The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor) - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,30

time for sex crimes. He raped and killed the little girl.

Outraged citizens demanded that they had the right to know when dangerous people moved into their neighborhoods, leading to the passage of sex offender registry laws, first in Jersey, then across the nation.

Payne said, “Aren’t you worried that that’s essentially encouraging people to take the law into their own hands, like Fuller’s Lex Talionis is doing? Not that I’m surprised, considering your secret benefactor.”

“Uh-uh,” Mickey quickly said, shaking his head vigorously, making the red curls bounce like tiny coiled springs. “In that area, we’re simply a clearinghouse of sorts for a lot of things that are already available all over on the Internet. The key to any good source of information, Matt, is making it easy on the person looking for that information, whether it’s where to get the cheapest ground sirloin or how to finger a bad guy. You ever hear of a company called Google?”

“Yeah, the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of Internet search engines,” Payne said. “I take your point. I’m just not convinced.”

“Hell, Matt, the FBI has a page devoted to a Wanted poster for that raghead, Whatshisname the Terrorist, with a twenty-five-million-dollar price tag for his head. And all sorts of bounties for lesser criminal shits. How the hell is that any different if we add it to our website?”

After a moment, Matt nodded. “Okay, you’re convincing me.”

Mickey went on: “And we’re also a place to give ‘attaboy’ accolades to cops who otherwise don’t get noticed, like a patrolman walking the beat in your neighborhood who unlocks your car after you’ve left your keys in it.” He pointed to his shirt. “Kiss a Cop.”

“Now, that sounds like a stretch.”

“Aw, c’mon, Matty. You ever read a positive piece on a cop? Everyone likes a pat on the back now and then.”

“Well, you’re absolutely right about that. Rare is the day you ever hear anything good about cops doing their job. Just mention the name Wyatt Earp of the Main Line.” He smiled. “Sounds like we’re on the same side of this fight, Mick, just different teams.”

“Exactly.”

IV

[ONE]

Standing at the bar at Liberties, Harris looked from Mickey to Matt, took a sip of beer, then said, “You remember Danny Gartner, Matt?”

Payne, his glass to his lips, raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Really? ‘The shittiest lawyer in all the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ’ as they call him in the DA’s office? Never could forget a prick like that. Can’t count the times in court during questioning that he tried to make me look stupid or crooked. So he’s the one who got dumped at Francis Fuller’s door?”

Harris nodded and said, “Gartner and one of his loser clients, a cocky little shit by the name of John Nguyen, aka ‘Jay-Cee,’ ‘Johnny Cannabis,’ age twenty-five. And mean as hell.”

Then he mimed that his right hand was a pistol. He put the tip of the index finger in the base of his skull and, moving his thumb forward, dropped the “hammer” and mouthed Bang!

He said: “Apparently, a fairly big-bore weapon. Really made a mess of their skulls.”

“I think I’m about to cry,” Payne said, more than a little sarcastically, then sipped at his single-malt. He feigned wiping at a tear under his eye and went on: “Nope, guess I was wrong.”

O’Hara chuckled.

Payne smiled. He said to Harris, “Should I know the punk client, too?”

“Only if you were in on any of his dozen drug busts for possession with intent to distribute. Just two of which ever went to trial—both for running roofies and other date-rape drugs—because Gartner kept playing the three-strikes game. There was also a sexual assault charge that got tossed because of a broken chain of evidence.”

“Three strikes, eh?” O’Hara said. “That has to be one of the worst rules ever. Whatever happened to the notion of a speedy trial, as opposed to a speedy dismissal?”

Clearing out cases so there could be speedy trials was precisely why, at least in theory, the Municipal Court had invoked Rule 555 in the criminal court procedures.

Despite the shared name, Philly’s three-strikes law had nothing to do with laws across the land which declared that if someone racked up three felony convictions, he or she was clearly a habitual criminal who hadn’t learned a damn thing the first two times in the court system—and, accordingly, deserved a long sentence that essentially locked them up and threw away the key.

Philly’s three strikes, in fact, could be argued to have the polar opposite effect of those laws: Rule 555 actually