Night Sun

by Tom Barber

  (reyes didn’t answer)

  been hard to take. she was only five. I wish she lived to be a million

  The two brothers read the code:

  East Superior and 22nd.

  Take

  Five million.

  ‘Superior and 22nd must be a street corner somewhere,’ Brooks said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Could be Cleveland. I know that’s where Reyes is from.’

  Billy stared at the paper. ‘And there’s five milly on offer?’

  Brooks glanced at him. ‘If I’m right, then yeah.’

  ‘What did Reyes say?’

  ‘He wasn’t happy about it,’ Brook said, taking back the page. ‘That part wasn’t in code. Check him out on the benches. He still isn’t.’

  Billy looked up and casually eyed the man. ‘Can we find out where she lives? If you’re right, we could take it from the bitch after we get out.’

  ‘You think she’s gonna steal five million dollars and just go back home to brew a cup of coffee?’ Brooks replied. He glanced over at Reyes too. ‘This sounds like a robbery. We gotta work out where this Superior place is.’

  ‘And be there?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Cos we’re stuck in here.’

  ‘Not for much longer. Our departure date was arbitrary.’ Billy gave him a blank stare. ‘Means it can be moved.’

  ‘Lupinetti’ll like that. I haven’t told you yet.’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘When you were meeting Cuse, the screws let the cop know he’s getting shipped out tomorrow after getting cut open again last week. Warden thinks if he stays in here, he’s gonna get killed. Frankie-boy was pushing Hoff and Kattar to get us to bring Independence Day forward.’

  ‘How the hell did he find out about it?’

  ‘Kattar told him.’

  The horn went for the end of rec time, and Brooks carefully folded up the paper before pushing it into his sock. ‘If this is right, we don’t need the cop anymore.’

  ‘Lupinetti’s already gotten us wired nearly fifty grand for keeping his ass alive. You confirmed it with Cuse last week. And he told me he’ll pay us another two hundred thousand if we get him outta here. That’s guaranteed. This other thing ain’t.’

  Brooks looked at his brother. ‘He better be for real.’

  ‘He was a pig rolling in all kinds of shit for twenty years. He’d know where to hide it. And we’ll need every cent if this Superior thing is bullshit or you’re seeing something that ain’t there.’

  ‘Grab him at chow then,’ Brooks said. ‘Hoff and Kattar too.’ He caught his sibling. ‘Don’t tell those two clowns about Cleveland.’

  ‘What about baby brother? He still thinks we’re rolling Monday.’

  ‘I’ll get a message to him.’

  Brooks had already decided to fast-track their escape plan with this new information on Reyes and the girl, but then after hearing on their way back to their cells from chow that work rotations were being switched up early next week, much to Lupinetti’s relief, bringing forward the breakout to the following morning had suddenly become a necessity. If Brooks and Billy were no longer working in the laundry, they couldn’t use it to escape, so Independence Day as they’d been calling it was kicked up.

  Unknown to them, that was precisely the result a certain other prisoner in C Block had been hoping for.

  After eating what was euphemistically described as breakfast in the chow hall on that Friday morning, the two Loughlin brothers had headed to the laundry for work detail, some essential items they’d been collecting in preparation for their escape tucked into their socks. Then right on time, the sirens started, just after Hoff and Kattar attacked Lupinetti’s escort as they opened up C Block, using that as their trigger point for a riot and adapting the original plan which had been to lure a couple of COs into the block before jumping them.

  Brooks and Billy knew what time the laundry truck driver arrived, when he left and that he had a routine of a cup of coffee inside the facility with some of the screws while the inmates unloaded and then reloaded the truck; that’s where he was when the trouble started. However, when the COs and driver tried to open their door, they found it was jammed, a door wedge made in the carpentry shop pushed against the door on the other side. Basic, but effective.

  ‘Where’s Frank?’ Brooks asked, as Hoff and Kattar ran into the laundry, the wedge buying them all some valuable time.

  ‘His celly jumped him,’ Hoff said. ‘No way we were goin’ back for his ass.’

