The Vigilantes

VIII
[ONE]

Jefferson and Mascher Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 5:12 P.M.

Speeding down Girard Avenue, just past the Schmidt’s Brewery development and just before the Hops Haus complex, Sergeant Matt Payne pulled a hard left onto Howard Street, putting the unmarked gray Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor into a tire-squealing four-wheel drift.

Moments earlier, Jason Washington had reported that not only were there three dead at the Northern Liberties scene, but a call had come in saying that a blue shirt at the scene reported another shooting had just taken place a block away.

Matt had floored the accelerator pedal.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw in the rearview mirror that the maneuver had thrown Corporal Kerry Rapier against the right rear door.

“Hey, Marshal,” Rapier said, his tone casual, “think you might want to take it a little easier on the car?”

Detective Tony Harris chuckled.

“This thing’s a tank, Kerry,” Payne replied calmly as he steered in the direction of the skid to correct it. Then, squared up, he stepped harder on the gas pedal and the engine roared. “Heavy Dee-troit metal. Big iron block V-8. And you couldn’t throw a turn like that back there without the rear-wheel drive. It’s not as nimble as my Porsche, but then I wouldn’t attempt a PIT with my 911. These cars are built to take it.”

Rapier knew that Pursuit Intervention Technique was basically tactical ramming. In a PIT, the reinforced nose of the Police Interceptor smacked the tail of the car being pursued so that its driver suddenly lost control, turning sideways or spinning out before skidding to a stop.

“Not built to take the way you handle cars,” Rapier replied. “I heard you got that nice sports car all shot up.”

Harris chuckled again. “He’s got you, Matt. By the way, what’s up with your 911? That happened months ago.”

“Still mired in the purgatory known as insurance adjuster arbitration,” Payne said. “I hate insurance companies. The bastards don’t want to write me a check for what it’s worth to replace. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. So, while I was killing time stuck at the desk going over the pop-and-drops, I found out a half-dozen unmarkeds were about to go back to the feds-they were on loan to Dignitary Protection from the Department of Homeland Security-and I managed to get this one’s transfer paperwork ‘misplaced’ for the foreseeable future.”

Harris grinned. “Smooth move. It’ll take the feds forever to figure out one’s missing.”

“Yeah, and my conscience is clear. Thanks to budget cuts, we don’t have near enough cars, and we’re at least putting this one to good use. The paperwork showed the other five are just getting parked, either warehoused or ‘tasked to a possible high-value target.’”

“Translation being,” Harris said, “left sitting empty with the wigwags flashing outside the U.S. Mint or Fed Reserve here to give the impression that one of the alphabet agencies under DHS is on the ball.”

“Exactly.”

Kerry Rapier went on: “Did you guys know these are about to become dinosaurs? Ford’s not going to make the Crown Vic anymore. And no Crown Vic means no Crown Vic Police Interceptors. They’re going to be replaced with a hopped-up Ford Taurus.”

“What? A scrawny V-6 front-wheel-drive like our Impala squad cars!” Payne said, making a mock gasp. “Horrors! You, Corporal Rapier, have ruined my joyous thoughts of being forever able to abuse police pursuit vehicles. I may as well put in my transfer to the Bike Squad.”

Payne saw in the mirror that Rapier was smiling out his window.

And then he saw that Rapier wasn’t wearing his seat belt.

When they’d first gotten in the car at the Roundhouse, both Payne and Harris had climbed into the front seats. It wasn’t lost on Rapier, as he automatically went to latch his seat belt, that Matt and Tony had sat on their seat belts. The belts had already been buckled across the seats.

“Hey, guys, didn’t your mothers teach you to always put on your seat belts?”

Payne was putting down the unmarked squad car’s two sun visors so that they would be visible at the top of the windshield from the outside. On the driver’s visor was a white sticker with red block lettering that spelled POLICE. Strapped to the passenger visor was a light bar with red-and-blue strobes. The twelve-volt DC power cord for the emergency lights was snaked over the stalk that held the rearview mirror to the windshield and ran down to the cigarette lighter.

As Payne stuck the plug in the lighter receptacle, he said, “Yes, but that was before dear ol’ Mummy knew that I’d be carrying a pistol on my belt.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I was going to say, ‘Didn’t they teach you at the Police Academy

…?’ then realized that if they had, it would have been on the QT.”

