D
OWN BY THE RIVER, THEY FOUND MIKAL’S TRUCK, TWO open body bags with no bodies inside of them, and a spray of blood. They were forced to report back to Mikal’s father, by cell phone. It was supposed to be just a routine checkup, to see what the kid was up to tonight. He hadn’t shown up for his gig down in Wildwood—a buddy had called it in.
“He’s nowhere in sight?” Mikal’s father asked.
No, they said.
“Is there blood inside his truck?”
No. Just around the construction site. Some tarp and concrete and pipes sticking out of the ground.
“There anything inside these pipes?”
Not that they could tell. Not without flashlights or anything. Probably not. But they could check. They hung up, promising to call back soon.
“Fuck.”
“What do we do now?”
“Chill. Just chill the fuck out, that’s what we do.”
“I don’t want to do that. Gotta think, gotta think.”
Fifteen minutes later, they called Mikal’s father back.
Mikal’s appointment book was still in the truck, they said, and on today’s page they saw a note for a meeting. The names: Patrick Lennon, Harrison Crosby, and Holden. The exact details of the meeting were not known, but these three names happened to be the names of three bank robbers who were suspected of stealing $650,000 from a Wachovia branch in Center City that morning. It was in the paper today. Didn’t he see it?
This was bullshit. No such news story had made the papers. But Mikal’s father didn’t know that.
Mikal’s father didn’t know about
any
of this. This had been Mikal’s deal.
“Bank rob-bers?” said the father, through clenched teeth.
They didn’t have to see the man’s face to know his teeth were clenched.
The first matter of business was to find Mikal. (Yeah, right.) They were instructed to split up: one guy to Mikal’s townhouse in Voorhees, New Jersey and the other to his friend, this piano player named Andrew, to his house. He lived in the northeast, not far from where some of the crew made their homes.
“Let’s go, then.”
“You know we’re not going to find shit.”
“That’s not our problem. The man speaks, we go. Let’s go.”
M
IKAL’S FATHER RETRIEVED AN ICE-COLD BOTTLE OF Stoli from his miniature office fridge. He poured a drink to his son, who’d been so eager both to please his father and pursue his art at the same time. Sitting in some recording studio in downtown Philadelphia, along the waterfront, were the tapes of Mikal’s unfinished rock album. Mikal’s father had paid $18,500 for two weekends of studio time, complete with professional engineers and mixers. It had been a late birthday present for Mikal. He had been so thrilled, and was due back in the studio the following weekend—it had to be postponed because of a performance at the shore. Mikal had just turned twenty-two.
Now, Mikal’s father considered that $18,500, and considered how he’d pay ten—no—one hundred times that amount just for the bitter pleasure of renting out a large soundproof room with concrete floors, two meat hooks, and a large industrial hose for cleanup afterward. He wanted those three bank robbers run through electric meat grinders and the remains doused in gasoline and burned.
Mikal thought about sending someone into the studio to take the tapes, just so that the robbers could listen to the music. In the spare moments when they weren’t screaming for their lives.
Forty-five minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was his employees. They had discovered that someone was sleeping in Mikal’s friend’s dormitory room. And it wasn’t Mikal’s friend.
L
ENNON HEARD THE WRENCHING OF STEEL AND HIS eyes snapped open. Once again, recent memories took their time returning. His aching hands felt the single bed beneath his body, and he knew he wasn’t in his own bed. He was in a small room. The pale light filtering through a window to his right revealed that much; there was a wooden dresser and a desk. A dormitory room. The name Andrew Whalen popped into Lennon’s head, then everything came rushing back.
The steel cried out again, and something heavy thudded to the ground outside of his window.
Lennon sat up, his deadened muscles protesting the motion, screaming for him to lie back down for another few minutes or months or years, but he had to see. He looked through the glass, which was protected by steel safety bars, and down one floor. There were three men dressed in black coats with knit black caps over their heads. One of them held a crowbar the size of an Arthurian broadsword.
They had pried the bars off the window and were preparing to enter the room below.
Andrew Whalen’s room. The Russians.
