by David Archer
For the police detective team of Frank Mueller and Biggie Hilton, life went on as normally as you could expect in Philadelphia’s most dangerous precinct. Then Frank stumbled on some unpleasant news that could be coming their way soon. Delroy MacGregor, former leader of the Jamaican gang, The Lehigh Avenue Rude Boys, would be up for parole in another six months. If he got it, things were bound to heat up in his former neighborhood. The guy who presently ran the gang was no friend to Delroy. In fact, a few of Delroy’s best friends had turned up dead as a result of the selection process. Parole or no parole, both Mueller and Hilton felt that MacGregor was not going to take that in stride. The two detectives had mixed reactions to the possibility. To Frank, it represented more personal risk if the shooting started back up. To Biggie, it represented a redemption of all the chances he imagined he had lost to put one between the eyes of Delroy MacGregor. As it turned out, he would never get the chance.
The chances were pretty good that Delroy would get parole, the first time out. Like Evelyn in the women’s prison, he had used his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to teach art and drawing to those of his fellow inmates who wanted to do something creative with their time. That had been a big plus in his favor. On top of that, his renewed dedication to Rastafari led him to question his unholy past. Perhaps Delroy MacGregor and the gang he used to run would come to a final parting of the ways.
They did, but not in a way that the former boss had in mind. The usurper, a truly violent thug named Scipio Kelly, was not going to wait around to see what happened if Delroy managed to get out. As expected, the model prisoner did get parole, but, as grateful as he seemed for his release, he missed the first scheduled meeting with his parole officer. But then, Delroy MacGregor had a perfectly good excuse for doing so—the passage of a .45 caliber slug through his head at very close range.
Delroy had about as many friends in the neighborhood as he did enemies. It would be a hot time in the old town tonight, and for many nights to come.
Chapter 10
“And you’re absolutely sure of this,?” Sean Higgins asked one more time in the vain hope that Louis Simmons would hedge his bet.
“Sure as I can be, Sir. The kid gave the story to Mother Jones last Wednesday. Our guy on the inside got a look at it and, trust me, it blows the cover clear off our operation, no maybes about it.”
“That goddam twerp! That fucking Benedict Arnold! Where the fuck does he get off? I tell you, Simmons, I’ve had it up to here with all these snot-nose punks who hate America. Okay, so what can we do about this fellow Porch?”
“Our guy says he can keep the story out of the magazine, at least for now, but there’s any number of people on the staff who saw the piece. Who knows what they may do to spread it?”
Sean sighed and shook his head. The best remedy he could think of would be to have this Leon Porch kid “eliminated,” True, it wouldn’t undo the damage he had already done, but it would send a loud and clear message to anyone else who thought it might be fun to fuck with the bureau. He thought of assigning the task to Simmons, whom he knew to be a stone-cold killer if the situation called for it, but, so far, that had been strictly in the line of duty. What the deputy chief was thinking about was highly illegal. If he so much as asked Simmons—or anyone else in the bureau, for that matter, he was putting himself on the hot seat. Whether the guy said yes or no, Sean would be known, on some level, as the one who had the idea. In any of several scenarios—not just the worst case—that mess could be traced right back to him.
“So, what you’re saying is we’re screwed,” Higgins summed up.
“Real bad, if enough of those people go squealing to the media. For now, I think we’d better shut this baby down.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Higgins sighed. “Let’s do it.” Inside he burned with uncontrollable rage.
In the weeks to come, Sean Higgins would have even more reason for rage. Certain of the Powers That Be in Washington alleged they had no idea of this plot when called before Congress to account for their shameful conduct. They assured their angry congressional inquisitors that they would get to the bottom of this matter if it was the last thing they ever did. And they did: Sean Higgins was demoted and transferred to North Dakota.
For his part, Leon Porch did not gloat over the triumph he had engineered. His predominant feeling was one of regret that such a promising vehicle for change had turned out to be a hoax. It was at that point he resolved to become a social worker and go about improving the world one small step at a time.
Upon his graduation from Antioch, he applied for a position with the Philadelphia Department of Social Services. The good news was that he got the job. The bad news was that he would be working out of Strawberry Mansion.
The momentary relief that Luther and Betty Porch felt over their son’s getting a good job, right out of college, quickly vanished when they found out where the boy would be working. They begged him to at least commute to the job and live somewhere decent. He could even stay with them, rent free, while he was looking for a better place, but please, they begged him, don’t go settling in with “those people.”
“It’s bad enough I got a husband who may get killed on the job any day,” Betty complained. “Now I got to add a son.”
Smelling out the ruse behind The Fair Welfare Action Committee had been only one of Leon Porch’s great epiphanies. Another was that the drugs that had seemed to bring him so much enjoyment as a student were only bringing the people of his assigned territory down. High among his priorities was to get as many people as he could straight and sober. This was especially the case with the PCP that had seemingly eclipsed pot as the recreational drug of choice Unlike the basically harmless marijuana, PCP often caused crazy, violent behavior on the part of the user. Since one of the drug’s effects was that someone who was high on it could not feel pain, the potential for truly horrendous mayhem would get ramped up even more.
