He greeted Harris: “Not dead yet, pal.”
—
“McCrory said he was going to see Pookie,” Harris explained once he was inside the apartment, “then tried to reach you. But when he could not get you, he called me.”
“Sorry for the trouble. I just crashed. And hard.”
“No trouble. I got a little sleep, too. You want to catch up with McCrory? He said the house is on Clementine, down the street from where Dante Holmes got whacked. Said to just let him know when you want to meet.”
“Yeah. But hold on.”
Payne scrolled through his messages.
“Nothing new here on Cross or Hooks. You hear anything?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Something needs to break,” Payne said. “Let me grab a hat. You want to tell McCrory we’re en route?”
“Sure.”
—
As Payne was locking his apartment door, his phone vibrated.
Mickey. About time . . .
Payne thumbed the glass screen and the complete text of O’Hara’s message came up: “Got it. Thanks. Sadly, that death doesn’t bring back Tim and Emily. Remember me telling you about the EB-5 visas? There’s more to that story. But, first, tomorrow I’m running O’Brien’s next story—about the Cartel del Nuevo Acuña laundering its dirty money into gold. Erring on the side of caution, I’ll be out of pocket for a few days after this story breaks. Be safe, Matty.”
Gold? My God! Payne thought, then shook his head, recalling the conversation about the visas:
“Matty, you know that high-rise on Arch that you blew a gasket over?”
“The one the Poster Boy for Billionaires got the hundred million in tax breaks for? What about it?”
“You ever hear about EB-5 visas?”
“Yeah. And I remember hearing on a Philly News Now broadcast that Rapp Badde’s PEGI is using them for some of the funding of that new sports complex.”
“Well, ol’ Willie Lane greased the skids for Fuller’s company to get EB-5 funding to build his project.”
“Why not Badde?”
“Two reasons. One, Center City isn’t suffering economically like the hard-hit areas and thus does not meet standards under the Philadelphia Economic Gentrification Initiative.”
“And two?”
“Two, Lane is council president and can yank Badde’s chairmanship of HUD at any time—actually, officially ‘reassign’ his duties where he believes they best could be utilized—say, on the Parking Meter Coin Collecting Committee . . .”
Payne chuckled.
“. . . and thus Badde doesn’t want to rock the boat.”
“But,” Matt said, “as damn disgusting as that ‘fund a visa, get a fast green card’ program is, it’s legal.”
“The problem is where the money is coming from. That’s a different story—a big one, according to O’Brien.”
Payne then remembered how O’Hara had replied when he asked how O’Hara squared working for Francis Fuller—to wit, by quoting Sun Tzu’s “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”