Lennon had taken a chance and picked the room directly above Whalen’s. In a building like this, singles were likely to be placed on top of other singles, doubles on doubles, and so forth, so heat ducts and plumbing lined up. Whalen’s room was too risky—somebody was going to miss him soon enough and show up looking for him. Another single room was a smarter bet. People who lived in singles were either loners who went home on weekends, or seniors who had friends or girlfriends on campus elsewhere. It wasn’t Lennon’s safest move, but it was better than wandering the streets of a strange city, looking for shelter. His crew’s “safe” apartment in West Philly should be assumed compromised. There was no place else for him to go.
Lennon watched the men enter the room. Then he heard a scream. But just for a brief second. He thought about trying to take a closer look, to see what he was up against. But he was in no condition for that. Better to stay here, regroup, rebuild, and work the problem with a fresh mind and body in the morning.
Lennon rolled back over and went to sleep, trying hard not to think of Katie.
S
AUGHERTY STOOD AT THE CORNER OF SEVENTEENTH and Market at 4:00 A.M., drunk off his ass, his belly full of beer and whiskey, thinking about bank robbery. I’m a bank robber, he thought to himself. Whoo-hoo-heee. I’m going to jack up this jug here, a Wachovia. Breeeeee-hawww. Where do I go afterward? If I’m a clever guy, I try to find my way out of the city without getting caught in any jams. This being Center City Philadelphia, good freakin’ luck with that.
But the newspaper story Mothers had given him in the bar had explained that. The team was crafty—they’d set up phony window-washer horses all up the west side of Seventeenth Street, which allowed them easy access to JFK, and then to … to where? That was the $650,000 question. JFK led directly to Thirtieth Street Station and on-ramps for I-76, but that was one of the most congested points in the city. Smart guys like the Wachovia crew wouldn’t go there. But they were headed up JFK for a reason. Only a few streets lie between Seventeenth and Thirtieth—most of the streets in the Twenties were stopped because of train tracks and the river. Weehew, I’m a bank robber, where do I go?
Saugherty looked in his wallet. He still had over $200 cash in there. Mothers had tossed him a line of credit.
He hailed the next cab headed down Market Street. He was in no mood to sleep and no condition to drive.
T
HE PHONE RANG. LENNON’S GUMMY EYES FLICKERED open. It took a second, but everything came back to him quickly this time. Most important, the reason for the phone ringing.
The alarm he’d set had been tripped. Someone wanted back into the room.
It hadn’t taken much. Lennon had scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, then taped it to the door of room 219: “Dude—I’m hooking up. Call first. PLEASE.”
Lennon had wanted some kind of warning, just in case the occupant of room 219 were to return sometime this evening. Every male college student had an unspoken set of rules in regards to getting lucky with a member of the opposite sex. (Lennon had never graduated from college, but he’d had enough of it to glean this nugget of wisdom.) If you were a true friend, you’d always allow your buddy the use of your room for the purposes of carnal acts. Hell, you’d even allow a complete stranger who lived in your hallway the use of your room for immoral acts. Only a total dick would raise a holla over a brother gettin’ some.
The note was vague enough—
Dude
—to warrant at least a call. That was why the phone was ringing.
The occupant of 219 wanted to come back, and wanted to make sure it was safe.
Lennon bolted upright and his entire body screamed back at him. There was no time. He snatched up the plastic bag full of clothes he had prepared before he had lain down and exited the dorm room. He took the staircase down one flight, slowly walked down the main hallway, and went into the men’s room. There were six shower stalls inside, three on each side. Lennon chose one at random and used it to dress.
The clothes he’d picked out of the student’s closet were purposefully random. A black White Stripes T-shirt, a gray Penn State sweatshirt, and a pair of ill-fitting Vans. He kept Andrew Whalen’s black dress pants—they fit better than anything else he saw in the closet. He had also taken a Timex Indiglo watch, which was a far cry from the Swiss Army platinum watch the Russians had stolen, but at least it told the time. Which was 2:30 A.M.
Lennon felt like shit. He needed to find new shelter quick or he wasn’t going to make it. Sooner or later he’d lose consciousness, and campus security would find him, and they’d call the cops, and everything would be over.
