The Vigilantes

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Minutes after the last Crime Scene Unit drove off from Lex Talionis,” Matt said, “another body got dumped there. Someone walking by thought it was a vagrant passed out on the sidewalk. Then they noticed all the blood.”

  “Holy shit!” O’Hara joined in, then downed his drink.

  “You can’t run with this just yet, Mickey, but there’s something different with this pop-and-drop.”

  “What?”

  “He was strangled and beaten. But no bullet wounds.”

  O’Hara banged the glass on the wooden bar and, making a circular gesture with his hand over their drinks, barked to the bartender: “Johnny, all this on my tab. We’ve got to go!”

  [TWO]

  Loft Number 2055 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 1:14 A.M.

  Tossing his suit coat and kicking off his loafers, H. Rapp Badde, Jr., chased the beautiful and giggling Cleopatra past the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room. His intent: to make the beast with two backs after ripping off the Halloween outfit as fast as humanly possible.

  I love that there’re no other high-rises near here so no one can see us through those big windows.

  I can do whatever the hell I want. . . .

  It wasn’t the first time that the idea of doing whatever the hell he wanted—damn the consequences—had entered the mind of H. Rapp Badde, Jr.

  For almost all of his thirty-two years, Badde—a fairly fit, five-foot-eleven two-hundred-pounder with a thin face, close-cropped hair, and medium-dark skin—had learned that what he could not get with his charisma or his arrogant badgering, he could always get by subtly, or sometimes not so subtly, playing his favorite card, that of being a disadvantaged minority.

  It was a tactic—a remarkably effective one considering that Philly as a whole was half black, some sections up to three-quarters—that he had learned from his father. Horatio R. Badde, Sr., had used it successfully to work himself up from being a small-business owner—first a barber in South Philadelphia, then the owner of a string of barbershops throughout the city—to being elected to the Philadelphia City Council, and then, almost ten years later, to the office of mayor.

  Which was exactly Rapp’s planned next step: to become mayor. He was banking both on the name recognition—“Mayor Badde” still was familiar to voters despite the eight years since his father held the office—and what he considered to be his own accomplishments as a city councilman. And he was going to let nothing get in his way. There’d already been rumors trying to tie him to voter fraud, but he publicly dismissed them as exactly that—rumors that were simply a part of petty politics.

  Rapp Badde did as he pleased—damn the consequences—and the Hop Haus Tower condominium was no exception.

  The tax rolls of the Philadelphia County Recorder of Deeds, in Room 156 at City Hall, showed Loft Number 2055—a year-old 2,010-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath condominium on the twentieth floor—as being owned by the Urban Venture Fund, in care of Mr. James R. Johnson, JRJ Certified Public Accountants, 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

  There was similar information on the books at the complex.

  The building management kept a regularly updated computer file known as PROPERTY OWNERS: PERMANENT RESIDENTS & REGISTERED GUESTS. It listed everyone who was officially on file and showed that 2055’s permanent resident was named Johnson, James R., and its listed registered guest was a Harper, Janelle.

  While it wasn’t unusual for the names of owners and guests to be different—there were, for example, many unmarried couples who cohabited, as well as many lawfully married couples whose surnames were not the same—neither James Johnson nor Janelle Harper had a genuine financial investment in Loft Number 2055.

  In fact, the apartment’s official owner, the Urban Venture Fund, was a corporate entity solely owned by one H. R. Badde, Jr., 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

  That was in technical terms.

  Practically speaking, Unit 2055’s permanent resident and its (very) regular guest were actually Jan Harper and Rapp Badde.

  Never mind that Mr. James R. Johnson, CPA, had never set foot in the place.

  And never mind that Badde had purchased, with cash, the pied-à-terre love nest.

  And certainly never mind that the funds for the purchase were a small part of those provided to his mayoral election campaign chest by a generous businessman who believed in the politician, in his future at City Hall, and his influence therein for old friends.

