Sons of the City (27 page)

I got sort of a weird feeling on the back of my neck. Bravelli and his crew knew I drove 20-C car—its identification was on the front, the back, the sides. They knew I drove these streets five nights a week. Wait a few hours, and there was a good chance you’d see 20-C cruising through 67th and Locust.

It was perfect: Bravelli could have someone shoot me, and do it in a place that would make everyone think the shooter was black.

I reached into the car and got a flashlight, and walked over to the Westmount side. A lot of neighbors were on the street now, and I asked whether anyone could let me up on their roof. An old couple, in their eighties, lived a few doors down from the corner. They said they’d take me up.

They led me through their living room past the blaring TV, and then up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The woman, who was wearing a pink robe over her nightgown, opened the door of a tiny back bedroom and flipped on the dim ceiling light. There was a small bed with a red satin bedspread and ruffly pillows and a couple of stuffed animals, and you could tell it hadn’t been slept on in many years.

“Your daughter’s room?” I asked the woman. She smiled and nodded.

“Margaret,” she said. “Oh, but she’s grown now.”

I had to maneuver between the bed and an old polished-wood dresser with a sort of lace mat on top, covered with tiny pink and purple glass figurines and other doodads. The old man tried to open the window, but his thin arms just couldn’t do it. He looked back at me apologetically, and I took a step forward and easily slid the window up. It opened onto a roof—probably over the couple’s kitchen downstairs—and from there I went up a set of wooden steps to the top roof.

I took out my gun and switched on the flashlight, and went from one roof to another until I reached the building at the corner, overlooking the intersection. And there, right where the roof swept around the corner, I spotted a 7-Eleven coffee cup on its side and the metal glint of two rifle shells. There were also a half dozen fresh cigarette butts on the roof ledge. The guy had waited around for a while. I wondered how he had managed to get on the roof with his rifle and his coffee.

Kirk was on the radio, asking whether there was any word on Jeff’s condition.

Mutt was at the hospital with Jeff, he got on the air.

“He’s gonna be all right,” said Mutt, excited to be announcing the news. “He’s gonna make it.”

I had tensed up when Kirk asked about Jeff, and now I felt weak with relief. I looked out over the intersection. Near the light pole was my car, where Mutt had brought it to a halt. On the car’s roof,
20 C
was painted in giant black letters, like on an airport runway.

I saw that, and knew for certain the shooter had been aiming for me.

I
didn’t get home from work until two in the morning. Fortunately, I had the day off. I slept for a few hours, made myself some breakfast, then headed to the hospital. Jeff was awake when I walked into his room, and his mother and father were there. I noticed a couple of flower baskets on the win-dowsill, and I knew that by the end of the day the place would be crammed full of them, along with balloons, cards, and the occasional skin-magazine-hidden-in-the-newspaper gift.

I shook hands with Jeff’s father. He was very striking, with silver-gray hair and intelligent eyes that gazed out over half glasses. I remembered Jeff once saying that his father was a college professor, Villanova or someplace, he taught history or science, something like that. The father said he had heard a lot about me, and I assured him that anything good probably wasn’t true.

Jeff’s mother had sort of a college administrator air about her, though she seemed a little brusque, like she would have no problem firing somebody, I’m sorry but we’ve already hired your replacement, by the way your stuff’s in boxes out in the hall, have a nice day. But with her son lying there in the hospital bed she seemed so vulnerable. They both did.

Jeff’s neck was all bandaged up. When I asked him how he was doing, he smiled and gave a thumb’s up sign. His father told me that the bullet had narrowly missed his larynx. Although the doctors didn’t expect any permanent damage, because of the swelling Jeff wouldn’t be able to talk for a while. I asked the mother and father whether I could speak to Jeff alone for a couple of minutes. They said certainly, and went for a walk to the hospital cafeteria.

When they were safely down the hall, I looked at Jeff and just shook my head. “Can’t talk, huh? How come something like this never happens to Buster?”

Jeff gave a soundless laugh.

