The Traffickers boh-9, page 21
part #9 of Badge of Honor Series
To: jorge ‹cowboys_fan_16@yahoo.com›
Subject: the kid send someone (maybe Gomez?) to A amp;M to see if he can find out anything. we need to know if something?s happened.
Then he clicked to send it, and logged out of Gmail.
He typed PHILLYBULLETIN.COM and hit the RETURN key.
A second later, the screen loaded.
He saw that the image of the Philly Inn ablaze had moved farther down the screen. Now the main image was that of emergency vehicles at the Reading Terminal Market. And below that was a photograph of the Temple University Hospital surrounded by Philadelphia Police Department squad cars and what looked to Delgado to be very likely unmarked police cars.
The red text of the ticker crawling from right to left across the top of the page read: BREAKING NEWS… Police Investigating Suspicious Burning of 2 Vehicles Parked in West Kensington… BREAKING NEWS…
Delgado saw that under the photograph of Reading Terminal Market there was a caption:
Gunfire killed two people and injured four others this morning at Reading Terminal Market in Center City Philadelphia. Click here for full story. (Photograph by Jimmy Bell / Bulletin Photographer) And under the image of Temple University Hospital was also a caption. It read:
Temple University Hospital on North Broad Street was the scene of a shooting late this morning, Philly’s second of the day. (See related story by clicking here.) Police said that they were withholding details pending the initial investigation. Witnesses, however, stated that police pursued an armed gunman running from a hospital exit. The gunman fired at the officer chasing him. Click here for full story. (Photograph by Phan Hoang / Bulletin Photographer) That gunman was El Gigante.
And so it was a cop who chased him… and shot him.
Delgado clicked on the link to read the story: ARMED MAN MURDERS BURN VICTIM BEFORE FLEEING HOSPITAL, FIRING AT POLICE
While police remain mum on details of the murder, witnesses claim gunman fired shots at man who shouted “Police!” while chasing gunman from hospital.
By A.A. O?Reilly
Bulletin Staff Writer
Posted Online 09/09 at 11:30 a.m.
Philadelphia-A critically burned man who had just been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Temple University Hospital was shot multiple times by an unknown assailant this morning, according to a source inside the hospital who asked to remain anonymous.
Witnesses on the sidewalk outside the hospital said that about 10:50 a.m. the gunman ran out of the hospital from an exit door at street level. He then fled eastward down Tioga Street. When the exit door opened again, witnesses said, the gunman fired back at it, narrowly missing a man who identified himself by shouting “Police! Stop!”
“It was absolute chaos,” said Sylvia Morris, who was returning to her job at the hospital. “Everyone on the sidewalk was running for their lives.”
As the gunman ran toward Germantown Avenue, witnesses said, he reloaded his pistol. The man who identified himself as police then pursued him.
A short time later, witnesses said that they heard at least four more gunshots in the direction that the two had run, but that they could not see them at that point.
The gunman was described as being a Hispanic male of tiny stature, no older than a teenager. He wore royal blue hospital scrubs and carried in his right hand a black semiautomatic pistol. He remains at large.
A spokesman for the Philadelphia Police Department confirmed that a sergeant from the department had been the one who had chased the shooter. But the spokesman would neither identify the sergeant nor give any details on what happened in the hospital prior to the street chase.
Check back for updates as they become available.
COMMENTS (3)
From PutGodbackinPhilly (1:48 p.m.):
How on earth can something like this be possible? Is there no place in our city of brotherly love that?s not safe? This is what happens when we stop teaching The Bible. What part of “Thou Shalt Not Kill!” do these people not understand?
Recommend [12] Click Here to Report Abuse From PhillyEaglesFan (2:34 p.m.):
Amen, sister. And thank God for our men in blue.
Recommend [14] Click Here to Report Abuse From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (2:56 p.m.):
I talked to an inside source, too, and was told that this was a hit job. Maybe not a professional one, but the burn victim (there?s more to that story that I cannot share) was targeted. So sad to see this happening in Philly. I?ll say it again: Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.
