Ghostman

by Roger Hobbs

  “An unknown man?”

  “One six-foot Caucasian male, mid-thirties, with light hair and brown eyes.”

  “Then you know it wasn’t me,” I said.

  “I asked you a question about Marcus Hayes.”

  “It sounds like he loves to gamble.”

  She shook her head. She had a sort of half smile on. She said, “What are you doing here, Mr. Morton?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “You’re here to clean things up for Marcus.”

  “I’m not here for anyone,” I said.

  “Listen, I get it,” she said. “A guy like that says jump, you jump. I read his file. Extortion, murder, drugs, bank jobs in half a dozen countries. If someone like that told me to do something, I might start thinking that I didn’t have a choice. Like it’s this or prison. But you know what? I’ve found I do my best work when I’m doing my own damn thing. And I’ll tell you, this weekend I’m here by myself. If I were you, I’d try to stay out of this. I’m very good at what I do.”

  She handed me a business card that had a couple of names on it before hers, but hers was right there at the bottom. “In case you want out,” she said, “give me a call.”

  9

  The man Marcus promised me was leaning against the wall under the arrivals gate holding up a piece of paper with Jack on it. A young black guy with slick hair and a very expensive suit. I might have mistaken him for just another limo driver if it weren’t for his gold-framed eyeglasses and the almost-nervous look on his face. He barely saw me coming until I was right on top of him.

  “I’m the man you’re waiting for,” I said.

  We shook hands and he fell in step with me without my having to ask. His voice was soft as silk. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m here to help with whatever you require.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever used our service before?”

  “No.”

  “Whatever you need, we provide. Your privacy is of the utmost importance to us. Nothing you ask us to do will ever be traced to you. All evidence of our relationship will be destroyed once you pay the balance of your bill. We do not keep records of our clients, nor do we ask any questions of you.”

  “You running point for me?”

  “Yes, sir. Your employer called this afternoon and told me you would prefer it if I didn’t ask your name.”

  “Good. Do I get to know yours?”

  “Alexander Lakes.”

  “That’s not your real name, is it?”

  “No, sir, it isn’t. What should I call you?”

  “Sir is fine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ulysses is also good.”

  “That’s a fake name if I ever heard one.”

  “I have a soft spot for the character.”

  “There’s a character?”

  “Homer. Also James Joyce. Don’t you read?”

  “Newspapers.”

  I walked with him through the doors and out to where the rental-car agencies kept their desks. I knew Alexander was there to pick me up if I wanted, but I needed my own wheels. I rang the bell for service. When the lady came out with the papers, I gestured to Alexander. He looked at me, then showed her his driver’s license and he filled out his information on the contract. He was left-handed, and his script looked like he was performing a surgery. He had perfect cursive handwriting. He paid for three days’ rental with a gold credit card. In his wallet I could make out two faded photographs of his children tucked into the flap.

  As we walked away from the desk and into the parking lot, he said, “We’ve taken the liberty of booking you a room at the Chelsea. We know the staff there. Your name, whatever it is, won’t go on the register, and there will be no record of your stay. All charges will be forwarded to us. The name they’ve got is Alexander Lakes.”

  “When do you get paid?”

  “Call me when you are ready to leave, and we can arrange a meeting. If that isn’t possible, I can arrange a cold drop or a wire transfer directly with your employer.”

  “Do you take Visa?”

  “Cash or wire transfer only.”

  “Good.”

  We stood there for a moment until one of the parking-lot attendants pulled up in a blue Honda Civic, a couple of years old, with one of those bolt-on GPS devices above the dashboard. A kid got out and handed me the keys.

  Alexander said, “I could’ve paid for any car on the lot, sir.”

  “This one is fine.”

  It used to bother me to drive an economy car, but it doesn’t anymore. More expensive cars get noticed, and that’s counterproductive. When you rent a car for a job, you want something invisible. Angela taught me that. There is hardly anything more invisible then a Honda Civic. They do their best to advertise them as unique and youthful, but they’re not. They’re cheap and identical. There are dozens of model years on the road and nobody can tell them apart. I’ve grown to like that. The Civic didn’t have any bells or whistles or odd shapes or fancy colors. It was just a cheap little import, plain and simple.

  I looked back at Alexander. “You drive here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then drive back. I need some supplies as soon as possible. I need prepaid cell phones, a locksmith set, a knife, a change of clothes and a slimjim. Do you know what that last one is, other than a piece of jerky?”

  “A strip of plastic used to break into cars, right?”

  “Most people prefer to say ‘keyless entry.’ ”

  “Give me an hour. I’ll have your items waiting at the hotel.”

  “Do you have a phone on you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give it to me.”

  I waited for him to fish a black smartphone out of his pants pocket. It was one of those new ones with the touch screens that feel like they have buttons, but they don’t. I took a look at it, flipped through the last couple of calls he’d made and didn’t see any numbers I thought looked suspicious. I put the phone in my pocket.

