Ghostman (30 page)

I stuck the syringe into his arm. The needle went in sideways along the length of the vein until it hit the dark brown wrinkle where I could tell he’d shot up before. I pulled the plunger back slightly. A little blood went into the needle and blossomed out into the brown liquid like a flower.

“Please,” Ribbons whispered.

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

I pressed the plunger down. I could see the surface of his skin begin to flush red. Once the syringe was empty, I pulled it out and laid it on the floor. I took my belt off his arm. It was done.

It’s hard to watch a man die. A few seconds after I gave him the shot, Ribbons started to feel it. The pain drained away from his face. His eyes opened wide, like he was waking up, and he let out what sounded like a sigh of relief. For a moment, just a moment, all the pain was gone. His pupils tightened up into pinholes and his head rolled back. He stared at the ceiling with such intensity that it looked like he was seeing god himself up there. The moment passed, though. Ribbons’s face went red and his eyelids drooped down again. Beads of sweat formed all over him. After a few minutes, he went limp against the wall. Soon the seizure started. His eyes closed and his head slumped down to his chest. His mouth frothed up bits of spit. I watched his breath get slower and slower until the shaking stopped and he was dead.

I was kneeling in a pool of his blood.

I went back to the doorway and picked up the blue lead-lined Kevlar bag. Inside was a little more than $1,200,000, forty GPS trackers and seventy explosive ink packs. I walked out the door and went to the green Mazda Miata in the driveway.

I looked at my watch. Four p.m.

Fourteen hours to go.

47

KUALA LUMPUR

The secure elevator opened right up. Once we were inside, Hsiu took a can of black spray paint from her bag, shook it and fired a long black stream into the camera dome. It didn’t matter if security saw the blackout, because nothing could stop that elevator once the cards had been swiped. Once we were in, we were in.

We wasted no time. Once the camera was done, Vincent, Mancini and I dropped to our knees and started changing into our bank costumes. Each of us had a different disguise. Mancini had a baggy old olive-drab military surplus jacket and a black high-fiber balaclava to cover his face. Vincent wore a bright blue shaggy wig, a hooded sweatshirt and a Ronald Reagan mask. I had a black shirt, a tan jacket and a Guy Fawkes mask. Angela had a plain blue pantsuit and a hockey mask. Joe Landis had a full-face welding mask with just enough room for his glasses and Hsiu had a clear plastic thing that obscured all of her features. When we cased the joint, we’d calculated that it would take the secure elevator one minute and twenty seconds to reach the top floor. We could change into our costumes in half that.

The Halloween shit wasn’t just for show. Heisters who wear gaudy costumes are less likely to be remembered than robbers who wear plain, forgettable ones. The masks and jackets give hostages something to look at. If the robber wears something bright and flashy, the hostages won’t remember anything else. That way, once the costume is discarded, so is the memory of the man. Without the costume, the robber is just another face in the crowd.

I strapped on a pair of white latex gloves. We all had to wear gloves, even though Angela and I didn’t even have fingerprints. We didn’t want to leave any shred of biological evidence behind, including formless smudges. The only exception was Joe Landis, our boxman, because he couldn’t do his job wearing gloves. It takes some serious finesse to open a bank vault, and we weren’t about to handicap him. Instead, he had a gallon jug of ammonia. He’d splash that on everything he touched and it would work just as well. While we were getting our gloves on, he was in the back of the elevator attaching an oxygen tube to a six-foot thermal lance.

Vincent nudged me on the arm and held out the butt of the money handler’s G36 assault rifle we’d retrieved from under the armored car, as well as a small belt full of magazines. I gave him a look and hung the gun by the strap around my back. I could tell he was beaming at me through his Reagan mask when he cocked the slide on his sawed-off 12 gauge. Mancini gave me the thumbs-up and grunted with similar enthusiasm. They were more than prepared for this. They were
ready to rock
.

I turned away and chewed my lip, watching the floor numbers ratchet slowly up above the control panel. Twenty-five stories. Twenty-six. There was a faint
bing
every time the number changed. Twenty-seven stories. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine.

