You're a Mean One

The Philadelphia Daily News today reports on the arrest of a man who broke into a family's home on Christmas and stole... well, you can probably guess:

[Christopher] Smith entered a home on Rhawn Street near Verree Road through a locked back door by using a pry tool and stole presents right from under the family's Christmas tree, police said. "It was a unique job in and of itself because, number one, it occurred on that day," said Major Crimes Capt. John Gallagher.

Nice, eh? Hope they roast his chestnuts over an open fire, if you know what I mean. But the most interesting detail comes later:

Smith's accused lookout, Robert Stanley, 44, of Croydon, Bucks County, who police say weighs more than 500 pounds, is in custody in Bucks County on an unrelated charge, and police are in the process of obtaining an arrest warrant for the Christmas Day incident for which Smith was charged.

So let me get this straight. The Christmas Bandit has a fat dude—whose belly almost certainly shakes like a bowl full of jelly—as his lookout man? I mean, c'mon. Was he also wearing a red shirt with puffy white fringe? Did he say to his pal, "Yo, Chris, make sure you grab some cookies and milk in there—I'm starvin', man"?

The Fat Lookout is soooo begging to show up in a story. I may even write an entire novel about him.

Um, Did I Happen to Mention That...

... this week, somebody sent the City Paper a handwritten note, threatening to kill Philly cops? And included in the envelope were two armor-piercing bullets? You can read all about it in my column this week.

This Happened...

... just a few blocks away from where we live. It's our local bank branch, in fact. And we drove by about a half hour after it went down.

My heart goes out to the families of the guards who were killed. The Bride often takes our kids there first thing in the morning, whenever she needs to hit an ATM or deposit a check, and would regularly watch the armored guards, doing their jobs, protecting the morning deposit.

The four perpetrators are still at large.

Update (11:10 a.m.): According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, police are seeking only one gunman.

Update (Friday, Oct. 5): The Philadelphia Daily News has the whole story.

Update (Sunday, Oct. 7): There is a suspect in custody, and reportedly, he has confessed.

Philadelphia, The City That Loves You Back

From today's Philadelphia Daily News: "He was abducted, beaten, shot & robbed--for $29" by David Gambacorta:

"They put me in a choke hold and started pistol-whipping me," Bishr said quietly, running his hand over his salt-and-pepper beard.

The captor whom police identified as Walker said, "'I know you own the fried-chicken place. Give me the $5,000,'" Bashir said.

"I said, 'Sir, you must be mistaken. I'm a 50-year-old man on disability with a family.' But they kept asking for a specific amount of money, and it got me worried," he said.

His captors weren't buying his story, even after Bishr gave them the $29 he was carrying. They had bigger plans.

Farley said the men drove Bishr to an abandoned property on Callowhill Street near 62nd, dragged him inside and ordered him to lie down in a bathtub and strip.

"They searched me and told me I was going to die," Bishr said. "I kept telling them that I had given them everything that I had, but they said, 'Don't think you're leaving here alive.'"

"Sidewalk Tiger" Concludes, Plus...

Here, finally, is "Let Us Prey," the third installment of my short noir story, "Sidewalk Tiger." (You can find part 1 here, and part 2 here.) Hope it was worth the wait. I'd love to hear what you think, if you're so inclined.

But while you're over at the CityPaper.net site, be sure to check out this week's cover story, "85 Shots," by staff writers Doron Taussig and Tom Namako. Granted, I'm biased, but I think this is one of the best crime stories we've ever run. The boys hit this one right out of the park. And it's nice to have a cover like this in a week when Kate Couric and CBS News was all up in our jock, calling us a "City Under Siege." (You know what? Maybe they're right.) If you're a crime fiction fan, this story is required reading.

Smoke

There is a certain time when I am at peace. When my mind is clear, and life is reduced to its necessary elements. When I stand behind my house and stare at the sky, and quietly reflect upon the day's events, or future plans. When I am delighted by the laughter of my children.

When am I at such peace?

When I am in my back driveway, grilling meat.

I don't know what happened, but it came on strong this year. I've grilled for years, ever since the summer of 1998 when we lived in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn that somehow, impossibly, was blessed with a back deck. (And for only $1,110 a month!) So I grilled dogs and burgers. Sometimes a piece of chicken on a patch of tinfoil, but that's not really grilling. That's using an outdoor oven.

And every summer since then, I've grilled. It is expected of me. But my repertoire remained frozen in 1998: Dogs. Burgers. The occasional piece of chicken on a patch of tinfoil.

This year, everything changed.

Don't know if it was turning 35 or what, but suddenly I was fascinated by grilling. I looked up recipes online. I consulted books for tips. My menu grew exponentially — to chops and ribs and clams and God help me, I'm even thinking about vegetables and kebabs now.

