Ghostman

by Roger Hobbs

  I carried a black nylon bag over my shoulder. Marcus had given me enough time to pick up a few things from my apartment. In the bag was my Colt .38 revolver with the bobbed hammer, which Marcus had given back. A toothbrush. Shaving kit. Makeup. Hair dye. Leather gloves. A few passports, driver’s licenses, state ID cards and two prepaid burner phones. The five grand from Marcus, and three black Visa corporate cards with a different alias on each one. At the bottom was a faded copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Charles Martin. I always travel light.

  I was excited to get on the plane. It had been a long time since I’d had a job like this. I’m very picky. When I’m not working, time seems to pass by in a haze. The days blend together, then the weeks, like a tape recorder set on Fast Forward. I sit in my apartment, at the desk facing the window, and watch the sun come up. I read the Greek and Latin classics again and translate them on yellow legal pads, some in German or French as well. Some days I don’t do anything else but sit there and read. My translations go on for hundreds of pages. Aeschylus, Caesar, Juvenal, Livy. Reading their words helps me think. When I’m not on the job, I don’t have any words of my own.

  This was what I’d been waiting for—a job that, for once, wasn’t going to be boring.

  The Cessna was beautiful on the inside. I’d never flown in that model before, but it was like most of the other private jets I’d seen. It had a nose like a hunting bird and two big engines under the tail. The takeoff was like an amusement-park ride, but once we got up five and a half miles, the flying was easy and the engine noise minimal. There were eight seats, plus two for the pilots, and the sticker price was just south of twenty million. For that amount of money, every seat was like first class. There was a full-sized bar in the back of the cabin, a flat-screen TV overhead tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel, a satellite phone next to the coffee machine and a wireless connection to the Internet. When the copilot came back and said it was okay to walk around, I made a pot of coffee. I still felt uncomfortable. You can barely stand upright in one of these things.

  I brought the coffee flask with me back to my seat, poured myself a cup and drank it. I poured myself another and opened up my book. Something was making me nervous, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.

  After about twenty minutes, a story with the graphic Shoot-out at the Regency came on the television and I turned up the sound. The names of the victims were being withheld, but an old picture of Moreno in olive-drab fatigues flashed on the screen followed by a couple of shock shots of the hotel-casino tower and a line of bullet holes in the cement. A news crew was set up on the Boardwalk. I could make out where the heist had gone down by the crowd of onlookers in the background. A female reporter said four people were dead at the scene, one of them a perpetrator, and then added that police suspected two more were on the run, which caught me off guard. I’d suspected there was a third shooter as soon as Marcus told me what happened, but this confirmed it. The heisters had detailed knowledge of the casino’s security system, the reporter said, and the investigation was well under way.

  Then Jerome Ribbons’s mug shot came up.

  I nearly spilled my coffee. The picture was a few years old, but it was definitely him. Wanted for questioning. Ribbons’s name was in all-capital letters at the bottom of the screen next to the number for the tip line, and the reporter did two whole sentences about it. They’d figured out his identity in less than four hours. Shit.

  I pushed Pause and stared at the picture for a second. Blinked. Ribbons was maybe four years younger than he was supposed to be. He was scowling at the camera and holding up a booking number. He was a thick man, positively fat, with a boyish face and facial hair the thickness of a Brillo pad. He was hunched forward like a brown bear and his jaw hung open. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked exhausted. The shot had been taken by the Philadelphia Police Department, so he was still in street clothes. The tattoos on his one visible wrist and on his neck told a story. I could make out a stylized stag on his wrist. He’d been to prison and done five years, judging by the number of horns. He was gang affiliated, or used to be, according to the tattoo of a pistol under his chin. His nose had been broken and never quite fixed, and his knuckles were covered in scars.

  I recognized him from somewhere. I couldn’t remember where.

