She ran through the door, her coat flying open, and hurried down the steps onto the sidewalk. It was darkening now and so cold; the sky was a frozen blue. The rising moon was full, casting a cool whiteness. She looked right, then left, down Lincoln Street. The sidewalk was still deserted. The row houses stood silent, not giving up their secrets. Mrs. Bristow wasn't in sight. It hadn't been that long. Where had the woman gone? She couldn't drive; she could barely stand. Was she in a neigh-bor's house?
Vicki sprinted next door and peered in a cracked window, but there was no light inside and the house seemed still. She went to the next house and knocked. No lights were on inside, and nobody answered. She ran to the Cabrio, pulled the keys from her purse, chirped the car unlocked, and hopped in. She'd find the woman faster in the car. She switched on the ignition and zoomed out of the space, going the right way on the one-way street, then taking a right onto Washington Street, another right onto Harrison, then a third right onto Van Buren.
No Mrs. Bristow. Vicki turned on the heat, and it blew a cold stream into her face. She drove around, looking. The next few minutes were a blur of American presidents until she looked to the right. Behind Lincoln was a narrow street that ran parallel to it, almost an alley. The crooked green sign read CATER STREET, but the light at the corner was out. In the moonlight, Vicki could barely see shadows moving on the street, at the far end.
There. Shuffling toward the shadows was Arissa Bristow, easily recognizable because she wore only her housedress. The poor woman had no coat on and moved through the cold night with surprising speed. Vicki pulled over to the curb, cut the ignition and put her hand on the door handle, about to get out and run after her. Then she stopped herself.
How would it look? An AUSA running down the street, physically tackling the aged, crack-addicted mother of someone she was prosecuting? Not a great idea. Vicki weighed her options. She wanted her wallet and her phone back, but she wasn't supposed to be here anyway. Also, she felt a little scared at the prospect of running down a dark street in this neighborhood. I'm not from the suburbs for nothing.
Then she had a better, or at least a safer, idea. Mrs. Bristow had wanted to smoke, and now, thanks to her new lawyer, she had fifty bucks in cash. There was only one place she would go-to buy more crack. It might be interesting to see where she bought it. Vicki stayed in the driver's seat and watched Mrs. Bristow travel purposefully up the street, her dress flapping like a flag. Decrepit row houses lined the street; some with lights on, some without. There seemed to be activity five houses down, at what appeared to be at a vacant lot, its entrance partially obscured by bare city trees. Mrs. Bristow approached the trees and turned right, disappearing into the darkness of the vacant lot.
Vicki's breath steamed up her windows and she rubbed out a circle on the passenger side. She kept her eyes trained on the trees. A large figure came out of the lot, with another shorter figure. The car got colder, the heat dissipating quickly through the thin convertible skin. Maybe there was a good reason VW stopped making Cabrios. She checked her watch: 6:15. She waited… 6:40. She wondered when Reheema would get released from the FDC. Would she come to see her mother? Vicki tucked her cold hands into her jacket pockets. She developed an ache in her neck from looking to the right so much.
The sky darkened to blue-black ink but still no Mrs. Bris-tow. A few people, maybe five or six, went into the lot behind the tree and came out again. The only activity on the block was at the vacant lot. It had to be drug sales, but where was Mrs. Bristow? What if the woman had been hurt or had a seizure of some kind? Or what if Mrs. Bristow had just smoked up and fallen asleep in the lot? She couldn't survive outside in the night, not at this temperature.
Vicki was putting two and two together, developing a working theory. Maybe Reheema hadn't resold the guns, but had given them to her mother, who had sold or traded them for crack. Guns were valuable currency to drug dealers, the engine powering the straw trade. The theory was consistent with what had happened at Vicki's proffer conference and even jibed with Cavanaugh's proffer conference. It was possible that Reheema wasn't giving up the name because she wasn't about to flip on her own mother.
BOOM! Suddenly a loud bang came from the window on the driver's side. Vicki jumped in fright and looked over. A fist pounded on her driver's-side window. The Cabrio rocked with the impact. A man in a black hood loomed inches from her face.
"Get outta here, bitch!" he yelled, but Vicki was already twisting on the ignition and hitting the gas.
She sped down the street, cranking the Cabrio engine as fast as it could go, and she didn't stop speeding until her heartbeat returned to normal. At some point she came to a red light, unsure if she was in Atlantic City or maybe Maine, but she didn't care. She was away from scary guys in hoods. But she had left Mrs. Bristow behind, and that worried her.
She drove a few blocks until she spotted an Exxon station, then dug around in the car seat and retrieved a red scrunchy, a chipped grape Chiclet, and what she had wanted in the first place. She popped the Chiclet, got out of the car, and headed for the phone booth. Frigid air hit her like a blast; she hadn't realized what a cocoon the Cabrio had been. She opened the booth's squeaky collapsible door, which had left its runners long ago, fed the pay phone, and dialed her own cell phone. It was picked up after two rings.
"Yo," said a man's voice, and Vicki was pissed. Mrs. Bris-tow had already unloaded the phone?
"That's my cell phone, pal! Who are you?" she shouted, but the man hung up. She pressed redial and when he picked up, she shouted again, "Where's Arissa-"
He hung up again, and Vicki let it go. She took a deep breath outside the phone booth and exhaled deeply, taking mental inventory and watching her breath cloud around her like a chain smoker. She should call the cops, but that would reveal she'd been with Mrs. Bristow. Odds were that Bale wouldn't find out, but why risk it? Also, what could the cops do? Wallets got stolen all the time. Poor Kate Spade.
The air felt cold, the lights of Center City twinkled far away. Vicki was in West Philly, halfway out to suburbs like the Main Line. She had no wallet, no cell, no money, and no credit cards. She'd have to cancel them ASAP. She felt exhausted, hungry, and dumb. She could use a little comfort. She had gas in the car because she never let the tank get too low, on the advice of women's magazines. She moved her sleeve aside to check the time: 7:30.
She could be there in no time.
PART TWO
The names of the streets are mostly to be taken from the things that grow in the country, as Vine Street, Mulberry Street, Chestnut Street, and the like.
– WILLIAM PENN, Instructions to His Commissioners, 1681
Q: What type of crack or what quality of crack did you see on Brooklyn Street? Was it good, was it bad?
A: What type of crack?
Q: Was it good quality or poor quality?
A: Oh yeah, the best work in the city.
Q: The best work in the city? What does "best work" mean?
A: The best crack in the city.
Q: Is that just that the amount you sold was good in terms of volume, or was it the actual quality?
A: Quality.
– DAVID WEST,
United States v. Williams,
United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Criminal Docket No. 2-172, February 23, 2004, Notes of Testimony at 736-737
FIFTEEN
"Honey, I'm home!" Vicki called out, unlocking the front door, which opened to the shrill barking of a dog and the warning beep of a burglar alarm, set in case a psycho killer dropped in for Glenlivet, neat. She went to the keypad to disable the alarm before it went off, while her parents' Welsh corgi sprinted into the entrance hall and attacked her shoe.