The Traffickers (Badge of Honor 9)

They want it bad.

Hell, even the kids.

And look at those ads-booze, gambling, hookers.

Everyone’s got a habit.

What the hell’s the difference with drugs?

He clicked on the part of the page to leave a comment, then pounded out the message on the keyboard and clicked the SEND button.

After a moment, his message appeared onscreen, last on the comment list:

From Death.Before.Dishonor (9:52 a.m.):

F**k you pendejos! Dudes sell drugs because people (are you paying attention?) because people want to buy them! Look at the ads on this page-booze, gambling (and where there?s gambling there?s hookers)… Something for everyone. What?s the difference with drugs? And you know what? Sometimes we even clean up the rats from the gutters-like those in this motel!

Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse

V

ONE

Temple Burn Center Temple University Hospital North Broad and West Tioga Streets, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 10:10 A.M.

The third-floor Intensive Care Unit was ringed by a corridor that went around the entire floor by the exterior windows. Chad Nesbitt stood leaning against the northwest corner window, which looked out onto Broad and Tioga and, across the street, the Shriners Children’s Hospital. The two medical facilities were connected by an enclosed sky bridge.

Inside, Nesbitt had a view down the north and west corridors. Near the ends of each were pairs of swinging doors that led into the Intensive Care Unit sterile areas. The ICU room at the end of the corridor to Nesbitt’s left was where the doctors had put the burn victim initially admitted as “John Doe.” Sitting in a chrome-framed plastic chair across from it was Skipper Olde’s father.

Joseph Warren Olde, Sr., had his head in his hands and was staring at the highly polished tile floor, seemingly frozen. He was tall and lanky, with thin, patrician features.

Nesbitt knew that he was a graduate of Harvard, and even now he had on the school’s unofficial uniform. He wore it damn near every day-a Brooks Brothers two-piece striped woolen suit (summer weight now, the cuff of the pants barely covering his ankles) with blood-and-blue rep necktie, white button-down shirt, and Alden black leather shoes.

It’s on twenty-four/seven, Chad thought.

I’ve even seen him in it in Florida. He looked like Richard Nixon walking down the beach. Ridiculous.

It’s like he hides behind that suit.

Skipper said he’d overhead his grandfather once say, “Joey never really excelled at anything, except perhaps being arrogant.”

Sitting in another chrome-framed plastic chair beside him was a blue shirt Philadelphia Police Department patrol officer.

Police Officer Stephanie Kowenski was twenty-five years old, five-foot-four, and 150 pounds. She more than filled out her uniform, and her bulletproof vest served only to accentuate her bulk. In the molded polymer holster on her right hip she carried a Glock Model 17 nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fully charged magazine of seventeen rounds and one round in the chamber. Two additional fully charged magazines were on her kit.

Police Officer Kowenski’s orders were to keep watch on the door. She had a police radio on her belt, its coiled cord snaking up to her shoulder mic-the microphone pinned to her right shoulder epaulet. The orders further said to immediately report any news of any kind concerning J. Warren Olde, Jr. She was reading for the third time a People magazine she’d taken from the dog-eared stack on the coffee table next to her chair, and was attempting not to notice the anguished father of the victim.

At the end of the corridor to the right was the ICU room in which they’d put Becca Benjamin. There, a male version of Police Officer Kowenski-short, squat, bored, but reading a paperback novel-guarded the door.

Pacing in front of the swinging doors was Mr. James Henry Benjamin. The fifty-year-old president and chief executive officer of Benjamin Securities, who was five-eleven and 160 with a striking resemblance to the actor Pierce Bros nan, kept shaking his head and muttering, “I don’t understand this. I just don’t understand…”

His wife, Andrea, who also was fifty and a very attractive older version of her daughter Becca, sat in one of three chrome-framed plastic chairs against the wall of windows. She held a cellular phone in one hand, a white linen handkerchief in the other. After every third or fourth pass of her husband, she tried to calm him, and added, “Honey, please sit down.”

Nesbitt pulled out his phone and hit the key that speed-dialed Matt Payne’s mobile. It rang only once before he heard Payne’s voice.

“Hey, Chad. What’s up? Where’re you?”

“At Temple. The Burn Center? I felt it best to be here…”