The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor) - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,55

last minute. It’s always late, if at all.”

There were the expected chuckles.

“Okay,” Carlucci said, “then I won’t ask about NCIC. If we don’t have prints to run, we don’t have a name to run.”

The National Crime Information Center—also maintained by the FBI and available to law enforcement at any time, day or night—had a database containing the critical records of criminals. Additionally, NCIC tracked missing persons and stolen property. Its data came not only from the same law-enforcement agencies that provided IAFIS, but also from authorized courts and foreign law-enforcement agencies.

“I’ll go stoke the fire under them for those prints,” Walker then offered lamely. He stood and went over to use one of the phones at the other conference table.

Bingo, Payne thought. That’ll get ’em moving faster.

Ralph Mariana then spoke up: “Jerry, what should be done about Frank Fuller?”

Payne put in: “I’ve had an unmarked sitting on Fuller’s Old City office.”

“That’s fine, Matt,” Mariana said, “but I meant what should be done about his now-infamous rewards.”

Carlucci, his face showing a mixture of anger and frustration, said, “I’ve spoken with Fuller privately about that bloodthirsty reward system of his. I’ve tried to dissuade him, suggesting that it’s encouraging criminal activity. He said he didn’t care, that he’d spend his last dime on lawyers defending that eye-for-an-eye thing—”

“The law of talion,” Payne offered.

Carlucci shot Payne a look of mild annoyance for the interruption, then went on: “—especially, he said, after what happened to his wife and child.”

“What happened to his family?” Mariana asked.

Quaire offered: “I had that case in Homicide. It never got solved, primarily because, we believe, the doers involved killed each other before we could get statements, let alone bring charges. Anyway, the wife and the girl, a ten-year-old, I believe, made a wrong turn at the Museum of Art and wound up a half-mile or so north in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. Cut down in a crossfire of single-aught buckshot.”

“Jesus!” Mariana said, shaking his head. “That’s tragic.”

The table was silent a moment.

Carlucci then said, “But I have no choice but to denounce him, or at least what he’s accomplishing with his reward.”

Denny Coughlin cleared his throat.

“You have something, Denny?” Carlucci said. “Say it.”

“Just a point, Jerry. Giving credit where it’s due, Matt did bring up that for us to condemn the reward system would be somewhat hypocritical.”

Carlucci made an unpleasant face.

“You can’t be a little pregnant,” Payne said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Carlucci asked, looking at Payne.

“We can’t say that Five-Eff’s paying out ten-grand rewards—”

“ ‘Five-Eff ’?” Carlucci interrupted.

Payne nodded. “Francis Franklin Fuller the Fifth long ago had his name boiled down to simply Four-Eff.”

“You said ‘Five,’” Carlucci challenged.

Payne looked around the table, and all eyes were watching him with more than a little curiosity. He thought there may have been a trace of wariness in Coughlin’s.

Payne raised an eyebrow, then said, “Francis can be pompous, as you well know, and when he annoys me, I call him Five-Eff, short for Fucking Francis Franklin Fuller the Fifth.”

Carlucci guffawed again. A couple others followed his lead by chuck-ling. Coughlin shook his head.

“All right,” Carlucci said, “as he’s come to annoy the hell out of me, I’ll now say: How does my denouncing Five-Eff make me pregnant?”

Payne grinned. He knew Carlucci understood what he’d meant by the analogy.

“My point is, sir, that our department has partnerships with other agencies that offer rewards. The FBI Violent Crimes Task Force, for example.”

He gestured with his thumb in a southerly direction. The FBI’s office, at 600 Arch Street, across from the Federal Reserve Bank, was damn near outside the back door of the Roundhouse.

“And I’m sure you’ll recall that we have our own tips hotline,” Payne went on, “that, through the Citizens Crime Commission, pays out rewards that go from five hundred bucks or so on up to thousands. And when a cop gets murdered, the FOP administers rewards for info that leads to catching the doers. So we already do what Five-Eff does. We just don’t, as was pointed out to me”—he exchanged glances with Coughlin—“encourage the killing of the critters.”

Carlucci started nodding. “All right. I take your point. We can massage that in the message, so to speak. Now, let’s boil all this down to what I’m going to say.”

“Thirty seconds, Mr. Mayor,” Corporal Kerry Rapier said from behind the control panel.

Jerry Carlucci scrunched up his face and assumed a serious expression.

Corporal Rapier said, “In five, four, three, two . . . ,” then pointed to