Pipe Dream (10 page)

“We out here tryin’ to rumble in women’s clothes,” Leroy said, and burst out laughing.

Black tried to be serious, but when he looked at the pink trench coat and the wide-brimmed ladies’ church hat Leroy was wearing, he began to laugh out loud, too.

“I know,” Black said, focusing on the rhinestone-studded glasses Leroy wore under the brim of a black felt hat. “ ’Cause them Catwoman glasses you wearin’ got me trippin’.”

“I know you ain’t talkin’ with your
Lady Sings the Blues
gloves on.”

“They better than that
Josie and the Pussycats
trench.”

Leroy looked soberly at Black, the laughter disappearing from his lips. “You want my arm to fall off?” he said, reaching toward him and doing a bad Billy Dee imitation.

They both laughed.

“Look, man,” Black said. “I’ll drive.”

“Drive where?”

“To this little hotel I know. It’s right behind the 7th District in the Northeast.”

“The 7th Police District?” Leroy said.

“Yeah.”

“Man, you crazy.”

“We gon’ have to be crazy to get outta this,” Black said, pulling on his sunglasses and easing himself into the driver’s seat as a police car approached from the opposite direction.

Their smiles immediately disappeared. Black thought of the money and the dope they were carrying, then imagined being arrested as a drug dealer.

“Everybody be calm,” he said. “Nine times outta ten, he don’t know us from a can o’ spray paint.”

Leroy walked around to the other side of the car and got in next to Pookie. Clarisse slid over into the front passenger seat. Black looked into the bright lights of the approaching car and fought the impulse to drive away.

“Have you ladies seen an auto accident out here?” the officer said, pulling his car parallel to theirs and speaking through the driver’s side window. “Somebody called and said they heard a loud crash out here a few minutes ago.”

They all shook their heads.

“It was supposed to have happened five minutes ago at this intersection,” he said. “Are you sure you haven’t heard anything?”

Again, they shook their heads. Black didn’t turn around to look at Clarisse. But he hoped that she would follow suit. From what he could see, she was having second thoughts. Common sense was starting to tell her that what she was doing was wrong, and emotion was telling her that she was being used.

“Are you ladies having car trouble?” the cop asked.

“No,” Clarisse said. “We were just trying to decide who should drive.”

Black finally turned from the cop and looked over at her, trying to read something in her demeanor that would tell him what she was thinking. He didn’t like what he saw. It looked like she was trying to decide whether to tell the cop who they were. She started to say something, but Black couldn’t tell what she was saying or to whom she was speaking, because his imagination was in full swing.

He could imagine Clarisse screaming out for help, then throwing herself out the passenger-side door as the cop pulled his gun and shot through the driver’s side window. He would miss, barely. Then Black would duck down and stomp hard on the gas, racing away as the cop hung a screeching U-turn, red and blue lights blazing in a cloud of blue-white smoke. That’s as far as Black’s imagination would go—probably because he knew in the back of his mind that if the police started to chase them, they wouldn’t survive the ordeal.

“I didn’t hear you, ma’am,” the cop said.

Black looked up and prayed that the cop wasn’t talking to him. He prayed that Clarisse wouldn’t bring his imagination to life. Then he did what he’d always seen women do when they were uncomfortable. He smiled.

“I said, I was wondering if you could give us directions to . . .” Clarisse paused and looked at Black. “What was it, I-76? Yeah, that’s what it was.”

Black hoped the cop didn’t notice his sigh of relief.

“We’re trying to get out to my aunt’s house in Valley Forge,” Clarisse said. “We were just coming from a church revival and we’re really too tired to drive all the way back to Pittsburgh.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty long drive,” the cop said. “But you’re going the wrong way to get on I-76. You need to turn around and go straight out Girard to 34th Street. You’ll pass the zoo on your left. Keep going to the next intersection. The signs will point to 76 West, and that’ll take you out to Valley Forge.”

“Thank you,” Clarisse said, waving to him as he drove away.

Black made a U-turn, followed the cop until he turned off at 8th Street, and turned back around. No one spoke until they got down past Front Street and turned onto I-95.

“Well,” Leroy said. “Pookie wasn’t lyin’ about you, Clarisse. You crazy as hell.”

Leroy and Clarisse laughed. But Black was busy looking in the rearview mirror, waiting for the police to catch up with them.

Right before they pulled up at Clarisse’s house, the detectives in unit Dan 26 saw a late-model Honda Accord swing onto Broad Street from Dell Street. The four women in the car looked like church ladies, so the detectives paid little attention to them. Their main concern was looking at the house and confirming that the call was a prank.

