Sons of the City

by Scott Flander

  “Because then you’d be like every other woman he goes out with.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, it is true about these guys,” I said. “They look for a different kind of woman to have their kids than to be their girlfriend.”

  “Maybe that’s what he sees in me. A possible future wife.”

  “Can I throw up now?”

  “Hey, I think it means I’m doing a good job.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Is he talking at all? Are you picking up anything?”

  “Well, not about Steve, if that’s what you mean. But I can tell you that Bravelli really hates the black Mafia.”

  “I don’t think that’s top-secret information. Michelle—you know, they’re competitors.”

  “Yeah, I know. But this crackdown my father’s doing on the black Mafia? Bravelli thinks it’s great.”

  “I’m not surprised. Are you getting anything else?”

  “Well, he’s really worried that Frankie Canaletto might get charged with murder.”

  “Good.”

  “I heard he killed some mob guy?”

  “Yeah, over the winter,” I said. “Supposedly some kind of interoffice squabble.”

  “Over the winter? Why would he be charged now?”

  “I think it’s the new DA. He just seems to be more aggressive than the old guy. You know, more interested in actually fighting crime. From what I hear, Canaletto’s going to get nailed.”

  “Well, Bravelli’s definitely upset about it. I mean, you can tell they’re really close, Bravelli treats him like a brother. He said they’ve known each other since kindergarten.”

  “Where I’m sure they were model pupils. Are you kissing him?”

  Michelle moved her head back a little. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Well, I’m not going to answer it.”

  “Then you are kissing him.”

  Michelle narrowed her eyes at me. “What if I am? What if I am? Let me tell you something, Eddie, you think this is easy? I’m putting myself in danger, I’m trying to find out about Steve—and whatever you think, that’s what’s in the back of my mind the whole time—”

  “I know.”

  “—and I’m just trying to do this the best way I can, and all I’m getting from you is grief.”

  “Just picturing you and that asshole …”

  “Eddie,” she said, looking hard into my eyes, stopping me. “I could use your support.”

  I took a deep breath. I was about to continue, but she wouldn’t let me speak.

  “I could use your support,” she repeated.

  “OK,” I said. I took another deep breath, and let it out. “OK.”

  But I sat there thinking, what if I just killed Bravelli? I could have this all over with. And I wouldn’t have to worry about it, ever again.

  That night about nine, Doc paged me. He said he was planning to do a little surveillance in Westmount, and he wanted me along.

  “I’m working right now,” I said. “I’m out on the street, in my patrol car. I’m in uniform.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Doc said. “No one will see you. Just come on over.”

  Doc told me he had become preoccupied with finding out what was going on with Lanier. Every night when the captain left OC headquarters in Center City after work, Doc followed him. Half the time, Lanier went home, to his house up in the Northeast. The other half of the time, he went to Westmount.

  Doc said he had been looking for a way to run an audio surveillance on Lanier. He had figured out how and where to do it, and was ready to pull the trigger tonight.

  Come on over, he said again, and he gave me the address.

  It was at the far end of Westmount’s Locust Street shopping district. The stores began at 77th—the block with Angela’s and the mob clubhouse—and extended to 85th. Those eight blocks were sort of like a small-town downtown—clothing stores, jewelry stores, furniture stores, and of course the inevitable beauty salons. Everything was closed for the night.

  Doc was waiting for me at a door to some offices near the corner of 85th. He had a key to get us in, and we took the stairs to the second floor. It was an insurance office, and Doc had another key for that door.

  There wasn’t much to the reception area—a couple of tidy desks, both with framed family photos, and little flowers in little vases, and computers shut down and covered with clear plastic dustcovers. Doc kept the lights off, but there was plenty of illumination from the street.

  I followed him down a hallway, using his bald round head—which nicely reflected the light—as a beacon.

  “This place is run by a friend of mine,” he explained. “Ex-Navy, ex-cop.”

  In the back, overlooking the alley, was what had to be his friend’s office. Wood-paneled walls covered with diplomas and certificates and photos of Navy fighter planes. There was a modest desk that was just as neat as the ones out front, though it had about six different kinds of paperweights, and a model of a Navy jet on a plastic stand.

  “This is it,” Doc said, and waved me over to a small window that looked out to the right. The building we were in jutted out a few feet, and the side window gave us a clear view down the alley to 85th Street.

  “The other side of the alley, down at the end,” said Doc. “See that back entrance?”

  The next street over was Manning. I tried to remember what was at the corner with 85th. “That’s Sagiliano’s,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “Which might explain why there’s a brand-new white Lexus blocking the alley,” I said.

  “Never seen it before,” said Doc. “But somebody’s got his own personal parking space.”

  “What are we looking for?” I asked.

  Doc told me that three days before, he had followed Lanier to the bar, and parked on the side street as Lanier went inside. About a half hour later, he spotted Lanier in the alley.

  “He was talkin’ to someone,” said Doc. “From where my car was, I really couldn’t see them too well. I could tell it was Lanier and some other guy, but I was just too far away to see a face.”

  “Think it was Bravelli?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what. The captain had to come out that back door there. And I’ll bet whoever he was talking to went back in through that door.”

