Deadly Assets (26 page)

“Of course.”

“I thought you would,” Carlucci said, somewhat piously. “And so, if Badde is unable to persuade Reverend Cross to do that, then Badde is to immediately remove Cross as a CPOC member. This could coincide—key word ‘could,' I yield to James and Ed on what they believe is the best timing—with the announcement that I am making provision for four more seats on the CPOC board. We are creating a short list of citizens who would make strong additions.”

Carlucci looked at Stein, who, having been caught off-guard by Carlucci's announcement, was rapidly handwriting notes on his ledger.

Stein looked up and raised his eyebrows.

“Didn't Cross,” Willie Lane said, “actually proclaim at the rally that he was resigning his CPOC position? That leaves Badde with no leverage on him. Basically Cross is saying, ‘You can't fire me—I've quit!'”

“That's a bullshit bluff on Lenny's part!” Carlucci snapped. “He doesn't have a pot to piss in. I can guarantee that he is not walking away from eighty grand a year.”

There was a long silence, and then Carlucci, in a measured tone, went on: “Now, part two, should Councilman Badde, for whatever reason, not see the wisdom in the course of action you've suggested to him, then I believe that the president of the City Council should announce to Badde that he will immediately be transferred from his seat on the Committee for Public Safety, which of course would have immediate effect on any and all of his appointments in such capacity.”

Looking pleased with himself, Carlucci then laced his fingers and put his hands behind his head as he casually leaned back in his high-back leather chair. He looked between Finley and Stein.

“If that two-by-four whack between the jackass's eyes doesn't get his attention,” Carlucci said, “then we can threaten his other committee memberships, whatever they may be. And, Willie, when I say ‘we,' I mean that you can say that I am forcing your hand on this, which would absolve you. How does that sound, Willie, for starters?”

There was a long, awkward silence.

He has to see this as a chance to undermine Badde's future as a potential mayoral candidate,
Carlucci thought.

I'm handing him a slam dunk.

“Any of that,” Lane then said, “certainly could be considered either a sacrificial or symbolic act.”

“I'm pleased that you see it that way, too.”

“I will reach out to Councilman Badde, Mr. Mayor,” Willie Lane finally said. “Do we know if Skin—if Reverend Cross was injured in that shooting at the rally?”

“Our best information right now is, no, he was not shot. But we are not certain. Nor do we know about that rapper singer's condition. Which is why you contacting Badde is crucial,” Carlucci said, then leaned forward, his finger hovering over the desktop telephone. “Let me know soonest.”

“I'll be in touch.”

Carlucci stabbed the
SPEAKERPHONE
button, breaking the connection.

[ FOUR ]

The Roundhouse

Eighth and Race Streets, Philadelphia

Saturday, December 15, 6:20
P.M.

Matt Payne, holding his hand up to shield his face, was slumped in the front passenger seat of Tony Harris's Ford Crown Vic, the unmarked Police Interceptor coated in layers of gray grime. Payne tried not to make eye contact with any of the protesters on the sidewalk as Harris turned out of the parking lot. The black smoke from the fires in Strawberry Mansion was visible in the sky in the distance, and Payne believed that there was a very real possibility these protesters were angry enough to overturn the car—and worse.

Harris accelerated hard as he headed for North Broad Street, then Ridge Avenue, which would take them northwest to North Twenty-ninth Street. Payne sat back up in his seat, then began scrolling through messages on his smartphone.

The female dispatcher on the police radio was rapidly, but professionally, broadcasting updates on the unrest in Strawberry Mansion. There came a long pause, which she broke by automatically adding a filler safety message: “When exiting your cruiser, always turn off the engine and take the keys.”

Payne and Harris exchanged glances.

“Might want to keep that in mind, Detective. I understand there might be a criminal element where we're headed,” Payne said drily, turning back to his phone.

Harris snorted. He then felt his cellular phone vibrating. When he checked the caller ID, it read
NUMBER BLOCKED
.

