“Someone gave up one of Tomas’s photographers,” O’Hara said, “and, judging by the wounds, the cartel tortured him, most likely trying to get information on Tomas. Then they killed him. Hung him over an Acuña highway as an example. The narco mantra reads ‘This will happen to all who write lies about us on the Internet. You will pay. Signed CDNA.’ Tomas took off for San Antonio.”
“And they killed him there,” Payne said. “Just like O’Brien.”
“Just like O’Brien,” O’Hara repeated, “and his wife. Emily just learned she was pregnant.”
“My God!” Payne blurted. His mind then immediately went to Amanda, who they recently had learned was with child.
“And the bastards knew she was pregnant,” O’Hara went on. “They put on the Internet a photograph of Tomas’s head on the computer with another note that read ‘The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.’”
“That’s some damn message.”
“If they weren’t sending a message, Matty, he’d just wind up in a narco fosa. Hell, they hacked up Tim.”
They were lost in their thoughts for a long moment.
O’Hara then said: “While reporting news is not a perfect craft—never will be—I would suggest that it is getting worse as fewer people are willing to pay for publications that produce long-form journalism—the hard-hitting, in-depth pieces. That’s a damn necessary craft needed to protect this thing we call a free society. Corruption is a cancer wherever it feeds. And there no longer are real checks and balances in government.”
“No argument,” Payne said, nodding. “Seems that no matter which political party’s in charge, the politicians essentially take turns enriching themselves and their supporters. Not that that’s anything new. Remember what Mencken said about that a hundred years ago?”
O’Hara made a wistful smile.
“You mean good ol’ HL, the Sage of Baltimore? My hero scribe? Every one of his social commentaries, alongside those of Samuel Clemens, should be etched in stone. I will take a wild guess that the one to which you refer is: ‘Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.’”
“And yet,” Payne said, “it’s just accepted. To this day. Meanwhile, too much of what passes for today’s so-called investigative journalism is some perky TV reporter, her ponytail poking out of an Action News ball cap, waving a failed health department inspection at a restaurant manager and demanding to know if he’s cleared out all the cockroaches. No one puts the time into life-changing stories like your Follow the Money series. Tim seemed to be trying, which I suspect is in large measure your influence, including that solid piece he did on the Commish’s grandson.”
O’Hara met Payne’s eyes. “And now his heroin stories that he connected to the guys who set up Garvey.”
John A. Garvey—a thirty-six-year-old architect who was married to the granddaughter of retired police commissioner Joseph Gallagher—had been arrested at Philadelphia International Airport with two kilograms of cocaine hidden in his luggage. During a routine sweep of luggage coming off a flight from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Molly the chocolate Labrador retriever alerted on Garvey’s bag. When he retrieved it at the baggage claim carousel, he was approached by a blue-uniformed officer from the department’s Airport Unit, and Garvey immediately confessed. He explained that in Saint Thomas he’d been blackmailed to be a courier, that they threatened to kill his wife and kids if he did not transport the drugs.
“Every other news outlet,” O’Hara said, “ran with the screaming headline: ‘Former Police Commissioner’s Relative Busted for Smuggling Cocaine.’ That by itself was a cheap shot, because Gallagher had been one helluva top cop. But Tim wanted to know more. So, I approved the request to send him to the Virgin Islands to investigate the blackmailing angle. It’s what led him first to the story of Colombian coke being routed through the USVI to here and then to yesterday’s story about the ring of Mexican nationals pushing black tar heroin in Kensington and Strawberry Mansion. That one apparently was the one story too many.”
“They’re moving record amounts of smack,” Payne said. “Especially now that prescription painkillers on the street are so expensive. Four hits of heroin cost the same forty bucks that a single Percocet or Xanax pill costs.”
O’Hara nodded and added: “And if we hadn’t reported on the coke and heroin connection—if we’d been more like all the other media, and just wrote up Garvey’s arrest, and not dug deeper—then Tim and his wonderful wife would probably still be alive.”
Payne shook his head.
