[ONE] 826 Sears Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 7:55 A.M.
Paco Esteban, a bloodstained gauze bandage on his forehead, walked swiftly toward his South Philly row house. The two-story flat-roofed structure-like the row houses on either side and many others up and down the street-had a fa?ade of old red brick with dirty brown corrugated aluminum awnings above the door and windows.
In his left hand, Esteban carried two packed grocery bags, the sheer plastic stretching with the weight of their contents. He grabbed the black iron railing of the brick stoop and pulled himself along, quickly taking the three shallow steps up to the front door.
At the door, he nervously looked over his shoulder as he juggled the grocery bags and reached for his keys to open each of the door’s three locks. About the time he got the second one unlocked, he heard the familiar metallic clunk that told him someone on the other side of the door was unlocking the third, a deadbolt.
As he pulled out the key from the second lock, the door swung open.
Standing there in a dingy beige sleeveless cotton dress was his wife. As much as El Nariz’s head hurt, he still managed to think: My beautiful Salma. My Madonna. It is not fair that she should suffer such pain and worry…
Se?ora Salma Esteban was a swarthy black-haired twenty-nine-year-old who stood five-foot-four and weighed 160 pounds. Her face was puffy, the eyes somewhat swollen from crying. She clenched a wadded used tissue in her right hand.
On her left shoulder she held a toddler, the Estebans’ three-year-old nephew, who had a thick mop of unruly black hair and wore only a diaper. He was sound asleep and snoring.
Se?ora Esteban, sniffling, motioned for El Nariz to quickly come inside. When he had, she pushed the door shut and rushed to relock the doors.
“How is she doing now?” El Nariz asked his wife in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Better,” Salma Esteban said softly.
“Bueno,” El Nariz said, nodding thoughtfully.
He carried the bags into the cluttered kitchen. His wife followed.
She watched her husband, his coarse face still showing a mix of anger and fear, wordlessly unpack the bags with a heavy hand onto the counter. One bag held packs of flour tortillas, cans of frijoles negros and corn, and other staples of a heavy-starch diet. From the other he pulled out a pack of disposable diapers and handed them to his wife, then a box of gauze bandages, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide antiseptic, and a bottle of aspirin.
“While you were at the store,” Salma Esteban said softly, “Rosario did say she wanted to tell us more.”
Paco Esteban looked up from the bags. “More?” he said. “We know what she said about her being forced…”
He could not bring himself to repeat the sexual slavery part of her peonage.
He then shook his head and added, his tone incredulous, “There is more? Madre de Dios.”
“I will go and put the baby down,” Salma Esteban said.
On the loading dock of the laundromat nearly two hours earlier, El Nariz had had to slap a wildly hysterical Rosario Flores twice across the face. Not that he necessarily felt that she was overreacting to the severed head and the shooting. He himself was in shock from that-and from his bloody forehead, which throbbed beyond belief. But he had made the immediate decision that anywhere else would be better for them to be than at the laundromat.
And her banshee screams were about to attract some unwanted attention, if the sound of the gunfire hadn’t already accomplished that.
At least I hear no sirens, he’d thought.
At least not yet.
All of the other workers in his crew already had fled. He was not really worried about them. They knew how to take care of themselves, and for now that meant lying low, out of sight. He knew he would see some of them back in South Philly-particularly the ones who lived near his house, and especially the sister-in-law of his wife, who lived in his house with her husband and three-year-old son.
The others would at different times come out of the woodwork as they felt safer, as they collected information through their underground grapevine about what the hell had happened. And why. And how it did-or did not-directly threaten them.
The two slaps were enough to get Rosario’s attention-and more important, to get her to shut up and listen to reason. He had then been able to convince her to get in the Ford minivan, and that it was safer for her in the backseat, lying on the floor under a pile of bedsheets.
El Nariz then had gone back inside the laundromat.
Considering what had just happened, he thought that the scene did not look that bad. Or certainly not as bad as it could have.
El Nariz looked at the arch of bullet holes in the brick wall.
That crazy bastard!
What if he’d shot me-shot us all-instead of just leaving?
The wire baskets between the walls of washer and dryer machines were scattered wildly, a few toppled on their side. The severed head lay where it had slid to a stop, down by the table along the wall used for folding. He walked to it, afraid he might throw up, and quickly covered it with a white bath towel. The bloody slime trail it had left was becoming more and more dry, and he grabbed a damp towel from a wire basket and quickly wiped up what he could.
Then he found a box of plastic garbage bags, pulled two from the roll, and went back to the towel-covered head.
I still do not know who this is, may God rest her tortured soul.
Or how she is connected to Rosario.
But I do not question that she is.
He crossed himself, then carefully gathered the white towel around the head, lifting it all at once. He placed the severed head and its towel in one of the plastic garbage bags, then placed that bag inside the other. He added the bloody towel that he had used to wipe the floor, then knotted the bags closed.
He scanned the room and shook his head in resignation.
Nothing more to do right now.
Nothing but get the hell out of here.
Then, carrying the bag, he quickly moved to the steel double doors of the loading dock. He pulled them closed from the outside, locked them, then went to the minivan.
As the rear door of the minivan swung upward, he could hear the muffled sobbing coming from under the small pile of bedsheets.
“It is okay, Rosario,” he said softly. “It is only me.”
El Nariz carefully placed the garbage bag inside the rear storage area of the minivan-If she knows this is here, it will not be good for either of us; but it is not right to just leave it-and pulled the door down and closed it as gently as he could.
Rosario had sobbed uncontrollably on the drive to the South Philly row house.
And she was still inconsolable after Se?ora Esteban sat with both arms around her on the well-worn couch in the back-room parlor.
El Nariz had gone to clean up his head wound. He then took the double-bagged head down to the basement and, not sure what the hell else could immediately be done with it, he put it in the Deepfreeze, buried under plastic zipper-top bags of frozen vegetables.
Back upstairs, he’d stood watching from the doorway to the kitchen, taking an occasional pull from a liter bottle of agave liquor he held by his hip.
As Rosario continued sobbing, he’d finally gone back into the kitchen and poured two fingers of the tequila into a plastic cup. He’d then added twice as much orange juice to that and taken the drink into the parlor. With some effort, they got the girl to drink it.
After a short while, the alcohol had the desired effect. Rosario became somewhat calmer. She still trembled at times, but at least she no longer wailed.
Rosario now sat on the back-room parlor couch as Paco and Salma Esteban came back into the room. She had her knees pressed to her breasts and both arms wrapped tightly around the outside of her knees. She slowly rocked to and fro as she tried to hold back the sobs that seemed to rise from deep down inside.
“Rosario,” Salma Esteban began softly, “you do not have to do this thing now. You have been through very much.”
She shook her head vigorously.
“No,” she said. “It must be done.”
She sobbed.
“And I must go to church,” she added, “to confession.”
Paco and Salma Esteban exchanged glances.
Paco Esteban said, “Who’s the girl?”
His wife glared at him for asking such a question at such a delicate time.
He shrugged, in effect saying, What did I say?
Rosario buried her face in her knees and breasts. Then she looked up and between them.
