"Anything else out of the ordinary?"

"Define 'out of the ordinary,' Sergeant Payne."

They all chuckled.

Harris, looking deep in thought, then said, "Not really. Gartner was wearing a T-shirt that read PEACE LOVE JUSTICE."

Payne snorted. "File that under 'Irony,' Detective, not 'Extraordinary.'"

Harris shrugged. After a minute, he added, "Well, the only other thing that comes to mind is that there wasn't any paperwork attached."

"Really?" Payne said, visibly surprised. "Now, that's out of the ordinary-outside the MO of the other pop-and-drops, that is."

"Paperwork?" O'Hara asked, looking from Matt to Tony. "Like police forms?"

Then he looked at Payne.

"Wait," O'Hara said. "Back up. Explain that 'outside the others' modus operandi modus operandi oddity thing. What method of operation?" oddity thing. What method of operation?"

Payne took a sip of his single-malt, then said: "The MO in the other cases is that someone's shooting fugitives in the head or chest and dumping their bodies. Further, the dead guys-and they're only guys, so far-are wanted on outstanding warrants. A couple of them jumped bail, the others violated parole, for s.e.x crimes against women and children. Involuntary deviant s.e.xual intercourse, rape, aggravated indecent a.s.sault. These s.h.i.ts get popped point-blank, then dumped at a district station, one we a.s.sume is closest to where they got nabbed."

"None dumped at the Roundhouse?"

"None. At least not yet. That'd be an interesting situation."

O'Hara nodded as he took all that in.

"Now, the difference between those dumped at the districts and these two tonight is that tonight there was no 'paperwork'-printouts of the bad guys' Wanted info downloaded from the Internet. All the others had their paperwork stapled to them."

"Stapled? Like to their clothes?" Like to their clothes?"

Payne nodded. "Usually. But one b.a.s.t.a.r.d who'd raped a ten-year-old girl had his sheet stapled clean through his p.r.i.c.k. Multiple times."

"Ouch!" O'Hara said, instinctively crossing his legs.

Payne then said, "You know, it's funny, because your website is one place from where more than one of the Wanted posters has been downloaded. You can tell because the line at the foot of the page shows the date the page was printed and its source URL."

"That's great to know," O'Hara said. "That means that CrimeFreePhilly is working!"

"Only," Payne said dryly, "to create more crime, it would appear. As far as I know, as much as a miserable dirty rotten s.h.i.t Danny Gartner was, he had no criminal record."

O'Hara shrugged. "Chalk it up to collateral damage. You a.s.sociate with swine, you're going to get muddy, too."

"Jay-Cee," Harris put in, "had charges against him of involuntary deviant s.e.xual intercourse and rape of an unconscious or unaware person in one case that Gartner got tossed."

Payne nodded, then took a swallow of his single-malt and glanced at his watch.

"I need to get the h.e.l.l out of here. I'm trying to have a life outside of work," he said, then looked at O'Hara. "Okay, Mick. That's all we know at this point. Now tell me what you know."

O'Hara raised his gla.s.s. "Not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing, Matty. That's why you're called the confidential source close to the Roundhouse, and I'm called the reporter."

O'Hara took a sip of his drink as Payne gave him the finger.

"Sorry, pal. I really wish I had something for you. You know that eventually I will. And when I do, it's yours."

They all then stared into their gla.s.ses, quietly thinking.

After some time, O'Hara suddenly said, "So, Matty, what do you think are the chances of solving this?"

"Seriously?"

O'Hara nodded. "Seriously."

"h.e.l.l, I don't know. Right now, I'd say that the odds are about as high as the number of 'r's in 'fat f.u.c.king chance.' Zilch. Which is maybe slightly better than, say, finding all those fifty thousand fugitives."

Harris said, "Hey, you got Fort Festung. He was in the wind."

"Whoopie! One down, another forty-nine thousand nine-ninety-nine, give or take, to go. And don't forget that he took almost twenty years."

Tony Harris's cell phone then chimed once and vibrated. He pulled it from the plastic cradle on his belt and glanced at the LCD screen.

