came from the back of the van, pulled out a dolly, and walked into the Shawmut Bank, where he would collect the day's receipts. If all went according to plan, he should be visible in the door in about seven minutes.
'Be alert,' Black said into the small microphone pinned to the wrist of his shirt. Inside the van, the three men crouched against the back door.
Black continued staring out the window. The hazy dusk had grown thick, made to seem even darker by the moonless sky. A mist gathered on the windshield. The streets appeared slick with water, reflecting the glare of car headlights and store signs. All in all, Black thought to himself, ideal conditions for a heist.
Black regarded the armored car driver for a moment. He was about forty-five, maybe fifty years old, ruddy from all that time standing outdoors in weather just like this, stout, boyish, as if his wife made his lunch for him every day and packed it in a brown paper bag. He had big forearms, probably from lifting bags of money back at the warehouse. Imagine that? Black thought to himself. Here's a guy making $10 an hour, and he spends his days lugging other people's money around to the point that it probably hurts his back. Life can be ironic, and irony can be cruel.
Black shot a quick glance at his watch. The guard had been inside the bank for four minutes now. According to the plan, he should be approaching the door in roughly three minutes. Black's three men continued to crouch against the van door.
'Sanchez, come on up,' Black said into the microphone.
The driver of the getaway car opened his door and walked up to the side of the van, his ski mask on top of his head like a wool hat, with the part that covered his face not yet pulled down. He stood beside the van, waiting, looking at the ground, concealing his face from any passersby.
And just as planned, the guard appeared inside the door of the bank, pushing a dolly with a duffel bag. He turned around and opened the door with his backside.
'Showtime,' Black announced into his wrist. 'G.'
In a blaze of action, the rear door of the van burst open. The three men jumped out into the moist winter air, their black masks shielding their faces. On the pavement, they fanned out, then sprinted toward the guard at the bank door from different angles. There was to be no mistake: this was a relentless commando raid. Shoot one attacker, and there were still two others to finish the job.
'Freeze,' Stemple yelled. The guard jerked his face up and was instinctively reaching for the semiautomatic pistol in his side holster when Rocco hit him with a body slam at full running speed. The guard sprawled out on the pavement, dazed. When he rolled over to get up, Cox was already on top of him, stripping his gun away, then pushing a jackboot down on his throat.
'You even move your tongue and I'll fucking rip your fucking Adam's apple out,' Cox seethed. The guard stared upward, helpless and wide-eyed.
Meantime, at the van, Sanchez yanked his mask down over his face and approached the driver of the armored car from behind. His sole job was to immobilize the driver, preferably by putting him in a headlock, and knocking him unconscious with a knee to the face. Black had chosen Sanchez for this role because of his immense physical stature. He was six feet, two inches tall, some 220 pounds of raw muscle, a veritable mountain of a man.
Black watched from the seat of the van as Sanchez headed toward the armored truck at a controlled but rapid clip. He saw the driver reach for his sidearm. Just as the driver pulled his weapon out, Sanchez made contact, grabbing his coat and preparing for the headlock.
It was misting out, and that presented an unexpected problem. The drops of moisture had balled up on the driver's water-repellent jacket.
Sanchez's hands slipped, causing a couple of seconds of uncertainty.
The driver, considerably shorter, squirmed loose. Sanchez lost his balance-not enough to fall, but plenty enough to leave a gaping canyon of opportunity for any decent shot. Barely stopping to aim, the driver fired his gun in the direction of the bandits in front of the bank door, a wild shot but a shot nonetheless. The report felt like an explosion to Curtis Black, the sound echoing off the facades of the ancient stores and carrying down rain-slickened Hanover Street like a rolling ball of thunder.
As Black sat with his panoramic view from the front seat of the van, the moment seemed to freeze before his eyes. Sanchez stood a few feet from the driver, trying to regain his balance. The driver stood with the gun in his hand, taking aim again at the bandits. By the bank door, Stemple and Rocco, grabbing the duffel bag filled with money to lug to the getaway car, had fallen to their knees at the sound of the shot. Cox took shelter by crouching down behind the incapacitated guard.
Any and all semblance of control had been lost. Every minute of meticulous planning had become nothing more than a distant, disconnected memory, irrelevant to the events at hand. Never in the life of Curtis Black had he felt the raw terror he did at this instant, watching his heist spiral out of control, his destiny in the hands of four men he neither knew nor trusted.
He watched as Sanchez regained his balance, then shifted his body weight in preparation to lunge at the gun-wielding driver. On the sidewalk, he saw Stemple and Rocco reaching inside their jackets, though now he couldn't tell who was who. They both wore those ominous ski masks. They were both dressed identically.
'Hold fire,' Black yelled into his wrist microphone. 'Hold your fucking fire.'
Crack.
Another shot, another echo rolling down Hanover Street. Passersby screamed, though Black hardly heard them. They dove behind cars, scattered down the sidewalk like frightened animals. Black scanned the scene frantically, looking for the source of the shot, afraid to know the answer. There was no good answer.
That one second felt like an hour. Black watched in horror as the driver dropped his gun, then crumpled to the wet pavement. Blood began flowing from a grotesque cavity in his neck, the liquid trickling out into a puddle of crimson that formed beneath the man's face. Sanchez stood over him for a moment, looked up at Black in the van, then bolted back toward the getaway car.
Stemple and Rocco ran toward the car with the duffel bag, their bodies slung low to the ground by the weight of the money. Cox crouched down low to the guard, lifted his gun up over his head, and swung it down violently at the guard's face, crushing his nose. He then stood up and sprinted after Stemple and Rocco.
Black flung the driver's-side door open on the van, lowered his head to conceal his features, and raced the ten yards back to the getaway car, where he snapped the rear door open and settled into the backseat.
Rocco and Stemple flung the money into the trunk and got into the back beside him. Cox settled into the front. Sanchez drove. The group squealed away, a tiny band of silence amid so much chaos.
Success and failure. Maybe a million dollars in the trunk. One man dead, five lives in so much jeopardy.
In a parking lot at the end of the Boston Fish Pier, where the group switched getaway cars from the Lincoln to a stolen station wagon, Black paused for a moment in the darkening night.
'Who killed him?' he asked, in something just short of a shout. 'Who killed him?'
No answer.
The new driver, who had met them at the pier, took in the scene with panicked eyes. It wasn't supposed to be like this, he knew. The mood was supposed to be one of restrained celebration. It was his job to sweep them quietly out of town.
'What happened?' the driver asked nervously.
No answer. Rather, the men silently but hurriedly folded themselves into the new vehicle, ignoring the question. Stemple paused at the door, turned around, and flung his gun far into the harbor. Black could only shake his head. What was the point now? he wondered.
Would it do any good to merely yell at a man who had just committed cold-blooded murder? Instead, he leaned against a light pole and vomited into a plastic trash bag. His life, he knew, would never be the same.
fifteen
