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Authors: Duane Swierczynski

BOOK: The Wheelman
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L
ENNON WRESTLED THE WHEEL TO THE LEFT AND APPLIED pressure to the brake pedal. The Acura spun forty-five degrees, give or take a degree, so that it faced the wrong way on Seventeenth Street.
“Jesus
fuck
yo!” yelled Holden in the back.
“Hey,” said Bling. “Brother knows what he’s doin’.”
Brother knew
exactly
what he was doing. He just didn’t know
how
he was going to do it. The trick was shooting across Market Street in one piece. Lennon knew he had a fifty-fifty shot at a green light, which would make everything easy. A red light would be tricky.
Predictably, the light was red.
Lennon rationalized it. Only sixty feet across. Just sixty measly feet of
Frogger.
Lennon looked at Bling and nodded, then turned back and pushed down on the accelerator. The Acura jumped forward and raced through the first thirty feet. An SUV tried to cut him off from the last thirty, but Lennon swerved to the left, then cut back to the right and sailed through a parking meter and the traffic pole, directly onto the sidewalk, smashing through the first wooden horse they’d set up. He crashed the Acura through the rest of the window-washing gear—which had been loosened to ensure easy breakage—clear through to JFK Boulevard. Better the gear than innocent people. One hit-and-run victim was enough for one morning.
“Now
that’s
how you do it,” Bling said.
Lennon shot him a glance, then spun left onto JFK and raced forward all the way up to Twentieth Street, weaving in and out of cabs and Mercedes and Chevy Cavaliers. He pressed two fingers to his neck, feeling for the carotid artery. This was his favorite way to gauge stress. He was doing okay, all things considered.
Another rearview check: no flashers. Five blocks away from the bank and nothing. The first five blocks were always the hardest. Lennon took a hard right onto Twentieth Street, going north, then a quick left down a tiny side street that ran parallel to JFK.
Now here’s where Philadelphia geography gets interesting. Even after ripping out the Chinese Wall, some bits of the old city remained. Tiny streets and alleys that used to run through the industrial blocks sat right next to the new thoroughfares. One of those alleys was the key to the getaway plan.
The alley Lennon took was wide enough for a car, and led downhill. Right next to it, JFK continued at a level elevation and then turned into a small bridge that ran over the Schuylkill River and directly to the front doors of Thirtieth Street Station. This side alley dipped down to river level. Nobody ever drove on this tiny street.
No sirens yet. Anywhere. A good sign.
The Acura sailed down the side street, crossed Twenty-first Street, then continued to Twenty-second. Lennon made a quick right, then a quick left, and pulled into the parking lot. By this time, Bling and Holden had stripped out of their jerseys and windbreakers and shiny pants and tucked them, along with their guns, into an oversized plastic shopping bag. All Lennon had to do was slip off the window-cleaning uniform, which he handed back to Bling, who tucked it away.
The lot was a park-it-yourself deal. They pulled into a spot, gathered up everything out of the car, then walked over to the second car: a 1998 Honda Prelude. They tucked the plastic bag with their clothes in the trunk next to the canvas bag with the $650,000, tossed the keys in, and slammed the lid shut. Then they calmly walked back to Twenty-second Street to the third car—a Subaru Forester—which was parked on the street. There were still fifteen minutes left on the meter.
Lennon took the keys from his inner suit jacket pocket and pressed the orange button. The security system disengaged with a loud
thew-WEEP WEEP.
He pressed the blue button, and the locks popped. They climbed in, just three business guys carpooling to a meeting in the city.
Except they weren’t headed for the city. The gang was headed for Philadelphia International Airport, where they’d take separate flights to different resort hotels in various parts of the world. Holden was headed for a place in Amsterdam. Bling was looking forward to some time on the Left Coast—Seattle. And Lennon was headed for Puerto Rico, to the El Conquistador Hotel and Casino and to Katie, who would be waiting there for him. The $650,000 would stay parked in the trunk of the Prelude. It was a long-term parking lot.
In the first meeting, Holden had had a problem with that part of the caper. “You mean we’re going to let it just sit there? What if someone boosts the car?”
