Canary (22 page)

But the biggest shock of all was who put all this together in the first place. The person who tracked him down through the feds—one of the few alive who could do such a thing. Get outta here, was Ringo’s first thought.
Of all people—really?

This is why he loves this town. Philly, where you can always count on someone to do the absolutely wrong thing.

One of the first headlines Ringo saw when coming back to town just before Halloween was about a City Hall ordinance to stop calling ex-cons “ex-offenders.” Instead, the mayor wanted to call them “returning citizens.” Philly had about two hundred thousand “returning citizens” at any given time. Ringo: Returning Citizen. He liked the sound of that. Like he could expect a parade and a key to the city.

Of course, Ringo wasn’t Richard “Ringo” Gloriosa anymore, either. He bought a new identity before his return, so now he was just some asshole named Matt Carlson.

The leader of this operation was using a fake name, too: El Jefe. But of course Ringo knows his real name, knows him by sight. The audaciousness of it all astounded him. At the very least, they were in for some interesting times.

Anyway, El Jefe was their contact, the one running this ongoing operation. He called them his Four Horsemen.

Two members of this hit team, the ex-cops, should know him by sight, too. But if they do, they’re not letting on. Frankenstein—well, it’s hard to read anything on his scarred-up face. When he turns his head and the shadows fall at just the right angle, you can almost see the handsome Latino Lothario (alleged!) he used to be. But mostly he’s just a freak show of burns and scars and a right eye that bulges out a little bit. A shotgun to the face will do that to you.

Bird, meanwhile—Bird is just like his name. Jittery. Eyes flitting all around. Most black guys Ringo knows have that level of cool, and Bird’s missing that. He’s all exposed nerve, like he’s about to lose it at any given moment.

Then there’s Lisa Lisa—the assassin formerly known as Lisa Perelli. She wasn’t really in the game ten years ago. But she’s done a lot of growing up since then. Ringo only knows her by reputation—and a few salacious stories that even made their way out to Kansas. She’s the one he worries about the most, because she’s clearly not in it for the money. She just likes what they do.

And what they do is kill people and dump their bodies in a secret location down by the river, after an amusing torture interlude.

Just like the old days.

Ringo heard about a sweet body dump spot that opened up about ten years ago at Penn’s Landing. It was supposed to be the foundation of a children’s museum, but when funding was held up it became a kind of free-for-all for every underworld organization that had a dead body on its hands. What amused Ringo the most was the location. Almost nobody knew that when the area was first settled by colonists, that exact spot was where they dug out these caves to live in. When they got around to finally building real houses, the caves became these little subterranean dens of vice—gambling, boozing, whoring, smuggling. Pretty much the ongoing activities of the modern-day underworld. To think of all those dead bodies pretty much piled up above those old caves, and beneath the concrete foundation above … well, it made Ringo laugh. Philadelphia was hilarious if you knew the history.

Take their torture room—the brainchild of El Jefe.

To the modern observer, it was just this crappy abandoned warehouse right under the Ben Franklin Bridge, ringed by a Cyclone fence and located across the street from the Race Street Pier. The place had been empty for at least thirty years and smelled like it, too. But as a torture room, it was more than ideal. The constant noise from the bridge and the avenue drowned out even the heartiest of screams. If you needed a break, you could step outside for a smoke and enjoy a pretty decent view of the lights bouncing off the water.

But that’s not what cracked Ringo up. When he looked up the property on the Internet (he’s always curious about the history of things, mostly as a source of amusement), he discovered that the place had been built in September 1914 as “a rat receiving station.” Seems back then there was a worry about European rats carrying all kinds of nasty plague shit to American waterfronts. So a bounty was offered: two cents per dead rat, five cents for live ones—and you used to be able to bring them to this very building to collect your reward. Ringo even found a poster online:

KILL THE RATS

And prevent the plague

TRAP THEM POISON THEM

RAT-PROOF YOUR BUILDINGS

Always good to see a building returned to its original use.

Part of him wanted to print it out and stick it on the wall inside the torture room, but Ringo didn’t think El Jefe would appreciate it.

El Jefe brought the meeting inside the Cambodian karaoke bar to order.

“I’ve got two more names,” he says. “So we’re going to split up into two-man teams.”

“What neighborhoods?”

