Ghostman

by Roger Hobbs

  Today, however, it was our ticket in.

  The van was dark and stuffy. Joe tapped his fingernails on the case holding his lock-pick set. He was nervous. We all were.

  Thirty seconds.

  We heard the armored truck coming. I raised my head and looked out through the dim, eight-inch-square window in the back of the van.

  It was an older, cheaper model built on the chassis of a Ford F550 pickup. The windshield was divided into two flat planes of inch-thick bulletproof glass, and the entire body was covered by maybe half an inch of steel armor. There were gun ports in the walls and doors, though not more than usual, and the tires were puncture-proof, sure, but not strong enough to stop a shotgun blast. In the States no self-respecting bank would use such a vehicle, but in Malaysia this was the best they could get. Back then, these deliveries weren’t nearly as high-tech as they are today. A lot can change in five years. There were none of those magnetic plates or GPS trackers or streaming color cameras that make modern armored vehicles so impenetrable. The only technology this rig had was a single CB radio in the cockpit, so the truck could go missing for close to thirty minutes without raising any suspicion.

  Inside were three men: a driver, a money handler and a guard. The driver would stay in the cockpit and keep the engine running in case they had to make a quick getaway. The money handler would unload the money onto a cart, and the guard would stand outside next to him with a gun drawn to make sure nobody tried anything. We’d all done the research about these guys. The driver was the new guy on the team. He’d been on the job less than six months and had never fired his weapon except on the range. He had his hair cropped tight like a fresh recruit. The money handler, however, was a pro. He’d been doing this for five years, and not much else, apparently. He didn’t have a wife or girlfriend and didn’t see his family on a regular basis, either. He’d done nothing but deliver money to and from banks and businesses. He had a grim face and small eyes. The guard protecting him was the youngest by several years, though he was more experienced than the driver.

  Once the vehicle made a complete stop, the driver put the hand brake on and left the engine idling. The guard opened the passenger door and stepped out and walked around back. He knocked twice on the rear door with his knuckles. The money handler opened the doors from the inside and hoisted a big blue nylon bag of valuables down to him.

  Ten seconds.

  I could hear the time ticking away on my watch. Angela was breathing hard next to me. She wasn’t nervous or anything. She was breathing like that to flood her body with oxygen so she’d be ready to go when the moment came. I kept my eyes glued to the armored truck and the elevator.

  The handler passed two more bundles of money down to the guard, who piled them up at his feet. The money handler briefly disappeared from view, then came back pushing a small dolly cart that he rolled haphazardly out of the truck onto the pavement. The driver lit a cigarette, leaned forward to adjust the air conditioning and cracked the door ajar a little, craning his head around to see how things were going. A second later, the money handler hopped down with something I didn’t expect—a large black assault rifle with a reflex sight slung by a strap over his back. We hadn’t planned for that.

  Five seconds.

  It was a goddamn G36. Next to a flight wing of police helicopters, that gun was the last thing we wanted to see. It could put out thirty NATO rounds in a little over two seconds. Each bullet could go through our secondhand body armor and out the other side, no sweat. If we didn’t do things exactly right, someone was going to die. I stopped breathing.

  Time’s up.

  Angela gave the signal.

  Vincent and Mancini jumped out of the back of the van with their shotguns. They charged the armored truck like football players and shouted orders at the guards. Mancini ran toward the money handler and Vincent toward the driver. Before they could register what was happening, our buttonmen were shoving shotguns in their faces.

  “Don’t move!” Vincent yelled in English, then in broken Malay to make sure he got the point home. He pressed the muzzle of the shotgun to the driver’s temple. The man dropped his cigarette and put his hands up right away in surrender.

  The other two didn’t give up so easily. Mancini had two targets and only one gun, and the money handler had that rifle on his back. When he got close to the truck, he pointed the shotgun at the guard. As a result, the other guy tried to grab the assault rifle off his back. Before he could get a grip, though, Mancini stepped over into melee range and bashed his head in with the butt of his shotgun. The money handler’s nose exploded in a torrent of blood and he stumbled backwards. The assault rifle slid under the truck. The other guard threw his hands up in the air.

  Hsiu and I jumped out of the van.

  Hsiu’s job was easy. She had to hold the men hostage. When most people think of hostages, however, they’re picturing ropes and handcuffs, but those are crude measures for neutralizing anybody. Do you know how much rope we’d need to tie up thirty people, or even just these three? I don’t. Hsiu had an elegant solution: a jet injector. A jet injector is a medical device shaped like a gun, but instead of firing bullets it uses a very powerful blast of pressure to shoot medicine directly through a patient’s skin without rupturing it in any way. There’s no blood or needle. The medicine goes right through the dermis and instantly into the bloodstream. No switching nozzles, no risk of transmitting HIV/AIDS, no need to clean it between uses. The jet injector just works.

  Hsiu ran up to where Vincent had the driver pinned and pressed the nozzle of her jet injector under his chin. The gun made a soft pneumatic sound. It took all of two seconds for the tranquilizer to take effect. The driver went as limp as if he’d been shot through the head. One second he was conscious, and the next he was comatose. His body dangled from the door of the armored car.

