Enough was enough. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since the Wachovia heist. Now it was time to bring the getaway to a close.
The warm air sharpened his senses, or at least gave that illusion.
Orders of business:
Find a car.
Find a convenience store. Snag a long-distance calling card and a map of Philadelphia.
Dump some rubbing alcohol over his shoulder wound.
Wrap a tourniquet around it.
Pray to Christ nothing got infected.
Figure out where the fuck he was.
Call Katie’s cell. Enough dancing around it. Thirty seconds on the phone would tell him what he needed to know.
Meet up with her. Or cut free, and worry about her later.
Arrange a way out of town, with the cash.
Never, ever visit Philadelphia again.
A Fond Memory of Hardship
SAUGHERTY PURCHASED HIS TWIN ON COLONY DRIVE IN 1988, with his then-wife Clarissa and five-year-old boy. The price then was $65,000, which made for slightly uncomfortable mortgage payments on a cop’s salary. In the fifteen years since, the value of the house had doubled as the real estate market boomed. In the fifteen years since, Clarissa had gone, his five-year-old boy was now a twenty-year-old Ecstasy-popper on seizure medication, and the cop’s salary had given way to other forms of support. Clarissa and the kid had picked up and moved to Warminster; Saugherty kept the house out of sheer inertia. He kept meaning to rent a place closer to the city where he did most of his work, but never got around to it.
But as he sat on his back lawn in the spring air and watched his $135,000 (current market value) twin burn, Saugherty thought about none of this. Instead, his mind was still trying to wrap around something else.
No, not the fact that his former confidant and best friend, Earl Mothers, was a burnt piece of North Philly brisket inside his smoldering garage.
No, not the fact that three other heavily armed guys—sounded like Junior Black Mafia—were also in the Colony Drive BBQ pit.
Nor the fact that Saugherty, sooner or later, was going to have to come up with a story to explain his dead friend and dead niggers inside his burning home.
It was the mute.
He spoke.
All this time, the guy could talk. He’d been fooling people for months, maybe years. Saugherty didn’t know how old the info on the I.O. was, but it wasn’t as if the mute detail cropped up yesterday. Patrick Selway Lennon had been fooling people for a long time. It probably made him attractive as a getaway driver—what better accomplice than one who can’t sing to the cops?
Even when it came down to it, when his life was on the line and any other person would have been pleading for it, the guy kept quiet.
Then why did he bother with that final spoken jab? Irish brogue and everything?
Remove this, ya fuckin’ arseholes.
An anger limit. The guy had a boiling point, and the lid had blown off the pot just then. This would be useful.
Now Saugherty had to find the guy. He assumed he’d survived the blast, just as Saugherty had. That door had probably shielded him. Saugherty had barely cleared the garage door leading into the basement when the tank went up. When he saw the aim line, from gun to tank, Saugherty decided to screw the charade. He jumped up and ran for it. Two of the four guys—including Mothers—spun their heads around to watch Saugherty run. The others were focused on Lennon, and that gun poking out from beneath the door. Within seconds, the room was full of fire, and Saugherty was diving behind a love seat. A fireball whipped through the air above him, and everything in his basement went up. He had to hurl a chair through the basement bay window to make it out to the lawn.
Lennon hadn’t come out that way. Saugherty had sat there on his lawn, holding his pistol, waiting for him.
He must have gone out the front.
Saugherty walked around the side of the house toward the street. His next-door neighbor, a Home Depot manager named Jimmy Hadder, grabbed him by the arm. “Jesus, are you okay?”
“Home invasion,” muttered Saugherty. “Bunch of black guys knocked me out, robbed me, set the place on fire.” He was spinning off the top of his head. He realized he should stop before he talked himself into a corner he couldn’t explain later. “One guy got out—you see him, Jim?”
“Yeah—he went up toward Axe Factory. But he looked white.”
“You never can tell these days. Thanks, Jimbo.”
Axe Factory Road, which Colony Drive spilled into. From there, it was two choices: east or west. Saugherty thanked him and started jogging toward the end of the cul-de-sac.
Down toward the park: nada. Up toward Welsh Road: a glimpse of his guy, turning a corner.
Got you.
Saugherty ran back for the car he’d taken from Lennon, then realized it had been parked in the garage.
Convenience
LENNON STOLE A HUNTER GREEN 1997 CHEVY CAVALIER parked on the side of a street named Tolbut. Now a Chevy: that was easy pickings. He’d learned how to hot-wire a car on a Chevy. Plus, no alarm, and the Club attached to the steering wheel wasn’t locked. People never locked them. But what made the car even more attractive was the sweatshirt rolled up in a ball in the backseat. Lennon drove two blocks, pulled over, removed his bloodied, ripped sweatshirt, and put on the new one. It was emblazoned with the words Father Judge High School. He’d regressed from college to high school overnight.
A few turns, and he found himself on what looked like a main drag—Welsh Road. Ten minutes up the road, across from a main artery road, Roosevelt Boulevard, was a 7-Eleven. Lennon pulled in and entered the store. His shoulder ached; his skin burned. And Saugherty was right. He was beginning to smell a little ripe. When he put some miles between himself and that burning house, he’d have to do a little rudimentary first aid. Even if that just meant dumping some vodka over it, slapping a bandage on it.
The occupant of room 219 hadn’t kept any money lying around; college kids never did. So Lennon had to pull a little stickup. He was loathe to do it, since it was just the kind of thing to attract attention to himself. But the prepaid calling cards were behind the counter, and there was no easy way to do the five-finger discount.
Besides, he could use a little dough to hold him over until he reached the money in the car. And compared to the murders he’d just racked up, a 7-Eleven heist wasn’t shit.
Lennon selected a detailed map of Philadelphia streets from a spinner rack. He had a better fix on where he was when he crossed Roosevelt Boulevard, but a quick glance at the map confirmed it. He was up in Northeast Philadelphia, about twenty-five minutes away from downtown. Saugherty had taken him home. From the looks of the map, the quickest way back down was to take the boulevard, also known as Route 1, down to where it merged with I-76 headed into downtown. He replaced the map on the spinner rack.
He picked up a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News, a packet of precooked chicken strips—easy protein—and a bottle of water. As an afterthought, he grabbed a chunky white stick of Old Spice deodorant. He placed them on the counter.
The counter kid looked at him funny as he bagged the stuff. Chances were, he attended Father Judge High School. Lennon picked up the bottom of the sweatshirt and showed him the Glock tucked into the waist of his jeans. He pointed to the cash register, and then to the bag. The kid understood. He opened the register, scooped out bills, and shoved them in the bag. Next, Lennon pointed to the prepaid calling cards.