He reached over and opened the glove box, where the unmarked car's radio was concealed, and turned down the volume as the dispatcher announced, “Safety is a full-time job. Don't have a part-time attitude. The time is . . .”

“Yeah?” Harris then answered the call, his tone annoyed.

Matt Payne, picking up on that, looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, Sully,” Harris said. “What's up?”

Now Payne turned his head to look at Harris. Harris shrugged his shoulders at him as he nodded.

“Tell him I want to talk to him,” Payne said.

Harris raised his index finger in a
Hold one
gesture.

“All right, Sully. Get back to me if you hear anything.” He paused, then added, “If I can. No promises.”

Harris met Payne's eyes as he broke off the call.

“I said I wanted to talk to him,” Payne repeated. “What'd he want?”

“Sully says the rally shooting was not his guys in the crowd.”

“His guys? In the crowd? I thought he said he had nothing to do with the hypothetical whacking of Hooks and Company.”

“He still maintains that. These guys, he says, were doing recon work. He had two there. One was actually Lynda Webber, who used to work for him in Vice. After she got back from two tours in Iraq with army intel—she's a captain in the reserves—Sully hired her away. Really razor-sharp mind. I actually saw her in the crowd on the video feed.”

Harris chuckled as he honked the horn to pass a slow-moving pickup.

“What?” Payne said.

“Shouldn't tell you this, but what initially drew my eye to her was that there was a group of young white women in a clump, all with their politically correct looks of moral outrage, and furiously pumping those posters of the murder victims over their heads. One, projecting the angriest outrage and loudly leading that ‘Yo, Yo, Yo! Payne Must Go!' chant, held a poster of Public Enemy Number One.”

Payne grunted. “So she was carrying mine.”

Harris chuckled again. “Guess Lynda felt that gave her a really solid cover.”

“Glad I could help in some small way.”

“So, Sully claims they were just there to keep an eye on Hooks, gather intel, follow him if necessary. The last thing he said would happen was for Hooks to be whacked like that. If that's what happened.”

Payne looked at Harris and said, “Because it would not give them a chance to recover the stolen jewelry and, more important, it would not be the punishment that would make an example of why one does not rob their casino.”

“Almost word for word, more or less.”

“What did I miss? What wouldn't you promise?”

“If we found Hooks and/or Cross dead or alive.”

—

When they pulled up to the scene, Payne saw that there was now some semblance of normalcy—or what passed for normalcy in that part of the city.

The raging fires had been brought under control, although smoke still rose from the rented panel van. Two fire engines were pulling away, and the last ladder truck was being packed up in preparation of leaving. Only one fire-rescue ambulance was in sight. And Payne also noticed that the PECO undercover van was still in its place, and in one piece, parked just off Twenty-ninth Street.

Then, parked just ahead of the PECO van, Payne saw a Ford Explorer wrapped in the logotype of
Philly News Now
and, near it, the logotype of
Action News!
on a Chevrolet Suburban. And there was an assortment of what looked like rental sedans, all with placards on their dashboards that read
WORKING MEDIA
and/or a station's logo.

Standing next to the Suburban was a five-foot-tall buxom brunette reporter wearing high heels with her blue jeans. She had on a bright red knit sweater with a string of pearls. And an
Action News!
ball cap with her hair in a ponytail poking out the back.

Payne sighed.

“What?” Harris said.

Payne nodded toward the reporter.

“Wonder Woman, our fair city's Super Anchor, is here.”

“What do you know about her?” Harris said, then grunted. “Besides that she wears pearls and heels in the hood.”

“For starters, that she's dangerous. So don't say a word to her. Let me do all the talking.”

Harris put the Crown Vic in park, then looked askance at Payne.

“You're serious, Matt.”

“As a heart attack.”

“Not a problem. With the exception of O'Hara, I hate dealing with those media types. She's all yours, boss, Sergeant, sir.”

“Good. She's out to prove herself, and as Mickey told me last week, it's not exactly pretty.”

