The Witness Read online

  The first rider raised his face mask and then removed his helmet.

  Jesus H. Christ, it’s Pekach! I knew he had been in Highway, but I didn’t know he could ride a wheel that good!

  “For obvious reasons,” Captain Pekach announced solemnly, “I think I should remind all of you that Departmental regulations require that the keys to motorcycles be removed when they are left unattended.”

  The second rider now raised his mask and removed his helmet.

  “Anyone who willingly gets on one of those things,” Staff Inspector Peter Wohl announced, “is obviously not playing with a full deck.”

  Then he and Captain Pekach walked into the building.

  Captain Sabara had turned to the sergeant who had reported the missing wheels to him.

  “Did I ever tell you, Sergeant, that when I first came to Highway the sergeant I replaced was Inspector Wohl?”

  Then he turned and walked into the building.

  Malone thought it was a great story. But it was more than that. Wohl knew how to deal with people. After the wheelie demonstration, and after the word had spread that Wohl had been the youngest sergeant ever in Highway, there had been no more bitching that he didn’t understand how things were in Highway.

  And, Malone thought, it had been a nice touch for Wohl to come out of his office himself to apologize for being tied up. Most division commanders wouldn’t have done that; they would have told their driver to have the newcomer wait.

  And what Payne had said, “you’ll be right at home around here,” was interesting too.

  Maybe this Special Operations assignment will turn out all right after all.

  FOUR

  At five minutes past one that afternoon, Abu Ben Mohammed pushed open one of the double doors giving access to the business premises of Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Appliances, Inc., which occupied all of a three-story building on the north side of South Street, between South 8th and South 9th Streets in South Philadelphia.

  Abu Ben Mohammed, according to police records, had been born, as Charles David Stevens, at the Temple University Hospital, in North Philadelphia, twenty-four years, six months, and eleven days earlier. On the occasion of his most recent arrest, he had been described as a Negro Male, five feet nine inches tall, weighing approximately 165 pounds, and with no particular deformities or scars.

  Goldblatt & Sons had a doorman, Albert J. Monahan, who was fifty-six. Red Monahan had been with Goldblatt & Sons for thirty-eight years. He went way back to when it had been Samuel Goldblatt Fine Furniture, when Mr. Joshua Goldblatt (now treasurer) and Mr. Harold Goldblatt (now secretary) had been in short pants, and Mr. Samuel Goldblatt, Jr., (now president) then known as “Little Sammy,” had been just another muscular eighteen-year-old working one of the trucks delivering merchandise alongside Red.

  Before he’d had his heart attack, three years before, Red Monahan had worked his way up to warehouse supervisor. In addition to the portions of the third floor and of the basement of the building on South Street used to warehouse, there was a five-story warehouse building on Washington Avenue two blocks away.

  Red had been responsible for checking merchandise as it came in, filling orders from the store to be loaded on trucks, and in moving merchandise back and forth between the store and the warehouse.

  Old Mr. Goldblatt had still been alive when Red had his heart attack, although he was getting pretty fragile. But he insisted on being taken to the hospital to see Red, and Young Mr. Sam had, nervously, loaded him into his Buick and taken him.

  Old Mr. Goldblatt had told Red that he was too mean an Irishman to die, or even to stay sick for very long, and anyway not to worry. The store had good hospital insurance and what that didn’t pay, the store would. And he could consider himself retired, at full pay, from that moment. Anyone with thirty-five years with the store was entitled to take it easy when the time came.

  Red told Old Mr. Goldblatt that he didn’t want to retire; everybody he knew who retired was dead in a year or eighteen months. And what the hell would he do, anyway, sit around the house all day?

  Old Mr. Goldblatt told Red that there would be a job for him at the store as long as he wanted one, and then when he was back in the Buick he told Young Mr. Sam that he was to figure out something for Red to do that wouldn’t be a strain on him, but that would also keep him busy.

  “No make work. Red’s got pride.”

  “Jesus Christ, Pop!”

  “Just do it, Sammy. Let me know what you come up with.”

