What the dispatcher and the sergeant both should have known is that the cat was already out of the bag. Half the people in the Radio Room—call takers and dispatchers alike—already knew. Some of their friends on the outside knew, too, and had probably tipped off the press. Which meant that the prey had been selected, the hunt was afoot, and the feast of the jackals was just about ready to begin.
Homicide lieutenant Jorge Ramirez was directing two of his detectives to begin door-to-door questioning of all the neighbors, when he saw a guy in a sweatshirt and a woman with a trench coat get out of a news van and start setting up in Lee’s parking lot.
He motioned to a young detective, who dropped what he was doing and walked over to him.
“Has anybody called the captain?” Ramirez said.
“I left a message on his answering machine,” the detective said. “He paged me a few minutes ago and said he’d be coming down with the commissioner.”
“Good, because I don’t want these reporters asking me about a whole lot of stuff they know I can’t talk about. As a matter of fact, call Radio and have them try to get a hold of the girl from community relations. Sergeant Harris, I think her name is. Let her get out of bed and answer some questions.”
“Sure, Lieutenant.”
“You notified Podres’s family, right?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Good. As far as the press is concerned, the family hasn’t been notified yet, okay?”
“Sure, Boss.”
“I want to keep a lid on this thing for as long as possible. At least until tomorrow morning.”
Ramirez turned to walk back inside the house, wondering how Leroy had disappeared so quickly. Mrs. Green, the woman from two doors away, said she saw Leroy go into the house just before the gunshots. That’s how they’d lucked out and got a clothing description. The stuff on Leroy’s partner, though, was pure speculation. No matter. Ramirez figured that the best way to flush out Leroy was through another piper. And since the guy in the hospital wasn’t likely to wake up, he figured Black was the next best thing. After all, a piper would rat on his own mother for a three-dollar cap. He’d seen it happen.
“Detective,” the trench-coat-bedecked reporter called out.
Ramirez turned around, wondering what had made her pick him from the crowd of officers who were walking in and out of the house.
“Yes?”
“Is it true that Councilman Johnny Podres was found shot to death inside that house about an hour ago?” she said.
“No comment.”
“Detective,” the reporter called out as her cameraman trained a bright light in Ramirez’s face. “We have confirmed from several police sources that the victim, city councilman Johnny Podres, was shot to death in this house. Now, can you tell me if his family has at least been notified?”
A few people, older neighbors and kids who shouldn’t have been out at that time of night, began to gather, drawn by the lure of the camera and lights.
“Look, lady,” Ramirez said. “I don’t know who your sources are, but, as you know, Ms. . . .”
He left a space for her to fill in her name.
“Miss,” she said. “Miss Jeanette Deveraux. Don’t you watch the news?”
“No. Too much blood and guts.”
“Oh great,” she said, holding down her microphone. “A detective who can’t stand blood and guts.”
Ramirez stifled a grin.
“You were saying?” she prodded.
“I was saying, Miss Deveraux, that we cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. We’re withholding the identity of the victim until the family can be notified. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Do you have any suspects?” she asked, rushing the question to keep him from walking away from her.
“You probably already know the answer to that,” Ramirez said, knowing that all the news agencies monitored police transmissions with scanners.
“One more question,” the reporter said before he could run back into the house. “Isn’t 3746 Park Avenue a crack house?”
“One might call it that,” Ramirez said, feeling like he’d already said too much.
“Yeah, it’s a crack house!” someone from the crowd yelled.
“They know it’s a crack house!” another voice shouted.
“If you were doing your job from the beginning, shutting down these houses, you wouldn’t have to be here now!” an older woman said angrily.
The reporter looked at the woman. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Eva Richards,” she said.
“Can I talk to you when I finish talking to the detective?” Deveraux said.
“I don’t talk to reporters,” the woman said. “Especially about what goes on in these houses, because nobody’s going to protect me when these dope fiends and murderers come back here. Nobody.”
“Okay,” the reporter said. “But if you change your mind—”
“I won’t,” the woman said, and moved back into the crowd.
The reporter turned back to Ramirez.
“Well, Detective . . . ,” the reporter said, pausing to allow him to introduce himself.
“Ramirez. Lieutenant Ramirez.”
“Lieutenant Ramirez,” the reporter repeated. “What was Johnny Podres, the head of the Police Civilian Review Board, doing in a crack house?”
A murmur ran through the crowd as some of the neighbors learned the identity of the victim for the first time. Ramirez turned beet red. As far as this reporter knew, Podres’s family hadn’t even been notified. So why would she stand there and tell the world that the man was dead when his wife might still be at home waiting for him to come to bed?
