Lennon sat down, but he didn’t pick up the pen. He waited.
“Really. Go ahead. Anything you want. They’ve got a fully stocked bar here.”
He picked up the pen and the legal pad beneath it. He scribbled a few words on the surface, then flipped the pad to show his host: THE MONEY?
The guy smiled. “I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have your money. Did I give you the impression I had your money? I don’t think I did.”
In some ways, this was a relief. The $650,000 was still out there somewhere. Lennon scribbled some more. He turned the pad over.
ICE WATER. CHICKEN BREAST.
“That’s more like it. Get some food in your belly. If you don’t mind me saying, I’m assuming you don’t always look like a bum. Or smell like one.”
The guy picked up a phone, punched in three buttons, said “Come here,” then gave a teenaged boy in a white coat Lennon’s order. The guy specified Boar’s Head chicken breast, then turned his attention back to Lennon.
“You know, my daughter gave me a book last Christmas. What the hell was it called? Something like Outlaw Heroes of the 1930s. Guys in there were Dillinger, Baby Face, Pretty Boy, the Barkers, Al Karpis, all those guys. I like how it was titled ‘Heroes.’ Ever see it?”
Lennon had. He was a voracious reader of true crime and history—that’s how he had spent his wasted winter. Catching up on his reading, both crime stuff and a stack of science fiction novels. (Katie liked the sci-fi, too—Dick, Bester, Sturgeon—so they traded paperbacks back and forth at a feverish pace.) Outlaw Heroes was okay; nothing special. He remembered flipping through it on a lazy December afternoon. The guy clearly cribbed most of his stuff from other histories.
Lennon didn’t write anything on the pad. He preferred to listen. Sooner or later, this guy was going to get to the point.
“Okay. Maybe you don’t read much. You’re busy. I’ll get to the point. The Russian mob has your girlfriend. Intes Studios, down on Delaware Avenue. Suite 117.”
Lennon stared at him. Girlfriend?
“I can tell by your look that you might doubt me. Well, they told me to tell you to smell the roses. That make any sense? That’s supposed to be proof.”
Fucking hell.
These bastards had Katie.
“Smell the roses” was one of their in-jokes from years ago. One Christmas, Lennnon found himself at one of Katie’s girlfriend’s houses for a holiday party. There was a big guy there. Named Joe. Joe was a bit of an idiot. Physical trainer from Florida. He spotted Lennon in a corner and took it upon himself to bring Lennon out of his shell. (Lennon was actually embroiled in a getaway plan, spinning the details and arrangements around in his head. He always did his best thinking in large groups, while nobody paid attention to him.) After a few awkward attempts at small talk, the guy grabbed Lennon by his shoulders and shook him. “C’mon, man, open up and live! You gotta smell the roses, dude!” From that point on, “smell the roses” had cropped up in countless conversations. It became shorthand for people who didn’t understand The Life. It became shorthand for pretty much anybody who annoyed Katie and Lennon.
That meant Katie was here, in Philadelphia. And with some associates of the man behind this desk. Against her will, or perhaps otherwise. This didn’t make sense yet.
Then again, nothing from the past twenty-four hours made sense.
The guy opened a desk drawer and pulled out a revolver. A black .38 with rubber handgrips. He popped open the chamber, placed it on the desk, then slid it across to Lennon. A box of bullets followed.
“They’re expecting me to hand-deliver you,” the guy said. “But I figure you can deliver yourself. Am I right?”
Lennon took the gun and bullets, waiting for the punch line. There had to be something else.
“Drink your ice water, eat your chicken, then go do what you have to. When it’s done, feel free to come back here. I might have something else for you.”
Lennon balanced the gun and box in his lap, then scribbled a hasty question. YOUR PROPOSAL?
The guy read it and smirked. “Nah, no proposal. I changed my mind.”
Lennon stood up, gun and box in his hands.
“Don’t you want to wait for your food? No, I guess you wouldn’t. Tell you what. I’ll have ’em save it for you. Come on back later. Bring your woman. We’ll have dinner. Then we can talk. Maybe there’s some business opportunities for you in Philadelphia.”
Lennon left the office, but he still heard the guy talking behind him.
“Hey—you might want to use the back entrance. My guy said somebody followed you from the parking lot.”
Preservation Mode
FOR CLOSE TO THIRTY MINUTES, WILCOXSON TAP-DANCED like a motherfucker. No, Evsei. Don’t kill the girl. Killing the girl will do nothing. No, Evsei, trust me. Put her on my bed. She’s better as bait, and Lennon will only go for it if she’s alive. You want Lennon, remember? The guy who killed your son. The only way you’re going to lure him out into the open is to use his girlfriend, and that only works if she’s alive.
Evsei, the crazy fucker, wanted to gut Katie with a steak knife right there in the apartment, then dump both bodies in front of Lennon before hoisting him onto a meat hook. A regular family reunion. The Russian was absolutely blood crazy. No wonder young Mikal had been so eager to strike out on his own.
Wilcoxson needed Katie alive. That was the only thing that mattered. He also needed to figure out a way to let Evsei take his revenge on Lennon—a walking dead man, anyway—and extricate Katie and himself from the situation. And then allow both of them to take an extended vacation without having to worry about looking over his shoulder the whole time. Unlike the pathetic Italian mob, the Russian mafiya had tentacles.
But Wilcoxson also needed that $650,000 recovered. Fieuchevksy knew nothing about his son’s plan to rob the bank robbers; in fact, he was still waiting for an explanation as to why his son was meeting with bank robbers in the first place.
So Wilcoxson whipped up a little speech.
“I made a few calls,” he told the Russian. “Your son was not involved in that bank robbery.”
Fieuchevsky’s eyes closed and his lips tightened.
“He was approached by one of the robbers—this Patrick Lennon—who presented your son with an investment opportunity. Lennon needed seed money to bankroll his next job, and your son gave him $10,000. In return, your son was promised six and a half times that amount—$65,000.”
“But,” Fieuchevsky started, “I gave him money.”
“The important thing to remember is that your son, Mikal, approached this as a business deal. He didn’t know he was dealing with a bank heister.”
“What did he need the money for?”
“Your son is the victim here. Remember that.”
“Didn’t I give him enough?”
“Evsei,” said Wilcoxson. “Listen to me. How would you like to kill this bank robber guy, and also make a lot of money in the process?”
This stopped the Mad Russian. He listened intently to Wilcoxson’s plan—the details spinning out on the spot.
To Wilcoxson’s surprise, he nodded.
“Good,” Wilcoxson said. “Let me get the tape recorder.”
Flagged
BY HIS THIRD BOILERMAKER, THE WORLD SEEMED TO make more sense. Sure, his house was burning … burnt … extinguished … but so what? That’s why God made insurance. Saugherty watched Dominick’s, looking for his boy, the bank robber. Sooner or later, he had to come back out the front. Sooner or later, he had to go for his $650,000. Sooner or later, Saugherty would get to finish the job he started late last night.