Chinatown
Philadelphia
Friday, January 6, 5:02 P.M.
A little more than a mile south of the deserted power station—and a block away from the Roundhouse—Philadelphia City Council President William G. Lane, Jr., stood on the brakes of his silver Mercedes-Benz SUV as he approached the broken curb beside a building construction site. Beneath a tall tower crane, a massive skeleton of steelwork rose more than thirty stories.
Lane was in his early forties, with an average build and a very black complexion. He kept his dark hair short and had a three-day growth of beard that almost masked
the heavy pitting of acne scars. He wore designer sunglasses, a black blazer over a gray merino wool sweater, and dark slacks with Italian loafers.
The luxury SUV’s large tires eased over the crumble of concrete, crunching to a stop alongside the fifteen-foot-tall, fabric-covered chain-link fence that encircled what months earlier had been a parking lot of asphalt.
Lane took a final pull on his cigarette, opened the sunroof and exhaled through it as he tossed the smoldering butt.
I really don’t have a good feeling about this, he thought, checking his cellular telephone, then sending a text message to John T. Austin that simply read I’m here.
As he began to light another cigarette, he smelled fried food. He glanced at the two-story building directly across Ninth Street and saw a restaurant. Its big window had WONTON KING in faded red lettering and, under that, what he assumed was Chinese. By its door, a teenage male was putting a large white bag into the cargo basket of a battered moped. On the basket was plastic signage displaying a phone number and WONTON KING—SPEEDY DELIVERY.
Lane turned and looked through the windshield. There was an enormous double gate ten feet ahead, the gates folded open against the interior of the fencing. A driveway of crushed stone, rutted from the steady traffic of heavy-duty trucks and industrial equipment, led inside.
On the far side of the open gates was a black Chevy Tahoe. Lane wondered if the SUV was Austin’s. It was parked on the broken sidewalk in front of a ten-foot-square vinyl banner. The banner had an architectural rendering of the construction project: a thirty-three-story, glass-sheathed tower. Above the rendering was HOUSE OF MING—LUXURY CONDOMINIUM LIVING—PRE-CONSTRUCTION PRICING FROM $1 MILLION. Under the dollar figure was a box that read REMAINING UNITS AVAILABLE, and then, on a sticker that clearly had been affixed over a series of similar stickers, the number 12.
Amazing, Lane thought. Out of more than probably two hundred condos, only a dozen are left to buy before the place is even finished. Just like Austin said.
Wonder how long the dives like Wonton King will last with the property values going up?
But, then, I bet the developer’s brother-in-law—or cousin, nephew, whatever—have already used a straw buyer to get that property for dirt before anybody had a clue this high-rise was going in.
I do give Austin credit. He said the one big benefit of Chinatown being “the ugly stepchild of Center City” is it’s got the last cheap real estate that can be converted into prime properties.
Chinatown—which covered about forty blocks, from Arch Street north to Vine, and Broad Street east to Seventh—was in Lane’s district. He knew only a few parcels there remained diamonds in the rough. And with councilmanic prerogative—Philadelphia’s city charter dictated that council members, because they knew their district and constituents best, were granted final approval over land sales in their districts that got the green light from the Vacant Property Review Committee of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority—he effectively controlled them all.
Lane looked back at the Tahoe but could not see anyone in it. He glanced through the open gates and saw a line of construction workers, all in heavy work clothes, reflective orange safety vests, and white polymer hard hats. They were on the far side of a wooden shack—a sign in front read ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN HERE—and looking as if they were clocking out for the day.
From around the edge of the open left gate, a tall white male came walking out. He also wore an orange vest and white hard hat. But instead of construction worker’s clothing, he had on a gray parka over a black cardigan sweater and blue jeans. He also wore shiny black Western boots with pointed toes.
Is that him? Jesus Almighty, it is . . .
Lane immediately noticed two things about Austin: first, the blue-black bruise that covered the right side of his face, and then that he looked deeply saddened.
He really got beat up bad in that wreck. On top of losing two people he was close to.
Austin slipped off the vest and, using his left hand, tossed it and the hard hat onto the hood of the Tahoe. He turned and looked toward Lane’s SUV.
Lane waved, and Austin acknowledged him with a short nod, before walking toward the front passenger door of the Mercedes.
Behind Austin, an eighteen-wheeled tractor-trailer rig was pulling in through the open gates. An enormous blue, shrink-wrapped modular unit was strapped to the flatbed trailer, dwarfing it. Seeing that made Lane recall the first ones Austin had showed him in South Florida. It had been two years earlier, at a manufacturing plant west of Miami, after they had visited the construction site of a condominium high-rise overlooking Biscayne Bay.
—
Austin drove Lane, in a white Ford Expedition with a license plate that read NEXTGEN05, the dozen miles from downtown Miami out to an industrial complex on the edge of the Everglades, the vast wilderness known as the river of grass.
They followed the eight-lane Dolphin Expressway out, passing Miami International Airport along the way. Lane, after adjusting the dash vent so that the cold air blew directly on him, stared out the window, taking in the sights, as he listened to Austin. He drank from a can of Jai Alai India Pale Ale that Austin had given him when they first got in the SUV. Austin had pulled two of the craft beers from a small cooler he had on the floorboard behind the driver’s seat.
Lane had already decided that drivers in Miami were bad enough, but Austin was even worse, speeding through heavy traffic while drinking and talking a hundred miles an hour, either to Lane or on his cellular phone.
“The developer of that condo project,” Austin now explained to Lane, gesturing with his right hand between sips of beer, “is handling the sales himself, including making all the loans on the individual units. And because these are private mortgages—the money comes from an investors’ fund I put together—they are not held to the same lending rules as banks.”