I sat down in a chair next to the bed and told him about how I found the shell casings on the roof.

“You’re here because of what happened at Hotshot,” I said. “I’m very sorry, Commissioner.”

He shook his head, like, forget it.

“One thing you don’t have to worry about,” I said. “We’ll take care of Bravelli for you.”

Jeff tightened his lips a little.

“You’re worried,” I said.

He nodded.

“About me.”

His mouth twisted into a give-me-a-break look.

“About the rest of the squad.”

He nodded.

“Getting hurt like you because of how I’m handling all this.”

He nodded again, solemnly.

“So you think I should just forget about Bravelli?”

Jeff considered that for a moment, then shrugged. I thought about telling him that a commissioner couldn’t be indecisive, but I figured what the hell, he’s in the hospital all shot up, I’m not going to bust his balls. Anyway, I was the one who had to come up with the answer, not him.

M
y next task was to tell Ben Ryder that his daughter had absolutely no desire to talk to him. I called his office, they said he was giving a luncheon speech to the Urban League at the Bellevue Hotel in Center City.

When I slipped in the back door of the banquet room, the Commissioner was behind a podium on the dais, spreading his deep, silky voice across the room. Several hundred black men and women, seated at large round tables, were just finishing their lunches, and waiters and waitresses in beige uniforms were coming around with silver coffeepots and large trays of pie slices.

The Urban League was a collection of the most powerful blacks in the city—politicians, business leaders, heads of various organizations. And the Commissioner was assuring them that the Police Department was doing all it could to prevent a full-scale riot in West Philadelphia.

“We’re trying to get the word out that we want to work with the African-American community,” the Commissioner was saying. “This is a partnership. We need to trust each other.”

Around the tables, Philadelphia’s black movers and shakers, the men in conservative suits, the women in red or white dresses, listened intently. But they had crossed arms and stone faces, and I had a feeling they didn’t believe a word he was saying.

As I watched the Commissioner, I wondered whether he really believed he could get through to these black leaders, or whether he was just going through the motions. I couldn’t tell.

Finally, he spotted me, and I pointed to the door, meaning I needed to talk to him outside. He nodded and went on with his speech. I found a spare chair near the back corner, next to a makeshift bar. A blond girl in an apron was trying to wrestle a cork from an oversized bottle of white wine. Her mouth, painted with bright red lipstick, was half open in the effort, revealing a well-chewed wad of gum wedged between her upper and lower back teeth. She was wearing heavy makeup, though she didn’t need any.

Girls who grow up with money and education can keep their looks for a long time. But girls like this, from rough-and-tumble neighborhoods, only have a few years, maybe from high school to their first kid. Then they lose their looks fast, and by twenty-seven seem tired and haggard and don’t even bother to cover up the dark circles under their eyes. I was sorry to see this girl waste her brief moment of beauty under a pound of makeup.

“Mind if I sit down?” I asked her. She finally popped the cork out, and nodded at the chair.

“You with him?” she asked, glancing up at the Commissioner. She was chewing her gum again.

“Sort of,” I said.

On a low table between me and the bar was a large white plastic container filled with ice and a lone bottle of Rolling Rock, dripping with condensation. I glanced at the girl.

“Go ahead, take it,” she said. “But I need three bucks.”

“Maybe later,” I said.

She shrugged and we both looked up as the audience erupted in applause. The Commissioner had finally stopped talking. He said “Thank you” a couple of times, looked directly at me, and then headed toward the side door.

“Gotta go,” I said to the girl, and slipped back out the door.

The Commissioner was anxiously waiting for me in a wide hallway. “You’ve talked to Michelle?” he asked.

I nodded. We found a brightly lit conference room that was all set up for the next day—in front of each chair at a long table were little notepads, hotel pens, and small dishes of hard candy. I half sat on the edge of the conference table.

“You want to sit down?” I asked, pointing to a padded chair.

He shook his head no. “You see her today?” he asked.

“Last night,” I said, and told him about my visit to her apartment.

