“I told you, going after the low-level dealers is useless. You wanna talk about weeds popping up … shit, I could spend all day crushing fuckin’ creamers and they’d ship more in by the boxful.”
“I’m not talking about them.”
“What, then?”
“What about the people sitting down at the table?”
Wildey blinks, uncomprehending. “Huh?”
“The users, Wildey. What if you took all that money spent hunting down dealers and kingpins and used it to help the users? Jobs, training programs, rehab. That’s the one thing in the system that can’t be replaced. The customers. You take away the user and the whole thing collapses.”
“Huh. Wow. Never thought of that, Honors Girl. Hey, wait—junk food is bad for you, too! All we have to do is talk billions and billions of people out of going to McDonald’s for a Quarter Pounder.”
“Joke all you want, but you know it’s the truth.”
“And I know it’ll never happen, not on the scale you’re talking about. I don’t care what grants or rehab or bullshit do-gooder shit you got, people want to get their drugs on. Too many people are wired with the self-destruct button, you know what I mean? Ask yourself—why aren’t you hooked on the Oxys? I’ll tell you why. Because you’ve got a future. Not everybody’s that lucky.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. Our government spends over fifty billion dollars every year on the drug war. Imagine if you divided that up among addicts—”
“Yeah, they’d go out and buy one fuck of a lot of drugs, that’s what would happen.”
Honors Girl sighs. Wildey almost feels bad.
“Look, you’re asking good questions. I asked myself more or less the same things when I first started out. But it’s not about saving the world. It’s about keeping this city from tearing itself apart. It’s stopping scumbags like Chuckie fuckin’ Morphine from profiting from the weak and turning whole neighborhoods into war zones. If I can drop the right kingpin, the boot comes off my neighborhood long enough to do all that good shit you’re talking about. Right now, I just don’t see it. Sorry,” he says again, then flips the left turn signal, checks to make sure nobody’s coming, and executes an illegal U-turn.
Wildey pulls into the doughnut shop parking lot but grabs Honor Girl’s arm before she can reach the door handle.
“Look,” he says, “don’t do any more research.”
“So we’re done?”
“No. We’re not done. Just stand by until further notice.”
“What does that even mean? Can I at least get rid of this stupid burner phone?”
“No! I need to talk to my lieutenant, see where we are with the investigation.”
“Whatever.”
“Go ahead and get in your car. I’ll follow you home to make sure you get back okay.”
“Why?”
“Because even though you think I’m some kind of dick, I’m actually a gentleman?”
“That’s nice. But I’ve got to stay here for a while.”
“Why?”
“Because of the lie you made me tell my dad.”
Wildey nods. Yeah, he deserved that one.
“Don’t stay out too late,” he says quietly. “And text me when you go back home.”
“Why?”
“I wish you’d stop asking me why all the time.”
“I wish you’d leave me alone.”
He probably deserved that one, too.
“Night, Honors Girl.”
Wildey doesn’t leave, of course. He can’t leave her all alone, defenseless, where anybody can pretty much take a run at her—not with the two dealers she’s brought down and whatever forces are at work taking out all Wildey’s CIs. So he pulls around the block and parks on a side street with a view of the insanely well-lit doughnut shop. Honors Girl, true to her word, sits alone in a booth, sipping a coffee out of a paper container. She looks up to glance at every customer who walks in. Not long, maybe a second. Which reminds Wildey to check the perimeter again, make sure no hostiles are moving in.
Maybe half an hour later she has a text exchange. Not on her burner phone. Her real phone. He can tell by the shape of it. The burner’s a piece of shit. Daddy probably bought her an iPhone. Who are you talking to? That mysterious boyfriend of yours? What kind of an excuse did you give your father, anyway? Who does he think you’re meeting?
Then the exchange ends and Sarie Holland smiles briefly. Catches herself in the act and quickly changes her expression back to bored concern. But it was there. Someone made her happy, if only for a few seconds. Who?
But then she puts down her iPhone and her face falls.