  Unless Ribbons had really messed up at the crime scene, they must’ve found his name when they ran Moreno’s fingerprints. Ribbons was probably on Moreno’s known-associates list. It wouldn’t have taken long to match the file photo of Ribbons against the surveillance video of the heist. He’s pretty unmistakable, considering his size and his history. There aren’t a whole lot of six-foot-four cons with stag tats. That would be enough evidence to get his booking photo to the media. By mid-afternoon, everyone in the world would be on the lookout for Jerome Ribbons.

  I looked at my watch. Three more hours to wheels down. This was going to make my job very challenging.

  I pressed Play again and poured myself another cup of coffee. The report was almost over, and there wasn’t anything new when it came on again forty minutes later. I sat and thought about all the things that could’ve happened since six Eastern that morning. The investigation would’ve gotten huge fast, because any crime involving the Federal Reserve is a jurisdictional nightmare. The police would have detectives, sure, because people had been killed. The sheriff would have deputies running around, too, because there were fugitives on the run. The FBI would have field agents, because bank robbery is a federal crime. The Secret Service might be in on it, because they’re the ones authorized to investigate crimes against currency. The Treasury has its own enforcement agents and, hell, even the Federal Reserve banks have their own security branch. There were probably two dozen guys in cheap suits in Atlantic City by now.

  And Ribbons was still at large.

  I wondered why he hadn’t called Marcus.

  When you don’t show up or call in after a heist goes down, you’re vanishing. Vanishing and ghosting are very different things. A whole crew ghosts after a job, so none of them get caught. One guy vanishes, so he personally doesn’t get caught. Vanishing is one of the cardinal sins of professional bank robbery. No matter what happens, no matter how messed up things get, you don’t vanish, and you really don’t vanish with the loot. If the plan says meet at the warehouse, you meet at the warehouse. If the plan says check into a motel, you check into a motel. If you vanish on your crew, the whole getaway falls apart, which is the first step to everybody getting caught. In most instances, if you get a bad feeling before the job goes down, there’s plenty of time to say you’re done, give up and go home. If it looks like things are going bad, you tell your crew you’re not feeling it and walk away. The minute the job starts, however, you’re all in. Professionals take this very seriously. It’s a matter of pride for some people. Some people would rather die than vanish. In fact, many have.

  So maybe Ribbons was dead.

  Or maybe Marcus’s reputation had finally backfired.

  Marcus was known for being horrible to the people who didn’t come through. Truly barbaric. The rep helped him keep things in line, sure, but I could see why it might make a guy like Ribbons run. I’d heard a story about an electronics man who’d forgotten to disable a bank alarm. Four of Marcus’s favorite men got locked up for five years each. Marcus went to the guy’s house and made him eat a whole jar of powdered nutmeg. Scooped it into his mouth with a spoon. That doesn’t sound so bad until you realize nutmeg’s got myristicin in it. A teaspoon’s okay, but not a whole jar. A few hours after the incident, the guy started dry heaving. Then he developed a headache and body pain like the hangover after a bar fight. An hour after that his heart started racing and his hands were shaking uncontrollably. It took nearly seven hours of that before the hallucinations started. Tripping hard and running a fever of 106, he took off all his clothes and scratched his face until it was covered in blood. A nutmeg trip can last for three days. Some people find it pleasant. Most think it’
s hell on earth. In some versions of the story, Marcus leaves the guy with a gun with one bullet so he can shoot himself. In other versions, the guy bites off his own tongue and drowns in the blood.

  If Ribbons thought that was in store for him, no wonder he hadn’t called.

  7

  I turned off the television and sat in silence for a few moments, closing my eyes and thinking about Ribbons. He’d gotten himself into a world of trouble. When I opened my eyes, I started to transform myself into someone else.

  Transforming has always been the easiest thing in the world for me. I unbuckled my safety belt and retrieved my bag from the overhead compartment. In the side pocket was a trio of faded passports, and stuffed under the covers were matching driver’s licenses. I had three men with a range of ages. Each one had a different look, career and lifestyle. None of them looked like me, but that wasn’t a problem. I wasn’t going to Atlantic City anymore. One of these three men was.