After a moment he said, “How did you know to go to his house today? Couldn’t be coincidence . . .”
“It wasn’t. He e-mailed me.”
“He what?”
“I got an e-mail this morning that said ‘If you’re reading this, either I screwed up the reset button—or I’m probably dead.’ He’d set up a time-delayed e-mail. He wrote in it that it was insurance against losing the material in the event they acted on the death threats.”
“A what? A time-delayed e-mail?”
“It’s rather simple, actually. It’s a remote e-mail server. He addressed an e-mail to me, attached the article with the sources and background material to it, and then, instead of clicking on SEND, he set a time and date for when he wanted the e-mail sent, anywhere from, say, a day in the future to a year in the future. Initially, O’Brien’s were set to be sent after a five-day period, unless he reset the schedule, which he could do from any computer or even his smartphone by simply clicking an icon he’d set up. So, if something happened to him—he went missing or got whacked—out went the e-mail. If he didn’t get kidnapped or whatever, then he’d click the icon, or go back into the e-mail, maybe update the file, and then the clock was reset for another five days.”
“But this didn’t happen five days ago.”
“Anytime there was a heightened threat, usually coinciding with the publishing of his articles, the schedule got moved up. In this case, it was one day. He was probably about to reset the delay for another twenty-four hours.”
“You said the schedule could be set up to a year in advance?”
“Or longer. Five days, five months, five years, doesn’t matter.”
Payne was quiet a moment, then said, “What do you think are the chances there’s more coming from some remote server?”
O’Hara nodded.
“The e-mail this morning came with his first draft of the next piece he was working on attached. Another along the lines of Follow the Money. It’s good stuff. And I’m betting that there’s more.”
[ FOUR ]
North Twenty-ninth and West Arizona Streets
Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia
Saturday, December 15, 2:40 P.M.
The 2900 block of West Arizona, a single-lane one-way street of cracked asphalt, was lined mostly, except where there were empty lots, with two-story redbrick row houses. The majority of the hundred-year-old homes were inhabited and efforts were made to keep them more or less neat and tidy, despite being in various states of disrepair.
A few, however, with their windows and doors boarded over, were clearly deserted and deteriorating, well on their way to collapsing and creating another gap of an empty lot. (One entire side of the 3000 block was completely barren.)
At the corner where Arizona intersected with two-lane Twenty-ninth Street, two adjoining properties had been converted from residences to a single business space. Their brick fronts had been modified to create the elaborate facade of a pagoda. While the enormous plate-glass window had block lettering in gold paint that boldly stated the property now served as the ministry of the Word of Brotherly Love, the Reverend Josiah Cross presiding, if one looked closely, and in just the right lighting, one could read on the glass a faint CITY BEST CHINESE EGGROLL—WE NEVER CLOSE.
A block up Twenty-ninth, other corner row houses also had been c
onverted to storefronts. One was a check-cashing business, its banners advertising a 99-cent-only fee for each cash withdrawal from its automated teller machines and, in Spanish, a low-cost wiring service for sending money internationally. Next door to it was a bodega, the market’s windows containing more signs in both English and Spanish pushing cigarettes to fresh produce to pre-paid Visa debit cards.
Twenty-ninth, being a wider thoroughfare, provided for parallel parking along the curbs on either side of the street. There were various vehicles parked in spaces up and down Twenty-ninth, but almost directly across the street from the Word of Brotherly Love sat a rusty 1980 Chevrolet panel van. It once had been the property of the Philadelphia Electric Company, the PECO logotype on its sides long faded but still recognizable.
When Detective Harvey Simpson of the Philadelphia Police Department had parked the panel van in the spot not quite three hours earlier, there had been no activity at the Word of Brotherly Love.
Within the last hour, however, Simpson—a ten-year veteran cop who was thirty-two years old, of average build with a very dark complexion, and had grown up just ten miles away, across the Schuylkill River in West Philly—had witnessed more and more happening, beginning with a late-model Ford minivan dropping off a half-dozen young men at the corner, then speeding off.