Recommend [6] Click Here to Report Abuse What bullshit! Delgado thought.
He clicked on the page to leave a comment, then typed one and clicked SEND.
After a moment, his message appeared last on the list of comments:
From Death.Before.Dishonor (3:20 p.m.):
What about “Thou Shalt Not Steal”??
The only sad thing about what happened is the gun didn?t empty all of its bullets into that pendejo! Skipper deserved every damn bullet!
Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse Delgado shook his head disgustedly, then shut down the Dell rental lap top. He pulled out his USB flash drive. And then he walked out of the kiosk, headed to the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint for Concourse E.
FOUR
Delaware Expressway (I-95 North), Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 3:45 P.M.
Philadelphia Police Department Sergeant Matt Payne was behind the wheel of his white Ford rental sedan. Texas Rangers Sergeant Jim Byrth was in the front passenger bucket seat looking out the window at the Delaware River and, on the other side of that, New Jersey. The Hat was sitting upside down on the backseat.
When Payne’s cellular telephone started ringing, he had to do some juggling in order to answer it.
And the first thing he did was toss his “specialty” pretzel onto the dashboard.
As Payne and Byrth had headed for Baggage Claim D, the Texan had suddenly said, “Hey, look! Soft pretzels! I didn’t eat a damn thing on that lousy flight. C’mon. The Great State of Texas is treating.”
The pretzels had been huge, each weighing at least a pound. Payne had been impressed, but not to the point where he’d have paid for one.
The two cops had chewed on theirs while waiting for Byrth’s one leather suitcase to show up on the baggage carousel. And then chewed on them on the walk to Terminal E. And then after that during the drive up I-95.
When they had walked up to the rental car where Payne had left it in the Terminal E OFFICIAL POLICE USE ONLY parking spot, Payne had pushed the button on his key fob that remotely unlocked the trunk. Byrth tossed his leather suitcase inside, then put down his pretzel and went about opening the suitcase.
Payne had watched with curiosity as Byrth then removed from it a pair of Smith amp; Wesson chrome handcuffs.
Byrth felt him watching and said, “I left the standard-issue leg irons and transport belt in my truck at the airport in Houston. Figured you’d have some I could borrow if necessary.”
“I think we can find something suitable. Maybe even rope.”
Byrth slipped the cuffs into the right patch pocket of his blazer, then pulled from the suitcase two hard-plastic clamshell boxes. He put them side by side on the carpeted floor of the trunk. They were identical. Payne thought they looked like the case that had been on Denny Coughlin’s desk, the one containing the police department-issued Glock 17 pistol. Except these boxes were smooth-sided, with no markings whatever. There was only a combination lock and a luggage name tag on each.
Wordlessly, Byrth spun the dials of one combination lock, then the other, and removed them. Next he slid open the latches of the box on the right and opened up the box.
Now, Payne saw, the box did look like the one on Coughlin’s desk. It held a black semiautomatic pistol in a dense black foam cushioning that was customized to fit the exact contours of the gun.
Payne smiled.
A Colt Combat Commander.
Customized and engraved with a Texas Ranger badge.
Very nice gun.
When Byrth opened the other clamshell, Payne saw that it also had the black foam cushioning, but this one had been custom-fitted to securely hold five magazines, a polymer box labeled.45ACP TACTICAL JHP, 230-GRAIN, 50 ROUNDS, and a black leather skeleton holster.
Tactical jacketed hollow points.
Same rounds we use.
Byrth took out one of the magazines. He snapped back the top of the polymer box to reveal the shiny brass bullets inside.
“This’ll take just a second, if you don’t mind,” he said.
“No problem,” Payne replied. He added, “So you like the.45, too?”
Byrth clenched a magazine in his right hand and was pulling rounds from the box and using his thumb to feed them one by one into the top of the magazine.
“Too?” Byrth repeated. “I take it you’re a fan, then.”