“What am I doing to you,” Wildey mutters to himself. He pulls out of Fox Chase and takes the long way back to the Badlands.
So I’m thinking up the fake conversation I’ve supposedly just had with Tammy when I pull up to the house to see Dad out in front, hunched down, sweeping up something with a dustpan and broom.
—What happened?
—Somebody threw a bottle at the house, screamed something, then raced away in a car.
—You’re kidding.
—At first we thought it was the movie, but … no. Not kidding.
—What did he scream?
—Well, that’s the weird thing. I thought it sounded something like Eff You Sarie.
—What?
Dad gives me one of those classic Dad looks. Eyes that lock on and refuse to let go. I haven’t seen one of those in a long time. Not since eighth grade.
—Something you’re not telling me, honey? Somebody giving you a hard time?
Oh, Dad, if you only knew. Want to go punch a big cop in the face for me, tell him to leave your daughter alone?
—No, I swear.
After an uncomfortably long time, as if scanning my eyes for a possible lie, Dad continues to sweep up the glass.
—You’d better go in. I’ll finish up here.
As I pass, I quickly glance down to check the broken glass to see if there’s a label. But that doesn’t matter. I know who threw the bottle. The same guy I threw in jail earlier this week. Guess he’s out. And he knows my home address.
THE ROUNDHOUSE
The commissioner is not pleased.
“How many?” he asks.
His would-be drug czar tells him: “Five since Thanksgiving.”
Katrina Mahoney doesn’t give a shit about what any man thinks about her—except perhaps the commissioner. He’s an old-school Philly cop who worked his way up from beats in the worst districts in North and West Philly to the top spot in the then-burgeoning narcotics squad in the late sixties, followed by two decades working homicide and organized crime. He was the ballsiest commissioner since Frank Rizzo himself, and that was saying a lot. Mahoney wanted nothing more than to impress him, and she was painfully aware she was doing the exact opposite.
The commissioner gave her a disarming smile. “Katrina, when you asked for this job, you told me your experimental system would be airtight. Did you not?”
Lieutenant Mahoney nods.
The commissioner stares off into the space over her head for a moment, as if seeking guidance from above. Then his iron gaze falls back on Mahoney. “Do you know what Fiorello La Guardia said about narcotics cops? This was back in the 1940s, mind you, long before the meth explosion in the sixties. La Guardia said that you could give a thousand cops to fight narcotics dealers, but then I’d need a thousand more cops to watch them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do, sir.”
“So what the fuck is going on?”
“We have a rat. I’m actively working to flush it out.”
“See now, that’s the thing, Katrina,” the commissioner says. “You told me your system would negate the possibility of a rat. That only you and I would be privy to your complete list of CIs and counter-CIs. So what you’re suggesting here is that one of us is the rat.”
“Commissioner, I have the situation …”
“Is tha
t what you suspect? Tell me now, and be honest. Do you believe that I’ve somehow exposed your operations? Maybe bragged to a pal over too many drinks at Palm? Told a mistress? Wrote a note on the men’s room wall?”
“No, Commissioner.”
“Well, then. If this is your fervent belief, then there is no other conclusion than that you’re the one dropping the ball. That you’re compromising this operation.”
“I want this resolved within the week,” the commissioner tells her. “I want you to find out who’s disappearing your CIs. I do not want any more CIs disappeared. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Commissioner.”
“And I want one of those big busts you promised me would be coming weekly.”
The lieutenant’s eyes narrow; her lips tighten. “We were instrumental in providing intelligence for the raids this past Monday …”
“That was last Monday. What do you have for me this Monday?”
The commissioner pauses to look around his office. “Remember, Katrina,” he finally says. “Play with rats and you end up with bubonic plague.”
RETURNING CITIZEN
WASHINGTON AVENUE
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7
Ringo can’t believe it. He’s actually happy to be riding a SEPTA bus.