“Why quiet?”

Payne, badly mimicking a Shakespearean actor, said: “To buckle or not to buckle, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer either the slings or the arrows”-he went back to his normal voice-“the slings in this case being seat belts, the arrows being bullets.”

Harris put in, “You really butchered that, Matt.”

“You people clearly have no couth,” Payne said. “Simply put, then: It’s a judgment call as to which you consider the safer option: wearing a seat belt so that you’re better off in case you’re in an accident, or not wearing one so that you can exit the vehicle and draw your weapon faster when going after a bad guy. Having numerous times had to exit vehicles in pursuit of bad guys-some of whom thought it a good idea to shoot at us-certain of us have chosen not to buckle.”

Payne, looking in the rearview mirror, had seen Rapier considering that.

And now, as they had turned onto Jefferson, he saw that Rapier was sitting on his seat belt.

Payne braked hard, bringing the Crown Vic Police Interceptor to a screeching stop not far from a Crime Scene Unit van. A Medical Examiner’s Office van was parked farther down Jefferson, and a gurney holding an obviously full body bag was being rolled into its rear cargo area.

Unrestrained by seat belts, the three men were almost instantly out of the unmarked shiny gray Police Interceptor.

“That’s one massive steel ball,” Kerry Rapier said, looking up at the towering red-and-white Link-Belt crane that in the late-afternoon light was casting a huge shadow across the dirt. “Must weigh two, maybe three tons. Could be a contender for the largest murder weapon on record.”

Harris snorted. “If in fact it was the cause of death. Remember that the Black Buddha said the other two victims showed no known cause of death.”

With Payne leading, they walked past a big, bright white sign announcing a Philadelphia Economic Gentrification Initiative project by City Councilman Rapp Badde and the coming of three thousand new jobs.

That’s a lot of jobs, Matt thought. Especially here.

Probably another political lie.

Payne couldn’t help but notice that the sign was plastered with homemade flyers that bore a crude representation of the city councilman.

“Badde wanted for crimes?” Kerry Rapier then wondered aloud.

“Everyone’s got their own idea of what constitutes a crime,” Payne said. “As far as I know, Badde hasn’t broken any laws on the books. Arguably, he’s bent the living hell out of a few, but then that’s what politicians do.”

Payne saw that except for a line of five row houses-Make that four and a half, considering that hole in the one on the end-only smelly, raw earth remained on the once-residential city block. There was some heavy equipment and the white PEGI signs in each corner of the block. And that was it.

Yellow POLICE LINE tape was strung from the half-fallen wooden back fence of the semidemolished row house to the rear of the red-and-white Link-Belt crane, then to a four-foot-high iron pole in the concrete sidewalk that once held a parking meter, then past the Medical Examiner Office’s van and all the way down the sidewalk to the farthest row house at the corner of Jefferson and Mascher.

Payne looked at the small group gathered beside the crane and saw a familiar face, Detective Harry Mudd of the Crime Scene Unit.

Mudd-a muscular, five-foot-eleven thirty-five-year-old with fiercely inquisitive eyes and salt-and-pepper hair trimmed short-was a ten-year veteran of the department. Payne knew him to be a no-nonsense and damned thorough investigator.

Mudd stood with his arms crossed and head somewhat cocked as he listened to one of the three beefy men who looked like construction workers.

Or heavy-equipment operators, Payne thought when he saw the sloppily hand-lettered cardboard square sign-TURCO DEMOLITION amp; EXCAVATION-that was taped to the side of the crane.

Mudd’s eyes darted to Payne, who was leading Harris and Rapier toward him. He held out his right index finger as a Hold that thought a moment gesture to the beefy guy who was doing the talking. Then Mudd turned and started moving to intercept Payne.

“Sergeant Payne, good to see you,” Detective Mudd said, offering his hand.

“It’s ‘Matt,’ Harry,” he said, taking it, then he gestured to the others. “You know Tony Harris. And this is Corporal Kerry Rapier.”

“Harry Mudd, Kerry,” he said, shaking the corporal’s hand.

Kerry Rapier nodded, more than a little impressed by Mudd’s grip. He was almost afraid he was going to pull back his hand and find his fingers crushed to a bloody pulp.

