by Roger Hobbs
It was genius.
And these safety deposit boxes were big, too. Each box was two feet wide, two feet deep, and three feet long—that’s twelve cubic feet. With twelve of those, we’re talking 144 cubic feet total. At optimum capability, we’re talking more than three million banknotes. Averaged out, that’s somewhere in the range of thirty to fifty million dollars’ worth of untraceable, nonsequential cash money. I smiled as I pulled the keys from my pocket.
It would all move less than twenty feet.
52
ATLANTIC CITY
The Wolf’s men were waiting for me at the abandoned strip club. They weren’t being obvious about it, but I knew they were there anyway. I could see the corners of their elbows and the smoke from their cigarettes through the cracks in the plywood over the windows. One of the Wolf’s black SUVs was parked two blocks down the boulevard, between a chain-link fence and an empty parking lot. I’d passed it driving up.
The club itself was a long-dead relic of Atlantic City’s bad days. The sign had been covered over with graffiti to the point of illegibility, and the plywood nailed over the windows had deteriorated and started to rot. Weeds poked up through the pavement in the parking lot and shriveled ivy had climbed up the stucco walls. This place had been nice once, but that had been years, maybe even decades ago. The neon lights under the awning were broken. The traffic light at the corner of the boulevard was slowly blinking red.
I parked, got out and slammed my car door so they’d hear me coming. Once I got out, I put my hand up so they could see me too. The rain dripped down my palm and collected in the cuff of my new shirt. It had started up again on the drive over, this time as a low drizzle that wouldn’t let up. When I was within earshot, I put my hand in my pocket and gripped the Beretta.
I was halfway across the street when one of the Wolf’s goons came out to greet me. I crossed over into the parking lot and stopped maybe ten feet away from him.
He was a sinewy guy in a black hooded sweatshirt with the top down. All the hair on his head had been shaved off, even his eyebrows, and there was a tattoo of two interlocking hammers on his forehead. He gave me a toothless grin and lifted his hoodie to indicate that he had a big Baby Eagle automatic handgun in his waistband.
“Take out your gun,” he said. His voice was heavy and slurred. “I’ll give you five seconds.”
I took out the Beretta, dropped the clip and pulled the slide to knock the live round out of the chamber. I showed him the empty chamber and the magazine so he’d know the gun was harmless, then tossed them both in the dirt between us. I put my hands back in my pocket and shrugged.
“Where’s the Wolf?” I said.
“Waiting,” the guy said. “Now I need your other gun.”
I took my hand out of my pocket. I showed him both empty palms and shrugged.
“You got it,” I said.
The man looked at me suspiciously, then took a few steps forward as slowly as if he were under water. He brushed my arms aside and patted my torso down until he found the lump, then reached around my back and pulled out the revolver. He pointed it at me and kept patting me down with his free hand to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything else. His breath smelled like menthol, gun oil and crystal meth.
I glared at him and felt the rain dripping down my neck.
The guy took a step back, but kept his eyes on me just in case. He released the cylinder on my revolver and swept the ejector rod. The brass fell out and scattered over the pavement.
“Now you’re the only one with a gun,” I said.
He smiled at me through his crooked teeth and took the Baby Eagle out from his belt and released the magazine. He pulled the slide and the bullet in the chamber popped out. Then he held the magazine out for me to see and flicked the bullets out of the spring release with his thumb. The bullets fell to the ground one by one.
Click, click, click.
Our bullets rolled around and slipped into the cracks in the pavement. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even move. We stared at each other across the pavement like gunfighters in some old Western. The wind picked up and blew rain into my face.
The Wolf stepped out through the front door. His pale suit was perfectly dry, even in this downpour. Water came pouring down around him off the awning.
“Come in,” he said. “We’ll talk.”
The club was like a sieve. Every three feet, water came down in thick sheets from holes in the ceiling as large as pitcher spouts. After so many years of misuse, the water didn’t even pool up on the floor anymore. It fell from the ceiling straight into the foundation through large gaps where the floor had caved in. Another one of his men was waiting inside. He was wearing a big thick bomber jacket and standing silently in the corner.
