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Authors: Duane Swierczynski

The Wheelman (19 page)

BOOK: The Wheelman
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D
EEP DOWN, LENNON KNEW HE COULDN’T TRUST Saugherty. And here he was, telling some story about crooked cops and helping people. Please. Who the fuck did this guy think he was talking to? But since the guy was in a soul-baring mood, maybe it was time to play along.
At the very least it would be a way to get out of this hotel room. Back into the city proper. Find Katie, shoot everything that moved, then light out of Philadelphia forever.
Lennon pushed the police reports back on the desk and …
 
T
HANK YOU OH MY GENTLE JESUS HOLY FUCKING SHIT
 
… MADE THE BY-NOW FAMILIAR PANTOMIME. PEN. PAPER. Bring them to me. Saugherty was a quick study. And he seemed awfully relieved that Lennon wasn’t flipping through his precious case files any longer. Probably enough police corruption in there to make a hundred investigative journalists cream their pants. Who cared? Not Lennon.
They made an odd-looking pair at the front desk: Lennon, with his beat-up face and white hip-hop tracksuit; Saugherty, with his high-school-math-teacher sport coat and wrinkled-beyond-redemption button-down shirt. Saugherty looked like a suburban dad with a nasty secret. The age difference was about right. Lennon looked like he enjoyed it rough. Whatever.
The request for the key to the hotel’s word-processing center seemed to take the clerk by surprise. Probably thought they wanted to surf for man-on-boy porn.
Again: whatever.
Once they were in the room and the busted-up looking Dell had booted up, Lennon started typing furiously. He’d learned to type by e-mailing Katie. It was the ideal way to communicate whenever work separated them, which was often. Granted, Lennon wasn’t going to win any typing awards. He used two fingers in a modified hunt-and-peck fashion, occasionally bringing the thumb and middle fingers into play.
Saugherty read over his shoulder. “Ah. Yeah. That I know. Wachovia.”
Lennon shot him a look.
“Sorry. Go ahead. Do your thing.”
So Lennon continued his rundown of the weekend, from the heist itself to getting arrested this morning. It wasn’t an emotional account. Pure business. Because that was what Saugherty wanted to hear, right? About the money. Because he knew that Saugherty just wanted Lennon to lead him to the money, at which point he’d be arrested or killed. Nothing had changed since Friday night. Actually, in a long weekend of turnabouts and backstabs, Saugherty’s consistency was refreshing.
“No kidding! Shit, your own partner? That son of a bitch.”
More typing.
“Yeah, the Russians. No surprise there. But how did the wops get involved—”
More typing.
“Ah. Gotcha. Which is why I got the shit kicked out of me when I followed you down to that restaurant. Somehow, knowledge diminishes the pain, don’t you think? Guy walks up to you out of nowhere, pops you in the kisser, you think, What the fuck? The question hurts just as bad as the punch. But say you find you were giving his baby sister the ol’ sloppy push from behind. Now it makes sense all of a sudden. Am I right?”
Lennon ignored him and continued typing. He wished the ex-cop would shut the fuck up and pay attention to what he was writing.
More commentary:
“Unfuckingbelievable.”
And:
“A cop—right there at the party?”
On and on.
The other reason Lennon was spilling his guts? He needed Saugherty’s help figuring out this shit. Where
was
the money? Maybe there was still a spark of a keen analytical mind somewhere in that ex-cop’s booze-addled brain. Maybe Saugherty could spot something Lennon had overlooked.
When Lennon finished, Saugherty let out one long whistle.
“Man. I almost feel bad shooting you in the shoulder and strapping you to a table. You’ve had one hell of a weekend, haven’t you boss?”
Lennon typed:
help me rescue my sister. we find the money, split it … deal?
 
“Nah. We look for the money first.”
 