  Twenty-five-year-old Jan Harper—who had a full and curvy five-six, one-forty body and a silky light-brown skin tone—was down to barely-more than Cleopatra’s golden-colored sheer panties and plastic-jeweled collar and crown as she ran into the bedroom. Rapp was hot on her heels.

  And just as she jumped on the king-size bed’s thick goose-down comforter, her legs flying up and ample breasts bouncing, Rapp heard his Go To Hell cell phone start ringing in his pants pocket.

  Damn! he thought.

  Badde shared the number of his Go To Hell phone, one of two he carried, with next to no one—only his accountant, his three lawyers, and a select few others who were friends or business associates, or both, had the number. Even Jan didn’t know it; being his executive assistant, she could call him on his main cell phone.

  He’d given it that name because, when somebody who did have the number called, chances were damn good that something had just gone to hell. Or was about to.

  Jan was now busily unbuttoning Rapp’s white dress shirt as he quickly dug into his pants pocket.

  Retrieving the phone, he looked at the screen, hissed the word “Shit,” then pulled away from Jan’s hands. He walked toward the windows.

  “What?” she said, surprised. Then, a little indignantly, she added, “Who the hell is that at this hour?”

  He held up his left index finger to gesture Give me a minute, then flipped open the phone, put it to his head, and said, “Everything okay, man?”

  He listened for a moment.

  “Wait,” he suddenly said. “Who the hell is this, and how’d you get this number?”

  After a moment, he said, “Goddamn it!”

  His eye caught Jan, now sitting up on the comforter with her arms crossed over her naked breasts, her head cocked, looking at him curiously.

  “Hold on a minute, brother,” he said into the phone.

  Then to Jan he said, “I’m sorry, honey. I’ll be right back.”

  Badde slid open the glass door in the wall of the floor-to-ceiling windows and stepped out onto the small concrete balcony.

  The view from the twentieth floor was extraordinary. And for more than just the beauty of the lights twinkling in the night.

  H. Rapp Badde, Jr., enjoyed the feeling he got from being up so high and seeing so many parts of the city that made up his life. It made him feel literally on top of the world, or at least on top of what he thought of as his world—Philadelphia.

  “Okay, Kenny—I mean, Kareem,” Badde said when he’d closed the sliding glass door, “calm down and start from the beginning.”

  For his first twenty-two years, Kareem Abdul-Qaadir answered to the name Kenny Jones. That had changed two years ago when Kenny Jones, not the brightest bulb on the marquee, had gotten arrested for selling crack cocaine to undercover Philly cops in Germantown, then fled the justice system by jumping his two-thousand-dollar bond.

  The Jones family, who’d lived in a brick-faced row house across Daly Street from the Baddes in South Philly, had four brothers. Kenny was second oldest, after Jack, who’d been a classmate and friend of Badde’s seemingly forever.

  When Kenny went on the lam, he called his big brother for help and advice. Jack then turned to his old buddy, Rapp Badde. The city councilman had connections with the authorities—“Maybe he can get the whole case thrown out or something,” Jack told Kenny. And if for some reason Badde was not able to use those connections, he had other resources well beyond the Jo
neses’.

  Badde hadn’t hesitated. Beyond being old neighbors, the Jones family had campaigned hard for his election to office. He couldn’t do anything with Kenny’s case; that, he told Jack, was a matter involving the court system and the district attorney’s office, over which a city councilman such as himself had absolutely no sway, even in a place like Philadelphia.

  So he called the manager of his campaign office in West Philly, which was run from a rented row house, and told him to let Kareem live there in the basement bedroom, which had its own door to the street, and to pay him, in cash, to work as one of Badde’s “community voter canvassers.”

  Badde even helped Kenny pick out the cover name “Abdul-Qaadir,” which was Arabic for Servant of the Capable. Badde quietly enjoyed the implication of that.

