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[ FOUR ]

North Twenty-ninth and West Arizona Streets

Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia

Saturday, December 15, 2:40 P.M.

The 2900 block of West Arizona, a single-lane one-way street of cracked asphalt, was lined mostly, except where there were empty lots, with two-story redbrick row houses. The majority of the hundred-year-old homes were inhabited and efforts were made to keep them more or less neat and tidy, despite being in various states of disrepair.

A few, however, with their windows and doors boarded over, were clearly deserted and deteriorating, well on their way to collapsing and creating another gap of an empty lot. (One entire side of the 3000 block was completely barren.)

At the corner where Arizona intersected with two-lane Twenty-ninth Street, two adjoining properties had been converted from residences to a single business space. Their brick fronts had been modified to create the elaborate facade of a pagoda. While the enormous plate-glass window had block lettering in gold paint that boldly stated the property now served as the ministry of the Word of Brotherly Love, the Reverend Josiah Cross presiding, if one looked closely, and in just the right lighting, one could read on the glass a faint CITY BEST CHINESE EGGROLL—WE NEVER CLOSE.

A block up Twenty-ninth, other corner row houses also had been c

onverted to storefronts. One was a check-cashing business, its banners advertising a 99-cent-only fee for each cash withdrawal from its automated teller machines and, in Spanish, a low-cost wiring service for sending money internationally. Next door to it was a bodega, the market’s windows containing more signs in both English and Spanish pushing cigarettes to fresh produce to pre-paid Visa debit cards.

Twenty-ninth, being a wider thoroughfare, provided for parallel parking along the curbs on either side of the street. There were various vehicles parked in spaces up and down Twenty-ninth, but almost directly across the street from the Word of Brotherly Love sat a rusty 1980 Chevrolet panel van. It once had been the property of the Philadelphia Electric Company, the PECO logotype on its sides long faded but still recognizable.

When Detective Harvey Simpson of the Philadelphia Police Department had parked the panel van in the spot not quite three hours earlier, there had been no activity at the Word of Brotherly Love.

Within the last hour, however, Simpson—a ten-year veteran cop who was thirty-two years old, of average build with a very dark complexion, and had grown up just ten miles away, across the Schuylkill River in West Philly—had witnessed more and more happening, beginning with a late-model Ford minivan dropping off a half-dozen young men at the corner, then speeding off.

Digital video cameras mounted in hidden ports on the van’s roof rack captured live feeds. One camera angle was now focused on the front of the church, another looked down Arizona, and two others covered both directions of Twenty-ninth. The images, in addition to being viewed and recorded with notebook computers in the back of the van, could be sent on demand back to the Executive Command Center at the Roundhouse.

The two computers sat on metal shelving that had been welded to the bare ribs of the van body. Beside the computers Simpson had placed his stainless steel thermos of coffee and, wrapped in white wax paper, the second half of a rare roast beef hoagie that he’d started right after his arrival and getting the surveillance equipment set up.

The tallest of the dropped-off young men—Simpson estimated he had to be six-five—had gone directly to the crimson red door of the ministry and unlocked it, opened it, and anxiously motioned for the others to follow him inside.

Watching the new activity, Simpson thought: Should probably test the feed with the Roundhouse.

He clicked on a link on the notebook computer. A small window popped up on the computer screen. It showed Corporal Kerry Rapier in the ECC as his voice came across Simpson’s headset: “Hey, Harv.”

“Hey, Kerry. Finally got some activity. Figured now was a good time to make sure there’s no burps in the system.”

“Good idea,” Rapier said, and Simpson saw his eyes turn to look past the computer screen to the wall of flat-screen monitors as he said, “I’m looking at four males in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, three black, the fourth Hispanic, all wearing dark hoodies and jeans, coming out of the church’s red door with some sort of big heavy black boxes. And . . . on the other cameras showing nothing except what looks like normal street traffic.”

“That’s all I’ve got. Looks like we’re good to go then, Kerry.”

“What are those guys doing?”

“I’m guessing probably not setting up for a FOP fund-raiser—”

Rapier made a raspberry sound, then said, “Ping me if it gets interesting.”

Simpson chuckled at his own humor as Rapier and the pop-up window disappeared from the screen.

Simpson then watched the four males carry, with some difficulty, the black-painted four-foot-square plywood cubes, two men per cube, and put them on the snow-covered sidewalk under the ornate curved corner of the pagoda’s roofline. They went back inside and reappeared with two more cubes and then, on a third trip, carried out a lectern and two massive loudspeakers.

They lined up the cubes, creating a sixteen-foot-long stage, on top of which they centered the lectern. The massive loudspeakers then went on either side of the lectern.

Simpson scanned the images captured by the other cameras and realized that with the stage set up in such a manner, there would be ample room for the crowds to fill up and down the streets.

Easily hundreds, Simpson thought, maybe even thousands.

Whoever was onstage speaking would have a clear view of everyone in all directions.

And the PECO van’s cameras would have a perfect angle on everyone.