Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  Dino rested a stop hand against the captain's chest. "This is my guy, Cap. Frawley, bank squad. Good cop."

  The captain looked back at Frawley, nodding a grudging apology. "We got a 911. Radio distress call from inside the armored."

  Frawley turned and looked at the silver Provident truck near the camper wreck, now empty-- a distress call going out inside his mind.

  "Dean," he said, and Dino registered it, completed the thought.

  This crew never left things like that to chance. They went around alarms.

  "Trip it on purpose?" reasoned Dino. "But why?"

  Frawley stepped back to take in the car wrecks on Yawkey, the multitude of cops in orange coats attending. He turned and looked up Van Ness, seeing more orange coats. "They wanted police here."

  He noticed one cop crossing the street carrying a loose black bag-- walking away from the ballpark, moving too calmly.

  * * *

  DOUG STOOD WATCHING JEM go. Another arriving cruiser squealed past, and then Dez was yelling at him. Doug turned to find Dez still holding his gun on the guards. Flashlights and footsteps in the tunnel.

  Doug pulled his Beretta and extracted the magazine. Only two rounds left. He pocketed that clip and pulled a full mag from his belt, reseating it, chambering a round. He took a guard from Dez and hustled them all down to the last door, the one farthest away from the tunnel, at the end of Van Ness.

  Doug put his guard facedown onto the floor there, then holstered his gun and untied his bandanna from around his face. The guard was begging for his life, certain he was about to be executed, until Doug's bandanna across his mouth gagged his pleas.

  Dez did the same, then stood, still wiping at his eyes, trying to blink his contacts right. "Can we do this?" he said.

  Doug looked out the door at the rain. "Fuck," he hissed, considering their chances, then turned to Dez. "It's life for me-- I got no choice. For you it's just a couple of years. Cut a plea, give them everything you can. If I make it out, I'm gone from here anyway."

  Dez stared, uncertain.

  "Gloansy's already hurt," said Doug. "Give yourself up. It's what I would do."

  Dez blinked, sore-eyed. "No, it's not."

  Doug leaned out of the bay and saw cops coming up from both sides, almost upon them. He stepped right out into the rain and quickly waved over the nearest pair.

  In orange coats they came running up the sidewalk, guns at their sides. Doug made sure they saw his empty hands, then pointed them around the corner to where Dez was standing over the bound and gagged guards.

  The cops got busy immediately, one officer dropping his knee down hard on a guard's back, the other calling in their position. "Nice catch," said the kneeling cop.

  The guards started to wriggle, grunting in protest, trying to talk with their eyes.

  "Transport these two," said Doug. "We're going after the third."

  Doug and Dez started across the street, briskly but not running. Doug glanced down the length of Yawkey to where the Suburban was bunched up at the corner, having smacked into their stolen T-bird, cops in orange all over it. A paramedic was at the driver's-side door, working on Gloansy, and a chill rippled through Doug.

  To their left lay Landsdowne Street, beyond a pair of empty cruisers. Ahead was Ipswich Street, full of orange cops, the direction in which Jem had gone.

  "Come on," hissed Dez, starting left, looking to slip the police perimeter.

  Gunshots sounded on Ipswich up ahead. Doug felt the reports in his chest, the way you feel thunder or a woman's scream.

  "Holy fucking hell," said Dez.

  "Take off," Doug told him, then started alone after Jem.

  * * *

  THE COP HAD REACHED the end of Ipswich where it met Boylston, walking in the street along the left-hand row of parked cars. "Excuse me!" said Frawley, coming up behind him. "Officer! Hold up a minute there, please."

  The cop stopped, the bag hanging heavy and low in his hand. A gas station was to his left, another one across Boylston, a Staples office supply store to his right. Traffic continued on four-lane Boylston as usual.

  The cop did not turn at first, his slick orange back wrinkling as his free hand went into it. When he did turn, it was with a sweeping arm motion such that the rounds rattling out of his gun would have zippered Frawley up from feet through groin to head, dropping him dead in the street. But Frawley had spun away behind a small gold Civic hatchback, which the cop now fired into.

  Two other cops nearby came under fire, dropping the blue Boston Police sawhorses they were carrying, and Frawley hazarded a look through the cracked auto glass at his assailant.

  Frawley only caught a distorted flash, the wild face with its white-out eyes and upper lip ridge looking profane in cop blues, like a cannibal wearing a chef's apron. James Coughlin. He was backing away behind cover fire with the engaged smile of a teenager seeing his violent daydreams come true.

  Frawley tried to get his shotgun over the roof of the car, but pedestrians scattered behind Coughlin, cars waiting for a green light. Then Coughlin swung back, turning with the shoulder-harnessed semiauto-- an illegal Intratec-9-- popping window glass out of the car.

  It sunk in then that Frawley was actually being shot at, and he went into a tight fetal crouch, putting his shoulder into the hindquarters of the car. Many of the rounds went through-and-through, puncturing the roof and thumping into the wooden fence behind him.

