The Wheelman (12 page)

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Authors: Duane Swierczynski

BOOK: The Wheelman
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H
OLDEN HAD BEEN HIDING BEHIND THAT FUCKING partition for an hour now, waiting for Lennon to show up. It wasn’t comfortable, and his neck and back ached like a mother-fucker after that crazy shit yesterday.
Yesterday.
Fifteen minutes after the Wachovia job.
Wilcoxson had said, No sweat. The Russians are gonna pull their van out in front of you guys, surround you, put hoods over your heads, take you somewhere, pop the other guys, let you go.
Yeah, they pulled their van out all right.
Best Holden could figure it, Lennon was going too fast, and the Russians didn’t have time to get out in front like they had planned. So they just gunned it, and smashed right into the Subaru.
Sure, Holden had been bracing for a sudden stop, but not
that
fucking kind of stop. The Forester achieved liftoff, spun in the air a couple of times, landed top-first on the wet mud next to the Schuylkill River, then slid a while, so long that Holden was starting to think they were going to end up in the river, and that would be it. But no. The car skidded to a halt, the Russians got their act together and finally—finally—surrounded them with those crazy black submachine guns they got, but it didn’t matter. Lennon was gone, convulsing and spitting before he passed out. Bling was still awake, so Holden started hammering his face with his elbow. Who cares? Nigger was going down a tube anyway.
Truth be told, Holden felt a little bad about Bling. He was the guy who’d introduced him to Wilcoxson in the first place, vouched for him. Holden had no idea there was a loose network of dudes in his profession, scattered across the country. It was like the Mafia, but not, at the same time. Just guys who knew other guys, vouching for each other. So Bling vouched for Holden, and met Wilcoxson one night for dinner at that steak joint, Smith and Wollensky, had himself a fat Montana prime rib. Wilcoxson told him he had a future. He could always spot talent, he said.
And that was it. Then nothing, for months. Bling used him for a couple of jobs, nothing big. Wilcoxson didn’t call him for shit.
Which bugged Holden.
Bling was fine, but he never tapped him for the big heists, the kind that Wilcoxson said he was ready to pull. He wanted Wilcoxson to give him something that would set him up. He was tired of kicking around his same old West Philly apartment. You didn’t see Bling around the neighborhood—Negro was out kickin’ it in resort hotels.
So when the call finally came from Wilcoxson a few weeks back, Holden said yes, not even a thought to it.
The call from Bling came the next day. Wilcoxson had vouched for
him,
instead of Bling doin’ it the other way around. A nice fat score, Bling told him. “Don’t fuck it up,” he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep flapping your gums there, Bling. Holden knew what Wilcoxson was
really
up to, and Bling didn’t. Fuck Bling. This was his ticket in. No more West Philly decaying mansion shit—hello, resort hotel circuit.
Wilcoxson told him, “Holden, I need somebody I can trust.” The implication: Bling was somebody he couldn’t trust. All Holden had to do, Wilcoxson said, was keep him posted, and then have a little patience right after the job.
A little patience, yeah. And a motherfucking neck brace.
After the Russians took Bling and Lennon away—they stripped them naked and put their corpses in body bags and everything—Holden wanted to go right after the money. His gut told him to grab it and run. Forget Wilcoxson, who had promised half of the proceeds instead of the third Bling had promised. Half, third. Why not take it all?
No. That wasn’t thinking big picture. Wilcoxson could set him up. $650,000 was nothing compared to what was in the future.