This past weekend, for Father's Day, the kids gave me something I'd been hinting about for a few weeks now.

Oh yeah, I've gone charcoal.

Granted, it took me three hours to properly cook four pieces of chicken. (I don't think I added enough briquettes.) But the euphoric smell of the char, of the ash, of the roasting flesh ... it's still in my head as I type these words. I want to stand up, gather the entire staff of the City Paper and take them on an El ride to my house, where I will pour the Kingsford and await the intoxicating splendor of burning stuff.

Such pleasure it brings me.

Which means, of course, that it's doomed.

I can picture it now. Me, out back with a Yuengling pounder, putting the final touches on my Southwest-style shark kebabs, when a guy in a suit will walk down my driveway.

He'll be a city councilman. He'll ask me what I think I'm doing.

Grilling, I'll tell him. Want a kebab?

What about the secondhand smoke?

Huh?

The councilman will point to the house next door.

Do you think it's fair that your neighbors have to put up with all this smoke?

Hey, I'll tell him. That was only the first time, because I forget to open the vents at the bottom of the grill.

The city councilman will shake his head, sad expression on his face.

Sorry. This won't do.

He'll pull a bright and shiny piece of legislation from his jacket pocket.

And these words will echo in my head as I'm dragged, screaming, from my beautiful little 22-inch Weber kettle grill, trying desperately to stab my attackers with a two-pronged fork:

When they came for the smokers, you said nothing.

When they came for the trans fats, you said nothing.

When they came for the hippies playing guitar in the park, you said nothing.

Yeah. Frickin' guitar players in the park. This week's City Paper cover story by newcomer Will Dean details the latest skirmish in this city's war on personal freedoms.

My dad used to play his guitar outside. He'd smoke, too, and probably have a slice of pound cake between sets. In this town, that makes my dad a three-strikes lifer. Some may cry "police state" and all that, but I think the reason for the assault on the citizens of Philadelphia is more banal.

We've got a city full of serious problems: rampant murder, a broken education system, widespread, corruption, stalled economic development.

So what do our leaders go after?

The hippie with the pound cake.

In other words, the low-hanging fruit.

The stuff that grabs headlines, and makes it look like they're actually doing work.

I don't need City Council to tell me what to do with my lungs. I don't need the legislative branch of the fifth — whoops — sixth largest city in the U.S. wrestling over their abortion stance. I don't need them to snatch the pound cake from my table. And I don't need them to roust musicians from a public park.

Seriously, Council, enough of this shit.

Don't piss me off. I've got a two-pronged fork, and I'm not afraid to use it.

(Simulcast at www.citypaper.net.)

Dexter-ity

The Philadelphia Weekly (our noble competition) has a cool profile of Pete Dexter today. Writer Steve Volk traveled out to Seattle to interview the legendary columnist, and even dug up some new details on the infamous night when Dexter had has ass handed to him outside a bar in Grays Ferry. There's a great little scene that sounds like it belongs in 300:

The only one in Dexter’s entourage who stayed and defended him was Cobb, the heavyweight. He stood over his fallen friend, pushing away the men who were striking him, and absorbing blows with an arm that was ultimately broken in the fight.

I think every newspaper columnist needs a Hawk/Joe Pike looking out for him.

Dexterville

Tuesday is deadline day, which means I'm usually leaving the paper late in the evening. Tonight, it was close to 8. I caught the El and after a few stops, a seat opened up. I pulled out my Pete Dexter collection and enjoyed a few more short columns. I'm really trying to avoid rushing through this book. It's meant to be savored. You can even savor a good Dexter column just by reading the first line:

Friday night in the Northeast, about two blocks from Liberty Bell Race Track, three kids kicked an unarmed, off-duty Philadelphia policeman unconscious in front of his own house.

Old Pete had worked construction since he was eleven.

Sunday is Father's Day, and I'm going to be in Chicago, probably red-eyed and sorry and starting a brand-new drunk with my brother Tom, instead of siting out on the lake with my wife and Casey.

The last time I saw Jack Walsh his head was level on the table with half a dozen empty beer mugs in a bar in Trenton, New Jersey, and he said he was going to do something special for me.

Louie the Dog Boy says he is reformed.

Those are Crumley-worthy lines. Dexter makes it look effortless. And he did it on deadline, all the time.

Meanwhile, I started to become aware of a cell phone conversation behind me, a few seats back. The guy's voice is loud, like he's performing for the entire car. "Yeah I'm doing construction now," he said. "Eighteen bucks an hour. Bought three grand worth of tools, but you know what? Somebody broke into my garage and stole 'em. Yeah. I filed a report with the police. I swear to God."

Man, that sucks, I thought.

