by David Archer
“That’s good. Neither do we,” Fabbri told him. “Now get your bony ass out here and move your car. We are hereby expropriating your parking place, you dig?”
“But where will I park?” the gentleman asked.
“Not my problem, Gramps. Now get a move on it.” At that point the young man gave the resident a shove and told him to get his car keys, pronto.
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. You punks are under arrest,” Ernie said from behind them. The four visitors turned around and saw two very angry cops, one white and one black.
“You got nothin’ on us,” Fabbri blustered as he stepped forward to get in the white cop’s face. “If you pigs are smart, you’ll—” That was as far as the gang leader got. Ernie instantly put him in a hammerlock and proceeded to march him to the unmarked squad car.
“Yeeow, watch it, fucker!” the suspect screamed as he stumbled on the porch steps, causing a searing jolt of pain to shoot through his pinned arm.
“Assume the position, Punk!” Ernie barked, once he had the young man against the car.
“Go fuck your mother!” the prisoner screeched. Ernie grabbed a generous handful of the guy’s ducks-ass haircut and slammed his face down onto the hood, not once, but three times.
“Learned a little respect, yet, or do you want a coupla more repeats?” Ernie shouted.
“Jesus H. fuck, I’m bleedin’!” the prisoner wailed. “You’ll pay for this, Pig!”
Meanwhile, Officer Tompkins had been holding the other three at bay, a good distance away from the car, while he waited for his partner to secure the ringleader.
“Hey Sambo,” called out the punk who was the farthest away, “I fucked your sister last night. She sho’ do lub dat white meat. Yowza!”
As Tompkins moved to confront the loudmouth, Rudy Nero took a few stealthy steps toward Ernie as his hand fished through his pants pocket. Seconds later, both cops heard a distinctive click.
“KNIFE!” Tompkins shouted as Ernie rolled away from the suspects, then rose to one knee. His service revolver was tightly secured at his side, but the spare piece he had strapped to his ankle was a lot more accessible. Nero had only seen the white policeman try to get out of danger, so he continued to advance with his blade at the ready.
“Drop it!” Ernie shouted.
“Eat shit!” Nero yelled back as he took another menacing step toward his target. In the next instant, two shots rang out and Rudy Nero screamed. He hit the ground with two slugs in his left thigh. The other three suspects quickly put their hands in the air.
“We surrender, OKAY?” one of the suspects wailed.
It took several seconds for Campanella and Tompkins to get the other three intruders lying face-first on the ground with their hands splayed and empty over their heads. Leonard kept a baleful eye on them while Ernie turned his attention back to the guy he had shot in the leg. As it turned out, one of the slugs had embedded itself into the victim’s muscle tissue, which is pretty much what Ernie had in mind. The other one, though, had nicked and opened the guy’s femoral artery. By the time Ernie knelt beside him, he had bled out.
Patrolman Earnest Lawrence Campanella found himself on paid administrative leave. It was no surprise to him or anyone else on the force. Even in the case of the most righteous shooting, a policeman who kills a citizen must move to that status and await a grand jury inquiry. Ernie had been punished—and punished severely—in the past for a lot of what was, he eventually came to realize, stupid stuff, but there was nothing stupid about this situation. He was absolutely certain he’d be cleared. That the victim was white, like him, would protect him from a predominantly black jury voting to indict on the basis of race alone. That the victim had been from New Jersey, whose contiguous residents were not exceedingly popular with Philadelphians of whatever color, was another point in Ernie’s favor. The only thing working against him was that Nero was Angelo Fabbri’s significantly younger cousin, who had been getting served with a fake ID. When all the details got sorted out, Ernie had killed a minor. That, he realized, could present a problem.
With all that free time on his hands, Ernie devoted himself to his favorite study: the effects of 12-year-old scotch in massive quantities on the human brainpan. This time, he had been smart enough to do his drinking at home or in places where other cops, particularly his superior officers did not care to frequent. The memory of his unpaid vacation, three years earlier, but still clear as a bell, that had come from his drunken request to the new lieutenant that he “go jack off in your hat” still served as an important life lesson.
