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When Ke
Badde hadn't hesitated. Beyond being old neighbors, the Jones family had campaigned hard for his election to office. He couldn't do anything with Ke
So he called the manager of his campaign office in West Philly, which was run from a rented row house, and told him to let Kareem live there in the basement bedroom, which had its own door to the street, and to pay him, in cash, to work as one of Badde's "community voter canvassers."
Badde even helped Ke
At first, Kareem Abdul-Qaadir's job had been to go door to door pretending to be a volunteer with the City of Philadelphia working for the Forgotten Voters Initiative-a program that, had anyone actually bothered to investigate, would've been found not to exist. He asked the residents if they were registered voters. If they said no, he helped get them registered.
But then came his real job: the compilation of the names and addresses of all these voters, especially noting the elderly, immigrants, and others who could easily be convinced that they needed to request absentee-voter ballot forms. More important, once those ballots arrived in the mail, Ke
Ke
As he was canvassing a far section of West Philly, knocking on door after door, he walked up to a retirement community, Fernwood Manor at Cobbs Creek. The ten-story-high building overlooked the greenbelt of the small tree-lined stream-and, curiously, on the opposite side of the creek, Fernwood Cemetery.
Ke
At Fernwood Manor's Community Activity Center, he didn't have to go door to door. The retirees came to him. They were happy to see a nice, clean-cut young man such as Kareem. Especially the old-timers who had failing memories, Alzheimer's disease in particular, and never remembered previously meeting him-or filling out forms.
And when Kareem had explained the purpose of his volunteer work, everyone thought that the nice young man was extremely considerate to think of forgotten old folks. That, and to understand how difficult it was for them on voting day. They said visiting polling stations that invariably had long lines was very painful for their aged bodies. At the community activity center, though, they could at their leisure fill out the requests for absentee-voter forms, then later, when the forms arrived, fill those out also at their leisure.
Especially with the kind help of a nice young man like Kareem.
Ke
And then he went to nursing homes, where he found the residents were more or less unconscious-almost every one on medication that kept them in a mental fog, or worse-so all he had to do was forge their signatures on the forms. Even easier to sign up were those who in the last year or two had fallen into their own category: deceased.
Slipping the kid or old man in the mailroom a little stash of cocaine or cash, with the promise of more, guaranteed that there'd be a telephone call alerting him when the absentee-voter ballots arrived in the mail.
Over time, Ke
And Rapp Badde had been impressed. Ignoring the unfortunate fact that Ke
Until now. "What the hell do you mean something's gone bad with you and Reggie?" he said into his Go To Hell cell as he looked out over the city to the right, toward West Philly and the rented campaign-office row house.
Reggie was the baby Jones brother, but at age twenty and two hundred thirty pounds, not much of a baby anymore.
Rapp knew that Reggie had never been really normal-his mother had had him late in life, in her forties, and there'd been complications at birth-and when Reggie got mixed up with drugs, he really went off the deep end.
Worse, while Ke
Ke
Thirty thousand dollars! Badde thought. Jesus!
"How'd he get that deep in debt?" Badde asked.
"Hell if I know. Snorting more than selling? A lot of IOUs over time? And some crazy interest on top of what he owed? Adds up fast."
"Who grabbed Reggie?" Badde asked.
"The dude he bought his coke from. The man. His dealer."
Badde sighed audibly.
"So, what would you have me do about it?"
Ke
"What?"
"The money. I need the money bad to get him back."
Can I quickly put my hands on that much even if I wanted? Badde thought as he looked out at the city and mentally went over his cash reserves.
There's only ten, eleven grand in my office safe.
He was silent for at least a minute.
"You still there?" asked Ke
Badde didn't reply.
Ke
And I've not helped you?
And what the hell have you done that's worth thirty grand?
Ke
Right. Where the hell will you get that to repay me?
"Rapp? You there?"
"Yeah, Ke
Ke
Rapp stared off into the night, silent.
Ke
What? "Those ballots"?
He's threatening me!
Sonofabitch! He thinks he can finger me for the voter fraud!
He blurted: "Are you fucking threatening me? You fucking ingrate!"
"I'm just saying…"
Jesus! Him getting diarrhea of the mouth would start the whole house of cards crumbling, starting with the campaign for mayor. And I can kiss the housing project goodbye.