# 21 - Chapter Twenty One "It Hurts to Say Goodbye"

 

It Hurts to Say Goodbye

 Chapter Twenty-One

The air was chilly and damp, a surprise for an early summer morning. 

It was five am, and the officers of the Philadelphia Police Department were installed off Allegheny Avenue in a weed-filled lot almost directly under the passing traffic above them on Interstate 95. 

The massive concrete abutments on two sides of their gathering point protected the teams from contact with any possible early rising civilians, but not from the bitter winds. 

“Take down a drug lord, that’s fine with me,” one of the officers told no one in particular. “But let’s do it when and where it’s nice and warm. That okay with you guys?”

A few of his buddies near him gave him a friendly laugh. 

Most of the officers allowed the wintry temperature to bother them. They wore standard black SWAT garb with special protective equipment, but their attire was designed for summer wear, not for early mornings in a location that was battered by winds blowing through a virtual wind tunnel. Most carried their own personal handguns, and some carried military-style assault rifles.

The officers were divided into three units. One, a total of thirty officers, was drawn from members of the department’s Narcotics Tactical Unit, headed by Captain William McAllister. The second, a total of another thirty officers, was work-a-day officers from six districts, officers who had volunteered because of their strong feelings against illegal drugs. And the third unit, of fifteen officers, was made up of members of the specialized Crime Scene Investigations.

“Listen up! Listen up!” McAllister shouted. “Okay, I’m gonna bring you guys up to date. This is it, really is. For anyone that’s not too bright, this is not a drill. It’s the real thing.”

No one understood the captain’s attempt at humor. He continued. “In just a few minutes, our transport’s gonna arrive. Three buses provided by SEPTA. Then, you better know your assignments: Teams assigned to encircling the perimeter. Other teams will break down the entrance and search every room and every studio for any activity or people related to illicit drugs, and then you’ll slap good, old Zip-tie cuffs on ‘em and move ‘em to the vans. And then the Crime Scene guys, their work speaks for itself.”

McAllister was beginning to enjoy himself. “Good luck, and good hunting.” 

When the SEPTA buses came into view, a wave of sound rose above the encampment – the shouts, the laughter, the clunking and clanking as the officers grabbed their gear and struggled forward under their heavy backpacks. Then the officers lined up at three designated loading points. When the buses hissed to a stop, the officers began climbing aboard and looking for a place to stow their gear and sit. 

“Hey, how about this? It’s fuckin’ genius,” one officer shouted. “People gonna see these SEPTA buses, and they’re gonna think it’s just like any morning, specially since everyone inside is wearing black and carrying enough fire power to capture City Hall. Go figure.”

Another answered, “Hey, wait a second. I don’t got a SEPTA pass. That mean I can go home now and finish gettin’ my zzz’s.”

Sergeant Buckley and Lieutenant Boswell were on the third and last bus to exit the encampment. Even though they knew some of the other officers, they remained with their team. Like every other police officer on the buses, they were a bit groggy, given the hour they rose for the early-morning operation. 

“You gotta admit it, our Captain McAllister doesn’t waste time,” Boswell said. “I’d say the commissioner had something to do with it. Saw ‘em on television. DiNardo kinda put McAllister on the spot. It’s all yours, and if you fuck up, it’s your ass in a sling.”

“Can’t really feel too sorry for the captain,” Buckley said. “He’s not exactly the sweetest guy in the world. I read the whole text of what DiNardo said in The Inquirer – real caring, real correct. But the commish was stepping outta the line of fire if the mayor’s not happy.”

“You’re talking about The Inquirer,” Boswell said. “We did okay. You were right about it. Thanks, no shit. We weren’t even mentioned by name. That woman, Robbi, she must have some pretty good connections in The Roundhouse.” 

“I’m sure that guy, Wong, he was okay,” said Buckley. “I’m sure he’s smart and all that. But Robbi, she’s sure something. She’d look at you in kinda a girly way, and then bang, she’d hit ya with a tough question. Ya know, bet she was really hot when she was young.” 

In less than ten minutes, the three municipal SEPTA buses ground through the six blocks of narrow streets between their encampment and the target, the former textile mill used by the suspected drug cartel as its operations and production center. 

Carefully, the police officers filed out of the buses and took their places for the assault, making sure to avoid every obstacle or trap that could make noise and signal their arrival. Moving as fast as possible, designated teams filed down two streets and two alleys to encircle the building. 

The reconditioned textile mill was five stories high. A wide, open atrium dominated the center of the structure, where lines of spinning and other machines used to turn out fabrics for clothing, bed linen and other things. On all four sides of the atrium were balconies and doorways leading to work rooms, which now were rented by artists to produce paintings, sculpture and other art forms, and by the target drug cartel. 

