Deadly Assets (36 page)

He hesitated a moment before moving toward the shooter, who was motionless. He picked up the small-frame semiautomatic pistol from the floor.

The cook stood and shouted, “Daquan, don't!”

Daquan went out the door.

He turned right and took off down the sidewalk, following Payne.

—

The storefronts along Erie Avenue gave way to a decaying neighborhood of older row houses. Daquan Williams watched the teenager dart out into traffic and dodge vehicles as he ran across Erie, headed in the direction of a series of three or four overgrown vacant lots where houses had once stood.

He saw that Matt Payne, arms and legs pumping as he picked up speed, was beginning to close the distance between them.

“Police! Stop!” Payne yelled again.

The teenager made it to the first lot off Thirteenth Street, then disappeared into an overgrowth of bushes at the back of it.

Payne, moments later, reached the bushes, cautiously pushed aside limbs, swept the space with his pistol, and then entered.

Daquan started to cross Erie but heard a squeal of brakes and then a truck horn begin blaring. He slid to a stop, narrowly missing being hit by a delivery truck. It roared past, its huge tires splashing his pants and shoes with slush from a huge pothole. A car and a small pickup closely following the truck honked as they splashed past.

Daquan finally found a gap in traffic and made his way across.

He ran to the bushes, then went quickly into them, limbs wet with snow slapping at him. One knocked his cap off. The dim light made it hard to see. After a long moment, he came out the other side, to another open lot. He saw Payne, who had run across another street, just as he disappeared into another clump of overgrowth at the back of another vacant lot between row houses.

While Daquan ran across that street to follow, a dirty-brown four-door Ford Taurus pulled to the curb in front of the house bordering the lot. Daquan dodged the sedan, running behind it, then started across the lot.

Ahead, from somewhere in the overgrowth, he heard Matt Payne once again shouting, “Stop! Police!”

This time, though, was different.

Almost immediately there came a rapid series of shots—the first three sounding not quite as loud as the final two.

Daquan heard nothing more as he reached the overgrowth and then, while trying to control his heavy breathing, entered it slowly. He raised the pistol and gripped it tightly with both hands.

More snow fell from limbs onto his soaked T-shirt and jeans. He shivered as he stepped carefully in the dim light, listening for sounds but hearing only his labored breath. He finally reached the far side.

He wiped snow from his eyes.

And then his stomach dropped.

Oh, shit!

Matt Payne was laying facedown in the snow.

The teenager, ten feet farther into the vacant lot, was making a blood-streaked path in the snow as he tried to crawl away.

Then he stopped moving.

“Matt!” Daquan called as he ran to him.

Payne turned his head and, clearly in pain, looked up at Daquan.

“Call nine-one-one,” he said. “Say, ‘Officer down . . . Police officer shot.'”

Daquan, now kneeling, saw the blood on the snow beneath Payne.

His mind raced. He looked at the street ahead.

There ain't time to wait for help.

I've gotta get him to it . . .

“Hang on, Matt.”

Daquan then bolted back through the bushes. As he came out the far side, he saw the driver of the Ford sedan, a heavyset black woman in her late fifties, leaning over the open trunk, looking over her shoulder as she rushed to remove bulging white plastic grocery bags.

He ran toward her and loudly called, “Hey! I need your car . . .”

The woman, the heavy bags swinging from her hands, turned and saw Daquan quickly approaching.

Then she saw that he held a pistol.

She dropped the bags, then went to her knees, quivering as she covered her gray hair with her hands.

“Please . . . take whatever you want . . . take it all . . . just don't hurt me . . .”

Daquan saw that a ring of keys had fallen to the ground with the bags.

“It's an emergency!” he said, reaching down and grabbing
the keys.

—

Tires squealed as he made a hard right at the first corner, going over the curb and onto the sidewalk, then squealed again making another right at the next intersection. He sped along the block, braking hard to look for Payne down the first vacant lot, then accelerating again until braking at the next lot.

He finally found the one with Payne and the teenager—Payne was trying to sit upright; the teen had not moved—and skidded to a stop at the curb.

Daquan considered driving across the lot to reach Payne faster but was afraid the car would become stuck.

He threw the gearshift into park and left the car engine running and the driver's door open as he ran toward Payne.

