W. Griffin: Deadly Assets

Badde’s flip phone vibrated and he saw that there was a new text from Lenny: “Forgot to say we’re having Feed Philly Day as planned, so still need that check for the food. That will be the sign to my followers that we are moving forward despite being targeted by the police. Going to promote it at the new rally * MarchForRevCross .”

He showed that to Janelle, who used her phone to view it on the Internet.

“‘Beat Down The Man’?” Jan said, making a face. “That sounds like a lot more of Lenny’s population control conspiracy theory. That’s not going to be helpful, Rapp. And by that I mean not helpful for you.”

She stood, collected her bag, and walked to the front of the aircraft, where the main door was opening.

Watching as she deplaned, Badde thought: Damn it! And I forgot to ask Lenny about that damn rapper who ripped off the jewelry store. That guy hunting him said, “Remember, Rapp, Urban Venture LLC has ownership in the casino, too. We need him so that we can get back the jewelry.”

Badde texted Lenny: “Okay, you’ll like the next project. We need to start working out the details of your ‘pie piece’ so we can get this behind us. Name a time today and a place. And I’ll bring the turkey check.”

Rittenhouse Square

Center City, Philadelphia

Sunday, December 16, 8:20 A.M.

Despite the fact that his apartment was in complete disarray, with half-packed moving boxes cluttering every corner, Matt Payne opted for Tony Harris to drop him off in Center City so that he could get his shower and change of clothes there.

While Payne had more or less already moved into Amanda Law’s luxury penthouse condominum in Northern Liberties, going there would have meant him being very careful not to wake her-she had only a couple hours earlier texted him that she’d just returned from some emergency at the hospital.

To Payne, it simply did not seem possible that he could get in the one-bedroom condo, get past Luna without the dog greeting him with happy whines and her tail thumping on the wall, get in and out of the shower, then dig clean clothes out of the closet, and finally get back past Luna and out of the condo-all without making a sound, or sounds, that would disturb Amanda’s rest.

And so it was off to Payne’s tiny apartment, which was in the garret atop the hundred-fifty-year-old brownstone that presently housed the business offices of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society. The building, overlooking what was generally considered to be the most attractive of Philadelphia’s public squares, and certainly was among the most expensive real estate in the city, had been in the Payne family since it was built.

When the brownstone’s three lower main floors had been converted to modern office space, the existing apartment, its small rooms and slanted walls making it practically unleasable as office space, had been left alone. And Matt, because police department rules requiring its members, after a six-month grace period if necessary, to live within the City of Philadelphia, had made it his home.

–

Payne put the contents of his pockets next to his Colt.45 and cellular telephone on one of the glass shelves above the bathroom sink. He then tossed his dirty clothes into one of the cardboard boxes that sat just outside the door.

He poured a dab of face wash that Amanda had bought him into his palm and began scrubbing his stubble. He had immediately decided against shaving because, for one, he was exhausted and just didn’t feel like it was a good idea to risk running a razor-sharp blade across his neck, and, two, because he felt that an unshaven look would be a better fit in the hood.

His cell phone made a Ping! and when he raised his head from the sink he saw an image of a Marine Unit vessel, its emergency lights flashing, holding its position maybe twenty feet off a brush-covered riverbank.

What the hell? Payne thought.

Most likely, the photograph had been taken from above, Payne decided, from a police helicopter.

The message read that it had been sent by Kerry Rapier.

There then came another Ping! and a new photograph from Rapier, a close-up, appeared in place of the first. It was taken from the police boat itself. It showed a large male’s body, clad only in a T-shirt and blue jeans and work boots, laying facedown at the water’s edge along a strip of large rocks that protected the riverbank from erosion.

Payne’s phone then began to ring, and he quickly wiped his face, then took the phone from the glass shelf.

“You got my attention, Corporal.”

“Those images come through okay?” Kerry Rapier said.

“Yeah. What am I looking at?”

“The aerial shot of the scene I got from Tac Air. And the other-sent in from the Marine Unit-shows one of the doers in the O’Brien case. He was pronounced at the scene.”

Payne always found it interesting that most people preferred the shorthand version of “pronounced dead.” He thought it was almost like a superstition that no one liked to actually say the key word.

“No shit? That was fast. .”

“At seven this morning,” Rapier explained, “a maintenance crew-they were working on that train trestle that spans the Schuylkill River just upstream from the Bartram’s Garden property-saw the body. It was below them, along the bank, caught up on that riprap.”

“They get his fingerprints run?”

“In the process. But he had Kevin O’Brien’s credit cards, an AmEx and a PNC Visa debit, in his jeans pocket.”

“The Crime Scene guys confirmed that there were two distinct sets of bootprints,” Payne said. “So, assuming this actually is one of the killers, at least one more is still out there.”

“Maybe one guy whacked the other? Set him up with the credit cards?”

“That can’t be ruled out. But, based on what we know about the killers of the reporter in San Antone, I’m betting that they both got whacked. And that’s what I meant by ‘one more still out there’-that other body will probably pop up next spring.”

“Why next spring? That’s four, five months.”

“In winter, bodies tend to sink and stay down in the cold water.”

“That’s right. I knew that.”

When the river water warmed in the spring, whatever bodies were in it also became warm, and, once warm, the process of decomposition accelerated. The gases that were created by that process then made the corpses buoyant, causing them to rise to the surface.

“That’s always a lovely time of year,” Rapier said. “Wouldn’t want to be in the Marine Unit fishing them out.”

“Yeah. Let me know when there’s a positive ID, Kerry, and anything else,” Payne said, then broke off the call.

Looking absently at the phone, Payne thought: I wonder if there could be any connection with Cross and Hooks and O’Brien’s story about the ring of Mexican nationals pushing black tar heroin in Kensington and Strawberry Mansion?

Or is it simply a case of the streets being flooded with cheap smack?

They just took down a couple cartel guys in the Bronx with almost a hundred keys, all uncut, some of it headed for here.

It’s everywhere. .

Payne then texted Mickey O’Hara: “Just got word that the body of a Hispanic male was found on the shore of the Schuylkill. He had Tim O’Brien’s credit cards in his pocket. More info when I know more. How are you doing?”

He hit SEND, looked a long moment at his phone to see if he would reply, and then put it back on the shelf and finally grabbed a shower.

–

Fifteen minutes later, Payne stepped around boxes in the apartment while pulling on a Temple University sweatshirt. He yawned deeply. He glanced at the couch.