The Getaway (Sam Archer 2) (4 page)

‘Shit.’

‘Like I said, it was delivery day. The vault was fully stocked up. They cleaned house.’ She looked back down at the report in the folder. ‘A silent alarm they didn’t know about was tripped, but it didn’t matter. Every cop in the area was uptown. Judging from the timings, it looks like they called in a fake emergency on the police frequency, and it emptied the entire 19
th
precinct as they headed the opposite direction, responding to the call.’

Gerrard closed his eyes, processing everything she’d just told him, picturing the entire heist in his head from start-to-finish. There were a few moments of silence as he mentally ran through the job
, seeing it unfold in his mind.

Then he opened his eyes and looked back at the torched getaway car.

‘These people have done their homework,’ he said. Katic nodded in agreement as he started walking towards the burnt-out wreck. ‘And they’ve got some serious nerve. It takes a lot of balls to hold up a bank four
blocks from a police station.’

He p
aused, ten yards from the taxi.

‘But this doesn’t make sense,’ he said, pointing at the cab. ‘All that proficiency yet this? Five armoured trucks, four banks, and this is the first getaway car they’ve ever burned. In fact, this is the first one they’ve even left for us to find. Why?’

Katic didn’t reply.

She just
pointed to the rear of the car.

The trunk was popped open, one of the forensics detectives peering inside. Gerrard walked forward, and that sickeningly sweet smell of burnt flesh grew stronger. He grabbed the end of his tie and covered his nose and mouth,
and took a look inside himself.

A body was in there. It was a horrific sight, the kind that gave g
rown men nightmares.

The corpse used to be a man. His skin and hair had been burned away, and he was red raw where his skin had scorched, stained with black, his flesh and remaining skin smouldering. An awful and agonising death, cooking like meat in an oven. No escape, just frenzy and desperation as the flames ate up the car as he tried to thrash, kick and claw his way out. Gerrard saw the stringy remains of binds around his hands and ankles and a gag tied around his head and in his mouth.

‘Jesus,’ Gerrard muttered, his tie still to his nose.

‘The driver of the cab,’ Katic said. ‘He was gagged and bound after they lifted the taxi. When they lit the interior, he couldn’t get out.’

Gerrard glanced at what was left of the man’s hands. The fingernails were mostly still intact, and he saw black fabric and blood there from where he had scrabbled at the interior, trying to claw his way out. He’d ripped off a few of them off in his desperation. Having seen enough, Gerrard stepped back, turning and taking a deep fresh breath to clear his airways of the awful smell, releasing his tie and letting
it drop back down to his shirt.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. They screwed up,’ he told Katic, who joined him. ‘The ball’s in our court. This is a homicide charge.’

‘Double,’ Katic corrected. Gerrard looked at her and she nodded with her head towa
rds the front seat of the taxi.

He stepped forward and walked around the car. A female detective from forensics was there, peering inside. Gerrard tapped her on the shoulder and she turned and nodded, moving to one s
ide to let him see for himself.

A second dead body was there in the front seat, behind the wheel. His torso, arms and legs had been torched by the flames, but his
head was the worst mess of all.

Half of it was missing.

Ahead of him, some of the front windshield was smashed out, blood spattered amongst the black char.

‘Someone shot him up close, from the back seat. Shotgun, point-blank. One shell. No cartridge left behind,’ Katic said. Gerrard looked closer at the corpse. He saw the remains of white clothing clinging to his burnt flesh, patches of it on his legs, torso and arms. Katic had said that all the thieves had been wearing white, save for the hostage.

So this guy was one of the four.

‘No prizes for guessing who it is,’ Katic added.

‘Oh shit,’ Gerrard said, realising who the dead
man was. ‘Oh shit, shit, shit.’

He stepped back, turning and cursing, walking away from the carcass of the vehicle and kicking over
a traffic cone in frustration.

‘There goes o
ur inside man,’ he said.

Katic nodded, walking with him across the tarmac.

‘But we’re making progress,’ she said. ‘Our first getaway car. Two homicides. They’re getting sloppy and careless. And now we know one thing for sure about them.’

Gerrard looked at her, his eye
s narrow behind his sunglasses.

‘And what’s that?’ he asked.

‘They’re going to need a new driver.’

TWO

The pub was called McCann’s. It was an Irish joint on
Ditmars Boulevard
, a long stretch of road which ran through the north-west Greek neighbourhood of
Astoria
, Queens, the last stop on the N train from
Manhattan
and
Brooklyn
. For a Monday night, the place was filling up fast. The two guys behind the bar were hard at work, serving customers, pouring draughts and shots and working the till, whilst a handful of waitresses moved out into the seating area ahead of the bar, taking orders from cu
stomers and earning their tips.

The crowd inside was a real blend. Half of them were office workers, most of them still in shirt and tie, having come straight from the office to the bar, the other half sports fans who were avidly watching television screens mounted in
various positions around the room
. There was some kind of big baseball game going on, the Yankees versus the Red Sox, and fans in navy blue Yankees gear were transfixed by the action on the screens. In most cities and towns around the world, different sports teams carried the hopes and dreams of the neighbourhoods they represented, and
Astoria
was no different. Around these parts, the Yankees were like a religion. They were the most famous and successful baseball team in the world, and their fans liked to let everyone know it.

