Authors: Duane Swierczynski

The Wheelman (13 page)

BOOK: The Wheelman

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L
ISA PERELLI KEYED INTO THE FRONT DOOR, AND IMMEDIATELY felt this weird vibe. Somebody else was here. Had her father rented this place out without telling her?

Of course, why would he tell her?

She was here to pick up Andrew’s things. This house on Oregon Avenue was one of many that her father owned. It was the one she had used during the past six weeks. Her and Andrew.

Lisa hated Andrew’s dorm room—it was like a shoebox, only with worse interior design. Andrew, meanwhile, hated camping out on the couch at Lisa’s father’s place in South Philly. Andrew never said why until one day, a month and a half ago, when he finally broke down and admitted the truth: he couldn’t use the bathroom at her father’s house. Not the way he usually did in the mornings. Andrew veiled it in all kinds of cute terms—I’m a regular guy, I need to read in the morning—but Lisa knew what he was talking about. Funny thing was, Lisa was the same way. That’s why she hated crashing at the dorms. She just couldn’t feel comfortable getting up, walking down a hallway past a bunch of strange doors with strange boys behind them, walking up two flights of stairs, then using the common women’s bathroom. She wasn’t used to that sort of thing. That’s why she never chose to live on campus in the first place.

The only solution: Dad’s Oregon Avenue rental property, complete with one and a half baths. A full bathroom upstairs, and another smaller one on the first floor.

It was like playing house, only without the risk. Andrew had some minor things there—an Aerobed, a stack of paperback books, extra contact lenses, and a cardboard box with underwear, deodorant, a toothbrush, and a huge tube of Crest. Lisa brought candles and stored jug bottles of Pinot Grigio in the fridge, and stacked some of her unmentionables neatly in the master bedroom closet.

Her dad didn’t know they stayed there; Lisa had filched the keys one night.

The same keys that were in her hand now, still halfway jammed into the front-door lock.

Lisa listened.

Somebody was definitely here. Upstairs.

She closed the door behind her and locked it.

Gamma Delta Gazelle

I
T WASN’T THAT KATIE ESPECIALLY MINDED BEING HAND-cuffed to a pole all day. She could deal with that. She didn’t even mind the tender bruising on her face from where that Russian had punched her. She could deal with that, too.

What she couldn’t deal with: how badly she needed to pee.

It was a pregnancy thing.

Katie was in Henry’s bedroom, that much she knew. She’d been in here once before, when he’d given her and Patrick the grand tour. She didn’t expect her next visit to Henry’s bedroom to involve loss of consciousness, handcuffs, and a support column, around which her arms were secured backward, behind her back. Henry didn’t seem like the kinky type.

After the Russian had decked her, she’d woken up on the couch. The Russian had a black revolver pressed to the back of Henry’s head. “They want you to make a tape recording,” he said calmly, his eyes trying to communicate something else. “I suggest we do what they say, then sort this out later.”

Katie didn’t argue the point. She had felt bad—she obviously had led the Russian right here and gotten Henry tangled up in this. Patrick would have never involved Henry. Not for a million bucks. She was disgusted with herself. There was so much she needed to learn.

Michael kept telling her that. Not in a snide way. Just in his typical, nonjudgmental, matter-of-fact way. Michael was a real professional. It’s what had attracted her to him in the first place.

Katie spoke the words Henry gave her into the tape recorder, trying to reassure Patrick by how calm she could sound. As if nothing were wrong. She tried to think of a code word, something to let Patrick know where she was, but couldn’t think of anything. It all happened too fast.

There was a knock at the door. The Russian forced Henry up to answer it. It was two young-looking white boys who desperately wanted to look black. They didn’t look at Henry. She didn’t know them, but she started putting the pieces together. One of the white boys was probably the third guy on the Wachovia job—aside from Lennon and Bling. And this third guy had sold the job out to the Russians.

The thicker of the two white boys handcuffed her to a support column in Henry’s bedroom. Henry tried to reassure her: “Everything’s going to be fine”—before he was hustled out the door with the other white boy and the Russian. They were off to find Patrick. Or threaten him. Or kill him. Or bring him back here, then threaten and kill him. That was probably it. Why else would the Russian keep her alive?

Fifteen minutes later, it first occurred to Katie that she had to pee.

