[ONE] 1834 Callowhill Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Saturday, October 31, 7:30 P.M.
Will Curtis, a frail fifty-four-year-old, was sitting slumped against the driver's door of his rusty Chevrolet Malibu when the thoughts suddenly hit again, causing him to wince and grunt. He quickly pulled his right hand from the.45 GAP Glock Model 37 semiautomatic pistol beside him on the seat, stabbed at the dash to turn off the radio, then smacked at the brim of his grease-smeared red-and-blue FedEx cap, knocking it from his head. With the fingers of both hands, he began rubbing his sweaty temples.
Goddamn these flashbacks! he thought.
The fingertips pressed harder and deeper in a futile attempt to make the mental images vanish.
Damn them all to hell!
Only six months earlier, Curtis had been what he'd thought of as bulky, standing at five-eleven and weighing two-ten. But now he had withered to a sickly one-sixty. His jeans, T-shirt, and denim jacket were ill-fitting, hanging on him so loosely they looked as if they belonged to someone far bigger. His close-cropped silver hair was damn near disappearing, and his formerly warm gray eyes were becoming more and more hollowed and distant in his slight if somewhat hard face.
Curtis felt he was fast becoming a miserable shell of the man he'd been. He had gone from fearing nothing and no one to being scared shitless to, now, just not giving a good goddamn anymore.
He wasn't sure what was most responsible for that-the constant stress from the mental anguish that caused the flashbacks, or the aftereffects of the intense chemotherapy treatments to slow the aggressive cancer they'd first found in his prostate.
Probably both.
Easily one or the other-especially that fucking chemo that makes me shit my shorts like some sorry bedridden invalid-but probably both.
The flashback scenes torturing Will Curtis were of the brutal sexual assault of his only child, Wendy. After leaving a pub late on the night of Saint Patrick's Day almost eighteen months ago, his beautiful, bubbly, twenty-four-year-old daughter had been attacked in her apartment.
She was just two years out of college!
Just beginning to enjoy a full life!
Triggered by the slightest of things-for example, hearing a song she liked, which had just happened as he sat listening to the radio in the Malibu, or driving past Geno's and smelling her favorite cheesesteaks-the flashbacks would suddenly hammer him. They were grotesquely lit and viciously vivid, showing the attack in her bedroom again and again from damn near every possible angle.
And they haunted him all the more because he hadn't actually witnessed the attack-rather, his imagination ran with possibilities of what had happened to her.
And what had happened to her was what the legal system termed "involuntary deviant sexual intercourse."
"Involuntary"? he thought, putting his hand back on the pistol.
Fucking-A it was involuntary!
Which of course meant rape. There'd been absolutely no question of that. The exam given by the doctors at Hahnemann University Hospital-not a dozen blocks from where he now sat parked, waiting-had determined unequivocally that that had happened. And not only vaginally, which was without doubt bad enough to have happened to his baby girl, but also what was termed in the legalese as "sexual intercourse per os and per anus."
The pervert drugged her so she passed out, then abused her body-even gave her the goddamned clap!
The revelation of all that had driven the normally levelheaded Curtis to a point of desperation he'd never believed possible.
And-boom!-his mind hammered with the garish image of the bastard on top of Wendy in her bed.
"Dammit!" Will Curtis said as he sat up in the dark and slammed the pistol against the dashboard.
His left hand rubbed his temples more vigorously. He shook his head.
What kind of miserable fucking animal does that?
Who takes advantage of an innocent girl like that?
He glanced out the window and looked across Callowhill Street at the office with the frosted plate-glass window. More or less centered on the window-which had a crack that ran jagged across its upper-right corner-were faded black vinyl peel-and-stick letters that spelled out LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.
And I'll never understand why that bastard defends perverts.
Just for a lousy dollar?
But that assistant district attorney had said, "Only a matter of time before Gartner gets busted himself and goes down just like one of his clients."
So, yeah, some kind of payout, or payoff, that's for sure, because there's no shortage of scumbag lawyers like him.
He squeezed the Glock's grip.
That DA was close to right. Gartner may never have got busted, but he is about to go down…
Before their world went to hell, Will Curtis and his wife, Linda, were more or less comfortably middle class. Will had driven package-delivery trucks all his career, first for the U.S. Postal Service, the last eleven years for FedEx, and Linda was a teller at First National Bank. Their idea of an exciting weekend night usually meant taking a BYOB of cheap California red wine to the $9.99 all-you-can-eat pasta and salad at Luigi's Little Italy, around the corner from their row house of twenty years on Mount Pleasant Avenue in Philly's West Mount Airy section.