She wailed, “I killed my cousin!”
Paco and Salma Esteban again exchanged glances, this time ones of deep shock.
[TWO] The Roundhouse Eighth and Race Streets, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 8:15 A.M.
Lieutenant Jason Washington was in his glass-walled office in the Homicide Unit. Minutes earlier, he had decided to deal with the matter of Detective Bari at a later time, if not date, and felt a twinge of guilt for having more or less brushed off Denny Coughlin’s question by saying the “administrative problem” had been taken care of.
Now he turned to reviewing the notes Tony Harris had taken so far in the Philly Inn job. He noticed the sound of voices growing louder in the outer office.
Washington looked up and saw Sergeant Matthew M. Payne being welcomed by a small crowd of detectives. They shook Payne’s hand and patted him on the back as he slowly but certainly moved through them and toward Washington’s office.
Washington heard Payne say, “I’d better check in with the boss.” A moment later, Payne rapped a knuckle on the edge of the doorway.
“Matthew,” Jason Washington said warmly. “I had heard a rumor that you were on your way back to the Roundhouse.”
“How are you, Jason?”
They shook hands.
“Very well, Matthew. Thank you for asking.”
“Mind if I ask where you came across this rumor? I was really afraid that the rumor circulating was the one that painted me as having turned in my gun and badge and gone off to take art classes in the south of France.”
Washington chuckled. He motioned with his hand, waving Payne into one of the two metal-framed chairs across from his desk.
“Oh, no,” Washington said, smiling. “That rumor-and it had you in Gay Paree, emphasis on the Gay-died a slow death weeks ago. This new one I got from far up the chain of command.”
Payne figured that one out-From my call to Hollaran-right when Washington confirmed it.
“I just enjoyed a visit to Commissioner Coughlin’s office,” Washington said.
Payne nodded but didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue.
“The commissioner had brought me and my boss and his boss in,” Washington went on, “to discuss the situation of the Philly Inn.”
Payne nodded. “I was just out there at the scene.”
“So I understand.” He pointed at the notes on his desk. “I’ve been speaking with Tony.”
Payne nodded again. “Does that mean Tony’s got the job? And not Bari?”
Washington considered his reply for a long moment, then said, “It’s now Tony’s. The answer to the other part of your query is-how do I put this?-that it’s on the back burner for now.”
“As long as Tony’s got it, I don’t care about the how or why. I want in on this, too, Jason. It’s important to me.”
Washington’s eyebrows went up.
“Matthew, it would never cross my mind that you had anything other than a strictly professional interest in this case.” He paused. “Would it?”
“My interest is to find out-professionally-what the hell happened out there. And why.”
Washington did not immediately reply. He looked at the notes on his desk. “Tony tells me you have a history with”-he glanced at the notes to refresh his memory-“with this Warren Olde and Rebecca Benjamin.”
“And with Chad Nesbitt,” Payne said, then went on and gave Washington all the background he’d given Tony Harris.
“Matthew, you didn’t hear this from me.”
“Yessir,” Payne said, but it was more of a question.
“Denny Coughlin is of course going to welcome you back with open arms-”
“Great! I didn’t want this to be difficult.”
Washington gave him a hard look. “Kindly allow me to complete my thoughts, Matthew.”
“Sorry.”
“Thank you. And what the commissioner has in mind-and, again, you did not hear it from me-is that you’re welcome back to your desk.” He nodded to the outer office of Homicide. “You’ll work out of here.”
“I’m tied to a desk? What is that about, Jason?”
“He’s concerned for you, Matthew. We all are. You went through a lot.”
“Which was why I took the thirty days. Now I’m back. I’m well. And I want to work.”
Both Lieutenant Jason Washington and Sergeant Matt Payne knew there never was any real chance that Payne would be denied his job if and when he said that he wanted it.
After all, it was a fact that the shooting had been declared a good one; thus, the department could not use that against him. And it was a fact that the psychiatrist, Dr. Aaron Stein, had said that Payne had suffered only from emotional exhaustion-“The treatment is rest,” Stein said, “and don’t push yourself so hard again”-which sure as hell was not cause for suspension or termination.
Finally, while it had been the Number Two man in the police department hierarchy, Denny Coughlin, who’d strongly suggested to Payne that he take off the deserved time, it also was a fact that it had been exactly that-a suggestion.
And now Uncle Denny is probably going to throw Dr. Stein’s “Don’t push yourself so hard again” line in my face.
Which translates to running in low gear while driving a goddamn desk.
Had anyone hinted at denying Sergeant Payne his job, Payne knew that technically he could have created one helluva stink. Starting with the Fraternal Order of Police getting its lawyers to file grievances against the department to reinstate Sergeant Payne, and on up to a team of big-gun litigators from the prestigious firm of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester dragging the City of Philadelphia to the Supreme Court of the United States of America for whatever unlawful action they could muster.
But that was technically. Realistically, of course, no one wanted it to come to blows. And it wouldn’t, because that would not have served either side’s best interests.
“I don’t agree with the order, Matthew, but the commissioner has his reasons. And he’s the boss. I’ll make it as best I can for you. You know that.”
Payne nodded thoughtfully.
And Jason will.
But it’ll still be a personal purgatory.
Payne then said, “Thank you, Jason.”
“You should go upstairs and make your manners. The sooner you start to meet whatever threshold the commissioner has in mind, the sooner everything will be back the way you want it.”
A detective walked up to Washington’s office.
“Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant.”
“No interruption. Sergeant Payne here was just leaving. What is it?”
“Just got word of a shooting at the Reading Terminal Market. At least two dead.”
“What the hell is going on with today?” Washington said disgustedly.
First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin was leaning back in his high-back leather chair, feet on the desk, and in deep thought, when Captain Francis X. Hollaran stuck his head in the half-open doorway.
“Chief, Matt’s here. And more info is coming in on the market shooting.”
Coughlin nodded, then slid his feet off the desk and onto the floor.
“Thanks, Frank. Give it to me when it’s solid. And send him on in, please.”
The door opened more and Payne came through it.
“Matty!” Coughlin said, his tone genuinely pleased.
Coughlin stood and came around the desk. He affectionately put his arms around Payne and patted him on the back as Payne returned the gesture.
“Have a seat, Matty,” he said, pointing to one of the pair of upholstered armchairs.
As Payne did, he watched Coughlin go back to his leather chair. Coughlin wasn’t wearing the double-breasted jacket of his suit, and Payne noticed that he also wasn’t wearing his Smith amp; Wesson snub-nosed.38 Special revolver. Nor did he have the well-worn holster threaded on his belt on the right side.
Coughlin had slipped the five-shot revolver, butt forward, into that same holster every morning for thirty-seven years, since the day he reported on the job as a rookie detective. Payne knew that it was the same standard sidearm that Philadelphia Police Department cops had carried for damn near forever, including his father and his uncle when they were killed.
Then Payne saw, sitting on top of a copy of The Peace Officer, the official publication of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5, a new black molded plastic clamshell box. It had the logotype GLOCK-the big G circling the smaller LOCK-molded into its top and bottom.
“That’s not a new pistol, is it, Uncle Denny?”
