Pipe Dream

by Solomon Jones

  Sheldon was silent.

  “We need to have that officer from the 6th look at some pictures, too,” Nelson said, thinking out loud. “Assuming the ones he saw wearing sunglasses were Black and Leroy, one of the two women must have been the owner of the car. If he can identify who’s who, maybe he can remember something that can help us figure out whether she’s working with them. Call your guys and have them bring some photos down to the 6th District so that officer can have a look at them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I also want another five teams out on the streets looking for these suspects.”

  “We’re going to be stretching our resources kind of thin, sir.”

  “I know,” Nelson said. “That’s why you’re going to call the state police and have them get some additional state units within the city limits. Get some of our units to set up communications with them so everybody knows what everyone else is doing.

  “In the meantime, I want the communications for this thing moved from J band to M band. And I don’t want any information—descriptions or anything else of interest to the media—to be put out over the air. The only broadcasts I want to hear are requests for phone calls and meets. Also, I want to hear from your guys about anything that goes on between now and the time this thing is officially declared a homicide.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s get the ball rolling,” Nelson said, looking out the window at the sun burning orange against the Philadelphia skyline. “Because time is running out.”

  “I know,” Sheldon said absently. “Time is running out.”

  Nelson didn’t respond.

  “I’m going to run down to headquarters to brief my guys in person, sir,” Sheldon said, grabbing his jacket from a chair. “I’ll make the phone calls on the way.”

  Sheldon rushed out the door, juggling his car keys and a cell phone. He was dialing the first of several numbers before he made it to the car.

  But not all of his calls concerned police business.

  The phone at Internal Affairs rang hollow, echoing through the dark room like an alarm. Usually, the office was empty at that hour. But Lieutenant Darren Morgan had been there since five A.M., and he was clearly relieved that the call came before the other officers arrived at the office.

  He snatched the phone off the hook before it could ring twice.

  “Hello.”

  “Meet me in the parking lot. I’ll be outside in ten minutes.”

  “Okay,” Morgan said, and hung up the phone.

  Lieutenant Morgan was used to those types of conversations. It was all part of the game. Very often, the network of political connections he and Sheldon had built over the last year depended on four-word phone calls and meetings in public places. At least twice a day, someone would call, name a place and time, then hang up. They did it that way because they didn’t have time to talk. They didn’t have time to play, either. But after the stroke of luck that had removed Johnny Podres from the picture, Morgan was in a jovial mood. He almost felt like, well, playing.

  Boarding the elevator for the trip down to the first floor of the Roundhouse—Philadelphia’s police headquarters—Morgan began to reflect on his perfect life. He had enough time to do what he wanted. He had enough money to do what he wanted. Now, with Podres gone, it was just a matter of packing up and disappearing.

  After he got off the elevator and walked past the officer who was posted at the desk, Morgan strolled through the glass doors leading to the parking lot. As he did so, he tried to put an exact figure on the stolen money he’d pocketed over the last few years. As always, the figure eluded him. Not that it mattered. He knew that it was enough to keep him from ever having to count.

  The scheme, after all, was perfect. An Internal Affairs lieutenant and a divisional supervisor riding plainclothes through select police districts would shake down drug dealers, numbers runners, fences, and anyone else who was bringing in large amounts of illicit cash. They never used the same car, never used names, and never hit the same place more than once in a ninety-day period. It was easy money. Keeping it hidden was the hard part. But they even had a way to do that.

  Morgan and Sheldon laundered the money by making campaign contributions to a select group of politicians through political action committees with phony membership lists. The politicians would take a little off the top, then donate the remainder to a phony nonprofit organization with a post office box for an address. At the end of the year, the nonprofit would fold, having donated all the money to worthy causes—namely Morgan and Sheldon.

  Politicians who needed more money for one reason or another were given “advances” through the bogus political action committees. In return, they would pretty much stay mum on whatever happened to be the police scandal of the moment.

  As he checked his watch and looked around for Sheldon, Morgan thought of how untouchable they were. After all, who was going to check out an Internal Affairs supervisor like Morgan? If anything, other cops tried to stay away from him. And Sheldon? No one could touch him as long as Morgan was there to protect him from Internal Affairs investigations.

  Every base was covered and the scam ran like clockwork. But that wasn’t always the case. Two years before, when a watchdog agency called the Police Civilian Review Board was founded, the clock almost ground to a halt.

  The push for the creation of the board began after a college student was mistaken for a drug dealer and shot in the back by police. That case brought attention to instances of other young black men who had died in police custody. And though few people could disagree that it had to stop, the position of the police was simple. They were outmanned and outgunned by criminals. So even as the protests became more vocal, the shootings and beatings continued.

  From the outset, the mayor and the Fraternal Order of Police—a police union of sorts—were against the board’s creation. They claimed that it would impede the department’s ability to perform. But as the pressure mounted, the issue became a political hot potato. Anyone who came down against it would look antiblack. And in a city whose electorate is largely African-American, that’s not a good stance to take.