They had known little about what went on in the nightclubs of Philadelphia, and damn sure absolutely nothing about any illegal activities. That was, until the toxicology tests taken on Wendy Curtis at Hahnemann had come back and Will and his wife had gotten an immediate and in-depth education into what the doctors called club drugs-Rohypnol (known on the street as "roofies" or "Mind Erasers"), Ketamin ("K-Hole," "Special K"), and GHB.
Wendy's blood had tested positive for far more than a trace of GHB, which was shorthand for gamma hydroxybutyric, and called the "date-rape drug" and "easy lay," among other street names. It was a powerful pharmaceutical widely prescribed as a sleep aid and a local anesthetic. The doctors told Will and Linda that when consumed with alcohol, GHB became even more powerful. It came in the form of a quick-dissolving pill, liquid, or powder, and was odorless and colorless, sometimes with a slightly salty taste. Commonly it was slipped into the drink of a young woman at some bar-though the illicit drug was no stranger among males in the homosexual community-or even at her apartment if she made the mistake of letting a date "come up for a drink, just one only."
And just one was all it took.
Within fifteen minutes of entering the bloodstream, GHB could leave the victim completely powerless for up to four hours, during which time they had no conscious knowledge of what was happening to them. In most cases, for better or worse, it also left them afterward with no memory of what had been done to them.
Almost, the doctors explained, as if they'd had a very vague, very tragic dream.
Which, Will had tried to console himself and his wife, explained why Wendy would not talk about the attack.
She couldn't remember.
Or maybe-probably?-didn't want to…
But that doctor's exam sure as hell found the physical damage.
And that's what really put her momma over the edge, screaming hysterically at the news of her baby girl hurt so badly.
Not even the damned priest could talk to her, calm her down…
And then this scumbag lawyer turned it all the worse. Getting the case tossed on a technicality with the rape-kit evidence-a goddamn broken "chain of custody" in the property room.
The pervert was guilty as hell… then he just walked.
Sonofabitch!
Tonight made the third time in a week that Will Curtis had been parked in the 1800 block of Callowhill Street. Each time he'd been in a different car and in a different spot, but all with a clear view of LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.
Callowhill was two blocks north of the Vine Street Expressway. To the south of Vine spread the great wealth of modern skyscrapers and well-preserved historic buildings that was the bustling Center City. Here, however, on this block of Callowhill, the majority of addresses were deserted. Signs in the dirty vacant windows of the decaying strips of storefronts-mostly three-story offices sharing a common brick facade-announced to the occasional passersby that they were for sale or lease.
Of the few that were occupied, not one was particularly noteworthy. Five addresses to the right of Gartner's law office, almost up to North Nineteenth Street, stood a soul food restaurant and bar-Curtis thought of it as "that soulless restaurant," complete with vagrants loitering nearby-and a couple addresses to his left were two other low-rent law offices, one of which had lettering on its window stating that the firm offered immigration-law services. And finally, across the street, next to a large grassy lot surrounded by chain-link fencing, was a struggling establishment named Tattoo U.
That, Curtis had thought with a morbid chuckle, was probably where Gartner's clients went to acquire "I'm a Loser Gangbanger" body art after Gartner, their loser of a lawyer, had told them their turn-in date to report to jail.
Other than that, there was damn near nothing here.
And that served his purpose tonight just fine. It had been a little more than three hours since Will Curtis had pulled the Chevy sedan into the parallel parking space across the street from Gartner's office. In that time, he'd come to feel comfortable that the patterns he had noted on his previous two nights of surveillance were similar to what was playing out tonight.
First, most workers in the nearby offices had headed for home-or probably a corner bar, he'd thought-the great rush of them at the stroke of five o'clock. There were even a few who'd worn Halloween outfits. If black tights and cat whiskers and a headband with pointy furry ears counted as a costume.
Then, for the next hour, out came the stragglers. They disappeared one by one down the cracked sidewalk until, easily by six, Callowhill Street-not counting an occasional patron for the restaurant or the tattoo parlor-was more or less deserted.
Right about seven-thirty, a woman left Gartner's office, returning fifteen or so minutes later with some sort of fast food. Each night it was the same chunky woman, about age thirty and black and overweight but with a pleasant face. The first time she had carried two flat cardboard boxes with pies from the pizza joint on the corner of Callowhill and North Twenty-first Street. Tonight she'd gone a block up to Hamilton Street and come back with a couple of greasy white sacks that had Asian-looking lettering: TAKIE OUTIE TASTY CHINESE.