The first thing they noticed about the house was its condition. Compared to the others on the block, it was relatively well kept. In fact, it wouldn’t have been out of place in a better neighborhood—one where crack wasn’t the mainstay of the local economy. The detectives looked at each other, looked around at the two cars parked farther up the street, and moved closer to the house. At first glance, it looked like everyone inside was asleep. But when they looked again, they found that the vertical blinds that adorned the front window were partly open. The screen door was slightly ajar, too, which meant that someone had just left the house.

They both knew the blinds—and especially the door—couldn’t have been left that way all night, because whoever lived there wouldn’t have left them open and gone to sleep. The blinds would have been kept closed, lest someone look inside and attempt to break in. And the screen door would have been closed and locked to keep the pipers from stealing it off the hinges.

“Dan 26 on location,” one of the detectives said as he stealthily approached the front window of 3934 Dell Street.

The radio crackled as the dispatcher mumbled a reply.

Cupping his hands as he looked in the window, the detective noticed something on the steps at the far end of the living room and motioned to his partner. “Take a look at this.”

The partner sidled up and quickly peeked through the window. In the yellow streetlight glow that filtered between the openings in the vertical blinds, he could see an expensively appointed living room. There was an entertainment center with a big-screen television, leather furniture, deep-pile carpeting, and the outline of the doorway leading to the dining room. Everything appeared to be in order, except for the staircase that led from the living room to the second floor. On the fifth step from the bottom, there was a crumpled pair of pants, a worn pair of sneakers, and a sweatshirt with some letters on it.

“What’d they say that guy Leroy was wearing?” the partner asked as he backed away from the window.

“Jeans, a Fila sweatshirt, and red sneakers.”

“I think we need to call Ramirez,” he said. “Because he’s not wearing that anymore.”

Satisfied that he and his partner had seen the same thing, the detective removed his radio from his back pocket. “Dan 26 to Radio. Could we get some additional units and a supervisor at this location?”

“Okay, Dan 26,” the dispatcher said, then raised Ramirez over the air.

“What do you have there, Dan 26?” Ramirez asked.

“Sir, I’d rather not say over the air.”

“I’m en route.”

Ramirez piled two other detectives into his car for the ride around the corner to Dell Street. On the way over, he called Radio on his cell phone to get the address of the person who’d made the Dell Street call.

When Ramirez pulled up and looked in Clarisse’s window, he immediately connected the red sneakers on the steps with the description of Leroy. “Take either end of the alley,” he told the detectives he’d brought from Park Avenue.

One disappeared around the near corner while the other jogged toward the far end of the block. Ramirez pulled out his radio and called J band.

“Dan 25 to Radio, get me two wagons at this location. Hold them out here on a detail.”

“Okay, Dan 25,” the dispatcher said, and called across the room to the dispatcher on East band to pull two wagons off Park Avenue and send them to Dell Street.

“I figure we’ve got two or three minutes before the newspeople get here,” Ramirez said to the detectives from Dan 26. “I hope the wagons can keep them out of here until we can see what we’ve got.”

Just then, a 25th District wagon and a 39th District wagon came over the air, announcing their arrival on the block.

Ramirez radioed in a command for the wagons to seal off both ends of the block.

Then he turned to the detectives again. “I’ll give those guys I sent around back five seconds to secure the alley, then we’ll knock on the door.”

The detectives nodded.

Ramirez looked around at the empty side of the house, then up into the second floor of the neighbors’ house, where a light shone in the front window.

“Somebody’s up late,” he said to himself. Then he looked quickly at the vacant lot on the other side of Clarisse’s house. “Did anybody check this lot over here?”

“Checked it while we were waiting for you,” one of the detectives said. “Nada.”

“Okay, let’s hit it.”

Ramirez directed the detectives to take up positions by the vacant lot and the Scotts’ steps, respectively. They all drew their guns. Then Ramirez stood to one side of Clarisse’s door and knocked. When there was no answer, he tried the doorknob.

It was locked, so Ramirez forced it open.

“You see them runnin’ around the back?” Eldridge asked as he peeked behind the side of the window shade and saw white men running to the corners of the block.

“Eldridge, get in the bed.”

“I just hope Clarisse don’t get hurt foolin’ with these people,” he said, ignoring his wife.

“She won’t, Eldridge, now get in the bed.”

“You know what?” Eldridge said, still looking out the window and ignoring Mildred. “I don’t even see Clarisse car out there no more.”

Mildred, who was trying not to think that something might happen to Clarisse, bolted upright in bed. “You think she mighta left?”

