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—

While watching the body bag that contained Antwan “Pookie” Parker get loaded in the back doors of the white panel van with medical examiner’s office markings, Payne’s phone vibrated and a text from Chuck Whaley read: “Got one! Can you talk?”

Payne glanced at Harris, hit the CALL key, and said, “Looks like Whaley has finally found his ass with both hands—or, at least, a doer’s ass.”

—

“That’s right,” Whaley reported, “it was a Transit Police officer, one Thelonious Clarke, who brought in Ruben Mora.

“The guy was unconscious and had no ID. Just a cell phone, which was dead, and a wad of cash and receipts in a pocket. The gas pump printout read Richard Moss on the credit card, and there was a Marion High School detention note with Dan Moss’s name. Theo—that’s what Thelonious goes by—he had seen the SEPTA alert about Moss getting nabbed for jumping the turnstile, then about Moss’s buddy getting killed, and got ahold of me.”

Whaley caught his breath, then went on: “When I told Mora that he was going to get charged for the murder, he rolled over on this Reggie Mabry character. He didn’t seem to care about Mabry, something about bad blood between them—hard to understand with him rattling off in Spanish—and when I asked for a description and where he lived, it matched exactly what the Moss kid had said the shooter looked like. Undercover car wasn’t in there looking for him two hours and he popped up.”

“Good job, Chuck. I now need you to come help us work this murder scene. Looks like it’s going to be another long night.”

[ TWO ]

Seventeenth and Chancellor

Center City, Philadelphia

Monday, December 17, 8:05 A.M.

As Matt Payne went out the front door of Little Pete’s while sipping a to-go cup of coffee, he suddenly felt a bit nostalgic realizing how many times, after a long night of drinking, he had walked the few blocks from his apartment at Rittenhouse Square to the diner.

And, thanks to Five-Eff tearing down the building for something shiny and new, Pete’s is going away.

He glanced across the street at the Warwick Hotel.

I hope that place never disappears.

Payne snugged his cap down against the blowing snow. He turned and walked toward South Broad.

His mind flashed to the previous week, when he and Amanda had seen Melody Gardot perform in the Warwick’s jazz bar. And thinking of Gardot made his mind flash to when he was driving Amanda in his 911 to drop her off at work at Temple Hospital and he had just vented about the crumbling of the city.

—

“This place is collapsing both physically and, even worse, morally,” Payne said as Amanda had reached up to change the radio station.

“It is sad,” she said as she tapped the radio’s memory button labeled 1, setting the tuner to the 88.5 frequency, the University of Pennsylvania’s WXPN.

A sultry voice singing “La Vie en Rose” softly flowed from the Porsche’s high-fidelity speakers.

“Ah,” Amanda said, her tone brighter. “Our hometown girl Melody Gardot. She’s an example of what makes this city great. I love her cover of this far better than Edith Piaf’s original.”

She turned up the volume and sang along, “‘Quand il me prend dans ses bras / Il me parle tout bas, / Je vois la vie en rose.’”

Matt glanced at her and smiled warmly.

“Very nice,” he said.

After the song ended, she turned down the volume.

She looked at Matt and said: “‘When he takes me in his arms / And speaks softly to me, / I see life in rosy hues.’”

Matt, braking as the traffic light cycled to yellow, then red, smiled and nodded, then said, “Gardot’s version is beautiful, but I actually like Satchmo’s take on it better than Piaf’s.”

“That’s because you can understand Louis Armstrong singing the English lyrics,” Amanda said, her tone playful.