"Damn, here we are already," Matt Payne said as he turned the Porsche into the Penn Services Parking Garage behind the BellevueStratford Hotel in downtown Philadelphia.
"How time flies," Amanda said, mocking him gently.
He stopped to get a ticket from a dispensing machine and then drove inside. He drove slowly, hoping to find a space on a lower floor. There were none. He searched the second level, and then the third and fourth. They finally emerged on the roof.
Matt stepped hard on the brakes. The Porsche shuddered and skidded to a stop, throwing Amanda against the dashboard.
"My God!" she exclaimed.
"Stay here," Matt Payne ordered firmly.
"What is it?" Amanda asked.
He didn't answer. He got out of the Porsche and ran across the rooftop parking lot. Amanda saw him drop to one knee, and then for the first time saw that a girl was lying facedown, on the roadway between lines of parked cars.
She pushed open her door and got out and ran to him.
"What happened?" Amanda asked.
"I told you to stay in the fucking car!" he said furiously.
She looked at him, shocked as much by the tone of his voice as by the language, and then at the girl on the floor. For the first time she saw there was a pool of blood.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice weak.
"Will you please go get in the goddamned car?" Matt asked.
"Oh, myGod!" Amanda wailed. "That'sPenny!"
"You know her?"
"Penny Detweiler," Amanda said. "You must know her. She's one of the bridesmaids."
Matt looked at the girl on the floor. Itwas Penelope Detweiler, Precious Penny to Matt, to her intense annoyance, because that's what her father had once called her in Matt's hearing.
Why didn't I recognize her? I've known her all of my life!
"I'll be damned," he said softly.
"Matt, whathappened to her?"
"She's been shot," Matt Payne said, and looked at Amanda.
You don't expect to find people you know, especially people like Precious Penny, lying in a pool of blood after somebody's shot them in a garage. Things like that aren't supposed to happen to people like Precious Penny.
He found his voice: "Now, for chrissake, will you go get in the goddamned car!" he ordered furiously.
Amanda looked at him with confusion and hurt in her eyes.
"This just happened," he explained more kindly. "Whoever did it may still be up here."
"Matt, let's get out of here. Let's go find a cop."
"I am a cop, Amanda," Matt Payne said. "Now, for the last fucking time, will you go get in the car? Stay there until I come for you. Lock the doors."
He stooped, bending one knee, and when he stood erect again, there was a snub-nosed revolver in his hand. Amanda ran back to the silver Porsche and locked the doors. When she looked for Matt, she couldn't see him at first, but then she did, and he was holding his gun at the ready, slowly making his way between the parked cars.
I don't believe this is happening. I don't believe Penny Detweiler is lying out there bleeding to death, and I don't believe that Matt Payne is out there with a gun in his hand, a cop looking for whoever shot Penny.
Oh, my God. What if he gets killed?
FOUR
With difficulty, for there is not much room in the passenger compartment of a Porsche 911 Carrera, Amanda Spencer crawled over from the passenger seat to the driver's and turned the ignition key.
There was a scream of tortured starter gears, for the engine was still running. She threw the gearshift lever into reverse, spun the wheels, and turned around, then drove as fast as she dared down the ramps of the parking garage to street level.
She slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car and ran to the attendant's window.
"Call the police!" she said. "Call the police and get an ambulance."
"Hey, lady, what's going on?"
"Get on that phone and call the police and get an ambulance," Amanda ordered firmly. "Tell them there's been a shooting."
A red light began to flash on one of the control consoles in the radio room of the Philadelphia Police Department.
Foster H. Lewis, Jr., who was sitting slumped in a battered and sagging metal chair, a headset clamped to his head, threw a switch and spoke into his microphone. "Police Emergency," he said.
Foster H. Lewis, Jr., was twenty-three years old, weighed two hundred and twenty-seven pounds, stood six feet three inches tall, and was perhaps inevitably known as Tiny. For more than five years before he had entered the Police Academy, he had worked as a temporary employee in Police Emergency: five years of nights and weekends and during the summers answering calls from excited citizens in trouble and needing help had turned him into a skilled and experienced operator.
He had more or less quit when he entered the Police Acad emy and was working tonight as a favor to Lieutenant Jack Fitch, who had called him and said he had five people out with some kind of a virus and could he help out.
"This the police?" his caller asked.
"This is Police Emergency," Tiny Lewis said. "May I help you, sir?"
"I'm the attendant at the Penn Services Parking Garage on Fifteenth, behind the Bellevue-Stratford."
"How may I help you, sir?"
"I got a white lady here says there's been a shooting on the roof and somebody got shot and says to send an ambulance."
"Could you put her on the phone, please?"
"I'm in the booth, you know, can't get her in here."
"Please stay on the line, sir," Tiny said.
There are twenty-two police districts in Philadelphia. Without having to consult a map, Tiny Lewis knew that the parking garage behind the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel was in the 9^th District, whose headquarters are at 22^nd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
He checked his console display for the 9^th District and saw that an indicator with 914 on it was lit up. The 9 made reference to the District; 14 was the number of a radio patrol car assigned to cover the City Hall area.
Tiny Lewis reached for a small black toggle switch on the console before him and held it down for a full two seconds. A long beep was broadcast on the Central Division radio frequency, alerting all cars in the Central Division, which includes the 9^th District, that an important message is about to be broadcast.
"Fifteenth and Walnut, the Penn Services Parking Garage, report of a shooting and a hospital case," Tiny Lewis said into his microphone, and added, "914, 906, 9A."
There was an immediate response: "914 okay."
This was from Officer Archie Hellerman, who had just entered Rittenhouse Square from the west. He then put the microphone down, flipped on the siren and the flashing lights, and began to move as rapidly as he could through the heavy early-evening traffic on the narrow streets toward the Penn Services Parking Garage.
Tiny Lewis began to write the pertinent information on a three-byfive index card. At this stage the incident was officially an " investigation, shooting, and hospital case."
As he reached up to put the card between electrical contacts on a shelf above his console, which would interrupt the current lighting the small bulb behind the 914 block on the display console, three other radio calls came in.
"Radio, EPW 906 in."
"9A okay."
"Highway 4B in on that."
EPW 906 was an emergency patrol van, in this case a battered 1970 Ford, one of the two-man emergency patrol wagons assigned to the 9^th District to transport the injured, prisoners, and otherwise assist in law enforcement. If this was not a bullshit call, 906 would carry whoever was shot to a hospital.
The district sergeant, 9A, was assigned to the eastern half of the 9^th District.
Highway 4B was a radio patrol car of the Highway Patrol, an elite unit of the Philadelphia Police Department which the PhiladelphiaLedger had recently taken to calling Carlucci's Commandos.