The CI said that his guy likes that “Wyatt Earp shoots dudes”? Payne thought. That it gives me “street cred”?
He shook his head.
My bet: the bastard’s blowing smoke.
But it’s a lead. Maybe another to nowhere. But for now a lead.
Be wary of wrestling with a pig, Matty ol’ boy. You can get very dirty—and the pig likes it.
It was Payne’s opinion that confidential informants were a pain in the ass and, with rare exceptions, tended to be more trouble than they were worth.
But, reluctantly, he also considered them a necessary evil.
They knew the streets and they knew what the players were up to . . . and sometimes they even told the damn truth. Not the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them God. The bastards were dirty themselves—the threat of doing time often was the leverage used to get them to act as CIs—and always working an angle, one beyond getting cash payments and other considerations.
Payne knew that some off-the-books information was better than nothing. Because nothing was all that most witnesses wanted to give cops. Getting them to answer any questions—truthfully or not—was next to impossible.
The reason for that wasn’t just that the citizens didn’t have enough faith in the police; it was more that if they talked to cops they feared retaliation from the neighborhood thugs. They knew there really was no way that the cops could protect them from that, and thus it was safer just to keep their mouths shut and not risk being accused of dropping a dime on anyone.
Unfortunately, they really don’t trust cops.
And the reality is the best we can do is deter crime. Because, unless we somehow develop some lead, nabbing a bad guy before he actually commits a crime is practically impossible.
We nab him before he does his next one.
Or next ones, plural.
If we nab him and if the charges stick . . . CIs or not.
The faint chanting from the sidewalk directly below seemed to be getting louder. He took a sip of coffee as he looked down again.
The chants sounded like “Stop Killadelphia! No more murder, no more pain!” And if one were to only hear their chanting, it made perfect sense to believe that that indeed was their message.
The message, however, took on a distinctly different tone when one saw some of the dozen signs that the protesters pumped over their heads. While there were posters painted STOP KILLADELPHIA!, others read NO MORE MURDER! NO MORE PAYNE! and had, so that their message was made unequivocally clear, the enlarged image of Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne standing over the dead robber.
Payne drained his coffee cup.
Not exactly fine poetry, he thought, disgusted, but it does get your point across.
Worthless point that it is.
I could disappear right now, and the murders would continue.
Just as they have forever.
So screw you!
He looked up and out, to north of the Roundhouse. Directly across Race Street, he could see most of Franklin Park and, a mile or so beyond it and the Vine Street Expressway, the gleaming glass five-story tower of the Lucky Stars casino on the bank of the Delaware River.
Three innocent people killed, and a fourth who may not make it.
All in just a few hours.
And all in high-profile places that everyone expects to be safe.
He looked back to Franklin Park. He could easily make out the long lines outside the white tent that was the North Pole. And nearby, just north of the fountain at the center of the park, he saw the links of green plastic turf that made up the miniature golf course. A small section of it was marked off with yellow police tape, beside which two Philly PD squad cars were parked, light bars and wig-wags flashing, on either side of a Crime Scene Unit van.
Payne was a little surprised at the vast number of people—couples holding hands, families pushing strollers, the green-costumed elves passing out candy—who remained at the park. It was a heavy crowd, one that he knew was keeping the dozen or so plainclothes officers circulating among them, busy looking to see if the suspect returned to the scene—or if anyone else looked intent on committing a crime.
Payne then decided that the crowd remained strong because the part of the miniature golf course with all the ongoing crime scene activity was not visible from the rest of the park.
Out of sight, out of mind.
And surely no one’s running around ruining everyone’s day by dwelling on what happened.
The show must go on!
But that quickly could change when news of the murders spreads . . .
Payne felt a presence behind him—an enormous one—and then heard the familiar deep mellifluous voice.
“Were this not a situation to take very seriously, Matthew, I would say that congratulations are in order.”
Payne turned as Lieutenant Jason Washington stepped beside him and glanced down at the protesters. The superbly tailored forty-three-year-old was very big—six-foot-three, two-twenty-five—and very black. He also was very well respected, considered to be one of the top homicide detectives up and down the East Coast. He took no offense to those—including Payne—who referred to him as the Black Buddha.
“A Buddha is an enlightened individual who is indeed venerated,” Washington said, “and there certainly is no denying this skin tone.”
In the chain of command, Payne, who months earlier had been promoted to the rank of sergeant and then became a supervisor in Homicide, reported to Washington, one of a handful of Homicide lieutenants who answered to the unit’s commander, Captain Henry Quaire, a stocky balding forty-four-year-old. Quaire was under Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein—a barrel-chested fifty-five-year-old with a quick temper and a reputation for strictly going by the book—whose boss was First Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis Coughlin.
Personally, however, Payne had another connection with Coughlin, a closer one that went back more than twenty-seven years—to months before Payne had been born.
Denny Coughlin had been the one to break the news to Matt’s pregnant mother that Sergeant John F.X. Moffitt—her husband and Coughlin’s best friend since they were rookie cops right out of the academy—had been shot dead trying to stop a robber. Coughlin subsequently became Matty’s godfather, and Payne was known to address him, when appropriate, as “Uncle Denny.”
