Ghostman

by Roger Hobbs

  I hung up and dropped the phone. I didn’t smell it before, but even in the open air I was beginning to detect the fuel. Naphtha evaporates clean. Some people use it to strip paint. But it takes a while. Especially with a full five-gallon canister. I turned back toward the dumpsters and crushed the phone under my foot. It broke in half in the dust and battery acid sprayed out like ketchup from a packet.

  Time to head out again. One hour, three thousand dollars and a phone for a wheelman. Not bad, I thought.

  I walked away toward the Civic and glanced at my watch as I ducked through the fence. Nine p.m., thirty-three hours to go.

  Then I saw a black Suburban waiting for me.

  17

  It was parked across the street near the defunct baseball stadium, the front end peeking out behind a dumpster like it was an elephant hiding behind a tree. The windows were tinted and the engine grille looked like snarling teeth with a Chevrolet logo stuck onto them. It hadn’t been there before.

  It was official.

  I was being watched.

  I’m not accustomed to that. Pursued, yes. Chased, certainly. But not watched. Nobody’s supposed to know who I am. That’s the whole point. There isn’t supposed to be anything to trace. No phones, no houses, no girlfriends, no mortgages, no connections. Police might chase a ghostman for a few blocks down the freeway in the thirty seconds or so immediately after a job, or an Interpol agent might pursue one or more of his identities from city to city for a while, but we never pick up tails. That’s just not how it works.

  So how the hell did these people find me?

  When I got in my car, I adjusted the rearview mirror to get a better look. The Suburban was maybe fifty yards back. It didn’t have a front license plate and there were traces of mud on the tires. I just sat there and thought for a moment. I didn’t know any techniques for losing a tail. I’d seen wheelmen lose the police fifty different ways, and I even remembered a few, but this was another thing entirely. Losing a tail is slow and spontaneous, not fast and choreographed. When you’re being chased after a job, you’ve had time to prepare for it. You know every street in the city and you’ve driven the route a hundred times. You’ve gone out and sat at the side of the road in a fold-out chair, timing the intervals between cars with a stopwatch. When you’re being tailed, you’ve got to improvise.

  I pulled the Civic away casually, like I hadn’t seen them, and turned left back onto the street. I tried to drive normally, but it was harder than I’d thought. I kept looking in the mirror. The Suburban slid out from behind the dumpster and weaved into traffic behind me. It stayed two cars back, which was a pretty smart move. How often do you pay attention to anything that far behind you? I could see only their boat rack in my mirrors.

  I crossed the bridge and went through the park back toward the Regency. The farther I got downtown, the heavier the traffic was. It was evening at the beach, which means lots of traffic. People were getting ready to go home or to go out somewhere. There were eight-car backups at every light. The Suburban closed the distance between us and swerved into the turning lane to cut in line. These guys were good, I thought. The driver was worried I might get to the front of the line at one of the intersections, then go through a light that turned red before they got there. If they stayed two cars back in traffic, they couldn’t keep up. Up close, if I ran a red, they could step on the gas and run right after me.

  I kept driving. I followed the signs toward the Atlantic City Expressway. The route took me all the way across town past the Regency casino. I got to the highway entrance and went up the ramp toward Philadelphia. The SUV held back a bit and blended into traffic, letting the gap widen again. Two cars between us. I got in the left lane. It got in the left lane. I increased speed. It increased speed.

  I took out my last phone and punched in Lakes’s number.

  “Executive Concierge Services,” Lakes said.

  “It’s me. I’m going to need a new car.”

  “Is there something wrong with the Civic?”

  “No,” I said. “I just need to switch rides. Something different. The sooner the better.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you weren’t the kind who asked questions.”

  “Sorry, sir. I can get that for you right away.”

  “I want a black Chevrolet Suburban. New model. Can you get me one of those?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Is there a place you’d like to meet?”

  “No,” I said. “Just deliver it to the parking garage at the Chelsea. And make sure it’s black. Has to be black, got it? Put the key with the rest of the stuff you’ve got me. I’ll come and pick it up when I’m ready.”

  “I’ll need to return the Civic, of course.”

  “You can pick it up behind the movie theater in Pleasantville. I’ll park it near where the emergency exits let out. You’ll know where to find the key. And when you get rid of it, I never want to see it again. Return it to the rental agency and dump the record. Get the new car from a different place with a different ID. Understand?”

  Lakes said, “It would be much easier for me to do this if you’d just tell me what’s going on.”

  “You’ve got it backward. You’re here to make it easy for me, not the other way around.”

  I shut the phone.

  I looked out at my mirrors. The Suburban was taking its time. Following slow. I was working on another plan to lose it. It was something I’d done once before while running from the cops in Las Vegas. It had worked then, but I’d nearly killed myself in the process. It was worth a shot.

  I slowed down until I was going an even fifty miles an hour, drifting into the outside lane. The Suburban did the same. We crossed the salt marshes and kept going for a few miles, all the way into Pleasantville and then off into the pine barrens. The exit for the airport was up ahead. I waited until I could see the sign. Come on, come on, come on.

