That's one old damn car.
The shocks are shot. And it sounds like the engine is just about to go, too.
The car rattled to a stop at the weed-choked curb in front of the row house at 1822 Ontario Street. The air became heavy with the smell of raw gasoline and half-burned exhaust.
Will Curtis pulled on his grease-smeared FedEx cap and swung open the minivan's door. He stepped out, swaying a bit, then walked back and stood in the beam of the car's left headlight so that the FedEx logos on his hat, shirt, and the envelope were clearly visible to the driver.
He held the envelope in front of his crotch, concealing his hand holding the pistol.
As Will Curtis carefully continued stepping toward the car-which he now could see was a mid-1970s AMC Gremlin, in his opinion one of the ugliest and most worthless vehicles that had ever been produced-there came the sound of tortured metal as the driver pushed open the rusted-out door.
"You stay there, girl," the driver, a black man with shoulder-length hair, said to someone in the passenger seat.
Curtis could barely make out what he thought was a thin young teenage girl sitting there. She wore a white sleeveless jacket.
So he's still got a taste for the young ones…
The black male turned to Will Curtis and aggressively said: "What the hell you want?"
"Your grandmother said I should wait for you to deliver this envelope," Curtis said. "You're Jossiah Miffin, right?"
As Curtis stepped closer, he saw the black man's attention turn to the envelope. Then, despite the now-long black hair, Will saw the face from the mug shot, including the J-shaped scar.
"What up with the envelope? What's in it?"
Unexpectedly, a delirious Will Curtis heard in his head Stan Colt's voice. Colt, playing an over-the-top tough-cop character, was saying one of the lines in the shoot-'em-up movie that Curtis had just sat through twice.
Curtis tossed the envelope at Miffin's feet.
Miffin instinctively tried to catch it.
Will Curtis then leveled the Glock at Miffin's head and, in his best deep gravelly Stan Colt voice, recited the line "A heavy diet of lead, with a side order of penance."
Curtis squeezed the trigger twice.
The first round pierced the hook of the J-shaped scar, causing Miffin's head to jerk backward. The second round then went into the roof of his open mouth and exited through the top of his skull.
Miffin collapsed to the asphalt street.
The teenage girl in the car began screaming hysterically.
And suddenly, feeling very dizzy, Will Curtis saw nothing but black. He collapsed beside Miffin, dropping the Glock as he went down. Will Curtis didn't know how long he'd been passed out, only that he'd definitely been out cold. He had a lump on his forehead from where it had hit the pavement.
He figured that he couldn't have been out too long, because the teenage girl was still screaming in the passenger seat.
And Jossiah Miffin, of course, was still where he'd fallen dead.
As Will Curtis tried to stand, he quickly discovered that he had almost no energy whatever.
He made it up to his hands and knees and began crawling back to the Ford minivan.
It took an eternity to pull himself up into the driver's seat, then get the door closed.
With a lot of effort, he started the engine, put the shifter in drive, and rolled forward.
He looked in the mirror and saw three young black teens rush out to the Gremlin. He watched as one reached under the car and pulled something out.
What was… oh, the envelope!
Those savages will steal anything they think is worth something.
Won't they be surprised when they find the Wanted sheet.
Then again, maybe they'll turn him in for the reward.
The kid shoved it inside his sweatshirt, then took off running.
Will Curtis turned at the corner and headed for Germantown Avenue. [THREE] Hops Haus Tower, Unit 2180 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 9:58 P.M. In the middle of the plush king-size bed facing a panoramic view of the lights along the Delaware River and beyond, Matt Payne and Amanda Law were lying on their left sides, spoon fashion, resting in the glow of the carnally exhausted. Matt had his arms wrapped around Amanda and across her slowly rising and falling bosoms. His right leg was draped over her right hip, his toes tucked back in just above her ankles. When he inhaled, he marveled at her soft warm scent-at once sweet and, from the perspiration, lightly salty-that felt rich in pheromones.
This is as good as it gets, he thought, and he gently kissed the back of her neck.
She grunted softly, appreciatively.
Then, even though his cell phone was in the pocket of his khaki pants that had been unceremoniously dropped on the floor at the far side of the bed and were now under a curled-up Luna, he heard the phone's distinctive ping! that announced he had an incoming text message.
Okay, we've been lying here like this for at least ten minutes, neither of us saying a word. Or moving an inch.
Just intimately intertwined.
And it's been nice. Incredibly nice.
So would I really ruin everything by checking that message?
I really really really don't want to fuck up the moment, because-wow!-what a helluva romp that was.
Where does she get the energy? And the deep passion?
Incredible.
Then he heard another ping!
In his arms, Amanda moved a little.
"You're not," she softly said. But it was more of a question.
He didn't reply.
"Are you?" she then said, her tone somewhat incredulous.
He thought: You probably would if it was yours going off.
He said: "Of course not, baby."
And then there was another: Ping!
Then two others in a row: Ping! Ping!
What the hell?
"What's going on, Matt?"
"I don't know, baby. I told you I'm not going to check those."
But I should. What the hell?
Ping!
She moved again, then suddenly squirmed out from under him.
"Well," she said, "if you're not, I sure as hell am."
She reached down the side of the bed and grabbed the waistband of the khakis, tugging hard when she felt the weight of Luna on them.
"Sorry, girl," Amanda said as she dug in the pocket and pulled out the phone.
Luna slinked across the room and went into her crate in the master bath. It sounded as if she threw herself down onto the hard plastic liner. Then Luna gave a heavy sigh.
Amanda looked at the phone's screen.
She said, "Three from Tony-"
"What the hell?" he said, sitting up and adjusting the pillow to lean back on.
"-one from Kerry, and the last one's from Denny."
"Denny?" he said.
She held the phone out to him.
"That can't be good," Matt said. "He doesn't like texting and only does it out of necessity. Wonder why he didn't just call."
He glanced at them, then saw that the time stamps of the various messages were not all from the last few minutes, as the multiple ping-pings would have suggested. Instead, the first one, from Harris, went back almost an hour. That suggested the messages had been stacked up somewhere, unable to get through. He then looked at his signal-strength icon, and it was flickering from the weakest signal to the icon that read: NO SIGNAL.
Payne shook his head, then read the first message from Tony Harris: -ANTHONY HARRIS- YO, MATTY. TURN ON KEYCOM CABLE CHANNEL 555 amp; BACK IT UP TO THE TOP OF THE HOUR. TROUBLE BREWING…
When Hops Haus Tower had been built, the entire property had been wired, so to speak, with super-high-speed KeyCom plastic fiber-optic digital transmission cables. The lines allowed for the advanced technology of KeyCom's various communications packages-telephone, Internet, television-to be exclusively provided by KeyCom to the residents and the retailers.