Deadly Assets

by W. E. B Griffin

  Police are asking that anyone with any information please contact Sergeant M. M. Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit at 215-686-3334, at M.M.Payne@Phila.Gov, or anonymously at phillypolice.com/submit-a-tip. Individuals who provide information that leads to an arrest are eligible for cash awards of up to $20,000.

  Updates to this story will be posted as soon as available.

  —Staff Report

  O’Hara looked up and across the newsroom—past the plainclothes policeman whom Matt Payne had insisted sit on O’Hara for at least the immediate future—and over to O’Brien’s desk.

  He felt his throat tighten and his eyes tear up.

  He swallowed hard, looked back at the computer, and angrily smacked the ENTER key, sending the article to the copy editor’s desk.

  Then he went to his backup e-mail program and opened the e-mail that he had forwarded there that morning, the one that had caused him to drive over and check on Tim O’Brien.

  His eyes dropped to the pop-up window filling the screen:

  From: O’Hara, Michael

  Date: 15DEC 1155AM

  To: Mick Off the Grid

  Subject: cartel backup file

  Attachments: 1

  BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE:

  From: O’Brien, Tim

  Date: 15DEC 1145AM

  To: O’Hara, Michael

  CC: O’Brien, Timothy

  Subject: cartel backup file

  Attachments: 1

  Buenos Dias/Noches, El Jefe . . .

  Or maybe it’s not so bueno—no matter what time of day it is—for your wandering scribe.

  You will no doubt note that this is being sent from my auto-send account. As I explained over those many pints of Kenzinger and Walt Wit at the pub, if you’re getting this, then I’ve either overslept and not had a chance to reset the send clock . . . or I’ve gone over to the Isle of the Blest.

  In either case, attached as insurance is a file containing the working material for what I have been doing when not downing pints or chasing my lovely lass of a wife. You’re welcome, in either case, to have a look at it.

  This is some serious shit, El Jefe. Bigger, I’d suggest, than the piece on the heroin ring in Strawberry Mansion that ran today (I’m typing this Friday).

  Clearly the piece isn’t ready for publishing. But I’m of course confident you can get it there in my absence. Ones to follow may require heavier lifting on your part.

  Tim.

  P.S. If I have been whacked—or hit by a bus or whatever—remember that in this Irish afterlife paradise here, I am enjoying, among other things, “endless stocks of meadow and wine.” Please remind my beloved Emily of that, and that I love her. I know that you’ll see that she’s taken really good care of. Peace, my friend . . . (Of course the next sound you hear will be my belch as I walk up behind you, alive and well. I hope.)

  O’Hara felt the tears start streaming down his cheeks.

  Godspeed, Tim.

  May you now rest in peace with your beautiful bride . . .

  Jesus! That was one thing we didn’t consider, and should have.

  Tomas was whacked with his wife and kids. Why wouldn’t we think they’d do the same here?

  Answer: We weren’t believing it would happen.

  But it did.

  And we did make a plan to provide for Emily if Tim were killed. Which now is moot.

  He wiped his eyes, then clicked on the file.

  O’Hara’s bushy red eyebrows went up as he read O’Brien’s work again—it came as no surprise that the piece was a fairly clean first draft, and had three pages of source material, including contact names and numbers—and slowly nodded.

  When he’d finished, part of his conversation with Matt Payne at the University City bar earlier flashed back . . .

  “After this, Mick, you’re going to run O’Brien’s next piece?”

  “Well, the bastards can’t kill O’Brien again when it does.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer and you know it. They can kill you. Jesus! I’m having an undercover sent to sit on you.”

  “You don’t need to, Matty. Don’t.”

  “And one for your mother, too. An unmarked unit parked on her street twenty-four/seven.”

  “Oh, God! I completely forgot about her!”

  “Okay, then. It’s not up for debate. You’ve got to be worried, Mick.”

