Authors: Keith Gilman
American Indians believed in cremation, Lou thought, but the bodies were cold and dead before they were burned. They also believed in reincarnation. Lou believed he was coming back as a cockroach—one of those big, fat brown ones that crawled out of the sewers at night and roamed the streets, with armor as thick as a Roman shield. They would tunnel underground and
could scale walls. They were everywhere. If they all came out at once, they would cover the ground like an advancing army—take over the whole fucking city.
The morgue hadn’t changed much. It was still in the basement of St. Christopher’s Hospital, where it had always been. They were the same everywhere. Cold steel, bright lights, porcelain and tile, permeated with cold artificial air. Large basins against the wall and drains in the floor, it could have been a high school lavatory or the shower room at Auschwitz.
Medical examiners hadn’t changed much either, except for the length of the alphabet after their name. Once upon a time they were nothing more than glorified funeral directors, couldn’t determine the cause of death any more than a vulture could before he plunged his head in. To them, it was all carrion.
There wasn’t much left to look at. The guy came out of a vintage Corvette looking like a lump of charcoal in a burned-out iron grill. His face was gone, the flesh on his cheeks and nose melted away. The only clothing that wasn’t incinerated was a leather belt with a large metal buckle that probably held him together, and pieces of a leather jacket.
“As you can see, Lou, there isn’t much to go on. Doc Havard has ordered X-rays and a check of the dental records. Remarkably, we were able to make out a partial tattoo just above the left shoulder blade. According to doc, some kind of accelerant was poured into his lap and ignited. The flames burned up the front of his body. He has some bruises on him but Doc says he was still alive when he was set on fire. The guy was burned alive. His jacket spared some of the skin on his upper back. A passerby called in a vehicle fire. Otherwise, there would have been nothing left at all.”
They all snapped on latex gloves and filter masks. Lou lifted the left arm and Mitch gently rolled the blackened corpse onto its side. The tattoo was clearly visible. It was the grim reaper,
shrouded in a black robe with a hooded skull, glowing yellow eyes, and a snake-headed staff. It was good work.
“We scanned a couple of pictures out to the FBI. They keep a database on tattoos. Our people are working on it as well. If this guy has been arrested or incarcerated, we should have a match on file.”
“No pun intended, Mitch?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Have you checked missing persons?”
“Yeah, but it’s too early yet. Something tells me it’s not unusual for this guy to be out overnight. You’re starting to sound like a cop again, Lou.”
“And I can’t help feeling I’m being duped into doing your dirty work.”
“This isn’t exactly high on the priority list, not with this maniac out there killing girls in the park. Why waste the taxpayer’s dollar on a couple of lowlifes?” Mitch threw a crooked salute at Doc Havard as they walked to the door. “Get me the person that did Richie Mazzino and we’ll have the person that did this.”
“You think it was the same person?”
“Don’t you?”
“You looking at anyone in particular?”
“I don’t like to speculate, Lou. But the list of suspects is pretty short.”
“Who does the car belong to?”
Lou knew the answer but asked anyway.
“Vincent Trafficante.”
“Funny how his name keeps coming up. How the hell do you misplace an antique Corvette?”
Lou rubbed the back of his neck.
“According to him, he didn’t even know it was gone. Said he kept it covered in a rented garage and hadn’t had it out in
months. Philly P.D. is filing an auto theft report at this very moment, after the fact.”
“I didn’t know you guys did that.”
“I didn’t either. I guess we do now.”
“Can I get a picture of the tat?”
“No problem.”
“Let me ask you a question, Mitch. What can you tell me about the death of Sam Blackwell?”
“I thought you asked me about that already and I told you what I knew.”
“Tell me again, I have a bad memory.”
“It was ruled a suicide. He was found hanging from a tree in his backyard. It’s old news.”
“Who was the investigating agency?”
“Southwest Detectives.”
“Why didn’t the state pick it up?”
“They wanted to. Protocol dictated that an outside agency do the investigation. Even back then, the death of a cop was a big deal. They could do all kinds of crime scene analysis that the locals couldn’t, but they had to be called in and they weren’t.”
“You think they’d let me have a look at the case file?”
“Not officially.”