  Lakes stared at me for a beat.

  “Did you just steal my phone?” he said.

  “It lets me know you trust me.”

  “And?”

  “And I need a phone with a local number.”

  “You should have my business line, then.”

  He thrust a card in my face with his name and number on it. Executive Concierge Services. I memorized the number and gave it back to him.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  I got in the car and shut the door. Alexander Lakes looked at me for a moment before walking back toward the terminal. I saw him pull out around the corner in a black Mercedes. It was a new model with tinted windows and it looked like a shined-up paperweight. I followed him on the highway heading downtown from the airport until I turned off into the salt marsh. I thought as I drove. He was the perfect lip man. He spoke his employer’s words almost better than he did. Almost certainly better. Time was ticking away.

  Thirty-seven hours to go.

  10

  I followed the old two-lane highway to Route 30 through the salt marshes, next to where the Absecon Bay twisted through the flatland like a junkie’s vein. Driving toward Atlantic City felt the same as driving into Las Vegas. The highway to both places was empty and lined with the faded billboards and casino promotions I remembered from my childhood. The marshland by the highway reminded me of the desert. Flat and hot and empty. There was hardly any vegetation taller than scrub brush for miles. The casino towers shimmered on the horizon like a mirage. The Honda handled nice and easy.

  I zoomed past a billboard that read The Atlantic Regency: A World Away.

  As I got closer to the city, I could taste the salt in the air. I cranked up the AC to full blast and followed the instructions from the machine on my dash. Back in the Five Star, Marcus had mentioned a self-storage unit north of the city. Call me and wait it out. If there really was a unit, it would be my first stop.
I owed Ribbons that much. Not everyone who doesn’t make a phone call after a heist is vanishing. Some have reasonable explanations for why they went incommunicado, and not all of them are liars. Phones run out of juice. Numbers get lost. People get caught in places with no reception. It sounds unlikely after so many months of planning, sure, but these things happen. If Ribbons had simply broken his phone during the firefight or ditched it in a moment of panic, it was still feasible he could’ve made it to the storage facility. He could be there right now, just hoping and praying that Marcus would send someone like me, and not a guy with a jar of nutmeg and a pair of pliers. I owed it to him to assume his innocence. At least, for the moment.

  I saw the storage sign from almost a half a mile out, growing like a dot on the horizon. The storage center was in a precarious zone between the outskirts of the city and the uninhabitable salt marshes separating the city from the rest of the mainland. The place looked like it had been around for all of a week. The units were old steel freight containers just dumped there in the marsh, surrounded by a fifteen-foot razor-wire fence. There was a plain stucco prefab manager’s office in the dirt parking lot. The sign was on wheels. I parked the car and stepped out. It was like walking into a steam vent. The smell of the stagnant water and rusting containers hit me like a blow to the head. I hadn’t even got across the lot before my shirt was soaked through with sweat.

  Units like these are a one-stop solution to a lot of heisting problems. Sure, the management takes notice if you start sleeping there, but for a quick and private place, a storage unit’s hard to beat. A hundred bucks can buy you a hundred square feet for a month. As long as you keep paying the rent, you can keep anything you want in there. Most companies make you flash a driver’s license and sign a piece of paper saying you won’t use the joint for anything illegal, but there isn’t much they can actually do to stop you. If you just need a place to lie low for a few hours, self-storage beats a motel every time. I looked through the fence at the rows of rusted shipping containers. I knew just by looking the place over once that Ribbons wouldn’t be there. Having your face on the news changes everything. Suddenly you think about the bored-looking kid who watched you sign the paperwork a couple of months back and start wondering if he could pick you out of a lineup. This place would seem too confining for him. By now, paranoia would be making the decisions.

  But Ribbons did have a unit in there.

  It was worth checking out.

  I ignored the manager’s office and walked directly up to the gate. There was an electric box over the handle with a standard numerical punch-code lock. You’d press four numbers and the magnetic bolt would come undone and let you open the gate, even if the manager wasn’t around. I tried 1111 and 4444 in case the manufacturer’s codes still worked. Neither of them did. I looked up at the fence. I didn’t enjoy the prospect of climbing up and slicing through the coils of nickel-chromium razor wire. I stared at it for a moment, then back down at the number box.

  I took out the car key. I worked the rental-car insignia off the loop and tossed it. Without the loop, it looked just like a regular key. If I kept my hand around the electronic part, it could pass for the key to anything. I went back to the car and took the rental agreement out of the glove box. I worked the staple out with my fingernail, slipped it in my pocket and put the papers back where I’d found them. I got out again and went straight to the manager’s office.