"It's Jenkins," he said as his thumb worked the BB-size polymer ball to navigate the phone's screen. He rolled and clicked to where the text messages were stored. "He's working the Wheel."

The Homicide Unit had a system called "the Wheel," basically a roster that listed the detectives on the shift. At the top of the roster was the detective currently a.s.signed to "man the desk." When a call came in with a new murder, the "desk man" got a.s.signed to the case. The detective listed below him on the roster-who was said to be "next up on the wheel"-then became the next "desk man."

Harris pushed again, then saw the message and exclaimed, "Holy s.h.i.t!"

O'Hara looked at Payne and casually inquired, "How come you don't get 'holy s.h.i.t!' texts from the Wheel guy? You're a sergeant. That outranks a lowly detective like Harris."

Tony handed Matt the phone for him to read the text message.

"Correction," Payne said. "I'm a sergeant a.s.signed to a desk. Tony gets the fun job of working the streets."

He looked at the screen.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" Payne repeated, rereading the message as he said, "Well, Mickey, do you want an exclusive for CrimeFreePhilly?"

"Sure. What?"

Matt handed the phone back to Tony, then his eyes met Mickey's.

"Minutes after the last Crime Scene Unit drove off from Lex Talionis," Matt said, "another body got dumped there. Someone walking by thought it was a vagrant pa.s.sed out on the sidewalk. Then they noticed all the blood."

"Holy s.h.i.t!" O'Hara joined in, then downed his drink.

"You can't run with this just yet, Mickey, but there's something different with this pop-and-drop."

"What?"

"He was strangled and beaten. But no bullet wounds."

O'Hara banged the gla.s.s on the wooden bar and, making a circular gesture with his hand over their drinks, barked to the bartender: "Johnny, all this on my tab. We've got to go!"

[TWO].

Loft Number 2055 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 1:14 A.M.

Tossing his suit coat and kicking off his loafers, H. Rapp Badde, Jr., chased the beautiful and giggling Cleopatra past the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room. His intent: to make the beast with two backs after ripping off the Halloween outfit as fast as humanly possible.

I love that there're no other high-rises near here so no one can see us through those big windows.

I can do whatever the h.e.l.l I want. . . .

It wasn't the first time that the idea of doing whatever the h.e.l.l he wanted-d.a.m.n the consequences-had entered the mind of H. Rapp Badde, Jr.

For almost all of his thirty-two years, Badde-a fairly fit, five-foot-eleven two-hundred-pounder with a thin face, close-cropped hair, and medium-dark skin-had learned that what he could not get with his charisma or his arrogant badgering, he could always get by subtly, or sometimes not so subtly, playing his favorite card, that of being a disadvantaged minority.

It was a tactic-a remarkably effective one considering that Philly as a whole was half black, some sections up to three-quarters-that he had learned from his father. Horatio R. Badde, Sr., had used it successfully to work himself up from being a small-business owner-first a barber in South Philadelphia, then the owner of a string of barbershops throughout the city-to being elected to the Philadelphia City Council, and then, almost ten years later, to the office of mayor.

Which was exactly Rapp's planned next step: to become mayor. He was banking both on the name recognition-"Mayor Badde" still was familiar to voters despite the eight years since his father held the office-and what he considered to be his own accomplishments as a city councilman. And he was going to let nothing get in his way. There'd already been rumors trying to tie him to voter fraud, but he publicly dismissed them as exactly that-rumors that were simply a part of petty politics.

Rapp Badde did as he pleased-d.a.m.n the consequences-and the Hop Haus Tower condominium was no exception.

The tax rolls of the Philadelphia County Recorder of Deeds, in Room 156 at City Hall, showed Loft Number 2055-a year-old 2,010-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath condominium on the twentieth floor-as being owned by the Urban Venture Fund, in care of Mr. James R. Johnson, JRJ Certified Public Accountants, 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

There was similar information on the books at the complex.

The building management kept a regularly updated computer file known as PROPERTY OWNERS: PERMANENT RESIDENTS & REGISTERED GUESTS. It listed everyone who was officially on file and showed that 2055's permanent resident was named Johnson, James R., and its listed registered guest was a Harper, Janelle.

