The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

“I told you this would happen!” he then shouted. “I warned you, don’t talk with nobody! You old bitch, you been fucking with me all my life!”

What Joelle Bazelon had done the previous week was more or less the same thing she’d done ten years earlier, when she’d seen Xavier Smith, then fourteen years old, beating up younger boys as they walked to Shaw Middle School. After the first shakedown, she’d telephoned his house to speak with his parents. But Xavier’s mother—also, Joelle then learned, a single parent—had told her that she should mind her own business, that she could take care of her own boy. Then, when Joelle had seen Xavier shake down another boy the very next week, taking his money and wristwatch, she’d called the cops.

She’d told the cops that she was saddened to see such bad behavior, but it could not be tolerated.

And she’d still felt the same way four days ago when she’d again called the cops.

The City of Philadelphia was divided into twenty-six patrol districts— twenty-five numbered ones, plus Center City. The corporal who answered the phone at the police department’s Twelfth District, down on Woodland Avenue at Sixty-fifth, dispatched a pair of patrol officers to respond to the house of the complainant, one Mrs. Joelle Bazelon at 5550 Ridgewood Street.

Joelle had been waiting in the wooden rocking chair on the front porch when the Chevrolet Impala squad car pulled up to her curb. She repeated to the uniformed patrol officers what she’d witnessed: that when she’d been in the alleyway putting out trash that afternoon, she’d seen Xavier sneaking out the back of the neighbor’s house two doors down. He’d been carrying the new flat-screen television that she knew the neighbor had just bought.

When Xavier had realized she’d seen him, he’d shouted at her: “Mind your own business, bitch! Or there be trouble!”

The cops asked a few questions, wrote down her statement, had her read and sign it, and then told her that they’d be in touch if they needed anything else.

And that was the last she’d heard about the episode.

That was, until tonight, when Xavier Smith, angry and hopped up on some drug, burst into her house.

“I seen that police car here!” he said. “Next I knowed, I was picked up!” Then he made an odd smile, showing his bad teeth. “But I got me a good lawyer.”

He looked at Sasha and leered at her backside. “Your girl got herself one fine booty.”

Sasha glared at him.

He noticed the bulge in the back pocket of her tight jeans.

“Give me that cell phone,” he said, and when she didn’t move, he worked it out of her pocket and put it in his front pocket.

“Xavier, please let go of my granddaughter,” Joelle said as evenly and sternly as she could. “Then please leave. If you don’t—”

He suddenly laughed out loud, interrupting her.

“Leave, old woman? You telling me to leave? You crazy! I ain’t leaving till I show you what happens when you call the police on me! That cost me money, had to pay my lawyer and bail. I don’t like losing money.”

Joelle started to move toward the couch, and to the white telephone with the long cord there. “I’m going to call—”

“You not calling nobody!” he said. He waved with the pistol in the direction of the couch. “Sit there, you old bitch!”

“Xavier . . .”

He suddenly shook his head violently, as if trying to clear it, then shouted: “Don’t you be trying to talk me down!”

He let go of Sasha’s arm, then waved the pistol muzzle at the elderly woman as he walked over to her. He then pushed her so hard that she fell onto the couch.

As she lay there, struggling to sit up, he grabbed the telephone from the side table. He took up the slack in its cord and yanked hard, snapping it free of the wall plug.

He then went back to Joelle and pushed her back down on the cushions. After tucking the snub-nosed revolver in the hoodie’s belly pocket, he grabbed Joelle’s wrists and started wrapping them with the cord. She resisted, pulling apart her wrists after a moment and undoing his work.

He grabbed the pistol from the pocket and raised it above his head as if he was about to hit her.

“Don’t make me do it,” he said, almost in a growl, then put the pistol back in his pocket and rewrapped her wrists, then tied her ankles.

The white vinyl-coated cord pressed deeply into her loose black flesh.

He looked down at her and said, “Now I’m gonna show you what it’s like when you got something to lose, too!”

He walked back over to Sasha, who was visibly shaking.