The thought of smelling, let alone tasting, greasy egg rolls made Will's stomach grumble. Not because he was hungry-he had almost no appetite these days-but because the chemotherapy treatments had made his gut easily upset.
Even before they found the cancer, his prostate had caused him to have to take leaks far more often than he liked. Particularly because finding a pisser was not always easy, especially while driving a FedEx truck on its delivery route schedule. He couldn't keep stopping continuously-his boss would wonder why he was constantly late-so in Center City he'd swung by Goldberg's Army-Navy on Chestnut Street and bought a couple of surplus gallon canteens. The plastic containers weren't the most sanitary solution, but they worked. He could do his business while seated, then later simply crack open the door and dump out the canteen onto the street.
And that had damn sure come in handy the nights he watched the law office.
Now, for the third time tonight, Will Curtis picked up the canteen, unscrewed its top, unzipped the fly of his blue jeans, and relieved himself into the half-full container. Then he screwed the top back on tightly and dropped the canteen to the floorboard.
And heaved a huge sigh of relief. Ten minutes later, Curtis saw the battered heavy metal door of Gartner's office swing open. The doorway opening filled with a harsh white glow of fluorescent light.
He checked his well-worn gold-toned Seiko wristwatch.
Eight o'clock on the nose.
Then, as he'd seen happen the other times here, out walked the overweight black woman. Tonight she wore a gray knee-length woolen overcoat, which only made her obesity more pronounced, and slung a black patent-leather purse over her shoulder.
Right on time.
He guessed that she was Gartner's part-time help, one who came in maybe after attending college classes or another job and worked for him till eight. Gartner's full-time assistant, a bony white woman of maybe forty, was one of the ones who left the office at five o'clock on the dot.
That meant, to the best of Curtis's knowledge, that Gartner was now alone. Which was how Curtis wanted it. He held no animosity whatever toward any of the office help. Everyone had to work for a living, he reasoned, and no one should be held accountable for what their bosses did.
Which was why he did not mind waiting so long in the car and pissing in canteens. While he knew that the spreading cancer wasn't going to give him all the time in the world-Sure as hell not much more time left on the top side of the turf-he felt that he did have enough time to settle some scores with the ones who deserved it.
Curtis glanced down at the Glock. The matte-black gun reminded him of the semiautomatic Colt Model 1911.45 ACP with which he'd first learned to shoot. That had been during his short stint-two years, ten months, and twenty-two days during the 1970s, discharged honorably during a postwar Reduction in Force-in the Pennsylvania National Guard.
And that caused him to shake his head in disgust.
I joined up to fight for freedom-but damn sure not so our legal system would allow these worthless shits to do what they want to innocent girls.
No one is going to miss him.
And there's not a damn thing that's going to happen to me for taking him out-that is, if I get caught.
Then he chuckled.
Like that saying goes, "You can't kill a man born to hang."
Or, in my case, hang dead at the end of a chemo IV drip…
He slipped the Glock into the right pocket of his denim jacket and opened the driver's door. As he shuffled his feet to get out, he accidentally kicked the full canteen across the floorboard. He looked down at it and made a face.
Oh, what the hell. May as well dump it out now.
Then he smirked.
And I know exactly how.
He looked over at the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ. He saw a couple of overhead white lights go off behind it, then there began a pulsing of different-colored lights. He'd seen that happen on the other nights he'd sat watching the office, and decided that Gartner liked to watch a little television, maybe a movie, after the help had left.
He picked up the canteen and swung open the door. [TWO] Will Curtis, staying in the shadows, walked up the sidewalk on the far side of the street. As he approached a parallel-parked filthy old Ford panel van-one that apparently hadn't been moved in a month of Sundays, judging by the parking tickets and fast-food restaurant flyers stacked thick under its windshield wipers-he stepped off the curb to cross the street. He turned his head left and checked for any traffic, and just as he saw that there wasn't anything coming, there came from the opposite direction the sound of a roaring motorcycle engine.
He stopped in his tracks, keeping behind the filthy Ford van, and carefully peered out to look to the right.
And there he saw it: one of those high-end racing-style motorcycles designed to look at once sleek and aggressive.
He saw plenty of them while driving his truck routes-and he hated them.
The idiots on those crotch rockets are always street racing or running in packs like marauding dogs, reckless as hell, causing wrecks in their wake.
Even worse, every now and then splattering themselves on the bumper of some car, making that innocent driver carry that damn memory the rest of his life.
The motorcycle had just turned the corner at Nineteenth, but then suddenly made a fast U-turn, which explained the roaring sound he'd heard.
