“Almost word for word, more or less.”
“What did I miss? What wouldn’t you promise?”
“If we found Hooks and/or Cross dead or alive.”
–
When they pulled up to the scene, Payne saw that there was now some semblance of normalcy-or what passed for normalcy in that part of the city.
The raging fires had been brought under control, although smoke still rose from the rented panel van. Two fire engines were pulling away, and the last ladder truck was being packed up in preparation of leaving. Only one fire-rescue ambulance was in sight. And Payne also noticed that the PECO undercover van was still in its place, and in one piece, parked just off Twenty-ninth Street.
Then, parked just ahead of the PECO van, Payne saw a Ford Explorer wrapped in the logotype of Philly News Now and, near it, the logotype of Action News! on a Chevrolet Suburban. And there was an assortment of what looked like rental sedans, all with placards on their dashboards that read WORKING MEDIA and/or a station’s logo.
Standing next to the Suburban was a five-foot-tall buxom brunette reporter wearing high heels with her blue jeans. She had on a bright red knit sweater with a string of pearls. And an Action News! ball cap with her hair in a ponytail poking out the back.
Payne sighed.
“What?” Harris said.
Payne nodded toward the reporter.
“Wonder Woman, our fair city’s Super Anchor, is here.”
“What do you know about her?” Harris said, then grunted. “Besides that she wears pearls and heels in the hood.”
“For starters, that she’s dangerous. So don’t say a word to her. Let me do all the talking.”
Harris put the Crown Vic in park, then looked askance at Payne.
“You’re serious, Matt.”
“As a heart attack.”
“Not a problem. With the exception of O’Hara, I hate dealing with those media types. She’s all yours, boss, Sergeant, sir.”
“Good. She’s out to prove herself, and as Mickey told me last week, it’s not exactly pretty.”
–
The previous Saturday night at the Union League in Center City, two blocks down Broad Street from City Hall, the Honorable Jerome Carlucci had held his annual charity event in the Lincoln Hall ballroom to raise funds for holiday gifts for the needy.
Payne’s attendance had come under some pressure-“Uncle Denny couldn’t make it,” he had told Mickey O’Hara, “and when he asked if I could, I knew by his tone, not to mention he was holding out the tickets, that that was the same as him saying I would, and so here I am under durance vile”-and he had spent a majority of time holding court at the League’s ornate dark oak bar with O’Hara.
Both were in black tie and drinking Macallan eighteen-year-old single malts mixed, at Payne’s instruction, with a splash of water and two ice cubes, and, because he was a member of the Union League, billed to his house account.
As Payne tilted his head back to drain his second drink, he absently looked up at the television above the bar.
It was tuned to the newscast of Philadelphia Action News. A perky-looking buxom thirty-year-old stood outside a Center City diner, her brunette hair in a ponytail poking out the back of a ball cap with the Action News! logotype across its front. The line along the bottom of the screen read RAYCHELL MEADOW INVESTIGATES.
“Why is this chick wasting time with Little Pete’s?” Payne said. “I thought it was closing because the building it’s in is set for demolition.”
An eccentric dive diner, Little Pete’s, at Seventeenth and Chancellor, around the corner from the Union League and across the street from the storied ninety-year-old Warwick Hotel, was an institution in its own right, having served in Center City around the clock, twenty-four/seven, for nearly four decades. And, judging by just the well-worn white-specked emerald green Formica tables, it more than looked its age-it appeared to have not had an update of any note since the doors first opened.
That, of course, was part of its charm. The fact that Little Pete’s served hefty portions of its greasy spoon staples-bacon-and-eggs to lox to scrapple to gyros-certainly was another. As were its lively servers, who addressed patrons as “hon”-even the obnoxious drunk ones feeding their munchies at three A.M.-and made sure that when ordering, patrons knew that Little Pete’s embraced In God We Trust-All Others Cash Only. Thank You Kindly. Hon.
“Raychell was anchor at one of the network TV affiliates in Missouri’s capital,” O’Hara said.
“St. Louis?”
O’Hara raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Not very big on geography, eh. .?”
Payne shrugged.
O’Hara went on: “Me neither. I had to look it up. Jefferson’s the capital. It’s tiny, so it shares its market with Columbia. Together they’re somewhere in the mid-hundreds, maybe one-sixty, market-share-wise.”
“While Philly is number four in the country.”
“Right.”
“And she catapulted into the hottie hot seat here because. .?”
“Oh, I’m not going to give this to you, Matty.” He smiled. “You’ve gotta work for it. This is too rich.”
Payne grunted.
“Okay, give me a clue.”
“Who was the attorney general of Missouri?”
“What? I don’t know the damn capital. How the hell would I know that? Why would I know that?”
“Perhaps because you know his former chief of staff.”
“I do? The Missouri AG’s chief of staff? How is that possible?”
“Former, and now current chief of staff for the attorney general for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
O’Hara looked across the bar. Payne followed his eyes and saw a pale-faced chubby-cheeked thirty-something with horn-rimmed glasses and a suit that dripped Ivy League having an animated conversation-He acts like everything he says is hilarious, Payne thought, but only he’s laughing-with Edward Stein.
Payne was aware that Frank Fuller had hired Stein away from his father’s law firm-his father, indicating his displeasure, had told him that-and Stein, at Fuller’s pleasure, was on loan to serve as Carlucci’s chief aide. The latter information having been provided by Denny Coughlin.
“So,” Payne said, “Daniel Patrick O’Connor is somehow connected. I do know that he and Stein, who until recently worked at my old man’s firm, were in the same Penn Law class. And that connection is?”
“Who owns the affiliate station, the perpetually-last-in-the-market affiliate that gives us the riveting Action News!?”
“I’m guessing the same sonofabitch who bankrolled the attorney general’s run for office.”
O’Hara nodded as he sipped his drink.
“With dark money, of course. .” he then said.
Payne knew that the “dark money” of well-heeled donors-individuals to teamster unions-was funneled through third-party political action committees in order to mask its source. And, for reasons that baffled him, was fully allowed by Pennsylvania law.
Payne nodded. “Which is legal, of course, but despicable. Which is why corruption in this state is off the chart.”
“Pay to play. .” O’Hara said, nodding, then added, “Five-Eff ring a bell?”
Payne sighed.
“Tell me you’re yanking my chain.”
“Good ol’ Frank, as you refer to him on days you’re not in a foul mood, tried to foist Wonder Woman on me at Philly News Now-which, incidentally, is how I came to research the Missouri capital-and I put my foot down. So he bumped her down the ladder to be a weekend anchor on Action News!”
The image on the TV screen transitioned to the station anchor desk, where the same buxom reporter, now with her thick brunette hair down to her shoulders and wearing an expensive outfit, sat with a TV monitor behind her showing the image of her in ball cap confronting the restaurant manager. At the bottom of the screen was a text box with ACTION NEWS ANCHOR RAYCHELL MEADOW.