Deadly Assets (31 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“The shots fired from the crowd?” Pringle said. “They were clearly a planned assassination attempt on Reverend Cross.”

“Are you crazy? By who?”

“By you. The Man. He said he's lucky to be alive—”

“How badly is he hurt?”

“Which is why Reverend Cross has gone into hiding,” he said, evading the question.

Payne sighed audibly.

He exchanged glances with Harris and Simpson, both of whom had looks that said
This is bullshit
.

“Okay,” Payne said to Pringle. “Enough. We did not shoot Lenny—if he was even shot. And what about Tyrone Hooks?”

“You mean King Two-One-Five?”

“Okay, sure, King Two-One-Five. Don't tell me—he was shot, too?”

Pringle met Payne's eyes.

“Everybody saw it here, and on their TVs and all,” he said, pointing at his pad computer. “Got shot right after rapping ‘Beatin' Down the Man' and ‘Payne's Gotta Go.' That's why he's gone hiding, too. Go figure.”

“And I guess the two of them are now sitting in this safe house of theirs, tending to each others deadly wounds?”

There came no reply.

Payne locked eyes with Pringle, then after a long moment just shook his head.

You sorry sonofabitch!
Payne thought.

Payne felt his phone vibrate, then looked at its screen, then looked back at Pringle.

“Thanks for your time,
Deacon
,” Payne said, and handed Pringle his business card. “Tell Lenny he'd better call me. Tell him I know a couple good doctors if he needs them to tend to those wounds. And tell him that Public Enemy Number One said there's going to be a police presence out front until he turns up, dead or alive.”

Payne looked between Harris and Simpson.

“Let's get the hell out of here, gentlemen,” he said.

Simpson gestured at Pringle's chest.

“Nice shirt, by the way,” he said, then smiled. “FOAD.”

Pringle looked up at the big black cop. “Foad?”

Simpson nodded.

“Just a technical term used in police work.”

Payne and Harris exchanged glances and grinned.

Both were familiar with the acronym for
Fuck off and die
.

—

Tony Harris finally returned to the Crown Vic, where Payne now sat on the front fender, arms crossed over his chest.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Harris said. “Nature called, and you know you can never be sure if there'll be another restroom downrange.” He then made a grand gesture of unlocking the vehicle, and added, “Don't forget what our friends on police radio said about keeping the car secure . . .”

After they got in, sitting on the seat belts that they had left buckled, Harris snapped his cell phone in the spring-loaded polymer mount he had clipped to the air vent on the dashboard.

“Think you can get the heater going sometime this year?” Payne said, rubbing his hands together.

As Harris turned the ignition switch, his phone began ringing and the screen glowed.
BLOCKED
NUMBER
popped up on it.

Payne reached to the dash and pushed the air temperature control as far in the red as possible and bumped up the fan speed. He felt cold air blow on his ankles.

“What's up with all these damn blocked numbers?” Harris said, then tapped his fingertip on the
SPEAKERPHONE
button and answered the call with “Yeah?”

A woman's voice, her tone even, said, “Okay, Harris, you never heard me say this . . .”

Payne motioned toward the phone and mouthed,
Who?

There was a lot of background noise on the call, and Harris shrugged as the phone screen dimmed.

“. . . but,” she went on, “Hooks has—make that Hooks
had
—jewelry from the casino robbery in his mother's house. There's still a lot missing, but we're pretty sure we now know where it's stashed at the Shore.”

“Who is this?” Harris said.

“Thank me later,” she said, clearly avoiding the question, then went on: “We finally ran down enough leads—his girl Carmelita is a lively one once she gets talking, though she has the vocabulary of a longshoreman, both in English and Spanish—and had a look. You might want to visit his house—actually, the place belongs to his mother—which is at Monmouth and Hancock. You can't miss the place. It's got a small cabin cruiser in the side yard, which isn't really a yard but where a row house once stood.”

“A cabin cruiser in Fairhill?” Harris heard himself automatically reply. “What the hell?”