Coughlin looked at it with a sour face.
“Yours?” Payne pursued.
“Mariani insisted.”
Payne raised his eyebrows at the mention of the police commissioner.
“Since the department now is issuing the Glock 17,” Coughlin went on in explanation, “he said that I needed to set an example.”
Payne nodded, then said, “Why not one of the other Glocks, the optional models?”
Police Commissioner Mariani had lobbied-and, remarkably, won the battle-for the city to allow the police to carry more firepower. The Philadelphia Police Department issued to every officer on the force a Glock Model 17-at no cost, after they of course had qualified with the weapon at the department gun range. The 17 was a semiautomatic pistol chambered for the nine-millimeter round. It could hold eighteen rounds, one in the throat and seventeen in the magazine.
The commissioner, even more remarkably, had also lobbied for and, beyond belief, gotten approval for four Alternative Service Weapons. These were also Glock models, two of the models chambered in.40-caliber and two in.45-caliber.
It had been remarkable because there were those of the mind-set-said mind-set more often than not being of one’s head being deeply stuck in the sand, or firmly up one’s ass-that it was a danger to the very public they were sworn to protect for the police to carry such powerful weapons.
All sorts of wild-eyed hysteria surfaced during the debates as to just how powerful a firearm a police officer should have. There had even been a troop of protesters who-perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not-looked like they might rob a bank at any moment. They had marched on City Hall carrying posters bearing a red circle with a diagonal bar across photos of Clint Eastwood as “Dirty Harry,” the movie character cop who’d terrorized the sensibilities of San Franciscans.
But in the streets of Philly, as more and more gun battles with bad guys-and gun battles between the bad guys themselves-showed that damn near none of the thugs carried a.38-caliber or similar-size weapon, cooler heads successfully argued that the cops were being outgunned.
For a Philly cop to carry one of the larger-caliber pistols as his duty weapon, there were rules, of course. Chief among them: The officer had to buy the larger-caliber gun with personal funds. The department would issue only the Model 17 at no cost. Second, the alternative weapon had to be inspected. Which meant undergoing a mandatory inspection by a department armorist at the police department firing range.
Then there was the actual qualification test. If the officer successfully completed this, she or he was given a certification card that had to be carried on their person at all times. There was also the rule that the pistols could be loaded only with department-issued ammunition-165-grain tactical rounds in.40-caliber and 230-grain tactical rounds in.45-caliber. That ammo had to be used exclusively, whether the officer was on duty or off duty. Finally, upon meeting all the requirements to carry one of the larger-bore Glocks, the officer had to give the department-issued Model 17 back to the department.
There were absolutely no exceptions to the rules-except, of course, one.
The Special Operations Bureau was tasked, as its name suggested, to perform particularly extraordinary ops. Emphasis on extraordinary. And it was in that environment that Matt Payne, before the police force even began issuing Glocks, began carrying his Colt Officer’s Model.45-caliber semiautomatic. Even after leaving Special Operations (and its commander, Peter Wohl, his rabbi) for Homicide, he continued carrying it, having successfully argued that (a) it had been grandfathered in as an approved weapon, and (b) it could be considered not as powerful as the Glock.45 because it held fewer of the 230-grain tactical rounds that he fed it.
Payne devoutly believed that his Colt, a smaller version of the dependable John Browning-designed Model 1911 semiautomatic that many argued damn near single-handedly won the Second World War, was superior to the Glock in almost every way. And its size sure as hell made it better for concealed carry.
Matt motioned toward the pistol box. “May I?”
Coughlin snorted. “Go ahead. But be damned careful, Matty. When you’re around guns, they tend to go off.”
Matt looked quickly at him and saw that Coughlin was smiling.
Matt unsnapped the two silver latches, opened the box, and removed the weapon. He automatically took care to keep the muzzle pointed down, then ejected the magazine and pulled back the slide enough to see that no round was in the chamber.
“Nice,” he said.
“Damn thing’s a monster compared to my.38.” He paused. “Which, I might add, served me just fine.”
“You never had to use it, Uncle Denny.”
“Precisely.”
“So why the nine-millimeter?”
“You’re not listening, Matty. I’m supposed to be setting an example. Besides, my.38 was fine. Why carry around an elephant gun? And I sure as hell didn’t want to have to buy a damned gun. If Mariani is forcing me to take one, it’d damn well better be a free one.”
Payne put the pistol back in the box, closed the lid, and snapped the latches shut.
“You know what they say about a nine-millimeter, don’t you, Uncle Denny?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“It’s a.45 set to ‘stun.’ ”
Coughlin grunted.
“Thank you for that educational ballistic tip, Marshal Earp.”
Payne shrugged and smiled.
“ ‘If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared,’ ” Payne quoted.
Coughlin’s Irish temper flared: “Jesus H. Christ, Matty!”
Payne put his hands up, palms out. “Hey, Niccolo Machiavelli said that, not me. Early 1500s, I believe it was.”
“If you think that kind of talk’s going to help with your case…” He paused, shaking his head. “Well, I suppose we actually should get into that, into why you’re here.”
“I heard-” Payne began just as the intercom speaker on the phone buzzed.
“Hold that thought, Matty.”
Coughlin pushed a button. “Yeah? What is it, Frank?”
“Call for you holding on line four, Chief,” Hollaran’s voice came over the speaker. “Sorry to interrupt, but I think you want this one. Could be educational for Sergeant Payne to listen in on.”
Coughlin looked to the bottom edge of the phone and saw the blinking red light under one of the row of five buttons, three of which were regular phone lines and two of which were secure lines.
He punched the SPEAKERPHONE button on the phone base, then punched the button above the blinking light and said, “Commissioner Coughlin.”
“How’s my favorite small-town police chief?” a soft feminine voice inquired.
Coughlin’s face lit up and Payne smiled at the sound of the voice.
Coughlin then glanced beyond Payne. Across the room was his I Love Me wall, and there he saw the picture of him standing beside the diminutive Liz Justice. The photograph had been taken two years earlier, when the Philadelphia Executive Women’s League had given her their annual Benjamin Franklin Leader of the Year Award.
She was a petite thirty-five-year-old with a bright face and deeply intelligent dark eyes who wore her shoulder-length brunette hair parted on the right. In the picture she wore a navy blue woolen business suit with a double row of brass buttons down the front, navy silk stockings, black leather shoes with low heels-and a dazzling smile.
“How the hell are you, Liz?” Coughlin said, his voice also showing his pleasure.
“Plodding ahead in the never-ending war against crime, Denny.”
“Indeed. Welcome to the club.”
“I need a favor, Denny.”
“You got it.”
“I need some doors opened for a friend of mine.”
“They’re wide open, Liz. Who is he?”
“A Texas Ranger. The youngest one. Reminds me of Peter Wohl. Or maybe Matt Payne-”
Coughlin glanced at Payne, who was somewhat glowing in the praise.
“His name is Jim Byrth,” she went on. “He’s after a charming guy who likes to cut girls’ heads off. He heard the bastard’s in Philadelphia.”
“We sure as hell can do without any of that. This Byrth will be doing us a favor. When’s he coming?”