It was during a moment of badly hung-over sobriety one morning Ernie came to realize that, in all that fracas, a black man had probably saved his life. A black man, but a good cop. Apparently, the two were not mutually exclusive.
He also took a moment to reflect on an earlier conversation with Frank Mueller. Greg and Frank and even Frank’s fiancée, Sadie had all stopped by his place, shortly after his suspension, to see how he was doing.
“Happy as a clam in slop,” Ernie assured Frank. “All of the dough and none of the work makes Ernie a happy boy.” As the four of them continued their friendly conversation, Ernie took a moment to ask his old pal how things were going up in Strawberry Mansion.
“Not great,” Frank answered. “Mind you, I get along with everyone and all, and my boss is basically OK, but they got me stuck on a case that’s a real bitch—a bitch on wheels, man.”
“Present company excepted, I hope,” Sadie spoke up.
“Hey, nobody ever accused you of having wheels,” Ernie was quick to assure her. “Are you talking about the little girl that got killed in that drive-by?”
“Yeah, that one. And I don’t need to tell you, the pressure is on, big-time.”
From what Ernie had seen in the papers and heard on the news, the case was still open and still probably giving his friend fits. It would be nice, Ernie thought, if he could take some of his copious and abundant free time to help his friend…if he could. Ah, but there was the rub. The flip side of the free time benefit was that he could not do any policing, not in his precinct or anyone else’s. Ernie meditated for a moment, and then it came to him as he recalled a distant memory. Maybe I can’t fill out the crossword puzzle with my own pen, he thought, but I can tell my buddy about the castle on the corner.
Chapter 9
Two days before Ernie Campanella’s hung-over epiphany, the Lehigh Avenue drive-by case took a major turn for the better.
“Guess what?” Biggie greeted his partner. “We just popped one of the Rude Boys, name of Ivan Johnson, for possession with intent to distribute.”
“On Lehigh Avenue?” Frank asked.
“Naw, way far away. Guy was dealin’ a short stone’s throw away from City Hall. You believe that?”
“Ha! Right under Billy Penn’s schnozzola! Takes all kinds I guess. Wait a minute, that must mean the gang is still staying out of Strawberry Mansion. Why bother to shoot up Bennett’s people if they’re not going to reclaim their territory?”
“I haven’t got that far yet,” Biggie admitted. “Good thing is, this kid Johnson looks like he’s the weak link in the chain. Last I saw, he was on the edge of panic, and we’d hardly begun to question him. How about we go and put some serious heat on this joker.”
That is exactly what Frank and Biggie did, playing the old “bad cop, worse cop” gambit. Within an hour, they had the names and whereabouts of every member of the Rude Boys…except Delroy, of course. The kid insisted that their runner had gone underground and nobody knew where.
By the end of the day, the police, working throughout the city, had rounded up all the names Johnson named. They would prove to be a font of information. There were just two flies in the ointment, though. First, they all claimed to be equally ignorant of MacGregor’s present location. Second, they all, to a man, hotly denied having anything to do with the drive-by: either the planning or the execution. On both of those points—particularly the second one—the detectives
were very much disinclined to take the Rude Boys at their word. On the other hand, the questions remained unanswered, for the time being.
If you asked their boss, Lt. Carl Grimes, they still had enough information to hold the suspects, at least until he had time to consult with the District Attorney about indictments. As it turned out, Grimes got the green light to prepare the cases.
“I’m sure I don’t need to say this to a smart cop like you, but let me make sure we’re all on the same page,” Prosecutor Rachel Leibowitz reminded the lieutenant, “Maybe in a couple of cases—you know, where your gut tells you one or another of those boys weren’t the actual shooters—you could hold the indictment over their heads and sweat them to name some more names, like, maybe, the actual killers and their driver.”
