The Interloper

by Dave Zeltserman

  “Is it smart turning on those lights?” Landistone asked. “You could be drawing attention here.”

  “Keep your voice low,” Willis said softly. “There are some people back there. You don’t want them recognizing your voice. And we won’t be here long enough for it to matter if anyone sees those lights. Where’s my money?”

  “How am I supposed to raise that kind of money tonight?”

  “That’s the thing,” Willis said. “You have us do a job, but you’re not prepared to pay for it. Not very smart, if you ask me. What can you get me tonight?”

  Landistone was beginning to recover some of his bluster. “Possibly a few thousand. No more than that. It would take me a week to raise the money you’re asking for.”

  “So I keep you on ice for a week. If your associates don’t send me the money you owe me, then I leave you dead, and take the loss as a busted deal. We can play it that way.”

  Landistone flinched at that. He opened his mouth to feed Willis another lie, but Willis shook his head to stop him.

  “You’re broke,” Willis said.

  “Mostly,” Landistone admitted with a slight, sheepish smile. “The damn economy and this damn stock market have nearly wiped me out. As it is, I’m heavily margined and my real estate holdings are all underwater with second and third mortgages. That’s why I’m resorting to this.” He rubbed a hand through his thick hair and managed a weak smile. “Look, if you give me a week, I might be able to raise twenty-five thousand for you, but that’s about it. The rest of it will be paid after the insurance money comes in.”

  “Sure it will. You have such a great track record of being trustworthy. First you arrange for all of us who did the heavy lifting to end up dead, then you lie to me just two minutes ago. But it’s all been pretty much what I’ve expected.”

  “Don’t worry, I know when I’m beat,” Landistone said graciously while flashing Willis a smile that was every bit as false as it was toothy. He held out his hand to Willis, as if they were going to shake and seal the deal. In response, Willis, in a quick and fluid motion, took out the 9mm Glock that he had tucked in his waistband and had been hidden by his jacket, and without hesitation shot Landistone in his right knee. Landistone hit the floor like a sack of bricks and grasped his injured leg. At first he was in too much shock and pain to speak, or even scream, his mouth twisting into a rigid circle. Willis lowered himself so he sat on his heels and could look more directly into Landistone’s face.

  “The plan was always to disappear once you got the money,” Willis said. “You and Tania both.”

  Landistone’s eyes widened as he stared at Willis. Through sobs, he asked Willis how he was going to be able to explain the bullet wound to the police.

  “You’ll figure out a way,” Willis said. “Just like you’ll find a way to explain this.” He then shot Landistone in the other knee. Landistone’s face contorted in agony as if he wanted to howl in pain. No sound escaped from him, though. Willis dug Landistone’s wallet out of a back pocket and slipped a piece of paper into it before returning the wallet.

  “You also better figure out a way to get back to your car and drive away from here,” Willis said. “Those shots are going to be bringing the police here, and I don’t think you want to be explaining to them why there are four men tied up in that back room who were supposed to be working for you earlier today. There’s a slip of paper in your wallet that has information for an offshore bank account. When your insurance pays up, I expect my money wired to that account right afterwards. If that doesn’t happen I’ll track you down wherever you’re hiding. I won’t kill you, but I will shoot out both your knees again. And as painful as it is now, it will be a lot worse the second time around.”

  Willis turned to leave. He left the overhead lights on and stopped at the door to listen to a scraping noise that Landistone made as he dragged himself along the floor. He left the door open so that Landistone would have a chance of getting out of the building before the police arrived. It would be to his advantage for Landistone to do that, although he had no doubt that Landistone would be able to sell the police a convincing story about why he was there with both knees shot out if they ended up finding him there.

  Willis had little doubt that if he hadn’t shot Landistone in the knees he would’ve had no chance of collecting any of the insurance money. Landistone and Tania would’ve been disappearing to parts unknown once the money was paid. It could still happen, but there was a better chance that Willis would get his money now—maybe as high as fifty percent. Landistone wouldn’t be running anywhere anytime soon, not with all the surgeries he was going to require, and if complications set in he’d be hospital-bound for well after the insurance money came in. And there would also be real fear now. No one would want to risk being shot in the knee after already living through it once. And if Landistone did disappear with the money and Willis wasn’t able to track him down, at least now Landistone would have to pay a dear price by living the rest of his life with ruined knees and having to always look over his shoulder.

  The pain medication was wearing off. Once again, Willis’s cracked ribs were making it feel as if a knife were ripping into his chest every time he breathed. He swallowed down some more pills and then headed back to the deserted elementary school in Queens where he had left Tania. He had nothing to gain by keeping her any longer, and since she could be connected to Landistone it wouldn’t be any good if she were discovered weeks later tied up and dead in that school. Something like that would ruin their insurance scam.

  As Willis drove, he heard news reports about the brazen robbery of The Dame. The reports had the yoga instructor alive but with a fractured skull, and greatly exaggerated what was done to Landistone’s wife. They mentioned the two members of the robbery who were found dead on the property, but so far the authorities hadn’t been able to identify them, which was partly because Willis took their wallets off them before going after Lowenstein.