Officers fanned out looking for spaces designated as “Aunt Alice’s Candle House,” which they knew was their main target. They also searched for any workrooms that evinced the presence of light, and some officers carried point-and-read thermal-sensor guns, which indicated heat from human activity. 

The officers knew that night time was the busiest time for illicit drug production. 

Buckley and his five-man team climbed the metal staircases and tried to cover as much of each floor as they could. On the second floor, they located their first drug lab. 

As soon as the officers broke in with their weapons drawn, the hands of every chemical worker shot high into the air. “Stay still, and don’t move,” Buckley shouted. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of producing illegal drugs.” The workers remained frozen. But Buckley suspected that most were illegal immigrants who – despite their chemical knowledge – didn’t speak English. The suspects – now Zip-tied – were marched down to the first floor, where they joined other suspects. 

Buckley took a few seconds to examine the men his team had just arrested. He noticed that every one of them was thin and dressed in badly worn attire. He wondered about what kind of a fix these poor souls were in. 

Evidently, they worked for a drug lord because that was their only option to survive and provide the minimum for their families. Buckley assumed they struggled to get to America. They did what they had to. And now they would probably end up in prison. Welcome to America! 

But the operation had to be completed, Buckley reminded himself. He and his team rushed up to the third floor, where they noticed another studio with bright light escaping from between the bottom of the door and the floor. The officers banged their way into the studio, where they found an elderly man with a white beard and wearing paint-splattered jeans and a black sweatshirt.

 The man turned away from the large canvas he was working on and confronted the officers. “What the devil you doing here? I got work to do.” 

Immediately, the officers stowed their weapons. They examined his oil painting in progress. It showed some familiar Philly scenes, and in the center was a collection of personages standing around, dancing or playing instruments, all in broad strokes and bright colors of oil paint. 

Buckley stepped forward and flashed his badge. “I’m Sergeant Buckley of the police department. We’re on assignment to arrest any persons involved in the production of illegal drugs.”

“Well, I’m a starving artist trying to get by and express ideas I believe in.” The painter was holding three wide brushes in one hand and a rag stained with paint in the other. “Don’t know anything about drugs, but I gotta admit, sometimes I see a lots of men don’t say hello and look away when they see you.” 

“Sorry about the door,” Buckley said. “It’ll get fixed. Can you just talk for a few minutes with one of our officers?”

The painter nodded. 

“Got a volunteer here?” Buckley asked.

One officer stepped forward, and Buckley’s team rushed out in search of another suspect space. 

Shouts and screams echoed throughout the central atrium, as two other drug labs were located and their workers arrested. The workers producing drugs for the suspected Russian cartel boss were lined up, cuffed with plastic Zip-ties, and marched down to the first floor. There, they were held, until police vans arrived to move them to The Roundhouse for processing. 

Almost all of the chemical workers surrendered peacefully. However, one worker who had been discovered in a space on the fourth floor, ran to the rear of the studio, opened a window and threw out a knotted rope, which he then used it to scale down the outside wall. 

When he encountered the police teams waiting for him on the ground, he drew a small pistol and didn’t follow orders to drop his weapon. One police officer fired low, to wound him. Hit in the abdomen, the suspect was carried to a waiting ambulance.  

-0- 

While the other units fanned out through the building looking for any more studios utilized by “Aunt Alice’s Candle House,” McAllister headed for the basement, alone. All officers had been instructed to use the stairs, not the creaky elevator left over from the old days. 

From the bottom of the stairwell, he knew the route to the storeroom for Orlov’s operation. The hallway reeked of rotting vegetables, and its stone walls were dripping with moisture. As McAllister approached the storeroom, he could hear a dull thud every twenty seconds or so. What the devil? 

When he entered the room, he had his answer: Orlov loading large sacks onto a flatbed cart. The captain was able to read the print on each sack: Baking Soda, in bright, read letters. 

Apparently, Orlov didn’t know he was being observed. He grabbed each big sack and tossed it onto the cart, one after another, as though they were pound bags of flour. As he moved, he grunted and mumbled what McAllister assumed were Russian obscenities.  

Suddenly, Orlov’s animal instinct clicked on. He turned. Surprise seized his big face. He didn’t understand why McAllister was there, and why he was wearing a black SWAT uniform, and why he was holding a pistol, and why the pistol was pointed at him. 

Then Orlov smiled. “I got it all set up for you.”

“Me too,” McAllister said. “I’m all ready.” He pulled the trigger. 

The first round entered Orlov’s heart precisely between the ribcage. He fell back onto the pallet loaded with the plastic sacks.

Blood flowed and spread rapidly over his white shirt. 