  ‘Let’s get on the-’ Kattar said, just before Brooks slashed his throat open to the bone and Billy shanked Hoff in the neck. They’d served their purpose; any chance of getting out with five men in the truck was slim to zero and the pair had been useful idiots. Their part in this was done.

  The brothers pushed them free from the shivs as Hoff and Kattar collapsed and bled out, Brooks and Billy dragging their bodies out of sight of the door before they could start to really leak out all over the floor; if they were discovered before the truck was gone, it’d be stopped before the brothers stood any chance of getting out of the facility. Hoff was still twitching so Billy stabbed him in the eye socket to hurry things along, leaving the shank buried in there as a parting gift.

  Meanwhile, Brooks had clambered over the baskets already loaded in the truck and opened up two at the back, having observed the driver’s inspections in the past and knowing he only gave the baskets back here a cursory glance, same as the CO on duty at the gate. He dragged out the contents and passed them to his brother who dumped them onto a pile already heaped up ready to load. Then both of them climbed into a basket each, covering themselves with a few remaining items of laundry, Brooks making sure neither of them had left bloodstains anywhere that could be seen before the truck departed.

  They’d just got into the baskets when another CO heard the noise being made by his colleagues and driver inside the break room they were trapped in, and removed the door wedge trapping them from the outside.

  ‘What are you still doing here?’ the CO asked the driver.

  ‘Someone blocked us in!’ he said, seeing the wedge in the man’s hand.

  ‘Get your ass gone,’ the CO told the driver, before turning his attention to the guard who’d been trapped inside the break room too. ‘They’re attacking our guys back in the housing! Pena just got killed!’

  As the COs took off to help deal with the riot, the driver ran to the truck, had a quick look in the back before closing the door, then leapt inside the cab and drove away from C Block towards the main gate. Despite checking several baskets, for whatever reason he was going to deeply regret and had a lot of trouble explaining at the investigation that followed, the guard at the gate didn’t go all the way to the back or check under the vehicle, a mistake that ended up costing a lot of lives.

  Once they were a good distance clear, and after a long wait in a queue for a traffic accident, Brooks climbed out of the basket. Then he slid open the window panel, grabbed the driver by the hair and held the shiv he’d killed Kattar with to the terrified man’s neck.

  *

  Now, almost forty eight hours later, Brooks, Billy and Lupinetti walked out of an old, abandoned shack in the Pennsylvania woods where they’d taken shelter during the night, checked the surrounding area, then set out again. The gun backpack was slung over Billy’s shoulder, the holdall from the heist over his older sibling’s, one brother holding a shotgun and the other a rifle, both men still in their stolen Cleveland Heights PD uniforms which were becoming increasingly stained from grime and sweat. As the pair set the pace, the city-bred Lupinetti trudged miserably behind, totally out of his comfort zone in this new and to him, hostile environment.

  As soon as they’d run from the gun store yesterday in Lakewood after realizing that silent alarm had been triggered, the three fugitives had seen a slow-moving freighter passing through the RTA West 117th Station ahead. Brooks and Lupinetti looked at each other, then clambered
over the fence fast before cutting across the tracks, Billy following a few steps behind. Their jogging in the yard at Gatlin paid off; they’d caught up to the train, climbed on board and hidden away in one of the cars just as they watched flashing lights arriving back outside the gun store.

  The freight train rolled into Cleveland’s main station a few minutes later, but wasn’t stopped or searched, and once they were through it picked up speed again, taking them clear of the city limits and heading east. They’d travelled out of Ohio, but then the train had suddenly started to slow when they were somewhere in what Brooks judged to be the northwestern Pennsylvanian woods. The three wanted men hidden on board had panicked and leapt off as the brakes screamed, then half ran and half skidded down a steep bank, Brooks keeping a tight hold of the stolen holdall from the heist as they went.

  Coming to a stop, they stayed low and watched through the grass, but the train had only slowed for a signal ahead, another train passing the other way a couple of minutes later, and then picked up speed again. Its three temporary passengers waited until both trains were out of sight, the area falling quiet, then Billy had gone back up the bank to retrieve the gun bag he’d dropped in the fall.