“He’ll be on the Continental flight arriving at three twenty-two.”
“He’ll be met. If he’s a friend of yours, I’ll meet him myself.”
“That would probably get the word out that the doors are open. He wants to nab this critter quietly.”
Liz Justice had been a chief inspector of the Philadelphia Police Department running Internal Affairs when the City Fathers of Houston, Texas, had decided that their troubled police department needed a new chief. One with lots of experience in internal affairs. To say that the Houston PD was having more than a little problem with corrupt cops was akin to calling the mafia a misunderstood boys’ club. “You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride” had become such common knowledge it may as well have been painted on the fenders of every squad car. And everything they’d tried thus far had failed to effect any significant change.
When the search of the nation’s major police departments came up with Chief Inspector Justice’s name, the only thing against her was her gender.
But the mayor had solved that in genuine Texas fashion: “Who better to break up the Old Boy Network than a lady who’s a fourth-generation cop?”
Not only did Liz still have friends on Philly’s force, she still had family. Including a cousin in South Detectives, Lieutenant Daniel “Danny the Judge” Justice, Jr. He was reputedly the smallest and without question the most delicate-looking white shirt in all of the Philadelphia Police Department.
Two weeks after the Houston mayor made the decision to hire Chief Inspector Liz Justice, she had been sworn in as the United States’ first female chief of a major city police department. The historic news put her on the cover of Time magazine.
“I do appreciate it, Denny. Please give my love to your far better half.”
He chuckled. “Will do, Liz. Take care of yourself down there in the Wild West.”
She laughed appreciatively.
He punched the SPEAKERPHONE button, breaking the connection.
Coughlin looked at the I Love Me wall again. Payne could almost see the gears turning in his mind.
And Coughlin was indeed thinking.
The reason Hollaran said that Matty overhearing that conversation would be educational was because (a) he’d had a nice talk with Liz before sending her call in here and knew what she wanted and because (b) he believed that sitting on this Texas Ranger would solve our problem of what to do with Matty.
That’s what you call a good assistant-one who solves problems for his boss.
“That’s one terrific woman,” Payne said with genuine praise.
Coughlin turned to Payne.
“Yeah, and one terrific cop.” He paused. “And you, Matty, are one lucky one. Guess where you’ll be at three twenty-two this afternoon?”
[THREE] 826 Sears Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 8:16 A.M.
Sitting on the well-worn parlor couch, her legs crossed beneath her, Rosario Flores sipped from a can of Coca-Cola.
Across from her, Paco and Salma Esteban each sat in a stackable molded plastic chair, of the type commonly found on backyard patios.
“Are you sure?” Salma Esteban said softly, leaning toward her.
Rosario nodded. “It is all my fault. I could have stopped it, or at least been smarter, when we met El Gato in Matamoros…”
She then explained herself.
It had been no accident that Ana and Rosario had crossed paths with Juan Paulo Delgado just over the border from Brownsville, Texas.
On that late afternoon in March, he had lain in wait, carefully watching the pedestrian traffic crossing the Gateway International Bridge into Matamoros, Mexico. He again was ready to cull from the crowd.
Ana and Rosario, wearing jeans, T-shirts, and dirty sneakers, were walking off the bridge in a group of twenty others. They had been officially declared by United States immigration officials to be unaccompanied minors. They had no way of knowing, of course, but they had joined some 35,000 other immigrant children who in a given year were so declared and, accordingly, lawfully deported.
This afternoon’s group was a mix of teenagers and younger children. One was a six-year-old, being carried by another teenager, whose mother was said to be missing in the desert. And Rosario held the hand of a sad-eyed ten-year-old boy whom she’d met only an hour earlier, when the group had been gathered. He’d warmed to her and taken her hand.
Two days earlier, Ana and Rosario had been in another group, one of a dozen Latino women and children, when they were caught illegally attempting to enter the United States of America.
They had come from Honduras, setting out weeks earlier by foot, then crossing Guatemala and Mexico by truck and train. When they had reached the Rio Grande, the “Great River” that was the United States border, their coyotes waited with them in the foliage until night, then secretly ferried the group the thirty-yard distance across in three small rubber rowboats.
Then bright portable floodlights had popped on. And they were almost immediately apprehended-following a futile attempt at fleeing-by the green-uniformed officers of the United States Border Patrol.
At that point, of course, their coyotes were nowhere to be found north of the border.
The American government’s processing of unaccompanied minors was similar at all southern U.S. points of entry. Within twenty-four hours of the declaration, with the detainees held in secure rooms, the usual telephone call was made to the local Mexican consulate. For Ana and Rosario, that meant the one in Brownsville. It was located on Mexico Boulevard, adjacent to the Amigo-land Shopping Mall, not quite a mile’s walk to two of the three bridges there that crossed into Mexico.
The Mexican consulate in Brownsville then arranged for an official in Matamoros with the more or less Mexican equivalent of child protective services to meet the group of unaccompanied minors. The children then would be repatriated to Mexico and, the Mexican government hoped, swiftly returned to their families.
The cold damn reality of that, however, was that in all likelihood their immediate family was still in the United States (parent and child having gotten separated during a crossing, for example). Or, worse, that their immediate family no longer existed for one of any number of tragic reasons, including a mother being lost and presumed dead in the desert.
And the task of (a) finding the child’s extended family and then (b) getting them to agree to take custody (and with it the financial burden) of the minor was daunting-if not damn impossible.
Thus, most of the unaccompanied minors had of course absolutely no desire to be returned home. Certainly not Ana Maria Del Carmen Lopez or Rosario Flores, who had struggled-had very much risked their lives for six weeks along dangerous smuggling routes-to reach the opportunities that awaited them in America.
Yet now, Ana and Rosario-having been processed by the American immigration system and given the status of unaccompanied minors-found themselves in the late-afternoon confusion of the crowd on the international bridge.
And out of that mix of tourists taking quick trips into Mexico to shop or eat and Mexican nationals returning home from working in Brownsville, a handsome young man suddenly appeared before the pair.
He had been exceedingly charming. With a calculated manner, so that the girls would come with him not only willingly but enthusiastically, he immediately began appealing to their desires.
And he began by saying he could get the pretty senoritas back to the United States.
Rosario was charmed.
Ana was wary.
How does he know what we want? Ana thought.
That was quickly replaced with: Is it not obvious? We were just thrown out. Everyone sees it.
And I don’t want to be stuck in cells here.
When caught at the river, they’d first been in the custody of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol. That agency had then turned them over to the Customs and Border Protection, also under DHS, which in turn had delivered them to the Mexican officials. They’d thus just suffered through the United States’ bureaucratic system, killing time in cold and sterile holding areas for what seemed like a month. It had actually been four days, and they were told it had taken longer than the standard twenty-four hours thanks to the delay of the weekend.
Neither Ana nor Rosario liked the idea of going through any of that again. Especially in Mexico, which without question would be a worse system with even fewer resources than those of the United States.
As Ana eyed the handsome young man, she thought, And we can’t get sent all the way back to Tegucigalpa.