Digital video cameras mounted in hidden ports on the van’s roof rack captured live feeds. One camera angle was now focused on the front of the church, another looked down Arizona, and two others covered both directions of Twenty-ninth. The images, in addition to being viewed and recorded with notebook computers in the back of the van, could be sent on demand back to the Executive Command Center at the Roundhouse.
The two computers sat on metal shelving that had been welded to the bare ribs of the van body. Beside the computers Simpson had placed his stainless steel thermos of coffee and, wrapped in white wax paper, the second half of a rare roast beef hoagie that he’d started right after his arrival and getting the surveillance equipment set up.
The tallest of the dropped-off young men—Simpson estimated he had to be six-five—had gone directly to the crimson red door of the ministry and unlocked it, opened it, and anxiously motioned for the others to follow him inside.
Watching the new activity, Simpson thought: Should probably test the feed with the Roundhouse.
He clicked on a link on the notebook computer. A small window popped up on the computer screen. It showed Corporal Kerry Rapier in the ECC as his voice came across Simpson’s headset: “Hey, Harv.”
“Hey, Kerry. Finally got some activity. Figured now was a good time to make sure there’s no burps in the system.”
“Good idea,” Rapier said, and Simpson saw his eyes turn to look past the computer screen to the wall of flat-screen monitors as he said, “I’m looking at four males in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, three black, the fourth Hispanic, all wearing dark hoodies and jeans, coming out of the church’s red door with some sort of big heavy black boxes. And . . . on the other cameras showing nothing except what looks like normal street traffic.”
“That’s all I’ve got. Looks like we’re good to go then, Kerry.”
“What are those guys doing?”
“I’m guessing probably not setting up for a FOP fund-raiser—”
Rapier made a raspberry sound, then said, “Ping me if it gets interesting.”
Simpson chuckled at his own humor as Rapier and the pop-up window disappeared from the screen.
Simpson then watched the four males carry, with some difficulty, the black-painted four-foot-square plywood cubes, two men per cube, and put them on the snow-covered sidewalk under the ornate curved corner of the pagoda’s roofline. They went back inside and reappeared with two more cubes and then, on a third trip, carried out a lectern and two massive loudspeakers.
They lined up the cubes, creating a sixteen-foot-long stage, on top of which they centered the lectern. The massive loudspeakers then went on either side of the lectern.
Simpson scanned the images captured by the other cameras and realized that with the stage set up in such a manner, there would be ample room for the crowds to fill up and down the streets.
Easily hundreds, Simpson thought, maybe even thousands.
Whoever was onstage speaking would have a clear view of everyone in all directions.
And the PECO van’s cameras would have a perfect angle on everyone.
As the four men began running wires to the stage and the speakers, a rented yellow six-wheeled box truck rolled into view of the camera. It turned off Twenty-ninth onto Arizona, briefly going the wrong way on the one-way street before rolling up onto the sidewalk and parking in front of the former row house next door that had the sign reading FELLOWSHIP HALL over its double wooden doors.
The driver, a wiry young black male who walked with a spring in his step, hopped out, exchanged words with the four assembling the stage, then went back to the box truck and rolled up its door. Simpson, due to the angle, could see only a few feet inside the box, and there was nothing in view.
The driver then climbed up into the box and pulled out what looked at first to Simpson like a roll of a thin white sheet of linoleum flooring, and maneuvered it to the lip of the box’s roof and then slid it completely on top. Then he smoothly hopped to the sidewalk—Simpson half expected him to slip on the snow but he didn’t—and went to the nose of the truck. He then effortlessly climbed from the bumper to the hood, then to the roof of the cab, and finally to the roof of the box. There he unrolled the thin white sheet down the side of the box.
“Aha!” Simpson said, seeing that it was actually a vinyl fabric sign.
It read Word of Brotherly Love Ministry 5th Annual Feed Philly Day Dec. 17th 4 p.m.–Midnight. Proudly Sponsored by Phila City Councilman H. Rapp Badde Jr. YOUR Voice in City Hall.
