Wheelman, The

“Okay. That’s it. You work for us until you pay back what you owe, and then we let her go on her way. You fuck up, she dies. And I send somebody to hunt you down, too. Whaddya think, Dillinger?”

Just for thinking the thoughts.

“I’ll take your silence as agreement.”

And then someone hit Lennon from behind. That failed to render him unconscious, as someone else quickly noted, so the first person hit him again, which did the trick.

MONDAY a.m.

This bank, my sister could have robbed.

—PATRICK MICHAEL MITCHELL

Breakfast in Bed

THE SAD TRUTH WAS THIS: LENNON WASN’T REALLY A bank robber. Sure, he’d taken part in countless bank heists. If you had handed him an application with a box that requested previous experience, and if you could somehow persuade Lennon to fill it out, he’d write “bank robber” in that box. But technically, Lennon had never robbed a single bank. He had merely transported bank robbers from one point (right outside the bank) to another point (another vehicle, or a safe house, or an airport, or a cave in the woods) in exchange for a cut of the money. Lennon was a master getaway driver. He’d read a ton about bank robberies. But still: he was not a bank robber.

So for his first solo robbery, Lennon picked the easiest target he could think of: a bank inside a supermarket. He’d read they were the easiest. Nobody wants to shop for doughnuts and cold cuts inside something that resembles Fort Knox.

His target: a SuperFresh on South Street, a long walk from the mob’s safe house in South Philly. Lennon had stolen a car from a few blocks away, then simply driven up Ninth Street until he saw the supermarket. It was a start.

But Lennon had no intention of robbing banks for that fat Italian gobshite bastard. He just knew he had to put his hands on enough money to appease the goons left behind at the safe house, spend two dollars of it on a screwdriver, then use it to get some answers. Then collect Katie and finally get the fuck out of Philadelphia forever.

He didn’t remember anything else useful from the previous night; the second blow had knocked him out cold. The next morning, Lennon had woken up alone in the same house, in the same bedroom, on the same mattress. He had tried out his voice; he still couldn’t use it. He wondered if those drops Dovaz had used were permanent. Wouldn’t that be a scream.

On the floor next to him was a typed note that read, “Eat breakfast and get going.” There were three Nutri- Grain bars and a liter bottle of spring water. The note continued: Make your daily deposit through the mail slot at 1810 Washington Ave.”

So the bastard had been serious, after all. Rob banks, hand him the money.

That’s when he saw that the note had been resting on something else—a piece of fabric.

No, not fabric—underwear.

Katie’s.

Lennon drank some of the water—which burned the living shit out of his throat—then put the bars in his jacket pockets and left the house. He stole a car, then saw the SuperFresh a short while later. Let’s get this over with already.

How the FBI Gets Its Man

BLING HAD ALWAYS BEEN THE BANK HEIST MASTERMIND, but he didn’t talk shop too much. Just concrete details, like this joint here’s got an ACU that sniffs gunpowder. Lennon would nod and file it away. All Lennon really had to know was that Bling knew his shit enough to be outside, with the money, no worries. Most of what Lennon knew about bank heists came from books he read as a kid in Ireland—stuff brought over by his American dad in a duffel bag. They were musty paperbacks with titles like How the FBI Gets Its Man and The Bad Ones and We Are the Public Enemies and I, Mobster and New York: Confidential. They sparked his adolescent imagination and led him to crime encyclopedias and lurid biographies and yellowed men’s magazines he nicked from bookshops in Listowel.

Lennon always knew his father was a bad guy, but Lennon’s mum never shared the details. She’d only spent a couple of weeks with him while on holiday in New York City in 1971. Freddy Selway made a few visits to see his boy later on, but only when he needed a place to hide overseas. It was during one of these visits, in 1979, that he’d brought along the duffel bag full of paperbacks. Freddy had to split, so he left the bag behind. Or maybe he’d left the bag behind on purpose. Lennon never knew. In late December 1980, Freddy Selway was killed trying to kill somebody else. Lennon’s daddy was a hit man.

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