by Robert Child
Chapter 3
FUGITIVE SQUAD ROOM, FBI HEADQUARTERS, PHILADELPHIA
The phone on Murray’s desk rings loudly. Jarred, Murray picks up the receiver, “Fugitives, Murray.”
On the other end, Marlene inhales a cigarette and is still holding the card. “Frank, just what the hell’s going on!”
Frank pulls the receiver from his ear, looks at the phone. “What? What do you mean what’s going on?”
Marlene begins to pace around the kitchen to calm her nerves and continues.
“I just got a basket of flowers delivered.”
Frank wonders if Marlene has truly finally lost her mind.
“Okay…?”
“They were meant for you.”
Annoyed, Murray says, “Me! What, I don’t get it. I don’t know anyone who would send me flowers. It’s gotta be some mistake.”
Marlene loses it. “Frank, it’s a fucking funeral arrangement!”
Murray leans back, “A funeral arrangement? What? Who died?”
Slowly, Marlene responds, “According to the card, Frank, you did.”
SUPERVISOR’S OFFICE, FBI HEADQUARTERS, PHILADELPHIA
In a glass-paneled office with large file cabinets, a gruff supervisor, European-looking Hans Bauer, 55, thinning blond hair and suspenders, sits across from Murray.
“Delivery trail was cold,” Bauer reports. “They must have paid in cash. Is there anyone you can think of who’d send you something like this? Frank innocently shrugs and Bauer rephrases. “Scratch that, is there anyone you know who wouldn’t send you something like this?”
Murray’s got a gut feeling.
“Gotta be Scarponi. I can just feel it. That asshole should still be in jail.”
Bauer nods, does his best to follow procedure. “I’ll send some guys downtown with PHPD – bust some balls – get some answers.”
Murray eager, “Well, I know one of their clubhouses is on Seventh Street.”
Bauer picks up a pen and waits for details. There’s an awkward moment, then Bauer realizes what Frank really wants. “Oh no. Not a chance, Frank. I don’t want you personally involved. And besides you’re not on organized crime anymore, remember.”
Frank takes the opportunity to reopen the discussion, “Actually, I kinda wanted to talk to you about that.”
Bauer, anger rising, says, “Oh you did, did you. Okay, where do you want to start?”
Murray rolls his eyes as Bauer goes on a tear. Bauer launches in. “Oh, I know, why don’t we talk about how the U.S. Attorney’s Office jumped on my ass every time you went over to ‘talk some sense into them,’ as you would call it. Or maybe we could discuss the endless parade of defense attorneys traipsing through my office screaming about excessive use of force, huh? Is that what you wanted to talk about, Frank?”
Murray sighs, gets up and begins to leave. Bauer calls after him.
“Nice chatting with you, Frank.”
EL BOHIO TAVERN, NORTH PHILADELPHIA
Outside the North Philadelphia tavern, Murray, along with Diaz, stews, scratching his palm. Diaz notices, and Murray explains that whenever his palm itches, he’s closing in.
“I’m itchy, I know he’s here.” A gold sedan pulls into the space ahead of them as Frank mutters, “‘Bout fucking time.”
Diaz is surprised by Frank’s anger but is getting used to it. Diaz and Murray exit the car to meet Costello and Hanson, fellow agents both in their mid 20’s, already on the sidewalk. Frank gives the instructions.
“He’s in number five. You guys head around back in case he makes a run for it.”
Costello nods as Frank finishes.
“C’mon, let’s get this done.”
Inside the tavern apartment foyer, Murray and Diaz begin to climb the stairs. A dog begins to bark.
“There goes our sneak attack,” Murray deadpans.
Reaching the squalid upstairs hallway, both draw their guns. Inexperienced Diaz is excited, so Frank gives him a job to settle him.
“Diaz, my back’s been actin’ up. You gotta kick in the door.”
Diaz steps back ready to run at the door. Frank stops him.
“Now wait, there’s a trick to it. You gotta kick it at the door lock – no place else.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I got it,” Diaz retorts.
Diaz runs up and kicks his foot right through the lower door panel and there it stays – stuck in the door.
“Fuck! What did I just tell you – at the Goddamn door lock!”
A commotion begins inside the apartment and shouts from the other agents are heard echoing from the back alley.
“Freeze, hands up, FBI.”
Murray kicks in the rest of the lower door panel, freeing Diaz’s foot, then busts in the door with his shoulder.
Entering the room, they see the window open. Murray runs to it and sees their fugitive, greasy Hector Ortiz, 22, wearing a dirty white wife-beater shirt and blue patterned boxers. Ortiz is standing on a lower retaining wall three feet below the window.
“Hey, shithead,” Murray calls out.
Ortiz deflated, realizes he is surrounded and raises his hands and responds to Murray.
Smiling, half-asleep, he says, “Okay, man, I quit. I quit.”
Murray, annoyed that this was too easy, gets upset.
“You fucking piece of trash,” Murray says under his breath and reaches out of the window and pulls Ortiz back towards the building by his greasy hair.
Ortiz staggers backwards protesting, “Ouch! What the fuck, man? Don’t hurt me!”
In the alley, Costello and Hanson look to each other surprised and amused at Murray’s actions.
At the window, Murray pulls even harder and brings the squirming Ortiz back into the apartment. The fugitive trips backwards through the window frame and falls on his ass in the room. Murray’s eyes bore into him.
