Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  "You're thinking too much, Morton."

  Morton stiffened, slowing down even more. His mustache rippled as he said, "No one calls me Morton."

  "I do, Morton," said Doug, reacquainting him with the Beretta. "You're rip-shit at me right now, Morton, I understand that. Because I brought your family into this thing, you're super-fucking-pissed." Reservoir Dogs suddenly coming out of Doug. "Remember this isn't your money, Morton, and how nice it will be tonight to get home. You too, Arnold," continued Doug, into his own collar. "We're coming out now and you're not gonna do a damn thing but sit tight and still. Tell me you will, Arnold."

  Arnold's voice in his ears said, "This ain't right."

  "Tell me you will, Arnold."

  "Lord Jesus been listening in on you just like I have."

  "Arnold, tell me you fucking will."

  "I will," said Arnold. "I have done my job here. I will leave the rest to Him."

  Into his hip radio, Doug told Gloansy, "We're coming out."

  Doug unlocked the glass door with Cidro's keys. They passed the imitation velvet rope and the ticket booths on either side, Doug stopping at the unlocked outside doors.

  "Okay, Morton?" said Doug.

  Morton just started straight ahead.

  They exited onto the cement landing atop the stairs, Arnold sitting inside the driver's window of the Pinnacle can, hands above the steering wheel, watching them.

  Doug and Jem followed Morton and the cash cart down the ramp to the sidewalk, then over the fire lane markings and around the rear of the can to where the Caravan was idling. Gloansy sat there in his dinosaur mask, eyes trained on Arnold.

  Jem threw open the rear hatch of the van and tossed the bags inside, Morton standing there, his unbuttoned shirt flapping in the breeze. Doug stood behind Morton, scanning the sunny sky for helicopters.

  "Arnold," said Doug, "the dinosaur's gonna keep monitoring the police radio, and I'm gonna stay in touch with you until we're outside broadcast range, understand? You don't make a call until then."

  Doug yanked down his earphones without waiting for Arnold's answer. Jem slammed the hatchback shut and Doug walked Morton around to the passenger side of the van where Jem pulled open the sliding door for Doug, then climbed into the front passenger seat. Jem covered Morton from the open window while Doug backed inside and shut the sliding door on Morton's scowling eyes.

  Gloansy floored it. They screeched through the empty parking lot toward the cliff edge. As Doug pulled a seat belt across his chest, Jem stuck his gun arm out his window, drawing a bead on sun-worshipping Yogurt Man.

  Jem did not shoot. Gloansy turned hard toward the emergency access road, banging through the gate-- they had cut the lock and chain overnight-- and plunging down the road. It was no steeper than Pearl Street, and Gloansy banked hard at the end, slapping through the second cut gate and bottoming out hard next to the batting cages and the driving range.

  Gloansy yanked off his mask and pushed the van for all it had, driving hard across the cracked parking lot and straight at the chain fence separating lower Forbes Road from the broad, busy highway. The fence had also been precut overnight, links snipped up the middle so that when the van bumped the curb, it smashed clean through.

  They rattled over a stripe of high grass before jumping out onto 93 at the mouth of Exit 6, cutting off another minivan and veering across the breakdown lane into the traffic flow, throwing off a pair of hubcaps like wheeling quarters. Other cars braked and honked their disapproval, Gloansy punching the horn to scare off the panicked midday commuters, zooming ahead, falling in with the traffic and running south through the highway split, toward the rail station and the switch-- with the cash-filled deposit bags sliding around in back, Jem howling like a madman in front, and Doug furiously stripping off his face.

  26

  Inside the Tape

  FRAWLEY STOOD AND WATCHED the highway traffic zipping past him as though the green minivan might come around again, hours after the fact, MacRay and his crew in their ugly-face masks hooting at him out of the windows, waving fistfuls of cash.

  The tire tracks, twin stripes of churned soil cut into the high grass, drove right through the precut six-foot chain-link fence and out onto the highway. The highway split offered them a variety of escape routes... and blah blah blah blah blah.

  Thwock! Behind Frawley, the lone driving-range employee teed off again, eyeing the cops and the evidence van as he reloaded between drives. Frawley envied the guy's bystander status, tired of cop-think, and nearly on autopilot here, having trouble finding a reason to care about this particular crime-- while at the same time feeling a mounting sense of fury toward the bandits.

  The photographer was done, the tire tracks measured and cast, a fireman now cutting out that section of fence for crime lab comparison, in the event the offending tool were to be found. But it would not be found. It had certainly been chopped into several pieces and disposed of in various trash receptacles between here and Charlestown.

  Dino was saying something about estimating the time of the fence snip and the cut gate chains. He was still working the crime; Frawley was working the criminals.

  The van offered a glimmer of hope. Frawley had a BOLO out on suspicious green vans, with special attention to handicapped plates. None of the witnesses had said anything about handicapped plates, but Frawley and Dino both knew that armored-car guys loved the tags for their access, letting them park closest to business doors without attracting attention.

