by Tom Barber
‘What’s…happening?’ Kat asked quietly.
‘We’re leaving,’ he told her, going into the bag and peeling off a couple of hundred dollar bills. He pinned them to the board with a quickly scrawled note, then went back to the couch to ease her up. ‘This is gonna hurt but you need to stay quiet. OK?’
She nodded and gasped in pain as he picked her up, the strap for the bag containing the money over his shoulder and a set of car keys now in his pocket. ‘Where we going?’
‘The hell out of here,’ he said, pulling the ball cap over his head before carrying her to the door. He checked outside briefly, but just as before, the bikers were all too busy having a good time to notice the two fugitives moving in the dark.
Reaching two cars parked side-by-side, Nicky lowered Kat to the ground then tried the key in his hand in an old, restored Mustang. It turned, unlocking the doors. He glanced back at the campfire but no shout went up. Picking Kat up, he opened the rear door and slid her onto the backseat, placing the holdall in the footwell with her, then not taking his eyes off the figures silhouetted against the flames, he moved around and got in behind the wheel.
Holding his breath, he started the engine. If they were going to be noticed, it was going to be now.
But with the noise the bikers were making, the music and several of them revving their own engines, the sound of the Mustang firing went unnoticed. Nicky slid the restored classic car into gear. Leaving the lights off, he drove it very slowly away from the campsite and disappeared into the darkness, far beyond the light of the fire.
The Cleveland MC president had demanded the two fugitives they were harboring be gone by morning.
Nicky had just made sure they were.
TWENTY NINE
‘I’ve been taking a closer look at the two women these missing deposit boxes belong to,’ Glick told Archer eight hours later. The NYPD detective was now standing just beyond the side of the awning outside his downtown Cleveland hotel in the morning sunshine, ready to go again after a full night’s rest. The hearing in his right ear had mostly recovered, all the tiredness from the day before gone. Lockdown in this part of the city had ended and people were walking around again, seeming more relaxed on this Sunday morning. ‘Remember the woman giving the two deputies a hard time? Divorced her hotshot banker husband a couple years ago when he went down for embezzlement. Court awarded her funds as part of the settlement after his estate was investigated and the money he embezzled was returned. No proof it belonged to anyone else, so altogether she’s got around two and a half million dollars’ worth of stuff inside that deposit box. Mixture of cash and jewelry. She’s given us an inventory.’
‘Ouch. How’d our thieves know it was there?’
‘I made a call to the prison over at Elkton. The captain told me one of our dead boys, Vaughn Till, did time in the same cell block as the woman’s ex-husband. The banker told investigators that he remembered bitching in the yard to Till about his wife cashing out on him in their divorce. Guess he told the wrong man.’
‘How’d they know the right bank and box number?’
‘Till got the name of the bank out of the guy and started dating one of the branch’s employees when he got out.’
‘Guess she never did a background check.’
‘Nope. He and his crew took their time. Didn’t rush anything and must’ve found out about the boxes being transferred out a few weeks before. Christmas arrived early, or so they thought.’
‘So this team of thieves hit the truck to only steal a pair of boxes: this banker’s ex-wife’s and the one belonging to Blair O’Mara.’
‘Just those two. The woman told us there used to be another couple million in there, but she spent it purchasing a new home, car, clothes, vacations, stuff like that. All adds up, I guess. The ex-husband didn’t know that so the thieves wouldn’t have either. So an assumed 4.5 million, plus whatever was in the other box? Lot of money for five people to split. The boxes were knocked loose like busted teeth when the wrecking ball hit the truck, so it would take enough time to find the right ones from the heap without just bagging random boxes. I think the thieves would’ve burned up too much of the clock trying to take others, and they could guarantee what was in the two they took. Who knows what crap people keep locked up? One man’s trash is another’s treasure, right?’
‘Anyone know yet how Kat O’Mara got involved with this crew?’
‘The other girl on the heist who got shot dead by your Loughlin brothers was Till’s sister. She was Kat’s celly at ORW when she was in there for eighteen months. Must’ve hit it off because they live together across town. The other girl moved in with Kat last year.’
‘What did Kat do time for? Robbery?’
‘No, doctor shopping. Lied on forms and visited different practices to score prescription drugs. Benzodiazepines. Sedative meds.’
‘Her stepmother was pretty cagey about telling us what was in the deposit box.’
‘Legally she’s not obliged to give us more details, but we ran a background on Blair O’Mara and she’s clean. No record, inherited legitimate wealth from her dead husband. She’s from Indiana. Last job she had before moving to Ohio was working at a casino there.’
‘She might have to tell us at some point what was in that box so you know what the hell you’re looking for.’
‘I got a question for you too, man; how do you think your four Gatlin boys got involved in this? I can’t find any ties between the Loughlins and Lupinetti with the thieves, the ex-wife with her divorce settlement or the O’Mara’s. There’s just one link to any of them: this guy Nick Reyes.’
‘Reyes must’ve found out about the heist through his so-called sister.’
‘But how’d the Loughlins find out about it too? You said those two and Reyes hate each other. Could he have let something slip to Lupinetti like the banker with the thief in the yard at Elkton?’