Far more than his foiling the puppetmasters behind Fair Welfare, those few people Leon managed to talk down from their dependence on PCP were the triumphs he really cherished. Another fellow in the neighborhood named Scipio Kelly did not feel one bit triumphant. It was during one of Leon’s encouraging conversations with a former user when a “friend” of Scipio Kelly dragged him into a nearby alley and held a knife up to the young man’s cheek.
“White boy,” the stranger inquired, “You evah been cut?”
Chapter 11
“You know,” Arlene Ellsworth told her mom as she held Madeline up to her, “I’ll bet if Howard had ever had the chance to see this little angel’s face, he would have sworn off of gay sex forever.”
“Arlene, Cara, you don’t have to talk me around. I think what you did was wonderful. Sure, it may have been better on some level if you never got knocked up, but maybe this was God’s way of saying, ‘Tick tock, Missy. Have a baby already!”
“So you don’t think I’m a gold-digger?”
“Is gold what you were thinking of when you let that man have his way with you?”
“Actually,” Arlene replied with a smile, “his way would not have done the job. I think it was more a matter of his having my way with me. And, no, I did not have a get-rich scheme in mind. Come to think of it, at the time, I didn’t even know Howard was rich. I knew he had a good job, of course, but he never told me about his treasure-trove until he proposed.”
“So you not only managed to make sure little Madeline would be taken care of, you comforted a sad, dying man in his last days. Hard to imagine you burning in Hell for that.”
“Thanks, Mom, I feel much better now.”
“So I guess there’s no prospect for a new husband in your short-term future,” Camilla Gomez sighed.
“If there is to be a new husband, he will have to seek me out. I am tired of desperately searching for Mr. Right.”
“In the meantime, you won’t be getting any younger.”
“All the better. I don’t want a man who only cares
about my looks or who is not interested in children, for that matter. If that narrows the field, then that’s just fine with me.”
“Good work on the Jackson case,” Steve Kashuba told his one and only gumshoe. “If she gets what she wants out of the divorce, Mrs. Jackson said she’d give us a bonus. Plus which, she’ll be a jim-dandy reference.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Ernie sighed. Sure it was fun to win at anything you tried your hand at, but he hated that he was spending so much of his time ruining people’s lives—never mind that they were not entirely innocent of wrongdoing. He longed for one of those cases people write mystery books about. Sherlock Holmes never had to stoop to this level, he was pretty sure.
On the other hand Evelyn was managing to bring in even more money than her husband. She had at last convinced the government receiver Stan Womack that her reputation as a woman of intrigue was entirely overblown, and this was all the stingy, nickel-squeezing so-called connoisseurs were willing to pay for her crappy art. Meanwhile Buonocore was making her and himself a small fortune in the high-end art galleries throughout Europe. Still, the “crappy” local artist was able to bring in three to four thousand a month in dribs and drabs. After not too many months of this modest prosperity, she and Ernie were able to move back to the Northern Liberties, and into a nicer place than they had before.
“Funny thing about Arlene Gomez getting pregnant,” Ernie said out of the blue one night while the two of them were lying in bed.
“Yes and also Arlene Ellsworth. Why it’s like another baby boom,” she responded.
“Ha ha, you got me. No, what I’m getting at is—”
“:I know what you’re getting at, and the answer is yes. I’ll go off the pill starting tomorrow, but, meanwhile, how about another practice session?”
“Jeez, give a guy a couple minutes to recover,” Ernie protested. “I can’t just summon Mr. Stiffy with a snap of my fingers.”
“I think I know a way,” Evelyn murmured.
“I tell you, Luther, I’m worried. It’s not like him to be out this late,” Betty Porch fretted. It was a quarter past eleven and their son had not come home—had not even called to say he’d be out a little late, as he did whenever that was the case.
“Aw, don’t make a federal case out of it. Kid’s just screwing around. I just hope it’s with a white girl,” Luther answered. Ever since Leon had come home from work one day with a short but deep nick on his face, his parents had become even more worried about his workplace. He tried to tell them he was doing a lot more good in the place he was working than he could possibly do in Fishtown or Bridesburg. Oh yeah, Mr. Save-the-World Social Worker, how much good can you do with a knife through your heart, his mother wondered aloud.
“I hope you’re right, Luther Porch. I’ll tell you this much, when that boy gets done with his gallivanting—”
“His what?”
“I was trying not to say screwing.”
“Gotcha.”
“Anyway, he is going to get one king-sized piece of my mind. If he wants to carry on like that, he can take and find his own place to live.”
“Now, what have I been sayin’ the past three months?” her husband agreed.
“Checkmate,” Ernie calmly told his boss. Best not to gloat when you were pinning back the ears of the guy who signed your paycheck.”
