Of course, we’re probably not going to find your pal Crosby, so I’ll put you in that pipe in his place. Then I’ll go after him. The heister with the money. Sorry Katie—you’re beyond saving, sweetheart.
He watched Lennon quit Word and click the “Don’t Save” box. His weekend memoir disappeared.
Then he looked at Saugherty and made a pistol with his right hand.
“Yes. Guns. We’re going to need guns to get Katie, aren’t we? Well, brother, you just happened upon the right retired cop. Come on back to the room. Got a surprise for you.”
Not the faxed photo of dead Katie—Saugherty had already swiped it, folded it, and put it in his jacket pocket. No second mistakes.
The surprise was inside a green army duffel bag, the payoff for a favor he had done a Philly S.W.A.T. team member some years ago—covering up a wife-beating beef. In return, Saugherty had asked for a bag of tricks: heavy artillery stuff he could keep off the books. The bag certainly came in handy from time to time. This time being one of them.
Saugherty thought he’d be using this stuff in a standoff with some of his former colleagues, if it came to that. It was part of his exit strategy. But now it was looking like he had another option, after all.
“Isn’t this sweet?”
Lennon didn’t seem impressed. He chose two .38s, and it was obvious he didn’t know much about guns, as he didn’t do much in the way of shopping. He was like an amateur home owner grabbing the first available tool to stop the leaky kitchen faucet. Didn’t matter if it was a hammer or pliers or a screwdriver or a chainsaw.
Saugherty, on the other hand, chose carefully. He skipped the pistols and rifles. He wasn’t going to need them. Instead, he dipped into special ordinance: an oversized flare-gun-looking thing. It held two flashbang grenades, used by S.W.A.T. teams to disorient and confuse their targets. The sonic blast was enough to render ten men unconscious at close range. Eardrums would be burst. Nasal vessels would rupture. Eyes would bleed.
The bank robber was giving him a quizzical look.
“What? This? Flare gun. It’s a distraction. For when we go after your sister. This’ll confuse the hell out of the wops.”
That seemed to satisfy Lennon, who checked his pistols to make sure they were loaded. Of course they were. All part of the exit strategy.
And the other part was this: once they determined that Crosby was a no-show at his own funeral, Saugherty would dump a flash-bang grenade in Lennon’s lap. That might be enough to kill him, but probably not. Either way, he’d dump him and the pistol down the pipe, then hightail it out of there.
Track down Crosby. Squeeze him. Retire.
“Ready to go, brother?”
Tell the boys I’m coming home.
—WILBUR UNDERHILL
Then they pulled up to a concrete parking pad within view of the pipes. And it got even worse.
Lennon couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
There were three people down there carrying two body bags toward the pipe. At first, Lennon thought he was watching a replay of his own near-burial from Friday night. But no, these were three different people, carrying—presumably—two different corpses to the mouth of the pipe. The one that was due to be covered with a thick slab of concrete in the near future.
Saugherty saw them, too. “What is this? A Mafia fire sale? Bury all of your dead now while prices stay rock- bottom? Who the fuck are these guys?”
Lennon squinted. He made one of them out.
Big guy. Pasty. Tortoiseshell glasses. Ugly moustache.
It was the guy from the South Philly basement. And his buddies. The ones who had held a gun to Katie’s head.
The body bag.
Plastic.
Sized just right.
The blurring stopped. Everything seemed clear now.
Lennon turned, pointed one of the .38s at Saugherty’s armpit—not covered by Kevlar—then pulled the trigger.
The ex-cop had been distracted by the strangers. “What … ?” Then, upon looking down. “I … can’t fucking believe this.” A dark damp stain spread down across the sleeve of his shirt.
Lennon left the car and made his way down to the pipes. He heard the driver’s door creak open behind him. Saugherty was trying to crawl out. Let him. He’d finish him later.
The gunshot hadn’t alarmed the three guys down below. After all, this was Camden. But the creaking door was another story.
They all looked up in Lennon’s direction.
By this point, Lennon was racing toward them, a gun in each hand. He had only two thoughts. First: see Katie with my own eyes. Then: exterminate. The rest would fall into place.
“What the fuck?” said one of them.
“Hey, it’s him,” said the big guy with the tortoiseshell glasses. “The bank robber.”
Lennon shot him right between the lenses.
His two pals dropped the body bag and reached for their weapons, but Lennon stopped and aimed a pistol at each of them and shook his head.
This wasn’t the deterrent that Lennon hoped it would be. They drew their guns anyway. Pointed them at Lennon.
“He wants you to open those bags,” said a voice.
It was Saugherty, that crazy bastard. Staggering toward them with that oversized flare gun in his hand.
“Frankly, I’m just as curious as he is. So why don’t you do us all a favor and unzip ’em?”
The two henchmen, who looked like twins now that Lennon had a chance to think about it, appeared puzzled. But not for long.
Gunfire snapped to life everywhere.
“Oh, fuck me up the ass!”
Bullets sparked off the concrete slab, and ripped through fabric and flesh.
“Shit! Shit!”
Then came a
In the microsecond it took for Lennon to lose consciousness, he came to realize: Yes, this was it.
This was the death flashback.
All of it.