“Someone boosts that shit,” Bling said, “that’s fate. We move on.”
“You got to be fucking kidding me.”
“It’s the safest thing. Trust me—you don’t want to be caught with one buck from Wachovia on you. You get nabbed, they ain’t got nothing.”
“Shit,” Holden said. “Someone’s gonna boost it.”
“Nobody’s going to boost it.”
Hopefully, nobody was going to boost it.
Lennon pulled the Forester out onto the street, drove up to the parkway, then hooked a right around the art museum and caught Kelly Drive. He had spent a lot of time mapping out this part of the getaway. Lights—only three between the art museum and I-76—were timed; curves studied; proper m.p.h. noted. This was the tiny bit of science involved in Lennon’s job. After a few trial runs, Lennon knew that when the light at Fairmount Avenue and Kelly Drive flicked green, he had three seconds to achieve a speed of 38 m.p.h., which would take him to the I-76 entrance without interruption. Lennon was impressed with the city planners; they had obviously taken time to craft this roadway. On some roads, he had to slow down/speed up for particular stretches. Not Kelly Drive. Lennon practically fell in love.
Past the art museum, past Boathouse Row, then deep into Kelly Drive, Lennon finally felt his stomach muscles unclench. The needle of the Subaru was firmly pointed at 38. The rest of the getaway was academic. There was nothing in the car to incriminate them; there were no obstacles between their car and the interstate out of town to the airport.
Lennon smoothly took a curve, looking at the geese assembled by the side of the river. They’d been here a few weeks before, when he’d been scouting the job. A few of them honked.
Goozles.
That’s what Katie called them. Something from her childhood. The goozles honked and suddenly fluttered their wings in near-panic.
And that’s when Black Death came racing at them.
A van, with reinforced steel crash bumpers, rocketing out of the side of the road. Smacking right into Lennon’s car. Driver’s side.
The Subaru flipped at least six times. Lennon lost count after the first two.
His first thought: Grab the gun.
His second thought: I don’t have a gun.
They were all headed for the airport. He was headed for Puerto Rico. And Katie.
Glass shattered around his head, beads grinding into his scalp. The engine whined and complained and finally settled into a low hum.
Lennon had a limited view out of his side window. Grass—some burned, some green. Shoes. Walking toward the car.
There was a dull roaring sound. Lennon could smell his own burning clothes. The last thing he heard was himself, trying to scream.
 
 
 
You should be able to strip a man naked and throw him out with noth- ing on him. By the end of the day, the man should be clothed and fed. By the end of the week, he should own a horse. And by the end of a year he should own a business and have money in the bank.
—RICK RESCORLA
 
 
A
NDY STARED AT THE THREE BLACK CANVAS BAGS IN the back of the red Ford pickup truck. They looked like body bags. “That’s the garbage?”
“Yeah,” Fury said. “And it’s all gotta go down that pipe over there.”
Andy looked at the bags again, trying to discern human forms. The first two looked like bodies. He stopped himself. This was ridiculous. Just because his friend was named Fieuchevsky, and that he sometimes did favors for his mobster/gasoline-distributor father didn’t mean …
“C’mon,” Fury said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We gotta be onstage in a couple of hours. Let’s get these bags down the pipe, have a beer, then get on 73.”
Andy Whalen and Mikal “Fury” Fieuchevsky were the keyboard and bass players, respectively, for a cover band called Space Monkey Mafia. Fury had come up with the name after listening to Billy Joel’s
Storm Front
drunk. All through March—Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays—the band was playing a resort hotel in Wildwood, New Jersey. It was mostly dead, but some people took advantage of off-season package deals, and those people liked to have live bands in the bar; the other nights were filled with karaoke.
Fury’s father was friends with the owner and that had helped them land the gig. Occasionally, Fury had to go off and run errands for his father. Take this here, pick up this there, and tonight, dump this down here. Fury had called Andy at his dorm room at La Salle University a few hours ago, and since he had nothing better to do before the drive to Wildwood, he agreed to lend a hand.
