The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  THE GLASS PANE RATTLED in the front door as Doug entered, heading upstairs to Jem’s before realizing the music he heard was pounding in the basement, not on the second floor. He turned and went outside, walking along a weedy stripe of cracked cement to the backyard bulkhead.

  The stone cellar was dank, the floor moist and brown, tears of condensation glistening in the corners. The clank of steel on steel—Jem always smacked the weight plates together, he was there to make some noise—died against the damp walls, a discordant counterpoint to the soar and crash of Zep’s “Kashmir.”

  Jem was on his back, doing presses on the old, overweighted machine. The cables squealed, the bottom rails rusty and fuzzed with mildew from cellar floodings.

  He finished and sat up, fire-faced, the long veins in his forearms like blue snakes feeding under his skin. “Hey,” he said, hopping off the bench, “check it out, I just picked these up.” Three thumping speakers were set on shoulderhigh stands around the machine like cameras on tripods. “Wireless,” he said, moving his hands around one like a magician demonstrating a levitation trick. “Receives from my stereo upstairs. Three bills each, but damn.” He cranked the volume to demonstrate, head jerking to the beat atop his thickened neck, for-getting or simply not caring that any metal inside the speakers would be oxidized within a matter of weeks. “Fuckin’ rocks, man.”

  Unlike his speakers, Jem was wired. It was the buzz of lifting and maybe something more. He turned the music back down and boosted a curling bar, balancing two wide, fifty-pound plates and a couple of twenties. “Get changed and come back down, we’ll hit it serious.” He started a set of preacher curls, his face filling with blood.

  This was not the welcome Doug had expected. Jem coming off friendly and pretending nothing was wrong was scarier than him taking a sledge to the weeping walls.

  “Last night,” said Doug.

  “Was that a fucking outrage or what?” said Jem, breaking off his reps, bouncing the bar on the floor. “Motherfuckin’ Wakefield, I hate knuckleballers. Straight-ball pitcher starts to lose his stuff in the sixth, you can see it, his speed, his control. Funny-ball pitchers lose their stuff? It’s like a trapdoor opened. Ball stops moving, and now they’re serving up fucking gopher balls to free-agent millionaires.”

  “Who you following, Jem? Me or her?”

  Still the poker face. “Told you, kid, I made the Shamrock out on Boylston, parked outside ’BCN. Which is fucked-up, by the way. Somebody take that primo shit off your hands, leave a thank-you note taped to the meter.”

  “You got something to say, say it now.”

  Jem smiled past him to the near speaker. “Don’t know, kid,” he said, turning down the tunes. “See—I think that’s my line here.”

  Doug sniffed, shifted his weight. “Told you I was working on things. Making sure we were clear.”

  “Yeah. And maybe it started out that way.” Jem tightened the wrist straps on his lifting gloves. “Then again, you grabbed her license from me pretty fast.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Is it, yeah? I mean, she’s awright, don’t get me wrong. I had my hand on her ass too, at the vault.” He looked up. “Though I guess you broke that up too, didn’t you.”

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “You tell me you’re workin’ a scam here, I’ll say, ‘Cool.’ ’Cause that’s something I get. That’s something makes sense to me. But anything else, and I’d say we got us a problem here.”

  Doug tried going on the attack. “That was stupid, you coming around like that. A stupid play. What’d you think—you were embarrassing me or something? You could of come to talk to me alone. I was keeping her separate from you guys—but especially you, ass-grabber. She remembers anyone, it’s gonna be the guy who took her for a ride.”

  “You always talk about Boozo’s crew and how reckless they were, like maniacs, crazy for action. Then you go off making googly eyes at the one person—the one—who could give the G anything on us. Oh, but I’m a fucking moron.” A Jem smile to go along with the Jem shrug. “Hey, thanks for your protection.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And no, I didn’t tell the others yet. Only because it would flip them the fuck out, and they’re skittish enough already. Plus your boyfriend, the Monsignor, he’d be so brokenhearted jealous. Besides—there’s nothing to tell, right?”