  “So this might be Bravelli’s private little meeting place,” I said.

  “Might could be. The captain’s in there now, so if he comes out tonight, we got a front-row seat.”

  “You got it wired?” I asked.

  “Yep-sir-ee.”

  Doc took out his walkie-talkie, and held it near the window so he could get some light from a street lamp in the alley. It wasn’t a typical police radio—this one had a numerical keypad and display panel on the front.

  Doc keyed in a frequency and turned up the volume. There were low-level street noises, nothing more. Doc pointed out the window toward the back doorway of Sagiliano’s.

  “I don’t think you can see it from here,” he said, “but there’s a metal box by the door, has telephone wires runnin’ up to the roof. I hid my microphone in the box where the wires come out, right where the hole is.”

  “Where’s the transmitter?”

  “It’s with the microphone, it’s all one unit.”

  We took turns looking out the side window for the next hour. Whoever wasn’t at the window got to sit in the insurance agent’s big padded chair and play with his toy jet.

  Just before ten-thirty, I saw Sagiliano’s back door open.

  “Doc,” I said, and he jumped up and came over. Bravelli came out, and then held the door open for someone. It was Michelle. Doc glanced at me, but I kept my eyes on the alley.

  Bravelli was saying something to Michelle, but we couldn’t make out what it was. Doc grabbed the radio and turned up the volume.

  “You just got this today?” we heard Michelle ask, pointing at the white Lexus.

  “Y
eah,” said Bravelli. “Take a look.”

  The driver’s side of the car faced the opposite side of the alley, and Michelle and Bravelli had to walk around. They kept talking, but they were totally out of range of Doc’s microphone.

  “Shit on a stick,” Doc said.

  I didn’t like this. If Lanier was inside tonight, he would have seen Michelle.

  Bravelli opened the driver’s door, and motioned for Michelle to get in behind the wheel. She did, and looked around, and turned the steering wheel back and forth, and then got out. When she did, she said something and laughed, and all of a sudden she and Bravelli were kissing. My stomach dropped, I felt sick, like I was going to throw up. It only lasted a moment. When Michelle backed away, I was weak with relief.

  Together, they walked around the front of the car, and Bravelli opened the passenger door. Michelle was about to get in, but then she turned and took a step toward Bravelli and said something, and then took another step, and kissed him. She put her arms around him and this time they didn’t stop kissing. I closed my eyes and opened them again, and tried to convince myself that it was Bravelli who had started the kiss, not Michelle. I tried to close my eyes again, to look away, but I couldn’t.

  One good thing about being a cop, you get to carry a gun. I could run downstairs and out the door, and around the corner into the alley. I could be there in thirty seconds. Now’s the time, I thought. Now’s the time.

  But I couldn’t move, I just stood there, unready for murder. Finally they stopped kissing, and stepped apart. Michelle got into the car and closed the door, and we heard the “shoomp” of it shutting over the radio, and then Bravelli got in on his side, and we heard his door close, and then we heard the car starting. There was a roar over Doc’s radio as Bravelli pulled the car out onto 85th Street and off to the right, and then the alley was quiet again.

  TEN

  I barely said anything to Doc, I just walked out of the insurance office, and down the stairs to the street. There had to be some way to fuck up Bravelli’s world. Maybe I could have my cops raid the Pleasure Palace, his “massage parlor” on Cleo Street near the Penn campus. Or we could bust up his numbers operation on Chestnut. There was plenty of other stuff Bravelli’s crew was into—protection, loan-sharking, meth dealing. Plenty of targets. All we had to do was choose.

  But as I drove out of Westmount, I knew it wouldn’t make much difference. Guys from OC, from Citywide Vice, from Narcotics, were always going after Bravelli. Parts of his operation might be shut down for a week or two, but then they’d be back in business, as if nothing ever happened.

  I realized I couldn’t even harass Bravelli anymore. If I stopped his car, Michelle might be inside—and I didn’t want to put her in that situation.

  So what could I do? Nothing?

  It was a quiet night, there was plenty of time to think as I drove through the streets. Out of habit, I swung by the crackhouse. It was something I had started doing every night—I was hoping that sooner or later, the pipers who used to hang out there would wander back. Maybe they could tell us something, anything.

  Kirk wanted to have the house sealed up, but I argued against it. They’ve got to come back sooner or later, I said. I had made sure all the crime scene tape was gone, the door was unlocked, everything was back to normal.

  That night, as I cruised past the house, I realized it had been three weeks since Steve was killed. It seemed much longer, months maybe. In the evening summer breeze, the block seemed so peaceful. Had it really even happened?

  There was some kind of light coming through the front window. It was so dim, at first I didn’t even realize I saw it—I just had a sense that something about the house was different. I stopped the car, and looked closely at the house for a few moments. Someone was inside.

  I got out of my car, took out my gun, and walked carefully up the sidewalk and onto the porch. The window was covered by a grimy window shade.

  I examined the brown-painted wooden door. It had been smashed open so many times, it barely hung onto its hinges. I gave it a little kick, and it swung open.