“Sheesh! I’ll never get the hang of this game.” Kashuba grumbled. “What I wouldn’t give to hear that telephone ring, right now.” Steven J. Kashuba, Private Investigations, had been going through a bit of a dry spell, excellent recommendations notwithstanding. These things happened to bootstrap operations like these from time to time. You just had to tough it out. Kashuba, with his generous pension could sweat out the never-ending expenses, but he was not a happy man.
Then something very much like the captain’s wish came true. The telephone did not ring, but the front door opened. There stood Frank Mueller.
“Guys,” he told them, “I wonder if you could help me out?”
“Sure we can,” Ernie was quick to answer. “What’s up?” Meanwhile, Steve Kashuba hoped they would end up getting a little something for their consulting work, and not have to chalk it up to “goodwill.”
“It’s about Luther Porch. Remember him?”
“I’ll say!” Ernie thundered. “What’s that Piney son of a bitch done now?”
“Ernie, please, a little respect. His son has been missing for two days. We think there may have been foul play.”
Chapter 12
Frank and Biggie searched the neighborhood where Leon Porch worked during the day, while Ernie and Steve tried to find out where he liked to spend his free time. It took two full days, but the night of the second day, Biggie Hilton discovered a body in a dumpster behind an abandoned restaurant on Dauphin Street. It took a little effort to recognize the corpse, which had been stabbed and hacked mercilessly and repeatedly with a butcher’s knife. As soon as the cops made the discovery, Frank called Ernie and told him to meet them at the morgue. Yes, they all agreed, the victim was Leon Porch. Three of the searchers had been working from recent photographs Luther and Betty had provided, while Ernie remembered the kid from a few years back.
“It’s those…gangsters,” Luther wept when they gave him the news. He had wanted to use a more graphic term, but the sight of Biggie among the foursome kept him in check. “Those goddam gangsters! I told him this was a dangerous job, but would he listen? Would he listen to his dad, who’s been out on the streets all these years? No he would not!”
Ernie beheld the miserable condition of his former partner and it dawned on him: stupid people had feelings too. Whatever Luther Porch’s shortcomings may have been, he certainly did not deserve a punishment like this. Neither did the boy, for that matter.
For Ernie and his boss, the deed was done. The body had been found. Frank and Biggie had enough pull in the precinct that they could throw a few bucks to the P.I, team for their “consultation,” but now it was up to the two cops to scour the neighborhood in search of the killer. At least they knew who to start with: Scipio Kelly. If he had not committed the murder himself, it was almost a lead-pipe cinch he had ordered it. The guys had learned from Leon’s parents that their son had made it a point to get his “clients” off of the PCP, and PCP was the thing Kelly did best.
Unfortunately for Frank and Biggie, Scipio Kelly had an airtight alibi. From the day before Leon went missing to the day after they found his partially decomposed body, Kelly had been the unwilling guest of Delroy MacGregor’s closest friends. They had been holding him for ransom, although two of the captors would have been perfectly happy to forego the money and make this bastard die hard and slow. It was only because the neighborhood cops, under the supervision of Detective Hilton, had routed Kelly and his captors out for reasons that had nothing to do with the kidnapping that the captured thug had gained his freedom…relatively speaking. The two detectives were not quite ready to let him go on his merry way. Delroy’s friends had worked their rival over enough that his protests to the effect he had no idea what you pigs are talkin’ about bore a strong stamp of credibility.
As it turned out, Delroy’s remaining crew wanted nothing to do with the dangerous new drug. They were happy to go back to the ganja that had been such a moneymaker for them for all these years. So where did that leave Frank and Biggie?
One plausible theory was that Kelly had given the order just before he was snatched up. Who had he talked to before he got kidnapped the cops demanded to know.
“I don’t know. What am I a genius?” Kelly protested. “Man, I got so shook up by what happened to me, I can’t hardly remember nothin’ before that.” Well, that was only to be expected. After all this time working the neighborhood, the two detectives had a pretty good idea of who was in Kelly’s crew. Still, it would be a painstaking job to find them all and bring them in for questioning.
“I wonder if we should take a minute to consider whether or not someone else may have done this,” F
rank speculated.
“You kidding? Face it, that boy was a nerd. Who would want to kill him besides the dealers?” Biggie replied.
“How was his love life?” Frank wondered. “Could there be a crazy girlfriend or a crazy jealous ex-boyfriend of a girlfriend? I think I better have another talk with his parents.”
“Yeah, I suppose we got to allow for every possibility at this stage. I just wish that son of a bitch Kelly had been out on the street when this went down. Anybody wanted to finger him for this, I’d take the word of a liar.”
The payment Steve Kashuba finally got from the Philadelphia PD had been a pittance, when he considered all the time he and Ernie had wasted chasing wild geese…and at that, it took forever for them to issue the check. Oh, well, the boss figured, at least he managed to lay in some goodwill.
If their reward was short on cash, it was long on Karma, it seemed. The following morning, the telephone at Steven J. Kashuba, Private Investigations began ringing to beat the band. By the end of the day, they had five jobs lined up—all of them of the snoop and catch variety.