  Jack Morton was the oldest of the three, and one of my favorite identities. I’d modeled him after a favorite college professor and never gotten into trouble with him before. He had a good, strong, noble personality. When I was pretending to be him, my voice would get deeper and my movements would get slower and more thoughtful. He was kind, strong-spoken and quick-witted. His voice was like melted wax. I laid his passport on my tray table and put the other two away. He was my man.

  Although the birthday on the passport put him in his middle fifties, Jack Morton was barely two years old. I’d created him piece by piece over the course of six months between a couple of jobs. I’d already planted all of his official documents in the record books. I had copies of his birth certificate and his college diploma tucked away somewhere. He’d gone to the University of Connecticut, Stamford, and done moderately well studying ancient languages. Now he worked as an insurance investigator. I liked him because, unlike some of my other names and identities, he didn’t have a single file in his criminal record. He was a good man who didn’t mind playing rough from time to time. I stared at his picture until my muscles slowly relaxed into the shape of his face. I could feel my expressions changing to fit his appearance. My resting heart rate slowed down, and my hands seized up with the tension of sudden middle age. It’s hard to age twenty years in twenty seconds.

  I took a long breath, let it out slowly, and became fifty-six years old.

  Since Morton’s palette was brown, I had to change mine to match. I carefully took out my sharp brown contact lenses and replaced them with foggier, duller, blue ones from my pack. My kit had a small vanity mirror for the makeup. I accented the curves of my face with a pencil and furrowed my brow to emphasize the lines. I smudged the pencil marks with my thumb until they blended in seamlessly with the curvature of my face. I applied very small amounts of dark foundation to my neck, cheeks and forehead. Within two minutes, it looked like I had the wrinkles and deep laugh lines of a man twenty years older.

  “My name is Jack Morton,” I said in his voice, just to practice.

  The hair was next. There are hundreds of products that can change a man’s hair color, but I’ve come to rely on a select few. Speed and simplicity are important. I didn’t have the time or space to wash my hair and let the dye sit for an hour. Instead I got my scalp wet in the sink and carefully combed in streaks of instant dye, turning my light blond hair a darker, dirtier, older brown. Once the dye set, I added streaks of salt-and-pepper gray, then swept my hair back and tousled it until it looked careless. I made the eyebrows match with a few touches of a pencil.

  “My name is Jack Morton,” I said to myself again. “I’m an insurance investigator with Harper and Locke. I was born in Lexington, Massachusetts.”

  I had a few pairs of glasses in the bag. I tried a few different styles. Wire frames were too trendy. Circular specs were a little too old-fashioned. Thick-framed black glasses weren’t right, either. I settled for a pair of rectangular bifocals that slid down my nose slightly. I glanced in the mirror. I looked practically professorial. I tied a small amount of dental floss around my left ring finger and pulled it until it was tight enough to cut off circulation. According to Morton’s life history, which I’d written, he’d been divorced for a little over a year. When I pulled the floss off, it left the mark of a married man.

  To complete the costume, I’d have to change watches. No insurance investigator would wear such an incredibly expensive Patek Philippe, and, if I was smart, I wouldn’t risk someone recognizing it. However, this was the only watch I had with me, and I was quite attached to it. I pushed it back on my wrist to hide it under my shirt cuff.

  The combination of all of my efforts rendered me completely unremarkable. I looked like thousands of other middle-aged white American men. I was middle age, middle weight, middle height and middle income. The only thing that set me apart was the expensive suit and watch, but those could be explained away. At my age, I should care about how I look. It’s just part of the job.

  We arrived at Atlantic City International close to four in the afternoon local time. I set my watch forward three hours as the tires bounced once on the runway. It was even hotter here. A blistering ninety degrees, and it wasn’t likely to cool down anytime soon. Even the baggage handlers on the runway wore their shirts tied around their heads. With the humidity the way it was, the city felt like it was burning. The pilot gave me his phone number and told me to call when the cargo was ready. I patted him on the back and went down the stairs. The tarmac stuck to the soles of my shoes.

  First I needed to rent a car. Then I needed a place to stay and something to eat. But all that could wait until I found the facilitator.