So Lennon walked outside the St. Neumann dormitory and sat on the front steps. He wished he had a cigarette; almost wished he smoked. He watched the darkness, and the occasional student walking past him, heading into the dorm, or to the parking lot situated directly across the way. It took forty minutes, but eventually he found what he wanted: a drunk student, pausing in front of the open driver’s door of his late model Chevy Cavalier, debating whether or not to throw up now and get it over with or take his chances and start driving home before he passed out.
Lennon walked over to the lot quickly and made a big show of putting his hands out to help the student. He’d noticed the huge brown glass bubbles attached to poles dotting this part of campus—security cameras. As Lennon put his hand on the guy’s back, he also nailed him once in the kidneys, which temporarily paralyzed him, and then another time in the windpipe, which temporarily rendered him mute.
Lennon pushed the student to the passenger side, relieved him of his keys, then started the Cavalier and drove out of the parking lot and down the hill to Belfield Avenue. Once the car nosed out of campus, Lennon stopped. Wait. He couldn’t do this here—not in this neighborhood. Lennon drove back up the hill and took the loop that put him right in front of the dorms. He then reached over, opened the passenger door, and pushed the kid out. Campus security would spot him sooner or later. Besides, friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
Now, shelter again. Lennon didn’t know the neighborhoods well enough to know safe ones vs. not-so-safe ones, so he tried to find the only strip he knew: Kelly Drive. There were plenty of bridges and tree-covered canopies along the drive. One of them had to be good enough for temporary shelter. It took a while to find—the streets were hopelessly confusing in this part of the city, with burned-out warehouses and ruined shopping strips—but eventually Lennon nosed the Cavalier onto I-76, and then took the Kelly Drive exit. He found what he wanted within three minutes, then crawled into the cramped backseat to try to heal.
Sure, it was returning to the scene of the crime/betrayal, but it was also the last place the Russians would think to look for him. In a few hours Lennon would get up, steal another car, drive to the long-term lot, reclaim the money, and get the hell out of this city. Then he would figure out Katie, and the Russians, and how the two fit together.
If
they fit together.
Not too far down the road, Lennon’s blood—spilled almost eighteen hours ago—soaked into the grass and mud beside the Schuylkill River.
U
NCONSCIOUSNESS. BLACKNESS.
Then:
Tapping on glass.
Goddamnit. He was tired of being disturbed. The way his luck was running, it was probably a cop. Maybe that drunk La Salle kid had already called in his car. He should have found somewhere else to sleep. Or at least slept outside in the cold underbrush, away from the car. But that wouldn’t have helped him heal any faster. Getting brained again and again hadn’t done much for his logical thought processes. He was working this one through a brain fog.
“Hey in there,” a voice said.
Lennon sat up and, once again, wished he’d done something differently. He wished he’d found a way to hold onto the Russian kid’s gun.
A guy in a cheap sport coat was outside the car, leveling a Glock 17 at him. Classic cop gun—seventeen rounds, but only thirty ounces fully loaded, easy-pull trigger. Classic cop two-hand stance, too.
“Unlock the door,” he said, his voice slurring a bit.
A plainclothes, out awfully late. Probably headed home from an after-hours cop bar, happened to catch sight of the car. Which was amazing—Lennon had hidden it well. But you never know what’ll catch a cop’s eye. Bastard probably smelled it.
Lennon sat up and caught sight of something odd parked down the hill on Kelly Drive. It was a Yellow Cab, headlights on, passenger door open.
“C’mon, buddy,” the cop said.
Lennon shrugged, then reached over and unlocked the back passenger door.
The cop kept the Glock trained on Lennon, but briefly turned around to wave the cabbie off. Then he opened the door and slid in next to Lennon, right there in the seat. The pistol stayed on him the whole time. This cop was drunk.
“How’s it going tonight? Me, I’m doing good. Gotta say, I keep stumbling into clover this evening. Had myself a couple of Memphis Dogs over at McGlinchey’s hours ago, and I haven’t had a single explosive diarrhea session yet. Maybe my stomach’s adapting.”