  Eventually, several city council members forged a compromise. They created the board as a lame duck, thanks in large part to Sheldon’s influence in city council. But as luck would have it, the one council member who was virtually incorruptible was selected to run the board. That member was Councilman Johnny Podres.

  Initially, they tried to win him over with hefty campaign contributions. But money didn’t work. In fact, Podres became more obstinate than ever. The board became his personal power base, and the police department became his whipping boy.

  He held hearings on all manner of police corruption—from favoritism in hiring and promotion to negligence in police shootings. In some cases, the board even succeeded in having criminal charges filed against police officers. That worried Sheldon and Morgan. Even members of city council—the ones who had come to depend on the benefits they reaped from participating in the laundering scheme—could see that Podres had to be stopped.

  And so, after two years of watching the board grow increasingly powerful, Sheldon and Morgan came up with a plan. It was based on a brilliantly simple, time-honored method of bringing men to their knees: seduction.

  They knew they needed to find just the right woman to make a solid family man like Podres stray from a happy twenty-five-year marriage. After an extensive search of juvenile criminal records for females in the Philadelphia region, they chose Antonia Vargas. She was a seventeen-year-old Hispanic call girl who resembled a young version of Podres’s wife. The only difference was, Miss Vargas had a simmering sexuality that even leaped off the page in her mug shots.

  Sheldon contacted the call girl, met with her to set up payment arrangements, then set up a tricky psychological game. They knew from watching Podres that he attended morning Mass every day at six A.M. It was the only place he went, other than work, where he was away from his wife for any length of t
ime. And it was the same place that the councilman had met his wife twenty-five years before. Sheldon and Morgan, hoping that the sight of a woman resembling his wife would stir up something, paid the call girl to start attending the service on a regular basis.

  They gave her specific instructions: Always maintain close proximity to the councilman; wear tasteful yet revealing clothing; approach the councilman like someone in need of a shoulder to cry on (Podres, after all, had a soft spot for people with problems); and, above all, act innocent.

  For two weeks, Podres all but ignored Antonia—a young woman who, by most people’s standards, was the perfect combination of sex and vulnerability. With Podres acting like she wasn’t even there, the girl began to question her own abilities. Even Morgan, who followed them every day with camera in tow, began to wonder if they should have gotten a young man to seduce Podres instead of Antonia. It was so bad that Sheldon, normally an atheist, was beginning to whisper a few prayers of his own.

  But then, out of nowhere, Podres asked the young woman to lunch. That first lunch date led to other lunch dates, and eventually he started meeting her for late suppers. Within two weeks Podres was bedding Antonia in motels at lunchtime, in locked rooms at city hall, even at the church.

  By the time the affair was in full swing, Sheldon and Morgan had paid Antonia more than fifteen thousand dollars for her services. And it was well worth it. The credit card receipts from the lunchtime motel rendezvous, the pictures from the church, and the sworn affidavits they obtained from motel clerks and the church janitor were more than enough to suit their purposes.

  With the evidence in hand, they sent a letter to the councilman asking him to meet with their political action committee. When he refused, they had a manila envelope hand-delivered to Podres’s office. It contained evidence of the affair and a check for five thousand dollars. The note they enclosed was simple.

  It said, “Ease up.”

  Podres looked at the package and immediately absorbed it all: the pictures of him and the girl together; the extensive criminal record listing everything about her; the affidavits and credit card receipts. And then he looked at the check, which was drawn on the account of a political action committee that he’d refused to meet with on several occasions. It was called Safer Philadelphians.

  The note, which he read only after looking through everything else, brought the entire scheme into perspective. Safer Philadelphians must represent some police organization, or even some individual officers who might have to come before the board. If he eased up, none of the information in the envelope would come out. But if he didn’t . . .

  His marriage, of course, would be under significant strain. His career would come to an abrupt and tumultuous end. His reputation would be ruined. There were all kinds of negative possibilities. That is, unless he eased up.

  Podres thought about it for two days and decided to ignore the package. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, be bought. And he did everything he could to make it clear that he intended to continue doing business as usual. He didn’t cash the five-thousand-dollar check. He went on a talk show and said he intended to head an investigation into a ticket-fixing scam. The board, in three consecutive hearings, secured the suspensions of five more officers who were involved in a drug ring.

  The headlines were heralding Podres as a possible mayoral candidate in the upcoming election. The councilman was flying high. That is, until Morgan—claiming to be a representative of the political action committee—called Podres at home and told him to go down to the phone booth at the end of the block.

  The councilman told his wife that he’d be right back and walked to the corner. When he got there, the phone was already ringing. Without a word, Podres picked it up. Before Podres could say anything, Morgan proceeded to lay out the details of the money-laundering network. He told the councilman that if he refused to participate, the photos and affidavits would be delivered to every major media outlet in Philadelphia within twenty-four hours. Morgan even challenged Podres to go to the police, knowing that the councilman had made so many enemies in the department that they would never help him. When Podres remained silent, Morgan hung up.