  At first, Kareem Abdul-Qaadir’s job had been to go door to door pretending to be a volunteer with the City of Philadelphia working for the Forgotten Voters Initiative—a program that, had anyone actually bothered to investigate, would’ve been found not to exist. He asked the residents if they were registered voters. If they said no, he helped get them registered.

  But then came his real job: the compilation of the names and addresses of all these voters, especially noting the elderly, immigrants, and others who could easily be convinced that they needed to request absentee-voter ballot forms. More important, once those ballots arrived in the mail, Kenny would help those voters with filling out the forms—specifically, under “city councilman,” marking the box next to “H. Rapp Badde, Jr.”

  Kenny had then stumbled across an idea that had turned out to be borderline brilliant.

  As he was canvassing a far section of West Philly, knocking on door after door, he walked up to a retirement community, Fernwood Manor at Cobbs Creek. The ten-story-high building overlooked the greenbelt of the small tree-lined stream—and, curiously, on the opposite side of the creek, Fernwood Cemetery.

  Kenny, whose experience with retirement communities could be equated to his knowledge of quantum physics, had been excited to find the place was packed with really old people. In no time he had talked his way into its Community Activity Center, a large building that reminded him of a high school auditorium. There he found that the residents watched TV, played card games and bingo, and otherwise pleasantly passed time in their retirement before, ultimately, winding up across the creek.

  At Fernwood Manor’s Community Activity Center, he didn’t have to go door to door. The retirees came to him. They were happy to see a nice, clean-cut young man such as Kareem. Especially the old-timers who had failing memories, Alzheimer’s disease in particular, and never remembered previously meeting him—or filling out forms.

  And when Kareem had explained the purpose of his volunteer work, everyone thought that the nice young man was extremely considerate to think of forgotten old folks. That, and to understand how difficult it was for them on voting day. They said visiting polling stations that invariably had long lines was very painful for their aged bodies. At the community activity center, though, they could at their leisure fill out the requests for absentee-voter forms, then later, when the forms arrived, fill those out also at their leisure.

  Especially with the kind help of a nice young man like Kareem.

  Kenny started visiting as many retirement homes as would let him in the door.

  And then he went to nursing homes, where he found the residents were more or less unconscious—almost every one on medication that kept them in a mental fog, or worse—so all he had to do was forge their signatures on the forms. Even easier to sign up were those who in the last year or two had fallen into their own category: deceased.

  Slipping the kid or old man in the mailroom a little stash of cocaine or cash, with the promise of more, guaranteed that there’d be a telephone call alerting him when the absentee-voter ballots arrived in the mail.

  Over time, Kenny Jones did one hell of a job collecting names and helping the forgotten voters of Philadelphia support Badde for city councilman—and soon, for the office of mayor.

  And Rapp Badde had been impressed. Ignoring the unfortunate fact that Kenny was a fugitive charged with a felony, he’d thought that Kenny was still pretty much the good, if dim, kid he’d been when they were growing up. And in two years since his arrest—What the hell’s wrong with a little coke now and then? That probably was a bullshit bust, anyway—he’d never gotten into any other trouble.

  Until now.

  “What the hell do you mean something’s gone bad with you and Reggie?” he said into his Go To Hell cell as he looked out over the city to the right, toward West Philly and the rented campaign-office row house.

  Reggie was the baby Jones brother, but at age twenty and two hundred thirty pounds, not much of a baby anymore.

  Rapp knew that Reggie had never been really normal—his mother had had him late in life, in her forties, and there’d been complications at birth—and when Reggie got mixed up with drugs, he really went off the deep end.

  Worse, while Kenny had just sold dope, Reggie both sold and used the stuff. Unfortunately, a lot more of the latter than the former, and he was forever trying to pay off his dealer.

  Kenny said, “I got a call from Reggie. He was crazy. Crazy scared. Crying, man. Said, ‘If I don’t come up with thirty large to pay the man, I’m dead.’ He didn’t, and next day they grabbed him.”

  Thirty thousand dollars! Badde thought. Jesus!