“Which pipe?” Andy asked. There were three of them, sticking out of a long block of cement, under a blue tarp raised like a tent. They were on a construction site on the Delaware River, on the Camden, New Jersey waterfront side, right in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Cool March air picked up some extra chill from the water and blew hard and fast across the riverfront. Andy wanted to go back and put on his windbreaker.
“The biggest one—the one on the left.”
Andy saw it. It was roughly the diameter of a manhole cover. The other two pipes looked much smaller.
“C’mon. Grab one end of this.”
Andy walked over to the back of the Ford and grasped the end of one of the bags. Fury reached in and grabbed the other end, then nodded. Together, they lifted, and damned if it wasn’t heavy. The bag felt like it contained one big, thick piece of garbage, like a side of beef. Again, the words popped into Andy’s mind:
dead body.
The two of them took baby steps across the concrete until they reached the big pipe. Fury tipped his end down first, resting it on the lip of the pipe. “Ready?” he asked Andy. Andy nodded, and they heaved. The bag disappeared from view. Andy heard black vinyl rubbing against cold steel, then a muted
thud,
like a sandbag hitting a mound of soft dirt.
“One down, two to go,” Fury said.
“This looks like a construction site. Aren’t they going to find this stuff in the morning?”
Fury smiled and paused to rub imaginary pieces of lint from his black Z. Cavaricci pants. Cavariccis had been out of style for at least ten years, but Fury kept wearing them anyway. Andy thought Fury must have purchased them in bulk back in 1991.
“Next week,” Fury said, “there’s going to be another forty feet of concrete poured over this slab. That children’s museum is going here—that ‘Please Touch Me’ joint? There’s got to be a thick enough foundation to lift the museum up over river level. So whatever’s buried here stays here for at least sixty years. My dad said that’s how long the museum’s new lease runs. The city made the developer agree to it—pretty much float the bill forever.”
“Must be some garbage.”
Fury picked up the sarcasm. “It’s just garbage, Andy. Two more bags, and you can forget all about it.”
They walked back to the Ford and again grabbed another black bag. Only this time, Andy’s hands flew away, as if he had been burned.
“Hey, Fury?”
“What’s wrong?”
“This garbage is, uh, breathing.”
Fury stared at the bag, then looked up. “Go in the front of the truck, in the glove compartment, and bring me that small leather case in there. Okay?”
“Didn’t you hear me? Look at this thing.”
“I heard you, man. Just go get me that case, then grab a Rolling Rock and go for a little walk. Finish up and come back, and we’ll get the fuck out of here and go play some music.”
Andy’s blood turned to ice water. He looked at the bag again—he couldn’t help it, after all, it was
fucking breathing
—and then back at Fury.
“Jesus, man. Just level with me. Is that a fucking body in there? Did we just dump a human bod—”
“Shut up, Andy. Just shut up. They’re deer. My dad went hunting, and I guess he didn’t kill this one all the way. Now please, get me the bag and take a walk.”
Andy turned away. The night sky, painted behind the tops of the Society Hill Towers across the river, looked blacker than usual. What should he do now? There was not much he could do now. Andy went to the front of the truck, opened the door, popped the glove compartment, and grabbed the small leather case. It was heavy, as if there was a dense stone tucked inside. A stone. Or garbage. Or a deer, still breathing.
He took the gun—yes, he could call it that now, what the fuck, he’d walked through that door already—and then snapped up the glove compartment lid.
Behind him, Fury yelped.
Andy clutched the case to his chest and ran around the truck. A bare human arm, somewhat streaked with blood, had reached out of an opening in the black bag and was in the process of trying to strangle Fury to death.
Some deer.
For a second, Andy wondered if he should open the case and take the gun. But then he realized he wouldn’t know what to do with it—he was raised by two former hippies who didn’t allow toy water pistols in the house, let alone real firearms. He carefully put the case on the ground and looked for the nearest available weapon that didn’t require bullets.
There. A five-foot section of two-by-four.
Andy grabbed the two-by-four and ran over to Fury, who was wrestling with the bag on the ground. Hoisting the two-by-four above his head, Andy swung it down as hard as he could. The bag jolted, then jolted again as Fury managed to swing his knee up in the middle of the bag.
“Hit ’im again,” said Fury, breathless.