  “Worried? Hell yeah. I am worried. But if we give in, Matty, the bastards win. And they get away with . . . with what they did to the O’Briens.”

  —

  O’Hara picked up off the desk the mug of coffee that he’d spiked with a heavy pour of Irish whisky, and took a gulp.

  Then, hands back to the keyboard, his fingers flew as he began editing the piece, preparing it for publication.

  [ THREE ]

  Office of the Mayor, City Hall

  1 Penn Square, Philadelphia

  Saturday, December 15, 6:15 P.M.

  “Clearly, Mr. Mayor, we knew something had to be up when Cross did not get in touch with me after Badde promised that he would,” Edward Stein said. “However, I damn sure did not expect that Cross would double-down on his attacks on the police. And now he’s sowing these seeds of revolt that the lawlessness is intentional? That we want the killings to continue as some sort of self-perpetuating control?”

  Mayor Jerry Carlucci’s eyes went from Stein to James Finley, who was anxiously pacing in front of the television.

  “Something is going to have to give,” Finley said. “We need to contain this before something blows up.”

  “Before it blows up?” Mayor Carlucci said. “What do you call this lawlessness, this mayhem?”

  He pointed at the flat-screen television on the wall of his office. It showed live video from police department cameras at the scene of what an hour earlier, before the gunfire, had been a more or less peaceful rally.

  Now the view of the immediate area looked like a war zone.

  —

  After the shots had been fired, and Reverend Josiah Cross and Tyrone “King 215” Hooks had been whisked behind the red door of the ministry by deacons, those in the crowd who had not fled for their lives then set about trying to destroy everything in their path.

  As police officers—ones in uniform and at least ten others in plainclothes, having slipped over their coat sleeves elastic armbands embossed with representations of the blue and gold police insignia—attempted to control the raging crowd, the protesters began throwing anything from bricks to metal pipes to glass bottles.

  With that, the officers moved in and started handcuffing the worst offenders, then taking them to the nearby white panel vans that had just begun arriving.

  A chunk of jagged concrete taken from a pothole on Twenty-ninth Street struck one of the horses of the Mounted Patrol Unit. Hit between its left eye and ear, the horse reacted violently, roaring in pain as it reared up on its hind legs, throwing the officer from the saddle. The enormous animal shook its head, then became unstable and crumpled to the ground, landing on its side on top of the thrown officer.

  About the same time, the stage and the posters showing those killed in Philadelphia were toppled, then set afire.

  The yellow rental van with the vinyl sign promoting FEED PHILLY DAY was broken into, first the cab and then the cargo box. When they found that there was nothing but empty cardboard boxes in the back, they attempted to steal the entire van, and when that proved unsuccessful, they threw a flaming poster on the fabric seat, setting it on fire.

  Two other protesters, meanwhile, ripped the rubber hose from the gasoline tank that was used to fill it, then stuffed a Stop Killadelphia! T-shirt in the opening,
waited a moment for the cotton to become saturated with gasoline, then set the makeshift wick aflame.

  The entire truck cab was engulfed in flames a minute later, and then the front tires caught fire, the burning rubber sending up an even denser black smoke.

  After turning over two cars parked along Twenty-ninth Street and setting them aflame, other protesters tried moving toward the PECO van parked nearby, but were turned away by uniformed officers who were forming a loose but effective perimeter.

  A dozen units of the Philadelphia Fire Department, engines and ladders and medic units, swarmed in to reinforce the two fire trucks and ambulances that had been pre-positioned for the rally.

  Police cars—at least fifty, their emergency lights flashing—were visible as far as the eye could see.

  —

  “We’ve been damned lucky there haven’t been flare-ups in other parts of town,” Mayor Carlucci said.

  “And that’s my point: We cannot afford for it to get any worse,” James Finley said. “Something has to give.”

  “Such as?” Carlucci said.

  “There needs to be a real sacrifice,” Finley said, “one from a public relations standpoint. One of the police department appeasing the citizenry.”