He saw that Payne held his left hand over the large blood-soaked area of his gray sweatshirt. And, as Daquan approached closer, he saw Payne, with great effort, raise his head to look toward him—while pointing his .45 in Daquan's direction.

“Don't shoot, Matt! It's me!”

“Daquan,” Payne said weakly, then after a moment lowered his pistol and moved to get up on one knee.

Daquan squatted beside him. Payne wrapped his right arm around Daquan's neck and slowly they stood.

“This way,” Daquan said, leaning Payne into him and starting to walk.

The first couple steps were awkward, more stumbles than solid footing, but then suddenly, with a grunt, Payne found his legs.

They managed a rhythm and were almost back to the car when Daquan noticed a young black male in a wheelchair rolling out onto the porch of a row house across the street.

“Yo! What the fuck!” the male shouted, coming down a ramp to the sidewalk. “Why'd you shoot my man Ray-Ray for?”

Daquan said nothing but kept an eye on him
as they reached the car and he opened the back
door. He helped Payne slide onto the backseat, slammed the
door shut, then ran and got behind the wheel.

“Yo!” the male shouted again.

As Daquan pulled on the gearshift, he could hear the male still shouting and then saw in the rearview mirror that he had started wheeling up the street toward the car.

And then he saw something else.

“Damn!” Daquan said aloud.

He ducked just before the windows on the left side of the car shattered in a hail of bullets.

And then he realized there was a sudden burning sensation in his back and shoulder.

He floored the accelerator pedal.

—

Daquan knew that Temple University Hospital was only blocks down Broad Street from Erie Avenue. Driving to the ER would take no time. But Daquan suddenly was getting light-headed. Just steering a straight line was quickly becoming a challenge.

He approached Erie Avenue, braked and laid on the horn as he glanced in both directions, then stepped heavily on the gas pedal again.

His vision was getting blurry and he fought to keep focused. He heard horns blaring as he crossed Erie and prayed whoever it was could avoid hitting them.

By the time the sedan approached Ontario, Daquan realized that things were beginning to happen in slow motion. He made the turn, carefully, but again ran up over the curb, then bumped a parked car, sideswiping it before yanking the steering wheel. The car moved to the center of the street.

Now he could make out the hospital ahead and, after a block, saw the sign for the emergency room, an arrow indicating it was straight ahead.

Then he saw an ambulance, lights flashing, that was parked in one of the bays beside a four-foot-high sign that read EMERGENCY ROOM DROP OFF ONLY.

Daquan reached the bays and began to turn into the first open one.

His head then became very light—and he felt himself slowly slumping over.

The car careened onto the sidewalk, struck a refuse container, and finally rammed a concrete pillar before coming to a stop.

Daquan struggled to raise his head.

Through blurry eyes, he saw beyond the shattered car window that the doors on the ambulance had swung open.

Two people in uniforms leaped out and began running to the car.

Daquan heard the ignition switch turn and the engine go quiet, then felt a warm hand on him and heard a female voice.

“Weak,” she said, “but there's a pulse.”

“No pulse on this guy,” a male voice from the backseat said. “I'm taking him in . . .”

Then Daquan passed out.

[ THREE ]

Temple University Hospital, Room 401

1801 North Broad Street, North Philadelphia

Wednesday, December 19, 6:35
P.M.

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” Matt Payne said, pointing at the television screen while intravenous tubing dangled from the top of his hand. Then he exclaimed: “Shit, it hurts to move!”

Tony Harris looked to where he was pointing.

“What?” Harris said.

The image of Raychell Meadow, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, cut away to surveillance footage from the emergency room entrance that showed the EMTs rushing to the crashed sedan with shot-out windows.

The ticker of text at the bottom of the screen read
HOMICIDE SGT. PAINE HAS BEEN MOVED OUT OF THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT AND IS EXPECTED TO FULLY RECOVER FROM HIS WOUNDS.

“I bet that was intentional!” Payne said. “Damn it!”

Payne then pointed to the wall of windows that overlooked Broad Street.

“If I could get one of those open, I bet I could hit her with my bedpan from here.”

“What?” Harris repeated.

“That hack reporter bimbo spelled my name wrong!”

Harris looked, then chuckled.

“She probably would have left off the
e
, too,” he said. “Glad to see you're feeling well enough to be concerned about the important things now.”