The Wolf pointed to a set of rusty folding chairs. They were the old metal kind that were made of cheap Chinese steel. Between them was an overturned paint can and a length of plywood that served as a table. I followed him inside cautiously.
“Sit,” he said.
I pulled back one of the folding chairs and I scanned the new guy up and down for weapons. I didn’t see any, but there are plenty of places a guy could stash a knife, or a little Ruger like the one Aleksei had out in the salt marsh.
“Sit,” the Wolf said again.
As I sat down the Wolf gave me a strange smile. He pulled up a chair across from me, held out his hand and snapped his fingers. The guy behind him opened his bomber jacket, took out a chrome .357 Magnum revolver and placed it into the Wolf’s open palm. The gun was huge—easily as long as a baby’s leg and as powerful as a small rifle. It was a Taurus Model 65 single action, which means it weighed almost two pounds and could fire six rounds in less than ten seconds, if the shooter was any good.
I looked at it, then at the Wolf. “I thought we were going to make a deal,” I said.
The Wolf gave me that strange little smile again. He held the gun up, hit the cylinder release and swept the ejector rod so the bullets fell into his hand. He set the empty gun on the table between us and let the bullets drop beside it. They didn’t make the normal soft clinking sound. They made the heavy sound of 200-grain power slugs, each of which was as fat as a quarter and capable of leaving a hole in a man the size of two fists. He nudged one of them with his fingertip, and it rolled off the edge of the table into my hand.
“I want to see the federal payload,” he said.
I turned the bullet over. Magnum means “big” in Latin. This one was a semi-jacketed brass hollow point as long as my pinkie finger. It was as excessive as the gun designed to fire it. I put the bullet back on the table, setting it on its rim.
“After you show me the money,” I said.
“No, you first,” the Wolf said. “You don’t have to give me all of it, just prove that you have it.”
I made a face and flicked the bullet. It fell over and rolled back to the Wolf. He caught it before it fell.
“What sort of proof are you looking for?” I said. “You know I didn’t bring it with me. Once I see that you’ve come in good faith, I’ll tell you where the payload is and you can do whatever you want with it. Until then, I’m not doing anything.”
“Have you ever played Russian roulette?” the Wolf said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I like to gamble,” he said. “So do you, from what you’ve told me. There are six chambers in this gun, and let’s just say this one bullet. I don’t know which chamber the bullet’s in, so either the gun will fire when I pull the trigger or it won’t. It’s a game of statistics, you see. The first time I pull the trigger, I have a sixteen percent chance of blowing your head off. If I pull the trigger again, the odds jump. Twenty percent. Then twenty-five percent, then thirty-three percent, then fifty percent. Do you understand? Every time you play, your odds get worse.”
The Wolf picked up the revolver, opened the cylinder and slid the bullet into one of the chambers. He spun the cylinder back, cocked the hammer and pointed the gun at my head.
Then he squeezed the trigger.
53
The cylinder turned, the hammer dropped and the gun clicked as the firing pin hit an empty chamber.
The Wolf spun the cylinder and pulled back the cocking hammer, then put the gun down in front of him. I listened to the rainwater dripping on the concrete. Normally, with a big gun like that, you can see where the round’s chambered just by looking. But not in a dark room where the only light came through cracks in the plywood over the windows.
“You said you wanted something interesting,” the Wolf said. “This is it. Tell me where the money is, and we can drive over and pick it up. After that I’ll give you your share, and then we can both go home.”
“You and I know you’ll kill me right after you get the payload.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said. “I might kill you right now.”
The Wolf pointed the gun at my head again and squeezed the trigger. I could see the chambers shift around, the trigger lock into place and the hammer drop.
Click.
I took out my cell phone and flipped it open. I brought up the photo of the blue bag sitting on the rocks and held the phone out for the Wolf to see. I knew this moment would come, but not that it would come under these circumstances. The Wolf didn’t just want proof that I had the money. He wanted to show me that he was willing to risk it on a game of Russian roulette.
