Jack - Perfect Burn: Hot Crime Romance

by Alice May Ball

  The Escalade was quick for such a big car, but it wallowed. Tynie was going to have a hard time making a getaway car out of this. Even more to the point, I was going to have a hard time making a getaway with it, carrying four big guys, all of them loaded up with weapons.

  My plan, such as it had been, looked weaker with every passing moment. More than anything, I wanted to be certain I could get Haley out safely. Thinking of her locked up with Gregor and those assholes made me burn.

  The little burner phone rang in my pocket a few minutes later.

  The screen said it was the phone I’d given to Tynie. I had almost forgotten about the phones. When I answered, Tynie said, “Can you wait for us?”

  As soon as I hung up, I called the phone that I’d given to Haley. I heard the generic voicemail message. Maybe she had it switched off, but it wouldn’t make sense. There was no reason I could think of why she would do that. No other phones, none but Tynie’s and mine, had that number.

  Maybe she was calling someone. I tried to think of a way that could make sense. Not being able to connect with her and talk to her made me anxious.

  In the diner where I waited for Tynie and Seb to catch up, the coffee was thin and rusty. When Seb got there, he told me he thought maybe we should look for another Escalade.

  Seb got a coffee. Made a face when he tasted it.

  I asked him what he did when he ran over to the guy with the big gun.

  “Told him I was a cop. Had my phone out and I said I saw the whole thing. I was on the phone with my sister-in-law when it happened. Soon as he saw me, he bought it and he hid the gun, fast. Just happens, I told him, my sister-in-law is a dispatcher. There will be a cruiser here in no time, meanwhile, let me get after the car, sir.”

  “Did you show him a badge?”

  “Sure.” He took out his wallet and showed it to me. It had a toy detective’s badge in it.

  “I love it, Seb.”

  “You’d be amazed how well it works. Nobody ever stops to read it.”

  “What would you do if they did?”

  He shrugged. “You haven’t heard the best part. His wife was calling the cops. Or someone. I said, ‘Let me have your phone, ma’am. I’ll take it with me, then as soon as we apprehend the perp, I can call your husband.’ And she gave it to me.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “And he let her. He nodded like it was the most sensible thing ever.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Ryan, he’s Emilio Palastri. It’s his wife’s car.”

  “That was him? That was who you persuaded not to blow a hole in my head with that enormous cannon?”

  “Yeah. You know Emilio Palastri, right? I think we’d better take the car back.”