  What Young Mr. Sam came up with was what he called “floor walker.” When he was a kid, there had been floor walkers in Strawbridge & Clothier, John Wanamaker’s, and other top-class department stores. What they did was literally walk the floor, keeping an eye on customers, stock, and employees.

  Goldblatt & Sons had never had such people, but once he thought of it, it struck Young Mr. Sam as a pretty good idea. For one thing, Red was a genial Irishman, charming, silver-haired. People liked him. For another, nobody knew more about the stock than Red did. If when people came through the door, Red could be there to greet them with a smile and find out whether they were interested in a bedroom suite, or a refrigerator, or a rug, or whatever, then he could point them in the right direction. “Appliances are on the second floor, right up the stairs.” “Carpets are on the third floor, you’ll find the elevator right over there.”

  The first problem was to think of a new term to describe what he would be doing. Young Mr. Sam didn’t think Red would like to be a floor walker. He finally came up with “merchandise counselor.” Red’s face stiffened when he heard that, but he heard Young Mr. Sam out, listening to Sam explain what would be expected of him.

  “You mean like a doorman, Sam, right? To make sure the customers don’t get away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That sounds like a pretty good idea,” Red had said.

  Having Red Monahan working as the doorman turned out to be a very good idea, better than Young Mr. Sam would have believed when he first thought of it.

  Red started out by telling people, “Bedroom suites are in the front of the third floor. Take the elevator and when you get up there ask for Mrs. Lipshutz.” Or “Wall-to-wall carpeting is in the back of the store. Ask for Mr. Callahan.”

  The next step was to have the salespeople waiting downstairs near the door. Red would march the customer over to Mrs. Lipshutz or whoever and introduce her with a naughty little wink: “Mrs. Lipshutz is our bedroom expert.”

  And when somebody came in sore because the Credit Department hadn’t credited their account, or because the leg had come off a kitchen chair, or something, Red would be the soul of sympathy and calm them down.

  And he kept the undesirables out. There were a lot of drunks around South Street, particularly on Friday nights, when the store was open until nine P.M. and he discouraged them from coming in the store. And he kept the religious loonies from bothering the customers too. The ones who just wanted to pass out their literature were bad enough, but the ones who just about demanded money to plant trees in Israel, or save souls for Jesus in the Congo, or to buy tickets for the Annual Picnic of the 3rd Abyssinian Baptist Church, things like that, had been, pre-Red the Doorman, a real pain in the ass.

  Now Red either discouraged them before they got through the doors, or got rid of the really determined ones with a couple of bucks from a roll of singles he got, as needed, from petty cash.

  Abu Ben Mohammed, when Red Monahan greeted him at the door, told him he wanted to see about some wall-to-wall carpet.

  “You saw the ad in the paper, I guess?” Red asked.

  “Huh?”

  “We’re having a special sale,” Red explained. “Twenty-five percent off everything we have in stock, plus free pad and installation.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Absolutely,” Red said. “You picked the right day to get yourself some carpet.”

  He guided Abu Ben Mohammed over to where Phil Katz, who was Old Mr. Sam
’s nephew, was sitting with the other salespeople on the tufted blue velvet couch and matching armchairs that a sign advertised as “Today’s Special! Three-Piece Suite! $99 Down! No Payment Until March!”

  “Mr. Katz,” Red began, which caused Phil Katz to break off his conversation with Mr. Callahan in midsentence and get to his feet with a smile in place.

  “Mr. Katz,” Red went on, “this is Mr.—I didn’t catch your name?”

  “I didn’t tell you,” Abu Ben Mohammed replied.

  “This gentleman,” Red Monahan went on, “is interested in some wall-to-wall carpeting.”

  “Well, this is your day,” Mr. Katz said, “we’re running a special sale. Why don’t we ride up to the carpet department and let me show you what we have?”