Andy complied, and heard the distinct sound of something cracking. He didn’t know if it was the wood or the thing inside the bag. Regardless, the bag started jolting again, almost spasmodically. Fury scrambled backward a bit, out of reach of the arm sticking out of the bag, then started launching punches into the top of the bag, spitting and cursing with each blow. Eventually, the bag stopped moving.
“Help me get this into the pipe,” Fury said, rising to his feet.
Andy just nodded.
Together, they lifted the bag and shuffled over to the open pipe. The arm hung out of the bag, pointing to the ground like a dog’s tail.
“Jesus Christ,” Andy said.
“Don’t say anything,” Fury said. “We’ll get this straightened out, go play our job, and drink beers after that until we can laugh about this.”
“I don’t think I’m going to laugh about this.”
“Yeah, well.”
Andy looked down at the bag and wondered about the guy inside. Andy was no fool. He knew that Fury’s dad was a
vor
in the Philadelphia branch of the Russian
mafiya,
with a legit front as a club owner and a gasoline distributor in the Northeast Philly area. So this dead dude in the bag must have pissed off the Russian mobsters for something. He couldn’t tell much from the arm hanging out. A white dude, thin but muscled. No needle marks. Maybe he welshed on a bet or something, or got greedy. Or maybe he was a lawyer they didn’t need anymore. Andy looked for a watch or rings, but didn’t see any. The Russian had probably stripped him of jewelry, anyway, either to hide identifying marks or pawn it. Then again, there were three bags. Unless the Russians saved up their bodies for mass disposal, these three guys were into something together. Andy hoped to God they weren’t cops. His uncle was a cop, up in the Fifteenth District. Andy had made an uneasy moral peace with playing in a band with the son of a Russian mobster, but there was no way he could stomach the thought of—
The fingers on the arm twitched.
“Shit.”
A fist was formed.
“What?”
The body in the bag jackhammered his fist into Fury’s nuts.
That end of the bag dropped, which yanked the black plastic right out of Andy’s hands. He took a few confused steps back, watching the hand reach around and grab the zipper. Andy could imagine the zipper being lowered, and seeing his cop uncle inside, bruised and bloodied. The blood in his veins chilled.
But when the zipper came down, it revealed a naked white guy Andy didn’t recognize. The guy was bruised and bloodied all to hell, but he looked both pissed and calm at the same time. He stood up out of the bag, and Andy saw that he was
really
naked. Not even wearing skivvies.
Fury was writhing on the cement floor. This guy had really nailed him.
“Stop,” Andy said, holding his hands out in front of him.
The naked guy staggered a bit. The punches and kicks and hits by the two-by-four seemed to have had an effect on him, after all. He fell to his hands and knees and visibly shivered. Then he looked up at Andy, hand outstretched in a
hold on a minute
position.
“Pound him, Andy!” yelled Fury, his voice strained and slightly higher than usual.
The naked guy was shaking his head
no.
He gestured with his right hand as if he were holding a pen and writing a note. What was he trying to say? Did he want to sign something?
“For fuck’s sake, hit him!”
There really wasn’t much of a choice. If Andy didn’t do something, Fury would anyway. And God knows how pissed Fury’s
vor
father would be if Fury told him Andy had hesitated to help. For better or worse, Andy was Fury’s guy. Andy took a few steps back, found the two-by-four, and approached the naked man.
There was no pleading in his eyes. Just waiting. Almost a dare. Maybe even a glimmer of disappointment in there, too.
Andy swung the two-by-four like a T-ball bat, imagining the naked man’s body as the T and his head as the ball.
Hard.
 
L
ENNON WOKE UP AGAIN WHEN THE LIP OF THE PIPE scraped his chest. The hazy memories of the last few minutes loaded themselves back into his brain. It was all pain and fuzz and white noise, and flickering images of the inside of a black vinyl bag, and beatings, and looking at some dumb college kid, and then blackness again. He reached out to grab something, anything. His fingers scraped against concrete, then slipped around cold steel.
Shit.
The pipe.
The memory came back. These two jokers were dumping bodies down a pipe. Holden’s body. Bling’s body. Now, his body.
Whatever’s buried here stays here for at least sixty years.