“Way ahead of you, Ma’am,” Grimes assured her.
Mayor Rizzo’s press secretary could hardly wait to tell the media about the big break in the case and how they had most of the Lehigh Avenue Rude Boys in custody.
“You see, even in the poorest parts of the city, Mayor Rizzo and his police care about the safety and well-being of Philadelphia’s law-abiding residents. If these suspects are found guilty, you may rest assured, they will be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” the spokesman went on to inform his audience.
Frank only took the few minutes of his short, sandwich-at-the-desk lunch break to think about the suspects’ recalcitrance. As to whether or not they did the shooting, he would let the justice system work that out. As to Delroy MacGregor, he thought about another approach.
“I keep thinking about this guy MacGregor,” Frank told Biggie. “I’d like to take another look through his file. Oh, yeah, I just remembered. We got a file on Yvette Collins?”
“I bet we do, but that may take some diggin’ around. Christ, we got files goin’ back to Al Capone.” Although the police car had long since replaced the horse and buggy, the Philadelphia police department, like most enterprises of the time, was a long way from being fully automated.
“What, Capone?” I thought he worked outa Chicago.”
“Oh, yeah, big time, but he did a short stretch in Philly.”
“What for, asking for relish on his cheese steak?”
“I dunno. Firearms I think. Anyway, lemmie get someone on Miss Collins’ file, if she got one.”
As it turned out, there was a file on Yvette Collins, who got pinched twice for solicitation. Biggie plopped the paperwork onto Frank’s desk as he was pouring over the material on Delroy. He added a few notes to the ones he had scribbled, then slid MacGregor’s file aside to see what the authorities had on his presumed girlfriend.
About three pages in, he noticed that Miss Collins had found a legal way to get naked by working as a students’ model at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. That rang a bell. He remembered from Delroy’s file that the young man, unlike most of his followers, had actually graduated from high school and then spent a year at the Academy, possibly in the hopes of supplementing his ganja peddling income by becoming a renowned artist. Could that be where the two met?
“I think I found something,” he told his partner. “Anybody asks, I’ll be at PAFA for a while.”
“Checkin’ out all them nude chicks, huh?” Biggie taunted him.
“You may want to tag along. Sometimes they use nude dudes, from what I hear,”
“I think you got me confused with someone else. No, seriously, this have anything to do with the case?
“Yeah, it’s a place where both of them had business at one time.”
“Well, all right then. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and I don’t mean with a model.”
“Hey, come on, I’m nearly a married man.”
“The key word is ‘nearly.’ Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
“How about I gather ye evidence while I may? Beep me if anything crazy happens.”
The trip to the Academy proved to be a wise investment of police time and petrol. After talking with numerous students and some faculty, he learned that a favorite hangout of theirs was a bar and restaurant on Sansom Street. While nobody had remembered Yvette specifically, some of the seniors did recall a “fetching” young “colored model,” a few years back. A few of them and the faculty remembered Delroy. As far as they knew, he had been a serious student whose sudden departure had puzzled them. On the other hand, some of the regulars on Sansom Street might know more about those two,
As it turned out they did—at least one of them. An old barfly named Joe Dunlop remembered them two was all the time billing and cooing, to where it was like to make me sick. More than once he had loudly requested that they hie themselves off to a cheap motel. Turns out, Joe added, they already had that base covered. Dude said they was goin’ off to the Sleep-Eezzz Motel in Cheltenham to take care of bidness,, once they got done with they drinks.
It was in room 14 of the Sleep Eezzz Motel that Frank Mueller bagged his quarry and the lady fobbing herself off as Mrs. The Quarry.
That night, Frank called Ernie to see how his still-suspended friend was doing.
“Glad you called, Francis,” Ernie began the conversation. “I was actually gonna call you.” Ernie decided to leave the part out where he had been too falling-down drunk the other night to hold a phone, let alone talk on one. Just the latest in his experiments with the Scottish refreshment.”