Thirty minutes later, she knew she was going to have to do something drastic, or otherwise wet herself. As well as Henry’s fancy Pergo bedroom floor.

“Hey.”

Her captor. He was a young-looking blond-haired Alpha Chi thick-neck, complete with college sweatshirt and scuffed baggy pants. Joe Frat, with a heavy pistol. He obviously wasn’t a member of the Russian
mafiya;
he was an errand boy. An extremely odd choice for an errand boy.

“Want a blow job?”

It took some more sweet talk, but the Alpha Chi thick-neck eventually agreed to her proposal. After all, he’d led a life where it was easy to believe that random women wanted nothing more than to take his cock into their mouths. But he was no fool, this boy. First, he made her promise that she wouldn’t use any teeth. Katie promised. Then she asked him if he wouldn’t mind servicing her first, otherwise, it would just be demeaning. Alpha Chi eagerly agreed to her amendment to the proposal. That sounded even better—she must be really into him. The thick-neck said he really liked doing that. He probably had a very satisfied Gamma Delta gazelle somewhere in the city.

He dropped to his knees, then unbuttoned Katie’s jeans and lowered the zipper.

“Be gentle with me,” she cooed, and waited for him to look up at her.

When he did, she smashed her knee into his Adam’s apple. It was the most effective way to kill a man with a single body part, be it the flat of a hand, an elbow, or a knee. Patrick had taught her that. Joe Frat died fairly quickly, scraping the Pergo floors with his thick monkey-boy fingers until they stopped twitching.

The only problem was: she had no way of searching him for a key.

She had no way to contact Michael.

And she still very badly, very desperately, had to pee.

Many, many hours later, the cell phone in the corpse’s pants pocket rang.

No One Answers

L
ENNON STOLE A CAR A FEW BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE safe house in South Philly, then drove up Twentieth Street all the way to Center City. The clouds were low and the wind was cold. Lennon found a parking spot on Rittenhouse Square, miraculously enough. The doorman didn’t bother with him, once he told him where he was headed. Lennon put his ear to Wilcoxson’s door and listened, then knocked.

Fuck.

There was no answer.

Wilcoxson was his ace in the hole—the only guy in Philadelphia he could trust. Lennon hadn’t clued him in to the Wachovia heist ahead of time; better for Wilcoxson not to know. The old man had retired from the business years ago. No sense dragging him into something that could come back to bite him on the arse. Still, Wilcoxson had always been there for him in the past, and there was no reason not to go to him now. Lennon felt hopelessly outnumbered—Russian and Italian gangsters here, rogue cops there. This wasn’t his city. He needed help, protection. A few hours just to breathe. Wilcoxson could give that to him. Mentor to mentee, one last time. For old time’s sake.

But Wilcoxson wasn’t home.

Double fuck.

Lennon walked back down the hallway to the elevator, then took a car down to the lobby again. He scanned the lobby, hoping he might see Wilcoxson, lazing about, maybe kissing a Rittenhouse Square socialite good night, until we meet again, blah blah blah. Lennon had always wanted money just to live. Wilcoxson wanted money to buy a better life. The old man had grown up dirt poor in Brooklyn and clawed his way up and out during the 1960s. He never wanted to go back.

Lennon knew he couldn’t stay in this lobby forever. He was wearing a sharp Italian suit, but he still looked like he had gone six rounds with a piece of industrial machinery. And lost. The Rittenhouse Hotel management would get nervous soon.

Triple fuck.

This is the way it always was. Lennon hated asking for help. He absolutely
loathed
it. Lennon grew up promising himself he would never ask his father for anything as long as he lived—his father considered basic food and run-down shelter in a bad neighborhood gifts enough—and Lennon stuck to that promise. Even in jail. Self-reliance was always his preferred course.

But the moment he broke down and decided that asking for help was the most reasonable course, help was suddenly not available. There was no one to turn to. There was no help in this world. You were always lugging the load by yourself. Surround yourself with family, with loved ones, with minions, with partners, with whoever. But the truth remained: everyone has to do it alone.

Lennon exited the hotel lobby and started walking toward Locust Street. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts, he almost didn’t see him.

The dead man, walking out of the park.

