W. Griffin: Deadly Assets

The image then switched to a live shot of JFK Plaza. Another reporter, this one a large-bosomed blonde in her late twenties, made a solemn face as she spoke into her microphone and gestured toward more yellow crime scene tape in the background.

“And this!” Finley said, pointing to the television again. “Right across the damn street”-he dramatically jabbed his free hand’s index finger in the direction of the park-“a beautiful young woman’s life tragically cut short. .” He stopped when he realized the word he’d used. “Tragically ended , I should say.”

Finley held his cell phone at shoulder level, waving it as he went on: “Both of the stories are being spread all over social media with the key phrase ‘Stop Killadelphia.’ I can’t repeat the disgusting things people are saying about us. Especially after what that poor girl had just posted-‘My Love in the City of Brotherly Love’ with a beautiful romantic picture-before being murdered in broad daylight! For christsake, it’s Christmas ! What is wrong with these people?”

Mayor Carlucci, looking at the city’s new public relations head, thought, Finley’s not suggesting there’s a better time for murdering someone?

But I guess he does have a point.

He can be a real pain in the ass, but Stein swears he’s clever as hell and apparently good at what he does.

Not that that matters to the families of the dead kids.

The mayor then wondered how much of Finley’s dramatics could be attributed to genuine emotion-his hysterical fits already bordered on legendary-or be blamed on alcohol, or both. Finley had announced that he had been enjoying brunch with friends just blocks away in his Washington Square West neighborhood, with plans to walk the shops along Walnut Street for Christmas gifts afterward, when the news broke.

“Our new tourism campaign, well, this is just going to kill it.” Finley paused again. “Oh, damn it, I’m so upset I cannot think or speak properly. And it’s my job to use the proper words.” He gestured at the television once more. “This is going to scare off countless people. Look at this crime scene tape next to one of our most popular tourist attractions. Who wants to celebrate where someone’s been murdered? Or become the next murder victim? This insanity keeps getting worse.”

The room was quiet for a long moment.

“He is right, Mr. Mayor,” Ed Stein said, looking up from his legal pad and tapping it with his pen. He wore a well-cut conservative gray two-piece suit with a white dress shirt and a striped blue necktie. “It is worse. For starters, we’re now at three hundred sixty-two killings for the year. Four more than last year’s total, and it would appear racing for an all-time record.”

Carlucci met his eyes. Stein, who had proved to be both exceptionally sharp and a voice of reason, was starting to grow on him. But the mayor damn sure did not always like what Stein had to say.

Stein picked up on that and shrugged, adding: “It’s why I’m here. It’s why we’re all here.”

While Edward Stein and James Finley were officially listed as being executives on the City of Philadelphia’s payroll, they fell under a unique provision of the law. The mayor, at his discretion, was permitted to have as many staff members as he deemed necessary for the good of the city-as long as the total of their salaries and pension liabilities did not exceed that of his office’s budget for personnel. To that end, Stein and Finley were each receiving a city payroll check once a year in the amount of $1.

Their real income, not including bonuses and stock options, was in the middle six figures-as appropriate for their level as senior vice presidents of a major corporation-and was paid by Richard Saunders Holdings, which had its headquarters at North Third and Arch Streets in Old City.

Thus, the reality of it was that they were on loan to the city by local businessman Francis Franklin Fuller V.

The forty-five-year-old Fuller traced his family lineage to Benjamin Franklin. He enthusiastically embraced everything that was Franklinite, starting with “Richard Saunders,” the pen name Franklin used in writing Poor Richard’s Almanack . Fuller even physically resembled his ancestor. He was short and stout and had a bit of a bulging belly. Tiny round reading glasses accented his bulbous nose and round face.

Fuller had been born into wealth, and had built that into a far larger personal fortune, one in excess of two billion dollars. Under his main company, Richard Saunders Holdings, he owned outright or had majority interest in KeyCargo Import-Exports (the largest user of the Port of Philadelphia docks and warehousing facilities), KeyProperties (luxury high-rise office and residential buildings), and the crown jewel, KeyCom, a Fortune 500 nationwide telecommunications corporation.

His Old City headquarters also housed a nonprofit organization that he funded. A devout believer in the Bible’s “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Fuller chose the name Lex Talionis, which came from the Latin phrase for “Law of Talion” and essentially translated as “an eye for an eye.”

Tragedy had struck Fuller’s family five years earlier. His wife and young daughter, after making wrong turns and driving their Mercedes-Benz convertible into North Philadelphia West, had become collateral damage, killed in a hail of buckshot from the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. The gunmen were never caught.

A frustrated Fuller responded by setting up Lex Talionis and endowing it with an initial five million dollars. Every Friday-“Payday Friday,” Fuller came to call it-he ran advertisements in local media and all his KeyCom cable channels: “Lex Talionis will reward twenty thousand dollars cash to any individual who provides information that leads to the arrest, conviction, and/or removal from free society of a criminal guilty of murder or attempted murder, rape or other sexually deviant crime, or illicit drug distribution in the City of Philadelphia. Tipsters are provided a unique code to keep them anonymous. Lex Talionis works with the Philadelphia Police Department and courts to protect the identities of those providing the information, ensuring their anonymity.”

Carlucci had not liked it-in large part because it had been almost immediately effective, and thus embarrassed the leader of the East Coast’s second-largest city. At any given time, Philly had approximately fifty thousand criminals “in the wind”-robbers, rapists, junkies, and other offenders who’d jumped bail by ignoring their court date. They then became wanted on outstanding warrants. While some had fled the city, many remained. And when Fuller put a bounty on their heads, the fugitives-either dead or bound and gagged in some makeshift manner-were being dropped at the doorstep of Lex Talionis, and the rewards were promptly being paid.

It wasn’t that Carlucci didn’t want the criminals behind bars-or, in the case of known killers, in a grave. What the longtime law enforcement professional didn’t like was that the cash reward caused civilians to take the law into their own hands.

Carlucci had to use his iron fist-declaring that anyone who did not include the police department in apprehending the criminals would themselves be arrested and prosecuted, and then did so-while at the same time carefully bringing Lex Talionis more or less under the purview of the police department.

Shortly thereafter, Fuller, uninvited, had appeared at Carlucci’s office.

—

You arrogant sonofabitch! Carlucci thought as he watched Fuller push past the mayor’s secretary and then wave her off. The last thing I want to do is make nice with you.