IT WASN’T JUST THE DATE ON THE SEARCH WARRANT THAT DREW OUR ATTENTION; IT WAS THE ADDRESS. THE COPS RAIDED AN APARTMENT—ON ORTHODOX STREET.
The apartment wasn’t anywhere close to Torresdale, but Barbara and I had a strong feeling that this particular raid was key to our search for the woman. We repeatedly swung by the apartment. Sometimes we went together, other times separately. Each time no one was home, and we left business cards and notes, only to find them still jammed in the door seam when we returned.
The search warrant offered scant details. The cops were looking for a drug dealer named Beamer, whom they believed sold crack out of the apartment. During the 7:45 p.m. raid at the apartment, the cops found a gun and drugs, but they couldn’t arrest Beamer because he wasn’t home and they didn’t know his real name.
“Beamer.” That was all we had to go on.
Beamer no longer lived there, so Barbara and I canvassed the blocks around his old apartment, asking if anyone knew where we could find him.
The neighborhood was in the heart of a once-robust retail mecca of family-owned pharmacies, hardware stores, diners, florists, and shoe and clothing shops. The shopping district started to lose its luster in the late 1990s, when dollar stores and cash-for-gold pawnshops elbowed out the charm.
Despite the area’s decline, many of the homes, including Georgian-style structures built in the late 1700s, retained their grace. Most homes were boxy free-standing, three-story twins separated by alleys. From the street, Barbara and I could see the Philadelphia skyline in the distance.
By now, a lot of the people we approached on the street knew who we were. All we had to do was mention Daily News and police corruption and they’d say, “Ohhh! You’re the ones doing Tainted Justice.” They were eager to help and loaded us up with first names of women who had lived in Beamer’s apartment building: Latifa, Kia, Keiana, Tonya, Dashay, and Nicole.
Barbara and I were convinced that Beamer had some kind of connection to this woman. To find him was to find her. But no one seemed to know where Beamer had moved.
Then on a warm, sunny afternoon, I met Shante. When I first approached her as she sat on a front stoop, I wasn’t sure if she was a man or a woman. Her head was shaved, and she reminded me of a black Sinead O’Connor. She wore knee-length jean shorts, brown Timberland boots, and a wife-beater, or ribbed white tank top, that showed off her muscular biceps.
Shante was a twenty-one-year-old convicted drug dealer, openly gay, with a sexy, raspy voice. She’d been locked up at least six times, beginning at age sixteen, when she was found guilty of attempted murder in a bloody shootout. Shante’s street name was Pop, and Barbara and I wondered if the nickname sprang from the shooting, though Shante claimed Pop was a reference to her old soul ways. She was fiercely loyal to family and friends, a street lioness who protected and provided for her loved ones.
On her Facebook page, she posted photos of herself holding wads of cash, getting high, and wearing designer Air Jordans. Shante was proud of her plum-shaped lips and poked fun at her gut, calling herself “fatboy shit.”
Tattoos covered Shante’s neck, upper chest, arms, and hands. The designs were rudimentary, inked in one color, either black or navy. Some of Shante’s tattoos were the work of a guy named Skinny who made house calls, like the Fuller Brush man. Shante wanted to get rid of a tattoo that read DANGER. “This is gone,” Shante said, rubbing her neck. “It was a girl I used to mess with.” Two teardrops, tattooed in black ink, were etched under her left eye, just above her cheekbone. On her right arm she sported a tattoo of comedy-tragedy theater masks, with the words GOOD GIRL BAD GIRL. That about summed her up.
Shante not only knew Beamer, they were close friends, and she had his cell number programmed into her phone. She wouldn’t give me Beamer’s number, but she promised that she’d tell him we were looking for him. When I didn’t hear from Shante, I called her—a lot. “I’m so sorry. I know you must think I’m the biggest pest, but . . .”
A week or so later, late in the evening, I called Shante yet again. She picked up, and I could hear music and laughing in the background. She sounded giddy, and I wondered if she was high. I took a deep breath. “Shante, I haven’t heard from Beamer yet. Can you please just give me his number?” To my amazement, she did.
Barbara offered to call Beamer, and I agreed that was a good idea. Barbara had a knack for cracking tough nuts. She could have broken Al Capone.
But each time she tried Beamer’s number, no one answered, and Barbara decided to stop by Beamer’s old apartment for the fourth time. A teenage girl answered the door, called her mom at work, and handed Barbara the phone. The girl’s mom was furious. “Listen, I’m tired of you and that other reporter coming around here. I told the police the same thing—‘The woman doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know where she went.’ Just leave us alone.”
Barbara zoomed back to the office. “Wendy, this has got to be the right place. The cops had been there. They were looking for a woman.” We decided to play our last card. Barbara called a source on the FBI–internal affairs task force. Barbara knew to ask a narrow question, one with a yes or no answer. This way, the source wouldn’t feel too exposed.
“I’m going to give you three addresses. All you have to do is tell me if the address is familiar to you. Okay,” Barbara asked.
“Okay,” the source said.
Barbara gave him the Orthodox Street address first. “Yes,” he said, “that’s familiar.”
The task force was looking for the woman, too, and at this point, the source figured Barbara and I might have a better chance of finding her. He knew we were tenacious; he also knew that people on the street often felt more comfortable talking to us than to police investigators.
“If you find her, can you try to convince her to contact us?” the source asked, and Barbara agreed.
Beamer. Beamer. Beamer. We had to find him. I was giving up hope. It was about 8:30 on a Friday night. I rolled a chair next to Barbara, and she dialed Beamer’s number. I heard a muffled hello, and Barbara stiffened and gripped my arm. I clenched both my fists and pumped them up and down, wearing an alligator smile. Go, go, go, go, Barbara. C’mon, c’mon, do it.
“I’m soooo happy to finally talk to you. You just don’t know,” Barbara cooed, her moss-colored eyes bulging as she glanced at me and nodded like a bobblehead.
Barbara explained that she was looking for a woman who’d been sexually assaulted by a cop during the raid at his apartment. “We know he’s done this to other women. . . . This is your chance to do the right thing and see justice.”
I rolled my eyes. Barbara stopped talking, and Beamer said he’d help us. He knew the woman and thought he might see her over the weekend. He promised to call Barbara back.
“Thank you. Thank you so much, Beamer,” Barbara gushed. “You’re my hero.”
I gently punched Barbara in the arm. She was incorrigible. I later teased Barbara about her new hero after we learned that Beamer was a twenty-eight-year-old pimp who ran a brothel.
Because Barbara had been editor for a few years, the Daily News hadn’t given her a work cell and she hadn’t thought to ask for one. So she used her personal phone for the Tainted Justice series. But now this was becoming a problem. Unfamiliar numbers popped up on Barbara’s cell at all hours. She was never sure whether the caller was a pimp, drug dealer, crackhead—or a suitor from Match.com.
Barbara kept her phone within earshot all weekend, even while gardening or bathing. At a dinner party, Barbara placed her phone in front of her on the table. “I’m really sorry. I’m expecting an important call from Beamer.” Her friends just looked at her.
He never called. Early Monday morning, Barbara couldn’t take it anymore. She paced around her back deck and dialed his number. “Yeah, I talked to her,” Beamer said casually. “She’s really scared, but . . .”
Beamer gave Barbara the woman’s first name—we’ll call her Naomi—and her number.
Barbara called me right away. “Wendy, Beamer came through. My hero came through,” she said, tickled with delight.