  I took out my international phone and pounded in Ribbons’s cell number. I knew he wasn’t making calls, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t taking any. He had a cellular code from Virginia, which was a little unusual but not completely unheard-of. People have cell numbers from all over the place. The phone rang. By the time the answering machine picked up, I was already halfway to the rental-car desk. An electronic voice. You’ve reached this number. Please leave a message after the beep.

  I waited for the beep. “Call home immediately,” I said. “Father isn’t angry, he just wants to hear from you.”

  I killed the call and glanced down at the screen. Ribbons’s number was already logged on the phone’s record, permanently written onto the data chip. I took the battery out and crushed the small data card. I threw the phone away in a trash can. I had another international phone in my jacket, but it was the last one.

  The federal agent was waiting for me at the bottom of the escalator.

  8

  I don’t run from federal agents. I run from cops, sure, because I might have a chance of getting away. But running from a federal agent is like trying to hide in a labyrinth. You might be able to prolong the chase for a while, but in the end the minotaur’s going to catch you. Feds don’t mess around. They always get the people they’re looking for, so you’d better make sure they’re not looking for you in the first place.

  The only solution is to play along. I didn’t speed up or slow down. I just leaned against the escalator’s railing and let it bring me slowly toward her.

  I knew who was waiting for me. She had the right wrinkles in her suit and worn-out edges on the soles of her sensible leather flats. Her skin was the color of coffee creamer and she was slender, but not thin. She had curves in the right places and a stern sort of intelligence to her. I imagined that she was a swimmer. Her curly brown hair was bundled back. Shoulder length, no nonsense.

  She stepped in front of me and flipped open a leather badge booklet. Inside was a small gold shield with an eagle and the words Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  She said, “Are you the passenger from the Citation Sovereign?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Can I have a word?”

  “What is this about?”

  “Do you know a man named Marcus Hayes?”

  I didn’t answer. Not right away. I w
ould have walked away right then, if she weren’t so goddamn pretty. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You must have the wrong person. I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “You just stepped off his jet, so I’m betting you do.”

  “I want to see your badge again.”

  “Show me your identification and we’ve got a deal.”

  I considered it for a second. It is for moments like this that people carry fake driver’s licenses. Travel agents rarely give them a second look, and regular police don’t have enough training to tell the high-quality fake ones from the real ones, because every state has different security features. But Jack Morton was clean. If I played the odds, showing her his driver’s license would be almost as safe as refusing to show her anything at all. It was within my rights just to walk away, but that would make me look suspicious.

  I took the card out of my wallet. She looked at it, then up at me. We matched perfectly. For all she knew, the photograph could have been taken today. If she could tell it was a fake, she didn’t let on.

  She put the license back in my hand, then slid her shield booklet off her belt and gave it to me. It was a thin leather wallet with the gold insignia and a card in a viewing flap. Rebecca Lynn Blacker. Five foot six, pale eyes, tan skin, just north of thirty years old. I took out the card and rubbed it between my fingers. It felt real.

  I looked up.

  “All right,” I said.

  She took the badge back. “Mr. Morton, you’re in from Seattle, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You hear about the armored car that got robbed this morning?”

  “I saw it on the news on the flight.”

  “I didn’t. I got a phone call. I’m on vacation, you see. I was taking my two weeks down in Cape May. This morning I’m waking up, just about to take a run on the beach, when I get a call from the special-agent-in-charge of the Trenton field office, then another one from the Atlantic City Police. I get in my car and spend three hours getting back to Atlantic City. Traffic like you wouldn’t even believe, understand? No coffee, no time for a shower. I just drive and hope the PD sorts it out before I get there, but I pull up at the scene and the police have nothing. Two guys at large and no leads on finding them. So I start making calls. And you know what I find out? That just hours after all hell broke loose here, the Seattle field office snapped some photos of a meeting between an unknown man and a notorious heist-maker. An hour after that, the heist-maker got a Cessna Sovereign fueled and sent it packing across the country right here. This isn’t a large airport, Jack. This town doesn’t get that sort of itinerary every day.”