  Then the firing stopped. Frawley gripped his shotgun wildly, expecting an ambush.

  What he got instead was a sound like a stone skittering across the road. The thing rapped against the curb and Frawley peered down under the car, watching it spin and settle.

  It looked like an old hand grenade. Frawley couldn't believe it. And then of course, he did believe it-- and jumped up, racing away, yelling to the responding cops to get back--

  The grenade blew, and the Civic's gas tank blew, and Frawley and his shotgun went sprawling. He turned from the wet asphalt and saw the little import on its side, undercarriage aflame. The windows of the storefront Staples were blown in, and everywhere on Boylston Street people were leaping out of their cars and running. Coughlin was gone.

  Frawley got to his feet, pissed. That mangy fucker had tried to kill him. And a guy who'd open up on a federal agent would open up on anybody.

  Frawley regripped his Remington and took off after him.

  * * *

  DOUG CAME UP ON the burning car, its stinking black smoke rising into the rain.

  The grenades. Doug couldn't believe it.

  "Fucking crazy," said a voice behind him.

  Doug turned, found Dez still there. "Get out of here-- "

  "You two!" barked a voice from the side.

  Two other cops ran past them. The one yelling to them had rank.

  "Pick up that left flank! We're gonna sweep up Boylston and shut this end down!"

  Doug nodded and did as he was told-- pulling his Beretta and moving past the abandoned cars to the far sidewalk, past panicked citizens crawling away in the rain.

  "What are you doing?" said Dez, coming up at his side. "What do you think you can do for him?"

  "Desmond," said Doug, furious. "Get out. Leave me."

  Then Doug saw Jem break from the Howard Johnson's parking lot half a block up, orange coat flapping, the bag in one hand, the Tec out in the other. Four, maybe five car lengths behind him, a plainclothes guy with a shotgun cut across after him, wearing a nylon vest reading FBI.

  * * *

  COUGHLIN WANTED THE MCDONALD'S, running toward it, probably for hostages.

  Frawley could not allow that to happen. He ranged left, and as Coughlin reached the curb up the street, Frawley pulled the shotgun to his shoulder and fired wide, between Coughlin and the restaurant-- Blam!-- shredding a Free Apartment Guide stand on the sidewalk. He pumped, fired again-- Blam!-- this time killing a Boston Herald machine.

  Coughlin jerked back from the exploding stands. He spun and fired into the street, f
inding Frawley, but not quickly enough. Frawley dived between parked cars, scraping up the skin on his elbows and his knees, hearing rounds pick through the side of the truck, rap-rap-rap, thinking, I'm in a fucking gunfight. He got up off the road, worried about ricochets, sitting on the front bumper of the truck with his feet on the tail of the next car. He went into his jacket pockets and reloaded the shotgun, spilling some shells.

  Smatterings of small-arms fire behind him, a burst here, a burst there. Then only the rain. Frawley leaned out one way, looking up the sidewalk toward McDonald's, people streaming out of the back entrance with kids in their arms. The front of the restaurant was glass, and he could see in between the painted Mayor McCheese and the Hamburgler, Coughlin was not inside.

  Frawley leaned out the other way, looking up the rain-swept street cluttered with abandoned cars, their wipers still going. Not there either.

  Frawley pulled back patiently, thinking Coughlin was waiting to pick him off if he moved. Somebody was going to get hurt in the cross fire. Coming up toward him were two cops on his side of the street, still half a block away. They were orange just like Coughlin, and he checked them for a split second, remembering that MacRay was likely still at large.

  Shots again, rap-rap-rap off the side of his truck, and Frawley ducked out the other way, charging up the sidewalk, determined to keep Coughlin in the middle of Boylston and moving west.

  * * *

  DOUG MADE THE FBI shotgun as Frawley-- the sleuth propped up on the front bumper of a UPS van, stopping to reload.

  Dez was rubbing his eyes, trying to see clear. "You gonna shoot at cops?"

  "Fuck away from me, Dez."

  "How you gonna save him? How?"

  Doug could take out Frawley. If he wanted Frawley to be dead, he could do it right now.

  "You don't owe him anything, Doug. You can't do anything for him except die with him."

  Then rounds cracked and pinged off the parked car next to them, popping glass, kicking rain off the street.

  Jem was spraying rounds at them-- at cops-- from half a block away. Dez stooped low, swearing. "Duggy. We'll be pinned down here. We gotta bail now."

  Doug watched Frawley curl out from behind the truck. Sometimes just knowing you can pull off a thing is enough. He let Dez tug on him, and together they started back down Boylston toward the black smoke of the bombed-out car.

  * * *

  WHETHER OUT OF PANIC or confusion or just softheadedness, Coughlin started across the intersection where Boylston met the end of Yawkey. Cops lay in wait there, the rounds pecking at Coughlin's vest, dancing him, picking at his leg and his shooting arm. Still he turned and spit rounds back, silencing the service pieces but not the submachine gunfire. Controlled double-taps staggered Coughlin, who held the money bag in front of him now as a shield, retreating back to the corner in front of Osco Drug.

