“Kerry,” Walker then said. “Let’s go to seventeen.”
The main screen showed a crisp, clear, full-color image of the Temple University Hospital. There was a mix of unmarked Crown Victoria Interceptors and marked police cars, all with their lights flashing, lining the curbs.
The text in the lower right-hand corner read:
Temple University Hospital
Broad amp; Tioga 1158 hours, 24 Sept “And here we have a real-time feed of the hospital,” Walker said. He turned and looked at Corporal Rapier. “Eighteen, please, Kerry.”
The color image was replaced with a somewhat grainy black-and-white exterior shot of the Temple University Hospital. There were cars in the street and people on the sidewalk. But none moved. The image was frozen. The text read:
Temple University Hospital
CCD #21. POV: Eastward from Tioga/Broad 1046 hours, 24 Sept “You might find this one interesting,” Walker said. “Run it, Kerry.”
A second later, the cars began rolling and the people walking.
Then, at street level, an exit door to the hospital flew open. It almost struck two pedestrians. A Hispanic male wearing blue scrubs and holding a gun came out of the doorway. He immediately turned right and, as the steel exit door began to shut, ran down the sidewalk toward Germantown Avenue. The pedestrians started fleeing in the opposite direction.
“Jesus!” Mariani blurted. “There’s our doer!”
“Yes, sir!” Walker said a little too proudly.
The steel exit door then flew open again. Sergeant Matt Payne in plainclothes slowly came out in a crouch.
The Hispanic male, running down the center of Tioga, then turned and shot back at the exit door.
The camera clearly showed Matt Payne drop to his knees, then glance up at the door. After taking a quick look around the door edge, he took off after the doer, keeping to the sidewalk. The doer turned left on Germantown Avenue. When Payne went to follow, everyone in the room saw what he hadn’t-the taxicab flying down Tioga.
“Oh shit!” Henry Quaire blurted.
But then they saw Payne freeze and the cab swerve.
Payne then disappeared around the corner, headed up Germantown Avenue. And the black-and-white image froze again.
“We’re working,” Walker announced, “on getting any surveillance camera imagery along the route that Sergeant Payne stated he took in pursuit of the doer. Also, we have men reviewing the last two days of imagery from this same camera. They’re looking for foot and auto traffic anomalies or patterns on that sidewalk in case the victim was targeted, but randomly-”
“What about images from cameras inside the Burn Unit?” Matt Lowenstein asked, wondering why Walker would waste time with that.
“Those belong to the school,” Walker said with clear disdain. “They’re being cooperative, but due to technical compatibility problems, we’re having to use their equipment on site to review the very limited material they actually have. And I’m afraid it’s rather inferior to anything that we have here. Budgetary, you know. Someone had to decide whether to buy the latest scalpel or security camera…”
“Well, the good news,” said Henry Quaire, “is that what we just saw showswithout a doubt that the doer shot at Matt. He had every right to shoot back.”
“Commissioner Coughlin,” Lieutenant Jason Washington said, “what about Matt? What do we-or I-do with him now?”
Coughlin looked at ease. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Mariani repeated.
Coughlin nodded. “There was the discharge of his firearm. So until Internal Affairs officially clears him on that, he’s on administrative duty. Which works out fine, because I pretty much had him assigned to that already. He’s due out at the airport”-he looked at this wristwatch-“in about three hours.”
“Your call, Denny,” Mariani said.
“I would suggest one thing, Commissioner,” Coughlin said.
He pointed to the main screen. The video had started to loop, and now showed the critter kicking open the exit door and scattering the pedestrians.
When Mariani’s eyes went to it, the Hispanic was taking shots at the door and Payne was dropping to his knees.
“I wouldn’t let His Honor the Mayor see that,” Denny Coughlin went on. “He’s liable to slip it to the media. I think he likes that Wyatt Earp persona of Payne’s. Makes folks see that his administration stands with the police and isn’t afraid to boldly go after the bad guys.”
There were chuckles.
“Commissioner Walker,” Corporal Rapier suddenly said. “Some fresh imagery coming in. Shall I put it up on the main screen?”
“Yes, of course, Kerry. Punch it up.”
All eyes turned to the big screen.
The black-and-white shot of Payne running down the sidewalk with his pistol raised disappeared. In its place, up popped a new full-color video feed. It was an aerial shot, somewhat shaky and at times pixilated, the image turning momentarily to colored dots and squares. That suggested it was being shot by one of the Aviation Unit’s Bell helicopter Long Rangers.
When the image became stable, it clearly showed a Philadelphia Police Marine Unit boat making a slow circle on a river. The vessel was a twenty-four-foot-long Boston Whaler, its fiberglass hull silver with the department’s blue-and-yellow-stripe color scheme. It had a two-hundred-horsepower Evinrude outboard. The light bar atop the aluminum tower was pulsing red and blue.
In the lower right-hand part of the screen, text popped up:
Schuylkill River at Grays Ferry Avenue Bridge 1158 hours, 24 Sept “What the hell are we looking at?” Mariani said. “Some sort of fishing expedition?”
Walker looked at Corporal Rapier.
“Well, Kerry, anything on it?”
Corporal Rapier shook his head. “No, sir. All we just got was a call from the Marine Unit stating that they just recovered a body that was bobbing in the Schuylkill.”
VI
[ONE] Mall de Mejico 1118 South Sixth Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 12:16 P.M.
The Mall of Mexico carried on in much the same South Philly tradition as that of the nearby historic Ninth Street Market. Dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, the storefronts and open-air vendors of the Ninth Street Market-roughly the area along Ninth that covered the five blocks between Washington Avenue and Christian Street-served the great masses of immigrants of its neighborhoods. At one time or another-and most often overlapping-there were merchants catering to the tastes of the city’s immigrant families from Italy and Ireland and Germany and Israel and Africa.
The flat-roofed one-story concrete-block building that housed the Mall of Mexico had originally been built for Unity Frankford Stores, one of Philly’s long-time grocery store chains. (And if one looked beyond the gaudy paint, the original signage was still there, painted over countless times.) Each of the Unity Frankford Stores had been individually owned, and got their goods wholesale from the Frankford Grocery Company warehouse at Griscom and Unity Streets.
Then along came the corporate giants, the Great Atlantic amp; Pacific Tea Company (the “A amp;P”) among them. These eventually squeezed out Philly’s Unity Frankford and another grocer, American Stores. American did eventually become Acme, and there was in fact an Acme down around the corner from Mall de Mejico, on Washington.
Unity Frankford, however, was long dead and buried, and a vibrant Latin American marketplace its latest incarnation there on Sixth at Washington.
The Mall of Mexico merchants were arranged on a grid, much like those in the Reading Terminal Market. They offered South Philly’s immigrants the foods and more of Mexico, of course, but also of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, even Cuba.