Authors: Scott Flander
I was parked in the main lot, out of sight of the street down the hill, and I watched as a dented red-and-white United Cab approached. It pulled up next to my Blazer, and the back door opened and Michelle emerged. She had stopped using her car—it was registered under her real name, and anybody with a friend in the Police Department could run a license check.
Michelle looked sensational. She was wearing stone-washed jeans, white boots, a black blouse, and a thin black jean jacket, tightly buttoned at the waist.
I reached over and unlocked the passenger door, and pushed it open for her. She climbed in, and the first thing she did was lean over and kiss me on the lips. I almost had a heart attack.
“Hey, Eddie,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling.
“Hi,” was all I could say back.
“You ever try getting a cab to a housing project?” she asked. “Forget it. The first cab wouldn’t take me here because of the danger I’d be in. The second one wouldn’t take me because of the danger
he’d
be in. The only reason I made it was because the third guy was from Iran or India or someplace, and he had no idea in the world who or what Carver was.”
“Is he coming back?” I asked.
“I told him an hour, but I don’t know, one look at this place and he might already be on his way back to his home country.”
Michelle still had a sadness about her, but for now it seemed to be pushed away.
“I’m glad you changed your mind,” she said. “I was hoping you would.”
I told her about how I had watched the manicure from the hardware store, and my encounter with Frankie Canaletto. I thought she might be angry, but she wasn’t, it didn’t seem to bother her.
“Actually, I’m sort of glad you were there, you know, just in case anything had happened.”
“I got to be honest with you, Michelle. I know you want to find out about Steve, but I still think you’re going to be in too much danger. It’s not worth it.”
“But you are going to help me?”
“Well, yeah, I’m going to try to keep you alive.”
She smiled at me. “And I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”
One thing about a white guy and a white girl sitting in a truck in the middle of a black housing project, they don’t exactly blend in. As Michelle and I talked some more, we watched three young black guys walk slowly in front of the Blazer. Predators who had picked up the scent.
“Look at their expressions,” said Michelle. “Their brains are working overtime trying to figure us out. We must be cops, right? But if we’re cops, then what are we doing here?”
“Certainly not undercover work,” I said, and Michelle laughed.
“Right,” she said, “so they figure maybe we’re not cops, maybe we’re social workers, or newspaper reporters, or people from the Housing Authority. But now their problem is, how come we’re not getting out of the vehicle? How come we’re just sitting here talking?”
“We might be ordinary white people who just happened to get lost in North Philadelphia,” I said.
“Though we’d have to be pretty stupid white people.”
“And even those guys don’t think white people are that stupid, I said.”
“So there’s no answer. Nothing fits.”
“They still think we might be cops, though,” said Michelle.
“Yeah,” I said, “and you know they’re going to spend the next twenty minutes arguing about it.”
We kept an eye on them until they were out of sight.
“So how’d the manicure go?” I asked.
“Great. He asked me to go out to dinner with him at the Bordeaux.”
That was a hoity-toity French restaurant in Center City where they charged just for breathing their air.
“Oh, I’ve been there many times myself,” I said.
“You have?”
“Actually, I’ve walked past there many times. I’ve never technically been inside. When you going?”
“I’m not. I turned him down.”
“Why?”
She laughed. “You don’t understand women, do you?”
“Not particularly.”
“I knew he’d ask me again, and he did—he called me at the shop this morning. I said OK.”
“You took a chance.”
“Not really. He’s used to women falling all over him. To guys like him, ‘No’ is …”
“Intriguing,” I suggested.
“Exactly.”
“See, I know a little about women.”
“No, you know about guys. Actually, he can be quite charming.”
“Charming? Michelle, he’s a stone-cold killer.”
“What can I say? Anyway, we’re going to Lucky’s tomorrow night.”
“I thought you said the Bordeaux.”
“When he called me this morning he said maybe I’d prefer something less formal, something in the neighborhood.”
“Sounds like he’s getting cheap on you.”
“No, I just think he’s trying to be more down-to-earth.”
“Yeah, right. Did he tell you what he does for a living?”