  When Willis got back to the abandoned elementary school building, he found that Tania was gone. He had tied her up pretty good, and had no idea how she escaped, but somehow it didn’t surprise him.

  He dumped the stolen Buick and switched back to his own car. He had already checked out of his hotel. Days earlier he had wired Big Ed Hanley his cut, and after keeping fifteen hundred in cash, he distributed the rest of his share of the poker game heist into three different bank accounts. He also had an additional forty-two hundred that he had taken off the three dead members of the crew, the thousand dollars he took from Tania, and four guns that he needed to dispose of—the Glock he used in shooting Landistone, and the guns he took off Lowenstein, Tania, and Landistone. He also had their cell phones, and needed to dump those as well. First, he had to pick up Bowser from an eighteen-year-old girl who was holding him for the day. He had met her in a coffee shop and she had taken an immediate shine to Bowser, and Bowser to her. When he arrived at her apartment, she answered the door with Bowser leaning heavily against her leg, wanting all the physical contact with her that he could get, while barely even giving Willis the time of day.

  “I loved taking care of this little guy,” she said, and she kneeled down so she could hug Bowser and kiss him on top of his head. The dog’s tail started beating the door when she did that. She gave Willis a hopeful look. “If you’d like to leave him with me longer, that would be okay.”

  It struck Willis how much better off Bowser would be with her than with him, and he knew if he made the suggestion the girl would’ve taken the dog gladly. He almost did. He started to make the offer, but a certain weakness inside made him back down. Instead, he paid the girl the hundred dollars that he had promised her, which she took reluctantly, and he led Bowser away.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being mad at me. She was a real sweetheart, huh? Nice looking, too.”

  Bowser let out an angry pig-like grunt to let Willis know he wasn’t happy about the matter, but once they were inside of Willis’s car, Bowse
r settled down and was pretty much back to normal.

  Willis wasn’t sure where he was going next. He needed more money before he could go after The Factory, which meant more heists, but the next ones would have to be with a crew he could trust or he’d do them alone. The trip wasn’t a total bust. He did get a nice cut from the poker game heist and he learned a valuable lesson about honor among thieves—that there was none. And he still had a shot of getting a multimillion dollar payday out of the painting deal, but that was going to be months away and wasn’t anything he could count on. On the other hand, he was played for a fool, almost got killed, and was left with three cracked ribs that hurt like hell. All in all, a mixed bag. All he knew for sure was he wanted to get as far away from New York as he could.

  Part Three

  The Interloper

  Chapter 1

  At one fifty-four in the morning, Dan Willis had a ski mask pulled over his face as he sat patiently in a stolen pickup truck, the engine idling softly in the darkness, the lights off. The pickup truck had been backed into an alley off of a desolate city block in East Boston made up almost entirely of abandoned factories and burnt out warehouses. There was still one operational warehouse on the block, and if things went right, the crew Willis was working with would be stealing one point five million dollars worth of pharmaceutical drugs within the hour.

  Four minutes later, the car Willis expected drove past him. While he didn’t know what car it would be or who would be driving it, he and the rest of the crew were still expecting someone to be driving toward the warehouse at that time. It turned out to be a badly dented older model Ford Escort. Willis waited where he was until one of the other crew members turned on the brights of the stolen car he was in and accelerated directly at the Escort, forcing the other car to slam on its brakes. Willis then gunned the engine and swung his pickup truck out of the alley and pulled up behind the Escort, blocking the vehicle. Willis got out of the vehicle and moved fast to the driver’s side door of the Escort, then tapped the window with the barrel of the .40-caliber pistol he was holding. The driver of the Escort looked like a college kid. His eyes grew large and his skin paled to the color of milk as he focused on the gun. Willis tapped the window again and signaled for the kid to lower the window. The kid was scared to death, but he did as he was directed.

  “I’ve got about forty dollars on me,” the kid forced out in a faltering voice. “You can take my money, the car, the pizzas, please, just don’t hurt me.”

  “If you shut up and act smart, you won’t get hurt. Get out of the car now, and leave the keys where they are.”

  The kid did as he was told. Willis had him take off a grease-stained jacket and an even greasier-looking baseball cap, both of which had the name of the pizza shop the kid worked for stitched on them. Willis tossed these to Charlie Hendrick, who was the driver of the other stolen car and was standing off to the side. If the kid driving the Escort was closer to Willis’s size, Willis would’ve put on the jacket and cap, but the kid was six inches shorter than Willis and was closer to Hendrick’s height, although around twenty pounds chunkier. Hendrick was the one who had put the heist together, and like the rest of the crew except for Willis, was in his late twenties, and with his ski mask off looked like the typical slacker who maybe shaved once every couple of weeks and hung out all day playing video games and smoking weed. Big Ed Hanley, Willis’s agent for the job, had told Willis that Hendrick and the rest of his crew might not look like much at first, but that they were smart and professional, and so far that turned out to be accurate.