My palms were sweating under my gloves. I always get the shakes right before I go into a bank. I closed my eyes and tried to focus all my anger. We were nearly there.

Bing
.

The elevator came to a jerking halt and the doors slid open. A young vault manager was waiting for us. She looked up and then froze in fear, dropping the papers she was holding. I don’t remember much else about her, but I’ll never forget her scream. It wasn’t even particularly memorable. Like most, it started like a high-pitched yelp and ended in hysterical sobbing. The timing was what threw me off. During most robberies, it takes a few seconds before someone lets out a yelp. Sometimes there is even this strange pregnant silence through the whole thing because everyone’s too shocked and scared to move. But not this time. As soon as the elevator doors opened up, the woman started screaming.

I grabbed her by the hair and threw her into one of the teller windows.

This was a good thing, actually. Malaysia has several different major languages, and her scream transcended all of them. Everyone in the bank knew instantly what was going on, even if they couldn’t understand a word of what I was about to say. I swung the assault rifle around and raked the ceiling with a burst of automatic fire.

“Nobody move!” I yelled. “This is a robbery!”

A lot of things happened at once after that. Vincent jumped over the bulletproof plastic shields onto the counter behind them and pointed his shotgun at the tellers. He told them to move away from their stations and not touch the money. There were silent alarm buttons under the counter, and even if the tellers didn’t have the nerve to touch those there were passive alarms triggered to the money in the drawers. If ever the last bill was taken out of a cash drawer, the alarm would go off.

At the same time, Mancini took to the main floor. He moved from the back of the bank to the front, pointing his shotgun at everyone in sight and herding them all into the lobby. Once he got to the emergency-stairway exit door, he opened it up, pulled a tear-gas grenade from his bandolier and tossed it through. Within twenty seconds the gas filled the entire stairwell, down at least two stories. Without ventilation, the stuff would stay there for an hour and it would be nearly impossible for anyone
to climb up those stairs without a gas mask. As a further measure, Mancini jammed the door closed and sealed it with a heavy-duty bicycle lock. Nobody in, nobody out.

Hsiu stepped out into the lobby and pressed the call buttons on the other four elevators. Two elevators opened up right away. Once the doors were open, she placed a small strip of duct tape over the laser sensors that kept the doors from closing on someone’s hand. As long as the tape remained there, these elevators wouldn’t move unless released by a fireman’s key. They wouldn’t time out, either, which means it would be difficult for building security to take them offline or start an override. She coated the cameras over the elevator buttons with a long blast of spray paint. Over the next two minutes she’d wait for the other two elevators to arrive and take them out of commission the same way.

Angela was already in the back. Deng Onpang, the manager, was in his office behind the glass cubicles. She grabbed him by the collar before he got a chance to stand up and promptly slammed his head against the edge of his desk. He reeled and fell to the ground, stunned. We call this sort of treatment a “head jog.” If we think somebody is likely to give us trouble or try to trigger an alarm, we open with a blow to the head. It not only lets the guy know we mean business but also discombobulates him and makes it harder for him to act rationally. A guy with a minor concussion won’t do shit. Once he was on the ground, Angela pulled Deng’s shirt open and ripped the vault and safe-deposit keys from around his neck. Knowing there was a panic button under his desk, she dragged him out of the office by the collar and threw him onto the lobby floor.

Joe didn’t waste any time, either. He went straight to the vault door in the southeast corner, near the heart of the skyscraper. In less than twenty seconds he was on his knees and taking his drill equipment out of his bag. There was another vault manager less than two feet from him, but the man was frozen against the wall in total panic. Mancini motioned for him to back off with the muzzle of his shotgun.

I jumped up on the nearest desk and said, “We’re not here for your money. We want only the money in the vault. It’s insured, so you won’t
lose anything. If you obey my instructions, you will be unharmed. Now get down on the goddamn floor.”

