by Chuck Hogan
The other part of Doug was coming out now. The old Doug MacRay, the one resigned to his fate. The Jem in him who was damned and knew it. Never prison again. His only goal now.
No tomorrow: that was what Billy T. had been all about. No consequences, nobody to disappoint, not Dez, not Frank G., not even Doug himself. Nothing could touch him now.
Jem cracked open his third, ahead of Doug, meaning Doug was without another bottle to open his. He was working on the cap with his Krazy Glue fingers when Jem let out a war whoop.
The red light was on over the ambulance door on Van Ness.
The silver Provident truck turned off Ipswich, starting down the road, slowing at the rising door. It swung around, stopped, and began to back inside.
The black Suburban pulled up at the curb outside Fenway as the bay door closed.
Jem dropped his empty on the floor, kicking open his door to the street and the rain.
Doug stood out on the sidewalk, the downpour cracking loud against his hood. Dez got out in front of Doug, standing there, not looking at him, waiting for Gloansy. Those two started up Van Ness toward the Suburban as Doug crossed the street through blowing wet sheets, side by side with Jem, walking toward the Gate D entrance and looking for the G in every raindrop, thinking, ambush, ambush, ambush.
52
THE LAST JOB
JEM PULLED HARD A few times on the chained gate.
The red shirt sitting dry and comfortable on the folding chair inside looked up from his newspaper, then dropped it at the sight of the cops, hustling to the entrance.
Jem said, “Was it you who called?”
He was a young guy, cinnamon-skinned, puffy, maybe Samoan but not huge. “Huh?”
“Nine one one call, we got. Open up.”
“I didn’t… it wasn’t…”
“Robbery call. Who else is here?”
“Robbery?” He looked around, panicked.
“There’s no one else here?”
“Sure there is, but—”
“Call says you’re being held up. Right now.”
“Then I need to phone security.”
“Phone whoever you want, but we gotta get in there first, do our jobs. Then make your call.”
He nodded and unlocked the chain, admitting Doug and Jem.
Doug stiffened up to hide his jumpiness. “Go ahead, lock it back up if you have to.”
As the red shirt did, Doug and Jem both unclasped the bottoms of their coats, baring their holsters. With the rain and the lack of lights, it was darker than a night game in there.
“Where’s everyone else?” said Jem, starting down the ramp.
“Some around the corner there. Let me—”
“And what is your name, sir?”
“My name’s Eric.”
“Eric, point me in the right direction here. Let’s make sure everyone’s safe, then we can all sit down and make our phone calls.”
Eric nodded obediently and showed them the way, moving down the slope toward the corner. Doug glimpsed the open Employees Only door, and then, wider, the tunnel.
The motorized flatbed pushcart was on its way toward the first aid station at the tunnel’s end, loaded with thick bundles of plastic-wrapped cash. One gray-and-black Provident guard operated the cart’s handle controls, the other backing him up with one hand on his holster. Doug double-checked their ears, seeing no wires.
Jem started after them, his voice booming inside the tunnel. “Who called 911?”
The guards stopped, turning fast, spooked.
“Who called it?” said Jem, hand at his waist, coattails flapping. Doug pushed Eric down to the floor, telling him to stay still, lie flat.
The guards looked at each other, hands on their holsters.
The anxiety in Doug’s voice worked as he said, following Jem, “We got a distress call. Who made the call?”
The guards stayed between Jem and Doug and the money cart. “No call from us.”
“Who called it?” said Jem, pressing closer.
“Hold on,” said one guard, raising his off-hand.
“ID!” said Jem, not stopping. “Let’s see some ID! Both of you!”
“Hold on, hold it, now,” said the guard, half into a protective crouch.
“Whoa, whoa!” said Jem.
“Don’t do that!” shouted Doug.
“We didn’t hit it!” said one guard.
“We’re on the job here!” said the other.
Two Fenway Park security blue shirts appeared at the mouth of the tunnel behind them. “What the… ?”
“Get down back there!” commanded Doug.
They put their arms out like this was all a big misunderstanding. “It’s okay!” they yelled. “They’re okay!”
Doug drew his Beretta, keeping it low at his hip, muzzle down. “Everybody on the ground, now!”
