grinders and the remains doused in gasoline and burned.
Mikal thought about sending someone into the studio to take the tapes, just so that the robbers could listen to the music. In the spare moments when they weren’t screaming for their lives.
Forty-five minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was his employees. They had discovered that someone was sleeping in Mikal’s friend’s dormitory room. And it wasn’t Mikal’s friend.
The steel cried out again, and something heavy thudded to the ground outside of his window.
Lennon sat up, his deadened muscles protesting the motion, screaming for him to lie back down for another few minutes or months or years, but he had to see. He looked through the glass, which was protected by steel safety bars, and down one floor. There were three men dressed in black coats with knit black caps over their heads. One of them held a crowbar the size of an Arthurian broadsword.
They had pried the bars off the window and were preparing to enter the room below.
Andrew Whalen’s room. The Russians.
Lennon had taken a chance and picked the room directly above Whalen’s. In a building like this, singles were likely to be placed on top of other singles, doubles on doubles, and so forth, so heat ducts and plumbing lined up. Whalen’s room was too risky—somebody was going to miss him soon enough and show up looking for him. Another single room was a smarter bet. People who lived in singles were either loners who went home on weekends, or seniors who had friends or girlfriends on campus elsewhere. It wasn’t Lennon’s safest move, but it was better than wandering the streets of a strange city, looking for shelter. His crew’s “safe” apartment in West Philly should be assumed compromised. There was no place else for him to go.
Lennon watched the men enter the room. Then he heard a scream. But just for a brief second. He thought about trying to take a closer look, to see what he was up against. But he was in no condition for that. Better to stay here, regroup, rebuild, and work the problem with a fresh mind and body in the morning.
Lennon rolled back over and went to sleep, trying hard not to think of Katie.
But the newspaper story Mothers had given him in the bar had explained that. The team was crafty—they’d set up phony window-washer horses all up the west side of Seventeenth Street, which allowed them easy access to JFK, and then to … to where? That was the $650,000 question. JFK led directly to Thirtieth Street Station and on- ramps for I-76, but that was one of the most congested points in the city. Smart guys like the Wachovia crew wouldn’t go there. But they were headed up JFK for a reason. Only a few streets lie between Seventeenth and Thirtieth—most of the streets in the Twenties were stopped because of train tracks and the river. Weehew, I’m a bank robber, where do I go?
Saugherty looked in his wallet. He still had over $200 cash in there. Mothers had tossed him a line of credit.
He hailed the next cab headed down Market Street. He was in no mood to sleep and no condition to drive.
The alarm he’d set had been tripped. Someone wanted back into the room.
It hadn’t taken much. Lennon had scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, then taped it to the door of room 219: “Dude—I’m hooking up. Call first. PLEASE.”
Lennon had wanted some kind of warning, just in case the occupant of room 219 were to return sometime this evening. Every male college student had an unspoken set of rules in regards to getting lucky with a member of the opposite sex. (Lennon had never graduated from college, but he’d had enough of it to glean this nugget of wisdom.) If you were a true friend, you’d always allow your buddy the use of your room for the purposes of carnal acts. Hell, you’d even allow a complete stranger who lived in your hallway the use of your room for immoral acts. Only a total dick would raise a holla over a brother gettin’ some.
The note was vague enough—
The occupant of 219 wanted to come back, and wanted to make sure it was safe.
Lennon bolted upright and his entire body screamed back at him. There was no time. He snatched up the plastic bag full of clothes he had prepared before he had lain down and exited the dorm room. He took the staircase down one flight, slowly walked down the main hallway, and went into the men’s room. There were six shower stalls inside, three on each side. Lennon chose one at random and used it to dress.
The clothes he’d picked out of the student’s closet were purposefully random. A black White Stripes T-shirt, a gray Penn State sweatshirt, and a pair of ill-fitting Vans. He kept Andrew Whalen’s black dress pants—they fit better than anything else he saw in the closet. He had also taken a Timex Indiglo watch, which was a far cry from the Swiss Army platinum watch the Russians had stolen, but at least it told the time. Which was 2:30 A.M.
Lennon felt like shit. He needed to find new shelter quick or he wasn’t going to make it. Sooner or later he’d lose consciousness, and campus security would find him, and they’d call the cops, and everything would be over.
So Lennon walked outside the St. Neumann dormitory and sat on the front steps. He wished he had a cigarette; almost wished he smoked. He watched the darkness, and the occasional student walking past him, heading into the dorm, or to the parking lot situated directly across the way. It took forty minutes, but eventually he found what he wanted: a drunk student, pausing in front of the open driver’s door of his late model Chevy Cavalier, debating whether or not to throw up now and get it over with or take his chances and start driving home before he passed out.
Lennon walked over to the lot quickly and made a big show of putting his hands out to help the student. He’d noticed the huge brown glass bubbles attached to poles dotting this part of campus—security cameras. As Lennon put his hand on the guy’s back, he also nailed him once in the kidneys, which temporarily paralyzed him, and then another time in the windpipe, which temporarily rendered him mute.
Lennon pushed the student to the passenger side, relieved him of his keys, then started the Cavalier and drove out of the parking lot and down the hill to Belfield Avenue. Once the car nosed out of campus, Lennon stopped. Wait. He couldn’t do this here—not in this neighborhood. Lennon drove back up the hill and took the loop that put him right in front of the dorms. He then reached over, opened the passenger door, and pushed the kid out. Campus security would spot him sooner or later. Besides, friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
Now, shelter again. Lennon didn’t know the neighborhoods well enough to know safe ones vs. not-so-safe ones, so he tried to find the only strip he knew: Kelly Drive. There were plenty of bridges and tree-covered canopies along the drive. One of them had to be good enough for temporary shelter. It took a while to find—the streets were hopelessly confusing in this part of the city, with burned-out warehouses and ruined shopping strips—but eventually Lennon nosed the Cavalier onto I-76, and then took the Kelly Drive exit. He found what he wanted within three
