He looked at the screen.

"Holy shit!" Payne repeated, rereading the message as he said, "Well, Mickey, do you want an exclusive for CrimeFreePhilly?"

"Sure. What?"

Matt handed the phone back to Tony, then his eyes met Mickey's.

"Minutes after the last Crime Scene Unit drove off from Lex Talionis," Matt said, "another body got dumped there. Someone walking by thought it was a vagrant passed out on the sidewalk. Then they noticed all the blood."

"Holy shit!" O'Hara joined in, then downed his drink.

"You can't run with this just yet, Mickey, but there's something different with this pop-and-drop."

"What?"

"He was strangled and beaten. But no bullet wounds."

O'Hara banged the glass on the wooden bar and, making a circular gesture with his hand over their drinks, barked to the bartender: "Johnny, all this on my tab. We've got to go!" [TWO] Loft Number 2055 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 1:14 A.M. Tossing his suit coat and kicking off his loafers, H. Rapp Badde, Jr., chased the beautiful and giggling Cleopatra past the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room. His intent: to make the beast with two backs after ripping off the Halloween outfit as fast as humanly possible.

I love that there're no other high-rises near here so no one can see us through those big windows.

I can do whatever the hell I want… It wasn't the first time that the idea of doing whatever the hell he wanted-damn the consequences-had entered the mind of H. Rapp Badde, Jr.

For almost all of his thirty-two years, Badde-a fairly fit, five-foot-eleven two-hundred-pounder with a thin face, close-cropped hair, and medium-dark skin-had learned that what he could not get with his charisma or his arrogant badgering, he could always get by subtly, or sometimes not so subtly, playing his favorite card, that of being a disadvantaged minority.

It was a tactic-a remarkably effective one considering that Philly as a whole was half black, some sections up to three-quarters-that he had learned from his father. Horatio R. Badde, Sr., had used it successfully to work himself up from being a small-business owner-first a barber in South Philadelphia, then the owner of a string of barbershops throughout the city-to being elected to the Philadelphia City Council, and then, almost ten years later, to the office of mayor.

Which was exactly Rapp's planned next step: to become mayor. He was banking both on the name recognition-"Mayor Badde" still was familiar to voters despite the eight years since his father held the office-and what he considered to be his own accomplishments as a city councilman. And he was going to let nothing get in his way. There'd already been rumors trying to tie him to voter fraud, but he publicly dismissed them as exactly that-rumors that were simply a part of petty politics.

Rapp Badde did as he pleased-damn the consequences-and the Hop Haus Tower condominium was no exception.

The tax rolls of the Philadelphia County Recorder of Deeds, in Room 156 at City Hall, showed Loft Number 2055-a year-old 2,010-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath condominium on the twentieth floor-as being owned by the Urban Venture Fund, in care of Mr. James R. Johnson, JRJ Certified Public Accountants, 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

There was similar information on the books at the complex.

The building management kept a regularly updated computer file known as PROPERTY OWNERS: PERMANENT RESIDENTS amp; REGISTERED GUESTS. It listed everyone who was officially on file and showed that 2055's permanent resident was named Johnson, James R., and its listed registered guest was a Harper, Janelle.

While it wasn't unusual for the names of owners and guests to be different-there were, for example, many unmarried couples who cohabited, as well as many lawfully married couples whose surnames were not the same-neither James Johnson nor Janelle Harper had a genuine financial investment in Loft Number 2055.

In fact, the apartment's official owner, the Urban Venture Fund, was a corporate entity solely owned by one H. R. Badde, Jr., 1611 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

That was in technical terms.

Practically speaking, Unit 2055's permanent resident and its (very) regular guest were actually Jan Harper and Rapp Badde.

Never mind that Mr. James R. Johnson, CPA, had never set foot in the place.

And never mind that Badde had purchased, with cash, the pied-a-terre love nest.

And certainly never mind that the funds for the purchase were a small part of those provided to his mayoral election campaign chest by a generous businessman who believed in the politician, in his future at City Hall, and his influence therein for old friends. Twenty-five-year-old Jan Harper-who had a full and curvy five-six, one-forty body and a silky light-brown skin tone-was down to barely-more than Cleopatra's golden-colored sheer panties and plastic-jeweled collar and crown as she ran into the bedroom. Rapp was hot on her heels.

And just as she jumped on the king-size bed's thick goose-down comforter, her legs flying up and ample breasts bouncing, Rapp heard his Go To Hell cell phone start ringing in his pants pocket.

Damn! he thought.

Badde shared the number of his Go To Hell phone, one of two he carried, with next to no one-only his accountant, his three lawyers, and a select few others who were friends or business associates, or both, had the number. Even Jan didn't know it; being his executive assistant, she could call him on his main cell phone.

He'd given it that name because, when somebody who did have the number called, chances were damn good that something had just gone to hell. Or was about to.

Jan was now busily unbuttoning Rapp's white dress shirt as he quickly dug into his pants pocket.

Retrieving the phone, he looked at the screen, hissed the word "Shit," then pulled away from Jan's hands. He walked toward the windows.

"What?" she said, surprised. Then, a little indignantly, she added, "Who the hell is that at this hour?"

He held up his left index finger to gesture Give me a minute, then flipped open the phone, put it to his head, and said, "Everything okay, man?"

He listened for a moment.

"Wait," he suddenly said. "Who the hell is this, and how'd you get this number?"

After a moment, he said, "Goddamn it!"

His eye caught Jan, now sitting up on the comforter with her arms crossed over her naked breasts, her head cocked, looking at him curiously.

"Hold on a minute, brother," he said into the phone.

Then to Jan he said, "I'm sorry, honey. I'll be right back."

Badde slid open the glass door in the wall of the floor-to-ceiling windows and stepped out onto the small concrete balcony.

The view from the twentieth floor was extraordinary. And for more than just the beauty of the lights twinkling in the night.

H. Rapp Badde, Jr., enjoyed the feeling he got from being up so high and seeing so many parts of the city that made up his life. It made him feel literally on top of the world, or at least on top of what he thought of as his world-Philadelphia.

"Okay, Kenny-I mean, Kareem," Badde said when he'd closed the sliding glass door, "calm down and start from the beginning." For his first twenty-two years, Kareem Abdul-Qaadir answered to the name Kenny Jones. That had changed two years ago when Kenny Jones, not the brightest bulb on the marquee, had gotten arrested for selling crack cocaine to undercover Philly cops in Germantown, then fled the justice system by jumping his two-thousand-dollar bond.

The Jones family, who'd lived in a brick-faced row house across Daly Street from the Baddes in South Philly, had four brothers. Kenny was second oldest, after Jack, who'd been a classmate and friend of Badde's seemingly forever.