“Did that little girl beg you not to hurt her when you stuck your dick up her ass? Did she, Ortiz?”
Losing it, Murray pulls Hector up by his wife-beater shirt and looks into the man’s wild eyes. With an open hand, Murray slaps Ortiz’s face.
Ortiz holds his face and starts crying like a baby.
“What the fuck, man,” he shouts as Murray comes right back.
“‘What the fuck, man’ is I gotta daughter. And what you did to that girl is every father’s worst nightmare. Tell me, asshole, did that six-year-old beg you not to hurt her when you strangled her after you raped and sodomized her?”
Murray slaps him again hard, “You’re a fucking piece of human garbage.” The fugitive falls to his knees on the floor and struggles to get up, screaming back at Murray.
“Fuck, man! I got rights! What the fuck is this!”
Something deep snaps in Murray, something primal as Ortiz is back on his feet.
“Oh, you got rights? You got RIGHTS? What fucking right did you have to kill a kid? In whose fucking world do you have that right?”
Murray winds back and lands a sharp right cross that instantly decks the lowlife. Ortiz is out cold.
Diaz, who has hung back in stunned silence and fear, finally breaks in.
“Great, now we have to carry him outta here,” he says as he begins cuffing the man.
Murray turns and moves to the sink. He finds a glass and fills it. He returns to Ortiz and dumps the contents on the fugitive’s face.
Ortiz comes around.
“GET UP!” Murray barks. Then, looking to the heavens, he says, “I gotta get away from this shit.”
CORNER OF LOMBARD AND 7TH STREET, PHILADELPHIA
Murray turns his Taurus onto a large cross street. It is near noon. He passes a sign that reads, “Seventh Street”. He pulls up alongside a burly older cop walking the beat, a dead ringer for actor Brian Dennehy. It is Murray’s long-time friend, Center City Charlie.
“Charlie! Hey, Charlie!” Murray calls from the car.
Charlie turns, smiles, walks back as Frank climbs out of his car.
“Murray, you Ir
ish fuck, how you been?”
“Not bad, not bad, Charlie. Hey, what are you still doing walking a beat?”
“Counting the minutes, my friend,” Charlie says with a smile and continues. “I’m retiring in a few weeks.”
“No kidding,” Murray responds, thinking Charlie had retired long ago. He knew Charlie loved being a cop, loved Philadelphia, felt it was his city. He took things personal too and that’s probably what bonded them.
“Yeah, guys are throwing me a little going away bash at the Fireman’s. Hey, it’s even open to government workers,” Charlie pokes.
“I’m there,” Murray unhesitating.
“So, what’s up? I got a feeling you’re not out just joyriding.”
Getting right down to business, Murray says, “I need some information.”
Charlie nods and asks, “What kind of information?”
“That shithead Scarponi is out of prison, and I got a feeling he wants me to know it.”
Charlie nods for him to continue.
“I put him away a few years ago on a gun possession charge…”
JAMES A. BYRNE FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, 1980
In courtroom 14B with wood-paneled walls, a dark-haired man, 46, with glasses and a black robe, Judge Van Brabant, peers down at the papers in his hand. An old bailiff stands off to the left, expressionless.
The judge finally looks up. “The defendant will rise,” Van Brabant orders.
Nicodemo Scarponi at the defendant’s table, betraying slight impatience, rises slowly, bobbing his head. He is flanked by two federal marshals and a defense attorney in his mid thirties who rises and stands alongside his client.
“Mr. Scarponi, Van Brabant begins slowly, “the law gives me great latitude here. I have weighed the arguments of the defense as well as reviewed the government’s plea deal in detail. I am rejecting it outright.”
Scarponi turns slowly to his defense attorney whose mouth has dropped open then looks back to the gallery just behind him at Frank Murray, who has vigorously worked this case.
“Mr. Scarponi! Direct your attention to the bench, please,” Van Brabant orders.
Scarponi’s head snaps back to the front, and the judge continues.
“In view of your past criminal record and my determination that a plea deal should never have been authorized in this particular case, I am sentencing you to the maximum penalty under the law. You will serve three years at La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas.”
The judge then picks up his gavel and slams it down as the bailiff shouts, “All rise!”
Scarponi shouts back at the exiting judge, “Three years, judge? Three fucking years I gotta spend locked up?”
Van Brabant returns and counters, “Shall we make it five?”
Scarponi leans back and bites his lip. After a moment, he snaps his head back to Murray and shouts.
“Murray, what the fuck happened? You screwed me!”
Murray, taken aback, face reddening, “Me? How do you figure that in your twisted brain?”
The kingpin shouts, “We had a plea deal, but you set this whole thing up! It’s a government setup! You knew I was going down. You knew it! You had it in for me.”
“No way, asshole,” Murray responds. “I don’t decide what the judge is going to do.” Pausing a beat, he continues, “But I have to admit, his ruling is starting to grow on me. I think I can live with it.”
Eyes filled with rage and hate, Scarponi threatens, “This ain’t over, Murray!” as Marshals begin dragging him away. “You hear me, you fuckin’ son of a bitch – this ain’t OVER!”
7TH STREET, PHILADELPHIA
“So now you think Scarponi’s coming after you?” Charlie asks.
“Not sure, but his goons have a clubhouse not far from here,” Murray responds.
“You up for checking it out?”
Charlie smiles. “What the hell, might be fun.”