  The next afternoon, when Podres left City Hall, he went to the bank, cashed the check from Safer Philadelphians, and put the five thousand dollars in his sock. He didn’t know what he ought to do next and he really didn’t care. All he knew was that someone was intent on ruining him. His options? He could turn the matter over to the same police department he’d been purging for the last two years and hope that they would help him. Or he could play their game, launder their money, and hope that he didn’t get caught. Either way, Podres knew that he could never respect himself again, even if he survived politically. And nothing was worth that.

  So Podres decided to pack his gun, get drunk, go home, and wait for them to call again. When they did, he would ask for a meeting. Then he would blow the bastard’s head off, leave the money on the body, and walk away with his dignity intact. He knew he would be caught, but he didn’t care. At least he wouldn’t have to live the rest of his life under someone’s thumb. And in the councilman’s mind, the death of his tormentor was a fair trade-off for political ruin. The plan would at least enable him to maintain a portion of his self-respect.

  But it didn’t work that way, because someone had anticipated Podres’s lack of cooperation. The end was a foregone conclusion. Only, Podres didn’t know it.

  His plan started out the way he had envisioned. Podres managed to make it into a bar, and after several hours, he stumbled out to his car, thinking to himself how everything was going according to plan. His gun was packed, he was drunk, and he was on his way home to wait for the call. But then he saw a light-skinned black girl with long brown hair and hazel eyes walking up Broad Street.

  He pulled over in his city-issued black Mercury and waited for her to walk up to the car. When she did, he asked her to get in. The girl smiled sweetly and introduced herself. And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she pulled out a glass tube and offered him a hit of crack.

  Podres had never smoked anything stronger than a cigarette, let alone crack. But when the girl offered him the straight shooter, he looked at it. Then he looked at the girl. To his inebriated mind, she was an angel. And what she was offering was a slice of her own private heaven. It had to be better than the hell he’d lived in for the past two days. So Podres took it. And then he followed Pookie to a place where all his troubles would finally end. Because the man with the gold bracelet had decided that it was over.

  He knew that Podres would never cooperate, knew that the politician was backed into a corner, knew that there was only one way for it to end. And so he followed him. Watched him pick up the girl. Waited for him to go in the house. And when the pipers took Podres’s gun and blew out the candles, the rest was easy. He just slipped in, fired a single shot, and slipped out.

  Only one of them had seen him.

  And that little problem would be eliminated soon enough.

  “Morgan,” Sheldon hissed, trying to catch his attention.

  Morgan ignored the captain, dragged absently on his third cigarette, and stared straight ahead.

  “Morgan!” Sheldon repeated.

  Morgan walked over to the car.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Sheldon said as he got out of the car.

  “I was just thinking about Podres,” Morgan said wistfully. “And wondering why you were taking so long.”

  “I got caught up with something back at the scene.”

  “So what’s the big emergency? Podres is gone, the payments are on schedule . . .”

  “We got lucky last night when those pipers shot Podres. But we’ve still got a few loose ends.”

  “Such as?”

  “We don’t have a witness who actually saw Leroy or Black shoot Podres, and neither of them has ever been arrested for anything involving a gun.”

  Morgan grunted. “First time for everything.”

  “
Sure there is. But Accident Investigations found the probable murder weapon—Podres’s own gun, mind you—in the getaway car.”

  “Leroy could’ve left it in the car.”

  Morgan wasn’t getting it quickly enough for Sheldon. So he just told him straight-out. “You want to know what I think? I think the guy who died in that crash is probably the one who really shot Podres.”

  “So what. Wouldn’t you rather it was him? That way the investigation’s over quickly and nobody looks too deep into what was going on with Podres before he died.”

  “No, I wouldn’t rather it was him,” Sheldon said. “You think the Ricans are going to stand for a quick little investigation that pins this shooting on a dead guy? First thing they’ll scream is racism.”

  “Even if the dead guy we pin it on is the guy who really did it?”

  “Look, Morgan. You’ve still got people out there saying the mob teamed up with the Russians to kill JFK. You’ve got people saying they saw Elvis last Tuesday buying snakeskin belts out at Roosevelt Mall. Hoffa’s been dead since the sixties and people are still writing books about where the body’s really buried.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Sheldon said sarcastically, “people need closure. They need someone to blame when their hero dies. They need to know exactly what happened and how. They’re not going to accept that Podres just happened to be in a crack house and the guy who killed him died in a car crash. No. They need someone they can look at and hate. Somebody they can look at and say, ‘Let’s give that son of a bitch the death penalty.’ ”

  Sheldon could see Morgan coming around. His wrinkled brow was slowly unfolding and a grin was playing on his lips.

  “Somebody like Black and Leroy,” Morgan said as comprehension crept across his face.

  “Exactly,” Sheldon said. And then his words began tumbling out in a rush. “Pookie, too. I figure we let the nurse go. Say she was held against her will. People don’t really want to see nurses go to jail anyway. They’d rather blame everything on crack heads. Quick investigation. Quick arrests. The whole thing dies down. Case closed.”