“That’s it, then?” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Now you know I have the money,” I said. “I want to see my cut.”
“You’re clever, Ghostman, but not very smart. I still have the whole night to work on you. I can make you talk, if I have to.”
“You think you can break me in a couple of hours? Good luck. You know, I’m not weak and I’m not dumb.”
“I have ways.”
I shook my head. “I’m not scared of your gun.”
The Wolf held it up. “Oh, this? No, this is just for my own amusement. When the time comes you’ll talk, but not because everyone talks. You’ll talk because you’d rather play my game than sit here and wait for me to kill you. You’ll talk because you don’t have any other choice.”
He pointed the gun at my face again and pulled the trigger.
Click.
He laid the gun down on the table between us. I stayed silent for a minute and looked at my reflection in the barrel.
“You’ll talk,” he said, “because after all you want to live more than you want to get paid.”
“You’ve got it backward,” I told him.
The Wolf cracked his knuckles and folded his hands on the table.
“You’re the one who wants to live,” I said, “and I’m the one who wants to get paid. If I were to die right now, I’d be okay with that. You don’t know me, but I’m not in this to win. I do this because I can’t think of anything more interesting to do with my time. If you were to kill me or torture me, right here, I wouldn’t say a word. Then, once you kill me, you’ll have a big problem. I’ve stashed the money, and nobody but me knows where it is. Worse, who knows when and where it might blow? It could be in one of your safe houses or in some dive where your boys work. That way, when it blows the money gets tied back to you. You’ll do time for murder and aggravated robbery.”
“Fat chance,” the Wolf said.
I shrugged. “At the end of the day,” I said, “I think you care more about keeping your ass out of prison than you do about breaking me. Even if you don’t believe me when I say I’ve hidden the money someplace detrimental to you, you’ll make a deal anyway. It’s much cheaper for you to make a deal with me than take another chance with that gun.”
The Wolf stared at me in perfect silence. He was a calm and expressionless statue.
I went on. “Marcus was planning on pinning everything on you, Harry. He always has a hidden agenda, and you played right into it. It took me a while to put all the pieces together, but I did. You see, Marcus knew you’d figure the heist out. He even knew you’d be stupid and prideful enough to try to co-opt it as your own. By sending two idiots to rob the federal payload, he coerced you into robbing the federal payload yourself. Marcus wanted you to kill Moreno and Ribbons. He wanted you to take their loot as your own. He wanted you to try to use it against him. Hell, he even ordered Moreno and Ribbons to steal one of your cars just to antagonize you, because he knew that once you had the money, he could tell everyone he knew you were planning to cheat the cartel. See, nobody can steal a federal payload and walk away clean, not even Marcus, one of the greatest jugmarkers in the world. You thought you could? You’re just a drug dealer. You pretend to be powerful, but the cartel owns you. For a man in your position, reputation’s worth far more than a truck full of meth. If Marcus said you were crooked and the news backed him up, the cartel wouldn’t touch your money. In fact, I don’t think the federal payload even has to be hidden in a place directly connected to you in order to implicate you in the heist. I think that if the money were to blow up anywhere near Atlantic City, the result would be the same—cops swarming all around you and your reputation in ruins. Your name will be on the top of every investigator’s list for the next twenty years. All of your money will be suspect after that. Every drug dealer in the world will know you as the man who stole the federal payload. Your only chance to avoid taking the heat for the casino heist is to find that money and get it as far away from here as possible. That way, when it blows, you can pin the whole thing on somebody else. If you don’t, the cartels will tear you to shreds. So guess what? I think that if you can’t make a deal with me, your career is over.”
The Wolf picked up the .357 Magnum from the table, pointed it at my head and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell and clicked.
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t even blink.
“I want my hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
The guy in the bomber jacket shifted uncomfortably. His muscles were suddenly as tight as drums.
“If you kill me,” I said, “you’ll lose countless times that much. Once the cartels get word you stole a federal payload, even as payback, you’ll never make another deal. But we can still both win here. Give me what I want and I’ll make your money problem disappear before the sun comes up. It’s your only chance to get out of this spotless. We trade. A hundred and fifty grand for one point two million.”