Amongst the busy throng of people, a man sat alone towards the back of the pub, his forearms resting on the table in front of him, not interested in the baseball but watching the screen anyway. Dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, he was in his mid-twenties, handsome, blond hair and blue eyes, healthy and in the prime of his physical life. He picked up a bottle of Budweiser from the table beside his forearm and took a long pull. The bottle was frosty and cool, and he felt the beer slide down the back of h
is throat, the liquid ice cold.

The air conditioning in the pub was working flat out despite the slight drop in heat in the air, but it was still hot and humid. He took another pull from the beer, enjoying it, glancing at the bottle in his hand. A droplet of water slid down the bottle and over the logo above his thumb.

The King of Beers
, the label told him. With a taste that good, he didn’t doubt it.

Shifting his gaze from the television, he glanced at the interior of the bar around him. It was a welcoming place. Sports memorabilia and signed jerseys were mounted on the walls around Irish flags and three-leaf clovers, typical decorations, designed to bring out patriotism and pride of heritage and make customers nostalgic enough to want to go buy a beer and talk about it. It was a typical local bar, familiar and constant, like an old friend who would always be there for you no matter what kind of day you’d had. He figured pretty much everyone in here was a local, judging by the way different groups greeted and interacted with each other. He was the only outsider.

There was a sudden crack on the TV, and people around the bar started yelling and shouting excitedly at the screen. The blond man glanced up at the action and saw a player running base-to-base. He was a big guy but he hustled forward as fast as he could and the bar was filled with the sound of cheering from the stadium over the sound-system as the commentators called the play over the action. The Red Sox team in the field worked quickly though, as an outfielder scooped up the ball with his glove then threw it hard with impressive speed to a team-mate standing on one of the bases. The batter only made it to second. If he was thirty pounds lighter, he probably could have made third.

Watching the action, the blond man drinking the Budweiser was baffled. Baseball seemed like the most confusing game on the planet. The scoring system, the way the pitcher worked, the batting rules. The only thing he’d ever learned about baseball was three strikes and you’re out, but then again everyone and their grandmother knew that one. It went both ways though. He’d tried explaining cricket to an Am
erican once but it had been as if
he was speaking a foreign language, judging from the blank stare on the guy’s face as he laid out the rules. Both sports had a bat and a ball, but he guessed understanding how the hell to play each one depended on which side of the
Atlantic
you were brought up.

Taking another pull from the cold beer, the man glanced around the bar again, but at the people this time, not the furnishings. He was surprised at how busy the place was for a Monday, but then again, he’d been to the city enough times to know the rules were different in the New York summer. The days were longer and the nights seemed even more so, and people made the most of every single one, no matt
er what day of the week it was.

To his left by
the bar, a group of four were si
t
ting
on stools, each hitting a shot and wincing from the taste as they proceeded to
suck
on a lemon slice. Two men, two women, all still in work-clothes but all having a good time. He watched them laughing and enjoying each other’s company, much the same as everyone else around them. He figured the bar would be something for them to look forward to, a treat for getting through the first working day of the week, the carrot at the end of the stick. He watched them enjoying themselves. If he worked in an office, he’d probably be doing the exact same thing.

But there was one group who weren’t interactin
g with anyone else. They were sit
t
ing
ahead of the blond man at a table near the door, up against the window with the bar’s name and an Irish flag painted on the glass.
They were talking in low voices
, keeping to themselves, private and quiet, casting occasional glances
at the baseball on the screens.

There were three men and a woman, all four of them dressed in a mixed combination of jeans and tracksuit tops, sportswear and casual. Two of the men had short, buzz-cut hair and thick tattooed forearms. They both looked tough, guys who worked in construction or who did something physical for a job. The third man had slightly longer hair and was skinnier, but he shared the same grim expression and disinterest in the rest of the bar around him. They had a half-filled pitcher of beer going in the middle of the table, alongside a series of empty shot glasses. Plenty of drinks but seemingly not much pleasure.

Shifting his gaze to the right of the table, the man glanced at the fourth member of the group. The woman. Her three companions looked pretty tough, but she was the most menacing of the bunch by far. She was Hispanic, Dominican or Mexican maybe, and was wearing a tight grey t-shirt that revealed brown sinewy arms. She reached forward for a cell phone resting on the table and he saw the muscles and tendons in her forearm work, contracting and flexing as she moved her fingers and picked up the phone. There wasn’t a single ounce of body fat on her entire frame. Her dark hair was braided into tight corn-rows lining her head, her face unusually hard for a woman, unemotional, a solid
jaw
-
line
, not feminine or delicate. He also noticed that whilst the three guys were drinking the beer and shots, she was nursing a small bottle of water.
Some kind of athlete
, he thought, as he watched her. Whatever her sport, he figured it would involve some kind of confrontation. She looked the epitome of a woman that
you did not want to mess with.

He took another pull from his beer, and observed the foursome over the bottle, curious. Suddenly, the woman rose from her seat and started walking down the bar, headed straight towards him. He’d shifted his attention, looking up at the television again, but for a split-second he thought she was coming over to confront him. He couldn
’t resist flicking his eyes to her face
, and they made eye contact as she approached. Her gaze burned into his, no emotion, brown eyes that were cold and hard, accustomed to staring people down. He looked straight back as she passed him, and he heard a door behind him swing open as she entered the restroom.

A waitress from the bar approached him from the left. The polar opposite of the Hispanic woman. She was young, early twenties, and smiled a customary smile, her face and demeanour innocent, her features soft. ‘One more, hun?’ she asked, seeing his beer was almost gone.