  As Hendrick slipped on the jacket and cap, Willis used duct tape to bind the kid’s wrists together behind his back, then after hitting the Escort’s trunk release latch and dumping out the garbage filling up the trunk, Willis had the kid get into it. It was a tight squeeze, but Willis was able to position the kid so he could close the trunk on him. The kid was shaking badly and looked like he might pass out or start vomiting at any moment.

  “Relax, kid,” Willis told him. “I’m not going to gag you or bind your ankles together. In thirty minutes the police will be here. Just kick the inside of the trunk and they’ll find you. You’ll be fine.”

  He closed the trunk on the kid. Hendrick was on his cell phone finishing up his call with one of the other crew members. He nodded to Willis and got into the car the kid had been driving. Willis first moved the stolen car Hendrick had been using so that Hendrick could continue on to the warehouse, then he got into the pickup truck and followed him, all the while keeping the lights off. Willis pulled over far away enough from the entrance so that security guard working the front desk wouldn’t be able to look out the glass vestibule door and see the pickup truck in the dark. Hendrick had pulled up to the main entrance as if he were only delivering pizzas.

  From Willis’s vantage point he could see the events that played out next, and it was exactly what Hendrick had told him would happen, not that he thought it would be otherwise. Hendrick brought the pizzas to the vestibule door, was buzzed in, and then as he was handing the pizzas to the security guard at the front desk, he pulled the pizza boxes back just enough to make the guard lean forward to reach for them, which got the guard’s hands away from the security alarm button on the side of his desk. As the guard awkwardly took hold of the two large pizza boxes, Hendrick, in a quick and fluid motion, slipped from his back waistband a 9mm Glock and brought it out in front of him, pointing it at the security guard, who just stood dumbly for a moment before putting two and two together. Willis didn’t wait any longer. He hit the gas and brought the pickup truck up to the front warehouse entrance. Hendrick buzzed him in, and at that point the security guard was sitting on the floor behind the desk, his wrists and ankles bound with duct tape, a gag stuffed in his mouth. The guard peered up at Willis with a hurt, sullen look, probably mostly angry at himself for allowing himself to get taken the way he did.

  Hendrick had his ski mask back on. There were no security cameras in that part of the building, only out back by the loading dock and in the warehouse area. It was also doubtful the security guard would be able to provide the police a useful description of Hendrick as he would’ve first been focused on the pizza boxes, then on the Glock. Even if the guard had paid attention to Hendrick’s face during the two or three seconds he might’ve looked at him, any sketch he helped the police come up with wouldn’t do any good since Hendrick had such a nondescript and common look to him. Willis asked Hendrick if everything was all set in back, and Hendrick nodded, letting him know that the security guard patrolling the back of the building had been taken care of by the rest of the crew. It was then up to Willis to do his job.

  A four-man crew could normally have handled the robbery. It was stretched to five men because the original crew was stuck for months on how to open the security door that led from the vestibule area to the warehouse. The lock required swiping a card with a magnetic-encoded strip through a card reader and entering a password on a keypad. The problem was not only would a wrong password trigger a silent alarm to the police, but the lock had a failsafe code built in that would open the door while also triggering the police. If the crew used the front security guard’s badge and forced him to provide the password, he would most likely give them the failsafe code and they wouldn’t know it until they tried driving away from the warehouse and found themselves surrounded by cops. Cutting the power to the door wouldn’t do any good since that would also trigger the silent alarm. Same if they tried blasting through the door or any part of the walls. The system in place was near foolproof, and it had stymied Hendrick and the rest of his team.

  All other parts of the job had fallen into place. They had the floor plan for the warehouse, they knew how many personnel would be employed and where they’d be, and they had the delivery schedule for when oxycotin was brought to the warehouse before being distributed to local hospitals and pharmacies. When they found out about the guards’ nightly routine of having food delivered each night around two in the morning, th
ey had their entry through the vestibule, as well as how they’d take care of the front security guard. But the one thing they couldn’t figure out was how to get through the security door without alerting the police. When Big Ed Hanley was brought in by the crew to find a specialist, he knew that Willis was a whiz with locks, and asked Willis if he’d be able to get through that particular model. Willis told him he could without providing any details, and Hanley set up the meeting between Willis and the team.

  Willis signaled to Hendrick to buzz the security guards inside the warehouse, which was what the guards expected at that time each night as the guard working the front desk would always buzz them before bringing them their food. Hendrick did so, then joined Willis by the security door, his gun hand by his side, the barrel of the Glock pointing straight ahead. Willis took from his jacket pocket a souvenir from when he was a hit man for The Factory—an electronic gizmo about the size of a credit card except a little thicker—and swiped it through the card reader. A click sounded as the device overrode the electronics within the lock. When Willis pulled the door open, two security guards stood on the other side of it, both of them showing goofy grins. As they realized that two men with ski masks had opened the door instead of their buddy working up front, their expressions froze. Then as their gaze drifted down to the guns that were pointed at them, their grins faded completely. One of the guards simply looked defeated, the other, though, seemed as if he was trying to decide whether or not to reach for his firearm and play the hero. Hendrick helped him make up his mind by stepping forward and smacking him in the face with his gun. Not hard enough to knock him out, but hard enough to stun him and leave him bleeding.