Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) by Archer Mayor

guess so. It’s dark.”
    “I got lucky,” he admitted. “Sandy opened her window a crack.”
    “Gotta love those fresh-air freaks,” Neil responded.
    “Okay,” Frank concluded. “Get comfortable. Thirty-minute countdown.”
    Neil had once complained that this was when they earned the big bucks, sitting still in utter silence for sometimes hours at a stretch, in the cold or the wet or in considerable discomfort, waiting for the right time to move—in this instance, until the two women inside had fallen thoroughly asleep.
    All that considered, this was looking like a cakewalk.
    *   *   *
    “Welcome to glorious Port Richmond, gentlemen,” Elizabeth McLarney announced as she drove her unmarked green Ford Explorer off the interstate, onto Aramingo Avenue, and under a railroad overpass at East Lehigh. “Once home to shipyards, coal dumps—and nowadays, teen gangs, the Polish Mafia, and a dash of Irish hoodlums to spice things up.”
    Phil took over. “The Mafia, we call the Kielbasa Posse,” he said. “Out the right window is the east side—upwardly mobile, getting gentrified, complete with photo-op cute streets, hipsters, and parks with kids playing ball.”
    “And out the left window”—Elizabeth played along—“is the west side—heavy on rentals, abandoned buildings, shooting galleries, and gang fights. Bipolar Town is what I call it.”
    “Of course,” Phil explained, “It’s not that simple. At night, the whole area can get dicey, especially when the summer heat kicks in. The parks become staging areas for scumbags looking for trouble. Old-time residents are making inroads—neighborhood patrols and what have you—and I think the place is looking better. Campbell Square used to be nicknamed ‘Needle Park.’ It’s improving, but it still has a ways to go.” He cocked an eye at Joe. “Bet you don’t have much of that up in Vermont, huh?”
    “Not in the quantities you have to deal with,” Joe agreed.
    He and Les took in the buildings to both sides, a blur of glued-together two-story row houses interspersed with block-house commercial structures, all of it crisscrossed overhead with a visual spaghetti bowl of taut electrical lines, making Joe feel as if they’d just been trapped under a screened lid, like bugs in a box. The first floors of dozens of the narrower buildings advertised an assortment of minuscule restaurants, markets, and stores, many having hard-to-pronounce—mostly Polish—names, and with a smattering of everything from Asian to Irish.
    Partway along, Elizabeth took a left into Port Richmond’s western half, and then a right a couple of streets down. Here, the street was narrow, closed in, and far from quaint—house after beleaguered house, scarred and stained and sometimes boarded up, crammed together and festooned with the predictable mushrooming of weather-beaten TV dishes. Where a porch had been worked into the building’s plan, an occasional bundled-up figure sat, sometimes smoking, staring out at the desolation. Joe had seen worse—in Chicago, Newark, and New York, to name three—but none of that made this neighborhood upbeat by comparison.
    “Here we go,” Elizabeth said cheerily, parking by the curb. “Home sweet home to the late Tomasz Bajek. Everybody out.”
    The four of them stepped into the trash-strewn street and looked around. Each was aware of people watching from nearby—a stoop, a parked car, or behind half-drawn blinds. The neighborhood buzz that cops were on the street was like a small electrical impulse.
    McLarney crossed the cracked sidewalk, bounded up the three steps of one of the row houses, tried the door, hoping for the best, and successfully walked inside, the rest of her entourage following.
    In the claustrophobic entryway, she pounded on the nearest door.
    An older woman appeared after three minutes, the view of her face transected by the security chain she’d left in place. “What?”
    McLarney showed her badge. “Police. We