“How about unofficially? You could pull some strings.”
“I have less of a chance than you do. The Philadelphia Police Department is not the kind of department that welcomes official or unofficial dirt digging. Why don’t you find the investigating officer and see what he’ll give you. Use that sparkling personality of yours, you know . . . cop to cop.”
“Like me and you?”
“Yeah . . . sort of.”
“Can you tell me anything you remember. Did you hear anything, rumors?”
“I didn’t pay much attention at the time but it was all over
the papers. I seem to recall reading something about a scandal but I can’t remember exactly who was involved. It’s an angle you might want to check. Newspaper reporters have long memories and tend to carry grudges. You could probably find someone with a sharp bone to pick and maybe some info to sell.”
“Who signed the death certificate?”
“I believe the medical examiner then was Dr. Gilbert Dodgeson, a political hack of the third kind. I don’t know how he became a doctor. He couldn’t operate on an earthworm. Most people wouldn’t let him treat their cat for fleas. Maybe that’s how he got into politics. If you only knew his reputation, you’d swear he fathered half the children he delivered. He always wore a freshly cut red carnation in his lapel and a matching ketchup stain on his tie. I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t half bald with a long thin mustache. He’s been retired for years now but still testifies in court as a medical expert.”
“For the defense?”
“For a fee.”
“I’m glad I asked.”
“Ask and ye shall receive.”
“What’s Dodgeson supposed to be doing now?”
“He operates an upscale rehabilitation center in Montgomery County called Fenwick House. In the old days, they’d call it a sanitarium. A lot of rumors circulating around that place.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Drugs, mostly. And a confidentiality policy that tends to be a bit extreme. Meaning, we don’t know who the hell they got in there at any given time.”
“Rumors seem to be Philly’s number one asset.”
“Problem is, most of them are true.”
“He owns the place?”
“No, I don’t think so. I assume it’s owned by one of those private foundations. It’s been around a long time. It was the
original Reddington estate, old money. Reddington was the king of coal and one of the original railroad barons. One of his kids gets a hot shot of smack and kicks the bucket. He feels guilty and opens up Fenwick House. Dodgeson might be on the board of directors—kind of a front man with a medical degree. The public buys into it and no one makes a stink.”
“Smells fishy to me.”
“Keep me posted, Lou.”
“You got it.”
Lou bailed out the back door one step ahead of a medical examiner’s van backing up to the dock. They were bringing them in by the truckload from a building fire and collapse in Kensington, all shapes and sizes, young and old. They unloaded them like bags of freight in the shipyard. He popped an antacid before his stomach caught fire. He slipped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and walked toward the public lot. He found his car right where he’d left it. It had been scratched along the entire passenger side. The white metal showed through the black paint. He hadn’t noticed it before. Vehicle vandalized at St. Christopher’s Hospital. It would make a nice headline. He wondered if he should file a police report.
Legwork was considered a cop’s stock in trade. A good set of legs and half a brain was about the only requirement, other than eating and breathing, which they did plenty of as long as it was free. A conscience didn’t hurt either. He’d walked over broken bones, broken lives, and blood by the gallon. Ideally, his job was to follow the clues to the source of the crime, determine the origin from which all the pain and suffering sprung. At that point, armed with irrefutable evidence, he was supposed to effect an immediate arrest. It didn’t always work that way.
Lou’s father was the prime example. He did things by the book, followed the rules as he understood them, made the best of a system, which even he acknowledged, was in effec tive. It wasn’t
about the uniform. It was about the person that wore it, he’d say. He lectured kids on street, black, white, Spanish, Asian, it didn’t matter. He gave drunks a ride home. He’d help people shovel their cars out after a big snowstorm. He wore a badge and gun but it wasn’t always about taking people in, it was about keeping them safe, keeping them alive. Some of his cohorts in the squad said it was the Jew in him. He was too soft. One day it would get him in trouble and one day it did, Lou thought. On that terrible day, it did.
Lou’s next stop was a tattoo man he’d known from the old days, a guy who honed his skill in the slammer and parlayed it into big bucks on the outside. His name was Fred MacDonald, a junkie with a string of tattoo parlors and a six-figure payroll. He still worked out of his original building, a converted funeral parlor on Market Street toward the western edge of the city. He was known on the street as Freddie Mac.