Ramirez started to argue that point. He paused for a moment and opened his mouth to speak. But common sense got the better of him.
“No comment,” he said, and disappeared into the house.
Jeanette Deveraux looked at her notes, breathed deeply, and turned to her cameraman.
“Okay, Mike, are they ready for the live shot?” she asked him.
“Yeah, Jeanette. Ready when you are.”
“Okay, let’s take it live.”
He gave her a silent countdown, then pointed at her. Standing against a backdrop of barricades, yellow tape, police officers, and neighbors, Jeanette Deveraux contorted her face into that grave, concerned expression television reporters resort to with blood-and-guts stories. And then, as three more news vans and two cars pulled onto the block, she milked it for all it was worth.
“This is Jeanette Deveraux reporting live from the 3700 block of Park Avenue in North Philadelphia, where a Philadelphia city official has been found dead in this reputed crack house.”
She turned and extended her hand toward the house, and the camera zoomed in as a child on a bike rode past and waved.
“The official’s name is being withheld by police pending family notification,” she continued. “But several police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said that the victim, shot once in the head, was a prominent member of city council.”
She began to walk along the edge of the yellow tape, making her way toward Mrs. Richards, who had retreated to the wooden gate that separated the houses from the alleylike street that ran between the Lee’s Chicken parking lot and the back of the Park Avenue houses.
“Police have begun the search for two male suspects who may still be in the area. The car they are believed to have escaped in was involved in a high-speed chase in which one occupant was killed and another was taken into custody and hospitalized in critical condition. A police officer was injured during that chase and is also hospitalized in serious condition.”
She walked right up to Mrs. Richards, who turned too slowly to walk away. “Neighbors, including this woman, are fearful and outraged. How does it feel to know your public servants are being found in crack houses?”
“I told you,” Mrs. Richards said. “I don’t talk to no reporters about what goes on in these houses.”
“Because of fear?” Jeanette Deveraux said.
“Because I don’t,” Mrs. Richards said as she walked away.
“This is Jeanette Deveraux, reporting live from North Philadelphia, a neighborhood besieged by fear.”
Two men and a woman, all with perfect hair and trench coats, got out of the other news vans and scrambled to set up live reports from the back of the house. Two other men, armed with notepads and tape recorders, got out of cars that had pulled up along with the news vans and began to talk to the neighbors who were willing to talk.
As they did, another car pulled up. A man wearing a suit and a man pulling on the jacket to a police captain’s uniform walked up to the barricades and flashed badges. Before they could make it into the house, the lights and cameras were upon them.
“Commissioner Nelson, Commissioner Nelson!” a reporter from Channel 3 yelled out in a voice too forceful for someone her size.
Commissioner Nelson turned around. “We will not have any comment on any aspect of this case until the family of the victim has been notified. Thank you.”
“What about the officer who was injured chasing the suspects?” a reporter from the
Daily News
asked. “Will the suspects be charged in relation to that?”
“No comment,” Nelson said, bending down to get under the yellow tape.
“Do you have any idea where the suspects might be hiding out?” a reporter from Channel 6 asked.
“No comment,” Nelson said, walking briskly toward the back door.
“How could the suspects have walked away from a crash in which one of their companions was burned beyond recognition and another was critically injured?” Henry Moore, a freelance reporter, asked the retreating commissioner. “And how could they disappear in an area flooded with police officers?”
“No comment,” he said over his shoulder as he walked into the house.
“Are you sure they were even in the car?” the reporter from Channel 3 asked.
But by the time that question was asked, the commissioner and the captain were inside the house.
“Don’t tell me,” the reporter said to herself. “No comment.”
The commissioner was seeking out Ramirez, whom he had heard live on ABC on the car radio. When he found him, he gave it to him with both barrels.
“Lieutenant, may I speak to you privately?” Nelson said, looking weary and red-eyed, like he always did.
“Yes, sir,” Ramirez said, bracing himself and walking with the commissioner to a corner of the living room.
“If I ever hear you say anything other than ‘No comment’ when the press asks you about an ongoing investigation, I will personally see to it that you get taken to the front,” Nelson said, threatening the police equivalent of a court-martial. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I will guarantee that I will make that experience so long, so drawn out, so frustrating, so painful, that you will not want your badge by the time it’s over. I will see to it that Internal Affairs gets you for everything from wiping your ass the wrong way to jerking off in the shower. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Nelson said. “Now, why the hell haven’t these guys been apprehended? What’d they do, disappear into thin air?”
