The Traffickers (Badge of Honor 9)

When the Expedition slowly rolled past the fuel pump island, Delgado surprised Aguilar by opening the passenger door and leaping out.

Aguilar, pulling to a stop, followed Delgado in his mirror.

El Gato moved with speed and grace. He went quickly to the fuel pump island, then to the open driver’s door of the white church van there. He stepped up on the running board and put his head inside the van, looking toward the rear of the vehicle.

Then he hopped down from the running board, shut the van door, and damn near flew to the side of the convenience store where the grimy Latino had gone.

El Cheque lost sight of El Gato just as he was going behind some shrubbery-and just as he was pulling the Beretta from his waistband.

FOUR

7701 Brocklehurst Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 8:56 P.M.

Stanley Dowbrowski took a sip of his bourbon, then cocked his head as he looked at his computer screen.

Something there’s not right, he thought.

Stanley Dowbrowski was sixty-five years old and in March had become a widower. He stood five-foot-eight, weighed 225 pounds, and kept his salt-and-pepper hair closely cropped; it looked almost like the three days’ growth of his white beard. He wore thick bifocal eyeglasses and, for their comfort and ease of care, a two-piece athletic warm-up suit with a white cotton sleeveless T-shirt.

Stanley Dowbrowski had once been more or less physically fit. He’d worked out regularly. Now, however, he was in failing health, mostly due to having spent nearly the last half-century burning through pack after pack of cigarettes. The resulting scar tissue on his lungs had reduced their capacity to only thirty percent, which meant that getting around took him great effort, and when he did get around, it was with the aid of an aluminum walker, and with an asthma inhaler in his pocket.

Consequently, Stanley Dowbrowski rarely left the nice comfortable four-bedroom house just off Roosevelt Avenue in Northeast Philly. It was where he and his Betty had reared their two children.

He now, of course, was what people called an empty-nester. The kids were adults with young kids of their own, and living in nearby suburbs. He was grateful that over the years Betty had been able to win most of her many battles against the different cancers. Not only had she been able to spend time with her kids’ kids, but the grandchildren had gotten to know-and have memories of-their wonderful “Grandmama.”

Since Betty’s passing six months before, Stanley Dowbrowski’s kids had begun regularly dropping by to check on Grandpapa. Once a week they brought him food from the grocery and precooked dishes that had been frozen so all he had to do was thaw and warm them.

And they brought their pleas that he sell the old house and come out to live with them in suburbia.

But Stanley Dowbrowski wouldn’t hear of it. He told them that he was far too set in his ways. He was not going to become a bother to them. They had their families, and he had his home and all its dear memories.

“I’ll leave when the boys from the Philly ME’s office tie a tag on my big toe,” Stanley Dowbrowski dramatically announced more than once, “and carry me out in a body bag.”

Which, of course, always triggered the desired reaction.

“Dammit, Dad!” his daughter yelled. “Don’t talk like that-especially in front of the kids!”

Stanley Dowbrowski still knew some of the people at the Medical Examiner’s Office. (He also knew they wouldn’t tie a toe tag on him; he just liked the black humor of the metaphor… and the response it elicited.) But not as many people as he used to.

He had retired from the Philadelphia Police Department fifteen years earlier.

Yet he’d never really left the police department. He kept up with old friends from there, also retired or, like the one in Homicide who lived by the middle school a few blocks away, still on the force. And he read cop books and watched cop movies. He lived and breathed-albeit sometimes on an oxygen tank now-everything about being a law-enforcement officer.

And high on his list of proud cop-related moments involved his sister’s daughter. Police Officer Stephanie Kowenski had joined the cops six years before-after telling him she’d first gotten the idea of going out for the police department from listening to “Uncle Stan’s cop stories.”

Stanley Dowbrowski had many memories. Even the bedroom that he’d converted from his oldest child’s bedroom into an office occasionally triggered one.

It had damn near taken an act of Congress for the conversion to happen. His beloved Betty had practically turned the boy’s bedroom into a shrine to her son-who was now married, he and his bride happily living on their own. It had taken his son’s help to convince Betty that it was fine if his father moved his office from the small corner of the basement into the old bedroom.

The office soon became packed with all of the stuff that Stanley Dowbrowski had collected over the course of his service to the citizens of Philadelphia. On the walls he’d hung black wooden frames holding diplomas and commendations and uniform patches and old photographs and newspaper clippings. He had added a wall of bookshelves, and on these were all his cherished books, arranged alphabetically by author, and a healthy collection of movies. Most were on VHS videotape, but he had a growing number of DVDs, too. His kids brought him a lot of movies with the weekly food deliveries.

The one thing that Stanley Dowbrowski considered the real gem of his office, however, was his desktop computer. It was a brand-new tower model, and he’d bought it with all the bells and whistles. These included a lightning-fast processor, more memory than he could believe, a home-theater audio system, and a pair of twenty-four-inch LCD monitors.

Of the latter, he used one LCD panel for his main screen. The other held all the different screens of whatever he was working on-an Internet browser window, say, showing a police scanner website, another with his e-mail in-box, and so on. He had even started watching some of the DVDs on the computer.

Stanley Dowbrowski used his mouse to scroll back up the browser window that had caused him to look askance at the screen.

Since Betty’s passing, Dowbrowski had established a daily routine. Most of it was centered in this room and around the computer. It was something he knew Betty would have frowned upon had she still been alive. But she wasn’t there. And he had decided his life-at least what was left of it-was his to live in any way that he wanted. Or, considering his failing health, any way that he could manage.