“Well, you know ain’t nobody steal it, ’cause that girl ’bout crazy out her mind with that gun.”

“I know,” Mildred said, getting up and joining her husband by the window. “I remember the last time somebody tried to take somethin’ outta that car.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Eldridge said, wearing a toothless grin. “I bet they won’t be tryin’ to take nothin’ else from outta there. She almost shot that boy hat off his head.”

The couple peeked out in silence for a moment. Then Eldridge spoke.

“How she just come out and ride right by the police?”

“Same way we would. It ain’t like they lookin’ for her.”

“Yeah, but they lookin’ for that boy,” Eldridge said, lifting the shade slightly to get a better look. “Black, or whatever his name is. And he was with her.”

“You think he was with her. But you don’t know that for sure.”

They watched the three detectives who were in front of the house mill about for a half minute or so.

“Get back,” Eldridge said, nearly knocking his wife down as he snapped the shade shut.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“You ain’t see that policeman lookin’ up here?” he said, his voice filled with exasperation.

A second later, Eldridge lifted the shade and looked out again.

“I don’t want them comin’ over here askin’ me ’bout nothin’,” he said, slowly pulling the shade back into place. “And you know if they see us lookin’, that’s probably the first thing they’ll do. Matter fact, turn off that light.”

Mildred walked over and turned off the night-light. Then she walked back over to the window and looked out from the space between the bottom of the shade and the windowsill.

“Oh my God,” she said, looking up at Eldridge. “They broke in the house.”

Chapter 9

B
y the time they finished checking the house, Ramirez knew that he had been right to include Black in the description he’d called in to Radio after speaking with Hillman. All three suspects had been there with Clarisse, and they’d all left in a hurry.

There were signs that Clarisse had gone with them voluntarily, but that didn’t rule out the possibility that she had been forcibly taken. In the absence of hard evidence and with time on the side of the fugitives, Ramirez decided not to call it a kidnapping until they could get more information.

“Secure the property,” he said to the detectives after they’d determined that the suspects were gone. “I want to talk to the neighbors who made the call.”

“Do you want to remove any evidence from the house?” one of the detectives asked.

“No,” Ramirez said, closing the door behind him as they walked down the front steps and gathered on the sidewalk. “We can come back and get whatever we need later, after we get a warrant.”

Ramirez watched television reporter Jeanette Deveraux jump out of a news van at the corner. She was yelling something that sounded like Ramirez’s name.

“No comment,” Ramirez mumbled to himself, turning his back on the reporter and looking up at the Scotts’ bedroom windows.

Several news vans pulled up behind Deveraux’s. Cameramen leaped out with lights trained on the house where the detectives stood, and neighbors began to look out from windows that had been tightly closed and shrouded in darkness only minutes before.

Squinting against the bright lights from the assorted news vans and the hum of neighbors’ voices, Ramirez watched as several reporters tried to con their way past the barricades. The two officers from the wagon held them back.

“The neighbors must have fallen asleep in record time,” Ramirez said as he surveyed the Scotts’ darkened bedroom. “I just saw them looking out the window five minutes ago.”

Ramirez spoke into his radio and had the two detectives posted in the alley come around to the front of Clarisse’s house to stand guard. When they took up their stations, he pulled out his cell phone and called the Command Center to speak with Captain Sheldon.

He answered on the first ring.

“Sheldon here.”

“I’m over on Dell Street,” Ramirez said. “Looks like Leroy’s been here.”

“I heard you calling for wagons on J band. Do you have prisoners there?”

“No, sir. They were gone before we got here.”

“I see,” Sheldon said, clearly disappointed. “What is it, 3934 Dell Street?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whose house is it?”

“A woman named Clarisse Williams. She’s a nurse.”

It took a moment for Sheldon to respond.

“Did you find that out from the neighbors?” he asked.

“No.”

“Was she at home?” Sheldon’s words took on an edge.

“No.”

“So you’ve been in the house,” Sheldon said matter-of-factly. “With no warrant and with nobody at home.”

“The door was open.”

Sheldon sighed, and his breath made a sound that rattled over the phone like a wind through leafy trees. An illegal search wasn’t something the detectives could just smooth over with those types of lies. Not this time. Because someone might look deeper into Podres’s murder and discover the truth. Sheldon couldn’t risk that.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘Shit rolls downhill’?” Sheldon asked smoothly.

“I’ve heard it once or twice.”

