After a moment, the bartender slid a glass of draft before him and said, “Let me know if I can get you anything else, Mr. King.”
Hooks again pulled the cash wad from his coat pocket and took from it his Lucky Stars debit card. He pushed the card across the bar.
“Close me out. Gotta go after this one.”
III
[ONE]
Police Administration Building
Eighth and Race Streets
Saturday, December 15, 2:01 P.M.
Homicide Sergeant Matthew M. Payne, standing with a cell phone to his ear, listened to Homicide Detective Dick McCrory’s update while looking out from the third-floor hallway windows of police headquarters.
The half-century-old complex, commonly referred to as the Roundhouse, was built of precast concrete and consisted of a connected pair of four-story circular buildings. Interior walls were also curved, including those of the elevators. The imposing design of the exterior, some said, resembled a massive pair of handcuffs.
Payne raised to his lips a coffee mug that had STOLEN FROM THE DESK OF HOMICIDE SGT M. M. PAYNE in gold lettering, and took a sip. He had had the cheap mugs custom-imprinted-there was a representation of his badge in addition to the wording-after his regular heavy china mugs had repeatedly wound up in the possession of parties unknown.
He had expected that the personalized ones would bring the disappearances to an end. They had had, in fact, the opposite effect-the one he now held was the last of the original dozen-the unique mugs having become trophies of a sort around headquarters.
There was a faint chanting coming from below, and he looked down.
At least fifty protesters marched up and down the steps past the mottled bronze statue-“A Friend,” its plaque read-of a uniformed Philadelphia policeman holding a small child on his left hip in front of the Roundhouse.
Two uniformed officers of the Mounted Patrol Unit were across Race Street, standing by in support of the half-dozen uniforms of the Civil Affairs Unit who were on foot and creating a safety zone for the protesters, in effect defending their First Amendment rights of assembly and freedom of speech.
Payne watched as a young woman with a little girl-the latter licking a candy cane; they had just left Franklin Park-walked up to the officers on horseback. The woman then spoke to the closer of the two, and after he smiled and nodded, she lifted the toddler onto her shoulders so the girl could pet the horse’s rich brown mane. The young woman then held out her camera and snapped a photograph of them, with the smiling officer looming in the background.
“Dick, you’re right,” Payne said into the phone, “if you don’t try, you don’t get. Maybe we’ll get lucky if the CI is really onto something. Go find this guy he says wants to talk and bring him in. Lord knows no one else is talking about who took out Dante.”
He paused, listened, then said, “Okay, and have Kennedy do his dramatic routine when you’re slapping on cuffs, so all those watching from wherever they’re hiding don’t miss it.”
He listened again a moment, chuckled and replied, “Yeah, right. Nice try. If all else fails, I am not going to ‘just shoot the knucklehead,’ as much as he might deserve it,” then broke off the call.
The use of confidential informants was strictly regulated by Police Department Directive 15. First and foremost among its rules was that there had to exist an absolute professional relationship between an officer and a CI.
The CIs were paid for tips that, it was hoped, led to arrests. Money was also made available to them for street purchases of, for example, drugs and firearms-and even of, say, the renting of a row house needed for an undercover operation. Because these funds over time could run into the tens of thousands of dollars, procedures had to be followed to ensure that the police officers kept a distinct arm’s length from the informants.
There’s more than the usual BS going on with this, Payne thought, taking another sip of coffee.
Why wouldn’t McCrory’s CI just tell them what the other guy knew about the drive-by?
And why does this guy say he needs to see me?
He slipped the phone into his pants pocket. His Colt Officer’s Model.45 ACP, snapped into a black leather shoulder holster, hung under his left bicep, and his shield-Badge Number 471, which had been his father’s-was midway down his striped necktie, hanging in its black leather holder from a chromed bead chain looped around the button-down collar of his stiffly starched white shirt.
The Colt did not technically meet Philadelphia Police Department regulations. When Payne had begun carrying the semiautomatic, during a stint with Special Operations, 38 caliber revolvers were still the department-issued sidearm. Payne disliked wheel guns in general and.38s in particular. He argued that the smaller caliber did not have the stopping power of a.45 bullet and that the Officer’s Model carried more of the powerful rounds and could be reloaded more quickly.
Because of the nature of Special Operations cases-especially its undercover work; Payne made the point that the blued steel.38 caliber revolver screamed “Cop!”-the department had made an allowance for him.
After Payne left SO, if anyone asked about the.45, he waved the allowance at them, arguing that his Colt had been grandfathered. That particularly annoyed those who-wrongly-believed it was another case of his connections getting him preferential treatment.
But what really annoyed them even more was that Payne had then appeared vindicated in his assessment of the underpowered.38 when the department was given approval by the city council to issue Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatics as the standard sidearm. Officers who passed muster on the department’s shooting range with a.40 caliber Glock were given the option of carrying one-if the officers paid for the optional weapon with their own funds.
The magazines of the Glocks held three times as many rounds as the revolvers they replaced, and put the police officers on more or less equal footing with the bad guys, who (a) were not subject to the whims of the city hall politicians who had been against replacing the.38s and thus (b) had long been packing the more powerful semiautos.
Once again Payne had bent the rules to his needs-and once again had not only gotten away with it, but proved that he thought ahead of the conventional curve.
Payne wasn’t sure which pissed off his detractors more. But he really didn’t give a damn. He was right. And he knew it. And he wasn’t going to risk his life because of some outdated bureaucratic rule.
The CI said that his guy likes that “Wyatt Earp shoots dudes”? Payne thought. That it gives me “street cred”?
He shook his head.
My bet: the bastard’s blowing smoke.
But it’s a lead. Maybe another to nowhere. But for now a lead.
Be wary of wrestling with a pig, Matty ol’ boy. You can get very dirty-and the pig likes it.
It was Payne’s opinion that confidential informants were a pain in the ass and, with rare exceptions, tended to be more trouble than they were worth.
But, reluctantly, he also considered them a necessary evil.
They knew the streets and they knew what the players were up to. . and sometimes they even told the damn truth. Not the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them God. The bastards were dirty themselves-the threat of doing time often was the leverage used to get them to act as CIs-and always working an angle, one beyond getting cash payments and other considerations.
Payne knew that some off-the-books information was better than nothing. Because nothing was all that most witnesses wanted to give cops. Getting them to answer any questions-truthfully or not-was next to impossible.