“Nice to meet you, Detective,” Rapier said.

Tony Harris said, “How they hanging, Harry? It’s been a while.”

Mudd nodded. “It has. And if you mean, how are the bad guys hanging, I wish I could say by a noose. Otherwise, the answer’s the same, one lower than the other.”

He and Harris exchanged grins.

Payne looked over at the three men standing beside the Link-Belt crane. The tallest one, who appeared somewhat pale and had his chin almost to his chest, had a real look of gloom. The shortest of the three, who had a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, glanced at his wristwatch as he anxiously kicked the raw dirt with his boot toe, then glared in Payne’s direction.

“I’m assuming one of those guys is Mr. Turco?”

Mudd glanced over. “Yeah, two actually. The tall one’s name is Bucco, Bobby ‘The Ballbuster’ Bucco. He was running the crane when the ball found the deceased. The owner of the company is the short one who’s sucking on the cigar stub. Thomas ‘Little Tommie’ Turco. And he’s ten kinds of pissed off.”

“What’s his problem?”

“You.”

“Me? I just got the hell here.”

Mudd nodded. “And that’s why he’s pissed. I told him I was under orders to wait for the head of the homicide task force to get here. You’re here in that shiny undercover car-nice wheels, by the way; where’d you steal them?-and he’s probably guessing that I’m talking with The Man.”

Payne decided it best to ignore the hot-car question. But the fact that Mudd raised it indicated that it wouldn’t be the last time someone was going to ask how he came by a nice new vehicle when almost everyone else in the department was driving battered hand-me-downs with six digits on their odometers. It damn sure wasn’t the kind of vehicle that was going to hide in plain sight very well.

“So,” Payne said, “I still don’t get why he’s pissed at me.”

“He wants to return the crane to the rental place, which he says is now charging him Sunday double time. But I told him I couldn’t release him or his equipment until you gave the go-ahead.”

Payne raised his eyebrows.

“Like I said, Matt, I’m just doing what I was told. You know how antsy the department’s chain of command gets when Mayor Carlucci holds a press conference. And that shit flows downhill so fast.”

Payne nodded. “Understood, Harry. You know I have full faith in your skills, so we can skip the formalities. What the hell is going on here?”

Mudd pulled out his spiral notepad and began, “Thomas ‘Little Tommie’ Turco’s company was hired by HUD to turn the whole block back to dirt-”

“-and he’s really pissed at ‘that expediter sonofabitch who’s really going to pay for all this,’ ” Mudd finished a few minutes later.

“So, three dead?” Payne said. “But no idea why they were in the condemned buildings and no idea what killed the other two?”

Mudd was shaking his head. “No idea. And of course, until we hear from Dr. Mitchell’s autopsy, we won’t know for sure if the third died of blunt trauma. The one thing that is clear, however, is that there were people living in these houses right up until sometime today.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, these folks were holdouts. They didn’t want to move. They refused the buyout from PEGI.” He pointed down the street. “That middle house? We found one of the dead at the kitchen table, slumped over with his face in a bowl of apparently just-made tomato soup.”

“Possibly putting the time of death around noon?” Payne asked.

“Possibly,” Mudd said. “Who knows?”

Payne looked at Harris and Rapier.

“Any thoughts, gentlemen? You know as much about the cases as I do.”

Kerry Rapier shrugged, then grinned. “Death by drowning?”

Harris and Payne groaned.

“Only the obvious fact,” Tony Harris then said, “that this doesn’t fit the pop-and-drop MO in any way at all. Unless we’re missing something…”

Mudd glanced at the line of five remaining row houses and said: “Do you want to take a look inside?”

“Not right now,” Payne said. “It’s going to be dark soon. Let’s talk about the other dead guy.”

“Even better,” Mudd said, “let’s go over to the scene.”

Payne gestured that Mudd should lead.

As they started walking along the sidewalk in front of the half-demolished row house, they heard an Italian-accented voice bark, “Aw, what the fuck, youse guys?”

When they all turned, they saw a frustrated Little Tommie Turco standing with both arms above his head, palms up.

Detective Harry Mudd held up his right index finger again, this time in a gesture meant to signal Back in a minute.

They heard Turco then bark, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” and watched as he tore the cigar stub from his mouth and threw it to the dirt.