“Well, sir, I think—”
“I don’t care what you think, mister!” Nelson said. “Think about apprehending those suspects before we’re all out of a job.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to understand something, Ramirez,” Nelson said. “I want you to understand that I think you’re a hell of a detective. That’s why I’m putting the entire East and Northwest divisions at your disposal for this investigation. But even though I think you could probably handle this thing yourself, myself and Captain Sheldon are going to personally supervise everything that goes on here.
“We’re going back to headquarters to pick up a mobile communications unit,” Nelson said, putting a fancy name on what amounted to a trailer with some electronic equipment inside. “We’re going to set it up right outside this house, you’ll report directly to us with requests for any resources you need, and we’ll find these guys within the next twenty-four hours. Because if we don’t, if we’re depicted in the press as a bunch of incompetents who were outsmarted by pipers . . .”
Nelson paused in an effort to calm himself.
“If we don’t find them,” Nelson said, “and I mean yesterday, then God help us all.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Ramirez watched the commissioner and the captain walk back to their car for the ride back to headquarters, he realized that he wasn’t terribly eager to work with either of them. He had the feeling there would be too many chiefs and not enough Indians. He knew he could handle it, though. It wouldn’t kill him. It was what he didn’t know that could kill him.
Chapter 5
C
larisse broke out a six-pack, and they all had a cold one. It helped them to feel the high every time they took a hit, instead of smoking cap after cap and feeling nothing. But even with the beer, none of them felt the way they thought they should, because the first good hit of crack is often the last one. That’s one of the reasons that people get strung out. They get caught up in the cycle of trying to get one more hit like the very first one. But they never do.
“You ain’t got no forties up in here, Clarisse?” Leroy said, pushing his screen back to the other end of his straight to scrape the residue from the caps he’d smoked up to the top of the screens.
“No, I don’t have any forties, Leroy,” Clarisse said, shaking her head.
“ ‘Ain’t got no,’ ” she said to herself, mocking him. “Somebody call the English police.”
“I wish it was only the English police,” Leroy said.
“What are you talking about?” Clarisse said.
Leroy looked at Black, who jumped in quickly.
“Why don’t you ever push your straight, Clarisse?” he said, changing the subject and wishing that Leroy would stop saying stupid stuff.
“For what?” she said, going over to the radio and turning on KYW News Radio. “By the time I do all that, I could just get somebody to go and get me some more.”
“Yeah, but you missin’ the best part o’ the hit,” Black said. “Let me show you.”
Black reached for the straight shooter he had given her.
“I don’t think so,” she said, pulling the glass tube away.
For a moment, Black was offended. But after he thought about it, he couldn’t blame her for not trusting him. Crack isn’t a social drug, like weed, where everybody can get high from a single joint. And it isn’t like beer, where people drink it and get happy. No, crack is a lot different from anything else people use to get high. Very rarely is it fun to smoke. Usually, the high is scary, and the people who smoke it are worse than scary. So Black was almost relieved that Clarisse didn’t give up her straight that easily. If she was going to keep smoking, she would have to be that way, because most of the people she would end up smoking with wouldn’t care about her, about themselves, about anybody, or about anything.
Pipers are devious. They do all sorts of things to make sure that the person who’s treating doesn’t get high. That way, the person will keep buying more. The tricks range from poking a hole in the screens, so that the crack burns too quickly, to burning the screens so that the smoke doesn’t come through. There are a million ways to get over, and Clarisse wasn’t about to fall victim to any of them.
“Girl, gimme the straight and lemme show you somethin’,” Black said, extending his hand for the straight shooter.
Hesitantly, she handed it to him, watching carefully to see that he didn’t do anything extra. Keeping his hands in front of her so she could see what he was doing, Black pulled out a broken umbrella spoke with an empty cap attached to the end of it. With the jagged end, he scraped the thick brown residue off the side of her straight and shook it gently onto a bent piece of matchbook. When he had finished, there was an inch-high mound of flaky brown scrapings on the piece of cardboard.
“See that?” he said. “That mean your screen’s too loose. You tighten ’em up with this.”
He showed her the empty cap that he had forced onto the other end of the umbrella spoke.
“Okay,” she said, watching with wide-eyed fascination, as if he were performing some kind of complex experiment.
Turning the straight until the end she had been smoking from was flat on the table, Black pushed the screen down until the empty cap crushed it against the tabletop, making it more compact, and thus tighter. Then he turned it over, pushed the screen down enough so she could dump one or two caps, and handed it to her.