SEPTA, short for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Who would have thought he’d miss that mouthful? But after a decade and change out in Buttfuck, Kansas, hawking used cars to Maw and Paw Sixpack—who’d always, always, fuckin’ comment on how much he looks and sounds like one of those wiseguys they see on the TV (Never just “TV,” always “the tv”)—Ringo’s glad to be back in a city that does not give a shit, populated with people who mind their own business.
His return is a little precarious, they say. He can’t risk being pulled over, so no driving. The bus would have to do. It’s an interesting way to see his city, he’ll say that much.
Twenty years ago, Richie “Ringo” Gloriosa had been a loyal soldier on the side of the D’Argenio family during the brutal D’Argenio-Perelli war of the early nineties. And soldier wasn’t a euphemism; Ringo was the real deal. A few years before the war, he’d gotten into serious trouble with some Russian gangsters, uncut heroin, a stripper, and a shotgun; the D’Argenios thought it was best for Ringo to head off to finishing school in the U.S. military. At least until the heat died down, which it always does. Ringo returned with an entirely new skill set and a certain amount of fearlessness. Which served him well on the home front.
After the D’Argenio-Perelli war, the D’Argenios ended up indicted, dead or in Witness Protection; the Perellis took the throne until ten years ago, when the same thing more or less happened to them. This was the way it went down in Philly.
Now, against all good sense and reason, Ringo is back.
And working with a Perelli, go figure.
The girl—he’d like to call her Lisa Lisa—offered to pick him up, but Ringo insisted on public transportation. (Now he was saying it, too.) They were meeting at this Asian bar/restaurant thing right on Washington Avenue. The place always changed; tonight it’s gonna be inside a private karaoke room. Just as long as nobody decided to sing. Ringo doesn’t think he’d be able to handle that.
Working with two ex-cops, that was the other surprise. He didn’t know either of them from back in the day. Hell, these guys were pups back in the day. The one they called Frankenstein was probably a toddler back in 1994, when Ringo was in his prime. And Bird looked like a youngster, too. What did the police department do to these guys to leave them so demoralized at such a young age? Ringo could only guess.
But the biggest shock of all was who put all this together in the first place. The person who tracked him down through the feds—one of the few alive who could do such a thing. Get outta here, was Ringo’s first thought. Of all people—really?
This is why he loves this town. Philly, where you can always count on someone to do the absolutely wrong thing.
One of the first headlines Ringo saw when coming back to town just before Halloween was about a City Hall ordinance to stop calling ex-cons “ex-offenders.” Instead, the mayor wanted to call them “returning citizens.” Philly had about two hundred thousand “returning citizens” at any given time. Ringo: Returning Citizen. He liked the sound of that. Like he could expect a parade and a key to the city.
Of course, Ringo wasn’t Richard “Ringo” Gloriosa anymore, either. He bought a new identity before his return, so now he was just some asshole named Matt Carlson.
The leader of this operation was using a fake name, too: El Jefe. But of course Ringo knows his real name, knows him by sight. The audaciousness of it all astounded him. At the very least, they were in for some interesting times.
Anyway, El Jefe was their contact, the one running this ongoing operation. He called them his Four Horsemen.
Two members of this hit team, the ex-cops, should know him by sight, too. But if they do, they’re not letting on. Frankenstein—well, it’s hard to read anything on his scarred-up face. When he turns his head and the shadows fall at just the right angle, you can almost see the handsome Latino Lothario (alleged!) he used to be. But mostly he’s just a freak show of burns and scars and a right eye that bulges out a little bit. A shotgun to the face will do that to you.
Bird, meanwhile—Bird is just like his name. Jittery. Eyes flitting all around. Most black guys Ringo knows have that level of cool, and Bird’s missing that. He’s all exposed nerve, like he’s about to lose it at any given moment.
Then there’s Lisa Lisa—the assassin formerly known as Lisa Perelli. She wasn’t really in the game ten years ago. But she’s done a lot of growing up since then. Ringo only knows her by reputation—and a few salacious stories that even made their way out to Kansas. She’s the one he worries about the most, because she’s clearly not in it for the money. She just likes what they do.