NO TIME
 
Lennon stood up from the chair. He had options. Saugherty might have a gun, but it’d be tough to use in such close quarters. Lennon could hurl him through the plate-glass window that separated the word-processing center from the hotel lobby.
“Alright, alright. I’m not a prick. You want your sister safe. I’d want the same thing. And I know where she is; she’s going to be fine. These are wannabe Mafiosi. I know ’em. They’re lazy and greedy. They’re not going to jeopardize their meal ticket. But here’s the thing: we’re on a deadline for the money, too. So consider this counterproposal.”
Lennon nodded.
Go on.
“Seems to me there’s only one option with the money. Your third partner—this Crosby guy. You haven’t seen him since the morning of the heist. You assume he’s down that pipe, but you don’t know.
“What you do know is that your other partner—the one who double-crossed you—doesn’t have the money. ’Cause he’d be sitting back with his feet up in Cancún about now, sipping a Mai Tai and getting himself an Oriental massage complete with a happy ending. Am I right? So Crosby is the missing link.”
Which is what Katie had said.
“So first we go to the pipe over in Camden and fish out the bodies. We find Crosby, fine. We got to look somewhere else. We don’t find him, though, he’s our guy. Then we get your sister and plan our next move. Deal?”
 
T
HE IRISH BASTARD NODDED. DEAL. SAUGHERTY smiled.
Of course, we’re probably not going to find your pal Crosby, so I’ll put you in that pipe in his place. Then I’ll go after him. The heister with the money. Sorry Katie—you’re beyond saving, sweetheart.
He watched Lennon quit Word and click the “Don’t Save” box. His weekend memoir disappeared.
Then he looked at Saugherty and made a pistol with his right hand.
“Yes. Guns. We’re going to need guns to get Katie, aren’t we? Well, brother, you just happened upon the right retired cop. Come on back to the room. Got a surprise for you.”
Not the faxed photo of dead Katie—Saugherty had already swiped it, folded it, and put it in his jacket pocket. No second mistakes.
The surprise was inside a green army duffel bag, the payoff for a favor he had done a Philly S.W.A.T. team member some years ago—covering up a wife-beating beef. In return, Saugherty had asked for a bag of tricks: heavy artillery stuff he could keep off the books. The bag certainly came in handy from time to time. This time being one of them.
Saugherty thought he’d be using this stuff in a standoff with some of his former colleagues, if it came to that. It was part of his exit strategy. But now it was looking like he had another option, after all.
“Isn’t this sweet?”
Lennon didn’t seem impressed. He chose two .38s, and it was obvious he didn’t know much about guns, as he didn’t do much in the way of shopping. He was like an amateur home owner grabbing the first available tool to stop the leaky kitchen faucet. Didn’t matter if it was a hammer or pliers or a screwdriver or a chainsaw.
Saugherty, on the other hand, chose carefully. He skipped the pistols and rifles. He wasn’t going to need them. Instead, he dipped into special ordinance: an oversized flare-gun-looking thing. It held two flashbang grenades, used by S.W.A.T. teams to disorient and confuse their targets. The sonic blast was enough to render ten men unconscious at close range. Eardrums would be burst. Nasal vessels would rupture. Eyes would bleed.
The bank robber was giving him a quizzical look.
“What? This? Flare gun. It’s a distraction. For when we go after your sister. This’ll confuse the hell out of the wops.”
That seemed to satisfy Lennon, who checked his pistols to make sure they were loaded. Of course they were. All part of the exit strategy.
And the other part was this: once they determined that Crosby was a no-show at his own funeral, Saugherty would dump a flash-bang grenade in Lennon’s lap. That might be enough to kill him, but probably not. Either way, he’d dump him and the pistol down the pipe, then hightail it out of there.
Track down Crosby. Squeeze him. Retire.
“Ready to go, brother?”
 
