Eugene Hollis Kilbane, forty-four, was a two-time loser, a petty thief and pornographer, an importer of hard-core books, magazines, films, and videotapes, along with various and sundry adult sex toys and devices. Along with The Reel Deal, Mr. Kilbane owned a second independent video store as well as an adult bookstore and peep show on Thirteenth Street.
They had paid a visit to his “corporate” headquarters— the back of a warehouse on Erie Avenue. Bars on the windows, shades down, door locked, no answer. Some empire.
Kilbane’s known associates were a Who’s Who of Philly scumbags, many of whom plied the drug trade. And in the city of Philadelphia, if you sold drugs, Detective Vincent Balzano knew you.
Vincent came back to the phone in short order with a location that Kilbane was known to frequent, a Port Richmond dive bar called The White Bull Tavern.
Before hanging up, Vincent offered Jessica backup. As much as she hated to admit it, and as weird as it might sound to anyone outside law enforcement, an offer of backup was, in its way, kind of sweet.
She declined the offer, but it went into the reconciliation bank.
* * *
THE WHITE BULL Tavern was a stone-front hovel near Richmond and Tioga streets. Byrne and Jessica parked the Taurus and approached the tavern, with Jessica thinking:
You know you’re entering a tough place when the door is held together with duct tape.
A sign on the wall next to the door proclaimed CRABS ALL YEAR!
I’ll bet,
Jessica thought.
Inside they found a cramped, dark bar, dotted with neon beer signs and plastic light fixtures. The air was thick with stale smoke and the high-sweet redolence of cheap whiskey. Beneath that was something reminiscent of the primate reserve at the Philly Zoo.
As she stepped in and her eyes adjusted to the light, Jessica mind-printed the layout. A small room with a pool table to the left, fifteen-stool bar to the right, a handful of rickety tables in the center. Two men sat on stools, midbar. A man and a woman talked at the far end. Four men played nine-ball. She had learned her first week on the job that the first order of business upon entering a snake pit was to ID the snakes, and plot your exit.
Jessica immediately made Eugene Kilbane. He stood at the other end of the bar, sipping coffee, talking to a bottle blonde who, a few years ago, and in some other light, might have had a shot at pretty. In here, she was as pale as the cocktail napkins. Kilbane was thin and rawboned. He had dyed black hair and wore a wrinkled gray double-breasted suit, a brassy tie, pinkie rings. Jessica made him based on Vincent’s description of his face. She noted that about a quarter of the man’s upper lip, on the right side, was missing, replaced by ridged scar tissue. It gave him the appearance of a constant snarl, surely something he didn’t have any desire to renounce.
As Byrne and Jessica made their way to the rear of the bar, the blonde slid off her stool and walked into the back room.
“My name is Detective Byrne, this is my partner, Detective Balzano,” Byrne said, holding up his ID.
“And I’m Brad Pitt,” Kilbane said.
Due to his partial lip,
Brad
came out
Mrad.
Byrne ignored the attitude. For the moment. “The reason we’re here is that, in the course of an investigation we’re working on, we ran across something in one of your establishments we’d like to talk to you about,” he said. “You are the owner of The Reel Deal on Aramingo?”
Kilbane said nothing. He sipped his coffee. Stared straight ahead.
“Mr. Kilbane?” Jessica said.
Kilbane turned his gaze to her. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again, honey?”
“Detective Balzano,” she said.
Kilbane leaned a little closer, running his eyes up and down her body. Jessica was glad she wore jeans and not a skirt today. Still, she felt like she needed a shower.
“I mean your first name,” Kilbane said.
“Detective.”
Kilbane smirked. “Cute.”
“Are you the owner of The Reel Deal?” Byrne asked.
“Never heard of it,” Kilbane said.
Byrne kept his cool. Barely. “I’m going to ask you one more time. But you should be aware that three is my limit. After three, we move the party to the Roundhouse. And my partner and I like to party well into the evening. In fact, some of our preferred guests have been known to stay in that cozy little room overnight. We like to call it Hotel Homicide.”
Kilbane took a deep breath. There was always a moment with tough guys when they had to weigh the posture against the outcome. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s one of my businesses.”
“We believe that one of the tapes available at that store might contain evidence of a rather serious crime. We believe that someone may have taken the tape off the shelf within the past week or so and recorded over it.”
Kilbane did not visibly react to this at all. “Yeah? And?”
“Can you think of anyone who might have done something like that?” Byrne asked.
“Who, me? I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Well, we’d appreciate it if you’d give this matter some thought.”
“Is that right?” Kilbane asked. “What could possibly be in it for me?”
Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Jessica could see the muscle working on the side of his jaw. “You would have the gratitude of the Philadelphia Police Department,” he said.
“Not good enough. Have a nice day.” Kilbane leaned back, stretched. When he did so, he exposed the two-finger handle of what was probably a game zipper in a sheath on his belt. A game zipper was a razor-sharp knife used for field-dressing game. Seeing as they were nowhere near a hunting preserve, Kilbane was most likely carrying it for other reasons.
Byrne very deliberately looked down, staring at the weapon. As a two-time loser, Kilbane understood. Mere possession of this item would bust him back on a parole violation.
“Did you say The Reel Deal?” Kilbane asked. Penitent now. Respectful.