“Let’s get the teams straight first,” El Jefe says. “You and Frankenstein take one, Lisa and Bird will take the other.”

“Me and Lisa work better together,” Ringo says, even though it’s a lost cause, “if the target is somewhere south of downtown.”

“Hey, I set the fucking teams here, and you’ll go wherever I say you go. You got a problem with that, you can put your complaint in writing, then file it up your ass.”

“I’m just saying,” Ringo continues, “it’s something to think about if you want to play to our strengths.”

It’s not just that Lisa and Ringo know South Philly. It’s that Frankenstein and Bird are former cops, and Ringo’s still not used to the idea of teaming up with a former pig to go dump a snitch. But El Jefe would just say that’s the point. He wanted his teams to be coed, in a manner of speaking. Wops and pigs, playing nice together, keeping each other in check.

Ringo sighed. “What are the jobs? Do we at least get to pick those?”

“No.”

Fortunately, El Jefe gives him and Frankenstein the one he would have wanted anyway. The target was a DJ at a nightclub up in Northern Liberties, and he walked home to his Fishtown pad after his gigs. It just would be a matter of scooping the idiot up off the streets, escorting him to one of their two torture pads (Ringo assumed the other team would need the other, so hopefully El Jefe would sort them out in advance—otherwise, it’d be embarrassing), then dumping the body in the secret location. Also pleasing to Ringo is that the target is a DJ; he hates those fuckers. He grew up listening to bands, real bands, at weddings and clubs and shit until the dorks with the record player and zero musical skills muscled into the scene. Ringo’s dad was a semi-famous guitar player working the clubs in the old neighborhood. He retired from the business a bitter old man, priced out by those idiots with their record players. If you were to give Ringo a job killing DJs, man, he’d be happy the rest of his life.

But this whole operation isn’t about killing DJs. It’s about killing snitches, and to Ringo, that’s the next best thing.

El Jefe keeps the big picture vague, but Ringo is a smart enough man to figure it out. If you want to push your way into a castle, first you grab the lookouts. You force them to tell you everything about the castle’s defenses. Then you rip out their eyes.

Early. Real fucking early. That point where it’s pretty clear that last night slipped away but it’s not exactly morning yet, either.

Ringo just wants to get it on already.

The DJ guy took forever at the club. The set ended at 2:00 a.m., but he sat around for another hour drinking vodka tonics and snorting blow with some asshole buddies in the back of the club. Frankenstein had binoculars and could see the whole thing from the roof of a nearby house. Ringo was spread out on the cold, sticky roof, looking up at the stars. “What’s the good word, Frankenstein?” Frankenstein coughs in a pointed way. Almost a
fuck you
behind his tightened fist.

“What?” Ringo asks.

“Look, I know you don’t know, because we don’t really know each other, but don’t call me that, man.”

“El Jefe calls you that.”

“Yeah, but that’s different.”

“Because he’s your boss.”

“Yours, too.”

“Nah. I swore to never have a boss ever again. I’m an independent contractor.”

“Whatever, man.”

“You should see yourself the same way, Frankenstein. Your days of skulking around the lab, doing someone else’s bidding, they’re long over.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? And don’t call me that.”

Frankenstein doesn’t know that politely asking Ringo to
not
call him something pretty much guaranteed that he would be Frankenstein all the time. From now on Ringo will go out of his way to use the name, even in circumstances where he might settle for the pronoun. Ringo knows he’s perverse that way. But it amuses him.

“Sorry, Frankenstein.”

“Come on, man … wait. He’s coming out.”

“You think I like being named after the lamest Beatle?”

“Then tell people to stop calling you that.”

“Nah, I’m just fucking around. I love it. What are my other options? John? Paul? Fucking George? No thanks.”

Frankenstein doesn’t know how to reply to that, so instead he turns his attention back to the target. “Come on, let’s climb down and get ready.”

“Why don’t you stay up here and take a nap, Frankenstein. I got this.”

“What do you mean?”