  “I told you, I got from her what I wanted.”

  “Yeah? It any good?”

  Doug frowned. “I’m saying, it’s done. Over.”

  Jem squinted to see him better. “Hey, guess what? By the way, me and that assistant manager? We went out hankie shopping together last week. Yeah, I didn’t think it was all that important to tell you.”

  “If that’s your fucking point, then you made it.”

  “I’m a fucking porcupine with points. You worry me, kid. Seeing her on the side, away from us? That’s like a move, brother. Says that to me. Us or her.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t see any room for overlap there. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Doug had always been the only one able to handle Jem. When things got tight, he could pull that brother-withholding-love shit on him and Jem would always come around, settle down. Now everything was out of balance. Now Jem was sitting on all the power.

  “Awright,” Jem said, flexing out his lumpy arms, nodding. “Then we can get started on this movie caper.”

  Too soon, but now Doug couldn’t say no.

  Jem read his silence with a jacked, hungry smile. “You made anybody on your tail? I haven’t.”

  “Somebody was watching Dez’s house.”

  “Was. I think we’re ready to put ourselves back in play.”

  “Then Dez has to sit this one out.”

  “Fine. And actually dandy too.”

  “But he still gets his quarter take.”

  Jem eyed Doug, taking his measure. The shrug and the smile arrived together. “Fuckin’ whatever. All ends up in the collection box at St. Frank’s anyhow, right? Catholic charity, bring us some luck. So long as this gig comes together quick. That means no fucking stalling. And don’t tell me you ain’t been rolling this around your mind, ’cause I won’t believe it. I bet you got a mark already picked out. Hell—you maybe even got a plan floating around in there.”

  Maybe Doug did. Maybe this was exactly what he needed right now, something to occupy his mind. Something to bring them all back together, to the way things used to be.

  21

  CLOCKING IT

  BRAINTREE IS A SUBURB south of Boston where the Southeast Expressway out of the city splits in two: west toward the Maine-to-Florida Interstate 95, and east along Route 3, a state highway riding south to the flexed arm of Cape Cod. Braintree’s draw for city kids of the late 1970s and 1980s was the South Shore Plaza, one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the region, a quick bus trip via the MBTA Red Line stop at Quincy Adams. A hobby shop that sold exploding rockets, a B. Dalton that stored overstock Playboys under tables in the back of the store, the tobacconist C. B. Perkins that also sold lighters and knives, Recordtown, and the suburban girls that roamed the mall in packs and pairs—plus a movie theater, a detached two-screen job next to a Howard Johnson, known as the Braintree Cinema.

  Across the street from the mall, Forbes Road was a thin thoroughfare curling wide around the castlelike Sheraton Tara Hotel and the South Shore Executive Park. The road came into view of the highway there, tailing off along the bottom of a blasted rock cliff. A narrow, two-lane offshoot named Grandview Road climbed steeply to the summit of the mount where, surrounded by a few acres of blacktop parking, the old Braintree Cinema had reopened in 1993 as a brand-new multiscreen General Cinemas complex known as The Braintree 10.

  Across an eight-lane highway gorge was another cliff road, set on the edge of the Blue Hills Reservation, studded with industrial parks and office buildings. From there the big-signed movie theater looked like a temple above a ravine of automobiles
.

  An isolated mark. Easy highway access. Secluded vantage points.

  The second most important part of the job, after the getaway, is target selection. Once you commit to a target, the details that follow shape themselves to the task at hand.

  YOU PARK WITH THE other nine-to-fivers in front of the faceless office building next to the movie theater at the top of Grandview. Behind the building is a wood that descends into a residential area across from the shopping plaza, and there is a neglected fire road there, its entrance blocked by two craggy boulders. This will be your emergency escape route. If everything else goes to hell, you know that you can take to the trees on foot, dump your weapons and strip down to street clothes, and cross to a car parked at the mall before K-9 units and State Police helicopters hunt you down.

  Your Bearcat 210 scanner crackles underneath the newspaper, jammed between the two front seats. Field glasses wait in the glove, with the birdwatching guide as their excuse, but you won’t need the nocs today. Your position is too good: a side view of the movie-theater parking lot between low shrubs, the morning crows picking at pretzel bites and Raisinets.

  The only two cars in the lot appear empty. A navy blue Cressida putters in after 10 A.M., parking on the side near the trash cage. The manager locks his car, uses his key in the side entrance door under swooping, popcorn-loving seagulls, and you clock it.

  Seagulls and crows, that’s all you have until 11:15, when a couple of rattling imports pull in: the weekday crew, mostly older people, part-timers. You clock it.

  First showing of any movie that day will be at 12:20. Late-Monday-morning pickup time means no crowd control, no citizen heroes, minimal witnesses.

  At 11:29, a white Plymouth Neon rolls in, parking at the wood railing along the front edge of the lot. A guy wearing sneakers and a ponytail gets out, climbs onto the roof of his car, and sits there cross-legged. He opens a sandwich and a yogurt, eating lunch while looking across the highway at the serene Blue Hills.

  At 11:32, the can rolls in. You clock it, committing the time to memory but nothing to paper—no evidence in case you get pulled over.

  The armored truck rumbles in steady on oversized wheels. You recognize it as a Pinnacle truck. Pinnacle’s colors are blue and green.

  The can rolls right up to the front and parks in the fire lane at the stairs to the lobby. Its lone rear door faces you as the truck idles.

  Nothing happens for one minute.

  The passenger door opens and the courier guard, also known as the messenger or hopper, steps out with the heel of his hand on the butt of his belt-holstered sidearm. He wears an open-collared, police-blue shirt with his identification hanging alligator-clipped to one of the collar points, the Pinnacle patch sewn onto his right shoulder, an oversized silver badge pinned to his breast pocket.

  He is middle-aged, portly but strong, sporting a thick, white brush mustache and walking determinedly around to the rear doors. The brim of his police-style cap sits low over his eyes. No bulletproof vest. Vests are expensive and Pinnacle neither supplies nor requires them.

  You pay close attention to his movements. You absorb the routine.

  The courier knocks twice on the right rear door. The driver inside unlocks it with the push of a button, and the courier pulls on the handle.

  Your Bearcat is silent. No radio traffic on Pinnacle’s radio frequencies. This is normal.

  From the cargo area, the courier pulls out a two-wheeled dolly pasted with Pinnacle stickers and stands it next to the can’s broad steel bumper. He reaches into the truck again and lifts out a long-handled, blue-and-green, canvas Pinnacle delivery bag.

  This is the theater’s change order. You note that it looks small. He sets the bag down on the bottom of the dolly and shuts the rear door.

  The courier’s hand returns to the butt of his gun as he pushes the dolly up the handicap ramp along the perimeter of the outside stairs. He goes to the center doors, which are unlocked, opens them, and disappears inside.

  You clock it. 11:35.

  You cannot see them, yet you know that the second set of doors, the ones past the ticket windows, are certainly locked, and that the manager waits behind them with a key.

  Yogurt Man finishes his lunch and lies against his windshield, his face turned to the sun, oblivious to the cash pickup far at his back. A white paper bag tumbles across the lot where the empty cars wait.

  The armored truck sits tight, locked and idling.

  THE TRUCK HAS FOUR doors—one driver, one passenger, two rear—and a small sixteen-by-eighteen-inch package door on the left side. An additional jump seat is in the cargo area, separated from the cab by a locked door, which sits empty on this two-man run. The doors all have special Medeco high-security key cylinders, as do the interior safes or lockboxes. The ignition key is not a special key, but a kill switch is concealed somewhere inside the front cabin, or else a series of random actions (for instance, switching on the defrost, then depressing the brake pedal, then switching on the defrost again) must be performed in sequence before the engine will turn over.

  When the ignition key is turned, all doors automatically lock. When the driver’s door is opened, the back doors automatically lock. If any door is unlocked, a red warning light shines over the dash and the wheels on the vehicle lock to prevent the can from moving. In addition, manual dead bolts are installed inside each door.

  In a siege situation, the driver is trained to lock down and radio for help. The twelve-ton truck is a mobile bunker impervious to outside attack, its stainless steel armor designed to preserve structural integrity. Due to weight-load restrictions, the cargo area is usually armored one level lower than the cabin; for example, the cargo area might be certified to withstand an AK-47 or M14 assault, whereas the cabin could handle M16 fire. The weakest section of the cargo area, the rear door, is still three inches thick.

  Windshield and window glass is a glass-clad polycarbonate, less dense than but equally effective as heavier bulletproof glass.

  There is a roof-mounted beacon, a siren, and a public address system. Four eyehole gun ports are cut into the body of the truck. The heavy-duty bumpers are built to withstand a ram attack, and the tractor-size tires are puncture-resistant. The undercarriage would resemble that of any normal two-ton truck, but reinforced to carry six times that load; for example, the fifteen-inch differential unit is easily three times that of a standard vehicle.

  The security and liquidity of the world’s leading economy rides on these trucks, tens of thousands of them out on the streets at any hour, billions of dollars in notes and coin perpetually in transit. You know and accept that there is no practical way to compromise the hulk of an armored bank vehicle without also destroying its contents. The can is only vulnerable through its human operators.

  AT 11:44, THE COURIER reappears on the front ramp, rolling the stacked dolly ahead of him, having spent nine minutes inside. You clock it.

  The courier wheels the dolly to the rear of the truck. The handcart is stacked halfway up with three white canvas sacks of cash. The plastic trays below the white sacks contain rolled coins. The original blue-and-green Pinnacle canvas bag rides on top.

  Inside the sacks are deposit bags containing cash and receipts. The clear plastic bags are supplied by Pinnacle and each one bears a tracking bar code. Much of the courier’s nine minutes inside was spent inspecting the bags for tears, testing the seals, and reconciling the amounts printed on the deposit slips inside with the amounts on the manager’s manifest.

  The driver has spent this nine minutes watching the exterior perimeter. Security mirrors around the truck are specifically trained on the rear-door ambush area.

  Courier and driver remain in constant audio contact, both wearing small, black wire earphones and microphones. The driver monitors the courier’s conversations for warning signs and responds to his reports, such as I’m on my way out.

  As the courier approaches the can, a small playing-card-sized parabolic mirror mounted near the doo
r handle gives him an eye line on anyone behind him moving into the ambush zone. Two knocks and the right rear door is unlocked. He pulls it open and promptly loads the white sacks into the hold. He stows the empty dolly and shuts the door.

  He walks to the passenger door, plucking out his ear wires. The side door is unlocked by the driver and the courier climbs inside. 11:46.

  The truck sits for four more minutes while the driver double-checks the deposit receipts, entering bar codes into Pinnacle’s tracking system.

  You pull away during this time. Armored-truck guards are vigilant for tails, and a well-trained driver will spot your car driving away and make a mental note of its color and make.

  You drive to the bottom of Grandview and back along Forbes to the parking lot of the Sheraton Tara. There, you and your partner switch into a work car and wait.

  The can comes rolling along Forbes Road past you toward the mall. You see that the driver is a black man in his fifties. With no vehicle following him out of the parking lot of The Braintree 10, he starts to relax, falling in with the traffic, maintaining a safe and reasonable distance from the other vehicles. You pull out a few cars behind him.

  The interior of the armored-truck cab is wide but unremarkable, a cross between a police cruiser and a long-haul truck. Aside from the hypnotizing drone of the engine and the occasional radio chatter, the cab is essentially soundproof. Armoring and special glass make it like driving inside a vacuum. For such a boxy, bulky, dense vehicle—armored trucks average between three and four miles to the gallon—the suspension is exceptionally smooth, and driver and courier feel no bumps.

  Guards are often retirees from the MBTA or the Turnpike Authority, usually with a military background, earning between 65K and 90K per year. The shuttle between deliveries and pickups, or jumps, is the safest and least stressful part of their workday.