So far, Ana and Rosario had avoided that by lying to the U.S. Border Patrol polic?a. They’d stated that they were Mexican nationals, which was what their coyotes had coached them to do if caught.
Neither had any official papers-no birth certificate, certainly no driver’s license, no passport, nothing-proving that they were or were not Mexican.
But they also did not have anything that stated they were from Honduras or Guatemala or Nicaragua or any other country. The Americans called that “OTM,” any country Other Than Mexico. If the illegal aliens admitted to being from a particular country OTM, American law required that they be sent back to that particular OTM country.
If, however, they proclaimed Mexico was their home, the norteamericanos-Customs and Border Protection, to be precise, but it made no difference to the girls which official agency-would expedite their repatriation via the nearest port of entry.
Even Ana Lopez and Rosario Flores-with very little formal education, barely able to read or write beyond basics in their mother language, let alone the least bit literate in English-had the street smarts to figure out that game. And walking across the international bridge and winding up in Matamoros was a helluva lot closer to getting back into America than being trucked or bused or whatever all the way back to Honduras.
Of course, conveniently, repatriation via the nearest port also happened to be the most expeditious option for the U.S. government and its agents.
The Mexican official who was meeting the group of unaccompanied minors was an overweight gray-haired Latina woman in an ill-fitting pantsuit. She held up a clipboard and looked more than a little weary, if not overwhelmed.
Standing with Ana and Rosario at the edge of the bridge, the handsome young man gently applied pressure: “You must decide now! Quickly!”
He looked at the official, then added, “Before you are taken into her custody!”
And before, the girls knew, the long-and what would turn out to be futile-process of finding their families began.
Rosario and Ana exchanged glances, then Rosario handed off the six-year-old boy to another in the group.
The two teenage girls disappeared with the handsome young man into the lengthening shadows of a trash-strewn side street.
If the female Mexican official had noticed the two teenage girls leaving the group, she certainly did not show it.
Almost immediately-within two blocks-the handsome young man stopped and turned to the girls. When he told him that his name was El Gato, Rosario giggled. He smiled back, then said that if they wanted to get back to the United States, they would have to trust El Gato.
“We have little money,” Ana had said, looking at Rosario, knowing that that was a lie.
They had absolutely no money.
Most of what they’d had had gone to the coyotes for their failed first illegal crossing. The rest, little more than a hundred dollars, had been on a prepaid debit money card. On the back of the card, they had written the U.S. phone number of Rosario’s cousin, whom they’d planned to call once in America. But during the rough rowboat ride, unbeknownst to Rosario, the card had slipped free from the back pocket of her jeans. Both card and phone number were somewhere on the bottom of the Rio Grande.
“We can discuss that later,” El Gato had said agreeably, then held out his right hand and cocked his head. “And you are…?”
“Rosario Flores,” Rosario said, grabbing his hand. She nodded toward her cousin and added, “Ana Lopez.”
“Well, Ana and Rosario,” he’d said charmingly as he shook their hands in turn, “can you trust El Gato?”
“Who does not trust a kitten?” Rosario had quickly answered-Ana thought a little too quickly.
Ana then pressed for details-who was he, where would he take them, how much would it cost?
El Gato smiled at her. He commented that she would do well in America.
“You have such a wise and questioning mind,” he said.
Then he’d told them of the great many jobs that America offered pretty girls like themselves. Ones that paid cash to work as a waitress in restaurants, to clean houses and offices, even to watch over young children, jobs that the gringos called “nannies” and “au pairs.”
More money than they could believe, he’d said, more than enough to live on in great comfort and still send plenty back home to their families.
Juan Paulo Delgado said that once the girls were across the border he would introduce them to some of the others he’d helped. They were ones he called his “growing family,” he said with a smile. Then he said he’d set up Ana and Rosario, as he had the other girls, with work. He’d even help show them how to wire their extra money home.
Extra money! Rosario had heard.
Not just money, but extra!
Rosario-who people often confusedly assumed was Ana’s older, wiser sister despite the fact that Ana was far more grounded-leaned over and whispered in Ana’s ear: “Juanita!”
Juanita Sanchez, Ana knew, was a cousin on the other side of Rosario’s family, the one whose telephone number they had lost in the river. Juanita had been sending money home to Honduras, first from Dallas in Texas. Then it had come from the ciudad called Newark, in Nuevo Jersey, where the cousin now worked-though Rosario was not sure for whom-as a criada, a maid-servant.
Rosario had told Ana that she knew that was true because she’d gone once with Juanita’s mother to collect the money-five hundred dollars, which came out to be more in Honduran lempiras than the aunt earned in half a year. Juanita had wired the money from the United States to the bright yellow-and-black Western Union office nearest their Tegucigalpa barrio.
And that, in fact, had been what encouraged Ana and Rosario to start on their journey north.
Standing on the side street near the international bridge, Ana looked her cousin in the eyes and anxiously considered their options.
That had taken no time whatsoever. They had no money and no other place to go save for the streets of Matamoros or the Mexican system of child protective services.
“Bueno, El Gato,” Ana had said. “What do we do?”
El Gato smiled, then motioned with his hand over his head. He said that if they trusted him, they would also trust his friend Hector-who on cue suddenly came around a corner. As he approached them, Ana and Rosario saw that he was younger than El Gato, maybe even the age of Ana and Rosario, but far coarser-looking, with an acne-pocked face and bad teeth.
El Gato introduced them. Then he looked from one girl to the other and promised them (a) that they should have no worries with Hector, (b) that Hector would be their coyote and see that they safely got across the Rio Grande, and (c) that he himself would see them shortly on the U.S. side.
And then El Gato said his goodbyes.
Hector led Ana and Rosario around the dirty street corner to a battered and rusty yellow Toyota compact pickup. They all squeezed into its cab, with Rosario sliding across the torn fabric of the bench seat to sit in the middle. After about an hour’s drive on paved highway-during which an increasingly disgusted Rosario didn’t think Hector’s hand brushing her knees as he worked the gearshift was exactly an accident-the truck turned onto a narrow, bumpier macadam road.
Just past the corner, they passed a police car that was parked on the side of the small road. The officer made no effort to stop them. Ana even thought that she saw the man smile and nod.
Minutes later, the truck turned off the macadam road and drove a short distance down a tree-lined rutted dirt road. It then slowed and made an abrupt turn through some brush between the trees. The surprise turn caused Rosario to squeal, then laugh a little nervously.
Limbs scraped the side of the truck. One bough popped through the open passenger-door window. It struck Ana on the ear but caused no injury.
The Toyota pickup stopped fifty feet later, and Hector got out and motioned for the girls to do likewise.
They were upstream of Matamoros and standing alone on a small rise above the riverbank. The meander of the river made a tight bend here, almost turning back onto itself. The Mexico side was thick with scrub trees and brush, the low sun causing long dark shadows. The immediate area of the bank stank and was littered with trash-empty plastic bottles of fruit drink, empty snack bags, and dirty ragged discarded clothing, both men’s and women’s.
Ana then caught herself suddenly inhaling deeply. She nudged Rosario to look. Rosario followed her gaze and saw the tree with a dozen or more pairs of women’s panties dangling from its limbs. She thought she heard Hector chuckle.