  “Such as?” Carlucci repeated, his tone angry.

  “You said Matt Payne doesn’t need this job,” Finley explained. “Can’t he be convinced to fall on his sword—”

  “What the hell!” Carlucci blurted.

  “For the greater good.”

  Carlucci’s face turned red.

  “That is outrageous!” he said. “Payne has done nothing wrong! I won’t stand for him being railroaded out. He’ll be made a scapegoat over my dead body.”

  Carlucci looked between Stein and Finley.

  That wouldn’t disappoint you in the slightest—you would get me and Payne out.

  Is that what you’re going to report to Francis Fuller?

  Five-Eff and Payne are not exactly the best of buddies.

  “It would be symbolic,” Finley said. “Symbolism is good in a crisis.”

  “That symbolism, as you call it,” Carlucci snapped, “would make Payne a lightning rod. And make cops in general targets. It sends the wrong message.”

  “If you’re worried about Payne,” Finley went on, “give him some desk job in your administration. Make him City Inspections Czar or something. I don’t know. Anything harmless so that you can just tell the people of this city—and beyond—that he no longer carries a badge and gun.”

  The room was silent for a long moment.

  “What about DPR, Mr. Mayor?” Edward Stein then said.

  “DPR!” Carlucci blurted. “That’s purgatory.”

  “What’s DPR?” Finley said. “Purgatory sounds to me like it would work great.”

  “Differential Police Response Unit,” Stein provided. “When police officers get involved in an OIS—or some other possible infraction—they’re sent to DPR temporarily and assigned a desk. They’re kept busy with administrative duties, mostly monitoring surveillance cameras, answering anonymous callers who are reporting drug activity, handling four-one-one calls, and sending the important ones to the nine-one-one call center. Those who are deemed unfit to walk a beat get sent there permanently, hoping that they get the message and quit the department.”

  “No way in hell, so to speak, would Payne put up with that transfer,” Carlucci said. “He would quit first.”

  Carlucci saw Finley’s eyes widen.

  “Then problem solved!” Finley said. “It’s win-win.”

  Carlucci appeared to be taking great pains not to really lose his temper.

  “For the record, Mr. Mayor,” Stein said, hoping to calm the waters, “I simply was suggesting he go there temporarily. Since it’s more or less general knowledge that most officers involved in an OIS get parked there while Internal Affairs and the DA’s office review their shooting, it would make perfect sense that that’s where he’s been put. Both realistically and symbolically.”

  “Let’s get something clear,” Carlucci said icily. “You want some symbolic act, find another one. Payne is off-limits.”

  The large black multiline telephone on Carlucci’s desk began to ring. Carlucci’s eyes automatically went to the screen on it, and he saw that the caller ID read LANE, WILLIAM MOBILE.

  “Hold on,” Carlucci said, then snapped up the receiver.

  “Yeah, Willie? You get my message? We’ve got a bit of a problem, to put it mildly.”

  Stein and Finley watched closely as Carlucci, hunched over his desk and anxiously rubbing his forehead, listened to the president of the city council for a moment.

  Then they saw Carlucci immediately sit upright and look between the two of them.

  Finley thought he detected a slight grin—but then it was gone.

  “Hold one, Willie, I’m going to put you on speakerphone,” Carlucci said, then stabbed a button on the desktop phone with his index finger, and dropped the receiver back in its place.

  “Mr. Mayor?” William G. Lane’s gravelly voice came across the speaker.

  “Yeah, I’m still here, Willie. As are Edward Stein, Esquire, and Mr. James Finley. I trust you’ve made their acquaintance.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mayor. How are you, Ed? James?”

  “Hi, Willie,” Stein and Finley said almost in unison, and in a monotone.

  “How can I be of service?” Lane said.

  “Willie,” Carlucci said, “James just now said that considering the situation we find ourselves in, some real sacrifice needs to happen to calm our citizens. And Ed concurs.”