“She won’t listen to me,” I said.

The Commissioner looked at me, his jaw tight. “This never would have happened if you had come to me right away.”

What could I say? That I should have dimed out his daughter from the start? He finally sat down, plopping heavily in one of the blue-cushioned swivel chairs around the table.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “Right before I came over here, I got a call from the
Philadelphia Post.
Actually, from their gossip columnist, Jay Bender. He was asking about Michelle.”

“In what way?”

“He told me there’s a woman reporter on the paper who saw Michelle working in a beauty shop in Westmount and recognized her. Apparently they went to high school together.”

“That’s not good.”

“He said Michelle pretended not to know who the woman reporter was. But the woman told Bender, and now he says he’ll probably write about it in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Saying what?”

“Saying that the Police Commissioner’s daughter is hiding out in Westmount under an assumed name.”

“And that’s supposed to be a big story?” I asked. “You know how it is, they just want to sell newspapers.”

“So what’d you say?” I asked.

“I asked Bender not to run the story. He wanted to know why, I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you.’ He didn’t like that.”

“How come this reporter and Bender can’t figure out that Michelle’s working undercover?”

“I don’t know. Because media people are stupid? From what I’ve seen, most of them have no common sense at all, no understanding of how the world operates. And they certainly don’t understand cops.”

“Maybe you should just tell them what Michelle’s doing.”

“Absolutely not. I don’t trust these people one bit—they’re gossips, that’s what they do for a living. You think they wouldn’t let it out somehow?”

“So are they going to run the article?”

“Bender said he’s going to leave it up to the paper’s editor. I’ve already put in a call, I think I may be able to convince him.”

“Michelle needs to know about this.”

“Can you get word to her?”

I shrugged. “Like I said, she won’t listen to me. Maybe you can give it a shot.”

“How? You said she’s not going to call me.”

“That’s right,” I said. “But I think I’ve figured out a way we can get you two together.”

T
hat evening, Commissioner Ben Ryder collapsed in his office and was rushed to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, a few blocks from police headquarters. There was a press conference at Jeff, with hospital officials saying the Commissioner had suffered an apparent heart attack. There were unconfirmed reports that a priest had been brought in. Radio stations were running updates every fifteen minutes, and the mayor issued a statement saying the city’s prayers were with its police commissioner.

About 8
p.m
., I watched as Michelle stepped off the elevator at Jeff’s Cardiac Care Unit. She looked around for a moment, spotted the nurses’ station, then hurried over. I had been sitting in a small waiting area off the main hallway, watching the desk through a potted plant. Michelle was wearing blue jeans and a white blouse and no makeup at all, as far as I could tell.

One of the nurses pointed at the Commissioner’s room. It had a large window facing the nurses’ station but the blinds were drawn, and the door was closed. Michelle walked to the door, put her hand on the metal handle, then froze. She cocked her head and slowly turned and looked right at me. Then she wheeled back around and opened the door.

I walked over and leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, listening. My eyes met those of an older nurse, who was sitting at the station, watching me impassively. All I heard inside were muffled voices, and then the door opened. Michelle didn’t look even remotely surprised to see me standing right there.

“You might as well come in, too,” she said. “No reason to hide out in the hall.”

I stepped into the room and closed the door. The Commissioner was sitting on a ledge near the back window, which looked out into the night at another wing of the hospital. He was wearing street clothes—tan slacks, baby blue button-down-collar shirt. The bed was neatly made, unused. Nearby was the chair where he had sat waiting for Michelle. Within reach, on a low table, was the hardcover book, a police novel, he had been reading.

“This was your idea, wasn’t it?” she asked me.

“Yes, it was,” I said. “I was hoping your father—”

She turned back to him. “And you think this is a funny trick? Making me think you were about to die?”

“I’m sorry, honey, it was the only way to see you. I talked to your mother today, she said you haven’t been returning her calls, either. Michelle, you’ve been worrying us both to death.”

“Did you tell Mom what I’m doing?” “Of course.”