‘I don’t know, we’ll have to look into that,’ Archer said, raising his hand when he saw a familiar car with New York plates turn onto the street. ‘Where’s Richie?’
‘Oh yeah, almost forgot; young woman called the Department half an hour ago. Says she thinks she might’ve seen Frank Lupinetti and the brothers yesterday afternoon.’
‘It took her this long to call 911?’
‘She just woke up. Passed out when she got home yesterday after drinking too much at a cookout. The lieutenant’s gone to talk to her.’
‘Might not be too reliable if she was that wasted.’
‘I’ll take it if it’s a good lead.’
‘Think Richie would mind if I joined him?’
‘No, he told me to pick up with you again. I’ll message you the address then tell him you’re coming.’
Archer thanked the detective and ended the call just as the NYPD Ford slowed beside him and the passenger’s window slid down, revealing a familiar face behind the wheel wearing sunglasses. ‘Wouldn’t park there, Miss,’ he told her. ‘You might get towed.’
‘Jumped off any more bridges lately?’ Marquez replied, matching his quick smile as she got out of the vehicle. She stretched her arms up and yawned before giving him a hug. ‘Go our separate ways for one day and look what happens. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.’
‘The journey OK?’
She nodded. ‘Been listening to the news updates. Grid-by-grid searches are still happening here apparently. Extended to neighboring villages, towns and counties.’
Archer nodded. ‘I’ve been working with Robbery/Homicide. They’re a good team and willing to include us.’
‘Cool, but first, I gotta take five. I was driving all night.’
‘I rented my room upstairs for another day. Use the shower and get something to eat; I’ll fill you in on what I find when I get back.’
‘Where you going?’
Archer felt his phone buzz and saw the promised text from Glick with the location Richie had gone to. ‘A woman called in thinking she might have seen Frank and the Loughlins on h
er way home from a party yesterday. I want to hear what she’s got to say.’
‘So let’s go.’
He smiled. ‘You just said you wanted a timeout?’
‘It can wait.’ She tossed him the keys to let him take the wheel. ‘But my stomach can’t. We’re stopping to pick up breakfast on the way.’
At the scrapyard in Pennsylvania, one of the bikers from the Pittsburgh chapter woke up, having passed out beside the fire at around 4am. He opened his eyes, blinking blearily a few times, before reaching for his boots. He pulled them on and pushed himself back to his feet, scratching his beard then rubbing his eyes as he yawned.
The air was warm, even with the fire now only a mass of charred cinders; he saw he was one of the first to wake as he wandered over to a cooler. Inside, the ice had melted but there were a couple of beers floating in the cold water and he took out a can of Iron City, opening it and taking a long pull as he walked off to take a leak. He trudged into the undergrowth before pausing to open his fly and then emptied his bladder while drinking the beer with his free hand.
For a moment he thought he heard something, but deciding he’d imagined it, zipped up then walked back up towards the camp.
He stopped on the way, looking at the office where the wanted chick and her brother had been holed up last night. He’d seen the Cleveland president and his woman taking the girl into his office to try and fix her up; the president had told his boys why they were doing this, that Kev Rainey from the Atlanta chapter had asked for help, and word had spread. They all knew Rainey had taken a fifteen year federal gun trafficking charge driven by the ATF to save any guys from three separate chapters involved in the case take the heat for it. That meant the club would always help the guy out if and when he needed it.
But their president had also said that once morning came, the deal ended and that particular debt was paid. Most of them had heard about the bounty on Bonnie and Clyde last night, sixty g’s a piece. He decided to check they were still there, so tossed the beer can aside and walked towards the office, but as soon as he entered, saw they weren’t going to be collecting anything. The only thing on the couch was a blanket. He checked the toilet to make sure, but the wanted pair were gone.
‘YO, WHERE THE HELL IS MY CAR?’ he suddenly heard a voice bellow from outside, cutting through the morning quiet. The biker stopped and looked at the corkboard, where he knew the keys for the two cars being restored outside were normally kept.
One set was missing, some money pinned there instead, Sorry written on one of the bills in pen.
He moved forward, removed the pin and pocketed the money, before going back outside.
‘How sure are you these were the men you saw?’ Richie asked the eyewitness from the day before, passing her a printout with Lupinetti’s and the Loughlins’ mugshots on them. She lived in an apartment building not far from the gun store in Lakewood; Richie, Archer and Marquez were standing with her on the front stoop, the young woman wearing sunglasses and clearly very hungover. Archer had just introduced Marquez to the Cleveland PD lieutenant, the NYPD detective now munching on a danish and drinking coffee as she listened to the exchange.
‘Pretty sure it was them.’ The woman pointed at Lupinetti. ‘Saw some tattoos on his arms. The news said they were something to look out for, right?’
‘Why didn’t you call 911 last night?’ Marquez asked, not yet knowing why unlike Archer and Richie.
‘Went too hard on the sangria at my friend’s place,’ she admitted. ‘Left early, walked home, barfed and passed out when I got in.’