“Well, son, let me put it to you this way. This is the most politically charged case we’ve handled since I’ve been assigned to Homicide. Nelson is feeling the heat from this thing, which means that the shit has begun to roll. Capisce?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s not going to stop with me. So if you don’t want anything rolling down on you, don’t lie to me. It’s very important that we catch these suspects, without illegal searches or anything else that could come back to haunt us. Do you think you can do that, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” Ramirez said, holding back the anger he felt welling up inside.

“Good. These suspects are the best chance we have for a conviction in this thing. And what I need from you is to do yourself and everyone involved in this investigation a tremendous favor. Don’t screw it up.”

Ramirez hesitated, and tried very hard to convince himself that Sheldon wasn’t telling him to track down the suspects just because they’d be easy to convict.

“So what’d you find behind this open door?” Sheldon said after a long pause.

“It looks like Miss Williams likes a little crack now and then herself. There’s enough empty caps in the trash can in the dining room to put the whole block in rehab.”

“So?”

“There’s more. Clarisse left her radio tuned to KYW, and they’ve been broadcasting these guys’ names every five minutes for the last couple of hours. There’s a smear of blood on the wall, and broken furniture in the dining room. We figure Clarisse heard their names on the radio and panicked. After that it gets kind of fuzzy. She might’ve been forced to go with them.”

“I don’t want a kidnapping charge on this thing,” Sheldon said quickly. “I mean, we probably don’t need to get the Feds involved in this case.”

“It might not be a kidnapping,” Ramirez said. “They straightened up in the dining room before they left, and I can’t see her just sitting there while they cleaned up—or cleaning up herself—if she knew they were going to force her to go with them. There were semen stains on one of the dining room chairs and on one of the dining room walls, like they were doing the whole drug-sex thing. And somebody—or somebodies—took a shower before they left. Now, I’m not Sigmund Freud or anything. But I don’t think kidnappers shower in the victim’s house right after they’ve done the deed. Know what I mean?”

“So you think she helped them?” Sheldon said.

“I just don’t think they forced her to do anything.”

“I see.”

“The only thing I’m wondering about is how they got out of here without anybody seeing them,” Ramirez said.

“She must have a car.”

“Well, we should know that in a few minutes, after we talk to the neighbors.”

“Let’s bet she does have a car,” Sheldon said. “And let’s bet they’re all out for a little early-morning spin.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call Radio as soon as you get a description of the vehicle,” Sheldon added. “And as far as you going in the house, let’s just keep that between us.”

“Okay,” Ramirez said hesitantly, even as he wondered if the people next door had seen them going in.

As he disconnected the call to Sheldon and joined the two detectives waiting for him on the Scotts’ steps, he figured he’d find out soon enough.

Eldridge and Mildred Scott lay wide-eyed, staring at nothing. When the doorbell rang, they looked at each other, trying hard to pretend they hadn’t heard it. It rang again and neither of them moved, except to burrow farther under the blankets.

Then the telephone rang.

“Hello?” Eldridge said.

“Mr. Scott, this is Lieutenant Jorge Ramirez, Homicide.”

“Yes?”

“Sir, myself and some other detectives are down here at your front door. If you’d peek out your front window, we’d be glad to show you our badges.”

“Son, I’m seventy-four years old. I can’t see no badge from up here.”

“Well, maybe you’d like to come down and we’ll show you our badges through the front door. We’d just like to ask you a few questions.”

“You from Homicide, right?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Well what questions you got for me? I ain’t killed nobody.”

“We know that, sir. If you’d just come to the door we—”

“Son, if the president of the United States came knockin’ this time o’ mornin’, he’d have to slide a note under the door. So you know I’m not openin’ it for you.”

“Fair enough. I’ll just ask you a few questions over the phone, if you don’t mind.”

“I guess that’d be all right,” Eldridge said. “How’d you get my number anyway?”

“I got it from 911. We’ve got a system that tells us where every call comes from.”

Before Eldridge could ask another question, Ramirez continued. “You called earlier about a disturbance at your neighbor’s house and said there were some people there who we wanted to talk to. Well, Mr. Scott, we have reason to believe you were right. Now, I don’t know what your relationship to your neighbor is, but if there’s any more information you could give us, it would help.”

“I want to ask a question first,” Eldridge said. “Is Clarisse in any kind o’ trouble?”

Ramirez figured from the tone of the question that Eldridge Scott was worried about Clarisse. He wasn’t just some nosy neighbor. So he told him what he always told concerned friends and family.

“No, she’s not in trouble. But we need to find her before she does get into any kind of trouble or—God forbid—something happens to her.”

He paused to give his words a chance to sink in.