Confusion and surprise seized Orlov’s face, and then he smiled, a sad smile of defeat and resignation. After all the work, the plotting and striving, all of the things he forced himself to do, it was over. “Why? You didn’t have to.”

“I know. I just wanted to.”

The words were slow and weak: “You’re the killer business, it’s you.” The blood on Orlov’s white shirt seeped over his abdomen, and then there were streams of blood from his nose and from the left corner of his mouth. “Who’d know, the killer business wears a blue uniform?”

McAllister fired once more, and the round struck above Orlov’s left eye and carried brain matter, black hair and blood onto the piled sacks and the cinder-block wall behind.

McAllister wore a stiff smile. “Yes, my friend, the killer business wears whatever it can, whatever it can.”

Slowly, as Orlov slid down against the sacks one inch at a time, life slipped away from him. The remnants of his head slumped to one side. His mouth, perched on the stump of his neck, was twisted into a scowl. There was no more control, and his arms fell away, loose. 

After about ten seconds, McAllister rushed toward the body and began patting the pockets of Orlov’s loose trousers. Finally, he found it, the pistol, the small Mossberg that the Russian always carried with him. 

McAllister pushed Orlov’s body to one side on the storage sacks. 

Suddenly, the police captain looked at his own hands. They were covered with blood, Orlov’s blood. Disgust is what McAllister felt, and he began turning and searching for a cloth, a rag, or a paper towel, anything to rid himself of the sensation and the odor of the Russian’s blood. 

There was nothing. 

The captain’s disgust mounted. In desperation, he wiped his hands on Orlov’s sleeves. Then, he reached into the Orlov’s pocket and withdrew his weapon. He examined it, checked its magazine, and then pulled the slide to chamber the first round. 

Carefully, he raised the weapon and aimed. He pulled the trigger three times, and the rounds chipped paint and stone from the cinder-block wall on the other side of the room. Then, as rapidly as he could, he pushed the inert body back to its original position, wiped the pistol clean on his own trousers, and placed it in Orlov’s hand. He closed the Russian’s fingers around the weapon’s handle. 

As he stood up, he sensed something, a person behind him. He turned, and there stood Lieutenant Boswell. 

McAllister was stunned. “How long you been here?” 

“Just now,” Boswell said. “I was in the hallway, down a ways. I heard shots. Bam, bam, four times, just like that.” 

“This son of a bitch, he tried to kill me.” 

“Fuck, what the fuck! I thought . . . ” Boswell didn’t want to say it. “Anyway, he didn’t, and you’re okay.” 

McAllister studied Boswell’s face, looking for a hint, any indication of what he was thinking. 

“Me too, I sure didn’t expect it,” McAllister said. “Loyalty, know what that is?”

“Oh, yeah, sure!”

McAllister advanced toward Boswell, until his face was almost touching his subordinate. “Well, if you’re disloyal to me, if you ever oppose me, if you ever say anything against me, you’ll die in jail.” He paused, and added, “or on the street.” 

Then, he backed away one step and smiled at Boswell. “You got that?”

“You’ve always had it, my loyalty. You always will.”

“We’ll see,” the captain said. “You show me. I still want that Jew, that Siegel guy, for that girl’s murder, the Faith girl. You got that?”

“Like I said,” Boswell repeated. “You always will, you’ll always have my loyalty.”

McAllister said, “Then it wasn’t you, the story in The Inquirer?”

“Fuck no, not me. Like I said, loyalty. No shit, I thought it could be you. Look what you could do! Look at Orlov.”

Sounds were coming from the hallway, scrapping, the clanking of equipment, and snippets of conversation and bursts of nervous laughter. It all got louder, until a young officer carrying an equipment bag on his shoulder appeared at the doorway. 

“There was a report of shooting down here,” he said. “You okay, sir?”

“This fucker tried to kill me,” McAllister said. “Just opened up. I was forced to respond.” 

The young officer answered, “Don’t worry about it, sir. We’ll handle this. We’re one of the Crime Scene teams, under Captain Mathews. We’ll take care of everything.”

Three other young officers entered the storeroom. One of them was pulling a cart loaded with equipment behind him. Immediately, they moved toward Orlov’s body, and then started digging out the expended rounds from the wall. 

McAllister turned to the young officer and said, “Thanks, fella. I hated to do it, but I didn’t have any choice. If you need anything, just give me a ring or a text.”

“Don’t sweat it, but at some point we’re gonna need your sidearm, for verification and stuff.”

McAllister and Boswell exited the storeroom and made their way down the hallway to the stairwell that led to the first floor. At the entrance of the building, they looked outside at the brightening day. The sun had just inched past the horizon, and its light cast shadows of two police vans on the asphalt parking lot.