“For our safety!” said Jem, also drawing. “I want IDs from everybody!”
Twenty yards away, Doug just kept asserting himself. “Get down!”
“Wait, hey!” said the guards.
“On the floor!” yelled Jem.
The blue shirts lay facedown.
The panicky guard pulled his sidearm clear of his holster. Doug swung up his Beretta, aiming, bracing it on his opposite forearm. “Gun!” he yelled. “Gun!”
“Drop your weapon!” bellowed Jem, aiming his Glock. “Put it down now!”
“No, no!” said the other guard, covering his head, backing away.
Jem and Doug came at them gun-first, with legit tension: “Drop your weapon! We got a call! Put it down!”
Guard yelling, “We did not call!”
Doug stopped ten yards away. The four of them barking back and forth over drawn guns until the retreating guard dropped to his knee, took his hand off his holster, and laid on his belly, arms out.
“Stop resisting!” they yelled at the other one. “Get down! Get down!”
Cursing, the panicky second guard yielded, lying down arms-out, still holding on to his gun.
Doug and Jem came up fast, Jem stepping on the armed guard’s wrist, covering both guards, Doug going to the blue shirts beyond the cash cart, gathering hands and binding them with plastic ties. The can idled just around the corner from the mouth of the tunnel, backed in—the driver unable to see or hear anything.
Doug ripped off the blue shirts’ security radios and tossed them away. “Lie still,” he told them, rejoining Jem, pocketing the other guard’s gun and yanking his stiff hands behind his back. “Jesus Christ,” spat Doug’s guard, red-faced, gruff. “The fuck’re you two doing? We’re on the goddamn job here!”
“We got a call,” said Doug, binding the guard’s wrists. Doug then pulled up the black bandanna knotted around his neck, covering his mouth and nose and leaving only his eyes visible. Jem did the same as Doug turned and started back for Eric.
The puffy guy was already sitting up. Incomprehension, at first—masked cop with gun raised, coming at him—then Eric got to his feet and, with one hand on the tunnel wall, began to run for his life.
Doug yelled at him to stop as the round whizzed past. The crack of the gunshot echoed in the tunnel, and Eric turned, still galloping, his cinnamon hands reaching for the hip of his jeans as though trying to catch the bullet that had just entered his side. He ran like that a few more feet before collapsing—the shock of having been shot bringing him down, not the round itself.
Doug turned, seeing Jem with his 9mm still aimed, his knee and his opposite hand on the backs of the two squirming guards.
Doug rushed to Eric, who was gripping his wide hip in horror. But all four limbs were moving, and he had plenty of padding to absorb the round. Doug hoped the rain would do the same to the gunshot report.
He wrestled one of Eric’s wrists away from the tiny wound, then the other, binding them behind his back. “There’ll be help here soon,” said Doug, leaning on his shoulder for emphasis. “Stay down and shut up.”
He ran back to where Jem was, wasting
a glare at him, then yanking his guard to his feet. The guard twisted and fought, Doug finally bouncing the guy off the wall, stunning him before muscling him around the corner.
Doug got the full view of the silver can there, the Provident medallion bold beneath the rear windows. He dumped the guard down against the brick wall and walked up to the passenger side of the cab to get the driver’s attention.
He hadn’t expected a woman. She was frizzy-haired and long-faced, throwing Doug off his game for a second.
She went white, jerking back and fumbling with the keys in the ignition, starting up the truck, diesel smoke coughing into the cave. Doug heard the locks automatically reset and watched the yellow rooftop beacon start spinning, the can going into lockdown. With the bay door closed in front of it and the iron girders behind it, there was nowhere for the truck to go.
Jem dragged the blue shirts over to the dazed guards, dumping them along the side wall. The driver peeked out the passenger window, now talking fast into the handset of a ceiling-mounted radio. “Assholes fucked up,” snarled one guard. “Sandy’s locked in there. She’s calling the law.”
Doug moved to the switch controlling the lamp outside, turning it off. He checked Jem standing over the four captives, bandanna puffing with breath, then started back past the trapped armored truck to the next bay door, pressing the call button on the cop-style two-way Motorola clipped to his shoulder. “Ready?”
“Ready,” came back Dez’s voice, breathless. “All clear out here.”
Doug hit the switch and the second door crawled up the wall to the ceiling, rising on the crashing rain and Dez in his orange cop coat and black bandanna, holding his Beretta on the driver of the tail car: a swarthy bodybuilder type in a collared shirt and jeans, hands bound behind him, pissed off. Dez walked him inside, and then the big black Suburban followed them into the bay, backing in trunk end first. The wet tires slid to a stop on the downward incline, Gloansy jumping out wearing his bandanna, and Doug hit the switch that closed the bay door.
Gloansy took control of the tail-car driver, walking him back to the others at the Provident truck as Dez touched the radio wire looped over his ear. He blinked and squinted as he monitored all police channels plus the security net inside the park itself, muttering something about his contact lenses. “There it is,” he said. “Call just went out from dispatch.”
The driver had done her job, calling in a Mayday.
They jogged back to the idling can at the first aid station, where the mouthy guard was still going at it: “I put in twenty-two years as a guard at Walpole, I have friends that’ll see to it you all live out the rest of your lives in rip-ass hell.”
Jem pointed his gun at him and the guy shut up.
Gloansy and Dez stayed on the five hostages—the two uniformed can guards, the two Fenway security blue shirts, and the Suburban driver—while Jem and Doug worked the pushcart, Doug thumbing buttons on the electric handle to roll it past the back of the can and down to the open rear door of the Suburban. The cash was sealed in clear, tight, shrink-wrapped bundles, roughly the size of four loaves of bread packaged side by side. Jem scattered the paperwork off the top and dumped off two heavy racks of coins, the rolls bursting nickels and dimes on the floor. They pulled folded hockey duffel bags from their coat pockets, Doug spreading them open in the back of the Suburban.
Jem played baggage handler, tossing the parcels of currency at Doug as fast as Doug could pack them, six bundles to a bag. He was five or six bags in when Dez called back, “How much longer?’
Jem kept throwing. “What’s up?”
“Scrambled traffic on one of the special cop freqs.”
Jem stopped. Doug turned, seeing Dez in the flashing yellow light of the can beacon, his hand at his ear.
“Too soon off the initial call,” Dez said. “Can’t be because of us. Maybe something else going down somewhere.”
Doug’s heart was in his throat. He said, “I’ll check it out.”
“No,” said Jem, already starting away. Doug watched him break open his coat on the Tec-9, stepping inside the tunnel.
Doug returned to the loaves of money, packing up the last bag, loading it as fast as he could.
FRAWLEY PULLED UP OUTSIDE the “1912 Fenway Park” facade at the original entrance to the park, Gate A, at the other end of Yawkey Way. All he had for rain gear was the blue Nautica jacket he had grabbed rushing out to the hospital that morning. He opened his trunk and threw his nylon FBI vest over his shoulders, good for identification only—bank agents don’t carry body armor—and found an old orange Syracuse ballcap for his head. He grabbed what he had in there, sliding two extra 9mm mags for his shoulder-holstered SIG-Sauer into his pants pockets, emptying a box of shotgun cartridges into his zippered coat pockets, and pulling his Remington 870 twelve-gauge from its padded sleeve.
Dino’s Taurus pulled up fast on the opposite sidewalk, Dino unfolding himself out of it, buttoning his trench coat to the downpour. “I looped the block,” he said, concerned. “Nothing hinky. Looks tight. No vans around, nothing parked with handicapped tags.”
Frawley gripped the brim of his cap, curling it one-handedly, cursing. A bad call here would ruin him, plain and simple. Good-bye, Los Angeles. Hello, Glasgow, Montana. “Maybe we’re too early, maybe too late.”
They turned to the blue Boston Police Department camper that had just arrived, the Entry and Apprehension Team mobile-command center parked outside a closed souvenir shop. Two pairs of black commando-types in balaclavas, Fritz helmets, and trunk armor, with the initials EAT on their backs, walked along Yawkey Way as though it were Sniper Alley in downtown Sarajevo, one team headed toward the nearby ticket office, the other away toward Gate D.
A silver Accord came by, slowing, a blond mom watching the show, her little boy in back waving. Dino said, “We gotta close off these streets.”
Frawley was soaked with rain and doubt when he saw the EAT pair start sprinting from the ticket office down Yawkey toward Van Ness. Dino leaned into the open camper. “What?”
Two tactical cops were coordinating. “Voice inside, male. Says he’s been shot.”
Frawley saw the tac cops going in through the far gate and started running, thinking maybe he wasn’t too late after all.
DOUG LEFT THE SUBURBAN’S rear door open with the cash-stuffed duffel bags, moving past the others toward the tunnel. Jem was more than halfway through it, walking slow. Doug could see Eric lying at the end, his thick legs kicking, groaning over and over again, “I’m shot, I’m shot.” Doug was about to call Jem back when Jem dropped into a half-crouch.
Doug saw it too—a glint of light beyond squirming Eric. It was a small mirror on a long pole, extending across the mouth of the tunnel.
Jem opened up on it, cracking the mirror, the pole clattering to the stone floor. The echo of his fire was tremendous inside the tunnel, Doug going half-deaf, wincing, backing off and drawing his Beretta. Jem sprayed another volley at the mouth, then turned, firing mad bursts behind him as he ran back toward Doug.
The tunnel filled with fireballs. Fiercely bright but nonlethal Starflash rounds ricocheted off the walls, a disorienting salvo. Jem outran these sparkling bees toward Doug as Doug opened up, blasting cover fire at nothing but flashlight beams. He choked the trigger too tight, the Beretta coughing and jumping in his hand, the sound like firecrackers in a drum. Then Jem ducked past him and together they folded around the corner.
Jem broke off his empty magazine and reloaded, howling curses.
“What the fuck!” said Gloansy, panicked, edging away from the guards.
“We got dimed!” said Jem, leaning out, spraying the tunnel with fire, then leaning back again, the Tec smoking. “Fucking dimed! Motherfucks!”
Three gunshots cracked from a different direction, Gloansy shrieking and twisting, hit, falling forward to the stone floor.
Doug ducked, looking around wildly, then grabbed Gloansy’s ankle and dragged him to the side of the can by the rear right tire. A
ll five hostages were squirming and yelling and covering their heads. It hadn’t come from them. Gloansy had been hit from behind, and Doug peered out behind the can, back toward the Suburban. No one he could see.
Gloansy sat up swearing, reaching for his lower back. His vest had saved him, but it still hurt like hell.
Then more cracks over their heads. Jem opened up against the hull of the can, wasting rounds, the ricochets pelting the floor near Doug. Doug howled at Jem, but at least now he knew where the shots were coming from.
The can driver. From the safety of the armored interior, she was potting them through the gun ports. Doug and Gloansy were safe where they were—crouched against its hull—yet pinned down.
Doug looked under the can and saw Dez’s legs on the other side. Doug yelled but couldn’t get his attention, so he ripped off his radio and threw it beneath the truck, hitting Dez’s shoe.
“The door!” Doug yelled to him. “Open the door!”
Dez crawled to the front of the can and jumped up to punch the red plunger button, the bay door starting to rise.
“What the fuck!” yelled Jem from where he was trapped at the near mouth of the tunnel.
But Doug was right: the driver was panicking, and as soon as she saw the door go up, she jumped into the front seat and powered forward, scraping the side of the can against the brick doorframe, lurching over the curb and out onto Van Ness.
Doug stood in the now empty bay and hit the button, shutting the door. He pulled the guard’s gun from his pocket and went next to Jem, sticking his arm around the corner of the tunnel and firing, the .32 going crack-crack-crack.
“We bail!” Doug yelled over the reports. “Now!”
“No fucking way!” said Jem. “The ride is loaded and ready to go!”
“Leave it!” Doug said, over the racket of return fire. “Bail out!”
Gloansy was on his feet again, hunched over but moving. He drew on the tunnel and fired into it blindly, then tugged down his bandanna, exposing his face. “I’m driving!”
“No!” said Doug.
But Gloansy was already hobbling to the Suburban, his tunnel fire keeping Doug from giving chase. Gloansy was hurt, he was flipping out, he wanted the presumed safety of a mobile cage of glass and metal. “Meet you at the switch!” he yelled.