“Well, okay I blinked first,” Frank admitted. “Anything in particular on your mind?”
“I did have some thoughts on that drive-by case that’s been driving you bughouse, but, from what I hear, it looks like you guys cracked it. Good work.”
“You know something? We made a bunch of arrests, but I’m not one hundred percent sure we’re there yet. Too bad you’re suspended. I’d ask you to come by on a temporary assignment to help me cover up the loose ends.”
“What loose ends?”
“Thing is, I don’t know, but I got this feeling they’re out there somewhere.”
“Tell you what, old buddy, how about you buy me lunch tomorrow and we’ll shoot the breeze. Who knows what will come up? Maybe you should bring your briefcase.”
“Yeah, sure, let’s do that. You like barbecue? What am I saying, is the Pope Catholic? There’s this great place my partner showed me…”
Chapter 10
Aunt Sally’s was quite crowded when Frank arrived. He could have used a bit more privacy, but, in another way, the situation worked in his favor. He strode over to the only other white man on the premises—a fellow in mirrored sunglasses.
“Pardon me, there, stranger,” he began. “Do you mind if we share a table?”
“Which one did you have in mind?” the stranger wisecracked.
“Oh, I don’t know, let’s start with this one for now, then maybe later we can upgrade to that one over there, closest to the dumpster.”
“It’s like you read my mind. Okay, enough chit-chat, whattya got in that satchel?”
“Christ on a bicycle, can’t I even order? All I had for breakfast was a cuppa coffee and a Snickers bar.”
“The breakfast of champions,” Ernie pointed out.
Frank ordered the half barbecued chicken, extra-hot with slaw and an order of fries, while Ernie put in for a third beer to wash down the rest of his ribs. Frank knew from past experience that his friend would still be quite lucid after three beers, but he had better get the guy talking before even more suds came their way. For his part, Frank stuck to ginger ale.
After the guys had amply demonstrated their worthiness for membership in the clean-plate club (bones aside), they ordered coffee and got down to business.
“Let’s start with this warning note that you say you got from Washington,” Ernie began after he had spent several minutes combing through the rest of the stuff Frank had provided.
“Yeah, the one the Jamaicans sent,” Frank confirmed.
“Now, see, here’s the thing. It was supposed to look like the Jamaicans sent it, but I don’t think they did. Take a closer look,”
Ernie added as he handed the note back to his friend. “The note is written in exactly the way we would figure these people talk. Nobody writes like they talk: not you, not me, not the Lehigh Avenue Rude Boys. And, if that wasn’t enough by itself, according to what you got on Delroy MacGregor, who must of either written or supervised the note, the man’s no idiot. Graduated—with honors, yet—from Simon Gratz high, then went to art school, right?”
“Okay, I get your point. So who did write the note?”
“I think it was someone on the victim’s team.”
“Um, you think Bennett shot his own man so we would roust the Jamaicans out of the neighborhood?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I think. Bennett either shot Washington or had him shot by his own people. That’s why he only had the guy clipped when he could have been shot full of holes.”
“That’s an interesting theory, but what about Tyrone Smith? He got killed as dead as you can get.”
“You’d have to tell me more about Smith than I know, but here’s another thing that makes me think this was done to frame the Jamaicans. I was reading this guy Jackie Tasby’s account, along with the forensic team’s body markers. The little girl was three houses down from Washington and Smith. Along with that, Tasby said there was a final burst of gunfire four or five seconds after the first volley. That tells me shooting the girl was no accident. Those pricks made it a point to gun her down, just to make sure everybody would be hot to lynch the Rasta boys. That sound about right?”
“Well, the thing of it is, Jackie’s a drunk, so I don’t know.”
“Francis, why the hesitation? When someone opens a door for you, you walk through it, not stand around and think of reasons to stay put.”
“You’re right, of course. Thanks a lot, buddy. This was well worth watching the spectacle of you smearing barbecue sauce all over your face.”