  Hsiu tossed the injector over to Mancini, who pressed it to the forehead of the guy with the busted nose. He dosed him right between the eyes. The guy wobbled for a second and then fell to the floor. Mancini tossed the injector to me as I grabbed the third guard by the collar. I tossed him up against the side of his truck, pulled the gun out of his belt with my free hand and threw it away.

  All this happened in the first fifteen seconds.

  I pressed the nozzle of the injector against the soft spot of his neck, near the jugular, and said, “I’m not here to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I’m just here for the bank’s money, which is insured. No harm will come to you if you do everything I say, got it?”

  He stared at me with a blank expression.

  “What’s the name of the bank manager on duty today?” I asked him.

  He started babbling something in Malay that I couldn’t understand. His voice had a crisp squeak to it that made him sound like a seal. I slammed his head hard against the back of the truck. He winced and his eyelids fluttered.

  “I know you speak English,” I said.

  “He says he doesn’t want to die,” Hsiu told me.

  “He should act like it, then,” I said. “The bank manager’s name. Now.”

  The young man went limp in my hands. He was frozen in fear. I could see it in his eyes when he stared up at me. He didn’t look like a man who thought he was going to die. He looked like a man who didn’t exactly understand what was happening to him. He gazed at the jet injector in my hand like he was seeing it in a dream.

  I moved it from his neck up to the soft spot between his eyebrows. “One more chance,” I said.

  “His name’s Deng Onpang,” he muttered.

  “What color is the code card today?”

  “Red.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Then I squeezed the trigger—producing another soft pneumatic sound—and fired a load of drugs between his eyes. The young guard stumbled forward and touched the spot on his forehead. He was surprised he wasn’t dead. A second later his knees went weak and he crumpled. I caught him in my arms so he wouldn’t hit his head and lowered him
to the floor. He was comatose by the time he got there.

  I pulled the access key cards from his belt and flipped through to the red one. We were not only about the same age but also of similar height and weight. I snatched his company-logo baseball cap and put it on. Given my uniform, I looked a lot like him. The makeup had been easy. Most of it’s in the eyes. I’d used eyeliner and tape to mimic the general shape and now adjusted the brim of the cap to cover up the rough parts. I’d used a tanning spray to match the color of my skin almost perfectly to his. I’d dyed my hair black. Someone would have to be very observant to tell the difference. Now I just had to fool the manager on the other end of that closed-circuit television set.

  This was my moment, after all. In order to get the elevator doors to open up, I had to convince Deng Onpang that I was the same guard he’d seen nearly every day for almost three years. I tried to keep the sound of the kid’s voice in my head so I wouldn’t mess it up over the CCTV. A hat and a costume might make me look like him, but now I needed to sound and act like him. I took a deep breath.

  I pressed the call button. The small screen next to the elevator lit up with the face of an older gentleman in an expensive suit. I greeted him with a Malay phrase I’d practiced a thousand times, until I could pronounce it with the perfect accent.

  “Kantung-kantung,” I said. It means “pouches.”

  “How much this time?” he said, happily in English.

  “I do not know. It is sealed, and my driver has the manifest.”

  “How is your wife?”

  “Things have been better,” I said.

  I held up the red code card. Deng Onpang did the same, and we swiped at the same time.

  Deng said, “The elevator’s on its way. See you soon.”

  “Good,” I said. “We’ll be ready.”

  41

  ATLANTIC CITY

  I was driving to the address Marcus had given me when one of the phones started ringing. I reached over to the passenger’s seat and fished it out, then looked at the caller ID. Instead of a number the screen read FBI in big blue letters. I flipped the phone open and cradled it between my cheek and my shoulder.

  “Yeah?” I said. “You there?”

  “Hello? Who is this?” Rebecca Blacker said.

  Shit. I forgot I’d switched to John Grimaldi.

  “It’s me,” I said quickly, falling back into Jack Morton’s voice.

  “You sounded different.”

  “You know what a good shower can do.”

  “Better than anyone,” she said. “But you’re in big trouble, Jack.”

  She didn’t sound menacing or dire, however. She said this with an excited sort of glee, as if she’d just made a particularly savvy chess move. And I could tell by how she said it that she was the cause of the trouble she was warning me about. The low growl of her smoking habit wasn’t in her voice anymore.

  “The good news is you’ll get to see me again,” she said. “The bad news, well, the Atlantic City Police Department just issued a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Really? What are they charging me with?”

  “You’re wanted in connection to a double-homicide last night. Two bodies were found out in the salt marsh this morning with bullet wounds. Both victims took shots to the head, one of them at nearly point-blank range. The car you sent me to last night belonged to one of them, so they linked you to the killings by extension.”

  I sniffed. “That’s all you need to get a warrant these days? I’ve never even been out in the marshes.”

  “This is serious, Jack. Did you kill those guys?”

  “I don’t like killing,” I said.

  Rebecca sighed and banged the phone against something hard. “It doesn’t matter if the warrant won’t hold up,” she said. “If I want to find you, I’ll find you. There will be men looking for you at all the airports and on all the highways. There’s going to be a photo of you in every patrol car by the end of the hour. Three hours after that, every police officer for six states will know your face.”

