Wheelman, The

broken lives.” Huh. That sounded good, Saugherty thought. “Planted evidence. Rigged trials. You name it. And the day he painted the inside of his Ford Explorer with his brains was the day I swore I’d try to set things right.” Damn, boy! You’re on fire! Hot-cha! I have to remember this shit for when I retire with the 650K. Sit down there in Cancun and write a police novel. Bank robbery loot, that was one thing. But write a cop novel? Being a retired Philly cop with some scandal behind him? That was like printing money.

Saugherty looked down.

Lennon was holding the photo of his dead sister, naked and smeared with peanut butter.

But he didn’t look down. He was studying Saugherty. Probably trying to figure how much of this was bullshit.

About ninety-nine percent, buddy, Saugherty thought.

Confessions of a Bank Robber

DEEP DOWN, LENNON KNEW HE COULDN’T TRUST Saugherty. And here he was, telling some story about crooked cops and helping people. Please. Who the fuck did this guy think he was talking to? But since the guy was in a soul-baring mood, maybe it was time to play along.

At the very least it would be a way to get out of this hotel room. Back into the city proper. Find Katie, shoot everything that moved, then light out of Philadelphia forever.

Lennon pushed the police reports back on the desk and …

(Slight Return)

THANK YOU OH MY GENTLE JESUS HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Confessions (Cont’d)

… MADE THE BY-NOW FAMILIAR PANTOMIME. PEN. PAPER. Bring them to me. Saugherty was a quick study. And he seemed awfully relieved that Lennon wasn’t flipping through his precious case files any longer. Probably enough police corruption in there to make a hundred investigative journalists cream their pants. Who cared? Not Lennon.

They made an odd-looking pair at the front desk: Lennon, with his beat-up face and white hip-hop tracksuit; Saugherty, with his high-school-math-teacher sport coat and wrinkled-beyond-redemption button-down shirt. Saugherty looked like a suburban dad with a nasty secret. The age difference was about right. Lennon looked like he enjoyed it rough. Whatever.

The request for the key to the hotel’s word-processing center seemed to take the clerk by surprise. Probably thought they wanted to surf for man-on-boy porn.

Again: whatever.

Once they were in the room and the busted-up looking Dell had booted up, Lennon started typing furiously. He’d learned to type by e-mailing Katie. It was the ideal way to communicate whenever work separated them, which was often. Granted, Lennon wasn’t going to win any typing awards. He used two fingers in a modified hunt- and-peck fashion, occasionally bringing the thumb and middle fingers into play.

Saugherty read over his shoulder. “Ah. Yeah. That I know. Wachovia.”

Lennon shot him a look.

“Sorry. Go ahead. Do your thing.”

So Lennon continued his rundown of the weekend, from the heist itself to getting arrested this morning. It wasn’t an emotional account. Pure business. Because that was what Saugherty wanted to hear, right? About the money. Because he knew that Saugherty just wanted Lennon to lead him to the money, at which point he’d be arrested or killed. Nothing had changed since Friday night. Actually, in a long weekend of turnabouts and backstabs, Saugherty’s consistency was refreshing.

“No kidding! Shit, your own partner? That son of a bitch.”

More typing.

“Yeah, the Russians. No surprise there. But how did the wops get involved—”

More typing.

“Ah. Gotcha. Which is why I got the shit kicked out of me when I followed you down to that restaurant. Somehow, knowledge diminishes the pain, don’t you think? Guy walks up to you out of nowhere, pops you in the kisser, you think, What the fuck? The question hurts just as bad as the punch. But say you find you were giving his baby sister the ol’ sloppy push from behind. Now it makes sense all of a sudden. Am I right?”

Lennon ignored him and continued typing. He wished the ex-cop would shut the fuck up and pay attention to what he was writing.

More commentary:

“Unfuckingbelievable.”

And:

“A cop—right there at the party?”

On and on.

The other reason Lennon was spilling his guts? He needed Saugherty’s help figuring out this shit. Where was the money? Maybe there was still a spark of a keen analytical mind somewhere in that ex-cop’s booze-addled brain. Maybe Saugherty could spot something Lennon had overlooked.

When Lennon finished, Saugherty let out one long whistle.

“Man. I almost feel bad shooting you in the shoulder and strapping you to a table. You’ve had one hell of a weekend, haven’t you boss?”

Lennon typed:

help me rescue my sister. we find the money, split it … deal?

“Nah. We look for the money first.”

NO TIME

Lennon stood up from the chair. He had options. Saugherty might have a gun, but it’d be tough to use in such close quarters. Lennon could hurl him through the plate-glass window that separated the word-processing center from the hotel lobby.

“Alright, alright. I’m not a prick. You want your sister safe. I’d want the same thing. And I know where she is; she’s going to be fine. These are wannabe Mafiosi. I know ’em. They’re lazy and greedy. They’re not going to jeopardize their meal ticket. But here’s the thing: we’re on a deadline for the money, too. So consider this counterproposal.”

Lennon nodded. Go on.

“Seems to me there’s only one option with the money. Your third partner—this Crosby guy. You haven’t seen him since the morning of the heist. You assume he’s down that pipe, but you don’t know.

“What you do know is that your other partner—the one who double-crossed you—doesn’t have the money. ’Cause he’d be sitting back with his feet up in Cancun about now, sipping a Mai Tai and getting himself an Oriental massage complete with a happy ending. Am I right? So Crosby is the missing link.”

Which is what Katie had said.

“So first we go to the pipe over in Camden and fish out the bodies. We find Crosby, fine. We got to look somewhere else. We don’t find him, though, he’s our guy. Then we get your sister and plan our next move. Deal?”

In the Bag