The Wolf dropped the cylinder on his gun, slid another bullet in, spun the chambers, pulled back the hammer and fired.
Click.
“You’re testing your luck,” I said. “Every time you pull that trigger, you run a chance of shooting yourself in the head. You can’t break me and you won’t get me to back down. So take the deal.”
The Wolf put the gun down on the table. The corner of his mouth twitched just once. It was his tell—a brief glimpse into his thoughts that was over almost as soon as it started.
“All right,” the Wolf said. “Here’s my offer, and you better listen well, because you won’t do better. I might not feel like killing you, but I can kill that cute FBI agent you’ve been working with instead. Give me the money or she’ll be a corpse by morning.”
54
“Do what you want with her,” I said. “Your deal with me remains the same.”
I slowly reached across the table and picked up the .357 by the barrel. It was heavy, like someone had taken a normal gun and tied a brick to it. In response the Wolf’s guy pulled a short polymer automatic from his back pocket and pointed it at me. It was a hole puncher, chambered with .22 Long Rifle, with a barrel shorter than a credit card. A gun like that wouldn’t be very accurate, but at this range it would be a miracle if he missed.
“Easy, Ghostman,” the Wolf said.
“I just want to show you what I care about,” I said.
I held the gun out and showed it to him. There were two bullets in it now, not just one, so the odds were different. I spun the cylinder and pressed the barrel to my temple. Pulling the trigger was as smooth and easy as tearing silk. Th
e chambers turned and the hammer dropped.
Click.
I pulled the trigger again. I listened to the sound of the chamber ratchet snap into place, the hammer sear lock and the trigger drop.
Click.
The Wolf’s expression changed. He was uncomfortable. Like he didn’t know what I was going to do next. Like maybe he thought I’d blow my own brains out just to show him I could. He shifted around in his seat.
I pulled the trigger again.
Click.
I put the gun down and gestured to the goon in the bomber jacket, who also looked nervous. “Before I play again,” I said, “could I bum a smoke?”
He nodded at me and smiled. I must have impressed him. He stepped forward, keeping his gun pointed at me, and patted a Marlboro loose from his pack. He took out a Zippo and leaned in to strike it. I put the cigarette between my lips and waited until he was right up close. I took two puffs, then picked up the Magnum, pressed it under his chin and pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The pistol bark was muffled, as if I’d fired it through a pillow. The bullet punched a star-shaped hole in the top of his head and carried his brains out after it. The expanding gases peeled the flesh away from his skull and sent blood and bone fragments flying everywhere.
I kicked the table over and pushed until the Wolf toppled over and was pinned on the floor by the big sheet of plywood. My intention wasn’t to hurt him, just to keep him busy until I could take care of his men. I spun around and pointed the gun at the skinhead, who’d suddenly appeared at the door. I squeezed the trigger several times but nothing happened. Click. One of the rounds the Wolf put in must have been a dud—or maybe it was too wet to fire.
The skinhead smiled like a demon and charged me. Neither of us had loaded guns, so a second later we were inches apart. The guy slammed the Magnum out of my hand like he was brushing off a fly. I jabbed him hard with my left, but it was like punching a block of concrete. He was quarried out of solid prison and chiseled on the yard equipment by some sculptor who didn’t care much for what the finished piece would look like. My first punches were useless. His weren’t. He got off a wide and messy body shot that knocked the wind out of my lungs; two inches higher and he would’ve shattered some ribs. I didn’t bother to block, however. I attacked with everything I had. I landed an uppercut and could feel his jaw crack and whatever teeth he had left come loose. It was a blow that could’ve killed another man, but not this guy. He didn’t even seem shaken by it. He smiled as if to say, What else you got? Then he wrapped his hands around my neck and threw me against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster and started squeezing. Though I punched him four or five times in the chest, he didn’t even flinch. My vision started to get fuzzy as he cut off the oxygen to my brain.