Wheelman, The

by Duane Swierczynski

  But the fire was out of control. He had to get out now. He wasn’t sure if he was going to make it much longer without losing consciousness. His body screamed, and his shoulder screamed louder.

  The easiest way out: use the door.

  The aluminum garage doors were already buckling. Lennon could hear it. So he hoisted the wooden door—it was a heavy son of a bitch—and used it as a battering ram. The door went through the aluminum, and Lennon followed behind. He released his grip on the door before it brought him down with it, and tumbled off to the side.

  Fresh pain spiked through every nerve. Get up, get up, he told himself. His hair felt like it had been crisping over a barbecue pit.

  He climbed to his feet and quickly assessed his surroundings. It was madly disorienting. Jesus, this looked like a suburban cul-de-sac. A yellow plastic Big Wheel was perched on a lawn across the way. It was a bright, sunny spring day. The sun burned his skin.

  And behind him were five barbecued men—three of them probably gangbangers and the other two probably cops, or excops. Lennon had a bullet in the arm, bruises and contusions all over his body. He also had a gun in his hand and $650,000 waiting for him in the trunk of a car in downtown Philadelphia.

  Lennon started walking. He had to get away from the burning house, and away from eyewitnesses. Probably way too late for that. He already saw faces peeking from behind curtains, fathers stepping outside their screen doors.

  Enough was enough. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since the Wachovia heist. Now it was time to bring the getaway to a close.

  The warm air sharpened his senses, or at least gave that illusion.

  Orders of business:

  Find a car.

  Find a convenience store. Snag a long-distance calling card and a map of Philadelphia.

  Dump some rubbing alcohol over his shoulder wound.

  Wrap a tourniquet around it.

  Pray to Christ nothing got infected.

  Figure out where the fuck he was.

  Call Katie’s cell. Enough dancing around it. Thirty seconds on the phone would tell him what he needed to know.

  Meet up with her. Or cut free, and worry about her later.

  Arrange a way out of town, with the cash.

  Never, ever visit Philadelphia again.

  A Fond Memory of Hardship

  SAUGHERTY PURCHASED HIS TWIN ON COLONY DRIVE IN 1988, with his then-wife Clarissa and five-year-old boy. The price then was $65,000, which made for slightly uncomfortable mortgage payments on a cop’s salary. In the fifteen years since, the value of the house had doubled as the real estate market boomed. In the fifteen years since, Clarissa had gone, his five-year-old boy was now a twenty-year-old Ecstasy-popper on seizure medication, and the cop’s salary had given way to other forms of support. Clarissa and the kid had picked up and moved to Warminster; Saugherty kept the house out of sheer inertia. He kept meaning to rent a place closer to the city where he did most of his work, but never got around to it.

  But as he sat on his back lawn in the spring air and watched his $135,000 (current market value) twin burn, Saugherty thought about none of this. Instead, his mind was still trying to wrap around something else.

  No, not the fact that his former confidant and best friend, Earl Mothers, was a burnt piece of North Philly brisket inside his smoldering garage.

  No, not the fact that three other heavily armed guys—sounded like Junior Black Mafia—were also in the Colony Drive BBQ pit.

  Nor the fact that Saugherty, sooner or later, was going to have to come up with a story to explain his dead friend and dead niggers inside his burning home.

  It was the mute.

  He spoke.

  All this time, the guy could talk. He’d been fooling people for months, maybe years. Saugherty didn’t know how old the info on the I.O. was, but it wasn’t as if the mute detail cropped up yesterday. Patrick Selway Lennon had been fooling people for a long time. It probably made him attractive as a getaway driver—what better accomplice than one who can’t sing to the cops?

  Even when it came down to it, when his life was on the line and any other person would have been pleading for it, the guy kept quiet.

  Then why did he bother with that final spoken jab? Irish brogue and everything?

  Remove this, ya fuckin’ arseholes.

  An anger limit. The guy had a boiling point, and the lid had blown off the pot just then. This would be useful.