  “Where the hell did they get a photo of me?”

  “Airport security camera.”

  I cracked a smile. Rebecca Blacker was playing me good. She was the one who filed for the warrant, probably. In the United States, the police have to have a signed affidavit proving probable cause before they can issue an arrest warrant. She was the only person who could’ve written such an affidavit, or suggested the airport-security photo, or connected me to the murders, or even knew I was in Atlantic City at all. Blacker had put me on the wanted list so I’d have no choice but to play things her way. It was clever, I had to admit. She had something to hold over my head if I didn’t cooperate in her investigation.

  “You’re out of luck, then,” I said. “Jack Morton has already skipped town.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Okay, so you’ve got me,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “I’m supposed to ask where you are.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “I’m also supposed to tell you to turn yourself in.”

  “I like that idea even less. Enough with the act, okay? You got a warrant out on me. Congratulations. Now you’ve got a bargaining chip. However, if you wanted the ACPD to catch me, you would’ve triangulated this number instead of punching it into your phone. You’re a smart woman. You wouldn’t have called me unless you wanted to make a deal. So deal.”

  “How do you know I haven’t already triangulated your phone?”

  I looked at the sky through the windshield. “I don’t hear or see any helicopters.”

  “I could’ve called in a squad car.”

  “Then I’d know you weren’t really trying.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. I want you to drive out to the field office right now. You need to offer yourself up to the FBI. If you give me all the help I need to resolve the Regency shootings, in return I’ll make sure the two bodies in the marsh go down as self-defense. If you don’t, I’ll give you two counts of first-degree murder.”

  “You won’t ever see me in a jail cell,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound boastful, but it came out like that and I immediately regretted it. I meant it merely as a matter of fact. I’ve never been arrested before, and I certainly wasn’t going to get caught because of a baseless warrant and a police dragnet. If Rebecca wanted me in handcuffs, she’d have to put them on me herself.

  “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,” Rebecca said.

  “Police don’t scare me.”

  “I’m not talking about the police. Those murder victims belonged to Harrihar Turner’s drug ring. This morning I thought you’d just torched one of his cars. Now his men are dropping like flies. Do you have any idea what that guy’s done in the past?”

  “I’ve heard a few stories,” I said. “Why would you clear me on self-defense?”

  “It isn’t the first time those two have been suspected of burying people out in the salt marshes.”

  “Then I guess I don’t have to give you anything after all.”

  “If you come in, I can protect you.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said, “but I’m fine on my own. I’ll call you later and we can meet. But I’m not going to an FBI building, and I’m not turning myself in. I’m still just an interested citizen.”

  “Not anymore. Now you’re a wanted man.”

  “And I have you to thank for that,” I said. “Do you put arrest warrants out on every man you meet?”

  “Only the ones I want to catch.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll see you at your trial.”

  I threw the phone out the window and it flew over the guardrail. Damn, Rebecca Blacker was good. I looked at my watch. Noon.

  Eighteen hours to go.

  42

  The projects are never designed to look like the projects. They’re designed to look like anything else—suburbs, developments, apartment hou
ses, you name it. Project housing’s a good deal, considering the alternative’s a privately owned slum, but a project’s still a project. Take a good look and you can smell it. The block of uniform government houses was separated from the rest of the street by a row of short-growth pines and a wood-chip playground. A billboard for fast loans hung low over a row of dumpsters beyond it. Someone had broken all the streetlights. A bad neighborhood just looks like a normal one in the daytime, but the people who live there know what’s up. The playground was as empty as a graveyard.

  Ribbons’s scatter was a cheap hotel next to a pizzeria. There was a sign out front, facing the trash cans, that was hand-lettered by the same guy who did the one for the pizzeria. Hotel Cassandra, color TV, weekly rates. There was no manager’s office I could see. The front door had mail slots with handwritten names under them. The graffiti on the stucco walls looked like bad modern art. The ground-floor windows were covered with bars.

  Even rich crooks get cheap scatters. The poor can live anonymously better than rich people. Slumlords don’t ask for pay stubs, references or two forms of photo identification. All they want is cash for two weeks in advance.

  I walked inside.

  Ribbons’s room was on the first floor up a short flight of stairs and down a dusty hallway under a burned-out light. His number was nailed just above the peephole. There were small cracks in the door near the handle, where somebody with a very long screwdriver and a considerable amount of upper-body strength had used leverage to pry open the dead bolt. The wood around the lock went first, and the force had pushed the dull steel bolt through the frame and out the other side. Everything snaps with enough pressure. I took a step back.

  The police don’t open doors with three-foot screwdrivers. When they go to serve a search warrant on someone who isn’t home, nine times out of ten they go in with a master key they might have picked up from a neighbor or the landlord. When that doesn’t work, they use a lock pick. When neither of those work, they occasionally use a fireman’s tool or battering ram to get through the door, but those two things are last resorts and leave a very different breakage pattern. No, it wasn’t the police who did this. Somebody else had got here before me.