Fighting Chance(37)

“You can go crap yourself, George, you really can,” Sam said.

“If I crap, Sam, it’s not going to be on myself, it’s going to be on you.”

“Let me see if I understand this,” Gregor said. “Martha Handling hated security cameras, so she would spray-paint the lenses. But didn’t you clean them off? Even if you missed her in the act, you must have noticed that something was wrong with the pictures on your screen.”

“Yeah,” Sam Scalafini said. “We did sort of notice it.”

“The first time,” George Edelson said.

“George, for crap’s sake. I did something about it the first six times it happened at least, and you know it. It’s just that she was always checking, and you guys were being no help. I’m working security, for crap’s sake. You know as well as I do that I can’t go hauling off against a judge. It would have been my ass. And nobody would have been yelling about how I did the right thing, either.”

“You could have cleaned the damned lenses off,” George said. “Not the first time. Not the first six times. Every time.”

“Yeah, and then what? Then a whole crapload of stuff wouldn’t have gotten done and I’d’ve heard about that. And don’t you think I wouldn’t’ve.” Sam turned to Gregor Demarkian. “She’d go around with the spray paint can. And there are lots of security cameras, so we’d get tape of her doing it. She’d cover about six of the things and then she’d go back to her chambers and go searching through it for cameras. Except it’s like I said, there weren’t any in there. After a while, I mean, what the fuck? We knew who was doing it. She wasn’t going to go rob somebody or set a bomb off in the court or something. It wasn’t a priority. It’s damned hard to get spray paint off those lenses.”

“Coffee breaks were a priority,” George Edelson said.

Sam Scalafini flipped the bird. “You know what, George? You can kiss my ass.”

“Let me just try to get this straight,” Gregor said. “There’s no security camera footage of what, exactly?”

“Of anybody going through the hallways leading from the back door, the one we just came through, to Martha Handling’s chambers. And none from the hall leading from where Martha Handling’s chambers are to the hall that leads to the front foyer.”

“Okay,” Gregor said. “So, there’s a front foyer. There are security cameras there.”

“Right,” George said.

“And then,” Gregor said, “there’s some kind of corridor you can go down, and then—what? You make a turn? And when you make that turn, that’s the corridor Martha Handling’s chambers are on.”

“Right,” Sam said.

“So,” Gregor said. “There are security cameras on the hall that leads from the foyer to the corridor that leads to the chambers, but the lenses on the cameras were blacked out on the foyer that leads to the chambers. But they were not covered in that first hallway.”

“The last one before the end was,” Sam Scalafini said. “You never knew how far Martha—Judge Handling was going to be willing to go. It changed.”

“But wasn’t there a security guard on duty?” Gregor said. “Shouldn’t somebody have been patrolling the halls—?”

“Yes!” George Edelson said brightly. “Shouldn’t someone?”

“Frigging A,” Sam Scalafini said.

“The point of security is to provide security,” George Edelson said. “That’s why we have security. There is no point to a security system that is run for the benefit of people taking coffee breaks, running out to pick up sandwiches at the all-night deli, not showing up at all and still mysteriously being signed in. Do you want me to go on, Sam? Because I can go on all night.”

“Frigging asshole,” Sam said.

“I may be an asshole, Sam, but you’re just one more train wreck in the story of corruption in Philadelphia politics. Hell. You ought to be in the Corruption Hall of Fame.”

2

Gregor waited until they got down the street and into the other courthouse before asking any of the obvious questions.

“You can’t tell me,” Gregor said, “with a straight face, that that man has a chance in hell of holding on to his job after—what was all that, exactly? Corruption? What was he corrupting? He wasn’t doing his job, that I can see, but—”

“The only reason he isn’t already out of the building is the civil service rules. John is on the warpath. Scalafini will be out on his ear and worse before close of business today,” George Edelson said. “My God, have you any idea how hard John has worked, for years, to clean up the mess in this city? And now this. Some two-bit, punk-assed—”