And then Curtis saw why the rider-Jesus, he's small for that big bike-had changed direction: Near the end of the block, a group of four girls wearing their parochial-school outfits of dark woolen skirts and white cotton blouses were approaching the corner of Nineteenth and Callowhill. They looked to be about age fifteen or sixteen.
As the motorcycle closed on the group, the girls were lit by the bike's bright headlight-and they froze there in the beam, staring at the fast-approaching machine.
Scared like damned deer.
One of the girls wore a zippered hoodie athletic jacket, in blue and white, and when she turned away from the beam it lit her back. There Curtis saw the representation of Mickey Mouse stitched on the jacket, the cartoon character's head partially obscured by the hood.
Curtis had figured-and the jacket confirmed-that the group was from John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls' High School. A private institution run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Hallahan was just around the corner, between Callowhill and Vine. Blue and white were its school colors, the Disney icon its school mascot.
The motorcyclist slowed, then passed the girls and did another quick U-turn.
He may be small, but the prick can ride.
That's the "little man syndrome"-insecure guys getting a hot bike or car to help them look tougher.
Or maybe it's "little dick syndrome."
As the headlight swept around, it again washed the girls in its beam. Then the motorcycle engine roared loudly and the beam moved upward as the bike popped a wheelie, the front tire rising about three feet off the asphalt. The rider, half standing on the foot pegs, drove the bike on its back tire as he roared past the group of girls.
Fucking showing off, Curtis thought.
Like he owns the street.
And wants to own one of them…
As the motorcycle came closer to where Will Curtis peered out from behind the filthy Ford van, the rider backed off the gas and the front tire returned to the pavement. The headlight beam flashed Curtis in the eyes, momentarily blinding him.
He instinctively dropped back behind the van and went into a crouch. He heard the motorcycle approaching quickly, followed by the sound of skidding tires. The motorcycle's engine revved twice, then went silent.
The only sound Will Curtis now heard was in the distance, up the street. The school girls were giggling and talking-both nervously and excitedly-as they slowly walked on up Nineteenth.
And-boom!-the sights and sounds of the high schoolers triggered a memory.
This time, though, the flashback wasn't an unpleasant one.
Wendy had attended Hallahan. And Will remembered the last day of her senior year. She had come home with her blue-and-white athletic jacket dripping wet because, as was traditional at the girls' school, she and the rest of the senior class had jumped into the Logan Circle fountain, which was just blocks south of the school in front of the Four Seasons Hotel.
And then the Catholic school memory-boom!-filled his mind with scenes of attending Saint Vincent's Catholic Church with Wendy and Linda.
In addition to worshipping there, near their West Mount Airy home, Will had volunteered his time. Mostly it had been in the capacity of scout-master with a Boy Scout troop that the church sponsored. Never mind that he'd had no sons in the program. He liked what the Scouts did-he'd been one as a kid, working his way up to just two merit badges shy of the top rank of Eagle Scout-and, bending rules a bit, he liked taking his daughter on camping trips and other outings with the boys. He'd treated her like the others. He taught them how to handle knives and how to shoot pistols and.22-caliber rifles (though, to his disappointment, she never kept any interest in guns).
In Scouts he'd also, of course, taught Wendy how to tie her knots.
And that-boom!-did cause an unpleasant flashback.
Damn it!
An ugly one, a vivid one, because he knew that the morning after Saint Paddy's, after that evil date-rape drug had worn off, Wendy had awakened to find herself naked and spread-eagled-bound with nylon stockings knotted around all four of the bedposts. As Will Curtis's eyes readjusted to the darkness and he could make out his surroundings again, the flashback faded.
He looked across the street and saw that the motorcycle rider had nosed the machine to a stop in front of the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.
The window still pulsed with colored lights from the television.
The bike was indeed an aggressive-looking racing machine. It had bright neon green plastic body panels and a neon green fuel tank, a sleek, swept-back windscreen, and bold decalcomania that damn near screamed in black lettering: KAWASAKI NINJA.
The rider dramatically swung his right leg over the seat as he dismounted. He then began loosening the chin strap of his matching neon green helmet, a full-face model with its silver-mirrored visor pushed up.
Then, suddenly, the battered metal door of the office opened.
The motorcyclist turned to look toward it.
Will Curtis thought, All that engine roaring and rubber burning got someone's attention.
And then he saw a familiar face in the doorway.
Curtis had amused himself the first time he'd seen the criminal defense lawyer's name listed on court papers as: COUNSELOR, DEFENSE-GARTNER, DANIEL O. He'd begun by calling him "Danny O." Then he'd switched that around.