“The people she’s with are very dangerous,” Ramirez added dramatically, hoping to frighten the old man into telling whatever he knew.

There was silence on the other end of the line, as if Eldridge were taking a moment to figure out what to say.

“What kind of information do you want?” Eldridge said cautiously.

“First of all, we want to know if you saw either of the men we’re looking for go into the house.”

“No.”

“Did you hear them in the house?”

“I heard a man’s voice say, ‘Shut up!’ And then I heard somethin’ slam against Clarisse’s dining room wall.”

“Do you think the voice you heard belongs to one of the men we’re looking for?”

“Yes, because I seen that boy Black goin’ in there before. Clarisse must know him or somethin’.”

“Did you see Black or anyone else leave Miss Williams’s house?”

“No. But Clarisse’s car was out there earlier and now it’s gone.”

“What kind of car does she have?”

“You askin’ a whole lotta questions,” Eldridge said. “You sure she ain’t in no trouble?”

“We’re trying to keep her from getting into trouble, Mr. Scott,” Ramirez said impatiently. “Now, please, what kind of car does she have? It’s very important that we know.”

Eldridge paused.

“Mr. Scott?” Ramirez prodded.

“She has a 1991 black Honda Accord,” Eldridge said after a moment. “Her license plate says CWRN, for Clarisse Williams, registered nurse.”

“A late-model black Honda Accord, license plate CWRN?” Ramirez repeated.

The detectives standing next to Ramirez—the ones who’d been the first to arrive at Clarisse’s house—began to look confused. Then they looked as if they’d been struck by lightning.

“A late-model black Honda Accord?” one of them said as recognition swept across his face. “Isn’t that the car . . .”

“That car rode right past us when we were on our way here,” his partner said. “There were four ladies inside wearing big hats.”

“If you remember anything else, or if you need to talk to me for any reason, call me, Mr. Scott,” Ramirez said, quickly giving Scott his number when he heard them say that they’d seen the car.

“Which way was the car traveling?” Ramirez asked the detectives after disconnecting the call.

“South on Broad.”

Ramirez reached into his pocket for his radio and called J band. “Dan 25 to Radio. I’ve got some flash on the suspects in the Park Avenue job.”

“Dan 25 proceed,” the dispatcher said.

Ramirez repeated the description of the car and its occupants over J band.

One of the detectives, still befuddled, said, “At least they
looked
like ladies.”

*       *       *

The cop in car 611 was playing his usual cat-and-mouse game with the drug dealers on 6th Street. Every ten minutes, like clockwork, he’d ride slowly down the block and sit there. The drug dealers would walk away, never straying too far from the drugs they’d stashed when they’d seen his car. After five minutes, he’d cruise slowly away, and they’d complete the ritual by walking back to their corner.

This Sunday, like every Sunday, was slow. There was little more than the ritual to keep the officer occupied. Of course, there were a few disturbances here and there. But the closest thing to excitement was the search for the guys who’d killed the city councilman up on Park Avenue.

Homicide was broadcasting a blow-by-blow description of the search on J band, and car 611, along with the rest of the department and all of the Philadelphia press corps, was tuned in. From what he heard, the periodic updates on the descriptions of the guys who had supposedly shot the councilman sounded like hyped-up guesswork. But then, who was he to judge? The detectives from Homicide were supposed to be the experts. He was just a patrolman trying to keep the drug dealers off the corner. Not that he was complaining. Keeping drug dealers in check was important to him, even if everyone else in the department figured it was a lost cause.

Causes were his thing. He was the kind of man who wrote letters to the
Daily News
to correct the views of what he perceived to be the sickeningly liberal editorial department. He wanted abortion abolished, gun control loosened, and Bush reelected. He thought welfare was killing the people it was supposed to be helping and that crack was the scourge of the inner city. He knew that God was the only thing that could save Philadelphia from itself.

That’s why, when he’d gone to check out the unfounded auto accident a few minutes earlier, he was glad to see the four ladies in the black Honda coming from a church revival. Attending revivals and spreading the good news was what everyone in North Philly should have been doing. Instead, too many of them were smoking crack and collecting welfare.

Still, there was something wrong about those women. The scenario just didn’t seem right, no matter how many times he replayed it in his mind. He remembered getting a call about an auto accident at Mascher and Girard. He remembered riding up to them and asking if they’d seen an accident. That’s when it had gotten weird.

Only the one in the passenger seat had spoken. The driver just sat there smiling and looking uncomfortable. The two women in the backseat sat absolutely still and looked at him as if they were praying for him to go away.