Boswell took off to find Buckley, somewhere among the other officers and the lines of suspects waiting to be loaded into police vans. 

Now alone, McAllister looked out the glass door and noticed that Crime Scene specialists were loading gray, metal filing cabinets, several computers and some cardboard evidence cartons into the vans. 

Immediately, McAllister exited the building and held his hands up in the air. Then he spotted the captain in charge of Crime Scene Investigation and approached him.

“I’ll handle all that, Ed,” McAllister announced. “I got some teams all set to process it all. Don’t worry about it.”

“Sorry Bill,” said Captain Ed Mathews. “All this, it’s under the commissioner’s control.”

“Look’it, this is my operation and my investigation. I got a team ready to work on this right away.”

“Bill, want me to countermand a direct order from the commissioner? See that van we’re loading? Right now, he’s got a team waiting for it. That’s his strict orders. Everything goes to him. Matter of fact, he just called me. I think he’s there right now, got up early and all that.”

McAllister was desperate. What the fuck, he told himself. What the fuck can I do? I can’t let . . . He looked around, maybe another team could shoulder Mathews’ Crime Scene guys outta the way and seize . . . 

“Listen, Bill, it’s no problem,” Mathews said. “You’ll probably get everything sooner than you want. It’s a lotta shit.  Listen, I’m doing you a favor. You don’t wanna have to process all this shit. This kinda operation, it’s usually the same kinda stuff, like payment records and purchases, and who’s not paying. It’s a pain in the ass, honest.” 

McAllister watched evidence cartons being pushed into one of the vans, and then the rear doors were slammed shut. 

Pain in the ass, sure thing! The captain shuddered. You bet!  

-0-

The operation was ending. Twenty-seven persons were arrested and they were now on their way to The Roundhouse for processing. Orlov’s body was on en route in an ambulance to Medical Examiner’s Office across the Schuylkill River over by the Penn Hospital. The Crime Scene units were still removing evidence and loading it onto police vans. 

And the teams of armed officers in SWAT uniforms were lining up and then climbing onto the same SEPTA buses that had brought them to the crime scene. 

Buckley climbed onto the third and last SEPTA bus. As he was moving down the center aisle, he noticed Boswell already seated. Buckley took the place beside Boswell. 

“Buddy, how ya doin’?” Buckley asked. 

“Not bad. It’s over with, anyway.”

Then Buckley looked just a hint annoyed. “Where the fuck ya go? At the beginning, all of a sudden you disappeared, man.” 

“I was trying to help the Crime Scene guys a little. I got news for you.”

“Let’s have it, please!” Buckley said, trying to keep his tone down. “You sure got my attention.”

“You’re not gonna believe all this,” Boswell began. “I went down, to the basement, into some kind of a storage room. McAllister was there. He just killed this guy, this Russian guy. His name’s Orlov, he’s one of the bosses of that drug cartel. Now, you’re gonna ask me, how I know that?”

“You bet’cha, Tonto,” Buckley shot back. “Like the Lone Ranger said, ‘We’re either partners, or not.’”

Boswell lowered his eyes and stared at the back of the seat in front of him. “Ya know? This is tough for me, really tough! It’s hard for me to talk about, and I don’t want to get you mixed up with this shit. Honest, I’m tryin’ to protect you.”

“You know what they say, and I think it’s the true: the best protection is the truth.”

Boswell raised his eyes and turned toward his partner. “Okay,” he said. “Just gimme a little more time, just a little. I swear.” With the last words, Boswell’s face was twisted in pain.

“Okay, I’ll say okay. Guess I got no choice.”

“Okay,” Boswell continued. “Well, fuck, I can tell you this. It’s a whole story, a long story. Remember I told you I got involved in all this shit, and I didn’t know what to do? And I didn’t want you to get involved, get into trouble? I just can’t tell you now. But soon, I promise. Anyway, in that room, back to that room, McAllister shot Orlov. Just like that, shot him, it was hard to look at.”

“My God!”

“And then our captain, he tells me what he wants,” Boswell said. “He wants us to still pin Faith Gruen’s murder on El Siegel. You and me, we know, we know Siegel didn’t do it. We got to know the guy, he’s not a killer. He couldn’t, it’s impossible. So, now, with the Russian boss, with Orlov dead, it makes even less sense. Why the fuck, why the fuck’s McAllister still trying to pin the woman’s murder on Siegel. It’s just crazy, it just doesn’t   . . . ” 

Buckley shook his head and whispered. “I been thinkin’ about that a lot, thought about some possibilities. But I come up with only one, only one got a chance, but it’s still a maybe. Maybe he’s trying to protect someone, maybe he’s tryin’ to load El Siegel with someone else’s shit.” 

“Maybe we gotta find out who that someone else is,” Boswell said.