“Hold this,” he said, and emptied half a cap into the straight, then half the contents of the matchbook, then the other half of the cap on top.
Black lit two matches for her, held them to the end of the straight, and watched her pull the smoke into her lungs. There was a crackling sound, louder than that of a regular cap by itself, and a thick stream of cream-colored smoke shot through the glass tube.
Clarisse’s entire face seemed to change as she pulled in the smoke, her eyes bulging and her hand shaking as she tried to hold the straight steady. Her body began to move in small twitching motions, and Black became afraid for her, thinking that her heart might give out, as he had heard other people’s had done when the hit was too good. But she continued to pull in the smoke, then held it in, her entire face quivering, and handed him the straight shooter with a slightly trembling hand.
Black looked at her, then at Leroy and Pookie, who sat watching them, and he knew that this was the hit Clarisse had never gotten before, the ghost that she would chase until she’d reached the end of her road, either in needless death or in hopeless surrender to the crack demon.
Her eyes became wide, and her jaw became slack as she stood, watching Black in a way she never had. She glanced at Leroy and Pookie, her body involuntarily swaying in a circular motion. Then she looked down at the straight, and down at Black, and roughly slid her hand up and down his crotch.
He looked into her eyes, and then at the smoke swirling at the end of the straight. Then he shook out the two matches he had held for Clarisse, lit one match, and began to pull the remainder of the thick smoke into his lungs. Clarisse sat down in a chair directly in front of where he stood, sweating and breathing heavily, and began to unbutton her blouse, as if she were melting under the force of some incredible source of heat. Pookie and Leroy sat at either end of the table, watching her and moving closer to each other.
“You always wanted this, didn’t you, Everett?” she asked through lips that were frozen in the mouth-numbing grin of a crack fiend, while she undid his pants and stared at the eerily silent Leroy and Pookie.
As Black pulled on the seemingly endless stream of smoke, Clarisse placed him in her mouth, pulling him down into a place where smoke and pleasure whirled around each other in a swirling play of light and sound. When he finished pulling in the smoke, he stood with his eyes closed and felt her hands caressing him while her lips and tongue ran up and down the length of him.
Black put down the straight, slowly released the smoke through his nostrils, and began to caress her breasts. She gasped and he fell to his knees, pulling her down from the chair, his hands exploring her, learning for themselves what his eyes already knew—that she was delicious.
Kneeling there, Black could feel her, could smell her, could taste her. He put her fingers in his mouth and sucked them, one at a time, then ran his hands along the inside of her thighs, touching her softly until her essence poured out beneath his touch. He licked her breasts, teasing and then sucking, whispering the things he had never felt good enough to say to her, running fingers through hair, hands over hips, lips over eyelids and shoulders and neck. And then he sat before her, beckoning for her to move closer, to respond.
Clarisse pulled her skirt around her hips and sat atop his thighs. Gently, he wrapped her legs around his back and thrust into her, searching her eyes for the Clarisse he knew he’d never find again. She locked her ankles behind him and rocked back and forth, her waters running down and through him like hot streams. He met her every motion with a motion of his own, still searching her eyes and hoping that the Clarisse he’d known was still there, still salvageable. She began to scream, to curse him, to love him, to hate him. And then, with a violent shudder, she climaxed, and Black knew that she was someone entirely different. The Clarisse he’d known before had died in the swirl of creamy smoke that drifted toward the ceiling, fading into nothingness, like a ghost.
Now all that remained for either of them was to watch and to wait for whatever was next. There was no turning back. So they sat, their juices running down between them, and watched Pookie give to Leroy what she had never given to anyone who had paid for it.
When Black turned around, Pookie was pulling in smoke, standing and slowly gyrating in a strangely erotic grind. Then she held her straight to Leroy’s lips and let him pull the remainder of the smoke from the tube. While he inhaled the smoke, she dropped to her knees and released him from his clothing, caressing him slowly and gently, as if she wanted nothing more than to touch him. Then she began to roll him around on her tongue like candy. For a moment, he watched her. Then he rose from the chair, turned her around, threw her against the wall, and entered her.
Black laid Clarisse on the floor and was upon her, pushing into her as he braced her legs over his shoulders, penetrating her and reveling in the sound of her childlike squeals. Clarisse met his thrusts head-on, giving him all there was to give, while Leroy and Pookie gave their fear and their excitement and their relief to each other against the wall on the other side of the room.
Forever, it seemed, they continued, filling the room with screams and sweat and musky embraces, clawing and tearing at each other like animals, holding on to whatever they could salvage of the moment. And then, through the haze, Black heard someone call his name.
