Lennon kept his father’s paperbacks in a safe-deposit box in a small federal bank in Champaign, Illinois, along with $54,000 in emergency funds. The books were among his most prized possessions; he didn’t dare leave them somewhere that might be compromised.
Right now, his mind kept coming back to How the FBI Gets Its Man. It was one of the many books produced by the FBI, under the watchful eye of J. Edgar Hoover, meant to glorify the agency. The bad guys were punished; the G-men were always smarter and sharper and quicker to their guns. But Lennon, even at a young age, identified with the heisters and killers, who had cool names and led interesting lives. Lives he imagined his father leading.
He knew all about bank robbery from How the FBI Gets Its Man.
There were lone-wolf note jobs, and multiple-man takeover teams. Since Lennon lacked a team and a voice, a takeover was out. It had to be a note job. Quick and clean. He also knew that bank tellers were instructed to cooperate with bank robbers no matter what, lest the bank robber go crazy and start pumping the clientele full of lead. So the key was the note. The note had to be fucking scary. So scary, the teller had to think twice about an alarm, or a dye pack, or any other bullshit.
This is why Lennon thought a bank inside a supermarket was his best bet. There were moms and kids and old people and all kinds of innocent bystanders, there to buy milk and bread and juice and cereal. No teller was going to argue with a scary man with a gun.
Fuck. A gun.
He’d have to fake that … .
No. Wait.
This was America, post–9/11. He’d only have to fake a bomb.
Here’s a Suggestion
LENNON STOPPED INSIDE A MCDONALD’S AND BOUGHT A nine-pack of Chicken McNuggets—easy protein—with change he’d found in the stolen car. He sat down and wrote his note, using a pen ripped from the “Give Us Your Suggestions!” box and the back of a McDonald’s job application. When he finished eating his chicken, Lennon borrowed the gold token that would unlock the bathroom, where he used water to pat down his hair and straighten his tie and lapels and try to look as respectable as possible. Which was tough, seeing that his face bore the bruises and scrapes of a rough beating.
What the hell. Maybe that added to his scary factor.
Before stopping at MDonald’s, Lennon had walked into a junk shop and pocketed a plastic beeper toy meant for a toddler. God knows why toddlers needed to play with beepers, but that was something for Katie to figure out later. With Michael. Whoever the fuck Michael was.
Next stop: a Mailboxes, Etc., where he nicked a package in a metal bin meant for Herman Wolf in Warminster, Pennsylvania. Sorry, Herman. It was the right size.
On to SuperFresh.
Lennon flashed back to his favorite chapter from How the FBI Gets Its Man—chapter 7, which was a short history of Al Nussbaum, genius bank robber. Nussbaum kept a farm in upstate New York full of high-powered weaponry and bomb-making materials. He was the man who, in the mid-1960s, pioneered the idea that a mad bomber epidemic could distract police from bank heists going down.
Nussbaum probably never had to worry about stealing toy beepers or packages from mail services.
SuperFresh was like every other American supermarket he’d visited—bright, cool, crisp, white, frigid, and overstuffed with food neatly packed into every conceivable shelf, corner, and aisle.
Lennon placed the bomb on top of a stack of Fruity Pebbles—on sale for $3.99 this week—then walked over to the bank teller. He waited his turn, then slid the note across the Formica countertop.
Peanut Butter
SOMETHING ON THE SCANNER CAUGHT SAUGHERTY’S ear—a bit about a dead woman. A bunch of kids found her in an abandoned lot in Southwest Philly where neighborhood residents dump old furniture and trash.
Saugherty had holed himself up in the Comfort Inn up in Bensalem, right off Route 1, just out of the city limits. He took a corner room so he could see the highway. He didn’t want the flashing cherries and blueberries to come screaming out of nowhere. He was still under investigation, as far as he knew. He hadn’t made himself reachable.
The room was packed with the necessary supplies: the police scanner, of course, to see if his Irish bank-robber buddy had emerged. Two sixes of Yuengling Lager in a hard-case cooler. Three bottles of Early Times. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Two bottles of Ketel One—a buddy of his had turned him on to that stuff. Sipping vodka. Go figure. Six bottles of water. Two sticks of pepperoni; one block of sharp white cheese. Box of Ritz. Rye bread, liverwurst, mustard, fat red onion. He stuck the liverwurst and sharp cheese in the cooler with the beer. The rest could stay out.
He’d also paid a visit to his private armory over in Tacony, along the river. There was a bunch of stuff in a black canvas bag under the bed.
Saugherty had been listening for key words like “bank robber” or “heist” or “Wachovia” or “Lennon,” but then caught the police code for body dump. He called a friend on the force and asked for the skinny, which was: woman, late twenties, found naked at Forty-ninth and Grays Ferry, her wrists and ankles bound with brown extension cords and her body smeared with peanut butter. She was three months pregnant.
Wait, back up, said Saugherty. Peanut butter.
Yeah, confirmed the source. Peanut butter. People on the scene thought the killer—or dumper—smeared it on so rats from the area would eat the evidence.
You got a photo? asked Saugherty. Something nagged him about this.
After some back and forth, the source agreed to fax a photo of the woman’s face over to the Comfort Inn’s business center. Saugherty took another three sips of Early Times, then wandered down there.
He got the faxed photo.
Holy fucking shit.
SuperFucked
I HAVE A BOMB IN A PACKAGE IN ONE OF THE AISLES. GIVE me all your money—no dye packs, no alarms—or people will die. No sense fucking around with it, Lennon thought. This wasn’t an essay for a cash prize; this was a bank robbery demand note. He’d never written one before, but he surmised the most successful were direct and to the point.
The girl across the counter looked down at the note. She was pretty, in a geeky kind of way. Her brown hair was cut unflatteringly and she wore chunky glasses that her Goth friends probably thought were cool. But Lennon liked her look. He didn’t like that he was going to cause her some major grief this morning. This is why he enjoyed getaway driving: no personal interaction, no countermeasures, none of this at all.
She looked up at him questioningly. Are you serious?
Lennon froze his face, deadpan. Yes, I’m fucking serious. He let her see the toy beeper in his hand.
The girl nodded, then started to busy herself under the counter.
Lennon waited.
“We’re supposed to put a security packet in here,” she said, quietly. “But I’m not going to do that. I want you to know that, okay?”
Lennon nodded.
“It’s not much, either. Just a little over a thousand. But I’m not holding back.”
Lennon blinked at her. Come on, love.
“Just don’t hurt anybody, okay?”