Payne said, “You ever hear the story of the pacifist who got in the cop’s face and whined, ‘How come you carry a.45, tough guy?’ ”
Byrth grinned and made a soft grunt.
“Yeah,” he said. “And the cop replied, ‘Because they don’t make a fucking.46.’”
“That was no story,” Payne said. “That was me.”
Byrth chuckled.
Payne then discreetly reached inside his shirt and brought out his Colt Officer’s Model, taking care to keep it concealed from passersby.
Byrth nodded appreciatively. “I sometimes carry an Officer’s as my backup.”
He fed the eighth round to the magazine he’d been charging, then took a single round from the polymer box. He picked up the pistol, pulled back its slide, slipped the single round into the throat, and let the slide go forward. The moving of the slide backward caused the hammer to go into the cocked position. He then used his right thumb to throw the lever on the left rear of the slide, thereby leaving the pistol “cocked and locked.” And he slid the charged magazine into its place in the grip of the pistol.
He reached back into the clamshell box and took out the black leather skeleton holster. He unbuckled his belt and threaded the holster onto it so that it rode on his right hip inside his navy blazer. He secured the pistol in it. Finally, he loaded a second magazine, then a third. These he slipped into the front pockets of his pants, one magazine in each pocket.
He looked at Payne with what Payne thought was a look of satisfaction.
“Okay,” Byrth said with a smile. “I feel whole.”
“I know what you mean,” Payne said, securing his Officer’s Model back under his waistband.
“Excuse me, Jim,” Payne said motioning with the phone as they drove up I-95. “This won’t take a second.”
Jim Byrth shook his head in a gesture that said, No problem, then casually took in the river view.
Payne noticed motion at Byrth’s left hand, which he rested on his left thigh. He looked more closely and saw that Byrth had a small dry white bean on the top of his fingers. He manipulated the bean by moving the fingers in series-tumbling it end over end from his pointing finger to his middle finger to his ring finger to his pinky, then tumbling it back to the pointing finger.
He moved the bean quickly. It was evident that Byrth had had plenty of practice.
Some kind of nervous energy going on there, Jim?
Payne turned his attention to the highway. Into his cell phone he said, “Hi, Amy. Can I call you back in a bit?”
He listened for a moment.
“Yeah, that’s what I want to talk with you about.” He paused. “No, Amy, I didn’t ‘kill another one.’ I could do without your attempt at sarcasm.”
That caused Jim Byrth to twitch his head in interest.
“So then do you want to meet someplace later?” He paused. “Okay. That works. See you then.” He was about to push END but had an afterthought. “Amy? You still there?”
He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen. It showed that the call was dead.
Dammit! If she’d just been talking to someone at Temple’s Burn Unit, she might know something about that Dr. Amanda Law.
He put down the phone, then retrieved his pretzel. He glanced at Byrth, who was still looking out the window, still tumbling the bean.
The guy looks tough as nails.
I can just see him riding the range, then single-handedly driving off a mob of marauding Injuns.
But how’s he going to do here in the big city?
Then again, he did just come in from Houston.
With Byrth sitting, the cuffs of his pants rode higher, and Payne could see the upper parts of the western boots. They appeared to cover the complete calf. They had some intricate patterns of stitching and there was another representation of the Texas Ranger badge, this one in silver leather, and the red leather initials J.O.B.
Payne then looked at the pointed-toe part. The material that made up the part covering the foot was a high-gloss black, textured with a grid of little bumps every half-inch or so the size of BBs.
“Mind if I ask what kind of leather that is on your boots?” Payne said.
Byrth glanced down at his boots as he lifted the flap of the left patch pocket of his blazer and slipped the dry white bean inside.
“Skin,” Byrth corrected.
“What?”
“We say ‘skin.’ ”
“Oh. Okay, what kind of skin is that? All those bumps. They look like tiny nipples.”
There was a moment’s pause as Byrth considered that.
“Do they really?” he said.
Oh shit!