 
 
Tell the boys I’m coming home.
—WILBUR UNDERHILL
 
 
W
HAT IMPRESSED LENNON MOST, THINKING BACK ON it, was how everything seemed blurred—dreamlike yet harried—after they left the hotel. Earlier in the day, the drive to the Northeast had taken forever. Now, I-95 was all but empty and they rocketed down the length of the Delaware River and crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge (yeah, again) to the Camden side within minutes. It was more like experiencing a fevered deathbed flashback than actual life.
Then they pulled up to a concrete parking pad within view of the pipes. And it got even worse.
Lennon couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
There were three people down there carrying two body bags toward the pipe. At first, Lennon thought he was watching a replay of his own near-burial from Friday night. But no, these were three different people, carrying—presumably—two different corpses to the mouth of the pipe. The one that was due to be covered with a thick slab of concrete in the near future.
Saugherty saw them, too. “What is this? A Mafia fire sale? Bury all of your dead now while prices stay rock-bottom? Who the fuck are these guys?”
Lennon squinted. He made one of them out.
Big guy. Pasty. Tortoiseshell glasses. Ugly moustache.
It was the guy from the South Philly basement. And his buddies. The ones who had held a gun to Katie’s head.
The body bag.
Plastic.
Sized just right.
Katie.
The blurring stopped. Everything seemed clear now.
Lennon turned, pointed one of the .38s at Saugherty’s armpit—not covered by Kevlar—then pulled the trigger.
The ex-cop had been distracted by the strangers. “What … ?” Then, upon looking down. “I … can’t fucking believe this.” A dark damp stain spread down across the sleeve of his shirt.
Lennon left the car and made his way down to the pipes. He heard the driver’s door creak open behind him. Saugherty was trying to crawl out. Let him. He’d finish him later.
The gunshot hadn’t alarmed the three guys down below. After all, this was Camden. But the creaking door was another story.
They all looked up in Lennon’s direction.
By this point, Lennon was racing toward them, a gun in each hand. He had only two thoughts. First: see Katie with my own eyes. Then: exterminate. The rest would fall into place.
“What the fuck?” said one of them.
“Hey, it’s him,” said the big guy with the tortoiseshell glasses. “The bank robber.”
Lennon shot him right between the lenses.
His two pals dropped the body bag and reached for their weapons, but Lennon stopped and aimed a pistol at each of them and shook his head.
No.
This wasn’t the deterrent that Lennon hoped it would be. They drew their guns anyway. Pointed them at Lennon.
“He wants you to open those bags,” said a voice.
It was Saugherty, that crazy bastard. Staggering toward them with that oversized flare gun in his hand.
“Frankly, I’m just as curious as he is. So why don’t you do us all a favor and unzip ’em?”
The two henchmen, who looked like twins now that Lennon had a chance to think about it, appeared puzzled. But not for long.
Gunfire snapped to life everywhere.
“Oh, fuck me up the ass!”
Bullets sparked off the concrete slab, and ripped through fabric and flesh.
“Shit! Shit!”
Then came a
phhhh-WOOM
sound.
In the microsecond it took for Lennon to lose consciousness, he came to realize: Yes, this was it.
This was the death flashback.
All of it.
 
T
HOSE S.W.A.T. GUYS DON’T DICK AROUND, SAUGHERTY thought, as the smoking flashbang grenade pistol twirled once and slipped out of his hand. It didn’t have far to fall. Saugherty was already flat on his back on the concrete floor.
He sniffed blood, briefly noted that his eyes felt like burning charcoal briquettes, then passed out.
But not before he had one more thought: Shit, I’d hate to see the other guy.
 