His fingers found the edge of the pipe, and he clamped down as forcefully as he could.
“Let go fucker,” a voice hissed, and he felt a fist hammer the base of his spine. Lennon’s arms and hands went numb, but he kept holding on. The fist pounded his back again, and then his ass. Then more fists. Someone grabbed his legs and hoisted them up in the air. Then a fist smashed into his balls, and the fight was over. Lennon’s fingers released their hold on the pipe and he felt himself sliding down it.
Arms, legs,
out.
That was the only thing he could do. Skin slid against steel. Lennon pushed his arms and legs out farther, as hard as he could. Flakes of acned rust on the inside of the pipe caught against his skin, shredding it. But it also slowed his descent. A few panicked seconds later he stopped falling.
Lennon was naked, upside-down in a construction pipe by the Delaware River, arms and legs torn to shreds and his testicles hiding out somewhere in the vicinity of his rib cage … but he had stopped falling. He’d take victory where he could get it.
Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream. He would have loved to scream. Lennon pushed harder against the confines of the inner pipe. He wasn’t going to fall. No fucking way.
“He’s stuck,” a voice said up above.
Pause.
“Shit.”
Another pause.
“You’re
dead,
motherfucker, so you’d better give up now and drop. You want a bullet? That it? A nice couple rounds of hot lead up your ass, finish things off nice and quick?”
Lennon pushed harder against the pipe wall. This was no way to die.
“Get that two-by-four and see if you can push him down. I’ll get the gun.”
The slab of wood made a bonging sound against the side of the pipe. Then Lennon felt a hard jab on the back of his left thigh. Then another, more forceful this time. The rust dug deeper into his skin. The wood slammed into his butt cheek, painfully, almost causing Lennon to let go.
The next jab missed his body, rushing into the void between Lennon’s chest and the pipe wall.
This was it.
Praying that three limbs could hold him up, Lennon’s left hand whipped out and grabbed the wood. He felt it jerk upward, but Lennon held firm, then yanked back downward. The force of his pull almost dislodged him from the pipe entirely, but he held on as the rust plunged even deeper into his skin.
The two-by-four was in his hand now; the guy above had lost it.
“Shit. He just grabbed the two-by-four.”
“It don’t matter,” said the other voice. “Fucker’s going
down.
”
Lennon looked up past his body to the opening of the pipe. A revolver was pointed back down at him and a meaty thumb started to pull back the hammer. So he did the only thing he could.
He shoved the two-by-four upward as hard as he could.
Wood snapped the guy’s wrist. Surprised him completely. Hand popped open. Revolver tumbled out and down. Barrel caught the lip of the pipe. Weight of the gun dumped it inward. The gun fell down the pipe.
The gun landed on the underside of Lennon’s genitals. He let go of the two-by-four, then reached around for the revolver. Grasped it. Grasped it like a fifteen-year-old with his first tit.
Come on, fucker. Take a look.
Look down.
His shaking thumb pulled back the hammer.
“Aw, you son of a bitch—”
The guy looked.
Lennon squeezed once, and the guy’s head sprayed apart.
He could hear the other guy screaming, but that wasn’t his concern now. Lennon had heard the two of them talking before. The guy he’d just shot was obviously the semipro; the other guy seemed to be along for the ride and needed directions at every turn. And now he’d lost his boss, his two-by-four, and the gun. Hopefully, they didn’t have another gun. Lennon wouldn’t have to worry about him for the time being.
Now his worry was getting out of the pipe.
There seemed to be two ways out. Some smart, clever way, and some exhausting, painful, bloody way.
Lennon couldn’t think of any smart, clever ways, though he tried. He thought about slowly gliding farther down the pipe, expending precious skin real estate, but eventually hitting the bottom, where maybe he could dig until he hit water, then hold his breath and float back up to the surface like a cork. But there was no way of knowing what was below. Might be tightly packed mud; might be bedrock. This wasn’t his river—fuck, this wasn’t his city. Lennon then thought about slipping down farther until he found the two-by-four again, breaking it apart and trying to wedge pieces up in the pipe, and then using them as a makeshift ladder. But again, there were no guarantees that his strength would hold, or that the two-by-four could be broken. Most likely, it was fresh, strong wood; this was a construction site.