They looked toward him and saw him reaching into a big cardboard box in the back of the pickup. Hector brought out some clothes, then gave them to the girls.
They held them up and saw that they were uniforms: tan cotton dresses with brown piping and off-white cotton blouses with frilled collars. Each had a plastic name tag pinned to the lapel. The tags were a darker brown color with etched white letters at the top-RGG amp;RC-and one reading ANGEL, one ROSA.
Hector then said that they were to change into the clothes. Right there.
Reluctantly, the girls stepped to the far side of the pickup for some privacy, and stripped to their panties and bras. Hector pretended not to watch, but it was clear that he seemed to enjoy every moment of it.
When they were done, Hector pulled out of the cardboard box three small tan backpacks with a Nike logotype stitched on them. He slipped one over his shoulder and gave the girls the others. It took Hector’s help for them to shoulder the bags, the contents of each weighing exactly ten kilos-just over twenty pounds.
Hector motioned for the girls to follow. They began walking along the shoreline, within the line of trees and out of sight of the other shore. They came to a small rapid where the river bottom was exposed and the murky green-brown river rushed over it.
Walk across? Ana thought.
Why didn’t we do this the first time? Instead of those stupid rowboats!
Could the policeman in the car have something to do with this? Maybe control this part of the river?
Hector pulled out a cellular telephone. In a flurry of finger movements, he typed then sent a very short text message.
Almost immediately on the U.S. side of the river border, not a hundred kilometers away, there was movement at the top of the rise above the river’s edge. It was some sort of small cartlike vehicle. It stopped, and a man got out of it. He was heavyset, like a larger version of Hector, and wore a uniform that was the same tan and brown as the outfits that the girls wore. He then started down toward the river, walking awkwardly under the weight of a long black bag he carried with both hands.
Hector started across the river shoal. The girls looked at each other, then followed.
Wading the shallows was uneventful save for Ana at one point snagging her foot on something underwater. She stumbled, and Rosario laughed. But when Ana went to free her foot and found it stuck in yet another pair of women’s underwear-this pair snagged on a submerged tree limb-Rosario’s smile quickly disappeared.
Once they reached the U.S. side of the river border, the heavyset man nodded a greeting but said nothing.
The girls watched as he and Hector exchanged the backpack for the long black canvas duffle. Hector grunted under the big bag’s weight, and when he slung its web handles over his right shoulder, the girls heard what sounded like metal pipe and dense plastic clunking against each other inside it.
Hector then said, “Jos?, he will take you the next step.”
And, without another word, he struggled with the long bag and went back across the river.
Jos? led the girls with their backpacks to the cartlike vehicle they had never seen before. It had four small tires, a dull scratched dark green body, and not much more than a steering wheel and a black vinyl-covered bench seat that could accommodate no more than the three of them. There was lettering on the front of the cart-though neither girl could translate it, recognizing only the same logotype that was on the badges of their outfits-that read RGG amp;RC MAINTENANCE.
Jos? smiled warmly but said nothing as he drove them down a narrow asphalt-paved path that Ana thought looked as if it had been made expressly for this vehicle.
They came to an automobile parking lot, where Jos? pulled to a stop. A sign there announced RGG amp;RC VALET PARKING ONLY. They were beside a dusty white Chrysler Town amp; Country minivan, which a very long time ago had had its sides professionally lettered KIDDIE KASTLE PRE-SCHOOL in a glistening red. They all got in it and wordlessly drove off, passing a grand sign at the entrance reading RIO GRANDE GOLF amp; RACQUET CLUB.
A half hour later, they turned into a neat neighborhood of nice-looking one-story houses. When Jos? pulled the minivan to a stop on the street before one of them with a single scrawny tree in the middle of its yard, he announced with no emotion whatever that their trip was over.
Elated, Ana and Rosario looked at each other and smiled.
Ana then shook her head in wonder. The whole trip back into the United States had taken no time compared to what they’d just gone through from the time they’d been caught by the polic?a Americano to when they’d been sent back across the bridge to Mexico.
Jos? relieved the girls of their backpacks, then showed them the two bedrooms where they’d be staying. The girls beamed when shown a closet full of girls’ clothing in various sizes. They were told to pick their outfits from the closet and return the brown uniforms they were wearing to him.
After they had gotten cleaned up and were getting dressed, they heard the front door open and close, and then voices speaking in English. They pulled back the thin curtain and looked out the window. Out by the KIDDIE KASTLE PRE-SCHOOL minivan was parked a bigger vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban.
Then they thought they recognized one of the voices, and when they went out into the living room, they found El Gato and another young Latin male drinking beers on the couch. The tan Nike backpacks that they had carried across the river were on the coffee table.
The girls were nervous at first, even somewhat scared, but Juan Paulo Delgado, switching back to Spanish, had been all charm. He played up the friendly El Gato, and introduced the newcomer wearing black jeans and T-shirt as “El Cheque.” The Check was no bigger than either Ana or Rosario, but looked meaner than a snake. He was twenty-five with dark features and had a scar on his cheek in the shape of a check mark.
El Cheque, El Gato said, as he and the girls later shared a dinner of delivered pizzas, soon would be driving Ana and Rosario north. He explained how they would be permitted to find their family while they were working to repay the costs of their passage. He said it was not uncommon for that to happen quickly.
He saw them smile. “If that pleases you, then we must celebrate your arrival and new lives!”
He went into the kitchen and brought out a bottle of tequila, three squat shot glasses, and a small teabag-size cellophane packet containing a fine white powder.
The girls took a sip of the alcohol and made a face. El Gato laughed loudly and shot his down in a single swallow.
El Gato then playfully introduced the cocaine to them. First he rubbed some on his lips, smiled, then reached over and rubbed some on their full lips. After they smiled awkwardly at the funny tingling feeling it caused, he rubbed some of the white powder between the inside of his upper lip and gums-and then on theirs.
It was not long before he had dumped another cellophane packet on the table and they had decided to follow his lead and sniff a little line of it through a short straw.
They all became very comfortable and relaxed. There was much laughter.
The next day, El Gato told the girls he had a special surprise: He took them shopping for new clothes. “For looking nice when you start to work,” he said. And that night he produced more packets of coke. The girls needed no further formal introduction.
After these were consumed and they had the desired effect, and there was more laughter, the doorbell rang. El Gato then announced that he had one very special surprise.
He went to the front door and opened it. There stood an older white man carrying a black hard-plastic box resembling a small suitcase. As El Gato embraced the older man, the girls noticed that he had his long graying black hair pulled back in a ponytail-and that his hands and arms, from fingers on up into his shirtsleeves, were covered in tattoos. The body art even extended onto his neck.
El Gato introduced the man simply as “mi amigo,” and moments later his friend had opened the box on the kitchen table and was pulling from it what turned out to be a tattoo machine.
Not an hour later, both Ana Lopez and Rosario Flores were enjoying another cellophane packet of the white powder. It was to celebrate their newest gift from El Gato: a tiny tattoo, no larger than their smallest fingernail, at the hairline behind the left ear. It was of a gothic black letter D with three short black lines shooting out on either side.