  “I can understand that, Mr. Mayor,” Lane said.

  Carlucci saw that Finley’s expression suddenly visibly brightened.

  “And—” Finley began.

  “Some sort of symbolic act, James said,” Carlucci interrupted. “And I’m very much in agreement.”

  Carlucci almost grinned once more when he saw the shock on Finley’s face.

  “What did you have in mind?” Lane said.

  “We thought—” Finley began again.

  “Actually,” Carlucci interrupted again, “what I had in mind was a multifaceted act, two parts, for now, the second dependent on how the first plays out.”

  “I see,” Lane said. “And they are what . . . ?”

  “First, we get to Councilman Badde and have him find Skinny Lenny—”

  “I’m sorry,” Lane said. “‘Skinny Lenny’ is who?”

  Carlucci could tell by the looks on Finley’s and Stein’s faces that they did not recognize the name, either.

  “Oh, I thought that you knew Reverend Josiah Cross’s given name was Leonard Muggs. His street name, up until he got sent to the slam for stealing a neighbor’s welfare checks, then beating him, was Skinny Lenny.”

  He paused to let that sink in.

  “I’m afraid that this is news to me, unsettling news,” Lane said, the surprise evident in his tone. “And he’s now chairman of CPOC?”

  “If not for the extenuating circumstances we find ourselves in,” the mayor went on, “I certainly would not bring up that history. He has, after all, paid his debt to society and, at least on the surface, tried to find a better path in life as a man of the cloth. But, as I said, these are extenuating circumstances, and we need Badde to get Skinny Lenny to renounce that incredible notion—I cannot believe that I am actually repeating this outrageous nonsense—that we allow illegal drug activity to flourish as a method of population control. The very suggestion is reprehensible, wouldn’t you agree, Willie?”

  “Of course.”

  “I thought you would,” Carlucci said, somewhat piously. “And so, if Badde is unable to persuade Reverend Cross to do that, then Badde is to immediately remove Cross as a CPOC member. This could coincide—key word ‘could,’ I yield
to James and Ed on what they believe is the best timing—with the announcement that I am making provision for four more seats on the CPOC board. We are creating a short list of citizens who would make strong additions.”

  Carlucci looked at Stein, who, having been caught off-guard by Carlucci’s announcement, was rapidly handwriting notes on his ledger.

  Stein looked up and raised his eyebrows.

  “Didn’t Cross,” Willie Lane said, “actually proclaim at the rally that he was resigning his CPOC position? That leaves Badde with no leverage on him. Basically Cross is saying, ‘You can’t fire me—I’ve quit!’”

  “That’s a bullshit bluff on Lenny’s part!” Carlucci snapped. “He doesn’t have a pot to piss in. I can guarantee that he is not walking away from eighty grand a year.”

  There was a long silence, and then Carlucci, in a measured tone, went on: “Now, part two, should Councilman Badde, for whatever reason, not see the wisdom in the course of action you’ve suggested to him, then I believe that the president of the City Council should announce to Badde that he will immediately be transferred from his seat on the Committee for Public Safety, which of course would have immediate effect on any and all of his appointments in such capacity.”

  Looking pleased with himself, Carlucci then laced his fingers and put his hands behind his head as he casually leaned back in his high-back leather chair. He looked between Finley and Stein.

  “If that two-by-four whack between the jackass’s eyes doesn’t get his attention,” Carlucci said, “then we can threaten his other committee memberships, whatever they may be. And, Willie, when I say ‘we,’ I mean that you can say that I am forcing your hand on this, which would absolve you. How does that sound, Willie, for starters?”

  There was a long, awkward silence.

  He has to see this as a chance to undermine Badde’s future as a potential mayoral candidate, Carlucci thought.

  I’m handing him a slam dunk.

  “Any of that,” Lane then said, “certainly could be considered either a sacrificial or symbolic act.”

  “I’m pleased that you see it that way, too.”