The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

“Yuri had his assistant personally messenger them over from the Diamond Development office in Center City.”

She grinned slyly, then added, “You know, I think that messenger boy of his is really his concubine.”

“His what?”

“His young lover, his concubine.”

Rapp stared at her with an incredulous look. “You shitting me? What’s a billionaire Russian businessman doing with something like that? I mean, I’ve seen him with some incredibly hot women.”

She shrugged. “Female intuition.”

“Maybe. Just don’t say anything to him. He has a mean goddamn temper.”

“Guess that’s how you get to be a billionaire,” Jan said as she pulled the large sheets of architectural drawings from the cardboard tube.

Badde got up from the chair and walked around the marble-topped table. As he stood behind Jan, looking over her shoulder at the architect’s renderings for Volks Haus, his hands slipped down to her waist. He rested his chin on her shoulder as he squeezed her hips.

“Pay attention,” she said.

“I am paying attention,” he said as he buried his nose in her neck and inhaled her lightly scented perfume. “Attention to you. I’ll pay even better attention with this fancy outfit of yours off. . . .”

She giggled, then let her head drop back toward his. Just as she said, “I surrender,” Badde’s Go To Hell cell phone started ringing.

“Dammit!” Badde said, grabbing it and quickly checking the caller ID. It read UNKNOWN CALLER. “Dammit!”

He stepped back from Jan and started walking toward the sliding glass door to the balcony. “Yes?” he said into the phone.

The caller was yelling so loudly that Badde had to hold the phone away from his ear.

Jan could almost clearly hear what the caller was telling Badde: “Reggie’s dead! They’re coming after me!”

VI

[ONE]

5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 12:45 P.M.

Javier Iglesia parked his silver Dodge Avenger across the street from the Bazelon row house.

He counted at least a dozen teenagers and slightly older thuggish types milling about on the sidewalk—a handful of whom he’d seen earlier—and almost that many teens, mostly girls, sitting on the wooden porch and steps. Sasha Bazelon sat in the same rocker she’d been in when he’d wheeled away her grandmother three hours earlier.

At first glance, he mused, someone could easily think that a crowd of troublemakers had swooped in to take advantage of a poor teenage girl right after the death of her only kin.

But Javier now knew they weren’t troublemakers, at least not all of them, because he was very well acquainted with at least one person on the porch—his baby sister, nineteen-year-old Yvette—and was familiar with a handful of the others, including Keesha Cook, who was sitting between Sasha and Yvette.

They’re here supporting Sasha, is what they’re doing.

And not trying to take advantage of her during this dreadful time.

Even these punks, who are looking at me suspiciously.

Javier got out of the car and made eye contact with Yvette. As he started walking across the street, she popped up out of her chair and went quickly down the steps toward him.

He was surprised. What the hell is up with her?

But knowing his baby sister as well as he did, nothing she did should ever have come as a surprise to Javier Iglesia.

What the very petite Yvette Iglesia lacked in physical height—she stood four-feet-ten—she more than made up for with a bubbly, oversize personality. She spoke almost nonstop, mostly in rapid-fire bursts, gesturing wildly with her hands to make her points. She had straight black shoulder-length hair framing a pretty face that clearly showed her Puerto Rican heritage. Her dark eyes were full of life. And her small mouth was impressive not only for its dazzling smile, but also for the raw expletives that came out of it when she was angry, ones that Javier said “would embarrass a Port of Philly longshoreman.”