“Congratulations?” Payne said. “For what, Jason?”
Washington made a sweeping motion with his huge hand toward the protesters.
“It would appear that you are the poster boy—quite literally—of all that is wrong with our beloved city.”
Payne grunted. “Hell, you know that game,” he said. “Someone’s got to be the scapegoat. No sense wasting time actually trying to fix the real social issues that contribute to bad guys committing crime. Just complain about cops until another crisis makes headlines. Rinse and repeat.”
“As I just inferred, you being personally targeted is not to be taken lightly, Matthew. Denny Coughlin said that Mayor Carlucci declared that when any member of the department is targeted, the entire department is considered targeted, and he won’t stand for it.”
“I can’t speak for the entire department, but I know I’m getting love notes from my usual fans,” Payne said as he pulled out his cellular telephone, tapped its screen, then held it up for Washington to read. “This is the ‘Stop Killadelphia’ conversation on PhillyNewsNow-dot-com.”
“‘Fire and jail the killer cop Payne,’” Washington read aloud.
“Now look at the one that follows it, from the person calling himself Justice of the Piece. The one using the picture of a revolver as their avatar.”
Washington read: “‘Forget firing him! Fire at him! Cap the cop! If we’re dying, Payne’s dying.’”
“Not my first death threat,” Payne said, “but at least i
t’s one that’s a little more clever than the others.”
Washington read farther down, then looked from the phone to Payne.
“I would hesitate using the word clever, Matthew, but I will grant that it rises above the crudeness of these other illiterate messages. Regardless, they all anger me.”
Payne shrugged. “You know that people get brave online when they can hide behind their keyboard, Jason.”
“True. Let’s just hope that’s all it is, nothing more than tough rhetoric fueled by Reverend Cross,” Washington said. “Denny also said he was impressed with your remarkable restraint when Cross attempted to ambush you during the television interview at the LOVE Park scene.”
Payne’s mind flashed back to the moment he caught a glimpse of the tall, skinny, bearded forty-year-old African-American in his black cloak and white clerical collar, approaching the camera crew.
“Fortunately,” Payne said, “I saw him coming out of the corner of my eye and figured what he probably was up to.”
“The posters being your first clue?” Washington said drily.
Payne grinned.
“I admit I can be more than a bit slow, Jason, but I eventually figure things out.”
Washington chuckled.
“I damn sure didn’t want a confrontation,” Payne went on, “at least not one caught on camera. I leaned in close to the microphone so I’d be heard over the chanting, and said, ‘Excuse me. I have a job to do. And I would suggest that someone trying to create a cause célèbre on the spot where a young woman has just been brutally murdered is disrespectful at best, and damned disgusting at worst.’”
Washington raised an eyebrow.
“That sound bite should make headlines,” he said. “Especially when they edit out all but the last part, and begin with ‘. . . I would suggest.’ Between the two of us, good for you. But I caution you to be careful. As you know, he was just elevated to chairman of CPOC.”
“So?”
“So you well could be the trophy he wants to make a name for himself.”
—
Pronounced See-Pock, the acronym stood for Citizens Police Oversight Committee. The five people on the self-governed entity were appointed to staggered terms by each of the city council members serving on the council’s Committee for Public Safety. Current members were a female African-American pro bono publico criminal defense lawyer, a white Roman Catholic bishop, a Temple University professor of sociology who was a female of Puerto Rican heritage, a male civil engineer whose parents had emigrated to Philly from India, and its longest-serving appointee, whose five-year term would expire within the next ten months, the Reverend Josiah Cross.
CPOC had come into existence a quarter-century earlier, in the aftermath of the city’s race riots. The then mayor had thrown it out as a bone, hoping to appease, if not silence, community activists. They complained that the police department’s Internal Affairs Unit was nothing more than the cops policing themselves—read: paying lip service to allegations of misconduct, and doing next to nothing about said misconduct—and demanded an independent board.
Over the years, the members of CPOC, charged with only a mandate of reviewing and advising the mayor and city council on matters pertaining to police department policy, rarely accomplished anything beyond creating self-serving headlines. Which many observers said wasn’t exactly a surprise, as it was very much in line with the accomplishments of the city council members themselves, ones who (a) knew they were appointing them to a position that in essence was political patronage, and who (b) quietly expected a portion of the CPOC member’s annual $80,000 salary to find its way into the patron’s reelection war chest.
—
“I appreciate what you’re saying, Jason,” Payne said. “He’s a grandstanding troublemaker. And I’m not going to let anyone from CPOC bother me. Every damn member comes with some ax to grind. Starting with that fraud who says he ‘found’ religion in the slam.”
Washington chuckled deeply.
“Discretion being the better part of valor, Matthew, I probably should not tell you this, but I heard that the new head of the city’s public relations department—”
“That tiny guy who’s working for Ed Stein? Whatshisname? Finley?”