  None of the highway drivers who dialed 911 could pinpoint where the getaway van had pulled off the highway. Frawley guessed they had skipped the split in order to put some distance between them and the looky-loos who saw them bang through the fence-- but they wouldn't have gone too far before making their switch, not with the new highway-overpass traffic cameras.

  Now the TV news helicopter was making another pass overhead. A hot, muggy June afternoon, thunderstorms due to crack the heat. Frawley's boxers clung to him like wet swim trunks he had pulled pants on over. Leaving his necktie on in this humidity had been a form of self-punishment, but now he ripped open the knot and yanked it out of his collar, stuffing it into his pocket as, with Dino, he turned back toward the access road. The heat was one more obstacle the robbers had left him in their wake, one more taunting F.U.

  "It's them," Frawley said.

  Dino nodded, saying, "Okay," not doubting or disbelieving Frawley, only wanting to make him work for it. Dino's shirtsleeves were sopping, rolled up past his hairy gray forearms. "The guards, the manager, everyone says only three doers."

  "Could have been one more in the back of the van. Or maybe one of them was an extra pair of eyeballs out on the mall side, watching for cop patrols."

  "But no tech whatsoever. Not one clipped wire. All manpower and coercion."

  "None of the armored-car jobs have used tech. There can be no tech on an armored. This is them shaking it up. Knowing they're being sniffed at."

  "Okay. But Magloan-- he goes out robbing the morning after his wedding?"

  "That's the first thing their lawyers will proclaim in court. It's perfect."

  "And if it turns out Elden's been at work all day?"

  Frawley shook his head, adamant. "It's them."

  A Braintree cop stood by the dented gates, waiting for someone to collect the green-van-paint transfer. The cut chain lay there like a dead snake. Frawley and Dino walked the hooked road back up to the parking lot. "Some big movie, I guess, this weekend?" said Dino. "Twister? That the movie of the game?" He was trying to pull Frawley out of his funk. " 'Huge opening,' said the manager. What my last partner used to say about his wife, 'Huge opening.' "

  Frawley nodded, stubborn, nursing his bad mood. The wind up at the top was the stale gust of heat that comes at you when you open an oven. The broken chain there was being bagged, print dust smoking off it like gray pollen. The Globe truck stolen out of South Boston, which they had used to block off the roads leading in, sat on slashed tires atop a fl
atbed trailer, its green sides dusted as though it had been driven through a sandstorm.

  Frawley stood at the knee-high wooden railing around the parking lot and looked across the highway canyon to the facing road of industry set atop a cliff of blasted stone. A dozen different angles for casing the theater from there.

  They crossed the lot to the armored truck, still parked in the fire lane outside the theater entrance. Something about the yellow police tape offended Frawley and he tore it down himself, saying, "They never even touched the truck."

  "Went backdoor. Like at Kenmore."

  "Going out of their way to get the drop on the mark. They could have come at the truck head-on. It's isolated enough up here-- doesn't get much more isolated. Doable, though messy."

  Dino patted the can's side reassuringly as he might a spooked elephant. "They knew better."

  Frawley watched the police tape slithering across the baking lot. "These guys knew there was more money in the can, had complete control of the situation, and they let it go. Add in the days and weeks of prep, casing the job, following all the players? Decidedly risk-averse. Being super careful."

  Dino said, "That's another kind of good for us. They get too careful, too tricky, they'll screw themselves up."

  "Yeah," said Frawley, starting up the stairs to the lobby. "Except, I am through waiting for them to screw up."

  Entering the theater lobby was a jump from the oven into a refrigerator. The manager had set out bottled water and tubs of popcorn for the cops. They were hoping to reopen in time for the seven-o'clock shows.

  "That older guy, the projectionist, he okay?" asked Frawley.

  "No chest pains," said Dino. "Just gas."

  The two guards were sitting on folding chairs with their caps in their hands, going over forms with a rep from Pinnacle. Their fuzzy descriptions told Frawley that the bandits' intimidation-- their knowledge of the men's home lives-- was still working. Neither Harford, who had spent time in both gunmen's company, nor Washton, into whose ears the radio gunman had issued his instructions, said they would be able to identify the bad guys. The only useful thing Frawley had gleaned from their accounts was the fright makeup, similar to an earlier job he suspected these Brown Bag Bandits of, a co-op bank in Watertown.

  The guards acted like they knew their interview with the boss from Pinnacle was a formality. Both men had allowed themselves to be tailed on the job and followed home after work, enough to get them fired for cause.

  The smell of gunfire lingered in the chilled air. Little numbered orange evidence triangles stood on the carpeted floor, marking where brass cartridge casings from Harford's gun had been collected. Frawley stood by a Barb Wire cardboard display, looking at the bullet-hole nipples in Pamela Anderson Lee's vinyl-corseted tits, contrasting that act with the discipline of leaving $1,000 in new, traceable bills sitting on the manager's desk. It was like the kidnapping after the Morning Glory job: schizo.

  Maybe they'd start spending their money now. Their take was all clean, circulated cash. Frawley turned to remind Dino of this, but Dino was gone. Frawley wondered how long he had been standing there alone, ruminating.

  He saw the manager down by the side door where the robbers had first jumped him. Mr. Kosario was rocking a baby, his wife's arms tight around his waist. She was a small Latina with straightened, blond hair, wearing a silky blouse and a red leather skirt with a tight hem. A skinny movie-theater manager with a hot little wife, and there stood Special Agent Adam Frawley, still trying to pimp his gold shield to get laid.

  He ducked into one of the empty theaters and took a seat in the dark back row. When he first received the call that afternoon, he hadn't wanted to report. He wanted to ignore it altogether. I am tired, he told himself, of chasing bank robbers and bad men.

  Now this heist vexed him. Viewed one way, it was a step forward for this crew: a takeover robbery, a broad move beyond banks. Viewed another way, it was a step back: a safe play, shying away from financial institutions. He feared it might be evidence of them cycling down-- until he remembered that bad guys like these almost never quit until they're caught.

  Either way, Frawley needed to move fast.

  He kept going back and forth on Claire Keesey, between raging contempt and white-knight longing. Was she knowingly sleeping with the enemy, or just an unwitting damsel in distress? He stood and faced the blank screen, but try as he might to make a blank screen of his mind, the movie that kept playing there was Claire Keesey inviting MacRay into her home, into her bedroom, in between her legs.

  In the lobby he found Dino looking for him, pointing with his clipboard. "Van on fire, about a mile away. Hosing it off now. Might not be a total loss."

  * * *

  FRAWLEY RAN OFF HIS excess adrenaline that night, doing intervals through Charlestown, down the suspects' streets and past their doors-- even all the way out to Elden's house, in the area they called the Neck. The black-and-orange Monte Carlo SS outside Magloan's wooden row house on the downslope of Auburn Street still had beer cans tied to the bumper, JUST MARRY'D spelled out in Silly String on the rear window.

  He needed to remind himself how close he was to them. He ran past the Tap on Main Street and thought about getting cleaned up and dropping back Downstairs for a beer. Instead he turned onto Packard Street, past Claire Keesey's and through the alley behind, looking for inspiration and also MacRay's beat-to-shit Caprice.

  At home he made a protein shake and microwaved some chicken, eating in front of the Bulls-Sonics NBA Finals. Then he showered, put away some laundry he had stacked up, opened his mail. All of which was a prelude to the night's main event.

  A pot stash, junkie works, porn mags, fishnets and garters-- the sneaker box on the floor of his closet could have held any old shameful fetish, but Frawley's kick was minicassette-tape dubs of old crime-scene interviews. He wired his Olympus recorder through his stereo receiver, first warming up with a few older teller debriefings from past cases, some Greatest Hits-- tellers weeping, reaching out to him for answers, Why me?-- just to get his mind in that place. Then with the lights off and the shades down, he lay on the floor and listened as Claire Keesey's voice filled his room, transporting him back to the Kenmore vault and his desire for justice for her on that day...

  ... The one who was sitting next to me. Not next to me... but in the same seat, the same bench, the two of us. The one who blindfolded me. I could tell somehow... he was looking at me...

  27

  Next Morning

  HE HAD PUT UP with the blaring music all night. On his way out of the house, pissed-off first thing in the morning, Doug came down banging on Jem's door like a cop.

  Nothing. No response. Doug's pounding was just more bass in the mix.

  He was near the bottom of the stairs when two guys unlocked the inside door. Young guys with clipper haircuts, thick with new muscle, sporting different T-shirts but matching fatigue pants and paratrooper boots. Camo kids who looked like they'd walked straight off the rack of the Somerville Army/Navy Surplus store.

  They entered like they belonged there, the loose pane of glass rattling in the door. Doug thought he recognized them, maybe just from around the Town. Then he remembered-- the Tap that night, the two younger guys Jem was talking to in the corner.

  They nodded at him-- not friendly, more out of respect of Doug's size coming off the steps. "Hey, man, 's'up?" Something like that.

  Said Doug, "Who're you?"

  "Aw, we're going up to see-- "

  "How the hell'd you get a key?" He was on the landing now, facing them.

  "Jem, man. He gave it to us." They said it as though Jem's magic name solved everything.

  "What's that mean? You live here or something?"

  "Naw, man." Now they looked at each other like cats, sensing trouble, wondering what to do. "Yo, we got some business with him."

  "Yo, no you don't. Not in this house."

  Another look between them. "Look, man," said one, coming on confidential, "hey, we know who you
are. We know-- "

  Doug was on him fast, grabbing him by his T-shirt collar and driving him back up against the door. "Who am I? Huh? What do you know?"

  The loose pane of door glass popped out, shattering on the floor of the dingy vestibule. Doug hadn't meant to do it, but he didn't care much either. He shoved the camo kid halfway through the empty frame.

  "Take it easy, man, we just-- "

  Krista's door flew open behind Doug. She came out barefoot in a short black silk Victoria's Secret robe that was familiar to him. "What the-- ?" she started to say, but seeing Doug there with the camo kid silenced her.