Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (6 page)

At point-blank range the muzzle flashed and pellets tore through Perkins’ face and chest, sending him crashing back to the ground. The recoil knocked Jeannot back inside the truck into the bags of money. He found his feet and jumped down, gun still in his hands, as seventeen-year-old Leon shouted from down in the hole.

‘What was that, Jeannot? What did I tell you about touching Dad’s gun?’

‘I shot someone,’ Jeannot shouted, as he moved closer and saw an NYPD badge shining on the blood-spattered chest. ‘A cop.’

Leon didn’t believe what he was hearing. He wanted to pull out of the hole and investigate, but he’d almost got the train home and when it was heavy it had a nasty tendency to jump the tracks if there was a sudden change of speed.

As soon as the train clattered into the station at his feet, Leon vaulted out of the hole and found his brother frozen stiff, staring at a big red mess on the concrete.

‘Is he dead?’ Jeannot asked.

Leon snatched the shotgun. ‘Jeannot, if your brain’s spread up the wall like that, you can be sure of it.’

Jeannot’s voice went all high like he was about to cry. ‘But,’ he blurted, after a pause, ‘Dad always told us to shoot first and ask questions later.’

Leon gave his little brother a pat on the back. ‘You did the right thing, but now we need to get out of here. Did you see anyone else?’
exactly

‘Just him,’ Jeannot said.

Leon thought for a second. ‘Cops work in pairs. I’ll go look for the other one. You jump down the hole and do the emergency ring on the bell. You know how that goes?’

Jeannot nodded. ‘Three rings, stop, three rings. Repeat after ten seconds if they don’t respond.’

As Jeannot raced into the storeroom, Leon stalked his way around the side of the truck, clutching the shotgun and moving slow with his back close to the wall. At the top of the ramp he saw the outline of a fat man looking through the open gates.

‘Perky, watcha got down there?’ Officer Vernon shouted.

Leon made a dash from the top of the ramp to the rear of the ticket booth and crouched down low. The fat man heard but didn’t see.

‘That you, Perkins?’

Leon poked his head out and watched as the fat cop took a couple of steps. The cop was limping badly and clearly in no state to go far; he backed up to the car. As he leaned inside to radio for backup, Leon came out of hiding and rushed him.

‘Officer Vernon requesting assistance, I’m at Unicorn Tyre on the corner of—

The radio operator back at the precinct heard the bang. Vernon felt a shower of pellets hitting his back and thighs, but Leon had shot from too far away and most of the pellets chinked against the car. As Leon pulled down the shotgun barrel to reload, Officer Vernon got his hand on his service revolver and shot back blindly.

The first shot went wild, but the bang made Leon jump, giving Vernon time to take aim second time around. The bullet exploded inside Leon’s chest, blowing his lungs apart as he crashed backwards into the gates of the Unicorn parking lot.

A burst of adrenaline had kept Vernon upright while he was under attack, but once Leon was down Vernon succumbed to the pain of the hot pellets buried under his skin and collapsed into the snow beside the car.

Vernon tried reaching inside to grab the microphone, but gave up when he realised he didn’t need to. The operator at the precinct had heard the shotgun blast at the end of his last transmission.

‘Code one,’ the operator yelled through the radio static. ‘Possible officer shooting. All units head for Unicorn Tyre and Parking. Priority one!’

*

PT ran out of cage two and jumped into the hole as soon as his father yelled.

‘They rung a three and three,’ Miles explained. ‘Time to get outta here.’

PT was startled. ‘Half the money’s still in there. Isn’t Leon bringing us back on the train?’

Miles sounded impatient. ‘If your brother was sending the train he’d have given us a four and a two. It’s probably water building up in the tunnel again, but you know the rules: three and three signal means we’re coming out.’

The tunnel was a thirty-second ride when you were being pulled. When you powered yourself, you lay on your back instead of your belly and propelled yourself by kicking against the ground or pulling on the ceiling props. The journey took two minutes, longer if there was a lot of standing water.

PT lay on a trolley and his father tucked a stray bag of money between his legs.

‘Just in case we don’t get back down here,’ he smiled, before giving his son a push start.