  Mr. Katz thought he might have a live one. He had, of course, noticed that Abu Ben Mohammed was wearing what he thought of as African clothes. Over a purple turtleneck sweater and baggy black trousers, Abu Ben Mohammed was wearing a brightly colored dashiki. Perched on the back of his head was sort of a black yarmulke, neatly and rather brightly embroidered in a yellow and green pattern. He was also wearing a trench coat over his shoulders. Maybe they didn’t have overcoats in North Africa, Mr. Katz thought, or maybe this guy just didn’t have an African coat to handle the chill of January in Philadelphia.

  What was important was that he was into the African thing, and the Africans were deep into carpets. They put them two and three deep on the floors, and sometimes they even upholstered their walls with them.

  What was just about as important was that he had come into the store today. The furniture business just about died after Christmas; it was Phil Katz’s personal opinion that the store was just pissing money down the toilet with their advertisements in the Philadelphia Daily News for “After Christmas” and “New Year’s” sales. People had spent their money (or used up their credit, which was the same thing) buying Christmas presents. They had no money to do anything but start paying the bills they had run up for Christmas.

  But there were exceptions to every rule, and this guy in the dashiki just might be one of them. Mr. Katz had heard that the blacks who had become Muslims had to stop drinking and smoking and gambling, which meant this guy might just have the money to cover the floors of his apartment with carpet.

  He led Abu Ben Mohammed to the elevator, slid the door shut, and took him up to the third floor.

  Five minutes after Abu Ben Mohammed entered the store, a man subsequently identified as Hector Carlos Estivez, twenty-four, five feet nine inches tall, and weighing 140 pounds, and again with no distinguishing marks or features, came in.

  He told Red Monahan that he wanted to look at a washer-drier combination, and was turned over by Red to Mrs. Emily Watkins, who was forty-eight, and had worked for fifteen years in the Credit Department of Goldblatt & Sons before deciding, three years before, that she could make more money on the floor, on a small salary plus commission, than she could at her desk. She had asked Young Mr. Sam for a chance to try, and to his surprise, she had done very well, probably, he had finally decided, because women did most of the buying of washers and driers and other appliances, and probably trusted another woman more than they would a man.

  Mrs. Watkins led Mr. Estivez up the stairs to the second floor, and then to the rear of the building, where the washer-driers were on display. She was not nearly as enthusiastic about her chances to make a sale to her potential customer as Mr, Katz had been about his. She had been in the credit business a long time, and had a feel for who would have credit and who wouldn’t. Mr. Estivez did not strike her as the kind of man who held a steady job. But on the other hand, he might have hit his number or something and might have the cash.

  In a similar manner, over the next twenty minutes, seven more potential customers pushed open the door from South Street into Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Appliances, Inc., were greeted by Red Monahan and turned over to a member of the sales force.

  One of them, the third to come in the store, was a woman. She was later identified as Doris M. (Mrs. Harold) Martin, fifty-two, of East Hagert Street in Kensington. She had come in to look at carpet for her upstairs corridor and bedrooms after having seen the Goldblatt & Sons advertisement in that day’s Daily News. Red Monahan introduced Mrs. Martin to Mrs. Irene Dougherty, who took her by elevator to the third floor.

  The other six people to come in were all men. Two of them wore clothing suggesting they were either Muslims or at least had some connection with an African culture. All of them were, according to the race codification then in use by the Philadelphia Police Department, Negroid. Two of them, however, had such pale skin pigmentation that there was some question whether they were “really colored” or “maybe Puerto Rican or Mexican, or something like that.”

  The last of the six men to enter the store, at approximately 1:32 P.M., described as a “black male, approximately six feet tall, thirty years of age, and weighing approximately one hundred seventy-five pounds,” was wearing a “dark blue, waist-length woolen jacket similar in appearance to the U.S. Navy pea coat.”

  Immediately upon entering Goldblatt & Sons, this suspect, subsequently identified as Kenneth H. Dome, aka “King,” aka Hussein El Baruca, turned and began to bolt the door shut.

  “Hey, friend,” Red Monahan asked as he walked up to him, “what are you doing?”

