November 26, 1986

Josefina Rivera was having a rough night. In another hour it would be Thanksgiving, but so far she didn't have a lot to be thankful for.

She was still fuming about her argument with her boyfriend, a thirty-year-old black man named Vincent Nelson. She stomped out of his apartment in a huff. Then, when she went back an hour later to apologize, they started fighting all over again. That's when she said to hell with it and left a second time, figuring she might as well go to work.

Pacing back and forth at the corner of Third and Girard, she cursed under her breath and kicked at the trash littering the sidewalk: empty coffee cups; bright aluminum cans, which would soon be scooped up like treasure by neighborhood bums on their nightly rounds; and soggy mounds of what had been sheets from that afternoon's Daily News, now reduced to mush by a heavy, early-evening shower.

The rain had been the forerunner of a Canadian cold front barreling down the Eastern seaboard, bringing a jolting taste of winter to Philadelphia's northside slums. As she performed a little hop-and-skip around the puddles of dirty water, she burrowed deeper into her thin windbreaker, seeking relief from the plunging temperatures.

All the while, even as she swore against Nelson and the weather, she kept an eye on the street, sensitive to the cars that braked and cruised slowly past while the drivers gave her the once-over. Every time one of them seemed about to stop, she made an effort to look cheerful, flashing a fake, airline-hostess smile.

What the drivers saw was a thin, striking-looking woman of medium height clad in sneakers and skin-tight jeans. Josefina Rivera had fine, well-developed features, inherited from her Puerto Rican father rather than her black mother. Her nose was long and straight, her lips pencil thin, and her skin the color of coffee with double cream. Fortunately for her, the dim light hid the hard lines at the corners of her mouth and the flat glint in her eyes; the cool stare that was much older than her twenty-five years. When it looked as though a potential john was really interested, Rivera gave her head a quick jerk, setting the waves in her outsized wig jiggling like a fat man's stomach.

Usually she had no trouble attracting men, but tonight was exceptionally slow. As the evening wore on, she became increasingly desperate. It was cold and wet on the glum street corner, but she couldn't afford to give up yet. She didn't want to quit without at least one quick trick. She needed the money. A rabbit-fast liaison in a seedy motel or the back of a car would make her night, give her enough money for a hot Turkey Day dinner.

As she reached the edge of her self-defined boundary and reversed her course to make another circuit, a pair of headlights glared, went slightly past her and stopped. Glancing over, she opened her eyes slightly in surprise when she saw that it was a shiny new pewter-over-white Cadillac Coupe De Ville, complete with gleaming continental kit.

As she stared, the window glided down and a man spoke. It was a white man's voice, soft and low. "Hi," he said, leaning forward. "You hustling?"

"Yeah," Rivera responded, straining to see inside. Despite the gloom, she caught a reflection of light off a big, expensive-looking watch on the man's left wrist.

"How much you want?" he asked affably.

She named a figure and he made a counter offer: "Will you take twenty?"

It didn't take her long to decide. In response, she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat, noticing as she did the initials GMH painted on the door in flowing blue script. The smell inside the car was intoxicating, an overwhelming aroma of leather and wax. The Caddy was only nine days off the dealer's floor.

"My name's Gary," the man said.

"I'm Nicole," she answered, using her favorite alias. Nicole was a nice name, she felt, infinitely fancier than Josefina. To her it had class; it went better with her image of herself as a slightly exotic hooker.

"I want to make a quick stop first," the man said as he pulled away. A few minutes later he aimed the big car into the crowded lot of a McDonald's.

When he walked inside, she went with him. He bought coffee but offered her nothing. Clutching his steaming cup tightly in his right fist, he strolled to a back table and sat facing the parking lot. She slid into a chair across from him.

In the restaurant's bright light she could see him clearly, appraising with interest the thick gold chain and gold cross visible through the open neck of his plaid flannel shirt. In counterpoint to the jewelry and the heavy watch, which she now saw carried the Rolex name, the man wore an inexpensive cowhide jacket with leather fringes down the arms, the same kind of garment Jon Voight favored in the movie Midnight Cowboy.

The jacket was stained, and in spots the suede had rubbed through, leaving irregular shiny patches that looked like moth holes. It smelled, too, of sweat and grease, a fact evident now that it wasn't camouflaged by the new-car scent.

The man, Rivera noticed, was not the cleanest john she had ever done business with. His dark beard was neatly trimmed and his hair had recently been styled, but now it was unwashed, hanging in greasy ringlets over his ears. His shirt had a slept-in look, and his jeans, although fairly new, were marked with traces of oil and dirt. He had a strong jaw, though, and a straight nose. His most arresting feature was his eyes; they were as expressionless as two blue glass marbles. Looking into them, a shiver ran up her spine.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"I already told you," he said. "Gary."

"Gary what?" she persisted.

"Gary Heidnik," he said, lapsing into silence, quietly sipping from his steaming cup.

"Let's go," he said after a few minutes.

"Where are we going?"

"My house," he answered, already heading for the door.

* * *

Heidnik pulled out of the lot and pointed the car north, deeper into the slum district. Speeding recklessly down the potholed streets, one foot on the brake and one on the gas, Heidnik said nothing as they maneuvered through an expanse of row houses, block after block of dwellings sitting literally on the cracked sidewalks.

In years past, this section of Philadelphia had been home to hardworking blue-collar immigrants, Germans for the most part, who took pride in their surroundings and kept the streets as spotless as their houses. When these immigrants and their descendants abandoned the neighborhood for the suburbs, the blacks and Hispanics who moved in were not as fastidious.

By 1986 the neighborhood had earned the nickname "The OK Corral" because of a highly publicized, middle-of-the-street shootout between would-be drug lords — an incident that left several bystanders wounded while the participants escaped unscathed. In a demonstration of perverse pride, neighborhood toughs sewed the name "OK Corral" on their jackets and strutted the title proudly through the neighborhood, especially when they worked the corners hawking crack, coke, and pot to passing motorists.

When they got to North Marshall Street, Heidnik took a sharp left, nearly clipping an abandoned Chevy parked at the curb. The car's windows were broken out and its wheels had been removed. All vital parts had long ago been carted off. At one point someone had attempted to torch the vehicle, and the path of the flames were still visible on the rusting...