“Fuck you,” Katie said.
The line was silent.
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” she added.
The Outsider Pays Off
HENRY WILCOXSON CLICKED BACK TO THE OTHER line. “Evsei? Thanks for waiting. I think I can help you after all.”
Void
LENNON FELT A TAP ON HIS SHOULDER. IT WAS THE parking attendant.
“Can I help you?” he said, but his tone was just the opposite. Can I get rid of you quick, so I can go back to my booth?
Lennon shook his head. But the attendant persisted.
“What kind of car you looking for?”
Lennon ignored him and scanned the last row of cars, near the edge of the lot. He knew they hadn’t parked the Prelude here, but maybe some parking attendant moved the cars around somehow. They did that sometimes, especially to clear a street for a work crew; they just loaded the cars on flatbeds and moved them where they wanted. Although that seemed highly unlikely, Lennon searched anyway.
The attendant seemed to give up, and walked back to his booth. He kept giving Lennon strange looks.
Fuck him. Where the hell was the car?
Only two possibilities.
One—and this was another highly unlikely event—somebody decided to boost the Honda Prelude, and got a nice surprise when they looked in the trunk. In this case, Holden would have been correct to be nervous, and the fates were working against them all.
That was bullshit.
The more likely possibility was that one of his partners, Bling or Holden, had double-crossed him. Of course, that brought up two additional possibilities: one, the betrayer was either working with the Russians, in which case he knew the battering van was coming, and braced himself for impact, then led them to the Prelude. Two, the betrayer survived the Russian ambush just as Lennon had, but beat him to the Prelude and sped away, assuming the others were dead. Lennon hadn’t rushed back to the Prelude, thinking it was better to heal first and let the heat die down.
But now he saw that hesitation was just one of a long series of mistakes he’d made in the past twenty-four hours. If Lennon had gone right for the Prelude, that Saugherty prick wouldn’t have caught him napping on Kelly Drive, and he would have only two deaths on his tab, instead of at least … how many was it? Two, three (Saugherty), four (his big friend), five, six, seven strangers with guns? For a decidedly nonviolent heister, Lennon had racked up an uncomfortably large body count.
Sort it out later. Solve the problem now.
“Dude.”
It was the parking attendant again.
“Phone. It’s for you.”
He held out a cell phone.
I.P.B.
THE MOMENT RAY “CHARDONNAY” PERELLI LEFT THE Dining Car, he called his lawyer, Donovan Platt.
“How do I find somebody?”
“It would help if you could be a little more specific, Ray.”
“I need to find a bank robber.”
“A specific one, or any old bank robber?”
“Specific one.”
Pause. “This guy do the Wachovia job yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
Platt whistled. “What, are you trying to earn your Boy Scout merit badge thirty years too late?”
“Fuck you, you bagadonuts.”
“Hey, calm down. You know what—don’t tell me why. Who am I to ask why, right? You want to find this guy, try the usual places.”
“Like where?”
“These pro heist guys are predictable. If he’s still in the city, it’s because the money is still in the city. Try long-term parking lots, bus station lockers, storage joints. If he’s trying to get out of the city, he’ll be at the airport—which makes him a bit easier to track—or driving, which makes it impossible. While these guys are predictable, they’re not easy to track down. The whole point is to blend into the background and slip out as quickly as possible.”
“Wait, wait. Parking lots, bus stations, you said?”
“Yeah, Ray. Anyplace where you can hide stuff without raising eyebrows.”
“Okay. Thanks, Don.”
“Can I ask … geez, should I even ask?”
“Ask what?”
“Ask what you need a bank robber for.”
“Don’t ask, Don. Catch ya later.”
The Italian mob in Philadelphia was dealt a series of death blows in the early 1980s, but hung on through that decade and most of the decade after. Then right before 9/11, a blistering series of federal indictments destroyed the remaining leadership.
Within months, nine players and associates were shipped off to various federal lockups across the country to eat shitty food and work menial jobs that paid thirty-five cents an hour.
Within a few years, all that remained of the Philly mob was a motley collection of mid-level capos who wanted to rule what remained and small-time hoods who fancied themselves gangsters. They had the suits, but none of the muscle to fill them out. They had the small-time scams, but none of the brains to make them mean anything.
All that remained of the Philadelphia mob, actually, was a fairly efficient communication system, older and more secure than Ma Bell. The old guys, the new guys, the mid-level guys, they all talked. That’s all there was to do. Talk.
So when Ray Perelli decided to put out an APB on the bank robber the Russians wanted so badly, it didn’t take long for the word to get out. Especially because it involved the Russians. And shoving it up their vodka-drinking asses.
Within fifty minutes, Perelli received word that a strange guy was poking around a long-term parking lot down beneath the JFK overpass near Twenty-second Street. Perelli called the attendant, who was a cousin of a friend of his next-door neighbor, working his way through his sophomore year at Tyler Art School. What tipped the attendant off was the fact that the guy didn’t talk—didn’t the heister lose his voice? Perelli promised the guy next semester’s art books if he could keep the guy there in the lot. “How am I supposed to do that?” the attendant asked.
Jesus, Perelli thought. Kids don’t want to work for shit these days. “Put him on the phone,” he said.
Which is how Perelli found the bank robber that the Russians couldn’t. The Russians didn’t know the city. They hadn’t been here long enough.
Fuck those Russians, Perelli thought. Fuck them up their stupid asses.
Let’s Have a Drink
“HEY THERE.”
Lennon listened. “You’re the guy I’m looking for, aren’t you? The bank heister?”
Lennon listened.
“Now I know you can’t answer. Poster says you’re a mute. So what we’re going to do is this. You listen up, and then hand the phone back to my guy there. If you agree, nod your head and he’ll tell me. Okay? If not, just don’t do anything, and he’ll tell me that.”
The attendant looked bored.
Lennon listened. What the hell was this about, anyway? This wasn’t the Russian mob. At least he didn’t think it was the Russian mob. The Russians would be more pissed. The guy sounded too casual. Too relaxed. Was this an associate of the big cop?
“Okay. Here’s what I’m offering. I’ve got what you’re looking for. You let my guy there drive you out to see me, we’ll talk, and see what we can work out.”
Lennon thought about this and quickly decided that it didn’t make sense. He was looking for a Honda Prelude with $650,000 in the trunk. If the guy on the line had the car and the money, why would he be trying to work out a deal? No, he was offering something else.