Cops watch parking lots right after, Wilcoxson explained. You don’t want to go anywhere near that car. It’ll be there. Don’t worry. Holden couldn’t help worrying. Is this how the pros really did it? Bling and Lennon didn’t seem worried. Wilcoxson didn’t seem worried. But it bugged the living shit out of Holden, leaving that kind of money behind, just sitting in a parking lot in the middle of the city.
Holden spent the rest of Friday laying low, trying to keep his mind off the car and the money. Watched a few DVDs, had some take-out sushi and some Ketel One vodka, in honor of the Russians, who were down by the river that night putting Bling and Lennon down the tube. Holden looked around his cluttered apartment—the one they had used to plan the heist—and thought about packing up his shit. Actually packed up some shit, then stopped to have some more Ketel One.
Saturday morning, hungover, he got the call from Wilcoxson. There were some “complications.”
Lennon was still alive.
“Go get the car,” Wilcoxson said. “Then call me back.”
The car meaning the money. Holden had a really bad feeling about this. They couldn’t have listened to him yesterday? Listened to how motherfucking stupid it was to leave that much money just sittin’ around in a parking lot?
Holden hopped a SEPTA green-line trolley out to Nineteenth and Market, then walked the few blocks to the lot. He walked up and down the rows, looking. He looked some more, then went back over everything again.
No car.
No car, no money.
He called Wilcoxson, who was in the middle of some weird shit, it sounded like, and told him the bad news.
“Fucking Lennon,” he said. “Okay, hang tight. I’m going to call you back.”
Twenty minutes went by before Wilcoxson called him back. “I want you to meet me at my apartment. We’re going to get our money back. Bring somebody you can trust.”
Sounded good to Holden. He just hadn’t counted on crouching down behind a sound partition for close to an hour waiting for that mute bastard.
Finally, Lennon arrived and there was some back and forth, with Wilcoxson talking to him over a speaker, his voice all modified and shit. Holden was impressed; Wilcoxson had pulled together a plan fairly quickly, even with the Russian involved. “Don’t worry about the Russian being there,” Wilcoxson had told Holden over the phone. “We’re going to take care of him today. Let him join his son.”
And now, there Lennon went, broken and gushing, out the door again, off to recover the $650,000 from wherever he’d stashed it. If he wanted to see his knocked-up ho again, he would be bringing it back here tomorrow, high noon.
Holden stood up from his hiding spot and his knees cracked. Shit. He was stiff as hell, and his neck and back still hurt from that car wreck yesterday.
He felt the pistol in the right pocket of his starter jacket. The plan was, wait for the Russian to come out of the booth, along with Wilcoxson. Then, when Wilcoxson gave the signal, he was supposed to shoot the Russian in the head. “The studio is soundproof—nobody’s going to hear a thing,” Wilcoxson had reassured him.
Here came the Russian, holding his own gun in his hands. The Russian smiled uncomfortably at Holden. Holden nodded back, careful to show no expression on his face.
“That went fairly well, didn’t it?” said Wilcoxson, who popped out of a small door to the right. “Tomorrow, Evsei, you will have your revenge, and some money to ease the pain.”
The Russian nodded. He didn’t look happy about the arrangements. Not at all. He certainly wasn’t going to be happy about what Wilcoxson had planned, either.
Then again, neither was Holden.
Why settle for $325,000? He already knew the whole deal. Lennon was bringing the cash from the Wachovia job here tomorrow, in exchange for his woman.
Holden shot the Russian in the head first.
Wilcoxson looked surprised—he hadn’t given the signal yet. But not half as surprised as when Holden pointed the gun at
him.
There was nothing to worry about. The studio was soundproof.
 