He’s taking offense to “tiny nipples”? “No offense.”
Byrth laughed. “None taken. I’d just never seen my boot skins in that light. But I believe I will from this point forward. So is that what they call Freudian?”
Payne grinned.
“Quite possibly,” he said. “I’ll ask my sister. She’s a shrink. That was her on the phone just now.”
Byrth nodded.
Payne pursued, “So, what are they? What skin?”
“Ostrich. Ugly damn bird. But pretty skin. Soft, too.”
“Is that common?”
“Not as much as cowhide. But more than some snake skins. And eel or lizard. There’s a pretty long list.”
Payne shook his head.
“I had no idea,” he said.
“Let’s talk about why I’m here,” Byrth said suddenly.
Homicide Detective Matt Payne raised his eyebrows, surprised at the ninety-degree change of subject. He said, “Sure.”
“By the way,” Byrth said, “where’re we headed?”
“The Roundhouse. It’s Philly’s police headquarters. You’ll understand why we call it that when you see it. We’re maybe fifteen minutes out.”
Byrth nodded.
“So,” Payne said, taking the last bite of pretzel, “what did bring you here?”
“Texas government code section four one one dot zero two two,” he rattled off. “Authority of Texas Rangers.” He paused and looked at Payne chewing his pretzel. “It even covers your chewy there.”
Payne glanced at him with a curious look.
“Subsection (b),” Byrth went on, “and I quote: An officer of the Texas Rangers who arrests a person charged with a criminal offense shall immediately convey the person to the proper officer of the county where the person is charged and shall obtain a receipt. The state shall pay all necessary expenses incurred under this subsection.”
“What about the bad guy Liz Justice mentioned?” Payne replied. “The one who cuts off heads? What the hell is that all about?”
“That’s only part of it. It’s my personal opinion that this guy is a ticking time bomb. He’s a psychopath with one helluva temper.” Then, surprising Payne, he made the sounds “Tick, tick, tick… BOOM!”
“This guy got a name?”
“El Gato.”
“What?”
“The Cat. That’s his street name.”
“What about a real name?”
Byrth shook his head. “Nope. Not yet, anyways. But his MO’s pretty consistent. Won’t be hard to track him down. As far as we can determine, he’s not MDTO. He just has connections with them.”
Payne of course recognized MO-the short version of the Latin modus operandi, the critter’s “method.” But the other acronym was new to him.
“MDTO?”
“Mexican drug-trafficking organization.”
Payne nodded. Then he said, “You just quoted ‘a person charged with a criminal offense.’ How does the name on this guy’s-this El Gato’s-warrant read?”
Payne glanced over at Byrth, who looked back and said, “What warrant?”
What? No warrant?
No wonder Liz Justice asked for doors to be opened in Philly.
But she would not have done that unless this guy’s a straight shooter.
“How did you track him to here?” Payne said.
“Night before last night, we bagged one of his runners in College Station.” He looked at Payne. “Where Texas A and M University is?”
Payne nodded. “Yeah. And home of the Presidential Library, Bush 41’s. Its recent chancellor, like old man Bush, used to be DCI. He left A and M to be secretary of defense.”
Byrth stared at Payne.
“Secretary of defense?” Byrth repeated. “Director of the Central Intelligence Agency? If that bit of Texas Connection trivia was meant to impress, it worked. About all I can recite about Philly is that there’s a broken bell here somewhere.”
Payne made a face. “No, not to impress. It’s actually information I’d really rather be blissfully ignorant of. At least the Bush Library part. But let’s get off this tangent.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d really like to hear what all that’s about.”
“Sorry. Maybe later. You were saying about the runner?”
Byrth raised his eyebrows in a sort of surrender.
“Okay,” he then went on, “we tracked this runner while he was en route to Houston. One Ramos Manuel Cach?n, just turned age seventeen. He’s got the usual list of priors, mostly petty stuff like truancy and assaults. He’d made a stop in College Station to service his retailers-”
“Explain that,” Payne interrupted as he changed lanes to pick up the Vine Street Expressway.