Upside-down, the blood continued to rush to his head. He couldn’t hang like this forever. Enough blood in the brain and some foolish idea would seem reasonable, and then he would die. And this was a stupid way to die.
So it was down to the exhausting, painful, bloody way: Push hard, shimmy upward, and hope his skin held out until the surface.
It was the only sane option.
And hey, nobody ever said crawling out of your own grave would be easy.
Fifteen minutes later, Lennon’s toes scraped the lid of the pipe. He pushed hard one last time, pressed his legs out in the air, and wrapped them around the pipe’s edge. His muscles had been worked beyond exhaustion, ripped and burned and crying out for rest to repair themselves, but he pushed them one last time, clenching his entire body up to gain the leverage to grab the lip of the pipe with his hands and finally, to pull himself out. Lennon flipped over, stumbled on his heels, then collapsed to the concrete.
The other guy was there waiting for him.
He looked like he’d been crying, but the tears were ten minutes in the past. Since then he’d been doing some thinking. Some hard thinking. The kid—Lennon saw that now; the guy was just a college kid, or something—must have thought about the many ways to resolve the evening. Dump his buddy down on top of Lennon, then clear the fuck out? Dump cinder blocks and any shit he could find down the pipe and hope that did the trick? Or just call the cops and try to explain things?
But it looked like he’d decided on something different. The kid held out a notebook and a pen.
“I know you can’t talk,” the kid said. “You were trying to tell me that before, weren’t you? So write down what we should do.”
Lennon sat up, took the pen and paper, and thought about his options. The first thing that came to mind was taking the pen, uncapping it, then jabbing the business end into the kid’s neck. But that would mean grabbing his head and hoping the arterial spray went in a different direction, and besides, Lennon wasn’t sure he had the muscle power left to do any of that. Maybe not even to uncap the pen.
Then again, he needed rest and answers. Maybe this kid could help him with the first thing.
Lennon wrote:
Who are you?
The kid read the note, and a grim smile floated across his face. “My name’s Andy Whalen. I’m a senior at La Salle. Here, I’ll show you.” Andy pulled a brown leather wallet that was beat to hell from the back pocket of his black dress pants and slipped out an ID card.
Lennon looked at the student ID card. True enough. Andrew Whalen, a senior at La Salle University. There was a magnetic strip on the back of the card.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, and honestly, I don’t care. I know that Fury’s dad is involved in some gangster stuff, and you probably know more than I do, but—”
Lennon held up a finger to his lips. Then he started writing again:
Where do you live?
Andy read. “Oh. I live on campus.”
Dorm or apartment?
“A dorm. I’m a senior, but I like living down on South Campus. And there are no apartments down there, so I’m in St. Neumann.”
Alone?
“Yeah, I got tired of freaky-ass roommates. I’m in a single.”
That was all Lennon needed to know.
He jammed the pen into Andy’s neck, aiming more toward the back so the blood wouldn’t spray all over him. Andy looked genuinely surprised, up until the point his eyes fluttered shut and he passed out.
Years ago, Lennon would have felt bad about something like this. During high school, he’d devoured the biographies of guys like Willie Sutton and Alvin Karpis, gentlemen bank robbers who never fired a shot unless absolutely necessary—and civilians were absolutely hands-off. And that was still the way Lennon liked to run his bank jobs. The threat, but not the kill.
However, there was a truth that had eluded Lennon in high school. Something that guys he knew called “human law.” It wasn’t God’s law, moral law, or even the government’s law. It was a law as old as mankind itself, and law number one was this: If someone fucks with you, it is imperative you fuck them back. Andy Whalen seemed like a nice college kid. But he had also taken a two-by-four and tried to stuff him, naked, down an industrial pipe.
Andy Whalen had fucked with Lennon.
That’s what he thought about as he stripped Andy of his clothes, then dumped his body down the pipe, followed by the body of his semipro buddy. First, he fished the wallet out of the black Cavariccis.
Mikal Ivankov Fieuchevsky
was the name, with a Philadelphia address.

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