“Four to midnight?” Simpson said aloud to himself. “Timed to make the five, six, and eleven o’clock news. Go f’ing figure.”
Simpson, sipping from the stainless steel cap of his thermos, then watched the male slide down to the cab and hood and to the sidewalk, then walk to the double wooden doors of the Fellowship Hall. He called back to the four men assembling the stage, then went inside the hall.
After a few minutes, the Hispanic male walked from the stage over to the box truck. He hopped inside and began sliding big cardboard boxes to the outer edge. He popped open the flaps to one, reached in, and came out with a white T-shirt. He held it up to his torso to show the others. Simpson saw that its silkscreened block lettering screamed STOP KILLADELPHIA! on the front and back, the STOP in bright red ink, the KILLADELPHIA in black.
The Hispanic male pulled out more shirts from the box and tossed them to the others as they walked up. Everyone slipped one on over their hooded sweatshirts.
Then the Hispanic male began sliding five-by-three-foot posters to the outer edge, and when he handed them down, Simpson could see the front of them. They were enlarged images of murder victims, posters similar to those used in the Center City demonstrations at JFK Park and the Roundhouse.
The first showed Lauren Childs. She was in the photograph that she had posted online that morning, the one taken at the LOVE artwork with Tony Gambacorta. Her boyfriend had been inelegantly cropped from the frame—his arm, around her neck, was all of him that remained visible—and a white circle with MURDER VICTIM #362 in red text was positioned over where his head would have been. Along the bottom of the poster was her name, followed by “19 Years Young.”
On the second poster was Jimmy Sanchez, his serious face pockmarked with acne. He was wearing not a green elf costume but, instead, a shirt and tie and blazer. He sat staring at a chess-board, his right hand hovering over a white rook. Under his image was “Jaime A. Sanchez, 15 Years Young.” The white circle in the upper corner had MURDER VICTIM #363.
The next poster showed a grinning black male with MURDER VIC
TIM #360 in the white circle. At the bottom was “Dante Holmes, 20 Years Young.”
These were carried to the stage and leaned against its front.
When Simpson saw the next poster getting moved to the back of the truck, he muttered, “I’ll be damned.”
The poster was an enlargement of a digital image originally taken by police department closed-circuit cameras and then picked up by the media.
The image showed one of the PPD Aviation Unit’s Bell 206 L-4 helicopters hovering over the Ben Franklin Bridge, the eighty-year-old steel suspension bridge that spanned the Delaware River. Traffic was stopped around wrecked vehicles, and everywhere were ambulances and fire trucks and police cruisers.
And standing in the middle of the mayhem—in front of a sheet that covered a human form—was Matt Payne.
He wore gray trousers, a pale blue starched shirt with a red-striped tie, navy blazer, and shiny black loafers. The slacks had been soiled and the shoes scuffed during the chase. He had his Colt .45 in hand, and was giving the helicopter a thumbs-up gesture.
Bright red lettering at the top of the poster read SGT. MATTHEW PAYNE, and PUBLIC ENEMY #1 was along the bottom.
Simpson clicked on the ECC button.
“Yeah, Harv,” Kerry Rapier’s voice came over Simpson’s headset. “Saw it on the monitor here. I’ve sent word up the chain of command.”
“Payne didn’t shoot that guy, if I remember right.”
“You’re right. That guy—something Jones . . . Kenny Jones—had just fled the scene of a shooting. He stole a minivan, and Matt pursued him in an unmarked Crown Vic. Jones managed to get on the bridge going the wrong way—into seven lanes of oncoming traffic. Payne caught up in the Police Interceptor and executed a textbook PIT maneuver, bumping the minivan so that Jones spun out and hit the zipper barrier.”
“Who knows how many lives he saved doing that. But you get no points for that, huh?”
“No kidding. And then Jones ditched the minivan and made a run for it—with Payne on foot in hot pursuit. It was anyone’s guess what the hell the guy would do next—probably carjack someone headed toward Camden—but then he blindly ran into the path of a bus.”
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