‘Plenty of big guys with sleeve ink around,’ Richie said. ‘Pretty sure I could start mistaking their faces for someone else too after drinking too much.’
‘He had some bandaging on both his arms too,’ she said, tapping Lupinetti’s photo again. That information wasn’t something that had been released to the public, which Archer and Marquez both immediately latched onto. They glanced at each other, as Archer remembered seeing Frank getting his arm wrapped at the hospital in Jonesville just before his attempted escape.
He was about to tell Richie that but a train’s horn sounded nearby. As the hungover girl groaned quietly and leaned against the door jamb, the three cops with her all looked left and saw a slow-moving freight train approaching a station fifty yards away across the street, beyond some fencing and empty tracks. A sign told Archer it was RTA West 117th Station.
‘How often do the trains come through here?’ Archer asked.
‘All the time,’ the woman said. ‘Hear them stop and go all night. You get used to it.’ The horn went again and she groaned. ‘Kinda.’
‘Where were our guys when you saw them?’
‘Crossing the street.’
‘Heading that way?’ Archer replied quickly, nodding at the station.
‘Sure.’
‘Were passenger trains checked yesterday?’ Marquez asked Richie. ‘Passing through or leaving the city?’
‘Yeah, carriage by carriage.’
‘But not freights?’ Archer said.
He paused and looked at him. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
Archer thought about the events of the night, police units with dogs and helicopters, intensive searches being conducted all over the city and outer suburbs with no trace of the fugitives. Men who were in a strange locality but who’d still managed to escape detection, despite two of them being easily identifiable from their sheer size.
Archer, Marquez and Richie all watched the train as it pulled into West 117th.
‘They got out, didn’t they,’ Richie said, a statement rather than a question.
The search net had just been widened by hundreds of miles.
THIRTY
‘What did Cuse say?’ Billy asked, as his brother walked back into their cell after meeting with his visitor, a cousin of theirs, the day before the riot at Gatlin. ‘We all set for Monday?’
‘Shut up for a second,’ Brooks told him, going to the corner of their cell. He looked around for paper, couldn’t find any, so opened a book instead and ripped out one of the first pages before reversing it to use the blank side. Billy sat on his bunk and watched as his brother started writing with the stub of an old pencil. He was curious but managed to do as Brooks said and kept quiet.
‘What you doing?’ he asked eventually, curiosity finally winning out.
‘Reyes and his visitor were talking at the table next to me and Cuse. I think they were using some sort of code.’
Billy turned and looked up at the higher tier, seeing Reyes in the cell he shared with Prez Rainey. ‘Why do you care?’
Five to five, Brooks transcribed, ignoring his brother, remembering what he’d overheard of the pair’s strange conversation. Right now- no, he crossed out the w. She’d said right, no. Their strained body language and unusual, abrupt exchanges had caught his attention, and he’d ended up tuning out Cusick while focusing on Reyes and his female visitor, concentrating hard on what they were saying.
USP Gatlin was a high-security federal facility, housing many inmates who were still involved in criminal enterprises on the outside, so the guards were alert to any hint of unusual conversations or behaviors, particularly during visits. As a result, some of the men in these penitentiaries had to find inventive and novel ways to get messages in and out. Brooks was one of them, which was why Reyes’ conversation and his reaction to what the woman was saying had caught his interest.
He quickly wrote down the rest of what he’d heard before he forgot it then stared at the page, trying to make sense of the words. He took the paper out to the yard with them for rec time, and as he and his brother started to jog a couple of laps, something they’d been doing lately to slowly build up their cardio for once they were outside the fence, he mulled over the various possibilities.
The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced what he’d heard had been significant and not just an odd, random conversation. He disliked the guy but had to admit Reyes normally kept his cool
no matter what, and was always hard to read.
Why then had he suddenly looked so wound up?
Midway through the third lap, he slowed and looked over at Reyes sitting on the bleachers beside the biker Rainey, the pair having just taken a quick trip over to the payphones to make a call. He still didn’t look right. Billy stopped running too and caught his breath, as Brooks pulled out the paper and pencil stub from his pocket then started writing down a new series of words. Billy waited, knowing better than to interrupt again or maybe draw attention to what his brother was doing, then saw Brooks rise back up, looking at the sheet with a grin of quiet triumph on his face.
‘I got it,’ he said.
‘Already?’
‘Wasn’t hard. Look.’
Billy leaned in, checking the paper:
five to five. that’s right, no; or six to one. i will if y’all will. i gotta change hair dye.
or not. guaranteed.
yes it is.
the time?
wanted to since I was eleven. Sharp.
day?
This saturday.
‘Looks like a bunch of bullshit to me,’ Billy said.
‘Take the last word of four of the sentences. Put them together. Read it again.’
Billy took the paper and eventually was able to see what Brooks meant.
Five. No one will die
Not guaranteed.
Yes it is.
Time?
Eleven sharp.
Day?
Saturday.
‘I got more,’ Brooks said, reversing the page, having written down what Kat said to Nicky just before.
They headed out east. Her name was Superior. and. (she paused here, i think) she died on the 22nd.