As PT rolled head first through the blackness he hoped it really was the last time he’d have to do it. They’d pulled out two million dollars, and that was enough to be getting along with. Leon had stopped pumping water when they started running the money on the train and a waterlogged section of tunnel apparently confirmed his dad’s theory that they’d have to halt operations and do a pump-out. This was a pain, but it was something they’d done a hundred times before.

But everything seemed wrong as PT sighted the end of the tunnel. Instead of Leon’s muddy arms he saw Jeannot crouching tearfully in the mouth of the tunnel.

‘What’s the matter, squirt?’ PT asked, grabbing his cart off the tracks because he could hear his father rolling up a few metres behind him.

‘Cops came. I shot one, but Leon went up after and they shot each other.’

The news hit PT like a fist in the balls. ‘Is Leon OK? Where is he?’

‘By the gate,’ Jeannot sobbed. ‘He’s dead.’

By this time Miles was out of the tunnel and he quickly picked up the gist. ‘Why’d it have to be tonight?’ he screamed. ‘Of all the shitty luck you can have. Jeannot, did you see more cops out there?’

‘Nope,’ Jeannot answered.

Miles led his sons out of the hole. He burrowed inside his trousers and pointed at the truck. ‘PT, get in the front and get the engine running. Jeannot, in the back with the money and make sure the doors are locked behind you.’

As his sons entered the truck Miles jogged up the ramp, where he found his eldest son slumped against the gate. The cop car was still parked across the exit, but Officer Vernon had passed out from the pain.

Miles wanted to stop and say goodbye to his eldest son, but he only had time to take back his shotgun and give him a quick kiss on the cheek.

Once Miles had the weapon he found a key in his pocket and swung the vehicle gate open before running down to the truck. He sat in the driver’s seat and took a quick glance through the window into the back.

‘You got them doors locked, Jeannot?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Jeannot shouted.

Miles let the handbrake off too early and they rolled down the ramp for a couple of metres before he got the clutch in and powered up the ramp in a plume of diesel fumes.

‘Brace yourselves, boys,’ Miles shouted. ‘We’re going in hard.’

PT was alarmed to see the cop car blocking the gate and Officer Vernon sitting in the snow beside the open passenger door.

‘You’re gonna hit him,’ PT shouted.

‘Bastard shot my son,’ Miles yelled, angry beyond reason.

The truck smashed into the police car, crushing Vernon and sending the vehicle spinning out into the road. PT felt the jolt in his neck, but he’d held on to the bag of money his father had tucked between his legs before his final ride through the tunnel and the crumpled notes saved him from a nasty blow against the dashboard.

Miles hadn’t anticipated the forces involved when they hit the police car. His face hammered into the steering wheel, knocking him cold.

‘Dad!’ PT screamed, jerking up in his seat as the truck ploughed on.

It rolled on across the street on to a median planted with flowerbeds and bushes. Hitting the cop car had taken most of their speed off and knocked the engine out of gear. The bags in the rear shifted about and Jeannot got thrown into the truck’s metal side as PT reached between the seats and grabbed the handbrake, bringing them to a complete stop with shrubbery lodged between the wheels.

He turned back and looked through the hole into the cargo area. ‘Jeannot, you all right?’ he shouted.

One of the back doors had flown open and there was enough light to see Jeannot slumped amidst the money bags. PT jumped out of the cab as he heard the police sirens closing from a couple of blocks south. He had to run, but wanted to take Jeannot if he could.

‘Jeannot?’ PT yelled, leaning in the back and scooping cash-stuffed bags out of the way.

Jeannot had a bloody nose and a nasty split in his lip. He was breathing, but unconscious, and PT wasn’t strong enough to carry his brother much more than a few metres.

The sight of Jeannot and the thought of his other brother lying dead by the gates across the street broke PT’s heart. But there were two dead cops on the scene and PT knew if he stuck around he’d be on the wrong end of a savage police beating.

‘You’ll be all right,’ PT said, reaching out to give Jeannot a quick pat on the ankle as the sirens grew louder. Then he turned back towards the street and started to run, with a single white cotton bag in his right hand.