—

The previous Saturday night at the Union League in Center City, two blocks down Broad Street from City Hall, the Honorable Jerome Carlucci had held his annual charity event in the Lincoln Hall ballroom to raise funds for holiday gifts for the needy.

Payne's attendance had come under some pressure—“Uncle Denny couldn't make it,” he had told Mickey O'Hara, “and when he asked if I could, I knew by his tone, not to mention he was holding out the tickets, that that was the same as him saying I would, and so here I am under durance vile”—and he had spent a majority of time holding court at the League's ornate dark oak bar with O'Hara.

Both were in black tie and drinking Macallan eighteen-year-old single malts mixed, at Payne's instruction, with a splash of water and two ice cubes, and, because he was a member of the Union League, billed to his house account.

As Payne tilted his head back to drain his second drink, he absently looked up at the television above the bar.

It was tuned to the newscast of Philadelphia Action News. A perky-looking buxom thirty-year-old stood outside a Center City diner, her brunette hair in a ponytail poking out the back of a ball cap with the
Action News!
logotype across its front. The line along the bottom of the screen read
RAYCHELL MEADOW INVESTIGATES
.

“Why is this chick wasting time with Little Pete's?” Payne said. “I thought it was closing because the building it's in is set for demolition.”

An eccentric dive diner, Little Pete's, at Seventeenth and Chancellor, around the corner from the Union League and across the street from the storied ninety-year-old Warwick Hotel, was an institution in its own right, having served in Center City around the clock, twenty-four/seven, for nearly four decades. And, judging by just the well-worn white-specked emerald green Formica tables, it more than looked its age—it appeared to have not had an update of any note since the doors first opened.

That, of course, was part of its charm. The fact that Little Pete's served hefty portions of its greasy spoon staples—bacon-and-eggs to lox to scrapple to gyros—certainly was another. As were its lively servers, who addressed patrons as “hon”—even the obnoxious drunk ones feeding their munchies at three
A.M
.—and made sure that when ordering, patrons knew that Little Pete's embraced In God We Trust—All Others Cash Only. Thank You Kindly. Hon.

“Raychell was anchor at one of the network TV affiliates in Missouri's capital,” O'Hara said.

“St. Louis?”

O'Hara raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Not very big on geography, eh . . . ?”

Payne shrugged.

O'Hara went on: “Me neither. I had to look it up. Jefferson's the capital. It's tiny, so it shares its market with Columbia. Together they're somewhere in the mid-hundreds, maybe one-sixty, market-share-wise.”

“While Philly is number four in the country.”

“Right.”

“And she catapulted into the hottie hot seat here because . . . ?”

“Oh, I'm not going to give this to you, Matty.” He smiled. “You've gotta work for it. This is too rich.”

Payne grunted.

“Okay, give me a clue.”

“Who was the attorney general of Missouri?”

“What? I don't know the damn capital. How the hell would I know that?
Why
would I know that?”

“Perhaps because you know his former chief of staff.”

“I do? The Missouri AG's chief of staff? How is that possible?”

“Former, and now current chief of staff for the attorney general for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

O'Hara looked across the bar. Payne followed his eyes and saw a pale-faced chubby-cheeked thirty-something with horn-rimmed glasses and a suit that dripped Ivy League having an animated conversation—
He acts like everything he says is hilarious,
Payne thought,
but only he's laughing
—with Edward Stein.

Payne was aware that Frank Fuller had hired Stein away from his father's law firm—his father, indicating his displeasure, had told him that—and Stein, at Fuller's pleasure, was on loan to serve as Carlucci's chief aide. The latter information having been provided by Denny Coughlin.

“So,” Payne said, “Daniel Patrick O'Connor is somehow connected. I do know that he and Stein, who until recently worked at my old man's firm, were in the same Penn Law class. And that connection is?”

“Who owns the affiliate station, the perpetually-last-in-the-market affiliate that gives us the riveting
Action News!
?”

“I'm guessing the same sonofabitch who bankrolled the attorney general's run for office.”

O'Hara nodded as he sipped his drink.

“With dark money, of course . . .” he then said.