Harris held up his right hand, fingers fanned out and thumb folded.

“Four what?”

“Four hours Daquan was in surgery. The ER works miracles here.”

Payne nodded. “He got hit in both lungs and his liver. But he's gonna be fine.”

Harris folded all but his index finger.

“What?” Payne said. “You're now asking permission to use the head?”

Harris ignored that: “And one deathbed confession. Daquan warned his mother to be careful of Hooks.”

“Why? He told me ‘word on the street' was Hooks knew who capped Pookie.”

“That's because he had it done—Pookie was skimming from the drugs he sold in Needle Park and owed Hooks money. And Hooks took out Dante because he got cold feet being part of the casino heist and was afraid to talk. Hooks gave Daquan part of the diamonds from the robbery as a bribe—the message being ‘Don't talk and I'll take care of you.'”

“He lied to me, or at least wasn't truthful about that damn ear stud,” Payne said, shaking his head. “Sonofabitch! No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Hard to blame him, Matt. Not sure he had a choice, considering he knew what happened to his cousin. Daquan, I think, was trying to walk the straight and narrow. But Rayvorris Oliver—your big fan Ray-Ray, homicide number 372—decided the diamond stud meant Daquan was going to get Pookie's turf in Needle Park, which he thought he deserved, paid a visit to the diner, and . . . Well, here you are, Marshal Earp.”

Raychell Meadow came back onscreen.

“Why are we watching this channel?” Payne said, disgusted. “I think I'd rather be back in my drug-induced fog.”

Raychell Meadow, her tone highly dramatic, said: “In a horrific twist of fate, the Reverend Josiah Cross, who was said to have dodged death after gunfire erupted at his Stop Killadelphia Rally on Saturday, was killed yesterday morning. Police report that a forklift unloading a semitrailer full of frozen turkeys to be distributed for Feed Philly Day dropped a pallet carrying a hundred turkeys estimated to weigh more than one ton. The Philadelphia medical examiner's office said death from blunt force trauma was instant.”

The screen then showed a pudgy male's face.

“Ah, now there's one of our fair city's shining stars,” Payne said, “attempting to appear mournful.”

Raychell Meadow's voice-over said: “Philadelphia City Councilman (At Large) H. Rapp Badde, who sponsors the annual event at the Word of Brotherly Love Ministry in Strawberry Mansion, issued a brief statement . . .”

Onscreen, Badde then said: “It's truly a tragic day for our city to lose such a strong supporter of our citizens. He will be terribly missed, but we take comfort in the fact that he passed as he was performing yet another service to our people. Knowing him as well as I do, I know he would want this ministry to continue. And it will, including the Feed Philly Day, which will take place tomorrow, during which we will give thanks and prayers for all of Reverend Cross's blessings. I hope to see everyone there.”

Raychell Meadow came back on: “In related news, police sources report that Tyrone Banks, known by his hip-hop artist name King Two-One-Five, who was to perform at Monday's canceled Feed Philly Day event, was found dead this morning. An unnamed confidential source said the twenty-five-year-old singer was found wearing a Lucky Stars Casino hat and holding a seven of clubs and two of diamonds from a deck of cards bearing the Philadelphia Police Department's shield on the back and two Homicide Cold Cases on their face.”

Payne exchanged glances with Harris.

“Getting dealt a seven and a two,” Payne said. “Arguably the worst beginning hand in poker. Can't do shit with it.”

“Kind of like what he did with his life,” Harris said.

Harris gestured at the television.

“There's more to the story about how they found Hooks dead.”

“I guessing what Sully said—someone wanted to send a message about what happens to those who rob casinos.”

Harris nodded.

Payne impatiently gestured
Give it to me
with his tube-covered hand, and said, “You're gonna tell me, I'm sure.”

Harris grinned.

“That microphone he loved so much?”

“That one with the big chrome mesh ball at the top?”

“Yeah. You won't guess where they found it . . .” He paused, then said, “Wait. You're sick enough that you would guess.”

Payne grinned as he shook his head.

“Well, don't let your guard down just because Cross and Hooks got their due,” Harris said. “While the good news is you're out of ICU and going to survive the shooting—”

“The bad is?”

“Your fiancée is going to kill you, she's so pissed off at you.”