Then he continued:

"I gotta be careful, though. I'm on parole. I get so much as a parking ticket and I'm fucked. Judge says he sees me again, I'm goin' away for 22 years. You believe that?" Pause. "Ah, they caught me with all kinds of stuff. I had a .38. Two clips. And a diamond cutter."

This is still Pete Dexter's town.

A Cold 45

I knew there was going to be trouble when I heard the singing.

The Eastbound Frankford El was crowded, as it usually is at 5:20 p.m. on a Monday. But making matters worse was an old drunk guy perched on the handicapped seat with a Colt 45 tallboy in his gnarled hand, belting out a confused medley of R&B; classics while leering at any nearby lifeforms who happened to be female. Nobody wanted to be near him.

I squeezed into an empty space near the side doors and grabbed a pole. A young woman with an unusually full backpack slid in next to me. Her backpack, for some reason, came to a point in the back. This point, unfortunately, was aimed at my crotch.

The drunk guy kept singing, and leering, and drinking, and leering some more. I wished he'd stick to one song. It was confusing trying to identify each with only a single line to go on. I thought I heard a little Peaches & Herb in there, but it was hard to tell.

By Spring Garden Street, he'd goaded a beared guy in a red parka into a rare display of chivalry. They exchanged words.

"You got a girlfriend?" the drunk guy asked.

The bearded guy thought about it, probably wondering how much he should reveal in a crowded train.

"Yeah," he said. "I have a girlfriend."

"She your girlfriend?" the drunk asked, pointing at the object of his affection for the past 30 seconds.

"No, she's not. But if she were, I don't think she'd appreciate you..."

"She ain't your girlfriend, she ain't your girlfriend," the drunk guy crooned.

At Girard Avenue the beared guy exited the train, leaving his non-girlfriend to fend for herself.

By Somerset, even she'd had enough.

"Leave me the fuck alone," she snapped. She stepped out of the doors, rushed down the platform a few yards, and re-entered a different car.

Another woman took her seat.

He started in again with the songs, this time, invading his new victim's personal space to an astounding degree. You better back the fuck off, she said, and the guy responded by taking another hit of his beer, and leaning back in even closer. By the time the train was rocketing towards Erie-Torresdale, the woman stood up and told him, again, to back the fuck off. The drunk guy did not back the fuck off.

So the woman pulled out a cansiter of mace and nailed him in the eyes.

Now for most of the trip, the occupants of the car, myself included, pretended to not notice the drunk guy and his crooning and leering. But the mace attack was a little harder to ignore.

The rows surrounding the drunk guy immediately cleared; people herded toward the middle of the car. "That stuff travels," someone said. "That's mace."

I wondered how long it would take before my eyes started burning.

The woman who'd sprayed the mace looked vaguely satisfied, as if she'd fulfilled a civic duty.

Meanwhile, the drunk guy threw his can of Colt 45 onto the Erie-Torresdale platform, where it exploded spectacularly. He rubbed his face. "I'm burning," he said, though not in the voice of a man who was in fact burning. "I'm burning." He whipped off his belt. It was a thick black leather belt. What, was he going to start swinging it around now?

"Push the emergency button," someone said, as the train raced towards Church Street.

No. The guy wasn't on the attack. He was stripping.

After his jacket came off, and then his sweatshirt, he staggered back to where I was standing. I held out my hand, palm up, to brace him in case he knocked into me. Which he did. He bounced off my palm and tilted to the right. I tried to catch him, but then he suddenly fell to the left and curled up in a ball on the floor of the train.

We were approaching Margaret-Orthodox.

The drunk guy made it to his feet, reached into his pants, presumably to relieve some longtime itch, or to check that his gentials were where he'd left them. He took three steps forward, then proceeded to blow his nose onto the floor of the train. First the right nostril. Then the left.

Then he fell backwards.

"Will somebody please push the emergency button?"

Someone did. Not me. I thought it was bad strategy. We were one stop from the end of the line, and the last thing we needed was to be stalled here in the middle of the freezing tracks, waiting for SEPTA police to show up to escort Mr. Colt 45 off the train.

"Can I help you?" a voice said.

"We need help back here. There's trouble on this train."

"Which car."

"The front car."

"Number 1215," someone else said.

"Thanks for your patience. We'll send help right away."

The train ground to a halt for a few seconds, but it was only to let another train pass. We pulled into the final stop, Bridge Street, and the doors opened. The drunk guy seemed content to lay in front of the open doors, then thought better of it. Wearing only a t-shirt, pants and shoes, he crawled out of the car and made his way to a metal bench on the platform.

The SEPTA cops were no doubt on their way, but I didn't hang around to file a report.

I was just glad my eyes weren't burning.