The Vigilantes Read online

  Ten minutes later, Curtis saw the battered heavy metal door of Gartner’s office swing open. The doorway opening filled with a harsh white glow of fluorescent light.

  He checked his well-worn gold-toned Seiko wristwatch.

  Eight o’clock on the nose.

  Then, as he’d seen happen the other times here, out walked the overweight black woman. Tonight she wore a gray knee-length woolen overcoat, which only made her obesity more pronounced, and slung a black patent-leather purse over her shoulder.

  Right on time.

  He guessed that she was Gartner’s part-time help, one who came in maybe after attending college classes or another job and worked for him till eight. Gartner’s full-time assistant, a bony white woman of maybe forty, was one of the ones who left the office at five o’clock on the dot.

  That meant, to the best of Curtis’s knowledge, that Gartner was now alone. Which was how Curtis wanted it. He held no animosity whatever toward any of the office help. Everyone had to work for a living, he reasoned, and no one should be held accountable for what their bosses did.

  Which was why he did not mind waiting so long in the car and pissing in canteens. While he knew that the spreading cancer wasn’t going to give him all the time in the world—Sure as hell not much more time left on the top side of the turf—he felt that he did have enough time to settle some scores with the ones who deserved it.

  Curtis glanced down at the Glock. The matte-black gun reminded him of the semiautomatic Colt Model 1911 .45 ACP with which he’d first learned to shoot. That had been during his short stint—two years, ten months, and twenty-two days during the 1970s, discharged honorably during a postwar Reduction in Force—in the Pennsylvania National Guard.

  And that caused him to shake his head in disgust.

  I joined up to fight for freedom—but damn sure not so our legal system would allow these worthless shits to do what they want to innocent girls.

  No one is going to miss him.

  And there’s not a damn thing that’s going to happen to me for taking him out—that is, if I get caught.

  Then he chuckled.

  Like that saying goes, “You can’t kill a man born to hang.”

  Or, in my case, hang dead at the end of a chemo IV drip. . . .

  He slipped the Glock into the right pocket of his denim jacket and opened the driver’s door. As he shuffled his feet to get out, he accidentally kicked the full canteen across the floorboard. He looked down at it and made a face.

  Oh, what the hell. May as well dump it out now.

  Then he smirked.

  And I know exactly how.

  He looked over at the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ. He saw a couple of overhead white lights go off behind it, then there began a pulsing of different-colored lights. He’d seen that happen on the other nights he’d sat watching the office, and decided that Gartner liked to watch a little television, maybe a movie, after the help had left.

  He picked up the canteen and swung open the door.

  [TWO]

  Will Curtis, staying in the shadows, walked up the sidewalk on the far side of the street. As he approached a parallel-parked filthy old Ford panel van—one that apparently hadn’t been moved in a month of Sundays, judging by the parking tickets and fast-food restaurant flyers stacked thick under its windshield wipers—he stepped off the curb to cross the street. He turned his head left and checked for any traffic, and just as he saw that there wasn’t anything coming, there came from the opposite direction the sound of a roaring motorcycle engine.

  He stopped in his tracks, keeping behind the filthy Ford van, and carefully peered out to look to the right.

  And there he saw it: one of those high-end racing-style motorcycles designed to look at once sleek and aggressive.

  He saw plenty of them while driving his truck routes—and he hated them.

  The idiots on those crotch rockets are always street racing or running in packs like marauding dogs, reckless as hell, causing wrecks in their wake.

  Even worse, every now and then splattering themselves on the bumper of some car, making that innocent driver carry that damn memory the rest of his life.

  The motorcycle had just turned the corner at Nineteenth, but then suddenly made a fast U-turn, which explained the roaring sound he’d heard.

  And then Curtis saw why the rider—Jesus, he’s small for that big bike—had changed direction: Near the end of the block, a group of four girls wearing their parochial-school outfits of dark woolen skirts and white cotton blouses were approaching the corner of Nineteenth and Callowhill. They looked to be about age fifteen or sixteen.