He stopped and turned to Leroy, who was stock still against the wall, listening. Clarisse stopped moving, sensing that something was wrong, and Pookie began to adjust her clothes. The same voice called Leroy’s name, and Leroy looked at Black, then at the radio, and they all began to listen.
“ . . . and to recap the top story this hour, police are looking for two males in connection with a murder in a reputed North Philadelphia crack house and an assault on a police officer,” the voice was saying against a Teletype backdrop. “Although they have not released the name of the victim pending family notification, police have formally released the names of the suspects. They are Leroy Johnson, thirty-four, and Samuel Everett Jackson, known as ‘Black,’ twenty-four. Johnson is a dark- complexioned black male, five feet eleven inches tall, one hundred sixty pounds, with a scar on his right forearm and a tattoo on his chest that reads 30
TH STREET NATION
. He speaks with a slight stutter and was last seen wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the word
FILA
written across the front. Jackson is a dark-complexioned black male, five feet ten inches tall, one hundred fifty pounds. No further description. They may have made their escape on foot from Roberts and Wayne at or around 12:15
A.M.
They may be injured, and they should be considered armed and dangerous. If you spot either male, police are asking that you immediately call 911. KYW News time is 1:46. AccuWeather is next.”
For a moment, they were all still. No one looked at anyone. No one moved. No one breathed. They simply stared into space, wondering if it was all part of the high.
Clarisse was the first to speak.
“Who did you kill, Everett?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“I don’t know,” Black said, pulling on his clothing and staring hard at Leroy. “Ask him. He should know.”
“I’m asking you!” Clarisse shouted. “You, Everett. That’s who I’m asking. The one I let into my home, the one I trusted!”
“Clarisse, I—”
“Clarisse, nothing!” she said, picking up her underwear. “Now, unless you plan to kill me next, I suggest you get out of my house.”
“He ain’t k-kill nobody,” Leroy said, mumbling.
“What?” Clarisse said.
“I said, he ain’t kill nobody,” Leroy said.
“I don’t care what he did,” Clarisse said. “They’re broadcasting your ass on KYW and—”
“He ain’t kill nobody and I didn’t either,” Leroy said. “Now, I don’t know how they got our descriptions and I don’t know why they think Black was there, because he wasn’t. But we ain’t kill that dude.”
“Well, how do you know it was a dude?” Clarisse said. “They didn’t say it was a dude. It could’ve been a woman. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you. We can settle all this right now.”
Clarisse picked up the phone. Pookie went over and snatched the phone cord from the wall.
“Bitch, you ain’t settlin’ nothin’,” she said. “You might as well go ’head over there and sit down in one o’ them chairs ’fore you get—”
Clarisse punched Pookie hard on the side of the head, knocking her into the doorway that separated the kitchen from the dining room.
“Bitch, don’t you ever,” Clarisse said, kicking her in the head.
“Dis—” she said with a punch to the ribs.
“Respect,” with a kick to the midsection.
“Me,” punching and kicking her in the face.
Pookie fell on her back, sliding across the kitchen floor, then recovered and kicked a charging Clarisse in the stomach, knocking her back into the dining room table. Clarisse lost her balance and fell hard into a table leg. The leg broke, and the table fell across Clarisse’s arm, pinning her to the floor.
“Yeah, bitch, what?” Pookie said, getting up from the kitchen floor and preparing to pounce.
“Nah, y’all gon’ stop this right now,” Black said, grabbing and pushing Pookie away from Clarisse. “Leroy, get your girl, man.”
“That ain’t my girl, man.”
“Yeah, that’s what you think.”
Black pulled Clarisse from beneath the heavy rosewood table.
“Go in the freezer and get some ice,” he said to Pookie. “And put the rest o’ your clothes on. We gotta get outta here.”
Pookie looked at Leroy, who nodded, and then she went into the kitchen to get the ice.
“That ain’t your girl?” Black asked facetiously.
“Look, man, I—”
“Look, nothin’!” he said, taking the ice pack from Pookie and placing it on Clarisse’s arm. “I should be up in here kickin’ your ass. You got my name all on the radio and I don’t even know what’s goin’ on. You gon’ have to tell me somethin’, or I’m callin’ 911 myself.”
“Black, I—”
“I’ll be just like this,” Black said, picking up a mock phone. “Yeah, 25th District? This Black. Yeah, that’s right, Black—the one y’all got on the radio.”
Black paused for a minute, waiting for his make-believe cop to say something.