AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Carlucci glanced at the TV again, and said, “That killing was the tenth so far this year and we’re not even a full week into January. And thanks to Payne shooting that heroin-pushing punk, even though we already had surpassed the previous year’s total of numbers killed, we just hit an all-time record.”
“And now we appear on pace to beat it, Jerry. Is this where I invoke our critics’ favored term Killadelphia? Year after year, it’s become a classic SNAFU.”
Carlucci, staring at the TV, now clearly had a pained expression. Coughlin could tell something weighed heavy on his mind—something beyond the usual Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.
“Denny,” he said, meeting Coughlin’s eyes, “we go way back. What I’m about to tell you goes no farther than these walls.”
“Of course, Jerry. You know that.”
“A couple months back,” Carlucci began, “Five-F waltzed his arrogant ass in here, uninvited, and proceeded to tell me pretty much everything that I already knew about this city’s challenges.”
There was a somewhat small circle, which naturally included Coughlin, that was aware that 5-F was shorthand for the derisive nickname of a well-known forty-five-year-old Philly businessman. The circle also knew that Matt Payne had come up with it, and the mayor, having heard Payne blurt it in a moment of anger, had immediately embraced it, on occasion repeating the longer version: “Fucking Francis Franklin Fuller the Fifth.”
Fuller, who traced his family lineage to Benjamin Franklin, had been born to wealth. He had built that into a much bigger personal fortune, one that was over two billion dollars. Short and stout of stature, Fuller had a bulging belly and a round face and male-pattern baldness similar to his ancestor’s. He embraced with enthusiasm everything Franklinite, beginning with the pen name Richard Saunders that Franklin had used in writing Poor Richard’s Almanack.
Under Richard Saunders Holdings—his main company that was headquartered at North Third and Arch streets in Old City—Fuller owned outright, or had majority interest in, KeyProperties (luxury high-rise office and residential buildings), KeyCargo Import-Exports (largest user of the Port of Philadelphia docks and warehousing facilities), and KeyCom (a Fortune 500, nationwide telecommunications corporation).
Carlucci, jabbing his finger in the direction of the empty armchair beside Coughlin, went on. “Five-F sat in that chair and told me this city, the third poorest in the nation, is headed to becoming the next Detroit. Bankrupt, unless drastic changes are made. And chief among those drastic changes: the violent crimes rate.”
“Which would be the job of the city council members,” Coughlin said, his tone defensive but even. “They can talk to their constituents and figure out a way to stop the robbing and raping and killing. Beginning with cooperating with the police and the district attorney’s office.”
Carlucci, nodding, said, “I agree. And about that point Five-F said—and the research tends to prove he’s right—that unless all that changes, the next generation just graduating college is going to marry and raise families where they feel safer. When they go, their tax base goes, too. And companies follow. And we start circling the Detroit bankruptcy drain faster.”
Coughlin shrugged. “So, then, what’s the magic solution?”
“I have ideas, plans,” Carlucci said. “But what I may not have is time for them.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“The primaries are a year away. I can’t turn this sinking ship around in that short time.”
“You need another term as mayor,” Coughlin said after a pause. “And guaranteeing that takes a lot of . . . support . . . from high places.”
“Right. And it’s been made clear unless there are changes, that support won’t be there.” He paused to let that sink in, then added, “But with t
hat support, another term would have you, already my right hand, at the helm of the department. Four stars?”
Coughlin had been appointed—as had all deputy commissioners to commissioners, the one- to four-stars—by the city’s managing director. But that happened only with the blessing—read order—of the mayor.
“And after that,” Carlucci said, “perhaps even higher office.”
Coughlin looked at Carlucci, mentally going over what he had just heard, and felt his eyes widen involuntarily.
The pieces had fallen into place.
On a Saturday a month earlier, as holiday celebrations were peaking, Coughlin had been called to an emergency meeting in the mayor’s office to address that morning’s gruesome slayings of a young college coed, who had been stabbed in JFK Park, across from City Hall, and of a young teenage boy, whose throat had been slashed in Franklin Park, across from the Roundhouse.
In addition to Carlucci and Coughlin, the meeting included only two others, Edward Stein and James Finley, both of whom had joined the mayor’s staff no more than thirty days earlier.
Stein, a lawyer, held the new title of chief executive advisor to the mayor. Finley was head of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Office. Each was being paid, due to budgetary considerations, $1 per annum by the city. But this was not a hardship for them. While it was not broadcast, it was not exactly a secret that Stein and Finley continued to be well compensated—some believed in the middle to high six figures, plus generous bonuses and stock options—as senior vice presidents at Richard Saunders Holdings.
In short, Francis Fuller was loaning two of his top corporate executives to the city. It certainly was not the first time—nor would it be the last—that corporate businessmen would cycle into the political realm, influence the workings, then cycle back out to the corporate world.
In the meeting, Finley left no question that he was out to get rid of what he saw as the city’s chief public relations disaster concerning killings—the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line, Sergeant Matthew Payne.
Stein, Coughlin believed, tended to be the voice of reason between the two of them, going so far as telling Finley that he believed Payne was doing a great job protecting society from the barbarians—and that he didn’t think Payne went to work hoping to get into another shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.
Coughlin had witnessed Carlucci’s unwavering defense of Payne that day. He declared that he would not allow the decorated police officer, who risked his life protecting the city, to be sacrificed for what a sanctimonious Finley had called “the greater good.”