The female caller laughed.

I know that laugh . . .

“That was pretty much my first thought,” she said. “But it's not what you're thinking. It's on the ground, on its keel, listing to one side.”

“What's it doing there?” Harris said, hoping the more she talked, the better his chances of confirming he recognized the voice.

“The goats use it as a makeshift barn,” she said, and laughed again, “when the chickens let them. Welcome to 19133, poorest ZIP code in town. For the record, I had no part of what was done there or getting the girl to talk; I just connected the dots. Anyway, I'll check back if I learn more. Later . . .”

Payne raised his eyebrows as he watched the phone screen light up and
CALL ENDED
appear onscreen.

Payne looked at Harris.

“Nice source,” Payne said.

“Yeah. That was Webber. That laugh of hers is hard to miss.”

“Is she credible?”

“Oh yeah. Quite.”

“She's working for Sully, right?”

“Maybe he told her to give us that.”

“What do you think she meant by she had ‘no part of what was done there'?”

Harris grunted.

“Good question. Which may be why her first words were that we didn't hear it from her. Not sure we want to know.”

“Well, then, let's go find out,” Payne said. “We can sleep when we're dead.”

Harris put the car in gear.

“Or when Tyrone Hooks is . . .” he said.

[ THREE ]

Monmouth and Hancock Streets

Fairhill, Philadelphia

Sunday, December 16, 1:25
A.M.

It took not quite ten minutes to drive from the Word of Brotherly Love Ministry at North Twenty-ninth and Arizona to Monmouth and Hancock in Fairhill, a distance of a little under three miles.

The “small cabin cruiser” was about twenty-five feet long and right where Lynda Webber had said, sitting on the ground on its side next to the row house and behind a patched-together chain-link fence. Ragged-looking chickens were scattered around the yard.

As Payne and Harris started up the sidewalk, Payne saw that the birds were pecking around trash that littered the ground—cigarette butts, empty plastic baggies stamped with street names for heroin, even a discarded condom.

At the front door, which appeared to have been kicked in and now was slightly ajar, a dim light burned just inside.

They heard a woman sobbing softly on the other side.

Harris and Payne pulled their pistols out.

Harris then rapped hard with his knuckles on the door, announced, “Police!” and then cautiously pushed on the door.

Hinges groaned as the battered wooden door swung inward.

A skinny black woman, wearing a thin faded blue bathrobe, sat cross-legged on the bare wooden floor, her elbows on her knees and face in her hands.

“Police, ma'am,” Harris said, his eyes darting between her and the living room behind her. “You okay?”

After a moment, she slowly looked up. Payne guessed she was maybe forty years old, but could easily be mistaken for sixty.

Or older.

“Can we come in?” Payne said.

Between sobs, she said, “Why . . . why not? All those others that just left did.”

Payne saw that the living room was a mess. The couch had been turned upside down, its cushions sliced open, the stuffing seemingly everywhere. Cabinet doors and drawers were open, their contents scattered.

“What's your name, ma'am?” Harris said.

“Jolene,” she said. “Jolene Hooper.”

“How are you related to Tyrone Banks?”

“He's my boy.”

“Hooper, you said?”

“That's my married name . . . first husband, not Tyrone's daddy.”

“Where is Tyrone?”

She made what sounded like a sarcastic chuckle.

“That's what they wanted to know, too,” she said. “He ain't here. But being gone at this hour's normal.”

“The people who did this to your house, you mean?” Payne said.

“They say they were looking for Tyrone and the stuff they say he stole.”

“How many people?” Harris said. “What did they look like?”

She looked up at them, her face almost contorted.

“You serious, man? I don't know who they was, but I do know they can come back. I ain't getting no stitches.”

“Anyone else in the house?” Harris said.

“Not no more.”

“You mind if we look around?” Payne then said.

“Do what ya gotta do.”

She pointed to the stairs that led to the basement.

“His stuff is down there. I keep to myself upstairs.”