  Bloodied and sniggering, he hobbled up the wheelchair ramp to the drugstore, where someone inside had had the foresight to lock the doors. A wasted stutter of gunfire broke some of the glass until his Intratec clicked dry. Frawley heard it clatter to the pavement from his position in the drugstore parking lot, flat against the wall, listening to Coughlin's half-laughed cursing and the drag of his wounded foot.

  Coughlin rounded the corner and Frawley was there with the Remington. Coughlin grinned like he knew him, or maybe thought the letters across Frawley's chest were funny. Frawley was yelling at Coughlin. He didn't know what he was saying, and it was just as likely Coughlin never heard it anyway.

  Coughlin laughed, the pistol in his bloodied hand starting to rise, and Frawley squeezed one blast low-- Blam!-- then pumped and-- Blam!-- squeezed one blast high.

  Coughlin flew back, puppet strings of insanity keeping him on his feet, backpedaling until he fell off the wet curb and spilled hard into the road.

  Frawley did not move, frozen in the shooter's pose, still feeling the jerk of recoil. A bloody pistol lay on the sidewalk where Coughlin had once stood.

  Coughlin rolled over in the street and started crawling. He was dragging himself, the black bag still in his grip, reaching for the double yellow lines like they were the top ledge of a high building.

  Frawley finally moved, keeping his distance behind Coughlin, knowing that he had killed him and it was just a matter of time. Tac cops came charging up alongside Frawley, guns trained on the bright wet orange target, everyone waiting.

  Coughlin stopped, laughing blood, then rolled over and looked up at the sky spilling down on him, his chest bucking, his mouth smiling even as his throat groaned for air.

  * * *

  DOUG WATCHED JEM'S ORANGE form crawl into the middle of the wide road, stop, and roll over.

  Cops were coming up near them now. "Doug," hissed Dez.

  Doug backed away, turning, striding fast alongside Dez. He and Dez would go on the run together now. The switch car with their change of clothes was lost, but the Fenway Gardens were right around the corner. They'd dig up Doug's stash, hit the nearest clothing store they could find, then hop a taxi to the long-term parking lot at Logan, boost an older model car, head out of state. Then figure out what shape the rest of their lives would take.

  All these things raced through Doug's mind until he realized he was alone. He turned and saw Dez wandering back into the middle of the street, looking down the length of the double yellow line at Jem. Dez was trying to see through the rain, rubbing at his contacts like a man disbelieving his eyes.

  Vested Frawley and some commando cops were coming up slow on Jem. Doug didn't understand Dez's concern-- until, at once, he did.

  The grenades on Jem's belt.

  "Hey!" Dez started to yell.

  The commando cops would never hear him through the rain. "Dez!" said Doug, calling him back. Regular cops coming from the burning car.

  Dez ran a few steps forward, waving an arm. His stand here had to do at least as much with getting some final triumph over Jem-- thwarting his grand battlefield exit, Jem's plan to take a few of his enemies with him-- as it did saving the cops' lives.

  Dez drew his gun and fired it for the first time that morning, straight up into the rain, then a few times low at the road around Jem. It worked, the only way to back the cops away from that distance.

  The blast was like a road mine exploding, Jem erupting into lumpy pieces. The bag coughed money into the air, cash fluttering like confetti shot out of cannon, drifting back down to the wet road.

  The cops near the smoking Civic were drawing on Dez now, yelling. All confusion in the slapping rain, Dez trying to see, his eyes bothering him, arms rising to his face.

  The first shot spun Dez around. The second jerked him the other way, his vest vulnerable at close range, Dez dropping to the asphalt with a splash.

  Doug drew and started after him. But already half a dozen orange raincoats were advancing on Dez where he lay.

  You gonna shoot at cops?

  Doug watched Dez squirming on the ground until the encircling cops blocked his view. Dez was down. Gloansy was caught. Jem was dead.

  Something washed over Doug then, with the rain. He holstered his gun and turned and walked away.

  * * *

  THE RINGING IN FRAWLEY'S ears was his mind screaming as he picked himself up off the wet road and stumbled back toward the pieces of Coughlin. It was snowing money now, and he moved gun-first through the flurry of cash to the double yellow line.

  Coughlin's armored vest was cracked open like a bloody husk. The fucker had blown himself up and tried to take Frawley and everyone else with him.

  Frawley looked down the road to where the shots had come from, his thoughts too shrill to even speculate about what had happened. Someone was in custody down there. Frawley only hoped it was MacRay.

  * * *

  DOUG SAT ON HER stone bench. The willow was weeping rain into her garden, and he was trying to understand what it was he was feeling, until finally he realized-- he felt nothing.

  He got down on his knees in the muck. R
ain battered the purple impatiens as he thrust his hands wrist-deep into the soil, as though he could reach all the way down to his money, take it, and leave. As though he had anything to run to now. As though he had anything to run for.

  Nothing left in him but vengeance. Sirens wailed out on Boylston as he stood and shed his orange coat, starting back toward the Town.