Subject: the kid send someone (maybe Gomez?) to A amp;M to see if he can find out anything. we need to know if something?s happened.
Then he clicked to send it, and logged out of Gmail.
He typed PHILLYBULLETIN.COM and hit the RETURN key.
A second later, the screen loaded.
He saw that the image of the Philly Inn ablaze had moved farther down the screen. Now the main image was that of emergency vehicles at the Reading Terminal Market. And below that was a photograph of the Temple University Hospital surrounded by Philadelphia Police Department squad cars and what looked to Delgado to be very likely unmarked police cars.
The red text of the ticker crawling from right to left across the top of the page read: BREAKING NEWS… Police Investigating Suspicious Burning of 2 Vehicles Parked in West Kensington… BREAKING NEWS…
Delgado saw that under the photograph of Reading Terminal Market there was a caption:
Gunfire killed two people and injured four others this morning at Reading Terminal Market in Center City Philadelphia. Click here for full story. (Photograph by Jimmy Bell / Bulletin Photographer) And under the image of Temple University Hospital was also a caption. It read:
Temple University Hospital on North Broad Street was the scene of a shooting late this morning, Philly’s second of the day. (See related story by clicking here.) Police said that they were withholding details pending the initial investigation. Witnesses, however, stated that police pursued an armed gunman running from a hospital exit. The gunman fired at the officer chasing him. Click here for full story. (Photograph by Phan Hoang / Bulletin Photographer) That gunman was El Gigante.
And so it was a cop who chased him… and shot him.
Delgado clicked on the link to read the story: ARMED MAN MURDERS BURN VICTIM BEFORE FLEEING HOSPITAL, FIRING AT POLICE
While police remain mum on details of the murder, witnesses claim gunman fired shots at man who shouted “Police!” while chasing gunman from hospital.
By A.A. O?Reilly
Bulletin Staff Writer
Posted Online 09/09 at 11:30 a.m.
Philadelphia-A critically burned man who had just been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Temple University Hospital was shot multiple times by an unknown assailant this morning, according to a source inside the hospital who asked to remain anonymous.
Witnesses on the sidewalk outside the hospital said that about 10:50 a.m. the gunman ran out of the hospital from an exit door at street level. He then fled eastward down Tioga Street. When the exit door opened again, witnesses said, the gunman fired back at it, narrowly missing a man who identified himself by shouting “Police! Stop!”
“It was absolute chaos,” said Sylvia Morris, who was returning to her job at the hospital. “Everyone on the sidewalk was running for their lives.”
As the gunman ran toward Germantown Avenue, witnesses said, he reloaded his pistol. The man who identified himself as police then pursued him.
A short time later, witnesses said that they heard at least four more gunshots in the direction that the two had run, but that they could not see them at that point.
The gunman was described as being a Hispanic male of tiny stature, no older than a teenager. He wore royal blue hospital scrubs and carried in his right hand a black semiautomatic pistol. He remains at large.
A spokesman for the Philadelphia Police Department confirmed that a sergeant from the department had been the one who had chased the shooter. But the spokesman would neither identify the sergeant nor give any details on what happened in the hospital prior to the street chase.
Check back for updates as they become available.
COMMENTS (3)
From PutGodbackinPhilly (1:48 p.m.):
How on earth can something like this be possible? Is there no place in our city of brotherly love that?s not safe? This is what happens when we stop teaching The Bible. What part of “Thou Shalt Not Kill!” do these people not understand?
Recommend [12] Click Here to Report Abuse From PhillyEaglesFan (2:34 p.m.):
Amen, sister. And thank God for our men in blue.
Recommend [14] Click Here to Report Abuse From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (2:56 p.m.):
I talked to an inside source, too, and was told that this was a hit job. Maybe not a professional one, but the burn victim (there?s more to that story that I cannot share) was targeted. So sad to see this happening in Philly. I?ll say it again: Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.