Lennon just stared at him. What did this guy want? This wasn’t a vagrant roust. This was something else.
“You ever had a Memphis Dog? Only a quarter. Paired with a pint of Yuengling Black and Tan, it’s the closest a Philly working stiff will ever get to nirvana.”
Lennon slowly raised his hands, holding an invisible pen with one, and using it to scribble an imaginary note on the other. Then he made a slicing motion across his throat.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. You can’t talk, can you, Pat?”
Oh no. This cop. He was working the Wachovia job.
Fuck.
“Why is that, anyway? Your I.O. didn’t elaborate. A bank job’d be my guess. Catch a bullet under the chin? Or did somebody try to double-cross you, slice you up like lunch meat, leave you for dead? Bank robbery can be such a dangerous profession. Frankly, I don’t know how you can derive any real satisfaction from it.”
Lennon didn’t move. He just stared. Sooner or later, this guy would get to the point. And then he’d decide how much of a risk it would be to try to take the gun away from him.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering quite a few things, aren’t you, Pat? You’re probably wondering how I know your name, and how I found you so quickly. Well rest easy, brother. Your questions pale in comparison to the list of questions I have in my own head. Such as: Why
did
I find you so easily? Aren’t you clever heist guys supposed to know how to get out of town quickly and quietly? I thought I’d be reading about your extradition from Montana at some point. But the fact that you’re still here makes me think the job didn’t come off as ducky as everybody thinks. Which raises even more questions.”
The guy—Lennon wasn’t exactly sure he was a cop anymore; he definitely used to be, but something about him said
early retirement
—paused to adjust the crotch of his pants. The pistol remained on target.
“Where are your partners? There were three of you. You’re the wheelman, and the black guy and the wigger were the heavies. Maybe they’re back waiting at the hideout up there in jiga-bootown, and you’re staked out here for some reason. That’s it, isn’t it? The money’s still here. You’re waiting until it’s safe.”
The guy paused, waiting Lennon out. After about a minute of silence, Lennon simply shrugged his shoulders.
“Strong silent type, aren’t ya? Well let me get to the point.”
At long last.
“I could shoot you in the face right now, in the next very second, and make $20,000. Which is very nice money.”
Definitely not a cop anymore. Not that cops didn’t do shit like that, but he wouldn’t be yapping about it. Of course, the fact that he was yapping about it also meant that this guy was going to shoot Lennon in the face, no matter what. Next, he was going to ask about the money.
“Or, we could go recover that bank money, when it’s safe, and arrange a deal. Nod once if you understand me.”
Lennon nodded once.
“Goody. So here’s how we’re going to—”
Lennon swatted his right arm outward, his wrist catching the guy’s wrist and deflecting the Glock away, pointing it at the back windshield.
But not before the guy managed to squeeze the trigger. He was
fast.
He must have been prepared for Lennon to try something like this.
The shot felt like a hammer slamming his left shoulder. The area exploded into numbness as his blood tried to circulate itself anywhere but there. The blood failed, and started geysering out of his shoulder, soaking the Penn State sweatshirt. It looked black in the darkness.
“Now see that,” the guy said, calmly pulling his gun hand away from Lennon’s weakening right arm. “We’re not going to get anywhere like this. And I’m not ready to let you make your decision so hastily. A man should be able to think about these kinds of things in peace and quiet. Where’s the keys to this car?”
Lennon shut his eyes, trying both to block the pain and plan his next move. There would be no point in trying the same stunt twice. He had to think.
The guy tapped him in the face with the still-hot barrel of the pistol. “Hey. Come on now. Simple question. Keys.”
Keys. Above the driver’s seat visor. Keys meant the guy wanted to drive him somewhere. It was a chance to think, to plan something. He couldn’t drive with a gun on Lennon the whole time.
Lennon gestured to the visor. The guy smiled. “Well thankee greatly.” He stepped out of the car, walked around to the driver’s side door, opened it, and snatched the keys up. Then he walked around the back again and used the keyless button to pop the trunk. “Damn, Pat, you should see the shit back here,” he called from the outside. “Sorry to say, this ain’t going to be very comfortable.”
It wasn’t.