Kick Back

F
UCKING DEREK. HE NEVER TURNED HIS CELL PHONE on. What was the point of owning one of the fucking things if you never turned it on? So instead of chilling out for a couple of hours like he had promised himself—hey, throwing dead bodies down a fucking pipe is still hard work, no matter how you cut it—he was forced to drive all the way back down to Center City to check in on Derek and Lennon’s bitch.

The doorman looked at him funny at first, then regained his composure. He must have remembered him from this morning, when Wilcoxson had called for him. That was the way it was going to be from now on. Instant respect. Especially with that $650 large all to himself. Maybe he’d buy Wilcoxson’s apartment with some of the money. The old guy sure wasn’t going to be needing it anymore.

Holden took the elevator up. He keyed into Wilcoxson’s apartment and called out. “Yo, Derr.”

Nothing.

He walked into the bedroom and saw his cousin on the floor, dead. The girl was still handcuffed to the pole, but it looked like she was dead, too. Water was all over the floor, like someone had dumped a wash bucket. What the fuck?

Holden kneeled over Derek and felt his neck for a pulse. Not that he’d really know what to check for, but his skin was cold anyway, so there wasn’t any need to get scientific about it. Derek’s neck felt funny—aside from being cold.

Holden turned back around, and just in time.

The bitch was yelling and throwing a knee at his face.

I. O. You

B
EFORE JOHNNY KOTKIEWICZ TOOK A JOB AS HEAD OF security for the Rittenhouse Towers, he worked as a Philly cop, and eventually ended up in the Robbery/Homicide Division. He put in his twenty, then retired to the private sector. The Rittenhouse made him a nice offer; he accepted it. The money came in handy for his daughter, who was attending Villanova Law School. Maybe someday she would work for one of those hightoned Center City firms—Schnaeder Harrison, Soliss-Cohen—and afford to buy into this condominium, instead of working the entrance like her old man.

He was proud of what he did. But he wanted better for his daughter. Same old parenting story.

Kotkiewicz was here late on a Saturday night, which was unusual. But this had been an unusual day at the Rittenhouse. A cast of unusual characters had been floating around all day. First, a pretty young redhead, around 7 A.M. She went up to room 910, which belonged to Mr. Henry Wilcoxson, a Center City financial consultant. (At least, that’s what it said in the Rittenhouse security files.) Not unusual in itself. But the redhead left twenty minutes later. Later that morning, a beefy man who looked Slavic—Bosnian, Russian, maybe—also went up to room 910. An hour later, the redhead returned and took the elevator straight up to room 910. Barely twenty minutes later, a guy who looked like that white rapper—Eminem—entered the lobby, along with a doughier white guy. Their destination? Yep, 910. Forty minutes later, Mr. Wilcoxson, the Slavic gentleman, and Eminem left the building together. The doughy guy and the redhead were still upstairs.

It was an odd assortment of people and behaviors, and odd collections made Kotkiewicz nervous. He was familiar with the daily patterns of Rittenhouse residents, as well as their guests, but this was something he’d never seen before.

He made a phone call or two, and had a few things faxed over to him. Following a hunch. Like always.

So Kotkiewicz decided to stick around. Judy wasn’t thrilled; she was looking forward to Johnny bringing home some takeout from Kum-Lin’s and she had rented a movie,
Road to Perdition.
This was the same old story, too; Kotkiewicz torn between the work, and the wife.

As the evening wore on, Kotkiewicz thought maybe he’d been foolish.

And then another stranger entered the lobby and made a beeline for room 910. Mr. Wilcoxson’s pad again. He was obviously joining the redhead and the doughy boy. But for what?

Five minutes later, the new stranger—a brown-haired, blue-eyed guy with the nastiest set of facial bruises he’d ever seen—stepped off the elevator and walked out of the lobby.

Barely a minute passed. And then:

Eminem walked into the lobby again. Kotkiewicz was prepared. Eminem nodded at him, then Kotkiewicz threw a last look at the I.O. sitting on his desk. He’d been studying it all afternoon, trying to rely on his memory. But this last glance clinched it.
Bingo.
Holden Richards. Suspect in the Wachovia bank heist the day before.

Then he flipped to another I.O. Richards was one of three guys.

Hot damn. The other stranger. Mr. Purple Bruises.

Kotkiewicz picked up the phone. When he looked up, Bruises was walking back into the lobby.

BOOK: The Wheelman

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