  The Exit sign peeked out over the horizon.

  Then, without signaling, I jacked the wheel hard to the right. My car slashed across all four lanes in one long dangerous swoop. At the same time, I put the hammer to the floor and blew forward until my engine redlined, weaving four lanes back across traffic toward the exit. Cars behind me lay on their horns. Brakes squealed. A green Mazda jackknifed and spun out of control. It hit the safety rail and sent up sparks as it scraped along a few feet. The Suburban wavered out of its lane and then cut loose.

  I took the airport exit at full speed.

  I spun through the cloverleaf like a pinball. The street at the bottom of the ramp was totally empty, so I gunned it through the overpass and ended up back on the highway going in the opposite direction. I didn’t even touch the brake.

  I kept glancing in the mirror, and when the Suburban didn’t reappear for a solid two minutes, I let out my breath and regulated my speed. I got off two exits later and scrambled through side streets before coming to a stop at a gas station on the outskirts of the city. I parked around the back and waited with my lights off, watching the road as the cars zoomed by. I must have sat there for ten minutes, waiting for the black Suburban to blow past. It didn’t.

  I turned the ignition and drove to the movie theater.

  18

  The theater was a big complex, the sort of place that made popcorn by the hundred-pound tub. It had sixteen screens and red trim all around the stucco exterior. It looked less like a theater than a warehouse. It was across a road and a packed parking lot from a shopping mall, less than ten miles across the salt marshes from Atlantic City.

  I hadn’t seen the tail for half an hour.

  By the time I got there, the sun was on its way down. It illuminated the clouds to the west with bright pinks and purples. Even out here in the pine barrens, I could hear the wind coming in from the ocean. In the map of the city in my head, this was the only major commercial movie theater in this part of New Jersey. I drove around the parking lot for a moment, keeping an eye out for any vehicle I might recognize. Once I was satisfied,
I parked the Civic around back, by the emergency exits. It was quiet here—just me and a few dumpsters. To my left, the pavement petered off into a no-man’s-land of trash and wild pine trees. The ambient light was deep enough to shade my face in blue. I turned off my engine and waited.

  Angela had introduced me to my first real wheelman when I was twenty-three. I’d told her about the slick dude with the Shelby, and she told me I would never have to go through something like that again. No real pro would ever use his own car as part of a getaway. A few days later, she took me to meet Salvatore Carbone. He was in his seventies when I met him, but he was built like a pile driver. He was maybe five foot six and well over two hundred pounds, with not an inch of fat on him. His chest was as wide as most doorways, and his arms were the size of canned hams. He looked like he could run right through a wall, if he wanted to, or bench-press a motorcycle. We shook hands in the back of his auto body shop on West Fifty-third. He lit a cigar and brought me out into his shop. Right in the center was a rusted old fastback, and he told me to get in. He sat next to me in the passenger’s seat and said I should take us for a spin. When I told him he’d forgotten to give me the keys, he smacked me over the head. He took out a small knife, jammed it into the key socket and twisted until all six tumblers broke and the car rumbled to life. From then on, he taught me everything a real wheelman should know. He taught me how to plan getaway routes. How to pick up getaway cars. How to spot unmarked cars and bluff my way out of a traffic stop. I was never good enough to be a wheelman myself, but that isn’t the important part. I learned which skills I needed to look for.

  If I was very lucky, Spencer might have them.

  I waited there in the darkness, with one eye on my watch and the other on the street. The sun went down and the floodlights flickered on. They cast deep shadows into the pine trees. Ten minutes later a black late-model Camaro pulled into the parking lot. It was a car that hugged the ground like a slug and moved with the silence of a hunting cat. It was so clean that somebody could’ve eaten dinner off the hubcaps. The windows were as tinted as could be and there wasn’t a front license plate. I watched the Camaro cruise around the parking lot once before turning down the strip of pavement in front of me. It flashed its brights.

  I switched the engine on, so the driver would see my daytime runners. I looked at my watch. It had taken him sixty-seven minutes to drive seventy-five miles up the Atlantic seaboard. He was late.

  Quarter after ten. Thirty-two hours to go.

  The Camaro pulled a little closer and stopped no more than fifty feet away from me in the halo of a floodlight. A lanky guy in an expensive black suit got out. He was long and thin, just a little over six-two, with a large nose and black leather driving gloves that didn’t cover his knuckles. He was handsome, too, maybe even a little too handsome. When he bared his teeth they were bright white and as shiny as the silver trim of his car. There was an understated power in his shoulders. He looked a little like James Dean.

  I got out and walked around the front of my Civic.

  He looked me over, like I wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. “You’re the guy I spoke to on the phone, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I expected you in an hour.”

  “I stopped for a burger.”

  “Did you really?”

  “No. I ran into traffic on the bridge. I had to push almost eighty all the way here, you demanding little prick.”

  He was joking, I think.

  “Do you have something for me, or did I just break traffic laws in three states for no reason?”

  I took Marcus’s wad of cash out of my jacket pocket and counted out three thousand dollars. I took a couple of steps forward and put the money in his hand, like it was a handshake.