Well, hello, O Danny Boy.
You sleazy sonofabitch…
Curtis thought of Gartner, with a beak of a nose and squinty dark eyes, as a pale-faced prick. He was medium-size and in his early to mid fifties. He tried to appear much younger by dying the gray of his thinning hair, though the dye job, full of blotches, was badly done. He wore tight faded black jeans, a gray T-shirt stenciled with black arty lettering that read PEACE LOVE JUSTICE, and tan suede shoes that were open at the heel.
As his squinty eyes darted back and forth, Curtis recalled his first impression of Gartner: that he not only looked like a weasel, but projected a greasy sleaziness.
Gartner then said something to the motorcyclist as he was rocking his helmet side to side to slide it from his head. When he'd finally gotten it off and turned to lock it to the rear of the bike, Curtis saw yet another familiar face, a smug one.
Well, I will be goddamned! All the waiting really has paid off.
I'm going to get a twofer!
Jay-Cee, you miserable shit. You won't be smug long, not for what you did to Wendy…
John "JC" Nguyen was a cocky twenty-five-year-old-half Caucasian, half Asian, small-boned, five-two, and maybe one-ten soaking wet-who didn't walk but strutted. His thick black hair was combed straight back and hung to his collar. He wore baggy blue jeans that barely clung to his hips, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, and, over the T-shirt, a Philadelphia Eagles football jersey.
The green jersey had a big white number 7 on the back and, in white block lettering across the shoulder blades, the name VICK.
Small surprise that the punk worships an overpaid jock who likes making dogs fight to the death.
But what the hell kind of justice is it that Michael Vick sat almost two years in the slam for that crime while this miserable shit abused my baby and never spent a single fucking night behind bars? By the time he reentered the court system for the assault on Wendy Curtis, JC had had a long list of priors-more than a dozen arrests over as many years, mostly for either possession of, or possession with intent to distribute, pot and speed and other controlled substances. His first bust had been when he'd just turned fourteen, and it earned him the street name "JC," for John Cannabis, a nod to the homegrown marijuana he first sold to his South Philly High schoolmates.
Curtis had learned, primarily from the prosecutors in the Repeat Offenders Unit of the district attorney's office, that in all but Nguyen's very first cases, he had been represented by Gartner.
Curtis also had been told that that did not necessarily mean Gartner was a good lawyer. In fact, one assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute Nguyen's case said that the opposite was true.
"The one thing commonly said of Daniel O. Gartner, Esquire," the prosecutor told Curtis, quietly but bitterly, "is that he's the worst fucking lawyer in all the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."
He'd then added, "If there existed a book titled The Dictionary of Dirt-bags, and in it was a definition of a lawyer who not only graduated at the bottom of his class but was as dirty as his clients, Gartner's ugly mug would be beside it." He'd exhaled audibly and added, "He's always working the system."
He explained that Gartner almost never really won a case for a client. Practically all them were negotiated with some sort of plea bargain to get the charges reduced, working the system so that the sentence left the scum with a very short term in the slam. Thus, it wasn't unusual for Gartner to watch a less-than-ecstatic client in handcuffs and a faded orange jumpsuit being hauled out of court to go back behind bars.
Sometimes-thanks to the already overloaded justice system, its dockets packed, its prisons full-he managed to get only a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of probation.
And, on very rare occasions, Gartner got a case tossed out on a technicality.
Curtis had learned that the hard way in Wendy's case, with Nguyen. Gartner got the guilty bastard off scot-free. All it had taken was for him to find a breach in how the evidence had been handled.
The animal didn't even get probation. Nothing.
In the DA's office, after giving the bad news to Will and Linda Curtis, then deeply apologizing for the administrative mistake, the prosecutor sighed and said, "It's the reality of what we deal with every day. The system is broken. But like a broken watch that gets the time right twice a day, we eventually do get 'em. Meanwhile, guys like Gartner take advantage of the weaknesses to get their clients to walk." Will Curtis saw Gartner motion for JC to come inside. JC nodded in reply, then pulled a small nylon bag from under the weblike netting on the rear end of the motorcycle's black seat.
Strutting like a rooster, he carried the bag to the open metal door, went through it, and closed the door behind him.
Will Curtis checked for traffic again and started across the street. [THREE] Loft Number 2180 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Saturday, October 31, 11:05 P.M. "Maybe I'm wrong about you being a cop," Dr. Amanda Law playfully whispered to Homicide Sergeant Matthew M. Payne, Philadelphia Police Department Badge Number 471, "because I'm beginning to think that you do your best work undercover."