  “Fuck that. I’m taking the car to Gregor. Then it’s on him.”

  ~~~~

  Tynie rode with me back to Gregor’s workshop, and Seb followed.

  When we got there, I jumped out of the car and left it to Tynie. I went straight inside, into the clanking semi-darkness to see Gregor.

  He turned to see me. I didn’t like the smile on his face.

  I asked him, “Where’s… the girl?” I didn’t want to use her name, to give it to him if he didn’t have it already. I remembered the Dragon Lady on the news broadcasts and he probably saw those, but she got Haley’s name wrong anyway.

  “We got a big job, you’re doing a dangerous thing, making a big step up, you just brought me a car, and I think there’s a story to tell about that. And all you’re thinking about is that bit of perfumed fluff that you picked up in the BMW.” He ruffled my hair. “Where’s your head, Jacker? Sometimes I worry about you.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “She’s safe.” He put a big hand on my shoulder and steered me. “Come. We’ve got work to do.”

  I didn’t move. “I need to talk to her.”

  He stopped and looked in my eyes. “Oh, you got it bad, Jacker. I should give you some help, some therapy, maybe. I help you out with some withdrawal, okay? Or you’ll start to lose your mind over that girl.”

  “I’m serious, Gregor. You let me talk to her before I’m going to do anything.”

  “I tell you what. You come with me. I go over the plan with you. Then give you some test questions, okay? See that you’re taking it all in like a good student.” He shoved me toward the back of the arched workshop. “See that you’ve got your mind on the right things.” He squeezed my shoulder. Three of the guys were watching now.

  “Then I let you talk to her.”

  If I made a confrontation with him now, right before the score and with half the gang watching, it would be a point of no return. There would be a lot at stake. Maybe Gregor thought about that, too, because he showed me a phone. Haley was on the screen, sat on a chair in a room that I didn’t recognize. She seemed not to have any idea that she was being watched.

  He snatched the phone away. “Lesson first. Then test. Then if you’re good, you get your prize, okay?” And his grin was wide and bright. I started to speak. His chin tilted up just a fraction and his eyes flashed.

  I’d seen her. I felt somewhat relieved, and I let it go for now.

  Seb gave Gregor the phone he’d gotten from Mrs. Palastri and told him what happened. Gregor told him something I didn’t hear and Seb left.

  Gregor’s head shook and he grinned as he looked at the phone. He scrolled around the screen, then pressed it. He held the phone to his ear a moment. Then he said, “Mr. Palastri?”

  Then, “Okay, Mr. Palastri. It’s about your wife’s car… Yes.” He nodded. Then, “Oh, did he? No, he isn’t a cop. Tsk. No, Mr. Palastri, I had the car stolen. Yes, it was taken to order, on my instructions. I needed one like it, but I had no idea that it would be your wife’s car, obviously.” He paced as he listened. “Certainly, Mr. Palastri. Of course. We’re both men of business, I’m sure we can reach an accommodation that will be mutually satisfactory. I have some coffee, I’ll have some juice freshly squeezed, would you like to come for breakfast?”

  His head leaned to the phone. “Naturally. Now, do you know where I am? No? Okay, then perhaps you’d like to put your head up your ass and blow.” And he hung up.

  We all gathered around the weapons table, all except for Ratke.

  Gregor said, “Ratke knows all this. We worked it up together, him and me.”

  Hannes asked, “Where is Ratke?” Gregor grinned some more.

  “He’s finishing something off for me. We’ll pick him up on the way.” He looked hard at all the men around the table. “There’s never been a better time for a job like this. There’s no way they’ll be ready for another job just two days after the last one.”

  The men shuffled their feet. Looked down.

  He had a large map on the table and he took us over the routes to and from the bank. Then he pulled out a floorplan and went over the ways in, the places the guards were usually located, the teller’s desks, the manager’s office, and the safe.

  “There are vaults in the safe.” Gregor looked at Lubic and Hannes. “Do not get distracted. The baubles and trinkets there that might be in the boxes would slow you down. And you’d just as likely come out with someone’s will, their mother’s special hankie, or a little stash of love letters.”

  He looked at everyone then. “Keep to the plan. Focus on the objective. We’ll all be very rich men by this afternoon.” With a twinkle in his eyes, he looked at me. “Even you, Jacker.”

  Gregor rolled up the plans and said, “Suit up, grab the weapons. Get yourselves ready.” He looked each man in the eye. Each man looked down, away, tried to evade his gaze.

  “Keep your minds on the getaway. All the time.” Gregor always talked about “the getaway.” Often made me wonder if he wasn’t thinking about another getaway, a getaway after the one at the bank.

  He spoke forcefully. “We’re all ready, we’re all prepared, and we’ve even practiced. This is going to be a big job, a big hit, and we’re going to walk away with a huge amount of m
oney. I need everybody to pull all of their weight and have all of their wits about them. No mistakes, no hesitating, no fuck ups.” I knew I wasn’t alone in thinking of Ratke when he said that.

  I grabbed a Kevlar bodysuit. Gregor came over. “You’re putting on the coveralls only. No Kevlar.”

  “No, Gregor,” I said. “I’ll put regular clothes over this.”

  “You can’t do that,” Gregor said, shaking his head. “It will be too obvious. You will be too conspicuous.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Anyway, we don’t have enough Kevlar.” He moved away. That was it. No more discussion.

  I was going to be the only member of the crew who was unprotected. Everyone would be suited up with bullet-stopping body armor. Everyone but me. That didn’t make me happy.

  Hannes and Lubic climbed up into the black Hummer, with Jared up front. Gregor hauled up into the driver’s side. I shouted after him, “The phone. Let me talk to her.”

  He waved as he shut the door. “You saw her. She’s fine. Don’t worry.”

  The door slammed shut and the engine fired.

