Wheelman, The Page 4

  … and then what?

  Katie didn’t know.

  How do you put something like this?

  She couldn’t read the novel she’d packed—some Lorene Cary book about Philadelphia during the Civil War. It was the book that the whole city of Philadelphia was supposed to be reading at the same time. But she couldn’t keep her mind on it. And she couldn’t check the Internet without having to hire a cab, and she’d already done that in the past forty-five minutes.

  So instead Katie stood on a chair and reached for the leather zip pouch she’d stashed up in the room’s curtains, up out of sight, between the folds of the shears and the main curtain, tucked away in a Ziploc freezer bag and secured to the fabric with safety pins. Inside the leather pouch was her gun, a Beretta. She stripped it, cleaned it, reassembled it, re-hid it.

  That didn’t help, either.

  There was a knock at the door. Katie made sure the gun pouch was out of sight and then looked through the keyhole.

  Michael. A day early.

  Jesus, if Patrick had shown up on time …

  She opened the door, and couldn’t help herself.

  “I know, I know, I’m early, but—”

  Katie didn’t let him finish. She slid her hands under his arms and cupped his shoulders, then leaned forward, pressing her lips to his.

  The Bastard

  LISA DIALED ANDREW’S CELL ONE LAST TIME, THEN GAVE up and called his dorm room number. Oh, God help that bastard if he is in his dorm room. She had driven two and a half hours all the way down to Wildwood to see Space Fucking Mafia at the Thunderbird Lounge, and guess what? No Andrew. No Fury, either—his thick-necked Russian partner-in-crime. That was half the band. The good half.

  All that remained was the guitar player and the drummer, and neither of them sang. The pair joked about their bandmates finishing up on the Ozzfest tour, that they should be onstage any second. To fill the time, they played Ventures guitar-rock songs—“Walk, Don’t Run,” “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue”—pretty much the only thing you can do with just a guitar and drums and no vocals. By the end of the set, the lesser half of Space Fucking Mafia was desperate enough to play Christmas songs, Ventures guitar-surf style.

  What the hell was Andrew thinking?

  There she was, down there with her townhouse roommate Karyn—who she really didn’t like all that much, but couldn’t avoid inviting—and her best friend Cynthia, who had never seen the band but heard Lisa’s endless bragging. Which made it all the worse. Lisa looked like a real asshole. Add the fact that Thunderbird Lounge was a bit of a dive, full of cheap white trash who took advantage of the spring rates and took their shore vacations early. Cynthia rolled her eyes every ten minutes; Lisa could time it.

  Karyn, meanwhile, had found some loser with a goatee and a Weezer T-shirt and was huddled in a corner, tongue wrestling. The loser probably didn’t know that just twenty minutes before, Karyn, a world-class bulimic, had power-vaulted her fast food drive-thru dinner into the third stall of the ladies’ room. Karyn was now drinking a vodka and cranberry, but even that didn’t have a prayer of killing the taste of vomit. Maybe the loser was too drunk to notice. Or the film of Coors Light in his own mouth canceled out the taste. Lisa shuddered.

  Lisa gave it another hour, then decided to drive home, speed dialing Andrew’s cell every fifteen minutes the entire ride home. Karyn had begged them to stay longer, but nothing doing. Halfway through the trip, Lisa wished she’d left Karyn behind. She kept dialing. Nothing. Just the voice message. The fucking bastard.

  Dropped Cynthia home with a lame apology, then back to the townhouse with puke breath. Tried the cell one last time, then the land line. Got his answering machine. Nothing.

  This wasn’t the first time with Andrew. Just this summer, Fury had taken Andrew to an all-day drinking party with some Thunderbird waitresses they’d met—boy, don’t even get her started on that one—and they’d somehow driven back to Fury’s dad’s condo up in Egg Harbor Township, a full hour away, to crash for a couple of hours. The problem was, they were due back down in Wildwood to play a Thunderbird gig that night. Oh, Andrew and Fury showed up, but two hours late, sleepy-eyed and still reeking of Jack Daniel’s. That was the night Lisa had brought her mom down to hear the band. She swore then it was the last time.

  So no, she wasn’t thinking about Andrew being in a car accident, or some other tragic situation. Because she knew better. Fury had driven him off on some side adventure, and she was done waiting. Let Andrew fuck the Russian asshole, he prefers his company to mine.

  “Andrew, if you’re there, you’d better pick up the fucking phone, and while you’re doing that, you’d better be thinking up one hell of a fucking excuse.”

  There was a long beep.

  The Clean-Up Crew

  DOWN 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.”

  An Unfinished Boy

  MIKAL’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.

  Above and Below

  LENNON 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.

  Police Positive

  SAUGHERTY 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.

  The Hookup

  THE 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 e
xit. 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.

  Montana Extradition

  UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 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.