“How many?” the kid asked.
Lennon just curled his fingers into his hand. Give them to me.
“Okay.” The kid grabbed a stack and slid them into the bag.
Lennon took the bag.
“See you in class,” he said, smirking. From the looks of it, the kid looked completely thrilled. Lennon had probably just fulfilled a long-term work fantasy/running gag. Dude, I was totally robbed!
There was a security camera in the place, but at this point, Lennon reasoned, it was beside the point.
After fifteen minutes on Roosevelt Boulevard, Lennon fought his way to the outer lanes and turned into a large mall parking lot. He found a pay phone bank inside a Strawbridge’s department store and used one of the prepaid calling cards to dial Katie’s disposable cell phone. The emergency one.
Prepaid calling cards were the best thing to happen to planning heists since the invention of the road map. Absolutely untraceable—these rip-off companies bought long-distance minutes in bulk and sold them to people too poor to have home phones or with shitty enough credit to be turned down by long-distance phone companies or criminals who didn’t want their calls traced. There were no bargains to be had, even though the cards claimed significant savings per minute. But when you used a prepaid card to call a cell phone that would only be used once, then tossed away, you had a next-to-perfectly secure means of communication.
Katie’s disposable rang five times, and then an automated voice-mail message picked up.
Incoming
KATIE’S CELL PHONE CHIRPED. SHIT. SHE COULDN’T stop to pick it up now. Not with the business end of a Beretta in this Russian gangster’s mouth.
Wait.
Only two people had this disposable number. One of them was Patrick. Which would make it pointless to continue negotiations with this tight-lipped Russian prick.
“Hold on a second, okay? Of course you will.” Katie fumbled in her bag, found the phone, and flicked it open one-handed, but it was too late. The call was gone. Fuck.
She removed the gun from the guy’s mouth and then proceeded to pistol-whip him into unconsciousness. He wasn’t going to help, anyway. Claimed he knew nothing. Katie dialed in to check her messages, wiping the pistol clean on the guy’s sofa.
The Russian hadn’t been difficult to find. Henry refused to name names, and begged her to come over to his apartment to think things through. But eventually, he relented, and gave her one: Evsei Fieuchevsky. “I don’t know that he’s involved, but he might know some people who might know.”
Fieuchevsky had claimed to know nothing, and it didn’t matter. A search of his desk drawer revealed an old-fashioned address book. Somebody down the line would know what had happened to Patrick.
Outgoing
LENNON DIDN ’T LEAVE A MESSAGE. HE NEVER DID—IT wasn’t worth it. He’d just try later. He tried not to read too much into the fact that Katie didn’t pick up their emergency line. He was the only one who had the number. Either she was showering, or temporarily away from her phone. Or she expected him to be dead. And now she knew he was alive.
No time to think about it now.
On to the next item on the agenda.
He was very anxious to leave Philadelphia.
Manhunt
SAUGHERTY WATCHED LENNON USE THE PHONES. THE guy didn’t move his mouth at all. Was he retrieving a message, or listening to instructions? Saugherty almost wished he were a cop again. He could put someone on the Strawbridge’s phones, try to get a fix on the call. But he was a loner. Working this solo. In a car—a royal blue Kia—borrowed from his neighbor Jimmy.
Calling Mothers had been the mistake of the year. He wasn’t going to repeat that mistake.
He was going to follow Lennon to the money, then pop Lennon and take the money. Call a tip in to the FBI. Let them pick up their man, deal with the mess. Saugherty would still need a story, but that could come later.
Lennon left Strawbridge’s, but didn’t return to his stolen car. He simply strolled the length of the store, on the side away from the main bustle of the mall, and selected another vehicle—some early model Chevy. He was inside within seconds. Saugherty couldn’t even see how he did it. Amazing. It reminded him of a video game his son loved called Grand Theft Auto III. “You’ll dig this, Dad,” his kid had said, but the game appalled Saugherty. It was all about a guy who went around carjacking and heisting and killing; your score was measured in dollars you either stole or earned via underworld activity. According to his son, it was also a badge of honor to rack up as many “wanted” stars as you could—the maximum was six—and the easiest way to do that was kill cops. His son loved this game. It apparently didn’t dawn on him that his father used to earn their daily bread putting his life on the line as a cop, facing off against real-life scumbags who also considered it a badge of honor to snuff a pig.
Anyway, the protagonist of the game had no trouble at all stealing cars, parked or otherwise occupied. You simply moved your man close to the car, then pressed the button. This guy, it was like he was pressing that button. Boom. He was in the car.
Saugherty followed him out of the parking lot and back onto Roosevelt Boulevard.
He wished he’d had more time to read up on this guy. Everyone underestimated Saugherty, and Saugherty kept underestimating the fake mute.
What was his story? Where were his two partners, and why weren’t they sitting on the money? Or were they? And Lennon was fighting to collect his third?
No. Something had gone wrong. Pro heisters never hung around the target city. They struck hard, struck fast, and got the hell out. There was a wrinkle somewhere, which kept Lennon here.
But what was the wrinkle?
Damn it, Saugherty. Before you started pickling your brains on a daily basis, you were a pretty good investigator. Figure it out. Keep thinking ahead. This could be the difference between the life you’ve always wanted to lead and life in a (now) burned-up twin over in Pennypack Park.
The dash clock in his neighbor’s car read 9:34 A.M. He hadn’t been up this early in years.
Had he been up all night? He had.
Lennon followed Roosevelt Boulevard all the way down, through lower Northeast Philly and past crappy areas like Logan and Hunting Park and Feltonville and other neighborhoods that had been vibrant at some distant point in the past—full of factories and jobs and neighborhood delicatessens and candy shops and people who swept their front stoops every day. Now they rotted. Some people still tried to believe the neighborhoods were worth saving. You could see them every now and again, along the boulevard. A house with a new paint job and crisp awning. But the problem was, it was usually right next to a gaping hole in the row where Licenses & Inspections had finally ordered a home’s destruction. Nobody wanted to move into places like these anymore—certainly not anybody who could potentially save a neighborhood.
Saugherty wondered what Lennon thought of the view—if he noticed it at all. According to the guy’s I.O., he had been born in Listowel, Ireland, but who knows where he had spent his formative years. Maybe it was here. Maybe he grew up in a shithole like Feltonville, and pulled jobs to ensure that he’d never have to live in a shithole ever again.
If so, it was a reason Saugherty could understand. He’d done the same thing. Hell, it was why he was doing this now.
The boulevard trimmed itself down from twelve lanes to four—two in each direction. Lennon kept driving. He passed the sign marked KELLY DRIVE. Up ahead, the boulevard ended and offered two choices: I-76 West, into the suburbs, and I-76 East, which swung past downtown Philly, then South Philly, then finally the Philly International Airport. There was nothing for Lennon out west—unless he had a hankering to see Valley Forge, where George Washington and his posse wrapped their bleeding feet in rags and prepared to duke it out with the British.