  As the motorcycle closed on the group, the girls were lit by the bike’s bright headlight—and they froze there in the beam, staring at the fast-approaching machine.

  Scared like damned deer.

  One of the girls wore a zippered hoodie athletic jacket, in blue and white, and when she turned away from the beam it lit her back. There Curtis saw the representation of Mickey Mouse stitched on the jacket, the cartoon character’s head partially obscured by the hood.

  Curtis had figured—and the jacket confirmed—that the group was from John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls’ High School. A private institution run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Hallahan was just around the corner, between Callowhill and Vine. Blue and white were its school colors, the Disney icon its school mascot.

  The motorcyclist slowed, then passed the girls and did another quick U-turn.

  He may be small, but the prick can ride.

  That’s the “little man syndrome”—insecure guys getting a hot bike or car to help them look tougher.

  Or maybe it’s “little dick syndrome.”

  As the headlight swept around, it again washed the girls in its beam. Then the motorcycle engine roared loudly and the beam moved upward as the bike popped a wheelie, the front tire rising about three feet off the asphalt. The rider, half standing on the foot pegs, drove the bike on its back tire as he roared past the group of girls.

  Fucking showing off, Curtis thought.

  Like he owns the street.

  And wants to own one of them. . . .

  As the motorcycle came closer to where Will Curtis peered out from behind the filthy Ford van, the rider backed off the gas and the front tire returned to the pavement. The headlight beam flashed Curtis in the eyes, momentarily blinding him.

  He instinctively dropped back behind the van and went into a crouch. He heard the motorcycle approaching quickly, followed by the sound of skidding tires. The motorcycle’s engine revved twice, then went silent.

  The only sound Will Curtis now heard was in the distance, up the street. The school girls were giggling and talking—both nervously and excitedly—as they slowly walked on up Nineteenth.

  And—boom!—the sights and sounds of the high schoolers triggered a memory.

  This time, though, the flashback wasn’t an unpleasant one.

  Wendy had attended Hallahan. And Will remembered the last day of her senior year. She had come home with her blue-and-white athletic jacket dripping wet because, as was traditional at the girls’ school, she and the rest of the senior class had jumped into the Logan Circle fountain, which was just blocks south of the school in front of the Four Seasons Hotel.

  And then the Catholic school memory—boom!—filled his mind with scenes of attending Saint Vincent’s Catholic Church with Wendy and Linda.

  In addition to worshipping there, near their West Mount Airy home, Will had volunteered his time. Mostly it had been in the capacity of scout-master with a Boy Scout troop that the church sponsored. Never mind that he’d had no sons in the program. He liked what the Scouts did—he’d been one as a kid, working his way up to just two merit badges shy of the top rank of Eagle Scout—and, bending rules a bit, he liked taking his daughter on camping trips and other outings with the boys. He’d treated her like the others. He taught them how to handle knives and how to shoot pistols a
nd .22-caliber rifles (though, to his disappointment, she never kept any interest in guns).

  In Scouts he’d also, of course, taught Wendy how to tie her knots.

  And that—boom!—did cause an unpleasant flashback.

  Damn it!

  An ugly one, a vivid one, because he knew that the morning after Saint Paddy’s, after that evil date-rape drug had worn off, Wendy had awakened to find herself naked and spread-eagled—bound with nylon stockings knotted around all four of the bedposts.

  As Will Curtis’s eyes readjusted to the darkness and he could make out his surroundings again, the flashback faded.

  He looked across the street and saw that the motorcycle rider had nosed the machine to a stop in front of the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.

  The window still pulsed with colored lights from the television.

  The bike was indeed an aggressive-looking racing machine. It had bright neon green plastic body panels and a neon green fuel tank, a sleek, swept-back windscreen, and bold decalcomania that damn near screamed in black lettering: KAWASAKI NINJA.