While it wasn't unusual for the names of owners and guests to be different-there were, for example, many unmarried couples who cohabited, as well as many lawfully married couples whose surnames were not the same-neither James Johnson nor Janelle Harper had a genuine financial investment in Loft Number 2055.

In fact, the apartment's official owner, the Urban Venture Fund, was a corporate ent.i.ty solely owned by one H. R. Badde, Jr., 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

That was in technical terms.

Practically speaking, Unit 2055's permanent resident and its (very) regular guest were actually Jan Harper and Rapp Badde.

Never mind that Mr. James R. Johnson, CPA, had never set foot in the place.

And never mind that Badde had purchased, with cash, the pied pied-a-terre love nest. love nest.

And certainly never mind that the funds for the purchase were a small part of those provided to his mayoral election campaign chest by a generous businessman who believed in the politician, in his future at City Hall, and his influence therein for old friends.

Twenty-five-year-old Jan Harper-who had a full and curvy five-six, one-forty body and a silky light-brown skin tone-was down to barely-more than Cleopatra's golden-colored sheer panties and plastic-jeweled collar and crown as she ran into the bedroom. Rapp was hot on her heels.

And just as she jumped on the king-size bed's thick goose-down comforter, her legs flying up and ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s bouncing, Rapp heard his Go To h.e.l.l cell phone start ringing in his pants pocket.

d.a.m.n! he thought. he thought.

Badde shared the number of his Go To h.e.l.l phone, one of two he carried, with next to no one-only his accountant, his three lawyers, and a select few others who were friends or business a.s.sociates, or both, had the number. Even Jan didn't know it; being his executive a.s.sistant, she could call him on his main cell phone.

He'd given it that name because, when somebody who did have the number called, chances were d.a.m.n good that something had just gone to h.e.l.l. Or was about to.

Jan was now busily unb.u.t.toning Rapp's white dress shirt as he quickly dug into his pants pocket.

Retrieving the phone, he looked at the screen, hissed the word "s.h.i.t," then pulled away from Jan's hands. He walked toward the windows.

"What?" she said, surprised. Then, a little indignantly, she added, "Who the h.e.l.l is that at this hour?"

He held up his left index finger to gesture Give me a minute, Give me a minute, then flipped open the phone, put it to his head, and said, "Everything okay, man?" then flipped open the phone, put it to his head, and said, "Everything okay, man?"

He listened for a moment.

"Wait," he suddenly said. "Who the h.e.l.l is this, and how'd you get this number?"

After a moment, he said, "G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"

His eye caught Jan, now sitting up on the comforter with her arms crossed over her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her head c.o.c.ked, looking at him curiously.

"Hold on a minute, brother," he said into the phone.

Then to Jan he said, "I'm sorry, honey. I'll be right back."

Badde slid open the gla.s.s door in the wall of the floor-to-ceiling windows and stepped out onto the small concrete balcony.

The view from the twentieth floor was extraordinary. And for more than just the beauty of the lights twinkling in the night.

H. Rapp Badde, Jr., enjoyed the feeling he got from being up so high and seeing so many parts of the city that made up his life. It made him feel literally on top of the world, or at least on top of what he thought of as his his world-Philadelphia. world-Philadelphia.

"Okay, Kenny-I mean, Kareem Kareem," Badde said when he'd closed the sliding gla.s.s door, "calm down and start from the beginning."

For his first twenty-two years, Kareem Abdul-Qaadir answered to the name Kenny Jones. That had changed two years ago when Kenny Jones, not the brightest bulb on the marquee, had gotten arrested for selling crack cocaine to undercover Philly cops in Germantown, then fled the justice system by jumping his two-thousand-dollar bond.

The Jones family, who'd lived in a brick-faced row house across Daly Street from the Baddes in South Philly, had four brothers. Kenny was second oldest, after Jack, who'd been a cla.s.smate and friend of Badde's seemingly forever.

When Kenny went on the lam, he called his big brother for help and advice. Jack then turned to his old buddy, Rapp Badde. The city councilman had connections with the authorities-"Maybe he can get the whole case thrown out or something," Jack told Kenny. And if for some reason Badde was not able to use those connections, he had other resources well beyond the Joneses'.