S
AUGHERTY WOKE UP SOME TIME LATER. IMMEDIATELY, he knew that someone else had beat him to consciousness.
He could hear him moving around.
The best idea right now: play dead. Which wasn’t difficult, considering he had a bullet swimming around his armpit somewhere, and he was partially numb. Then, look for an opening. Take it. Just like he always did. Saugherty could imagine that sentiment etched on his tombstone.
Saugherty was used to playing dead and stealing peeks. He used to do it when he was eight years old, during sleepovers at his cousins’ house. His teenaged female cousins. The ones who slept only in panties. And who often grew thirsty in the middle of the night and bounced off for a cold glass of Delaware Punch. God, Saugherty missed those sleepovers.
But here, now, something bugged him. He’d blasted that flashbang grenade right in the middle of the three of them: Lennon, and his two Italian pals. If he wasn’t mistaken, the grenade actually nailed one of the wops right in the balls. No way
he
was up and about—checking bodies, smoking cigarettes, ordering pizza. Probably not his twin brother, either. Could be Lennon, but that didn’t make sense either. Saugherty had been standing a good ten yards behind Lennon. If Saugherty had been knocked out, Lennon’s head should have been knocked off.
He took a chance.
He peeked.
Nope. There was Lennon, sprawled on the concrete in what appeared to be a supremely uncomfortable position. Even for Tantric sex.
Which meant …?
A rough hand slapped him across the face. Saugherty’s eyes popped open.
“Hey there.”
The guy looking down at him … now this was a new character entirely. Saugherty tried spinning through his mental Rolodex but came up with a big goose egg.
“Who are you?”
“Michael Kowalski,” the guy said. He was thin yet muscular, with slightly beady eyes and razor-sharp black hair in a crew cut. He was wearing all black—even the gun rig strapped to his chest. “And you?”
“Saugherty. I’m an ex-cop.”
Then, playing a hunch:
“You look like you’re on the job, too.”
“I am. Sort of.”
“FBI?”
“Used to be. Bank robbery squad.”
“And now?”
“Something else.”
“CIA?”
“Something like that. It’s a department they don’t talk about much on the evening news.” Michael scanned the area around the pipe. “There are a lot of dead bodies. Some are already pre-bagged. What happened here, Saugherty?”
All of them dead? Including Lennon? Saugherty felt the white heat of hope burn in his stomach. It even eased the pain from the bullet.
“Guy in the white tracksuit is a bank robber. Did the Wachovia job on Friday. I’ve been pursuing him freelance. At the request of the mayor himself.”
Yeah, that sounded good. Even started out being true. In a way.
“The mayor? Really?”
“Yeah. Check with … well, Lt. Mothers is dead. But check with his replacement. You’ll see.”
Michael considered this.
“Are you sure the guy in the white suit is dead?” asked Saugherty. “He’s one tough fucker.”
“I checked for a pulse. Not much going on there. If he’s not dead yet, it’s a matter of minutes. So … wait a second. I can’t keep calling you Saugherty. That makes it sound like we’re in a bad TV cop movie. What’s your first name?”
A pause. “Harold.”
“Harry, is it?”
“No. Harold. That’s why it’s ‘Saugherty.’” He coughed up something wet. “Ah, shit, don’t make me laugh.”
“Harold, who are these other guys? They don’t look like bank robbers to me.”
“Some mobsters, I’m guessing. This bank robber, Patrick Selway Lennon, had a money-laundering deal with them.” Wow. That was good. Keep spinning, keep spinning. “There was even talk that they did the scouting for the Wachovia job. A pure moneymaker. They’re basically a bunch of washed-up losers trying to get back in the game.”
“Interesting,” Michael said, then walked over to the dead twins. Or what looked like the remnants of the dead twins.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
“Those your guys?” Saugherty asked.
“Nah. My guy’s over there.”
“Who?” Oh no. What was this? Was he one of Perelli’s guys?
“The bank robber in the white tracksuit. He was my brother-in-law. Or was going to be, anyway.”
Even though he was numb, Saugherty could feel the icy-blast effect of a cold fusion bomb in his stomach.
“Which brings me to my next question, Harold.”
“Yeah?”
“Why is there a photograph of my dead fiancée in your jacket pocket?”
Saugherty didn’t have an answer for that one.
So Michael Kowalski picked him up and threw him down the pipe.
 