  The rider dramatically swung his right leg over the seat as he dismounted. He then began loosening the chin strap of his matching neon green helmet, a full-face model with its silver-mirrored visor pushed up.

  Then, suddenly, the battered metal door of the office opened.

  The motorcyclist turned to look toward it.

  Will Curtis thought, All that engine roaring and rubber burning got someone’s attention.

  And then he saw a familiar face in the doorway.

  Curtis had amused himself the first time he’d seen the criminal defense lawyer’s name listed on court papers as: COUNSELOR, DEFENSE—GARTNER, DANIEL O. He’d begun by calling him “Danny O.” Then he’d switched that around.

  Well, hello, O Danny Boy.

  You sleazy sonofabitch. . . .

  Curtis thought of Gartner, with a beak of a nose and squinty dark eyes, as a pale-faced prick. He was medium-size and in his early to mid fifties. He tried to appear much younger by dying the gray of his thinning hair, though the dye job, full of blotches, was badly done. He wore tight faded black jeans, a gray T-shirt stenciled with black arty lettering that read PEACE LOVE JUSTICE, and tan suede shoes that were open at the heel.

  As his squinty eyes darted back and forth, Curtis recalled his first impression of Gartner: that he not only looked like a weasel, but projected a greasy sleaziness.

  Gartner then said something to the motorcyclist as he was rocking his helmet side to side to slide it from his head. When he’d finally gotten it off and turned to lock it to the rear of the bike, Curtis saw yet another familiar face, a smug one.

  Well, I will be goddamned! All the waiting really has paid off.

  I’m going to get a twofer!

  Jay-Cee, you miserable shit. You won’t be smug long, not for what you did to Wendy. . . .

  John “JC” Nguyen was a cocky twenty-five-year-old—half Caucasian, half Asian, small-boned, five-two, and maybe one-ten soaking wet—who didn’t walk but strutted. His thick black hair was combed straight back and hung to his collar. He wore baggy blue jeans that barely clung to his hips, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, and, over the T-shirt, a Philadelphia Eagles football jersey.

  The green jersey had a big white number 7 on the back and, in white block lettering across the shoulder blades, the name VICK.

  Small surprise that the punk worships an overpaid jock who likes making dogs fight to the death.

  But what the hell kind of justice is it that Michael Vick sat almost two years in the slam for that crime while this miserable shit abused my baby and never spent a single fucking night behind bars?

  By the time he reentered the court system for the assault on Wendy Curtis, JC had had a long list of priors—more than a dozen arrests over as many years, mostly for either possession of, or possession with intent to distribute, pot and speed and other controlled substances. His first bust had been when he’d just turned fourteen, and it earned him the street name “JC,” for John Cannabis, a nod to the homegrown marijuana he first sold to his South Philly High schoolmates.

  Curtis had learned, primarily from the prosecutors in the Repeat Offenders Unit of the district attorney’s office, that in all but Nguyen’s very first cases, he had been represented by Gartner.

  Curtis also had been told that that did not necessarily mean Gartner was a good lawyer. In fact, one assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute Nguyen’s case said that the opposite was true.

  “The one thing commonly said of Daniel O. Gartner, Esquire,” the prosecutor told Curtis, quietly but bitterly, “is that he’s the worst fucking lawyer in all the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

  He’d then added, “If there existed a book titled The Dictionary of Dirt-bags , and in it was a definition of a lawyer who not only graduated at the bottom of his class but was as dirty as his clients, Gartner’s ugly mug would be beside it.” He’d exhaled audibly and added, “He’s always working the system.”

  He explained that Gartner almost never really won a case for a client. Practically all them were negotiated with some sort of plea bargain to get the charges reduced, working the system so that the sentence left the scum with a very short term in the slam. Thus, it wasn’t unusual for Gartner to watch a less-than-ecstatic client in handcuffs and a faded orange jumpsuit being hauled out of court to go back behind bars.

  Sometimes—thanks to the already overloaded justice system, its dockets packed, its prisons full—he managed to get only a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of probation.

