it back so it could be released again to knock another hole in the structure.

And so on, until nothing remained but rubble.

Now aimed at the brick siding of the faded-red row house, the ball was positioned ten feet above the ground and directly in front of the cab’s windshield. Bucco could almost reach out and touch it.

Instead, he put his hand on the lever that worked the clutch on the lateral drum.

“What’re you waiting for?” Little Tommie said as he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat out a piece of tobacco leaf.

Bobby the Ballbuster threw the lever, and there came an ear-piercing metallic screech as the drum spun and the wire cable unspooled. The two tons of forged-steel wrecking ball swung toward the row house. The ball struck more or less on target-and sailed right on through the brick siding. The impact caused the ground to shake.

Bucco then threw the lever to engage the lateral line drum’s clutch. The crane’s huge diesel engine roared. There came another screech as the wire cable wound back on the drum. The pear-shaped ball appeared in the pear-shaped hole it had made, then slowly returned to its position in front of Bucco.

“Go again!” Turco said impatiently.

Bucco threw the lever. The drum screeched and the ball swung, and the row house shook on impact.

This time, though, the kinetic energy punched a hole in the wall that was three times the size of the ball itself. Wood splinters flew. Turco dodged one of the small pieces that managed to fly all the way to the crane.

The crane’s diesel engine roared again as Bucco retracted the ball.

As it came out, they suddenly saw a small tan mongrel dog peering out of the big hole on the second floor. It had no collar. It looked around nervously, then jumped down to the ground, tumbling when it hit. The dog got to its feet, shook its head, and ran off as if it were on fire.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Bucco said. “I thought these houses were finally cleared!”

“Looked like a damn stray,” Turco said reasonably. “And now the mutt’s gone.”

Bucco looked at him and said, “I don’t know, Tommie. I’m getting a bad vibe. Maybe I’d better go and double-check.”

Turco looked at his watch, then said, “It was just a fucking mutt. Just swing it again. We can knock these shit-for-houses down in a couple hours, and I can return this crane by five and only pay for a half-day rental. Then we can get the hell off this job and on to the next one.”

Bucco looked at him a long moment, then at the big hole in the wall, then back at Turco. He shrugged and said, “Awww, all right, you’re the boss.”

The next swing of the two-ton ball took out almost all the rest of the upstairs exterior wall, which caused the roof to partially collapse.

And again Bobby the Ballbuster threw the lever that caused the drum to begin reeling in the lateral line.

This time, though, there was something stuck on the ball. Bucco and Turco knew it wasn’t unusual for either the ball or the cable to snag something-anything from electrical wiring to abandoned furniture-and carry it outside.

But as the ball exited the massive hole in the second-floor wall, it was clear that this wasn’t any building material.

As the ball was reeled closer to the cab, they had a stomach-turning view of what had gotten snagged.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Bucco said as he stared through the cab windshield at the wrecking ball-and at the limp body of one of the male holdouts, his jacket caught on the rusty hook that held the ball.

His lifeless eyes stared back at Bucco.

Bobby the Ballbuster struck Little Tommie with the cab door as he flung it open. Bucco’s vomit splashed all over Turco’s steel-toed work boots.