Recommend [6] Click Here to Report Abuse What bullshit! Delgado thought.
He clicked on the page to leave a comment, then typed one and clicked SEND.
After a moment, his message appeared last on the list of comments:
From Death.Before.Dishonor (3:20 p.m.):
What about “Thou Shalt Not Steal”??
The only sad thing about what happened is the gun didn?t empty all of its bullets into that pendejo! Skipper deserved every damn bullet!
Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse Delgado shook his head disgustedly, then shut down the Dell rental lap top. He pulled out his USB flash drive. And then he walked out of the kiosk, headed to the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint for Concourse E.
FOUR
Delaware Expressway (I-95 North), Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 3:45 P.M.
Philadelphia Police Department Sergeant Matt Payne was behind the wheel of his white Ford rental sedan. Texas Rangers Sergeant Jim Byrth was in the front passenger bucket seat looking out the window at the Delaware River and, on the other side of that, New Jersey. The Hat was sitting upside down on the backseat.
When Payne’s cellular telephone started ringing, he had to do some juggling in order to answer it.
And the first thing he did was toss his “specialty” pretzel onto the dashboard.
As Payne and Byrth had headed for Baggage Claim D, the Texan had suddenly said, “Hey, look! Soft pretzels! I didn’t eat a damn thing on that lousy flight. C’mon. The Great State of Texas is treating.”
The pretzels had been huge, each weighing at least a pound. Payne had been impressed, but not to the point where he’d have paid for one.
The two cops had chewed on theirs while waiting for Byrth’s one leather suitcase to show up on the baggage carousel. And then chewed on them on the walk to Terminal E. And then after that during the drive up I-95.
When they had walked up to the rental car where Payne had left it in the Terminal E OFFICIAL POLICE USE ONLY parking spot, Payne had pushed the button on his key fob that remotely unlocked the trunk. Byrth tossed his leather suitcase inside, then put down his pretzel and went about opening the suitcase.
Payne had watched with curiosity as Byrth then removed from it a pair of Smith amp; Wesson chrome handcuffs.
Byrth felt him watching and said, “I left the standard-issue leg irons and transport belt in my truck at the airport in Houston. Figured you’d have some I could borrow if necessary.”
“I think we can find something suitable. Maybe even rope.”
Byrth slipped the cuffs into the right patch pocket of his blazer, then pulled from the suitcase two hard-plastic clamshell boxes. He put them side by side on the carpeted floor of the trunk. They were identical. Payne thought they looked like the case that had been on Denny Coughlin’s desk, the one containing the police department-issued Glock 17 pistol. Except these boxes were smooth-sided, with no markings whatever. There was only a combination lock and a luggage name tag on each.
Wordlessly, Byrth spun the dials of one combination lock, then the other, and removed them. Next he slid open the latches of the box on the right and opened up the box.
Now, Payne saw, the box did look like the one on Coughlin’s desk. It held a black semiautomatic pistol in a dense black foam cushioning that was customized to fit the exact contours of the gun.
Payne smiled.
A Colt Combat Commander.
Customized and engraved with a Texas Ranger badge.
Very nice gun.
When Byrth opened the other clamshell, Payne saw that it also had the black foam cushioning, but this one had been custom-fitted to securely hold five magazines, a polymer box labeled.45ACP TACTICAL JHP, 230-GRAIN, 50 ROUNDS, and a black leather skeleton holster.
Tactical jacketed hollow points.
Same rounds we use.
Byrth took out one of the magazines. He snapped back the top of the polymer box to reveal the shiny brass bullets inside.
“This’ll take just a second, if you don’t mind,” he said.
“No problem,” Payne replied. He added, “So you like the.45, too?”
Byrth clenched a magazine in his right hand and was pulling rounds from the box and using his thumb to feed them one by one into the top of the magazine.
“Too?” Byrth repeated. “I take it you’re a fan, then.”