  “How’d he get that deep in debt?” Badde asked.

  “Hell if I know. Snorting more than selling? A lot of IOUs over time? And some crazy interest on top of what he owed? Adds up fast.”

  “Who grabbed Reggie?” Badde asked.

  “The dude he bought his coke from. The man. His dealer.”

  Badde sighed audibly.

  “So, what would you have me do about it?”

  Kenny was quiet a moment, then with a tone that was incredulous said, “What else, man? You know.”

  “What?”

  “The money. I need the money bad to get him back.”

  Can I quickly put my hands on that much even if I wanted? Badde thought as he looked out at the city and mentally went over his cash reserves.

  There’s only ten, eleven grand in my office safe.

  He was silent for at least a minute.

  “You still there?” asked Kenny.

  Badde didn’t reply.

  Kenny said, “We go way back. My family’s done a lot for you, man.”

  And I’ve not helped you?

  And what the hell have you done that’s worth thirty grand?

  Kenny added, “It’d just be a loan. You name the interest, whatever.”

  Right. Where the hell will you get that to repay me?

  “Rapp? You there?”

  “Yeah, Kenny. I’m here. Isn’t there any way you can work out an arrangement with this dealer, just—”

  Kenny Jones interrupted him: “Are you listening, man? We passed that point. These people kill for less!”

  Rapp stared off into the night, silent.

  Kenny went on: “Listen, man, it, uh, it wouldn’t be good for folks to find out about those ballots, you know what I’m saying?”

  What? “Those ballots”?

  He’s threatening me!

  Sonofabitch! He thinks he can finger me for the voter fraud!

  He blurted: “Are you fucking threatening me? You fucking ingrate!”

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  Jesus! Him getting diarrhea of the mouth would start the whole house of cards crumbling, starting with the campaign for mayor. And I can kiss the housing project goodbye.

  Well, that is fucking worth thirty grand.

  But if I cough up the money, I can forget getting paid back, with or without interest.

  And what’s going to stop him from squeezing me for more?

  Shit!

  “Kenny, where am I going to put my hands on thirty grand?”

  “Important folks like you, you got con
nections.”

  Badde kicked the concrete four-foot-tall wall that served as the balcony’s railing.

  Goddamn it!

  “Where are you now?” he asked.

  “At the house in West Philly.”

  “How soon do you need the money?”

  “Like yesterday?”

  Shit.

  “Kenny, I hate to ask this, but do you know if he’s still alive? Have you talked to Reggie?”

  “Yeah, this morning. But he won’t be if I don’t do something.”

  Bullshit. Then they really wouldn’t get their money.

  Kenny, as if reading Badde’s mind, added, his voice cracking: “And if they kill him, they’re coming after me for it.”

  Well, then not paying would remove one problem immediately.

  But Kenny would still be mine, especially if he went into hiding and started blowing the damn whistle on the absentee ballots.

  The goddamn media would love that story. It’d become a bigger circus than the Bermuda photographs.

  And even if I gave him the money, I can’t keep having to wonder when dimwit Kenny or Reggie will fuck up again, or if Kenny will open his mouth about the ballots.

  “Okay, look, Kenny, it’s going to take a little time. Especially at this hour. But I’ll send someone first thing—”

  Kenny interrupted, “No, man. You need to bring it.”

  He waited a moment, then replied, “Why me? Personally?”

  “It’d be better. That’s all.”

  Badde lost his temper: “Well, you can fucking forget it, Kenny! Goddamn you! You want the money or not?”

  There was a long pause while Kenny thought about that.

  “Fine, then. I’ll be here waiting.”

  As Badde broke the connection, looking out at West Philly and shaking his head, he heard the glass door slide open, then Jan’s voice: “Everything okay, honey? I saw you kick the wall.”

  When he turned and looked at her, he saw that she glistened from having just taken a shower. Now she wore a tan silk robe. It hung open, and he could see that she was completely naked beneath it.