  “Shut your face, motherfucker!” Hussein El Baruca replied, simultaneously drawing a large, blue in color, large-caliber semiautomatic pistol (probably a Colt Model 1911 or 1911A1 .45-caliber service pistol) and pointing it at Red Monahan.

  “Hey, you don’t really want to do this—” Red Monahan said, whereupon Hussein El Baruca struck him, with a slashing backward motion of his right arm, in the face with the pistol, with sufficient force to knock him down and, it was subsequently learned, to cause a crack in Mr. Monahan’s full upper denture.

  Then he raised the pistol to a nearly vertical position and fired it three times. One of the bullets struck a fluorescent lighting fixture on the ceiling, smashing a bulb, which caused broken glass and then a cloud of powder, from the interior coating of the bulb, to float down from the ceiling. Then, the fixture itself tore loose at one end, causing a short-circuit in the wiring. There was a flash of light, and then that entire line of lighting fixtures, one of two running from the front of the store to the rear, went off, reducing the light on the ground floor by half.

  “On your fucking bellies or I’ll blow your fucking heads off!” Hussein El Baruca ordered.

  The three salespeople, two men and a woman, waiting for customers in the living-room suite, and Red Monahan complied with the order. The woman crossed herself, and her lips moved in prayer as she got onto her knees and then laid on the floor.

  Hussein El Baruca then turned back to the double doors and closed the Venetian blinds on them. There was a large display window on either side of the entrance. A complete bedroom set was on display in one window, and a complete bedroom set in the other. The “walls” behind the furniture in each window blocked the view of the interior of the store to passersby, and with the blinds on the doors now closed, there was no way anyone on South Street could look into Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Appliances, Inc.

  The sound of the three pistol shots fired by Hussein El Baruca was muffled somewhat by the upholstered furniture on the ground floor, and because the store was open from the front to the rear, where the Credit Department was located. But it was loud enough to be heard on the second floor, where it was correctly interpreted by Hector Carlos Estivez as the signal he had been expecting.

  He took what was probably a Smith & Wesson Military & Police .38 Special caliber revolver from where he had concealed it in the small of his back, held it in both hands at arm’s length, and fired two shots at the glass viewing port of a Hotpoint drier that was sitting on the floor approximately six feet from him, and two feet to the left of Mrs. Emily Watkins.

  Mrs. Watkins yelped and covered her mouth with both han
ds.

  Hector Carlos Estivez when he saw that he missed the glass viewing port with one of his shots, and that the second had cracked but not smashed or penetrated the glass, said, “Shit!” and fired a third time. This time the thick, tempered glass of the viewing port broke.

  “On the floor, bitch!” Hector Carlos Estivez said, and Mrs. Watkins, now whimpering, dropped to her knees and then spread herself on the floor.

  The shots from Estivez’s revolver were audible to Abu Ben Mohammed on the third floor, where Phil Katz was explaining to him that trying to get by with bottom-of-the-line cheap carpet was really not economy at all.

  “It’s just like tires,” Mr. Katz was saying, “what you’re really buying is wear. You—What the hell was that?”

  “You’re being robbed, motherfucker, that’s what it is,” Abu Ben Mohammed said, taking a large-caliber, single-action, Western-style revolver with plastic “pearl” grips from beneath his dashiki. He pushed the hammer back, cocking the pistol, and then fired at a three-foot-tall, stainless-steel cigarette receptacle that had been placed beside the elevator door.

  A hole appeared near the top of the receptacle, which then slowly tilted to one side, as if in a slow-motion picture, and then fell, dislodging a sand-filled glass tray, which shattered upon striking the metal elevator threshold.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Phil Katz said.

  “Lay down on the floor,” Abu Ben Mohammed ordered.

  “What?”

  “On the fucking floor, you heard me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The executive offices of Goldblatt & Sons Credit Furniture & Appliances, Inc., those of Mr. Samuel Goldblatt, Jr., and Mr. Harold Goldblatt, the secretary, and their secretary, Mrs. Blanche Steiner, forty-four, were at the right rear of the building. Mr. Joshua Goldblatt, the treasurer, maintained his office in the Credit Department on the ground floor.