He saw that her face was flushed and glowing as she smiled and pulled her shoulder-length blond hair into a ponytail, then threw back the soft cotton cover in question.
She leaned over and kissed him wetly and loudly on his heaving chest. Then she stepped out of bed and, after taking a moment to catch her breath, said, "Be right back, Romeo."
Twenty-seven-year-old Matt Payne-who was six feet tall, one-seventy-five with a chiseled face, dark intelligent eyes, and thick dark hair he kept trimmed short-marveled at the magnificent milk-white orbs that formed the toned derriere of Amanda Law as she padded stark naked across the hardwood flooring, then disappeared into the bathroom.
There then came from behind the door a soft thumping and whine, followed by the sound of two clicks, one of a light switch and another of the door latch softly shutting.
The whine had been from Luna, the two-year-old pup Amanda had rescued from the animal shelter five months earlier. And the thumping had been the dog's wagging tail hitting the plastic floor liner of the wire kennel crate that served as the dog's den in the massive tiled bathroom.
Luna-Matt joked that it was short for "Lunatic" due to the dog's occasional hyperness and regular talkativeness-was either a labradoodle or a genuine purebred Portuguese water dog. The two breeds could be spitting images, and had similar traits: a friendly disposition and a serious protective loud bark. It was Amanda's opinion that Luna, at forty pounds, with a dense, tightly curled, nonshedding black coat, was more poodle than lab.
Payne smiled as he thought, What the hell? Is it possible to lose count?
He glanced at the bedside table. There, beside two beer bottles and a glass of white wine, was his cell phone. He looked at the clock on its screen.
It's only eleven? And we got back here at maybe nine.
Payne, his heart pounding, put his head back on the pillow.
So, that means she… that is, we…
Damn! Three times in two hours…
As his chest continued to rise and fall with heavy breaths, he decided that if he was about to go into full cardiac arrest right damn here and right damn now, the luxury apartment of a medical doctor wasn't necessarily a bad place for that to happen. Particularly considering that over the course of the last two hours, said medical doctor had been party to the cause of his current condition.
I'm not about to die, but when I do, I damn sure want to go wrapped in the arms of that wonderful blond goddess.
Thank God she's gotten back so much of her old self.
And, thank God again, she seems only to have suffered a little of the anxiety that her shrink predicted-and none of the post-trauma stress he'd said would come.
He certainly underestimated her strong character and her ability to move forward and keep working.
And she loves her work.
Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM, was chief physician at Temple University Hospital's Burn Center.
Matt was then jarred by the painful memory of Amanda's abduction from in front of the hospital a month before-and how close she'd come to being killed by a psychopath. And that made him think about what she'd just said about him being a cop, and that in turn made him think about her condominium and why he was really glad she had a place that he knew was safer than any place in the screwed-up city.
After what she went through, having The Fortress doesn't hurt.
If only for her peace of mind.
Hell, mine, too.
Nearly nine months earlier, Amanda Law had bought Loft Number 2180, a luxury one-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath condominium on the top floor of the year-old Hops Haus Tower in the Northern Liberties section of Philly. The penthouse property had met her long list of requirements, starting with a good price.
"A really reasonable one, considering all the amenities," she'd said.
But, she confided in Matt, what had really sold her on the place were the incredible panoramic views.
Even from his pillow, Payne could stare out at the lights twinkling on nearby Interstate 95 and the Delaware River and, past the far riverbank, the lights of Camden, New Jersey, and, spreading out even farther east, of the Garden State itself.
She'd said she also liked the retro industrial design of the high-rise, which reflected the feel of the Hops Haus Brewery, the renovated four-story, hundred-year-old building adjacent to the foot of the tower. The wall surfaces were alternately exposed red brick and stained concrete, and the flooring was a rustic dark hardwood planking. The high ceilings had exposed fire sprinkler pipes, and the metal ductwork for the air-conditioning hung from straps out in the open. The floor-to-ceiling windows were of the same design as those of the original Bavarian brewhouse downstairs.
But what Payne liked best about the residential tower-and why he privately called it The Fortress-was that, while it was meant to appear old, the place had the absolute latest in state-of-the-art security. That included, of course, being wired with high-end closed-circuit TV cameras with overlapping fields of view so that no corner went unrecorded, as well as a multifactor authentication system for anyone who wished to access the property.
And all of it was monitored by round-the-clock private security personnel. The security chief was Andy Hardwick, a mid-forties, bald, and barrelchested sergeant from Central Detectives who'd conveniently retired from the Philadelphia Police Department right before the development was completed. He'd known Payne's biological father and uncle, had known Matt since he'd been in diapers, and was more than happy to show him all the building's bells and whistles and bad-guy booby traps.