PT read the label on his cotton bag and saw that he had $3,800
*
in twenties, tens and fives. He tucked it into his waistband, ran north through the ice and took a cab up to Grand Central Station. After ditching his overalls in a toilet cubicle and a quick splash to wash clay off his face, he caught one of the first subway trains running out to Queens. Being a Sunday, the cars were empty and his heart thudded, imagining that the cops were gonna jump aboard and nab him at every stop.

Miles was a known bank robber who would have been identified within minutes, so PT didn’t dare head home. His outdoor clothes were in the storeroom at the Unicorn and he got looks as he walked through temperatures below freezing in a short-sleeved shirt. He ordered breakfast at a near-empty diner but only pushed it around his plate and got a raised eyebrow when he paid with a torn-up twenty.

‘My dad hit the numbers,’ PT explained, as the waitress eyed him suspiciously. ‘Told me to spoil myself.’

He’d only glanced at Leon as the truck came up the ramp, but the image was glued in his head: clay-spattered torso, blood pooled in the snow and the expression on Leon’s face like he got when you caught him cheating at cards.
What, me?

Leon didn’t have PT’s brains, but he was the kind of big brother you looked up to: he’d stick up for you in the neighbourhood and only had to look at a girl to get what he wanted. The horror of his death was too big to grasp, but PT had to get on top of it and deal with his situation.

Cold was the most immediate problem. PT knew a Sunday flea market and bought new gloves, a second-hand overcoat and a clean shirt. But the cops around here knew his face so he took a bus south to Brooklyn.

He hopped off in a spot he didn’t know. Apartment blocks ran up both sides of a hill, breaking only for a kid’s playground and a Laundromat standing on its own. An old man from the neighbourhood played good Samaritan, shovelling a path through the overnight snow.

Vending machines on the next corner were filled with the final edition of the
Sunday
Post
. Blood and guts sold newspapers and the main picture was a gory shot of Officer Vernon spattered over the side of a police car and the headline: TW
O
COPS
,
TWO
ROBBERS
DEAD
IN
$10-MILLION
TUNNEL
HEIST
.

Two robbers
.

PT scanned the article until he came to it.
Notorious Chicago bank robber, Miles Bivott, died after a struggle with police officers trying to restrain …

The cops would have arrived less than a minute after PT ran off and his dad was in no state to struggle, but the news was no great shock. PT had mixed with bad people his whole life and every crook knew the score: if you kill a cop they’ll either kill you or make you wish that they had.

Next he scanned the columns for his little brother:

Bivott’s youngest son was found in the back of the truck and is being questioned by police. A third child, believed to have been Bivott’s middle son, Philippe, escaped the scene and is being hunted …

PT wanted to cry as he imagined little Jeannot in a cell, scared witless. With two dead officers on the scene they’d be pressuring him, most likely with some hard slaps and the threat of worse if they didn’t like what he said. But Jeannot’s age counted in his favour: at seven years he was too young to be locked away and hopefully they’d see him more as a victim than a perpetrator.

Unlike Jeannot, PT was old enough to cop a murder charge. NYPD had his photo and fingerprints on file and if they caught him he had more than juvenile hall to worry about this time. There might be an outcry if both he and his father died at the hands of the police. So they’d be unlikely to kill him, but they’d beat him senseless. The judge wouldn’t do him any favours either and the prison guards would ensure that he did the hardest time possible when he got to juvenile hall.

PT had to run, but where?

*

He waited until darkness on Wednesday evening. After four days on the street, PT was in a real state. Boots and trousers crusted with rock salt and dirty snow. Black face, black fingers and dried-out clay itching like mad beneath half a dozen layers of clothes. He dreamed of heading west to California, but he was scared of the cops picking him up at a train station and his picture had been in Monday’s paper, which made hitchhiking an invitation to get busted.

After three freezing nights huddled in an unheated garage, PT couldn’t bear a fourth. He’d have to throw the dice and hope they didn’t land him in a police cell. PT’s aunt and uncle – the brother of his late mother – lived in an apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan, close to the docks.

The cops had probably figured that they were PT’s only surviving relatives, so he approached cautiously and used what his father had taught him on surveying a joint before a robbery.

He walked purposefully down both sides of the street, checking that nobody was sitting in any cars, then vaulted a wire fence and used the back fire stairs up to the third floor. A couple of kids stood on the landing, sharing a bag of monkey nuts and flicking shells over the side.