Hsiu echoed me in Malay, although it wasn’t strictly necessary. For many purposes, banking included, English was still the language of record. We knew all the managers had at least a working grasp of it. The translation was just to make sure nothing important got lost in the frantic energy of the moment.

I pointed my gun at the people in the lobby. When you’re holding an automatic rifle you don’t have to be particularly threatening. The gun does most of the talking. They looked up at me in total fear, put their hands up and slowly lowered themselves to their knees. Once most of them were on the floor, I had only a few stragglers to deal with. I went into the glass enclosures where the bank officials worked and dragged the last three managers out from under their desks. Two were Asian, one British. These guys were front-end managers, so we knew they wouldn’t have panic buttons or safe-deposit keys. I threw them on the floor like everyone else. I went back into the offices to check again, in case someone was still hiding there. I pulled the cords to their desk phones out of the wall. Once I gave him the all-clear sign, Vincent stepped down from the counter and marched the tellers and the crying vault manager into the crowd that was starting to huddle together in the corner farthest from the elevators. Mancini examined each one. He didn’t have to do much else but stand there and look serious. They were as complacent as sheep.

One by one, I checked each of them for hidden weapons, starting with Deng Onpang. I tapped his pockets, shoulders and ankles with my foot. Once he was clear, I moved quickly onto the next hostage, then the next. Time was of the essence here. The whole process took less than half a minute. All told, we had thirteen hostages: two tellers, six other bank employees, two customers and the three armored truck guys whose bodies we’d have to bring up later. None of them were armed, though most had wallets and cell phones.

“Take out your cell phones and remove the batteries,” I said. “Slide
the phones over to the opposite corner. Don’t try to call anyone or send a message of any kind. We’re jamming the wireless, so that won’t work and will only make us angry. Do it now.”

Hsiu echoed me in Malay to make sure everyone understood.

I kept a careful eye on the hostages as they produced their cell phones. We didn’t actually have a cell phone–signal jammer, but to claim we did increased the odds of easy compliance. The process went smoothly, for the most part. One of the managers said something in Malay that Hsiu translated as “I don’t have one.” I was suspicious so I checked his pockets but I didn’t find anything, so I left him alone and told Mancini to shoot him up with tranquilizer. I didn’t want to take any chances. I stomped on each of their cell phones.

“All clear,” I said.

“All clear,” Angela said.

Hsiu and Vincent were behind the teller windows. “All clear.”

Joe was striking his thermal lance in front of the vault. “All clear.”

Mancini looked over and gave me the thumbs-up.
All clear
.

I smiled. Just like that, the bank was ours. I took a deep breath and looked out the window. The Petronas Towers were shimmering there in the distance. I looked at my watch. We’d been inside for exactly sixty-five seconds. The easy part was over. I took another deep breath and let it out slowly. My pulse was fast and I had to keep it under control.

Then the woman started screaming again.

She was crouched in the center of the group on her hands and knees. The tears rolling down her cheeks mixed with her eyeshadow in thick black globs that dripped off her chin and soaked into her suit. Her arms trembled and her face twisted up into a horrible look of sheer pain. I could see a trickle of blood make its way down past her hairline, following the curves of her face to her chin. I felt sorry for her. I tried not to, but nevertheless some part of me was suddenly burning with guilt. I looked away and tried to block out her screams, but I couldn’t. She was
breaking my concentration. It felt like she was screaming directly at me, practically calling out my name. I asked Mancini to pass me over the jet injector so I could fire a load of drugs into her neck. Ten seconds later she was fast asleep, but that didn’t change anything.

I felt guilty, but even more than that, I felt powerful.

48

ATLANTIC CITY

I wondered how long it would take before someone discovered his corpse. The smell was already atrocious, but people might overlook a smell coming from a house like that. The real-estate agent who sold him the address might find him on a routine visit, but that could take weeks. By that time the soft tissues in his body would have started to putrefy. His face would be unrecognizable.

I thought about Ribbons’s last request for a few moments. All he wanted in the world was one last hit. I wanted to find that despicable, but couldn’t. I have an addiction too, and it’s every bit as self-destructive.