K
OWALSKI CLEANED UP AS FAST AS HE COULD—YEP, there were sirens approaching. And no cover would be adequate to explain his presence in the middle of a Camden, New Jersey, bloodbath. Not even his government creds. So his valediction would have to be on the short side.
He rolled his dead brother-in-law-to-be over on his back.
“Nice to finally meet you, Pat,” Michael said.
Lennon stared up blankly. Dark blood had leaked from his tear ducts, nostrils, and ears—as if his brain were a tomato and someone had squished it.
“This is not how I imagined our first meeting. I was looking forward to our time in Puerto Rico. A little baccarat, some steaks, some rum. Not this.
“Well, perhaps
this.
Eventually. A brother-in-law on the Ten Most Wanted list can be a liability to a guy in my profession, you know? But to be honest, I hadn’t made up my mind about you yet. Katie was so in love with you—she idolized you. I didn’t see how you could possibly live up to your reputation.
“And now that I see you, and now that I’ve seen my dead fiancée and unborn child on a slab in a police morgue … well, I’ve gotta say. I’m disappointed. Did you even know her? Did you know she’d do anything for you?
“Ah, maybe I’m being harsh. I don’t even know you. Maybe you tried your best.
“Maybe you didn’t.
“Maybe I’m going to have to finish what you started here tonight.”
Michael stared down at Lennon and, after some consideration, made the sign of the cross. The sirens were almost upon him.
“Okay, good talk, bro.”
Michael picked up Lennon, then carried him over to the pipe.
Lennon floated across the blood-splattered concrete slab, his lifeless body headed toward the pipe.
 
Had he been a smoker, Lennon would have savored a last few puffs before smashing the butt into the metal lip of the pipe. Just one cigarette—something for the geeks in khaki pants and navy blue windbreakers to pick up with tweezers, drop into a thick Ziploc bag, tag, log, then store in their evidence cases.
 
Maybe someone would have gotten around to analyzing the brand, try to pluck some DNA from the butt.
 
Maybe some part of Lennon would have lived forever.
 
O
H, IT WAS BAD. SAUGHERTY DIDN ’T HAVE ANY ILLUSIONS. The wound under his right arm was pumping blood like a kid’s water pistol. The impact of sliding down the pipe had snapped his spine, and he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. He was folded like a V inside a dank, fetid, slimy, and circular metal coffin. There were soft, squishy things beneath him. Bodies. He had been to enough crime scenes to distinguish the degrees of ripeness.
But at least he wasn’t upside down. Saughtery could look up and see the night sky through the opening of the pipe.
Things were looking up already, he thought to himself, and chuckled, which hurt.
Then a hand appeared in the opening, and an arm. Draping itself over the side.
A head, in shadow.
What the hell … ?
The opening of the pipe suddenly went dark. Saugherty heard a scraping sound that became louder and louder until—
Impact. A hard skull pounded into his chest. An elbow smashed his nose, and another slammed into the middle of his left shin.
That Michael asshole had pitched his own brother-in-law—well, his almost brother-in-law—into the pipe.
Which made no fucking sense whatsoever.
“You son of a bitch,” Saugherty finally mumbled, when the waves of shock and pain finally ebbed. He took his frustrations out on Lennon’s body. “Shouldn’t you be out collecting your money? Isn’t that what this is all about?”
Nothing.
“I know you’re still alive. I can feel your body breathing.”
Nothing.
“You’re trembling. You’re scared, ain’t ya?”
Still nothing.
“Goddamnit, I wish you could have held on to your voice a bit longer. ’Cause you know, I’m really dying to know what was going through your head the past couple of days.”
Saugherty felt the trembling increase. At first, he thought the mute bank robber was going through death spasms. His body finally giving out. After a while, he realized he was wrong.
Lennon was
laughing.
BOOK: The Wheelman
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