Payne said, “You ever hear the story of the pacifist who got in the cop’s face and whined, ‘How come you carry a.45, tough guy?’ ”
Byrth grinned and made a soft grunt.
“Yeah,” he said. “And the cop replied, ‘Because they don’t make a fucking.46.’”
“That was no story,” Payne said. “That was me.”
Byrth chuckled.
Payne then discreetly reached inside his shirt and brought out his Colt Officer’s Model, taking care to keep it concealed from passersby.
Byrth nodded appreciatively. “I sometimes carry an Officer’s as my backup.”
He fed the eighth round to the magazine he’d been charging, then took a single round from the polymer box. He picked up the pistol, pulled back its slide, slipped the single round into the throat, and let the slide go forward. The moving of the slide backward caused the hammer to go into the cocked position. He then used his right thumb to throw the lever on the left rear of the slide, thereby leaving the pistol “cocked and locked.” And he slid the charged magazine into its place in the grip of the pistol.
He reached back into the clamshell box and took out the black leather skeleton holster. He unbuckled his belt and threaded the holster onto it so that it rode on his right hip inside his navy blazer. He secured the pistol in it. Finally, he loaded a second magazine, then a third. These he slipped into the front pockets of his pants, one magazine in each pocket.
He looked at Payne with what Payne thought was a look of satisfaction.
“Okay,” Byrth said with a smile. “I feel whole.”
“I know what you mean,” Payne said, securing his Officer’s Model back under his waistband.
“Excuse me, Jim,” Payne said motioning with the phone as they drove up I-95. “This won’t take a second.”
Jim Byrth shook his head in a gesture that said, No problem, then casually took in the river view.
Payne noticed motion at Byrth’s left hand, which he rested on his left thigh. He looked more closely and saw that Byrth had a small dry white bean on the top of his fingers. He manipulated the bean by moving the fingers in series-tumbling it end over end from his pointing finger to his middle finger to his ring finger to his pinky, then tumbling it back to the pointing finger.
He moved the bean quickly. It was evident that Byrth had had plenty of practice.
Some kind of nervous energy going on there, Jim?
Payne turned his attention to the highway. Into his cell phone he said, “Hi, Amy. Can I call you back in a bit?”
He listened for a moment.
“Yeah, that’s what I want to talk with you about.” He paused. “No, Amy, I didn’t ‘kill another one.’ I could do without your attempt at sarcasm.”
That caused Jim Byrth to twitch his head in interest.
“So then do you want to meet someplace later?” He paused. “Okay. That works. See you then.” He was about to push END but had an afterthought. “Amy? You still there?”
He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen. It showed that the call was dead.
Dammit! If she’d just been talking to someone at Temple’s Burn Unit, she might know something about that Dr. Amanda Law.
He put down the phone, then retrieved his pretzel. He glanced at Byrth, who was still looking out the window, still tumbling the bean.
The guy looks tough as nails.
I can just see him riding the range, then single-handedly driving off a mob of marauding Injuns.
But how’s he going to do here in the big city?
Then again, he did just come in from Houston.
With Byrth sitting, the cuffs of his pants rode higher, and Payne could see the upper parts of the western boots. They appeared to cover the complete calf. They had some intricate patterns of stitching and there was another representation of the Texas Ranger badge, this one in silver leather, and the red leather initials J.O.B.
Payne then looked at the pointed-toe part. The material that made up the part covering the foot was a high-gloss black, textured with a grid of little bumps every half-inch or so the size of BBs.
“Mind if I ask what kind of leather that is on your boots?” Payne said.
Byrth glanced down at his boots as he lifted the flap of the left patch pocket of his blazer and slipped the dry white bean inside.
“Skin,” Byrth corrected.
“What?”
“We say ‘skin.’ ”
“Oh. Okay, what kind of skin is that? All those bumps. They look like tiny nipples.”
There was a moment’s pause as Byrth considered that.
“Do they really?” he said.
Oh shit!
He’s taking offense to “tiny nipples”? “No offense.”