  Now Saugherty had to find the guy. He assumed he’d survived the blast, just as Saugherty had. That door had probably shielded him. Saugherty had barely cleared the garage door leading into the basement when the tank went up. When he saw the aim line, from gun to tank, Saugherty decided to screw the charade. He jumped up and ran for it. Two of the four guys—including Mothers—spun their heads around to watch Saugherty run. The others were focused on Lennon, and that gun poking out from beneath the door. Within seconds, the room was full of fire, and Saugherty was diving behind a love seat. A fireball whipped through the air above him, and everything in his basement went up. He had to hurl a chair through the basement bay window to make it out to the lawn.

  Lennon hadn’t come out that way. Saugherty had sat there on his lawn, holding his pistol, waiting for him.

  He must have gone out the front.

  Saugherty walked around the side of the house toward the street. His next-door neighbor, a Home Depot manager named Jimmy Hadder, grabbed him by the arm. “Jesus, are you okay?”

  “Home invasion,” muttered Saugherty. “Bunch of black guys knocked me out, robbed me, set the place on fire.” He was spinning off the top of his head. He realized he should stop before he talked himself into a corner he couldn’t explain later. “One guy got out—you see him, Jim?”

  “Yeah—he went up toward Axe Factory. But he looked white.”

  “You never can tell these days. Thanks, Jimbo.”

  Axe Factory Road, which Colony Drive spilled into. From there, it was two choices: east or west. Saugherty thanked him and started jogging toward the end of the cul-de-sac.

  Down toward the park: nada. Up toward Welsh Road: a glimpse of his guy, turning a corner.

  Got you.

  Saugherty ran back for the car he’d taken from Lennon, then realized it had been parked in the garage.

  Convenience

  LENNON STOLE A HUNTER GREEN 1997 CHEVY CAVALIER parked on the side of a street named Tolbut. Now a Chevy: that was easy pickings. He’d learned how to hot-wire a car on a Chevy. Plus, no alarm, and the Club attached to the steering wheel wasn’t locked. People never locked them. But what made the car even more attractive was the sweatshirt rolled up in a ball in the backseat. Lennon drove two blocks, pulled over, removed his bloodied, ripped sweatshirt, and put on the new one. It was emblazoned with the words Father Judge High School. He’d regressed from college to high school overnight.

  A few turns, and he found himself on what looked like a main drag—Welsh Road. Ten minutes up the road, across from a main artery road, Roosevelt Boulevard, was a 7-Eleven. Lennon pulled in and entered the store. His shoulder ached; his skin burned. And Saugherty was right. He was beginning to smell a little ripe. When he put some miles between himself and that burning house, he’d have to do a little rudimentary first aid. Even if that just meant dumping some vodka over it, slapping a bandage on it.

  The occupant of room 219 hadn’t kept any money lying around; college kids never did. So Lennon had to pull a little stickup. He was loathe to do it, since it was just the kind of thing to attract attention to himself. But the prepaid calling cards were behind the counter, and there was no easy way to do the five-finger discount.

  Besides, he could use a little dough to hold him over until he reached the money in the car. And compared to the murders he’d just racked up, a 7-Eleven heist wasn’t shit.

  Lennon selected a detailed map of Philadelphia streets from a spinner rack. He had a better fix on where he was when he crossed Roosevelt Boulevard, but a quick glance at the map
confirmed it. He was up in Northeast Philadelphia, about twenty-five minutes away from downtown. Saugherty had taken him home. From the looks of the map, the quickest way back down was to take the boulevard, also known as Route 1, down to where it merged with I-76 headed into downtown. He replaced the map on the spinner rack.

  He picked up a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News, a packet of precooked chicken strips—easy protein—and a bottle of water. As an afterthought, he grabbed a chunky white stick of Old Spice deodorant. He placed them on the counter.

  The counter kid looked at him funny as he bagged the stuff. Chances were, he attended Father Judge High School. Lennon picked up the bottom of the sweatshirt and showed him the Glock tucked into the waist of his jeans. He pointed to the cash register, and then to the bag. The kid understood. He opened the register, scooped out bills, and shoved them in the bag. Next, Lennon pointed to the prepaid calling cards.

  “How many?” the kid asked.

  Lennon just curled his fingers into his hand. Give them to me.

  “Okay.” The kid grabbed a stack and slid them into the bag.

  Lennon took the bag.

  “See you in class,” he said, smirking. From the looks of it, the kid looked completely thrilled. Lennon had probably just fulfilled a long-term work fantasy/running gag. Dude, I was totally robbed!

  There was a security camera in the place, but at this point, Lennon reasoned, it was beside the point.

  After fifteen minutes on Roosevelt Boulevard, Lennon fought his way to the outer lanes and turned into a large mall parking lot. He found a pay phone bank inside a Strawbridge’s department store and used one of the prepaid calling cards to dial Katie’s disposable cell phone. The emergency one.

  Prepaid calling cards were the best thing to happen to planning heists since the invention of the road map. Absolutely untraceable—these rip-off companies bought long-distance minutes in bulk and sold them to people too poor to have home phones or with shitty enough credit to be turned down by long-distance phone companies or criminals who didn’t want their calls traced. There were no bargains to be had, even though the cards claimed significant savings per minute. But when you used a prepaid card to call a cell phone that would only be used once, then tossed away, you had a next-to-perfectly secure means of communication.

  Katie’s disposable rang five times, and then an automated voice-mail message picked up.

  Incoming

  KATIE’S CELL PHONE CHIRPED. SHIT. SHE COULDN’T stop to pick it up now. Not with the business end of a Beretta in this Russian gangster’s mouth.

  Wait.

  Only two people had this disposable number. One of them was Patrick. Which would make it pointless to continue negotiations with this tight-lipped Russian prick.

  “Hold on a second, okay? Of course you will.” Katie fumbled in her bag, found the phone, and flicked it open one-handed, but it was too late. The call was gone. Fuck.

  She removed the gun from the guy’s mouth and then proceeded to pistol-whip him into unconsciousness. He wasn’t going to help, anyway. Claimed he knew nothing. Katie dialed in to check her messages, wiping the pistol clean on the guy’s sofa.

  The Russian hadn’t been difficult to find. Henry refused to name names, and begged her to come over to his apartment to think things through. But eventually, he relented, and gave her one: Evsei Fieuchevsky. “I don’t know that he’s involved, but he might know some people who might know.”

  Fieuchevsky had claimed to know nothing, and it didn’t matter. A search of his desk drawer revealed an old-fashioned address book. Somebody down the line would know what had happened to Patrick.

  Outgoing

  LENNON DIDN ’T LEAVE A MESSAGE. HE NEVER DID—IT wasn’t worth it. He’d just try later. He tried not to read too much into the fact that Katie didn’t pick up their emergency line. He was the only one who had the number. Either she was showering, or temporarily away from her phone. Or she expected him to be dead. And now she knew he was alive.

  No time to think about it now.

  On to the next item on the agenda.

  He was very anxious to leave Philadelphia.

  Manhunt

  SAUGHERTY WATCHED LENNON USE THE PHONES. THE guy didn’t move his mouth at all. Was he retrieving a message, or listening to instructions? Saugherty almost wished he were a cop again. He could put someone on the Strawbridge’s phones, try to get a fix on the call. But he was a loner. Working this solo. In a car—a royal blue Kia—borrowed from his neighbor Jimmy.

  Calling Mothers had been the mistake of the year. He wasn’t going to repeat that mistake.

  He was going to follow Lennon to the money, then pop Lennon and take the money. Call a tip in to the FBI. Let them pick up their man, deal with the mess. Saugherty would still need a story, but that could come later.

  Lennon left Strawbridge’s, but didn’t return to his stolen car. He simply strolled the length of the store, on the side away from the main bustle of the mall, and selected another vehicle—some early model Chevy. He was inside within seconds. Saugherty couldn’t even see how he did it. Amazing. It reminded him of a video game his son loved called Grand Theft Auto III. “You’ll dig this, Dad,” his kid had said, but the game appalled Saugherty. It was all about a guy who went around carjacking and heisting and killing; your score was measured in dollars you either stole or earned via underworld activity. According to his son, it was also a badge of honor to rack up as many “wanted” stars as you could—the maximum was six—and the easiest way to do that was kill cops. His son loved this game. It apparently didn’t dawn on him that his father used to earn their daily bread putting his life on the line as a cop, facing off against real-life scumbags who also considered it a badge of honor to snuff a pig.

  Anyway, the protagonist of the game had no trouble at all stealing cars, parked or otherwise occupied. You simply moved your man close to the car, then pressed the button. This guy, it was like he was pressing that button. Boom. He was in the car.

  Saugherty followed him out of the parking lot and back onto Roosevelt Boulevard.

  He wished he’d had more time to read up on this guy. Everyone underestimated Saugherty, and Saugherty kept underestimating the fake mute.

  What was his story? Where were his two partners, and why weren’t they sitting on the money? Or were they? And Lennon was fighting to collect his third?

  No. Something had gone wrong. Pro heisters never hung around the target city. They struck hard, struck fast, and got the hell out. There was a wrinkle somewhere, which kept Lennon here.

  But what was the wrinkle?

  Damn it, Saugherty. Before you started pickling your brains on a daily basis, you were a pretty good investigator. Figure it out. Keep thinking ahead. This could be the difference between the life you’ve always wanted to lead and life in a (now) burned-up twin over in Pennypack Park.

  The dash clock in his neighbor’s car read 9:34 A.M. He hadn’t been up this early in years.

  Had he been up all night? He had.

  Lennon followed Roosevelt Boulevard all the way down, through lower Northeast Philly and past crappy areas like Logan and Hunting Park and Feltonville and other neighborhoods that had been vibrant at some distant point in the past—full of factories and jobs and neighborhood delicatessens and candy shops and people who swept their front stoops every day. Now they rotted. Some people still tried to believe the neighborhoods were worth saving. You could see them every now and again, along the boulevard. A house with a new paint job and crisp awning. But the problem was, it was usually right next to a gaping hole in the row where Licenses & Inspections had finally ordered a home’s destruction. Nobody wanted to move into places like these anymore—certainly not anybody who could potentially save a neighborhood.

  Saugherty wondered what Lennon thought of the view—if he noticed it at all. According to the guy’s I.O., he had been born in Listowel, Ireland, but who knows where he had spent his formative years. Maybe it was here. Maybe he grew up in a shi
thole like Feltonville, and pulled jobs to ensure that he’d never have to live in a shithole ever again.

  If so, it was a reason Saugherty could understand. He’d done the same thing. Hell, it was why he was doing this now.

  The boulevard trimmed itself down from twelve lanes to four—two in each direction. Lennon kept driving. He passed the sign marked KELLY DRIVE. Up ahead, the boulevard ended and offered two choices: I-76 West, into the suburbs, and I-76 East, which swung past downtown Philly, then South Philly, then finally the Philly International Airport. There was nothing for Lennon out west—unless he had a hankering to see Valley Forge, where George Washington and his posse wrapped their bleeding feet in rags and prepared to duke it out with the British.

  No, Lennon headed east. Big surprise. The question now was: downtown Philly, near the scene of the crime, or right to the airport and up and out of here?

  Well, Lennon wasn’t headed out of town on what he had on him, unless he had stashed a getaway bag in an airport locker. Saugherty had given him a thorough field stripping, and the guy didn’t have a dime on him. His little convenience store stickup couldn’t have netted him more than fifty dollars. Read the signs on the door. They’re telling the truth. Yeah, the only thing he stole from that 7-Eleven, as far as Saugherty could tell, was a bunch of calling cards and beef jerky.

  Breakfast of champions. Although Saugherty wouldn’t have passed up a few sticks of beef right now. He was starving—the last thing he’d eaten were those fucking Memphis Dogs.

  As predicted, Lennon took an exit that spat him out downtown. Saugherty almost lost him—Lennon took another sudden exit on the right, to Twenty-third Street.

  Damn. The guy was returning to the scene of the crime.

  The Bitter Taste of Blood