Saugherty. It was all about a guy who went around carjacking and heisting and killing; your score was measured in dollars you either stole or earned via underworld activity. According to his son, it was also a badge of honor to rack up as many “wanted” stars as you could—the maximum was six—and the easiest way to do that was kill cops. His son loved this game. It apparently didn’t dawn on him that his father used to earn their daily bread putting his life on the line as a cop, facing off against real-life scumbags who also considered it a badge of honor to snuff a pig.
Anyway, the protagonist of the game had no trouble at all stealing cars, parked or otherwise occupied. You simply moved your man close to the car, then pressed the button. This guy, it was like he was pressing that button. Boom. He was in the car.
Saugherty followed him out of the parking lot and back onto Roosevelt Boulevard.
He wished he’d had more time to read up on this guy. Everyone underestimated Saugherty, and Saugherty kept underestimating the fake mute.
What was his story? Where were his two partners, and why weren’t they sitting on the money? Or were they? And Lennon was fighting to collect his third?
No. Something had gone wrong. Pro heisters never hung around the target city. They struck hard, struck fast, and got the hell out. There was a wrinkle somewhere, which kept Lennon here.
But what was the wrinkle?
Damn it, Saugherty. Before you started pickling your brains on a daily basis, you were a pretty good investigator. Figure it out. Keep thinking ahead. This could be the difference between the life you’ve always wanted to lead and life in a (now) burned-up twin over in Pennypack Park.
The dash clock in his neighbor’s car read 9:34 A.M. He hadn’t been up this early in years.
Had he been up all night? He had.
Lennon followed Roosevelt Boulevard all the way down, through lower Northeast Philly and past crappy areas like Logan and Hunting Park and Feltonville and other neighborhoods that had been vibrant at some distant point in the past—full of factories and jobs and neighborhood delicatessens and candy shops and people who swept their front stoops every day. Now they rotted. Some people still tried to believe the neighborhoods were worth saving. You could see them every now and again, along the boulevard. A house with a new paint job and crisp awning. But the problem was, it was usually right next to a gaping hole in the row where Licenses & Inspections had finally ordered a home’s destruction. Nobody wanted to move into places like these anymore—certainly not anybody who could potentially save a neighborhood.
Saugherty wondered what Lennon thought of the view—if he noticed it at all. According to the guy’s I.O., he had been born in Listowel, Ireland, but who knows where he had spent his formative years. Maybe it was here. Maybe he grew up in a shithole like Feltonville, and pulled jobs to ensure that he’d never have to live in a shithole ever again.
If so, it was a reason Saugherty could understand. He’d done the same thing. Hell, it was why he was doing this now.
The boulevard trimmed itself down from twelve lanes to four—two in each direction. Lennon kept driving. He passed the sign marked KELLY DRIVE. Up ahead, the boulevard ended and offered two choices: I-76 West, into the suburbs, and I-76 East, which swung past downtown Philly, then South Philly, then finally the Philly International Airport. There was nothing for Lennon out west—unless he had a hankering to see Valley Forge, where George Washington and his posse wrapped their bleeding feet in rags and prepared to duke it out with the British.
No, Lennon headed east. Big surprise. The question now was: downtown Philly, near the scene of the crime, or right to the airport and up and out of here?
Well, Lennon wasn’t headed out of town on what he had on him, unless he had stashed a getaway bag in an airport locker. Saugherty had given him a thorough field stripping, and the guy didn’t have a dime on him. His little convenience store stickup couldn’t have netted him more than fifty dollars. Read the signs on the door. They’re telling the truth. Yeah, the only thing he stole from that 7-Eleven, as far as Saugherty could tell, was a bunch of calling cards and beef jerky.
Breakfast of champions. Although Saugherty wouldn’t have passed up a few sticks of beef right now. He was starving—the last thing he’d eaten were those fucking Memphis Dogs.
As predicted, Lennon took an exit that spat him out downtown. Saugherty almost lost him—Lennon took another sudden exit on the right, to Twenty-third Street.
Damn. The guy
The bank robber who had probably murdered his son.
Thank God his Dimitra wasn’t alive to see his shame.
During the assault, Fieuchevsky had merely held his tongue. He had decided to show patience with the crazy bitch. Let her rant and rave and spit and threaten. It did not matter. Soon, his employees—the ones who found Mikal’s truck—would arrive. Within thirty minutes, the crazy bitch would be dangling from the end of a meat hook in his garage, begging for a merciful conclusion to the proceedings.
But then the bitch actually paused to answer her cell phone, and without warning, beat Fieuchevsky into unconsciousness.
This was madness.
Madness, too, that his tan Naugahyde couch was streaked with his own blood. The crazy bitch had beaten him about the face, then wiped the blood clean on his furniture. His $4,000 set. Like it was Kleenex.
Fieuchevsky couldn’t decide who he’d enjoy seeing tortured more—the bank robber, or his crazy bitch.
He’d savor both.
Then, a name popped into his head. An outsider, who knew this sort of thing. A friend his son had once mentioned. “This finance guy I met, Dad? He used to rob banks. Just keep that bit on the Q.T.—he don’t like anybody knowing.”
Fieuchevsky picked up the phone.
Call him bitter.
The moment he saw the Honda Prelude he could breathe again. Not that he was worried he wouldn’t—the only other two people who knew about the location and make and model of the car were both dead, decomposing in a tube down by the river. No, it was about reassurance on a cosmic level. That everything he touched didn’t necessarily have to turn to shit.
His shoulder was really worrying him now. It smelled funny, like Chinese food left on a kitchen counter too long. That meant infection. That meant trouble, unless he found a doctor who could prescribe antibiotics soon. The wound had pretty much closed and caked on itself; his shoulder would never be perfect, but at least he wasn’t bleeding out. On his personal pyramid of woes, the shoulder was the apex. That was followed by existential worries, of double crosses and bad luck and everything else mental. Below that was a thick base of bruises and contusions and cuts and sprains and everything else. Lennon had a feeling that if you were to remove every broken/ailing part of his body, all he’d have left would be two eyeballs and a spleen. Maybe not even the spleen.
But everything would heal. Money would help. Money and a plane ticket and a room at a resort hotel and a friendly doctor and good food and rest and music. That was it. And still a half a million left to live on. Spent frugally,