 
 
I can imagine them hitting the sack after one of those robberies, just laughing their heads off and having fun.
—PSYCHOLOGIST FRANK FARLEY, ON
BANK ROBBERS CRAIG PRITCHERT
AND NOVA GUTHRIE
 
 
A
LL THINGS CONSIDERED, IT WAS QUITE A BARGAIN: An empty row house in South Philly.
A doctor, with malpractice insurance problems and a suspended license, to attend to his multiple wounds.
Bottle of Jameson. Stack of frozen dinners and a small microwave.
Bottle of aspirin.
Plastic digital alarm clock.
Two pistols—both .38 Sig Sauers.
Six boxes of ammunition.
Price tag: $325,000.
Lennon had returned to Dominick’s restaurant that afternoon and put forth a straightforward business proposition, in writing: He needed food, shelter, and medical attention. In return, Perelli would receive $325,000, half of the proceeds from the Wachovia job, upon its recovery. He wrote that the Russians had his girlfriend, and that they demanded the money from the Wachovia heist or they were going to execute her. And their unborn child. Perelli was a father; Lennon didn’t think it would hurt to play on the man’s familial sympathies. He added that he had a plan to recover the bank loot, as well as bury the Russians. All he needed was time to recover and heal.
And think about his familial sympathies later.
Perelli agreed.
Perelli not only agreed, but had insisted on the suit, too. He got off on the whole idea of Lennon as a heister under his employ.
“A bank robber can’t be running around in a Father fuckin’ Judge sweatshirt, for fuck’s sake,” he’d said. “Did Machine Gun Kelly wear a sweatshirt? Did Johnny Dillinger?”
So when Perelli dispatched the unlicensed sawbones, he also sent along a guy to take Lennon’s measurements. The suit would be ready in a couple of hours, Perelli promised.
Lennon didn’t really care about the suit. He cared about getting Katie back, getting the money back, and getting the fuck out of Philadelphia. Then he would think about this baby thing. It was too much right now. In the meantime, he ate, he drank enough to dull the pain, he rested. He woke up when the doctor arrived, and tried not to cry out when the doc mauled sensitive parts. Listened to him
tsk-tsk,
then resume work. Cautioned Lennon against drinking. Whatever. Then the doctor scribbled his pager number on a blue napkin and left. Lennon drank more Jameson’s and fell back asleep.
The doorbell rang. It was a young kid, delivering the suit. A black Ermenegildo Zegna, from a shop called Boyd’s on Chestnut Street. Included was a dark blue Stacy Adams dress shirt, black socks with dark blue clocks on them, and a pair of black Giorgio Brutini shoes with a single strap buckle. Perelli had also thrown in a pair of sunglasses—Dior Homme by Hedi Slimane. The only items not plucked directly from the pages of British
GQ
were some undergarments by Hanes. Jesus fuck, tighty-whiteys. They must have been a personal favorite of Perelli’s.
Lennon took a slow, wince-inducing shower. His face was tragic-looking; in places, it had the pattern of a tie-dyed shirt in blacks and purples and blues. But he was pleasantly surprised to find that all of the clothes fit perfectly. Even the tighty-whiteys. He dressed himself, even putting on the Giorgio Brutinis. He loaded the Sig Sauers, then put one in each jacket pocket. He pressed two fingers against his carotid artery.
Then he lay down on top of the single mattress sitting in the middle of the empty master bedroom, and closed his eyes.
A few fevered hours later, his eyes popped open.
Three seconds later, the alarm went off. He was already dressed.
It was time to go.
 
H
OLDEN RICHARDS FOUND THE PIPE, NO SWEAT. Mikal, the Russian’s kid, had told him about it. Over on the Camden side, not too far from the bridge. That narrowed it down. There wasn’t too much new construction over here near the bridge—with the aquarium, and the Tweeter Center, and the rest of the tourist crap—tourists in Camden, if you can believe it—hardly enough room for a cockroach with a hard-on to squeeze through.
But here they were, trying to fit another tourist attraction along the cramped waterfront. A children’s museum.
Boy, would the kids be surprised to discover what Uncle Holden was dumping down their drainage pipe.
First down, the Russian. Let him and his kid have a happy reunion together. The Russian’s head remained remarkably intact, despite the point-blank shot to his face. The bullet entered his forehead, then exploded on its way out of the skull. The back of his head was shit, but his sturdy good looks would be preserved for the ages. As he let go of the Russian’s ankles, Holden wondered if he and his boy would end up cheek to cheek in the pipe, and what future archeologists would make of that.
Next up: Wilcoxson. Bank robber extraordinaire. His face hadn’t fared as well. Holden had popped a cap straight on, and Wilcoxson’s face was pretty much ripped off, leaving a mess of pulp behind. He screamed for a while, his legs flailing around like he was riding an invisible bicycle. Thank God for the soundproofing, huh? Eventually, the fury died, and so did Wilcoxson.
At the time, Holden had been tempted to go back and pop a cap in the bitch, too, just to get it over with. Lennon would show up tomorrow with the $650,000 no matter what, and then Holden would kill him. Right now, she was stashed at Wilcoxson’s Ritten-house Square pad, with his cousin Derek keeping an eye on her. Wilcoxson had agreed to that plan, but he’d also seemed nervous about letting some other dude hang with her while she was handcuffed to a pole. Like he was her man, or something. Something hinky was up there.
Holden thought about it for a while, then realized there really was no good reason to keep her alive. He picked up his cell and dialed Derek.

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