  Lupinetti stayed where he was, as Brooks scoped out the surrounding area. The night air was warm, the full moon bathing the landscape in a cold white light, the wilderness quiet. The freight had taken them just one State away from home, but Lupinetti had noticed that unlike him, the brothers already appeared far more relaxed out here than they had in the city. The three men had walked for several miles before Brooks said they needed to rest up for a few hours, each of them exhausted. They found an old shack, long abandoned, and after passing round the last of the food stolen from the Virginia fisherman’s kitchen which had been shoved in the gunbag earlier, had taken turns to sleep with one of them staying up to keep watch.

  Now seven hours later and after some rest, Lupinetti followed the two brothers through the woods; he was tired and every bone in his body ached from the unaccustomed exercise, but he was a free man again and would do whatever it took to keep things that way. As they walked, he saw Brooks reach into the heist holdall and take out the titanium deposit box that had been locked inside the larger one he’d opened from Morningstar, taking another look at it. They’d tried blasting the smaller box open with Billy’s shotgun first thing but it had barely made a scratch, the Granit padlock sealing it proving impossible to breach.

  ‘Other bag must’ve held the five million,’ Lupinetti said. ‘That’s way too small.’

  Brooks didn’t bother answer, thinking about the moment he saw Nicky Reyes appearing from nowhere and rescue the girl yesterday during the shootout. He hadn’t wasted any time on the guy, instead focusing on the son of a bitch cop from New York City who’d blasted Craig on that bridge in West Virginia.

  But now, a day later and having had time to reflect, something that had been at the back of his mind from the moment he’d seen Reyes hit him.

  ‘He used us to get out of Gatlin,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Reyes.’

  ‘How? We’d have seen him in the truck.’

  Brooks thought about it. Reyes was nowhere near their size, one eighty at most instead of three hundred pounds. Even so, they’d have known if he’d snuck himself inside the vehicle; he hadn’t been at the back and the front baskets had been searched. Then another possibility dawned. ‘Not if he was under it.’

  ‘Mean, like the beaners do, tryin’ to get over from Mexico?’ Billy asked. Brooks nodded. ‘But how’d he know we were breaking out?’

  ‘Kattar,’ his big brother said after a pause. ‘He worked in the library with Wesley. Must’ve yapped his mouth off again. Reyes and Prez were sitting with the old bastard at chow on Thursday night. Shit.’ He considered the various pieces of the puzzle. ‘He could’ve told him what we were planning. Knew we were getting out from the laundry, so spread a lie about the work schedule to bump us up.’

  Billy was giving him a blank look. ‘Reyes won’t make it out of Cleveland,’ he ended up answering instead. ‘He don’t have your brains, and you shot the bitch in the gunfight. She’ll slow him down good if she ain’t already bled dry.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Brooks said, looking at the deposit box. ‘But now he’s got the bag with the cash instead of this shit, whatever’s inside.’

  ‘Forget Reyes, the hell do we do next?’ Lupinetti asked. ‘Someone’ll start thinking to check that freight train when they can’t find us in Cleveland and put things together. They’ll bring dogs out.’

  ‘We got time,’ Brooks said. ‘Even if they realize we split town, they’ll be expecting us to ride all the way up to Rochester, Syracuse or somethin’. Closer to home.’

  ‘We’ve still gotta get out of PA.’

  ‘So we find ourselves a car.’ They’d almost reached a brook when a gunshot from somewhere suddenly sent all three men to the ground. As it echoed around them, Brooks slowly lifted his head as another shot rang out, further away this time.

  ‘The hell you doing?’ Billy asked, seeing him get back to his feet.

  ‘Hunting season just started,’ Brooks said. ‘They’re not shootin’ at us.’

  The other two realized he was right and got back to their feet too. ‘Makes a change,’ Lupinetti muttered, as he rose and trudged onwards behind the other two.