  And, on very rare occasions, Gartner got a case tossed out on a technicality.

  Curtis had learned that the hard way in Wendy’s case, with Nguyen. Gartner got the guilty bastard off scot-free. All it had taken was for him to find a breach in how the evidence had been handled.

  The animal didn’t even get probation. Nothing.

  In the DA’s office, after giving the bad news to Will and Linda Curtis, then deeply apologizing for the administrative mistake, the prosecutor sighed and said, “It’s the reality of what we deal with every day. The system is broken. But like a broken watch that gets the time right twice a day, we eventually do get ’em. Meanwhile, guys like Gartner take advantage of the weaknesses to get their clients to walk.”

  Will Curtis saw Gartner motion for JC to come inside. JC nodded in reply, then pulled a small nylon bag from under the weblike netting on the rear end of the motorcycle’s black seat.

  Strutting like a rooster, he carried the bag to the open metal door, went through it, and closed the door behind him.

  Will Curtis checked for traffic again and started across the street.

  [THREE]

  Loft Number 2180 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Saturday, October 31, 11:05 P.M.

  “Maybe I’m wrong about you being a cop,” Dr. Amanda Law playfully whispered to Homicide Sergeant Matthew M. Payne, Philadelphia Police Department Badge Number 471, “because I’m beginning to think that you do your best work undercover.”

  He saw that her face was flushed and glowing as she smiled and pulled her shoulder-length blond hair into a ponytail, then threw back the soft cotton cover in question.

  She leaned over and kissed him wetly and loudly on his heaving chest. Then she stepped out of bed and, after taking a moment to catch her breath, said, “Be right back, Romeo.”

  Twenty-seven-year-old Matt Payne—who was six feet tall, one-seventy-five with a chiseled face, dark intelligent eyes, and thick dark hair he kept trimmed short—marveled at the magnificent milk-white orbs that formed the toned derriere of Amanda Law as she padded stark naked across the hardwood flooring, then disappeared into the bathroom.

  There then came from behind the door a soft thumping and whine, followed by the sound of two clicks, one of a light switch and another of the door latch softly shutting.

  The whine had been from Luna, the two-year-old pup Amanda had rescue
d from the animal shelter five months earlier. And the thumping had been the dog’s wagging tail hitting the plastic floor liner of the wire kennel crate that served as the dog’s den in the massive tiled bathroom.

  Luna—Matt joked that it was short for “Lunatic” due to the dog’s occasional hyperness and regular talkativeness—was either a labradoodle or a genuine purebred Portuguese water dog. The two breeds could be spitting images, and had similar traits: a friendly disposition and a serious protective loud bark. It was Amanda’s opinion that Luna, at forty pounds, with a dense, tightly curled, nonshedding black coat, was more poodle than lab.

  Payne smiled as he thought, What the hell? Is it possible to lose count?

  He glanced at the bedside table. There, beside two beer bottles and a glass of white wine, was his cell phone. He looked at the clock on its screen.

  It’s only eleven? And we got back here at maybe nine.

  Payne, his heart pounding, put his head back on the pillow.

  So, that means she . . . that is, we . . .

  Damn! Three times in two hours. . . .

  As his chest continued to rise and fall with heavy breaths, he decided that if he was about to go into full cardiac arrest right damn here and right damn now, the luxury apartment of a medical doctor wasn’t necessarily a bad place for that to happen. Particularly considering that over the course of the last two hours, said medical doctor had been party to the cause of his current condition.

  I’m not about to die, but when I do, I damn sure want to go wrapped in the arms of that wonderful blond goddess.

  Thank God she’s gotten back so much of her old self.

  And, thank God again, she seems only to have suffered a little of the anxiety that her shrink predicted—and none of the post-trauma stress he’d said would come.

  He certainly underestimated her strong character and her ability to move forward and keep working.

  And she loves her work.

  Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM, was chief physician at Temple University Hospital’s Burn Center.