His mind raced. He looked at the street ahead.
There ain’t time to wait for help.
I’ve gotta get him to it. .
“Hang on, Matt.”
Daquan then bolted back through the overgrowth of bushes.
As he came out the far side, he saw the driver of the Ford sedan, a heavyset black woman in her late fifties, leaning over the open trunk, looking over her shoulder as she rushed to remove bulging white plastic grocery bags.
He ran toward her and loudly called, “Hey! I need your car. .”
The woman, the heavy bags swinging from her hands, turned and saw Daquan quickly approaching.
Then she saw that he was holding a pistol.
She dropped the bags, then went to her knees, quivering as she covered her gray hair with her hands.
“Please. . take whatever you want. . take it all. . just don’t hurt me. .”
Daquan saw that a ring of keys had fallen to the ground with the bags.
“It’s an emergency!” he said, reaching down and grabbing the keys.
Tires squealed as he made a hard right at the first corner, going over the curb and onto the sidewalk, then did it again making another right at the next intersection. He sped along the block, braking hard to look for Payne down one vacant lot, then accelerating again until braking at the next lot.
He finally found the one with Payne and the teenager-Payne was trying to sit upright; the teen had not moved-and skidded to a stop at the curb.
Daquan considered driving across the lot to reach Payne faster, but was afraid the car would become stuck.
He threw the gearshift into park and left the engine running and the driver’s door open as he ran toward Payne.
He saw that Payne was holding his left hand over the large blood-soaked area of his gray sweatshirt. And, as Daquan approached closer, he saw Payne, with great effort, raise his head to look toward him-while pointing his.45 in Daquan’s direction.
“Don’t shoot, Matt! It’s me!”
“Daquan,” Payne said weakly, then after a moment lowered his pistol and moved to get up on one knee.
Daquan squatted beside him. Payne wrapped his right arm around Daquan’s neck, and slowly they stood.
“This way,” Daquan said, leaning Payne into him and starting to walk.
The first couple of steps were awkward, more stumbles than solid footing, but then suddenly, with a grunt, Payne found his legs.
They managed a rhythm and were almost back to the car when Daquan noticed a young black male in a wheelchair rolling out onto the porch of a row house across the street.
“Yo! What the fuck!” the male shouted, coming down a ramp to the sidewalk. “What’d you shoot my man Ray-Ray for?”
Daquan said nothing but kept an eye on him as they reached the car and he opened the back door. He helped Payne slide onto the backseat, slammed the door shut, then ran and got behind the wheel.
“Yo!” the male shouted again.
As Daquan pulled on the gearshift, he could hear the male still shouting and then saw in the rearview mirror that he had started wheeling up the street toward the car.
And then he saw something else.
“Damn!” Daquan said aloud.
He ducked just before the windows on the left side of the car shattered in a hail of bullets.
And then he realized there was a sudden burning sensation in his back and shoulder.
He floored the accelerator pedal.
–
Daquan knew that Temple University Hospital was only blocks down Broad Street from Erie Avenue. He walked past it every day going to and from his job at the diner. It wasn’t uncommon for him to have to wait at the curb while an ambulance, siren wailing and horn blaring, weaved through traffic, headed to the emergency room entrance on Ontario Street.
Driving to the ER would take no time. But Daquan suddenly was feeling light-headed. Just steering in a straight line was quickly becoming a challenge.
He decided it would be easier to stay away from Broad Street and its busy traffic.
He approached Erie Avenue, braked, and laid on the horn as he glanced in both directions, then stepped heavily on the gas pedal again.
His vision was getting blurry, and he fought to keep focused. He heard horns blaring as he crossed Erie and prayed whoever it was could avoid hitting them.
By the time the sedan approached Ontario, Daquan realized that things were beginning to happen in slow motion. He made the turn, carefully, but again ran up over the curb, then bumped a parked car, sideswiping it before yanking the steering wheel. The car moved to the center of the street.
Now he could make out the hospital ahead and, after a block, saw the sign for the emergency room, an arrow indicating it was straight ahead.
Then he saw an ambulance, lights flashing, that was parked in one of the bays beside a four-foot-high sign that read EMERGENCY ROOM DROP-OFF ONLY.
Daquan reached the bays, and began to turn into the first open one.
His head then became very light-and he felt himself slowly slumping over.
The car careened onto the sidewalk, struck a refuse container, and finally rammed a concrete pillar before coming to a stop.
Daquan struggled to raise his head.
Through blurry eyes, he saw beyond the shattered car window that the doors on the ambulance had swung open.
Two people in uniforms leaped out and began running toward the car.
Daquan heard the ignition switch turn and the engine go quiet, then felt a warm hand on him and heard a female voice.
“Weak,” she said, “but there’s a pulse.”
“No pulse on this guy,” a male voice from the backseat said. “I’m taking him in. .”
Then Daquan blacked out.
TWO DAYS EARLIER. .
[TWO]
JFK Plaza
Fifteenth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia
Saturday, December 15, 9:55 A.M.
The moment she caught a glimpse in the distance of the iconic steel sculpture towering above the park’s granite fountain-the pop-art twelve-foot-tall bright red letters stacked like so many children’s blocks to spell LOVE-Lauren Childs knew that she absolutely had to be photographed in front of it.
All morning the nineteen-year-old had taken shots with the camera on her cell phone, and then uploaded her favorites to Facebook for her friends to see. She knew that this photograph would be the best yet.
She didn’t know it would be her last alive.
Lauren Childs and her boyfriend, Tony Gambacorta, had come down from Reading, about sixty miles north of Philly. They’d met there in September, as sophomores at Albright College, and began dating almost immediately. Tony, tall and olive-skinned with dark good looks, had been taken by the outgoing personality of the petite fair-skinned blonde with the pixie face. Lauren was open to almost any adventure, and the day trip to Philadelphia had been her idea.
“I want to soak up the holiday magic of the city,” she had told him.
After some window-shopping along Walnut Street in Center City-what the city’s tourism advertisements touted as “the Fifth Avenue of Philadelphia”-they had walked to JFK Plaza, commonly called LOVE Park, which covered an entire tree-filled block across the street from City Hall.
A festive holiday crowd packed its German-themed Christmas Village, which was patterned on Nuremberg’s sixteenth-century Christkindlesmarkt. Rows of Alpine-influenced wooden huts offered traditional German food and drink and holiday wares, and there were live performances by string quartets and dancers in authentic period outfits.
Tony had bought Lauren a genuine Bavarian felt hat, dark green with a brown feather in the hatband, which she now wore at a rakish angle while sipping a warm cup of Glühwein, red wine spiced with clove, cinnamon, and orange. He wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the weather-it had snowed heavily the previous night and looked like it might again-that caused her high cheeks and perky nose to glow with a cute rose hue.