Payne, holding his Colt alongside his leg, moved quickly to the stairway, then raised the pistol chest high, sweeping the space as he descended.

The lights in the small basement were still on—a pair of dusty bare bulbs in an overhead fixture that was missing its glass bowl—and Payne stopped at the foot of the stairs.

The room had been gone through like the upstairs. The drawers of the desk were all pulled free and dumped on the floor. The entire cover of the mattress had been cut away, leaving exposed a skeleton of wire springs.

Payne, about to turn and go back up the stairs, noticed on top of the desk, next to piles that he figured had to have been dumped from a drawer or two, that there was a ruby-red crushed velvet pouch with a string closure. He stepped closer and saw that it was imprinted with
WINNER'S PRECIOUS JEWELS

The pouch was flat, and he took an ink pen from his pocket to pull back the opening and check inside. It was empty.

—

After checking the top floor, which also had been ransacked, Payne found that Jolene Hooper was still talking to Harris. She stopped as Payne approached.

“Just more of the same up and down,” Payne said to Harris.

“Told ya,” she said, then looked back at Harris. “They said that robbery happened yesterday morning, and Tyrone ran it. Said a man got killed. But I told them that I know that ain't right.”

“You told them what's not right?” Harris said.

She looked at Harris with a sudden renewed strength, and said, “It ain't right 'cause my boy would never do that. And I know he didn't do it 'cause he was right here at home. With me. Had, uh, he had one of his girlfriends with him down there. She can tell you, too.”

Nice try,
Payne thought.
But we've seen the evidence.

You're lying to cover his ass, and the girlfriend will lie, too.

“Where is Carmelita?” Payne said.

“Who's that?”

“Tyrone's girlfriend,” Payne said.

She shrugged. “Don't know that one.”

“Ma'am,” Harris said, “I caution you that it's considered obstruction of justice to make false statements to a police officer.”

“What's that mean?”

“Lying to the law is illegal,” Payne said, as he walked toward the front door.

“I ain't lying! No way my boy was there.”

Payne saw Harris pulling out his smartphone.

“Let me show you something,” Harris said. “I'd like to hear your thoughts on this video. It was taken off the casino cameras . . .”

As Payne went out the door, he thought,
Waste of time, Tony. I can already hear her saying, “Who knows when that was taken? He likes gambling. That could be long ago and they changed the date . . .”

—

Matt Payne stood on the trash-strewn sidewalk. He looked at a scrawny white goat that had just bleated at him from behind the chain-link fence while he waited for Tony Harris to come out of the row house. Mentally debating what their next steps should be—
Going home is sounding like a real winner
—he then glanced at his watch and was somewhat surprised to see it was just about three o'clock in the morning.

Feels more like it should be at least dawn.

His cell phone then rang, which did not surprise him. He didn't bother looking at the screen as he pulled it from his pocket.

He answered it: “Public Enemy Number One, how can I help you?”

Payne heard a chuckle at the other end, then, “Hey, it's Hank Nasuti. I heard you were still out on a job.”

“Jobs—plural—actually. But, then, it is Saturday night, so no doubt more on their way. What's up, Hank?”

“We got the doer in the LOVE and Franklin parks killings.”

Payne was quiet a moment as his tired brain processed that.

“No shit?” he then said.

“No shit.”

“Where are you?”

“Where you said he'd been seen. Kensington. McPherson Square.”

So, Jamal the Junkie wasn't lying,
Payne thought.
Can thank Pookie for that—for once, a CI comes through.

“We're maybe a half mile out. Be there shortly.”

—

“Ah, behold the urban beauty that is Needle Park,” Matt Payne said as they pulled up, the strobes from the emergency light bar on the tow squad wrecker pulsing in the dark. Then he yawned.

The wrecker was parked up on the sidewalk, near the Twenty-fourth Police District's white panel van. A totaled subcompact sedan had been winched onto the wrecker's flatbed.

No loss there—just another ugly Prius,
Payne caught himself randomly thinking.