  If you’re going to convince someone to let you into a secure area, you have to look legit. If you’re trying to access a numbered account at a certain Swiss bank, for example, you’ve got to come in carrying a one-ounce rectangle of pure gold, because certain Swiss banks use gold bricks as part of the passkey to their numbered accounts. It doesn’t matter if the gold in your hand is just a piece of lead with spray paint and a holographic sticker on it, so long as it looks right. If I was going to convince someone to open that gate for me, I had to look like I had a key to one of the containers. He wouldn’t see me use it, or even really see I had it, but he had to think it was there. Sometimes a single detail is all the disguise you need.

  The kid at the counter was maybe eighteen years old with skin the color of pumpkin pie and a dirty uniform. He was sitting in an office chair behind the counter, watching television. He saw me but he didn’t get up.

  “The gate isn’t working,” I told him.

  The kid didn’t look at me. “You put the numbers in right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, putting a little anger into it.

  “Which gate are you using?”

  “The front one.”

  “Try it again. I just used that gate this morning.”

  “I’m telling you, I was just out there and the gate isn’t working.”

  The kid sighed and looked up at me. He didn’t recognize me in the slightest, of course, but I don’t think that ever crossed his mind. He just beckoned for me to follow him, like he was tired of having to do this every goddamn day. We walked out the door and went straight to the front gate, where I made a frustrated gesture with my key toward the punch box. Then, like he was dealing with an idiot child, the kid punched in the numbers one at a time, saying them aloud in case my brain was too simple to catch it all. The gate made a buzzing sound and unlocked. I gave him a shocked look, like maybe I thought he’d tricked me, then acted embarrassed. I focused on the emotion and felt my cheeks go red.

  “You remember your access key?” he said.

  I held up the car key, covering everything but the teeth.

  The kid nodded. “Write the code down next time, okay? Don’t forget.”

  When he was out of sight and I was through the gate, I put the key away and walked down the row of units until I found the container painted with a big sloppy 21. Moreno’s container. The lucky twenty-one. The door was padlocked with a key-operated Medeco two-cylinder that was probably supplied by the facility. The doors were bound by a length of chain.

  No Ribbons. Considering the lock was still in place, he might never have shown up in the first place, or even intended to. For all I knew, Ribbons and Moreno had been planning to blow off Marcus’s rendezvous point from the start.

  I took out the staple and straightened it out with my fingers until there was a series of very small bumps at the tip. I took off my tie clip to use as a torsion wrench. I leaned in close so I could get a good look at the padlock. It was harder to pick in the heat, especially without the proper tools, but in a couple of minutes I got the job done. I raked the tumblers with the edge of the staple like a bump key and twisted the tie clip gently until the lever popped. I removed the bolt and tossed the padlock away, then pulled the chain so I could free the doors and pull down the lever that kept them together.

  There was something off about this container. From the look of the lock, nobody had been around for quite some time. At least a week. Whatever I’d find inside would be dated at best or irrelevant at worst. Still, it was worth a shot. Ribbons had to be somewhere, and any little thing could help.

  Opening the container doors was like scraping a knife across a chalkboard. I pulled from the center with both arms. The unit let out a blast of hot air like a hair dryer. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and the stench of rust and old stains.

  It was empty.

  Mostly.

  An intermodal shipping container varies in size depending on the originally intended cargo. They’re measured in something called TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units, one of which could hold about thirteen hundred cubic feet of material. The common ones you see in the shipping yard are two TEUs, or about twenty-seven-hundred cubic feet. Forty feet long, eight and a half feet tall and eight feet wide. They were designed by the military during World War II to move huge quantities of goods easily between ships, trains and trucks. They’re universal now. This one was almost completely empty. No backup car. No makeshift hideout. No ditched equipment. No plans tacked to the walls, no sleeping bags, no maps with lines drawn all over them. I checked twice fo
r any sign that any of that stuff had ever been there, and I couldn’t see any.

  In the twenty-seven-hundred cubic feet of storage space, there was only a small backpack, more like a rucksack, that sat against the left wall.

  I looked around. Left, right. Nothing. Nobody.

  I entertained the thought for a moment that the rucksack might contain something dangerous, like Moreno’s used needle sharps or some sort of trap he and Ribbons had set up just in case. I also considered for a second the odds that it could be the money, but I’m not that lucky. Or that stupid.

  I untied the backpack.

  No needle sharps. Not a trap, either.

  Something else entirely.

  11

  A gun.

  Not just a gun. At the top of the bag was a goddamn Uzi the size of a pistol, with crude iron foresights and a cut-down folding stock. The action didn’t smell like gunpowder and the barrel was still shiny, inside and out. It hadn’t been fired in a while, if ever. It was fully assembled and still in the manufacturer’s plastic carrying case. There were three spare mags and a box of cheap ammunition underneath. Under that was a strap of twenty-dollar bills, a small Ziploc bag full of pills, a cell phone, a couple brochures and a lighter. Those were the only supplies. I rooted around at the bottom and in the side pockets for anything else, but that was it.