The Traffickers (Badge of Honor 9)

She glanced around the market and marveled at the worldly mix it offered.

In addition to the dozen or so merchants representing the Pennsylvania Dutch communities, Reading Terminal Market had many others representing the four corners of the world. Up and down the aisles, hanging shingles advertised Little Thai Market, Kamal’s Middle Eastern Specialties, Hershel’s East Side Deli, Tokyo Sushi Bar. There were Greek souvlaki and gyros, French crepes, Italian hoagies, and the revered hometown favorite not to be forgotten, the Philly cheesesteak.

Then there was the market’s mascot, Philbert the Pig, a life-size bronze pig that doubled as a giant piggy bank. Tricia smiled at the thought of the money that visitors donated to it being used to teach children healthy eating habits.

Maybe next time I’ll just arrange for a class field trip here.

Because of the way that the line had bent in the aisle, Tricia now stood almost exactly in front of the counter for the Mercado-The Reading Market Market, she thought, amused at the translation. She eyed the exotic variety it offered. Everything from homemade Mexican cheeses to burritos to even a chicken mole.

Who knew a chicken dish could actually have chocolate in it?

Behind a short wall that was the kitchen food-prep line, she noticed a black male of about twenty. He wore a white T-shirt and apron. He had his black hair in thick ropelike dreadlocks, a hairnet ridiculously overstretched on them, and Tricia then realized that he was Jamaican.

A Jamaican working in a Mexican caf?.

Now, that’s really what you call a melting pot of worldly people.

He smiled at her, and she returned it as she reached over to a display. She picked up a jar and began to casually inspect it. It was salsa, which she knew to be a spicy sauce of chopped tomatoes, onions, jalape?o peppers, and more. The festive red lettering of the label read HOLA! BRAND HOT amp; TASTY TEX-MEX SALSA, A TASTE OF OL’ MEXICO VIA SAN ANTONE, TEXAS.

The line for Beiler’s moved forward, and she returned the jar to the display, once more smiling warmly. The thought of such a product-one having originated in a country so distinct and different-being readily available in the urban belly of a city like Philadelphia was wonderful. (Her warm feeling would have been somewhat tempered had she turned the jar and read the tiny print on the back of the label: HOLA! BRAND IS A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF NESFOODS INTERNATIONAL, INC., PHILA., PENNA.) Tricia made brief eye contact with Kathleen Gingerich, who stood behind the counter at Beiler’s. The shy and sweet sixteen-year-old was of slight build and light features, and of course, being Amish, wore absolutely no makeup. She was dressed in the traditional Amish conservative clothing-a simple ankle-length tan cotto

n dress, white cotton blouse, and a tan cotton head cover, its spaghetti straps tied in a tiny bow beneath her chin.

When Kathleen’s light-brown eyes met Trish’s blue ones, her gentle face glowed.

Kathleen pointed to say that the shoofly pie was waiting there on the glass display in a white cardboard box. Tricia nodded, then reached into her purse, a purple Pravda knockoff she’d bought the previous weekend from a sidewalk vendor in New York City’s Chinatown. She pulled out a twenty-dollar bill to have it ready when she got to the front of the line.

That’s so sweet of her.

If there’s any place in Philly that better exemplifies its motto of the City of Brotherly Love than this market, I just don’t know what it could be.

Tricia Wynne then heard one of the heavy metal doors to Filbert Street slam shut. It was fifty or so feet down the aisle, beyond Beiler’s. She looked there and saw two businesswomen. They turned and walked down a side aisle.

Then Tricia saw a young man in black jeans and boots and a navy blue raincoat standing at the door.

A Latino, Tricia noted approvingly.

She saw that the black hood of his sweatshirt was pulled over his head. It at first struck her as odd, but then she remembered the rain had just started and the chill it could cause when one entered an air-conditioned room.

The Latino began moving with a determined stride in her direction.

Then, behind her, Tricia heard a commotion at the food-prep counter of the Mercado.

She turned in time to see the Jamaican, now with a stricken expression, quickly moving out from behind the short wall. He went to a table in the corner of the Mercado and pulled out from under it a brown paper grocery bag, its top folded over and stapled shut.

He began carrying the bag toward the Latino. He forced a smile as he came closer to him, holding out the bag in his left hand.

The next moment, everything happened so fast that Tricia could not comprehend it all.

The right side of the Latino’s navy raincoat opened and out came what looked like some sort of firearm. It certainly had what looked like a barrel. Then the Jamaican threw the brown paper bag toward the Latino at the same time that he produced a small black semiautomatic pistol from the waistband behind his white apron.

She saw that the Jamaican held the pistol awkwardly, as if uncomfortable with it, and not in what one might call a traditional-or even natural-manner, which was to say with the grip of the pistol up and down, vertical. Instead, he held it sideways, the grip horizontal to the floor.

Then there came two series of deafening gunfire, the sound of which seemed to rattle around the heavy iron beams of the terminal. One series, from the Latino’s weapon, made a steady and pounding stream of braaaaaps; the other, from the pistol, of much slower and irregular bang-bang-bangs.

Tricia and those who’d been in line with her were on their knees, cowering, as the Latino strode past. He continued toward the Jamaican, who now lay on his right side on the concrete floor of the market with his pistol appearing empty. There were holes pierced in the upper part of his white apron, dark crimson stains spreading between them.

The brown paper bag had been shredded by bullets. Spread on the concrete near the Jamaican’s feet were its contents, what looked to Tricia to be two bricklike objects wrapped in butcher paper and a lot of small sugar packets, maybe thirty or forty, all scattered.