And what they do is kill people and dump their bodies in a secret location down by the river, after an amusing torture interlude.
Just like the old days.
Ringo heard about a sweet body dump spot that opened up about ten years ago at Penn’s Landing. It was supposed to be the foundation of a children’s museum, but when funding was held up it became a kind of free-for-all for every underworld organization that had a dead body on its hands. What amused Ringo the most was the location. Almost nobody knew that when the area was first settled by colonists, that exact spot was where they dug out these caves to live in. When they got around to finally building real houses, the caves became these little subterranean dens of vice—gambling, boozing, whoring, smuggling. Pretty much the ongoing activities of the modern-day underworld. To think of all those dead bodies pretty much piled up above those old caves, and beneath the concrete foundation above … well, it made Ringo laugh. Philadelphia was hilarious if you knew the history.
Take their torture room—the brainchild of El Jefe.
To the modern observer, it was just this crappy abandoned warehouse right under the Ben Franklin Bridge, ringed by a Cyclone fence and located across the street from the Race Street Pier. The place had been empty for at least thirty years and smelled like it, too. But as a torture room, it was more than ideal. The constant noise from the bridge and the avenue drowned out even the heartiest of screams. If you needed a break, you could step outside for a smoke and enjoy a pretty decent view of the lights bouncing off the water.
But that’s not what cracked Ringo up. When he looked up the property on the Internet (he’s always curious about the history of things, mostly as a source of amusement), he discovered that the place had been built in September 1914 as “a rat receiving station.” Seems back then there was a worry about European rats carrying all kinds of nasty plague shit to American waterfronts. So a bounty was offered: two cents per dead rat, five cents for live ones—and you used to be able to bring them to this very building to collect your reward. Ringo even found a poster online:
KILL THE RATS
And
prevent the plague
TRAP THEM POISON THEM
RAT-PROOF YOUR BUILDINGS
Always good to see a building returned to its original use.
Part of him wanted to print it out and stick it on the wall inside the torture room, but Ringo didn’t think El Jefe would appreciate it.
El Jefe brought the meeting inside the Cambodian karaoke bar to order.
“I’ve got two more names,” he says. “So we’re going to split up into two-man teams.”
“What neighborhoods?”
“Let’s get the teams straight first,” El Jefe says. “You and Frankenstein take one, Lisa and Bird will take the other.”
“Me and Lisa work better together,” Ringo says, even though it’s a lost cause, “if the target is somewhere south of downtown.”
“Hey, I set the fucking teams here, and you’ll go wherever I say you go. You got a problem with that, you can put your complaint in writing, then file it up your ass.”
“I’m just saying,” Ringo continues, “it’s something to think about if you want to play to our strengths.”
It’s not just that Lisa and Ringo know South Philly. It’s that Frankenstein and Bird are former cops, and Ringo’s still not used to the idea of teaming up with a former pig to go dump a snitch. But El Jefe would just say that’s the point. He wanted his teams to be coed, in a manner of speaking. Wops and pigs, playing nice together, keeping each other in check.
Ringo sighed. “What are the jobs? Do we at least get to pick those?”
“No.”
Fortunately, El Jefe gives him and Frankenstein the one he would have wanted anyway. The target was a DJ at a nightclub up in Northern Liberties, and he walked home to his Fishtown pad after his gigs. It just would be a matter of scooping the idiot up off the streets, escorting him to one of their two torture pads (Ringo assumed the other team would need the other, so hopefully El Jefe would sort them out in advance—otherwise, it’d be embarrassing), then dumping the body in the secret location. Also pleasing to Ringo is that the target is a DJ; he hates those fuckers. He grew up listening to bands, real bands, at weddings and clubs and shit until the dorks with the record player and zero musical skills muscled into the scene. Ringo’s dad was a semi-famous guitar player working the clubs in the old neighborhood. He retired from the business a bitter old man, priced out by those idiots with their record players. If you were to give Ringo a job killing DJs, man, he’d be happy the rest of his life.
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