  And there, on the sagging old couch, was a black guy sitting quietly, hands resting on his thighs, like he had absolutely nothing else in the world to do.

  He was maybe forty but he looked sixty, in the way that drugs can just take twenty years right out of your life. He had on brown pants that had one day been dress slacks, and a collar shirt, short-sleeved, with blue and white stripes. They looked clean, like he had been staying with somebody who washed his clothes. How about that, I thought, a half-presentable crackhead.

  He was definitely not the shooter, that was obvious—he was not even remotely alarmed at the presence of a uniformed police officer holding a gun on him.

  “How many other people in the house?” I asked, stepping inside.

  “Nobody. Just me.”

  I lowered my gun. I didn’t think he was lying.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ronald.”

  “Ronald what?”

  “Just Ronald.”

  “Nobody’s just Ronald. Ronald what?” “Ronald Caruthers.”

  I looked around. He wasn’t smoking crack, and in fact there didn’t seem to be any sign of drugs in the living room at all.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “What am I doing here? This is where I live.”

  And the way he sat on the sofa, relaxed, even comfortable, he did look like he lived there. He had come home.

  “You gonna make us leave again?” he asked, like he was just wondering, already resigned to the inevitable answer.

  I holstered my gun. “What do you mean, ‘again'?”

  He looked at me, puzzled. “Do what, now?”

  “You said make you leave again. Who made you leave before?”

  “Cops,” he said, annoyed at being asked such a ridiculous question.

  “When was this?”

  “Right before that cop was shot here. They told me and Gail to leave.”

  “Who’s Gail?”

  “Gail’s my wife.”

  “How soon before, like a week?”

  That question took him aback. “Not a week. It was the same night.”

  That didn’t make any sense. But I’d never seen a crackhead who was very reliable on dates.

  “How do you know it was the same night?” I asked. “Maybe it was a couple of nights before.”

  “It wasn’t no couple nights before, it was the same night. We saw it on TV at my aunt’s, I said, damn, that’s our house.”

  This couldn’t be right. “What did these cops say?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, what did they say?”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said to get out.”

  He looked at me like I was retarded. He had never seen a cop ask so many stupid questions.

  “Uniformed cops?”

  He shook his head. “No.” And then, adding helpfully, like I wouldn’t be able to figure it out myself, “They were undercover.”

  “You mean plainclothes? Detectives?”

  “If that’s what you call them.”

  Now I understood. Two guys from the black Mafia. Ronald and Gail just assumed they were the police.

  “Did they say they were cops?” I asked.

  “Cops never say they’re cops, they just come right in.”

  “Then how’d you know that’s who they were?”

  Ronald’s mouth dropped open. This was by far the dumbest question he had ever heard in his entire life.

  “Two white guys walk into a place like this,” he said, “I don’t need to see no proof of purchase.”

  “White guys?”

  “Why do you got to repeat everything I say? Officer, if you want to be a real investigator—”

  “You’re telling me two white detectives came in here and told you to clear out the same night the police officer was shot?”

  “Now you got it. See, I knew you would, I knew you w
ould eventually. You may not ask the best questions … Why you looking at me like that?”

  I must have been staring right through him.

  On the first floor of Police Headquarters downtown, in the Photo Identity Unit, were the mug shots of every officer in the Philadelphia Police Department. Normally, no one ever pulled one out unless something bad happened to a cop, like he got arrested, or killed, and then the photo would be copied and given to the media so the public could see what we looked like. When they sat us down and took our pictures, they should have given us little signs to hold that said, “If you’re looking at this, my ass is grass.”

  Things would have been a lot simpler if I could have just started showing mug shots of detectives to Ronald. But sergeants, particularly inconsequential patrol sergeants, didn’t have access to the photos. You either had to have a very good friend in Photo Ident, which I didn’t, or approval from a commander. I didn’t have that, either.

  It also would have been helpful if Ronald could have at least given me decent descriptions of the two detectives. But describing “white guys” wasn’t exactly his forte.

  “You all look alike,” he said, when I pressed him for details such as height, weight, and hair color. “You’re all just plain vanilla scoops, sittin’ in a bowl, if you know what I mean.”

  It had occurred to me that maybe Ronald’s two mystery men were actually Nick and Steve—maybe they had swung by the crackhouse before they went on duty, just to see if they could get a quick pinch. But Ronald said he knew who Nick and Steve were. They were the ones always pounding on his door, saying Open up.

  One thing I knew, I couldn’t tell anyone else in the Department about Ronald. Something this big could never be kept a secret, and I didn’t want Ronald’s two detectives tracking down him and Gail for “questioning.”

  So for now, until I checked out Ronald’s story, I was on my own. With no mug shots, no descriptions other than vanilla ice cream, my only option was to start showing Ronald detectives in person.

  Part of me couldn’t accept the possibility that cops had something to do with Steve’s death. If it was a crackhead, or the black Mafia, that was at least understandable, you were dealing with the enemy. But cops didn’t kill cops, it just didn’t happen. I knew one thing—if I found out who they were, I’d be judge, jury, and executioner. They could have their fucking trial at the funeral home.