  He flipped through the bills quickly. When he was satisfied, he put it in his back pocket, looked at my car and made a face.

  “Tell me you’re kidding,” he said.

  “It’s a rental.”

  “You don’t want me to work on that, do you?”

  “You’re working on something I found a couple of miles down the road. What you see you can never speak about to anyone, understand? I’m paying for your time and your silence.”

  “I’m the master of silence. No need to hold my hand through this.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Spencer nodded, like he’d heard it all before.

  “I want you to say you understand,” I said.

  “I get it, I get it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re taking your car.”

  “You just going to leave this piece of shit here?”

  I went into the Civic and grabbed my overnight bag. I locked the doors, then bent over and slid the key under the front right tire, until the silver bit disappeared into the treads.

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  Spencer nodded. The inside of his car smelled of air freshener and energy drinks. In the foot well was a whole pile of crushed cans. I had to kick them aside to get in. Spencer pulled out of the theater parking lot slowly and methodically, like at any minute he thought he might have to take off. When we got back on the highway, he cut straight to the left lane and lay on it. The acceleration pushed me back into the seat, but I don’t get the same thrill as a passenger as I do when I’m driving. My reflection flashed across in the windshield as the city lights whipped by.

  “Were you followed?” I said.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  I didn’t answer.

  The drive took the better part of fifteen minutes, and I spoke only to give directions. Pleasantville to Route 30 and down Pacific back to the abandoned airfield. We parked behind the trees on the other side of the fence where we were covered from the street. Spencer got out first. He took a black box of automotive tools from his trunk, scanned the area with a look of disgust, then fell into step with me and said, “Now what?”

  “There are two things I want you to do. I want you to tell me what you can about a junk car that was ditched here. Then I want you to take a look at some tracks and tell me what sort of car they came from.”

  “What sort of junker am I looking at?”

  “A ninety-two Dodge Spirit. Lots of torch gas.”

  “Fun. Anything else I should know?”

  “Yeah. The car’s full of blood.”

  We went through the fence and across the runway toward the dilapidated hangars. It was dark now, dark enough that I could barely find my way. Spencer remedied the problem by taking out his BlackBerry and shaking it until the screen came on. He illuminated the ground in front of us with a pale green glow. I got to the hangar doors and slid them open for him. Instantly the smell of the blood and naphtha hit him head-on. There was a strange blend of horror and recognition on his face. Blood and octane.

  “Good god,” he said.

  “Do you see what I mean?”

  “This is the car from the Regency shoot-out.”

  “Just take a look around, tell me what you see.”

  “Just looking at this thing makes me an accessory after the fact.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “This is some serious shit.”

  “Don’t complain. Besides, you were an accessory the moment you took my money. The only thing you could pick up now is a misdemeanor count for failing to report, which is nothing.”

  Spencer gave me a look, shook his head, then got ready to go inside. He handed me his BlackBerry, removed his belt, put down his tools, then wrapped a handkerchief firmly around his nose and mouth like he was a spray-paint artist.

  “Why all the preparations?”

  “Have you ever left the valve of a gas tank open,” Spencer said, “just for a little while on a hot day?”

  “No.”

  “Hot weather makes gasoline and a lot of other flammable chemicals evaporate. The fumes mix into the air, and if it’s hot enough they can catch on fire. It’s called a flash point. If left in a garage on a hot day, even in an open garage, a bucket of gaso
line is a real hazard. Anything could set it off. You ever hear of that woman who blew up a gas station because she was talking on her cell phone? That shit isn’t true, but I’m not going to be the guy who finds out why.”

  He finished tying on his mask and started breathing through it. He stopped for a second when he got a closer look at all the bloody carnage in the car. Everybody does that, at least a little bit. A person has a lot of blood inside him, and it doesn’t look pretty when it comes out. He moved slowly, like an artist. He was a good wheelman, I could tell already.

  He walked slowly around the thin mud tracks and examined the grooves in the treads. He ran his finger over the surface of the passenger’s-side window just to get a feel for it. It was like saying hello, even with the fumes gathering all around him. He was building a relationship with the car the way another man would with a horse, or a gun, or a computer. When he was ready, he dropped to his knees and looked under the carriage. He worked quickly but thoroughly. He held his breath when he got close.

  Wheelmen think differently from normal people. They think in terms of cars. For them, a car is a unit of currency. Buying a house costs two cars, or six, or ten. Food for a year is the cost of a fix-me-up. A meal’s worth a quarter tank of gas. So when Spencer got close to the dirt around the side of the hangar, he took one look under the car and said, “You shoulda just let this thing burn.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. The Spirit was as busted as a car could get—blood evidence, material evidence and, of course, an easily recorded make, model and license-plate number. I watched as Spencer drew lines in his head and traced the trajectory of the bullets that had smashed through the front windshield and those that had blown out the back. While I had looked at the blood spatter, he looked at the material damage. He tapped the engine block with his knuckles twice. He didn’t like the sound.

  He turned to me.

  “What do you want me to tell you?” he said.

  “I want to know where the driver went.”

  “Not far, not with all this blood.”