“The whiskers of El Gato,” he said with pride.
Later, after they had all retired to bed, Ana had been grateful for the very numbing sensation caused by the white powder. Particularly when El Gato had come into her bedroom, said that he loved her-then torn off her new panties and forced himself inside her.
The next night, Juan Paulo Delgado had his way with Rosario Flores, too. But without the numbing benefit of the coke, she suffered. Earlier, she’d turned down the drug for fear it would lead to what Ana said had happened to her.
The next night, when the girls thought they might have the power and control to spurn his advances, he beat them. And had his way with them again.
If they weren’t getting the message, he spelled it out for them: They now bore his mark and were his until they repaid him for their passage.
Then, confusing them even more, El Gato went repeatedly to each girl individually, telling her that while the beating had been “necessary,” he was still very sorry, that in fact he loved them both.
The proof of that, he said, was that the next day they would leave with El Cheque to go north. And he, El Gato, would see them at the end of their trip.
El Gato was gone the next morning when El Cheque arrived at the house driving a four-year-old Chevy Suburban with deeply tinted windows.
The three of them loaded up the SUV, including the tan Nike backpacks the girls had brought across the river. These went into hidden compartments in the back.
They drove U.S. Highway 281 the 250-plus miles from Brownsville to San Antonio, then continued on it north another 250 miles through the rolling terrain of the Texas Hill Country.
Over the many miles and hours, the girls tried to engage El Cheque in discussions about something, anything. Except for answering their questions about where they were going-someplace they could not pronounce called “Philadelphia”; it may as well have been the moon-he had no personality and said absolutely nothing. Not even on his cellular telephone, which he used exclusively for sending and receiving text messages.
He simply played the radio and drove.
They hit Fort Worth, then turned east toward Dallas. On the far side of downtown Dallas, they went through an area where the billboards-advertising radio stations, beers, and more-were all in Spanish. They stopped overnight at an East Dallas house. It was surrounded by chain-link fencing and the backyard held a half-dozen utility trailers loaded with lawn care equipment beside a wooden garage.
El Cheque delivered one of the backpacks to a young Latino who came out of the back of the house to greet them.
The next morning, El Cheque went to the wooden garage. It stood separately from the house, freestanding, and looked much newer. He backed out of it another late-model Suburban, nearly identical to the one in which they’d driven up from Brownsville. The only differences were its color, silver, and its Tennessee tag. After transferring their luggage and the two remaining backpacks, he put the Suburban bearing the Texas tags inside the garage, then closed and locked the garage doors.
Just before they left, the young Latino came out with a long black duffle. The girls noticed that it not only looked similar to the one Hector had carried across the Rio Grande into Mexico, but made the same metal-and-heavy-plastic clunking sounds when its contents were jostled.
The spare tire under the rear deck of the Suburban was lowered on its cable hoist. That revealed a sealed compartment that had been added under the far-back flooring. The bag was placed in there, and the spare tire cranked back into place.
They drove Interstate Highway 30 to Little Rock, Arkansas, then I-40 into Tennessee, first passing Memphis, then going on to Nashville. El Cheque covered the six hundred-odd miles-coldly ignoring the girls’ pleas for more bathroom breaks-in just under ten hours.
Outside Nashville, the same thing happened as in Dallas: They stopped overnight at a house in an area that was heavily Latino, then swapped vehicles. This time the garage held a late-model Dodge Durango with darkly tinted windows and Pennsylvania plates.
The next day, down to one backpack and the big black duffle-all secreted in various parts of the vehicle-they drove on eastward, passed Knoxville, then picked up Interstate Highway 81. They took it in a northeast direction, following along the western side of the Smoky Mountains.
The girls marveled at how they had gone from the dusty desert of south Texas to this place with verdant green cloud-topped mountains-all within a couple days’ drive.
Just shy of the Pennsylvania border, they got off on U.S. 15 and drove to Gettysburg. El Cheque always recalled the first time he and El Gato had made this same trip-particularly when El Gato out of nowhere suddenly started dramatically reciting the Gettysburg Address.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…” Then El Gato laughed and said, “Thank you, North Dallas High, for forcing me to memorize that. Ol’ President Lincoln-I wonder what Honest Abe the Great Emancipator would think of El Gato’s little operation?”
From Gettysburg, they took the Dodge Durango up U.S. 15 the hundred or so miles right into Philadelphia.
It was just after dark when El Cheque pulled to a stop before what looked like an old city warehouse near a river. He killed the headlights. The warehouse had a corrugated overhead door, and after El Cheque sent a text message on his phone, the door began rolling upward with a clunking sound. The warehouse was darkened, and once the Durango had rolled inside, the overhead door clunked shut.
Interior mercury lights then began to come on with a glow.
And there Ana and Rosario saw a smiling El Gato.
El Cheque delivered the girls and hidden goods, then loaded the Durango’s secret compartments with bricklike objects wrapped in black plastic. He got back in the Durango, the overhead lights were killed, the overhead door opened-and he drove off.
El Gato had welcomed Ana and Rosario to what he said was his home. It was an old warehouse that had been converted to a very nice living space, clean and comfortable and spacious. It had a view of a river and city lights and was much nicer than any place he had had them stay before.
He kept up the act that he loved the beautiful girls. But that did not last long.
There were nights-or early mornings-he would come home, often either drunk or high or both, looking for a sexual release. First it had been himself alone; later, he would bring a friend and allow him his choice of girls.
When they complained, El Gato finally said it was time for them to begin earning money to repay their passage. He took Ana and Rosario to the run-down row house on Hancock Street and coldly explained what they would be doing. They protested that it was nothing like what he’d promised. And he beat them.
Thus, they’d been turned over to El Gato’s men who ran the house, and joined the other girls held there. And the next day, the men had taken Ana and Rosario by van to various convenience stores, where they’d been treated like any of the store’s other commodities-first to be sampled by the store managers, then put on display and made available to customers.
Neither Ana nor Rosario had any idea how much they owed or earned. El Gato simply showed them sheets of paper on which he said he kept track. Yet no matter how much they worked, they never seemed to make any progress.
And one day in a spontaneous act that surprised even Rosario, at the Gas amp; Go on Frankford she had fled her bondage, leaving behind that awful life.
And leaving Ana to suffer the consequences.
Se?ora Esteban now sat on the couch with Rosario Flores’s head resting on her lap. She soothingly stroked Rosario’s hair.
“It will be okay,” Se?ora Esteban said softly in Spanish.
“He did the same thing with Jorgina and Alicia and the other girls!” Rosario sobbed.
Then she suddenly sat upright and wailed.
“And if it wasn’t for me,” she cried out, beating her fists on the sides of her head, “Ana would be alive!”
She sobbed.
“I got Ana to leave Guatemala! I got her to believe El Gato! And then I was the one who ran away from him, leaving her to…”
She crossed herself.
“I got Ana killed! It is all my fault!”
Crying, she lowered her head back onto Se?ora Esteban’s lap.
Madre de Dios, El Nariz thought.
He said a silent prayer for her.
I cannot let this monster continue-but what can I do?