Ringo doesn’t answer; he shows Frankenstein what he means. The target is just a pale corpse with legs, stack of vinyl records tucked under a skinny arm, and Ringo is so tickled by the sight that he insists on doing the grab himself. Frankenstein protests; Ringo ignores him. He pulls the van up next to the DJ and honks the horn, which stops the DJ in his tracks. Ringo climbs out from behind the wheel—Frankenstein says, “Come on, man!”—walks around the front of the van—“Seriously what the fuck?”—and without a word punches the DJ in the face. BAM. The DJ folds like a table. Vinyl records go sliding out of their cardboard sleeves. Some lucky hipster is going to find this stuff later this morning. Frankenstein climbs out of the passenger seat and looks down at the DJ, who’s coughing and trembling and moaning. Ringo yanks open the side door, scoops up the bones of the DJ, then hurls him into the van like a sack of potatoes. “See? You could have taken a snooze.” Maybe it’s the coke, but the DJ apparently enjoys a surge of adrenaline and goes flying out of the van, but Ringo does a quarter turn and slams a meaty fist directly into his center of gravity. BAM, again. Not hard—too hard and he’d crush the guy’s rib cage—but hard enough to steal his air, temporarily stop his heart, and pretty much rob him of all ambition.

“Why?” he croaks as he drops to his knees.

Ringo looks at Frankenstein. Despite the scars, the guy has managed to screw up his face into an approximation of confusion. He turns his attention back to the DJ.

“Haven’t you heard?” Ringo asks. “It’s snitch season.”

Still no answer from CI #89. Wildey’s been trying all morning, since 4:00 a.m., but nothing. CI #89 keeps weird hours, but he always got back to him within ten minutes. There’s a sour feeling growing in Wildey’s belly. First the disappearance of CI #69 and now this.

Wildey eats a quick bowl of cereal, dresses, climbs into his peep car, and drives down to the bar in Northern Liberties, where CI #89 works weekends. The bar is locked up tight, but Wildey knows that the bartender (and part owner) lives in an apartment above the place. Some rapid pounding on the door brings the bartender out.

“Who’re you?”

“You remember me,” he says. “We’ve met a few times already. With Dana.”

Which was true. He’d met CI #89 a few times in the crowded bar. People assumed Wildey was a dealer. He liked people making that assumption, because it made him invisible and protected his informant.

The bartender nods, pursing his lips in understanding. “Oh yeah. Right. Sorry, man. I’m half-awake. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Dana. Dana Cameron.”

“He left last night around three.”

Wildey gestures to him in a way that asks, Can we talk in private? The bartender, weary, looking like he’s been up for the past seven days straight, nods. They convene in the guy’s dirty kitchenette.

“Look,” the bartender says, “if he owes you money, you’re going to have to take it up with him. Dana’s just a DJ here, not an employee.”

“No, no. Nothing like that. I was supposed to hear from him first thing this morning.”

“Yo, man, still
is
first thing this morning. He’s probably asleep.”

Wildey ignores that. “Did he say anything about taking a trip?”

The bartender shakes his head. “No. He’s on tonight.”

“Is he hooking up with anybody? Maybe he’s crashing somewhere else?”

“Maybe, but he left alone. He was here late, like I said.”

“Huh.”

CI #89 is the source that tipped him off to Chuckie Morphine. Doesn’t make sense that Chuckie would send someone to take him out. Chuckie, far as Wildey knew, didn’t know his snitch. CI #89 was a scenester—a tall, cadaverous-looking white guy who probably looked like a suave punk vampire in the late eighties but had devolved into a pockmarked zombie in cheap sunglasses. CI #89 was Wildey’s first official snitch. Back when he was still at the Twenty-fourth, Wildey would see Mr. Zombie Sunglasses stop by the Badlands for a bundle or two. Wildey rousted him, told him to stick to his own neighborhoods, at which point an indignant Zombie Sunglasses told him: “The whole city is my neighborhood, man.” Which Wildey thought was kind of funny, but he still told him to get his white ass the fuck out of Dodge. The pouting Zombie Sunglasses wasn’t going to leave it at that. He walked over to a bright green newspaper box, pulled out one of those free newsweeklies (the
City Press
), flipped a few pages, and showed Wildey a column.
Zombie’s
column, as it turned out. He was a nightlife columnist. And his byline was “D.A. Cameron”—the initials stood for Dana Andrew. People, Wildey wanted to yell, do
not
give your son a girl’s name—it will make him hit the streets to score for drugs to take away the pain of being named Dana. “I’m not scoring,” his soon-to-be CI said. “I’m
soaking
up the streets.” Wildey told him to go soak his head instead.