“Well, at one point he said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I just looked at him for a second, and then I said, ‘Maybe, but … I don’t know, I don’t watch soap operas much anymore.’ He thought that was very funny.”
I just couldn’t picture that asshole as a normal guy who could sit down and have a normal conversation with a woman. Particularly not Michelle. I tried not to think about it.
“Tell me about your apartment,” I said.
“It’s on the third floor, above where Angela lives.”
“Is it furnished?”
She nodded. “And it’s pretty dismal.”
The living room furniture was old and scuffed up, and the whole apartment was very dark. Even on the third floor, you could smell the pungent chemicals used downstairs in the perms.
“You know,” said Michelle, “it’s enough to make me want to spend the night in my own apartment once in a while.”
“Up in the Northeast?”
“Yeah, on Rhawn a few blocks from the Boulevard. Theresa, that’s my roommate, she doesn’t really know much about what I’m doing. But I told her I wouldn’t be staying there for a while.”
“I wouldn’t go back there unless I had to,” I said. “If you’re going to get into the part, you’ve really got to do it all the way.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, gazing out the truck window. I found myself looking at her face, her smooth skin, just drinking it in. She turned to me and smiled.
“Want to hear my name?”
“Sure.”
“Lisa Puccini, like the composer. What do you think?” “Mama mia!”
She laughed. “I’m actually one-quarter Italian.”
“And it’s certainly a very nice quarter. What about a cover story? Given any thought to that?”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got it all worked out. I’m from Wilkes-Barre, born and raised. Two sisters, one three years older, one three years younger.”
“What happens if you run into someone who really is from Wilkes-Barre?” I asked.
“Well, I sort of did grow up there—that’s where my grandparents lived. Steve and I and our mom spent our summers up there.”
“What about Lisa Puccini’s parents?”
“My father worked at the post office. He’s retired now, my mother has a sewing business out of the home.”
“You got names for everyone?”
“Let’s see. Older sister is Regina, she’s married and lives in Pittsburgh, younger sister is Sandy, she’s got tattoos and a pierced nose and she’s the lead singer for a rock band.”
“What’s the band’s name?”
“Um—I can’t remember?”
“Not good enough. You have to know everything.”
We tried to think of a good name for her sister’s band, and I suggested “Turn That Damn Thing Down.”
“That way,” I said, “when a kid’s father yells that upstairs, the kid’s going to think, Boy, my dad’s hip.”
Michelle laughed, but said she’d have to think about it. I asked her a lot of questions about Lisa Puccini, including what she was doing in Philadelphia. Her story was that she left Wilkes-Barre to get away from a violently abusive boyfriend, and was trying to start a new life. She wanted to keep a low profile so he wouldn’t be able to find her.
“Lisa Puccini” had worked as a manicurist at a beauty shop on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre. It was an actual beauty shop, owned by Michelle’s real cousin Darlene. If anyone called asking about Lisa Puccini, Darlene would say she had recently quit and hadn’t been heard from.
“That’s good,” I said. “You’ve really thought this through.”
I glanced at my watch. The cab would be back soon.
“Eddie,” Michelle said quickly. “Look out your window.”
I turned. There were the three guys, standing right there, malevolence rising from their bodies like steam. Apparently they had decided we weren’t cops.
“Hey, white boy,” said one of them, a short, muscular guy in a black T-shirt. “You got a cigarette?”
There was about a 99 percent chance he had a gun and was four seconds away from pulling it out. I reached under my T-shirt on my right side, pulled my Glock from its holster, and then stuck it out the window in the guy’s face.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I said. “We’re the police.”
He took a step back and then turned angrily to his friends.
“What’d I fuckin’ tell you?”
“No, man,” one of them said. “I was the one told you.”
“You both lying motherfuckers,” said the third. “I was the one said it first.”
“The fuck you did.”
“I’m tellin’ you, I said it, I said five-oh.”
They had totally forgotten we were there.
“Yo!” I yelled. They turned. My gun was still out the window. “Take a fuckin’ hike.”
Without a word they shrugged and ambled off, looking for something else to relieve their boredom. I put my Glock back in its holster.