Hardwick had promised Payne there'd be a close but discreet protective eye kept on the primary resident of Loft Number 2180, as well as heightened surveillance, mostly via CCTV cameras, but also by occasional security personnel "performing routine safety-device inspections," of the twenty-first floor.
This place is probably tighter than a Graterford RHU, Payne thought, and then he had a mental image of the hellish super-secure Restricted Housing Units-effectively individual prisons for the worst offenders serving time in solitary confinement-at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution thirty miles west of Philly. All of the Hops Haus Tower's common-area and exterior doors were on computer-controlled locks. Every resident was issued an electronic fob, smaller than a cough drop and designed to fit conveniently on a key ring, each of which had a unique electronic signature that could be turned on-and, perhaps more important, turned off-at one of the security computers. Most residents also had electronic scans of their thumbprints saved to the security computers.
For entry, residents could unlock the common-area and exterior doors-including those on each floor of the parking garage that led to the elevators-only through a two-step authentication process: First, they used the electronic fob, and second, they submitted to a biometric thumbprint reader or manually entered a unique code on a keypad. The doors guarding each elevator bank within the building were fitted with the same certification devices.
Finally, as a last electronic barrier, there was a fob receiver panel inside each elevator, on the wall of buttons. You had to swipe the fob in order for any of the buttons to become live and light up when pushed.
Each fob was coded to be floor-specific, which meant two things. It was noted if the resident associated with the thumbprint or keypad code at the elevator bank door got off at a floor other than the one linked to the fob, and the anomaly was flagged and archived and available in the event anything unfortunate happened.
And only residents of the penthouse floor had fobs that allowed access to that level. The fobs of every other resident could go only as high as the twentieth floor. Which was another reason Payne thought that Amanda's top-floor unit was highly secure.
Then he had an unkind thought.
Of course, no matter how high the professional standards, including Andy Hardwick's, the weak link in the most secure of facilities, whether it's a luxury residence or a super-max prison, is the human factor-the gatekeepers, whoever the hell is manning the desks and machinery.
One crooked guard on the take and the whole fucking system may as well be a bucket of rusty bolts and blown locks.
Especially with security-and certain concierge-personnel having access to that master key to every unit, the one that that effeminate manager had said "was necessary, you know, just in case of emergency, like your washing machine's water line ruptures while you're gone or your bathtub overflows and starts flooding your neighbors."
Yeah, right. And for what he didn't say: "Or there's the stench of rotted flesh coming from behind your locked door."
Still, for what it is, and where it is, this place is as good as it gets.
His pulse starting to calm, Payne sat up and heaved one last deep breath. He reached back over to the bedside table and picked up one of the beers, a half-empty bottle of Hops Haus India Pale Ale. After he and Amanda had eaten dinner in the pub on the first floor of the building, he'd bought a case of the IPA-the pub had its own microbrewery-and that case of twenty-four bottles was now down to twenty.
He looked out the tall windows again as he took a swig of beer. While he could appreciate the view, being a cop he couldn't help but look past the twinkling lights and think of all the criminals hiding out there in the shadows, masked by darkness.
His eyes followed the Delaware River up to the Betsy Ross Bridge, then beyond that. Though too far to see clearly, he knew that a few miles beyond the bridge, on State Road in the Holmesburg section of Northeast Philadelphia, some of those lights were from the Philadelphia Prison System. Its Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, the largest in the system, alone processed some thirty thousand inmates, all adult males, each year, every year. The intake center operated around the clock.
But not damn near enough.
What was that figure on fugitives from the courts? Almost fifty thousand who've jumped bail and run?
Now they're in the wind… out there, somewhere.
They're damn sure not in church confessing their sins and praying for absolution.
Hell no. They're roaming the streets, committing more robberies, rapes, murders, whatever, at will.
They know the court system is so clogged that they can just ignore it, thumb their nose at it.
Jesus, what a mess… [FOUR] It was no secret to the one and a half million residents of the sixth-most-populated city in America that the City of Brotherly Love was among the deadliest in America.
Philadelphia-"Killadelphia," Payne heard it called at least once every damn day-averaged a murder daily-down from, incredibly, a two-a-day average only a decade ago-which of course kept the police department's Homicide Unit plenty busy.
What politicians wished was more of a secret, if only because of bureaucratic bungling and intergovernmental finger-pointing, was the fact that there were tens of thousands of fugitives loose on the streets. Nearly fifty thousand miscreants-from pimps to pedophiles to robbers to rapists to junkies to every other lawless sonofabitch-who had skipped out on their bail and were on the run from facing their day in court.