  Unknown to the brothers, they were only sixty miles or so from the other two fugitives currently on the run from the Superior Avenue intersection robbery. The bell on the door of a diner outside Erie, Pennsylvania dinged as four police deputies walked in, one of them pausing to stretch out his back as the others made their way towards an empty table. The four men slid onto the Formica benches as a waitress came over, cradling some menus.

  ‘You fellas look like you’ve had a morning,’ a man sitting at another table opposite said, a pack of cigarettes and lighter resting beside a half full cup of coffee and an empty plate.

  ‘Long night before it,’ the lead deputy replied before removing his hat. ‘Ohio’s got a group of thieves they think could be heading this way.’

  ‘Same ones who robbed that truck in Cleveland?’ the waitress asked.

  ‘That’s them. Marshals think they’re split into two groups; two shithead brothers with some crooked former cop and a brother-sister team.’

  ‘TV said the woman was shot.’

  ‘She was,’ the deputy said, before ordering his food. The famished cops were too engrossed studying their menus to pay any attention to a man at the counter wearing a black ball cap waiting for a to-go order and moments later, the individual paid for his order and left.

  Nicky had parked the car he’d taken from the bikers’ scrapyard further down the road and out of sight; Kat was still lying across the back seat when he returned, the blanket covering her to the upper chest the way he’d left her, no police cruisers in sight. ‘Where are we, Nick?’ she asked quietly as he got back inside, having dozed off after he’d given her more oxycodone as a pain reliever. He hadn’t slept all night, wanting to keep awake and ready to move if the Mustang drew any attention from police. He placed the bag of food on the front passenger seat while checking to make sure the deputies hadn’t followed him.

  They hadn’t.

  ‘Just outside Erie,’ he told her. ‘How is it?’

  ‘I can’t…breathe…right. It hurts real bad.’

  He’d noticed her breathing had become more labored during the night. ‘We have to get out of this area. They’ll be widening the search net every hour. It’s gonna get as hot here as Ohio soon.’

  ‘Can you try…Rainey…again?’

  ‘Not anymore,’ Nicky said. He hadn’t told her about his fight with the two bikers last night and how he’d left them lashed to the tree in the undergrowth. It was a risk to keep driving this car which was very conspicuous, nice as it was; the Pittsburgh MC would probably be out looking for him already, their deal with Prez off the table now, especially since two o
f their guys had been assaulted and the Mustang stolen. An advantage of driving the vehicle was the bikers were highly unlikely to report it gone but that wouldn’t be much use if the motorcycle club caught up with him. The outcome of that wasn’t something he wanted to think about.

  However, Kat needed urgent medical intervention and all their running would be in vain if he looked back in an hour and she’d died on the back seat.

  ‘We gotta find another car,’ he told her, starting the engine.

  But before that, first thing she needs is a doctor, he thought.

  THIRTY ONE

  ‘Four prison fugitives from Virginia, all showing up here when a robbery’s going down, and you’re adamant they ain’t cooperating with each other?’ Glick queried again, sitting with Archer and Marquez at the Robbery/Homicide’s division headquarters. Word concerning their theory that the Loughlins and Lupinetti had managed to avoid detection and get out of Cleveland on a freight train passing through the West 117th Station in Lakewood had just been passed on to the Marshals, State police and authorities in Pennsylvania, while Richie’s squad now waited for any updates.

  ‘From what we’ve heard, far from it,’ Archer said, as Marquez nodded.

  ‘So how’d they all end up here? Explain the missing link.’

  ‘Reyes was due to be released next Wednesday,’ Marquez said. ‘Gatlin staff said he’s been behaving same as usual, staying out of trouble. Might’ve been edgier than normal but nothing strange about that, being so close to the end of his bid. Then after Kat O’Mara visited him late Thursday afternoon, he suddenly busted free the next morning. Couldn’t wait another six days.’

  ‘He got out the same way as the Loughlins?’ Glick asked.

  ‘Yeah, but the brothers wouldn’t have known. I visited the truck they made it past the gate in and took a closer look underneath along with some State investigators at the police impound in Lee County. We found strands of white fabric in the axle joints. Looks like it could be from a sheet. A spare bedsheet, maybe.’