Byrth laughed. “None taken. I’d just never seen my boot skins in that light. But I believe I will from this point forward. So is that what they call Freudian?”
Payne grinned.
“Quite possibly,” he said. “I’ll ask my sister. She’s a shrink. That was her on the phone just now.”
Byrth nodded.
Payne pursued, “So, what are they? What skin?”
“Ostrich. Ugly damn bird. But pretty skin. Soft, too.”
“Is that common?”
“Not as much as cowhide. But more than some snake skins. And eel or lizard. There’s a pretty long list.”
Payne shook his head.
“I had no idea,” he said.
“Let’s talk about why I’m here,” Byrth said suddenly.
Homicide Detective Matt Payne raised his eyebrows, surprised at the ninety-degree change of subject. He said, “Sure.”
“By the way,” Byrth said, “where’re we headed?”
“The Roundhouse. It’s Philly’s police headquarters. You’ll understand why we call it that when you see it. We’re maybe fifteen minutes out.”
Byrth nodded.
“So,” Payne said, taking the last bite of pretzel, “what did bring you here?”
“Texas government code section four one one dot zero two two,” he rattled off. “Authority of Texas Rangers.” He paused and looked at Payne chewing his pretzel. “It even covers your chewy there.”
Payne glanced at him with a curious look.
“Subsection (b),” Byrth went on, “and I quote: An officer of the Texas Rangers who arrests a person charged with a criminal offense shall immediately convey the person to the proper officer of the county where the person is charged and shall obtain a receipt. The state shall pay all necessary expenses incurred under this subsection.”
“What about the bad guy Liz Justice mentioned?” Payne replied. “The one who cuts off heads? What the hell is that all about?”
“That’s only part of it. It’s my personal opinion that this guy is a ticking time bomb. He’s a psychopath with one helluva temper.” Then, surprising Payne, he made the sounds “Tick, tick, tick… BOOM!”
“This guy got a name?”
“El Gato.”
“What?”
“The Cat. That’s his street name.”
“What about a real name?”
Byrth shook his head. “Nope. Not yet, anyways. But his MO’s pretty consistent. Won’t be hard to track him down. As far as we can determine, he’s not MDTO. He just has connections with them.”
Payne of course recognized MO-the short version of the Latin modus operandi, the critter’s “method.” But the other acronym was new to him.
“MDTO?”
“Mexican drug-trafficking organization.”
Payne nodded. Then he said, “You just quoted ‘a person charged with a criminal offense.’ How does the name on this guy’s-this El Gato’s-warrant read?”
Payne glanced over at Byrth, who looked back and said, “What warrant?”
What? No warrant?
No wonder Liz Justice asked for doors to be opened in Philly.
But she would not have done that unless this guy’s a straight shooter.
“How did you track him to here?” Payne said.
“Night before last night, we bagged one of his runners in College Station.” He looked at Payne. “Where Texas A and M University is?”
Payne nodded. “Yeah. And home of the Presidential Library, Bush 41’s. Its recent chancellor, like old man Bush, used to be DCI. He left A and M to be secretary of defense.”
Byrth stared at Payne.
“Secretary of defense?” Byrth repeated. “Director of the Central Intelligence Agency? If that bit of Texas Connection trivia was meant to impress, it worked. About all I can recite about Philly is that there’s a broken bell here somewhere.”
Payne made a face. “No, not to impress. It’s actually information I’d really rather be blissfully ignorant of. At least the Bush Library part. But let’s get off this tangent.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d really like to hear what all that’s about.”
“Sorry. Maybe later. You were saying about the runner?”
Byrth raised his eyebrows in a sort of surrender.
“Okay,” he then went on, “we tracked this runner while he was en route to Houston. One Ramos Manuel Cach?n, just turned age seventeen. He’s got the usual list of priors, mostly petty stuff like truancy and assaults. He’d made a stop in College Station to service his retailers-”
“Explain that,” Payne interrupted as he changed lanes to pick up the Vine Street Expressway.
