Enough was enough already. He raised the toy beeper.
The girl slid him the money, tucked in a white plastic bag. She hadn’t asked if he’d wanted paper.
Lennon took the bag and walked toward the exit. There was a little boy trying to rattle a prize out of a small red machine in the aisle and a young couple pushing a cart full of bagged groceries. He stepped around them and through the automatic doors, which whooshed open at his approach. Through the vestibule, to the other set of doors.
Which refused to open.
As did the ones behind him, when he backed up. The young couple looked at him through the glass. What did you do?
Oh, fuck me, he thought.
Trapped.
Like a gerbil in a Habitrail.
At that moment, for the first time all weekend, Lennon was glad Bling had been killed. He wasn’t sure how he would have explained this to him.
A short while later, after the police had arrived and Lennon was in cuffs and ready to be led to the nearest squad car, the girl from the grocery store approached him. She looked at him through those clunky glasses like a curious schoolgirl at a science exhibit.
“Next time,” she said, “pick a toy beeper that doesn’t say Fisher-Price on the side.”
She didn’t actually say that. Lennon imagined her saying that. Because that’s how this story was going to end, when it was written up for the newspapers in a couple of hours. The bomb angle, the toy. Guaranteed coverage. And the early editions would wrap up a little after midnight, and sooner or later, a copy would wind up in that Italian bastard’s hands, and Katie would be killed.
The Second Fax
“LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE ALREADY,” HIS SOURCE whined.
“Come on. One lousy photo.”
“What, are you whacking off to crime photos over there? It’s just some stupid asshole who tried to knock over a bank with a phony beeper and a napkin from McDonald’s. Happens every day. Read all about it in tomorrow’s Daily News.”
“Come on. One lousy fuckin’ photo, Jonsey.”
“Am I bent over a desk? Are you tickling my colon, you asshole?”
“Come on.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, Saugherty.”
“I know, I know. You need the fax number again?”
A few minutes later, Saugherty knew that the Philadelphia Police Department had captured Patrick Selway Lennon, only they didn’t know it yet—unless the cops involved in Saturday night’s shoot-out happened to drop by the holding cell. Not likely. The buzzword on the Philly P.D.: understaffed, overwhelmed. The mayor had just whacked 1,400 jobs—among them, cops and firemen—from the city payrolls the previous winter. They made the best of what they had. The Wanted posters from Saturday night hadn’t even circulated, and the fingerprint hit wouldn’t come back for about an hour. If they could get to it.
Which gave him about an hour.
Shit. He’d barely recovered from the shock of the first fax and gotten another few sips of Early Times in when the scanner said something about a 211 down on South Street. Which made no sense whatsoever, but the last place Saugherty had seen Lennon had been only a few blocks south of South, at the Italian joint. So it did make a kind of cockeyed sense. Plus, his gut twitched the same way it had before. This was something.
He’d have to leave this tumbler of Early Times behind. Breakfast would have to wait.
Saugherty hopped in his borrowed car and drove down Cottman, hooked a left onto Princeton, hopped on I-95, and hoped the morning traffic snarls had figured themselves out. The roundhouse was all the way downtown, and he couldn’t be late. He had another quick stop first. He had a bag to pick up.
MONDAY p.m.
To a few, it’ll be grief
To the law, a relief
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
—BONNIE PARKER
Any Goodly Amount
“FIRST OF ALL, YOU CAN CUT THE SHIT ABOUT BEING mute. I KNOW you’re not, okay?”
Saugherty had tap-danced like Fred Astaire on uppers to get inside this interrogation room. And this mick bastard was still playing the Shields and Darnell shit.
“Just say hi, you asshole. We don’t have time for this.”
The bank robber stared at him, his eyes opened wide, as if he was trying to mentally communicate with Saugherty. His hands were cuffed behind his back, looped through the chair. Go ahead and threaten to detonate a bomb in the U.S., see what happens. Saugherty still couldn’t believe he was in here.
Now the guy was trying to mouth something.
“I can’t read lips, so quit it. Do-you-know-where-the-money-is?”
The guy sighed.
Saugherty wanted to crawl up the side of the room and shit nickels. But then he stopped. Had he made a mistake? Was it possible the guy didn’t actually speak before firing that gun and blowing up Saugherty’s garage? Did he imagine the whole thing? No. He had heard it. That Irish brogue, the word “arsehole,” as if asshole needed the extra consonant. So what was going on here?
“Let me make it plain. I-know-where-your-sister-is.”
The bank robber’s eyes snapped to attention.
“Yeah, I know she’s your sister. Katie Selway. I know she got caught up in this whole thing, and I know she’s in trouble. And I can help you get to her.”
Of course, Saugherty was completely fumbling around this one. And he had left out an important detail or two, but that could be ironed out later.
“That got your attention, didn’t it?”
The guy nodded. Slightly. As if to say, go on.
“I need to know you’re going to help me out at the end of this, then. We need to recover that money, and then I’ll help you recover your sister. Do we have an agreement?”
Lennon, the bank robber, actually seemed to be thinking it over. He knew where the money was, alright.
He nodded again. Just once.
“You know, we have the most revealing conversations, you and I,” Saugherty said. “I love that about us. In this business, it’s really hard to meet people you feel a connection with. Do you feel the same way? Okay. Get ready.”
The two men sat there in the soft pink room with the wire mesh on the opaque windows, getting ready.
“It’s about to go off.”
Silence.
“What’s about to go off, you ask? The suitcase nuke I put in a locker over at the bus station at Tenth and Filbert. Let’s go.”
I-95
THE EX-COP WAS A LUNATIC LOSER. BUT THEN AGAIN, Lennon had been sitting in a cell, plotting an escape, a way out, a way back to Katie, and he’d come up with nothing better.
Lennon needed to reach Katie if he did nothing else on this earth before he left it. So let the ex-cop’s greed lead the way. Lennon didn’t know where the Wachovia money was any more than he knew the location of the Holy Fucking Grail. But this ex-cop, Saugherty, didn’t need to know that yet. And dealing with one ex-cop was better than a stationhouse full of full-time police officers.
Besides, an extra man would come in handy when he went to the drop-off point and made those Italian fucks tell him about Katie. He could always just tell … or write, that is … Saugherty that this mob capo, Perelli, had the money. And they had to go through Perelli to get it back. Problem solved. Saugherty could be dealt with later.
Amazingly, no one gave a fuck when they just walked out the front door. Saugherty fed them some bullshit about “transferring the prisoner,” and that was it. No fuss, no muss. No one had identified him as the same guy who was taking shots at some cops over at Rittenhouse Square two nights before. Nobody blinked. Was this city for real? This guy Saugherty just flashed some old piece of plastic ID and they were out of there. Into a car. A blue Chevrolet Cavalier. They both climbed in without a word. Saugherty took them up one street, then turned right, blurring past some brick buildings with historical designations on them, then they were on I-95, headed north. America.