Washington nodded. “That’s right, I forgot you met him shortly after Ed was tapped as the mayor’s new adviser and brought him for a tour here. James Finley. As I was saying, I shouldn’t tell you that Finley was said to have, at least at first, appeared quite excited by the tension of the moment. But then he announced to the mayor that he was terribly afraid you actually were about to shoot Cross right there on live television.”
Payne grinned.
“The thought crossed my mind. He deserved it for any number of reasons. But then I realized there’s probably a line of people ahead of me really wanting to whack Skinny Lenny, beginning with his old drug-running pal he ripped off.”
Washington knew the story. The grittier details had been circulated by Cross’s detractors shortly after his appointment to CPOC.
[ TWO ]
A decade earlier—listed in police records as “MUGGS, Leonard Robert, Also Known As ‘Skinny Lenny’”—the Reverend Josiah Cross had completed a year and a day in the slam. His offenses included assault and forgery of a financial instrument—while hopped up on crack cocaine, he’d beaten an elderly neighbor with a baseball bat, then cashed the old man’s welfare check. Cross had, as he put it, “suffered an unfortunate incarceration for a simple misunderstanding at a difficult point in life, and I’ve paid my dues for it,” then returned to society penniless but on a mission and with a new identity.
Having arranged for a money order in the amount of thirty-five dollars to be sent to Utopian World Ministries of Cleveland, Ohio, he had received at the jail by return mail a certificate, suitable for framing, signifying that Leonard R. Muggs was licensed as an ordained minister of the Utopian World Order.
Certificate in hand, he headed straight back to the old run-down neighborhood where his mother still lived—the area known as Strawberry Mansion for its most prominent residence, though the place no longer was a shining landmark—and slept on the threadbare couch in her row house when he wasn’t out looking up his old contacts.
Within days he had convinced, if not coerced, one Smitty Jones—the not very bright but very tightly wound thirty-year-old who was his onetime street-corner business partner—to front him a kilogram of marijuana on credit.
Cross moved the product, and with that cash then rented, for next to nothing, an empty building in the neighborhood that most recently had been City Best Chinese Eggroll for three years, before the owners tired of the regular robberies and fled.
The edifice had a mock pagoda facade, with a distinctive red-tiled roofline that curled out and upward, and a faded crimson red front door, on which he had painted in gold WORD OF BROTHERLY LOVE MINISTRY, REV. J. CROSS PASTOR and, above that, a big crucifix.
When Smitty showed up at the door and said that he wanted payment for the dope, Josiah announced that it had been “the work of a higher power” for the money to go to the new church. Josiah suggested that it might be possible Smitty would be repaid somewhat later, but then again he could make no promises.
“I have been redeemed,” Cross explained, somewhat piously, “and am now a man of the cloth. It’s out of my hands, brother.”
Smitty wasn’t buying it.
“That’s bullshit, bro! I’m gonna snuff your sorry skinny ass out if I don’t get my money back now!”
But about the time he finished making that threat he was staring at the black muzzle of the Reverend Josiah Cross’s Beretta Cheetah .380 caliber semiautomatic, which Cross had instantly produced from somewhere beneath his black robe.
Smitty didn’t think the tiny pistol could do much damage—he knew guys got hit all the time with a 9, which was bigger than a .380 and what mo
st everyone else packed, and even those bigger bullets just went right through them and the ER doctors stitched them up and sent them home the same night—but he figured Skinny Lenny just might get lucky and hit some important part on him.
Wordlessly, hands above his head, Smitty slowly walked backward to the faded crimson front door.
Five years later—with a growing congregation that had come to include, after he put them on the church payroll as deacons, both Smitty Jones and the elderly man who “miraculously” had forgiven the old Skinny Lenny for assaulting and robbing him—Cross had preached himself into a position in the community that, courtesy of City Councilman (At Large) H. Rapp Badde Jr., was considered worthy of an appointment to the CPOC.
—
Matt Payne looked at Jason Washington and said, “It’s no wonder that Badde bought his old neighborhood buddy. They’re cut from the same corrupt cloth. I won’t go into Badde’s—the list is too long—but the quote Reverend unquote Cross’s hypocritical behavior is nothing short of an outrage. As you well know, there are honest to God nuns and monks and others serving in those hard-hit neighborhoods. They’re the real deal, actually doing God’s work. They’re not making a mockery of it all for personal gain like Cross, starting with his shilling for Badde from the pulpit and essentially turning that bogus church into a campaign office.”
“You are aware that Cross got on camera after your interview . . .”
“Yeah, I saw him as I was leaving.”
“. . . and when the reporter asked if he felt what he was doing in a place where a young woman had just been murdered was ‘disrespectful’ or ‘disgusting,’ he dodged the query by stating instead that he felt that three hundred and sixty-two murders was ‘disgusting’ and that ‘a trigger-happy cop contributing to the bloodshed of citizens in the city was despicable.’”
Payne grunted. “I guess he’d rather have those murderers still running the streets.”
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