As a general rule of thumb, the main purpose of a court's bail system was more or less a noble one: to let certain of those charged with crimes to remain productive family members and citizens in their community until their court date, which could be months away. This "pretrial release" reinforced the presumption that those charged with crimes were "innocent until proven guilty."
It also, conveniently, helped ease the burden on the overcrowded jails. And that, in turn, eased the financial burden on a cash-strapped city to provide three square meals a day, armed guards for supervision, and sundry other services.
The vast majority of America's biggest cities used the bail bond system, a private-sector enterprise administered by for-profit companies. In contrast, the City of Philadelphia (and the City of Chicago, Illinois, which had a similar number of fugitives from justice) used a system of deposit bail, which was government-funded and government-run.
In Philly, it was overseen by judges from the Municipal Court and from the Court of Common Pleas.
Using a worksheet titled "Pretrial Release Guidelines," an arraignment magistrate determined the severity of the crime and the risk factor of the person charged with the crime to set the bail. The guidelines would, in theory, set a bail high enough to ensure that the person charged with the crime would appear in court so as not to lose the security fee.
Once the bail fee had been set, both the bail bond and the deposit bond worked essentially the same way. Generally, depending on various factors, the person charged with the crime had to pay only ten percent of the whole security fee to get out of jail.
The main differences between the two models arose if the offender missed or skipped out on his court date. Under the bail bond model, the court went after the bail bondsman for the deadbeat's forfeited fee-the company then had a financial incentive to find the deadbeat and deliver him to the court. There was no similar financial incentive, however, with a deposit bond. The government already owned the deadbeat's IOU. It was funny money, more or less worthless unless they hunted down the deadbeat and collected the remaining fee-if they could find him, and if he had the funds to pay.
And so, not surprisingly, those who'd blown their deposit bail numbered around fifty thousand-no one knew the exact number because, due to more bureaucratic blundering, a master listing was never kept.
These fugitives collectively owed hundreds of millions of dollars for their unpaid IOUs.
Worse, in the meantime they remained at large on the streets, acting with impunity-effectively telling the City of Philadelphia and its judicial system to go fuck itself. All kinds of craziness going on down there, Payne thought, while I'm up here enjoying the company of this incredible goddess.
And God knows I do love her.
But do I love being out there chasing some murderer more?
He sighed.
The answer-right here, right now-is not no, but hell no!
And Amanda's not complaining that they pulled me back off the street and stuck me at a desk in Homicide. There's absolutely no question that deep down, all things being equal, she'd rather I do something other than be a cop, anything that didn't risk me getting shot in the line of duty, like her father, or killed, like my father and uncle.
And that obit damn sure spelled it out. [FIVE] While Amanda Law had been in her first week of recovery, under the shrink's orders simply to rest at home and to reconsider taking the anti-anxiety meds that he'd prescribed and that she'd steadfastly refused-"I don't need to be popping Prozacs and I damn sure don't need them turning my mind to putty so I just sit there and drool all over myself "-her type A personality had her brain working overtime.
Dealing mentally with the abduction and the attempt at extortion had been bad enough. But then came the knowledge that the bastards who'd kidnapped her had made a regular habit of committing sexual assaults and, worse, their leader had just killed one teenage Honduran girl-an illegal immigrant whom he'd forced into prostitution.
Naturally, logically, all that had caused her to consider her own mortality-How close had he been to killing again? He certainly threatened me-and then that of Matt.
And in the process of working through what-if scenarios-What happens if we continue seeing each other? What happens if we get married and move into that vine-covered cottage with the white picket fence that Matt loves to mention? And then what happens if he stays on with the department?-she'd come up with, as her father the cop had taught her to do, a worst-case scenario.
Amanda explained all this-and more-to Matt in great detail. And then handed him the absolute worst case as it had manifested itself to her: as an obituary.
Amanda had written the obit as if she were Mickey O'Hara, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who was well respected by both police rank and file and brass. Over the years, Matt and the wiry Irishman ten years his senior had even become fairly close friends.
Amanda had gotten a great deal of the details for the obit from searches on the Internet, mostly from the Bulletin's online archive of articles, many of which had been articles written by O'Hara. The rest of the details had been provided by Matt's sister. Amy Payne had never liked that her brother was a cop, and had been more than happy to fill in any gaps for her old college dorm suitemate.
Payne thought that Amanda had done a helluva job putting together the obit. He hadn't been able to shake it from his mind, which was no surprise, considering the subject: The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line: