Wheelman, The

by Duane Swierczynski

  EVSEI FIEUCHEVSKY WAS NOT HAVING A GOOD MORNING. First, the news of his son. Involved with bank robbers, and now dead? How could his son do this? What had Mikal been thinking? Then the embarrassing mistake with the daughter of the fat Italian. Then finally, the arrival of the crazy bitch with a pistol, breaking into his home in Morrell Park and threatening his life unless he told her what they did with the bank robber.

  The bank robber who had probably murdered his son.

  Thank God his Dimitra wasn’t alive to see his shame.

  During the assault, Fieuchevsky had merely held his tongue. He had decided to show patience with the crazy bitch. Let her rant and rave and spit and threaten. It did not matter. Soon, his employees—the ones who found Mikal’s truck—would arrive. Within thirty minutes, the crazy bitch would be dangling from the end of a meat hook in his garage, begging for a merciful conclusion to the proceedings.

  But then the bitch actually paused to answer her cell phone, and without warning, beat Fieuchevsky into unconsciousness.

  This was madness.

  Madness, too, that his tan Naugahyde couch was streaked with his own blood. The crazy bitch had beaten him about the face, then wiped the blood clean on his furniture. His $4,000 set. Like it was Kleenex.

  Fieuchevsky couldn’t decide who he’d enjoy seeing tortured more—the bank robber, or his crazy bitch.

  He’d savor both.

  Then, a name popped into his head. An outsider, who knew this sort of thing. A friend his son had once mentioned. “This finance guy I met, Dad? He used to rob banks. Just keep that bit on the Q.T.—he don’t like anybody knowing.”

  Fieuchevsky picked up the phone.

  Prelude

  LENNON PARKED ON ARCH STREET, TWO BLOCKS AWAY from the lot. This Chevy sucked—he was glad to be ditching it. It could stay in Philadelphia and the two could rot together. From what he’d seen on the drive down, the city was already halfway there.

  Call him bitter.

  The moment he saw the Honda Prelude he could breathe again. Not that he was worried he wouldn’t—the only other two people who knew about the location and make and model of the car were both dead, decomposing in a tube down by the river. No, it was about reassurance on a cosmic level. That everything he touched didn’t necessarily have to turn to shit.

  His shoulder was really worrying him now. It smelled funny, like Chinese food left on a kitchen counter too long. That meant infection. That meant trouble, unless he found a doctor who could prescribe antibiotics soon. The wound had pretty much closed and caked on itself; his shoulder would never be perfect, but at least he wasn’t bleeding out. On his personal pyramid of woes, the shoulder was the apex. That was followed by existential worries, of double crosses and bad luck and everything else mental. Below that was a thick base of bruises and contusions and cuts and sprains and everything else. Lennon had a feeling that if you were to remove every broken/ailing part of his body, all he’d have left would be two eyeballs and a spleen. Maybe not even the spleen.

  But everything would heal. Money would help. Money and a plane ticket and a room at a resort hotel and a friendly doctor and good food and rest and music. That was it. And still a half a million left to live on. Spent frugally, that money could last Lennon until he was forty years old. Katie, too.

  If Katie was still in the picture.

  Lennon turned the corner, spied the lot. There was an attendant in the booth, but he was too engrossed in something perched in his lap. Not many cars were parked here on a Saturday morning, despite this being a long-term lot. This vaguely worried Lennon. He’d imagined more cars, burying the Prelude in a sea of pricier, sleeker cars with a higher street value.

  He walked down the second row, where they’d left it. Nothing yet. It was probably down farther.

  The row ended. Nothing.

  Had to be the third row.

  Halfway down the third row, the attendant took an interest in Lennon.

  Lennon pressed two fingers to his neck, feeling for the carotid artery.

  Steady now.

  Steady.

  On.

  An Interlude in Nausea

  KATIE THOUGHT BACK ON HER VISIT TO MORRELL PARK. It could have been handled better. Michael would definitely not have approved. Neither would Patrick.

  Then again, Patrick was probably no longer alive, so what did it matter?

  Unless that was him calling. And he was hiding out somewhere.

  There was only one way to find out. Katie pulled her rented car over to the side of Grant Avenue and dialed Henry. On her public cell, not the emergency one. Her stomach did flip-flops, but she kept it together by breathing oxygen. Oxygen dispelled the nausea, if she tried hard enough.

  “Hello?”

  “Did you call me about twenty minutes ago?”

  “No. But wait—don’t go. Let me get rid of this other line.”

  Click.

  Shit. Katie didn’t know what she was hoping to hear. That Henry had called, or that he hadn’t. If he really hadn’t, Patrick was somewhere. But then why didn’t he leave a message?

  Because the stubborn bastard never left a message. It was against his religion.

  Katie felt her stomach roil again, and she concentrated on breathing.

  The line clicked back.

  “Katie, where are you?”

  She ignored the question. “Someone called me twenty minutes ago. On the other line. Only two people have that number. You and Patrick.”

  “So then he’s fine. Tell me where you are, and I’ll send a car for you.”

  “No. Help me think. Where would Patrick be?”

  “I’m no good thinking over the phone,” he said. “You know that.”

  “What good are you at all?”

  Damnit, Patrick. Call again. Let me know what’s going on. Tell me I just didn’t pistol-whip a Russian gangster for no good reason.

  “Look, girlie. I’ve had enough abuse for one morning. You know where I am. You want me to help you figure this out, stop by. And let me just add that since you’ve gotten knocked up, you’ve been nothing but moody.”

  “Fuck you,” Katie said.

  The line was silent.

  “I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” she added.

  The Outsider Pays Off

  HENRY WILCOXSON CLICKED BACK TO THE OTHER line. “Evsei? Thanks for waiting. I think I can help you after all.”

  Void

  LENNON FELT A TAP ON HIS SHOULDER. IT WAS THE parking attendant.

  “Can I help you?” he said, but his tone was just the opposite. Can I get rid of you quick, so I can go back to my booth?

  Lennon shook his head. But the attendant persisted.

  “What kind of car you looking for?”

  Lennon ignored him and scanned the last row of cars, near the edge of the lot. He knew they hadn’t parked the Prelude here, but maybe some parking attendant moved the cars around somehow. They did that sometimes, especially to clear a street for a work crew; they just loaded the cars on flatbeds and moved them where they wanted. Although that seemed highly unlikely, Lennon searched anyway.

  The attendant seemed to give up, and walked back to his booth. He kept giving Lennon strange looks.

  Fuck him. Where the hell was the car?

  Only two possibilities.

  One—and this was another highly unlikely event—somebody decided to boost the Honda Prelude, and got a nice surprise when they looked in the trunk. In this case, Holden would have been correct to be nervous, and the fates were working against them all.

  That was bullshit.

  The more likely possibility was that one of his partners, Bling or Holden, had double-crossed him. Of course, that brought up two additional possibilities: one, the betrayer was either working with the Russians, in which case he knew the battering van was coming, and braced himself for impact, then led them to the Prelude. Two, the betrayer survived the Russian ambush just as Lennon had, but beat him to the Prelude and sped away, assuming the others wer
e dead. Lennon hadn’t rushed back to the Prelude, thinking it was better to heal first and let the heat die down.

  But now he saw that hesitation was just one of a long series of mistakes he’d made in the past twenty-four hours. If Lennon had gone right for the Prelude, that Saugherty prick wouldn’t have caught him napping on Kelly Drive, and he would have only two deaths on his tab, instead of at least … how many was it? Two, three (Saugherty), four (his big friend), five, six, seven strangers with guns? For a decidedly nonviolent heister, Lennon had racked up an uncomfortably large body count.

  Sort it out later. Solve the problem now.

  “Dude.”

  It was the parking attendant again.

  “Phone. It’s for you.”

  He held out a cell phone.

  I.P.B.

  THE MOMENT RAY “CHARDONNAY” PERELLI LEFT THE Dining Car, he called his lawyer, Donovan Platt.

  “How do I find somebody?”

  “It would help if you could be a little more specific, Ray.”

  “I need to find a bank robber.”

  “A specific one, or any old bank robber?”

  “Specific one.”

  Pause. “This guy do the Wachovia job yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  Platt whistled. “What, are you trying to earn your Boy Scout merit badge thirty years too late?”

  “Fuck you, you bagadonuts.”

  “Hey, calm down. You know what—don’t tell me why. Who am I to ask why, right? You want to find this guy, try the usual places.”

  “Like where?”

  “These pro heist guys are predictable. If he’s still in the city, it’s because the money is still in the city. Try long-term parking lots, bus station lockers, storage joints. If he’s trying to get out of the city, he’ll be at the airport—which makes him a bit easier to track—or driving, which makes it impossible. While these guys are predictable, they’re not easy to track down. The whole point is to blend into the background and slip out as quickly as possible.”

  “Wait, wait. Parking lots, bus stations, you said?”

  “Yeah, Ray. Anyplace where you can hide stuff without raising eyebrows.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Don.”

  “Can I ask … geez, should I even ask?”

  “Ask what?”

  “Ask what you need a bank robber for.”

  “Don’t ask, Don. Catch ya later.”

  The Italian mob in Philadelphia was dealt a series of death blows in the early 1980s, but hung on through that decade and most of the decade after. Then right before 9/11, a blistering series of federal indictments destroyed the remaining leadership.

  Within months, nine players and associates were shipped off to various federal lockups across the country to eat shitty food and work menial jobs that paid thirty-five cents an hour.

  Within a few years, all that remained of the Philly mob was a motley collection of mid-level capos who wanted to rule what remained and small-time hoods who fancied themselves gangsters. They had the suits, but none of the muscle to fill them out. They had the small-time scams, but none of the brains to make them mean anything.

  All that remained of the Philadelphia mob, actually, was a fairly efficient communication system, older and more secure than Ma Bell. The old guys, the new guys, the mid-level guys, they all talked. That’s all there was to do. Talk.

  So when Ray Perelli decided to put out an APB on the bank robber the Russians wanted so badly, it didn’t take long for the word to get out. Especially because it involved the Russians. And shoving it up their vodka-drinking asses.

  Within fifty minutes, Perelli received word that a strange guy was poking around a long-term parking lot down beneath the JFK overpass near Twenty-second Street. Perelli called the attendant, who was a cousin of a friend of his next-door neighbor, working his way through his sophomore year at Tyler Art School. What tipped the attendant off was the fact that the guy didn’t talk—didn’t the heister lose his voice? Perelli promised the guy next semester’s art books if he could keep the guy there in the lot. “How am I supposed to do that?” the attendant asked.

  Jesus, Perelli thought. Kids don’t want to work for shit these days. “Put him on the phone,” he said.

  Which is how Perelli found the bank robber that the Russians couldn’t. The Russians didn’t know the city. They hadn’t been here long enough.

  Fuck those Russians, Perelli thought. Fuck them up their stupid asses.

  Let’s Have a Drink

  “HEY THERE.”

  Lennon listened. “You’re the guy I’m looking for, aren’t you? The bank heister?”

  Lennon listened.

  “Now I know you can’t answer. Poster says you’re a mute. So what we’re going to do is this. You listen up, and then hand the phone back to my guy there. If you agree, nod your head and he’ll tell me. Okay? If not, just don’t do anything, and he’ll tell me that.”

  The attendant looked bored.

  Lennon listened. What the hell was this about, anyway? This wasn’t the Russian mob. At least he didn’t think it was the Russian mob. The Russians would be more pissed. The guy sounded too casual. Too relaxed. Was this an associate of the big cop?

  “Okay. Here’s what I’m offering. I’ve got what you’re looking for. You let my guy there drive you out to see me, we’ll talk, and see what we can work out.”

  Lennon thought about this and quickly decided that it didn’t make sense. He was looking for a Honda Prelude with $650,000 in the trunk. If the guy on the line had the car and the money, why would he be trying to work out a deal? No, he was offering something else.

  “All I want is a little conversation. I’ll get you some medical attention, too—my guys say you look pretty fucked up. Get you a glass of wine, some good food, and you listen to my proposal. You don’t like it, you walk right out. I’m being straight with ya. Whaddya think?”

  Lennon knew this was bullshit, but he didn’t have much choice. He was standing in a parking lot with no Honda Prelude, and no $650,000. He had nowhere to go, except a prison or a Russian mafiya torture chamber or that steel pipe down by the river. He wasn’t about to flee town screaming yet. Not without that money. There was the off chance that this dipshit knew something. And he had to know something, because he knew where to find Lennon.

  “Okay. If it’s a yes, you mind handing the phone back to my guy?”

  Lennon gave the phone back.

  The guy on the other end said something.

  “Uh, no.”

  Something else.

  “No, man, I don’t carry that shit.”

  And something else.

  “Mace, man. That’s it. I got some Mace.”

  Jesus Christ, Lennon thought. How was it that, all of a sudden, his dim future seemed to lie in the hands of a Philly gangster on the phone and one desperately retarded man? Not that there was much difference between the two.

  Lennon tapped the guy on the shoulder.

  “Hold on,” the guy said.

  Lennon lifted his Father Judge sweatshirt.

  “Oh shit,” the guy said. “This guy is packing. Seriously. Like … oh man. What the fuck am I supposed … Hold on. He wants to go. So we’re like, going. See you in a few. Wait, wait, wait. Where do you live again?”

  Power 100 Party

  THERE WAS A SMALL KNOCK. BEFORE WILCOXSON could stand, Fieuchevsky was up and answering the door.

  Katie’s face appeared in the doorway. She registered surprise when she saw Fieuchevsky, even more so when the Russian punched her in the face. Katie’s body flopped against the wall, then slid sideways down to the carpet. Fieuchevsky slammed the door shut, then grabbed Katie by the wrists and dragged her into the living room.

  “Jesus, Evsei. What are you doing?”

  “This bitch pistol-whipped me in my own home. I’m giving her a taste.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  Fieuchevsky looked at Wilcoxson. “Oh, I can’t?”

  “She’s pregnant,
” Wilcoxson said. “A fall like that, she could lose the baby.” Not that Wilcoxson really cared, one way or the other.

  “Fuck her. She pistol-whipped me. And her husband killed my son. You think I give a shit about her baby?”

  “She’s not married. Besides, you don’t want her. You want Lennon.”

  “I want their entire families dead.”

  Crazy Russian bastard. Wilcoxson looked at Katie, sprawled on his carpet, blood streaming from her nose. Even unconscious, she looked beautiful.

  Wilcoxson had been in love with her since the first day Lennon had introduced them. Lennon had called her his “sister,” but Wilcoxson knew better. He’d met plenty of heisters over the years who had introduced him to many “sisters.”

  He had never met anyone like Katie before. Her smile set his soul at ease. She was shorter than he preferred. Her hair was a dirty reddish-brown, a far cry from the blondes he’d enjoyed over the years. And her body wasn’t quite the proportions he usually desired—thin, wide, thin, then wider. But somehow, Katie managed to look perfect.

  From the beginning, this had all been about Katie. Wilcoxson had mentored Lennon—come to think of him as something of a son—though he’d never wanted children, and still didn’t. Still, it had been nice to be able to brag about some of the jobs he’d pulled over the years. Lennon was a quick study, and loved to listen. What else could he do? Wilcoxson had recommended him to a few teams here and there, and the kid had worked out well as a wheelman.

  But from the day Lennon brought Katie by to meet Wilcoxson, everything changed. He knew it’d just be a matter of time before he could take her off Lennon’s hands. Lennon was making decent coin, but he really didn’t have all that much to offer her. Not compared to what Wilcoxson had glommed over the years. He could give her the life she deserved. And frankly, Wilcoxson deserved a young woman like Katie. He had experienced enough of the chase, the drama. He wanted to take Katie and settle down. Or at least give it a run.