These guys felt comfortable around needles. Lou still got squeamish when the doctor held up the hypo with the serum dripping off the end, had to look away as the needle broke the skin. Freddie Mac would be able to identify the artist that painted the fiery grim reaper, might even identify the guy wearing it.
Half the people who walked into Freddie Mac’s shop were looking for a loan and walked out with a dollar sign tattooed on their ass. Freddie could sell beachfront property under the Walt Whitman Bridge. He sold pornography out of the back of an abandoned truck in the alley behind his shop—every kind imaginable. He sold phony stock in nonexistent businesses. He took premiums from widows on phony life insurance plans. He had other people peddle his drugs for him. Freddie Mac was an entire underground economy unto himself. Lou had succeeded in scaring him, in another lifetime, had shaken him down for information, knocked out his front tooth with a six-inch gun barrel.
It was the needle to the end for a whole class of criminals, a world of addicts and disease—hepatitis, meningitis, AIDS, HIV, STDs, DTs, ABCs, LTDs, and BLTs. Lou parked across the street and ambled toward the neon and fogged-out windows.
Freddie’s place was a cross between a dentist’s office and a downtown shooting gallery. An assortment of human canvases occupied every inch of space. They sat cross-legged on the floor and passed out in reclining chairs. Guys with white headbands and buzz cuts wearing dress pants cut off at the knees. Girls with swooshy cotton dresses, gauze blouses, and knit sweaters canvas carry bags over the shoulder. The silence was deafening when Lou walked in. The buzzing stopped. The breathing stopped. He was either a cop or needed directions.
Freddie Mac recognized him right away. He tipped his glasses back onto his head and daubed the blood from the arm of a sailor boy, drunk in a barber’s chair and lonesome for his mom.
“Hey, look what the cat dragged in. Who says there’s never a cop around when you need one. Louie, my man, you look ten years older and twenty pounds heavier than the last time I saw you. What you been eatin’ man—bad juju? You got to stay light, my man.”
“The last time I saw you, Freddie, I was testifying at your parole hearing.”
“Eh, man, that reminds me. Thanks for the vote of confidence. You know, every day I spend locked up, I’m losing money. Time is money, you know, and I lost plenty of it because of you. You owe me, my man.”
“I told them they should lock you up and throw away the key. I said you were a career criminal, not to mention a junkie, a pusher, a pedophile, a pimp, a thief, a fence, a bookie, and—I almost forgot—a rat.”
“I prefer to use the term
confidential informant
.”
“You prefer to get paid.”
“Everything has a price, my man. I might sell information but you sell yourself.”
Lou grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him into a back room. He threw him down onto a broken brown futon.
“Yo man, go easy on the threads. I’m a great artist. I’m just misunderstood.”
“And I’m Vincent van Gogh. Look at this picture, Freddie. It was on a guy’s back. I want to know who put it there. He’s unidentified in the morgue and I want to know who he is and who set him on fire.”
Freddie Mac pushed his glasses back down onto his face and held the picture up close.
“It’s good work. Only a couple of guys I know could have done it. This took a long time, probably a private job. A few years back there were a couple of guys, worked in this big place, not far from here, on Cobbs Creek Parkway under the El. I think it was called House of Ink. I think they were Russians. They took care of you white boys, gave your skin a little color. Nobody fucks with them, that’s for real. I’ve seen quite a few young guys, white bangers, with that Chinese lettering on their arms and necks. It don’t mean shit, they’re just punks, watched too many kung-fu movies, but that’s their signature work. Fucking Ninjas.”
“It’s a start, Freddie. But I need names. I’m not riding around West Philly looking for two Russians with a shitload of tattoos. Do I look that stupid? You’re going to tell me what I want to know or I’m going to beat it out of you, and then I’m going to get a marked police car to sit right in front of your door.”
“Yo, ease up, man. I don’t got no names. I wouldn’t know how to say ’em anyway. The dudes you lookin’ for, they at the House of Ink. No lie. They’re players, man, with the women, I mean. They like ’em young and you know I ain’t playin’ with dat shit.”