“That would be correct,” Byrne replied.
Kilbane nodded, looked at the ceiling, feigning profound thought. As if that were possible. “Let me ask around. See if anyone saw anything suspicious,” he said. “I have a
varied
clientele at that location.”
Byrne put both hands up, palms heavenward. “And they say community policing doesn’t work.” He dropped a card on the bar. “I’ll expect a call, one way or another.”
Kilbane didn’t touch the card, didn’t even look at it.
The two detectives glanced around the bar. No one was blocking their exit, but they were definitely in everyone’s periphery.
“Today,”
Byrne added. He stepped to the side, motioned for Jessica to leave ahead of him.
As Jessica turned to walk away, Kilbane slipped his hand around her waist and roughly pulled her toward him. “Ever been in the movies, baby?”
Jessica had her Glock holstered on her right hip. Kilbane’s hand was now just inches away from her weapon.
“With a body like yours I could make you a fucking star,” he continued, holding her even more tightly, his hand moving ever closer to her weapon.
Jessica spun out of his grasp, planted her feet, and threw a perfectly aimed, perfectly leveraged left hook to Kilbane’s midsection. The punch caught him just in front of his right kidney, landing with a loud splat that seemed to echo throughout the bar. Jessica stepped back, fists up, more out of instinct than any battle plan. But this little skirmish was over. When you train at Frazier’s Gym, you know how to go to the body. The one punch took Kilbane’s legs.
And, it appeared, his breakfast.
As he doubled over, a rope of foamy yellow bile spurted from beneath his destroyed upper lip, just missing Jessica. Thank God.
After the blow, the two thugs sitting at the bar went on high alert, all puff and chest and bluster, fingers twitchy. Byrne held up a hand that fairly shouted two things. One,
Don’t fucking move.
Two,
Don’t fucking move an
inch.
The room went jungle-nervous as Eugene Kilbane tried to find his wind. He took a knee on the filthy floor instead. Dropped by a 130-pound girl. For a guy like Kilbane, it probably didn’t get much worse than that. Body shot, no less.
Jessica and Byrne edged toward the door, slowly, fingers on the snaps of their holsters. Byrne speared a cautionary forefinger at the miscreants around the pool table.
“I warned him, right?” Jessica asked Byrne, still backing up, talking out of the side of her mouth.
“Yes, you did, Detective.”
“It felt like he was going for my weapon.”
“Clearly, a very bad idea.”
“I had to hit him, right?
“No question about that.”
“He’s probably not going to call us now, is he?”
“Well, no,” Byrne said. “I don’t think he is.”
* * *
OUT ON THE street, they stood by the car for a minute or so, just to make sure that none of Kilbane’s crew were going to take this thing any farther. As expected, they did not. Jessica and Byrne had both encountered a thousand men like Eugene Kilbane in their time on the job— small-time hustlers with little fiefdoms, staffed with men who feed off the carrion left by real players.
Jessica’s hand throbbed. She hoped she hadn’t injured it. Uncle Vittorio would kill her if he found out she was punching people for free.
As they got in the car and headed back to Center City, Byrne’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened, closed it, said: “Audio Visual has something for us.”
11
THE AUDIO VISUAL UNIT OF THE PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT was located in the basement of the Roundhouse. When the crime lab had moved to its bright new facilities on Eighth and Poplar, the AV Unit was one of the few sections that remained behind. The unit’s main function was to provide audiovisual support services to all the other agencies in the city— supplying cameras, TVs, VCRs, photographic equipment. They also provided news composites, which meant they monitored and taped the news 24/7; if the commissioner or chief or any of the brass needed something, they had instant access.
Most of the unit’s work in support of the detective divisions was in the area of analyzing surveillance video, although the occasional audiotape of a threatening phone call came along to spice things up. Video surveillance tapes were, as a rule, recorded with a time-lapse technology that allowed twenty-four hours or more of imagery to fit on a single T-120 VHS cassette. When these tapes were played back on a normal VCR, the movements were so fast that they could not be analyzed. Hence, a time-lapse VCR was needed to view the tape in what would be real time.
The unit was busy enough to keep six officers and one sergeant hopping every day. And the king of surveillance video analysis was Officer Mateo Fuentes. Mateo was in his early thirties— slender, fashion-conscious, impeccably groomed— a nine-year veteran of the force who lived, ate, and breathed video. You asked him about his personal life at your peril.
They assembled in the small editing bay near the control room. Above the monitors was a yellowing printout.
YOU VIDEOTAPE IT, YOU EDIT IT.
“Welcome to
Cinema Macabre,
detectives,” Mateo said.
“What’s playing?” Byrne asked.
Mateo held up a digital photograph of the
Psycho
videotape housing. Specifically, the side that held a short strip of silver-colored tape.
“Well, first off, this is old security tape,” Mateo said.
“Okay. What does this breakthrough substantiation impart to us?” Byrne asked with a wink and a smile. Mateo Fuentes was well known for his prim and business-like manner, along with his Jack Webb delivery. It masked a frisky side, but you had to get to know him.
“I’m glad you proffered this interrogative,” Mateo said, playing along. He pointed to the silver band on the side of the tape. “This is an old-school loss-prevention tag. Maybe early-nineties vintage. The newer versions are a lot more sensitive, a lot more effective.”