“You going to carry a gun?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. It’d be nice to have, but what happens if Bravelli or somebody finds it? Most women in Westmount don’t have guns.”
“Your decision. By the way,” I said, “don’t ask Bravelli a lot of questions. In fact, don’t ask him any questions. If he starts talking about business, seem totally uninterested, change the subject. Particularly if it’s about Steve.”
“Why? If he’s telling me…”
“It’s like you turning him down for the Bordeaux. You have to convince him it’s not that big a deal. If you can do that, maybe you can get him to tell you a lot more. He’ll never trust you, but maybe he’ll get stupid.”
Michelle’s cab was approaching. I made sure I had her pager number, and that she had mine.
“If you run into any problem at all,” I said, “call me right away.”
“I will. You know, I guess the only thing I’m really worried about is that my mother or father will find out.”
“Aren’t they going to wonder what you’re doing on your leave of absence? What are you telling them?”
“Are you kidding? I’m not going to tell them anything—particularly not my father. He asks way too many questions. If my parents call my other apartment, Theresa will take a message for me. I’m going to keep this as simple as possible.”
The cab pulled up next to my Blazer. I didn’t want to let Michelle go, I didn’t want to let her go back into that world. I tried not to look worried, but Michelle knew.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “And thanks for not trying to talk me out of this again. It wouldn’t have done any good.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I just hope this works,” she said. It was the first hint of doubt I had seen.
“It will,” I said. “You’ll do great.”
She smiled and this time I kissed her. And for a moment it was just me and her, sitting in that truck, as if no one else in the world existed. Not even Mickey Bravelli.
R
ight after roll call that afternoon, I headed over to Barney Stiller’s protest march in my patrol car. If we were expecting to get off easy, we were kidding ourselves. Four thousand marchers showed up.
It seemed that the harder we went after the black Mafia, the worse things got. We just couldn’t seem to make any progress—it was still like throwing darts blindfolded. We had no idea what we were hitting, though we kept hearing the cries of the black community.
Until that summer, one of the things that had always distinguished West Philadelphia from many other black neighborhoods was that people were willing to cooperate with the police. If there was a street-corner murder in parts of North Philly, for example, just try asking neighbors for help finding the bad guy. You’d be met by a blank face and a quickly closing door. It wasn’t that people there were afraid to cooperate, though some were. It was just that they didn’t like cops. White cops, black cops, they weren’t particular. They didn’t like any of us.
In West Philly, it was different. You’d be at a murder scene, see a young guy lying dead on the street. A crowd would gather behind the yellow police tape. As you walked back to your car to get something, you’d hear a soft voice: “Officer.” An elderly black man, maybe, or a young mother holding a small child. They’d motion for you to walk with them around the corner. “I saw who did it. It was that boy Darnell, he lives across the street with his mother, Mary Owens. She’s a good woman, she don’t cause nobody no trouble. But that Darnell, he shot this young boy down in cold blood, then ran right back into his house. Still there, probably.”
You’d knock on the door and make the pinch, and the detectives would show up and just look at you in amazement.
Over the years, a trust was built up between the community and the police. They needed us, we needed them. We understood each other. But now that trust seemed to have vanished. The black community was hurt, humiliated, full of rage. Why should they help us?
I
drove to Dogshit Park, where the march was to begin its twelve-block route to 20th District headquarters. Actually, the official name was Ariwanna Park, after a tribe of Indians that presumably hundreds of years ago lived on 56th Street and bought Chinese take-out from around the corner. People in the neighborhood wanted to rename it Conrad Park, after Nathan Conrad, a black Vietnam War hero who had grown up across the street. They argued that the Ariwannas had long since moved out, and hadn’t left a forwarding address. City council was more than willing to make the change, but it turned out there were still a few Ariwannas left here and there, though not in West Philly, and they demanded that the park’s name stay the same.
Faced with a tough decision, city council as usual ducked the issue completely. Which meant that everyone in the neighborhood called it Conrad Park, but as far as the city was concerned, it was still Ariwanna Park.