Something, anything…
El Nariz put the tequila back on the high shelf above the kitchen sink, then went to his wife. When she looked up to him, he gently kissed her on the forehead.
“I must go,” he said.
She acknowledged that by closing her eyes and nodding.
And he turned and went out the door.
[FOUR] Cup O’Joe’s Internet Caf? 4309 Main Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 9:30 A.M.
When Juan Paulo Delgado looked through the windows of the coffeehouse, he saw that the morning rush of business types was gone. The small caf? had a well-worn painted concrete floor and held ten round wooden tables, each with a pair of wooden chairs. There was a stainless-steel lip wide enough to hold a cup-and not much more-that was four feet off the floor and ran the length of the front picture windows. The windows overlooked the chairs on the sidewalk and, a block farther, offered a glimpse of the Schuylkill River. A wide wooden bar, with a dozen wooden stools, ran the length of the right wall to the rear of the caf?. And there, at the back, were four cubicles, each containing a desktop computer and flat-screen monitor that the caf? rented to customers in fifteen-minute increments of Internet online time.
Juan Paulo Delgado strode in through the wood-framed glass front door. A tan backpack was loosely slung over his right shoulder by one of its two straps. He wore sandals, desert camouflage pants with the lower legs off, making them into shorts, and a black T-shirt. The frames of his dark sunglasses wrapped so close to his face that they completely hid his eyes. The tight-fitting T-shirt accentuated his defined muscles and looked to be brand new. On the back across the shoulders, it was emblazoned with bold white type that read GET SLOSHED AT SUDSIE’S, and under that was a cartoon drawing of foam spewing from an oversize beer mug and a clothes-washing machine.
Delgado quickly but carefully scanned the coffeehouse.
A smattering of students and stay-at-home moms, chatting while their babies snoozed in strollers parked nearby, sat sipping lattes and iced coffees. Some clicked away at their laptop computers, using the wireless connection to the Internet. A paunchy middle-aged man wearing dark blue slacks, work boots, and a baby blue shirt embroidered with PETE’S PEST EXTERMINATORS was getting up from the far right of the four rental computers. He grabbed his paper cup of coffee and stepped out the back door, which led to a parking lot.
Two black teenagers, one male and one female, were working behind the counter. The male, who was six feet tall and rail thin to the point of being bony, took orders and ran the cash register while the girl, slightly overweight with a very round face, prepared the drinks.
There was no one in line, and Delgado walked right up to the register. As he did, he slid off his backpack and put it on the counter.
“Hey, brother,” Delgado said to the young man.
He unzipped an outer pocket on the backpack and pulled out a white fiberboard document-mailer envelope. It had FEDEX LETTER printed on it. Its top flap was sealed and there was an obvious bulge, indicating that it contained something other than a flat stack of papers.
The bony black clerk said, “What up, Cat? What can we brew for you? Maybe some trouble?”
He smiled, showing a mouthful of bright white teeth.
Delgado looked at the girl and said, “Usual, please.”
She nodded, and the coffee machine almost immediately began making the high-pressure hissing of steam being released.
As she worked, Delgado slipped the Federal Express envelope to the clerk. He took it and casually placed it under the counter. He then came back up with a brown paper sack the size of a lunch bag. Imprinted on it was FIND YOUR WORLD AT CUP O’JOE’S INTERNET CAF?. The sacks were provided to customers who bought muffins and sandwiches for takeout.
This bag was packed full, its top stapled shut.
“Our specialty sandwich,” the clerk said with another smile, this one suggesting it was an inside joke. “With our compliments.”
Delgado did not return the smile. Without a word, he simply placed the brown sack in his backpack and again slung the backpack over his shoulder.
The pudgy girl delivered his double espresso. Delgado took it, put four single dollar bills on the counter and one in the tip jar, then turned and walked toward the back of the caf?. In the middle of the room, he came upon an attractive olive-skinned brunette. She sat alone at a round table with her laptop and a coffee in a stoneware mug. She glanced up and smiled, her eyes catching his.
Delgado looked at her, then slowed his steps, as if he was going to stop. After a moment, he smiled back at her and picked up his pace, continuing toward the back of the room.
She cocked her head as she watched him walk away. Then she shrugged and returned her attention to her laptop screen-blissfully unaware of how close she’d just come to having her life turned tragically upside down.
Delgado put the backpack on the floor beside the chair in front of the far left computer. It was the computer nearest the wall and had a courtesy panel dividing it from the other monitors, affording the most privacy. He turned the monitor so its flat screen was completely out of sight of anyone else. Then he turned his chair so that he had a clear view of the front door.
He pulled out his cellular telephone and placed it beside the computer keyboard. He put his sunglasses there, too.
Then he reached into a pocket of his cut-off camo shorts and pulled out a computer memory device that was half the size of a stick of gum. The USB flash drive held a single file that was a computer program. The program could create a mirror image of the contents of a computer-everything from applications to data files-to use on any other similar computer. It was akin to carrying one’s computer around in the palm of one’s hand.
Delgado had set up the program on his flash drive to mirror a laptop that he kept locked in a safe at his converted-warehouse loft.
He also had the flash drive tethered with a plastic zip tie to a high-intensity butane cigar lighter, of the type advertised as “NASA Space Age Technology Windproof to 100 MPH!” If necessary, he could torch the chip into a molten-and unreadable-mass in seconds.
He inserted the flash drive into one of the two USB slots on the side of the flat-screen monitor, then hit the CONTROL, ALT, and DELETE keys all at once. That briefly shut down the computer, and its screen went black. Then he held the CONTROL and Z keys simultaneously as the computer restarted so it would load the program from the flash drive.
After a moment, the LCD screen lit up. He was looking at the same desktop image and icons that were on the laptop locked away in his loft safe.
He clicked on the icon for the Firefox Internet browser. In his computer coding class in high school, he’d learned that Firefox was a very intuitive and clean interface, far better than the crappy ubiquitous Internet Explorer. All those gee-whiz self-congratulatory messages-“IE Just Denied an Unknown Program Unauthorized Access!” or “IE Just Successfully Sold You Yet Another Program You Don’t Need!”-along with the other annoying inflated features made the program more sizzle than steak.
More important for Delgado, Firefox also had a far more complex code for security. Between the flash drive and Firefox, he could encode and decode-then wipe absolutely clean-anything he did on the computer.
He typed PHILLYBULLETIN.COM and hit the RETURN key.
A second later, the screen was awash with articles and photos, updated on the quarter hour, of the day’s news.
The biggest and brightest image was that of a motel in glorious flames. It was surrounded by various emergency vehicles, their lights flashing. Delgado grinned. Then his eye caught the red text of a ticker across the top of the page, the words crawling from right to left: Breaking News… 2 Dead amp; 4 Injured in Shooting at Reading Terminal Market. Police Said to Release More Details Shortly…
Delgado nodded knowingly.
Don’t fuck with me, he thought, and these things won’t happen.
Assholes. They all think they can rip me off and get away with it…
His cellular phone vibrated for a second, indicating a received text message. He picked it up. The tiny LCD screen, beginning with the sender’s cellular phone number, read: