Ghostman (12 page)

I opened up the leather case between the seats and wasn’t surprised by what I found. There was a bent spoon that smelled like vinegar and a couple of fresh needle sharps. There was a thirteenth of methamphetamine with a pink color to it. I dabbed my finger in the methamphetamine and tasted it. It was adulterated with some sort of strawberry flavoring. They were both probably high out of their minds when the heist went down.

I caught sight of a Colt 1911 pistol on the floor of the backseat. I climbed partway into the passenger seat and looked at the smashed-out rear window. Ribbons must have fired the Colt at something behind him, turning in his seat and shooting right through it. Who had been behind him? Were the cops chasing him, or the third shooter, or was all of this just from the ten seconds or so before he could get the engine started?

I could barely think over the hideous smell. The beep I’d heard happened again, and this time it was very close by.

I took out my cell phone and entered Ribbons’s number digit by digit. When I pressed the call button, a second later a loud chirp somewhere between a bell and a metal scratch came from the driver’s-side door. It echoed against the voluminous hangar walls.

I found the phone, an old clamshell, lodged under the bloodstained seat cushion. Twenty missed calls from a blocked number. The last answered incoming call was five a.m. There was a rejected call at two minutes to six, and then another one two minutes after six. There were
several dozen text messages too. All of them
Your father needs you
, all from blocked numbers. The contact list was empty.

The last incoming call was from me.

I got out of the car again and went back around to the trunk. The smell was both disgusting and distracting. I dropped to one knee and shined the light from my cell phone below the undercarriage. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve. When I looked under the trunk, my eyes went blurry. Then I saw the source of the smell.

My god.

16

Under the car was a silver-brown five-gallon fuel canister. The valve was broken, and the liquid had slowly seeped out into a large puddle. The side of the canister was marked with a yellow hazard symbol. I instantly knew what it was. Naphtha, also known as Coleman fuel. Made of petroleum and charcoal tar. Very flammable. Extremely. It was slowly evaporating under the Dodge.

Worse, it had been there for more than twelve hours.

When I was just starting out, I did my early bank jobs with whomever I could. I met a wheelman who was a fastidious and clean guy. Always kept his hair just so with that grease that they used to sell in the little round cans. He was the kind of guy who liked the word
slick
. Slick car, slick look, slick moves. He drove a silver Shelby GT500 that was so well preserved that it looked like he’d driven it through a time machine. It had an engine as shined up as a wedding ring and a coat of paint as fresh as an army recruit. He loved that car. After a bank job in Baltimore, where I’d helped him by pretending to be a wealthy customer, we were running from the cops with six hundred grand in bearer bonds, and somehow they’d figured out where we were going to swap our throwaway car for the GT. Once we were in the 500, the wheelman
didn’t hesitate. He parked the first place he thought was safe and walked down the street to the grocer while I stole us a third getaway car from a hotel parking lot. He picked up five gallons of naphtha on a prepaid credit card without the girl behind the counter popping her gum at him. He dumped the whole canister through the driver’s-side window, tossed a match in and let the only thing he’d ever loved burn away behind him. That Shelby was his life. The fuel burned that car down to the chassis. Down to the engine block. His classic car was a cinder by the time the cops arrived. His brand-new tape deck. His vintage fender. His custom leather seats—all toast. We both walked away from that heist with enough money to buy a fleet of those GT500s, but his new one wasn’t quite the same, he told me. The Coleman fuel had also burned away its soul.

I took three steps back, remembering what my wheelman had called it.

Torch gas
.

I backed quickly away from the toxic fumes. When I was out, I took a long, deep breath. I’d seen what this shit could do. Shotgun casings into plastic puddles. Handgun brass into charred pools of metal. Body parts would burn until even the bones were ash.

I considered turning right around and finishing what Ribbons had started. One little spark would torch away every shred of evidence. Blow it up like the Fourth of July. The drugs would vaporize. The bullets would melt like solder on the chassis. The whole hangar would go up.

But that was the thing.

There was evidence here that I wasn’t picking up on. To an expert, this car could tell a story. So far it had told me about Ribbons’s state of mind, his health and his getaway plans. But there was more. What about the tread marks leading out? What sort of car did they belong to? And besides, the minute I tossed the match at this wreck, the police would be en route, and I still had business here.

Why hadn’t Ribbons torched the car in the first place? He got as far along in the process as dumping out the torch gas; why hadn’t he
finished the deal? Everything was ready to blow, so it wouldn’t have taken much. All he had to do was light a match. Matches can be hard to strike when you’re wearing gloves, and maybe going through septic shock from a bullet wound, not to mention shaking from a quarter gram of crystal meth, but it couldn’t have been that hard. Maybe he had tried to set the thing on fire, I thought. Matches aren’t as reliable as people think. Eight times out of ten, a lit one will go out before it hits the ground. And sometimes, even when it stays lit long enough to hit the fuel, nothing happens. I once saw a guy flick a lit cigarette into a bucket of gasoline. It sizzled out, just like he said it would. Fire needs fuel and oxygen. Liquid fuels, especially in containers, often don’t have enough oxygen to catch from a single small flame. But that didn’t sound right. If Ribbons was cogent enough to get this far, he would have done anything to set this Dodge on fire. The evidence here could convict him. Hell, even if he’d run out of matches, he could have lit the thing up with the muzzle flash from his assault rifle. There must’ve been something else going on that I was missing.

I took out the phone again and stared at the numbers for a few seconds. Atlantic City. The number came back to me, like muscle memory.

Executive Concierge Services
.

The line opened up a second later. “This is Alexander Lakes.”

“I need a wheelman.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m looking for a person who knows cars. Do you guys do services, or only provisions?”

“We’ve worked with several mechanics in town. Where should I say—”

“I don’t need a mechanic. I need a wheelman. Someone who can fix a broken transmission isn’t good enough. I’m looking for someone who can take one look at some tracks in the mud and tell me what sort of car they came from. Someone discreet, who doesn’t ask questions and who likes getting paid in cash. I need someone who knows cars like I know how to breathe.”

Lakes went silent for a second. Thinking.

He said, “We can provide that.”

I listened as Lakes walked his phone into a different room. Because of the nature of my work, the collection of names and phone numbers in my head could fit on a single index card. I rely on fences and jugmarkers to know people for me. It’s safer, most of the time. I could hear crickets in the distance until Alexander came back on the line.

“There’s a man named Spencer Randall who I’ve worked with before. He’s done some emergency driving for our clients in the past. Very professional, very discreet. He’s one of the best drivers I’ve ever met.”

“Does he know cars?”

“Better than anyone.”

“Is he in the city?”

“He has an automotive shop in Delaware.”

“Don’t you have anything closer? Delaware’s too far.”

“Sir, as I mentioned, we do not keep a list of clients. Only assets.”

I shook my head. “Randall’s really all you’ve got?”

“I’m sorry, sir. If you give me a few hours—”

“Give me the number.”

In the background I could hear the hum of a computer and the sound of a television with the volume down at the other side of the room. I thought I could hear children playing. He recited the number slowly, and I only needed to hear it once. I terminated the call and put in the new number.

The phone rang seven times.

When someone answered, it was clearly in a machinist’s shop. The man on the other end cleared his throat. He said, “This is Spencer Randall. Who is this?”

He had a soft voice and he spoke through his nose a little too much.

“My name is Jack,” I told him.

“How can I help you, Jack?”

“I need a wheelman.”

The line went quiet for a moment.
Wheelman
, an almost exclusively criminal term, dates back to the early days of professional bank robbery, before John Dillinger and the Chicago Outfit. It was coined by a German guy named Herman Lamm, who was the original jugmarker. A former military man, he was the first person to plan his heists as if they were tactical operations. Before him, bank robberies were all messy, bloody, impromptu affairs. He chose the word for the getaway driver after what a naval captain would call the guy who steered his ship, because, at the time,
driver
was still associated with horses and carriages.

“Who gave you this number?” Spencer said.

“A man named Lakes. You know him?”

“Yeah, I know him,” he said.

“I hear you’re in Delaware,” I said.

“Wilmington. I run a shop.”

“I’m in Atlantic City. I’ll give you a thousand dollars for an hour of your time, but it has to be right now.”

“I’ll want to hear the circumstances first.”

I paused to think about what I should tell him. “I think it would be better if you saw for yourself.”

“Then my answer’s no. I don’t do any job without getting the information up front. I’m not even supposed to be taking this call. Jesus, I don’t know you. I don’t recognize your voice. For all I know you could be bringing me into some sort of bait-car scheme.”

“It’s nothing like that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m just asking you to look at something and tell me what it is. You’ll be in no danger.”

“I want more than a thousand bucks. How much are you getting on this job?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. Nobody works for nothing.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m nobody. Now or never, Spencer.”

“Make it five thousand. And I don’t run from cops. I see flashing lights, I pull over. As far as I want to know, this is all aboveboard.”

“Three thousand.”

“Done. Where should I meet you?”

I checked my watch.

“The movie theater by the airport,” I said. “Pleasantville exit. You can’t miss it. One hour.”

“I’m three hours away.”

“You’re a wheelman. I don’t want a Sunday driver.”

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.