  Tynie handed me the fob for the Escalade. “I haven’t been able to do a whole lot to it, Ryan. It would have been good to tighten up the suspension.”

  What he said didn’t make much of an impression on me, and I wasn’t really paying him too much attention as I started the Cadillac up. I gave Tynie an absent wave as I pulled out.

  The arrangement was that I would head out first. Gregor and I were set to travel on different routes anyway. The visor was down to shield my eyes from the midday sun. As I slid into the sluggish late morning traffic, easing through the gridlock, I concentrated on thinking through what the day’s events were going to bring, and I tried to calm my mind.

  There was some excitement there. I couldn’t deny it. I’d been around the edges of a raid like this. I had supplied vehicles, helped Tynie to tune them up. Once I’d been in on one of Gregor’s strategy talks, all about how the guns are for noise and to make fear, not for shooting at people to make tough sentences. Other details about different kinds of threats and assault, how they could add to jail time versus what you might expect to gain.

  With Seb, I’d worked up routes and planned what-ifs enough times, staked out the best parking places for observation and quick departure, driven around and mapped guard locations. I knew about everything there was to know about how this went down. But I’d never been here before. Never been part of the actual operation.

  Often enough, I thought about it. There were even times when I had wished I could go. Only in dreams, though. Only as a fantasy. I never really wanted to have it actually happen. Nobody in their right mind would. Bank robbers do. But as I said, nobody in their right mind would.

  For this one, I would drive by the bank and make a reconnaissance. After I scoped out parking spaces and called Gregor, then I would park up in a multistory park a block away. The west side of the parking had clear views over the square, the bank, and the wide street out front.

  From there, I would wait, observe, and keep in contact until the crew arrived and the raid began.

  At that moment, I would drive down slowly. There would be about three minutes for me to reach the street in front of the bank, locate a good position, and wait with the doors all open, ready for the crew to jump in.

  If the raid went according to schedule, there should be about a minute and fifty seconds to get out of the area before the first responders started to show up. There were two main routes to get away, and backup diversions on each one, in case there was traffic or trouble.

  All of the escape routes ran through my mind. For each one, I remembered everything I could from that part of town. That view, that traffic. Those turns. As I drove each one in slow motion in my mind, I tried to fix on where traffic bunched and clogged, where there were alleys and turns. Ran them all like videos.

  Then a thought unsettled me. The picture that I’d seen of Haley. It could have been a recording.

  It could have been shot at any time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  FACING DOWN FROM THE top of the stair I kicked at the door with my heel, ready to swing and nail Ratke if he came up and in range. My left hand was out toward him. My right hand was in Ryan’s jacket pocket.

  As I kicked, I shouted, “Gregor! Get in here! Get this fucker away from me. Now!”

  He came up. One step closer. One more step, fucker, I thought, and I’ll kick you right in the face. Get closer than that, and I’ll shoot a hole in your fucking head. The door rattled as I banged it again with my heel.

  “Gregor!” I yelled. Not that I thought he would come to help me, but I thought there was a chance that he might not want the noise of a girl shouting.

  While I thought about that, I tried not to remember the look of the block and the neighborhood. It looked like the kind of a place where a woman shouting might not exactly make front page news.

  Heavy footsteps came to the door. Ratke hesitated while the lock and the door handle rattled.

  The door shoved, but I was up against it. I slid along to the side so the door could open some, without me having to get any nearer to Ratke. The door pressed my right arm, made me squeeze harder on the gun.

  My left side was squashed painfully against a handrail. Ratke stepped forward. I kicked him straight in his face. He shouted as he staggered back. His hand found the rail. When his weight pulled on it, it tore away from the wall. As it came away, it dragged me with it.

  Ratke stumbled back a few steps. I was tumbling forward. A hand grabbed at me from behind the door. It gripped my shoulder tight and hard. Ratke was recovering his balance. My knee started to buckle and give way under me.

  The hand held me firm. It was the guy with the bandaged arm. He pushed me against the wall. Squeezing by the door, he moved between Ratke and me.

  “Isn’t there something you should be doing right now?” he asked Ratke.

  “I was doing it,” Ratke replied through a grating laugh.

  “Come on, get the fuck out of here, okay?”

  Ratke shrugged. “Want to keep the plump little beaver all for yourself?” He barged up the steps, past the driver, and through the door. “Be my guest. She’s not worth one half of this trouble. We should just ice her now and get it over with.”

  The driver held my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Seb,” he said. “My name’s Seb. You’re going to be fine, all right? Don’t worry.”

  By this point, I was kind of tired of people telling me I didn’t need to worry.

  “Listen,” he said, “come sit downstairs. Just for a little while. Ratke will be leaving soon.” His eyes showed his distaste. “Then I’ll bring you some coffee. Maybe something to eat. All right?”

  I set my jaw and took a breath.

  “The driver. Ryan. He’s okay. I just left him. You’re going to be fine, okay?”

  Reluctantly I went back down into the basement and sat back down on the lousy couch. When I looked up, I saw that Seb was holding his phone up. I guessed that he made a video of me. Seeing the phone reminded me of my own phone. Maybe I would get a signal down here. Maybe it could be my key to escape.

  But even if I was able to get out, where would that leave Ryan? Would I ever see him again? What would Gregor do to him?