Naked Greed (26 page)

Ryan shook his head, and sweat rained from his hair. “Nah, Al said Finn was going to beef up his security the first of the year, so you can bet he’s already at it. He’ll be on his guard all the time, too. Best to wait a few months until he’s feeling confident again, then drive up next to him at a traffic light some dark night and blow his fucking head off.”

“I can put out some feelers about Finn and his habits,” Vinny said. “That might help.”

“No! Don’t you put a goddamned feeler out to anybody, anytime. That’s how you end up in the joint with a needle in your arm. You just keep your mouth shut, listen, and bide your time. You don’t ask questions, and you sure as hell don’t put out feelers.”

Vinny sighed. “I guess you’re right. What about this bank tomorrow? How you feeling about that?”

Ryan shrugged. “Sounds good to me. I like it that Charlie has already done the place. You just follow his lead, and we’ll do fine.”

“What about this horse parlor he keeps talking about?”

“Now, that worries me. Horse parlors are always run by the mob, just like bookmaking is. I think after the bank job, I’ll just drift back to New Jersey and enjoy my new apartment for a while, watch some TV, wait for opportunities to raise their heads. That’s what you should do, too.”

“If you say so. I sure don’t want the mob after me. Life is too short for that shit.”

“Vinny, what do you tell your mother you do for money?”

“I don’t tell her nothing, and she don’t ask.”

“Why not? Doesn’t she want to know what her son does for a living?”

“My old man was a short-con grifter his whole life. He didn’t tell her nothing, and she learned not to ask. I’m just carrying on the family tradition.”

“You’re a grifter?”

“Nah, I don’t seem to have the talent for talking, like the old man did.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“He ran into a wise mark and got himself plugged a couple times. That was that.”

“Vinny, you going to be okay for this bank deal?”

“I’m okay, if you’re okay, Gene. You got reservations, I got reservations.”

“I got no reservations,” Gene said, and ordered another drink with an umbrella.

—

D
ino woke to a faint buzzing from the phone on his desk. He grabbed it: “What?”

“You’ve got a regular lunch date with the DC of PI at one,” she said. “That’s in fifteen minutes.”

“Break it. Tell him I’m not caught up yet.” He hung up and tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. He got up and used his private powder room, then went back to his desk and called Stone. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, how are you feeling?”

“Like shit, but don’t tell Viv.”

“Of course not. I looked at you last night and thought you weren’t ready to go back, but I didn’t say anything.”

“Fifteen minutes after I got here I was asleep on my sofa.”

“That’s what a sofa is for,” Stone said. “Where’s Viv today?” Viv traveled all the time.

“Chicago—should be back for dinner, she says.”

“Why don’t you go home and go to bed?”

“I can’t, Eva would rat me out.”

“Come over here, then, and use my sofa.”

“Love to,” Dino said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes, if I have to use the siren.” He hung up, got his jacket, and opened the door. “Tell ’em to bring the car around,” he said.

“Where you going?”

“Private meeting, confidential informer.”

“That’s what my last boss used to say. He’s divorced now.”

“Nothing like that. I just can’t stand being in the office for another minute. I came back too soon.”

“I knew that the minute I saw you.” She picked up the phone and called for the car. “Go home and get some rest.”

“Don’t tell anybody,” he said.

Ryan and Vinny were picked up by Charlie at noon and driven to a disused garage west of Lauderdale. Charlie had a stolen van fixed up with a legend on each side that said
QUIK PEST CONTROL
, and he outfitted them with gray jumpsuits with a logo on the breast, military surplus gas masks, and baseball caps, again with logos. Then some guy Charlie had hired to drive came in.

“I parked the car where you told me,” he told Charlie. “We’re all set.” He was carrying some light canvas duffels, and he dumped them, along with three riot guns, on a table, along with a box of shells.

“Let’s load up,” Charlie said.

Everybody put four shells in a shotgun, racked the slide, and put one more round in, then set the safety. They followed Charlie into the van, their masks around their necks. “Okay,” he said, “when we get there, we stop out front, put our masks on, and walk into the bank, like we’re providing a service. As we walk in, you, Gene, and you, Vinny, take a guard each. Disarm them, and don’t forget to look for a backup piece, then make them lie on the floor. Then give me your duffels. I’ll deal with the manager and take him to the vault, which will be open, and we’ll start stuffing cash into the bags while you two keep an eye on the folks in the bank. Don’t shoot anybody—that’s important. We’ll leave by the back door, where Ricky, here, will be waiting with the van. We drive to where the getaway car is, torch the van with the clothes and masks inside, and drive to the Sea Castle Motel, where we divvy up. Any questions?”

Ryan and Vinny both shook their heads.

“Let’s go, then,” Charlie said, checking his watch. “We’re right on schedule.”

They piled into the van. Half a block from the bank, Charlie donned his mask, and the others followed suit. The van stopped; Charlie slid the door open, hopped out, and walked into the bank, followed by Ryan and Vinny.

“All right, everybody,” Charlie hollered, “just stay where you are and don’t move and you won’t get hurt.”

Ryan and Vinny were already dealing with the guards. There were only two customers in the bank, men standing at a table, filling out deposit slips. Ryan liked the Glock he took from his guard’s holster, and he dropped it into the pocket of his jumpsuit for a keepsake. Neither guard was carrying a backup piece.

Charlie grabbed the empty duffels, and he and the manager disappeared through a door. Ryan checked the clock on the wall; they had been there a little over half a minute, and they had another minute and a half before cops started showing up. They’d hear the sirens first.

Charlie came out with the manager. “Grab a duffel each,” he said. Ryan and Vinny complied, and they started toward the back door. Ryan was walking backwards, keeping the shotgun pointed into the bank. Then the two men on the floor did a strange thing: they both produced handguns.

“Back door’s open,” Charlie said from behind them, and then there was a roar of gunfire at the door and Charlie staggered back into the bank, clutching his belly.

“Cops!” Vinny yelled, and then he took a shotgun blast and fell facedown.

Ryan held his duffel in front of him and ran for the front door, pointing the shotgun at the two men with guns. They were bringing theirs up, so he fired a round. Nothing happened. He threw the shotgun at the men, and while they ducked, he got out his borrowed Glock and got two rounds off in their direction, causing them to hit the floor. By then he was at the front door, and he ran out into the street. A cab was parked out front, and the driver was helping an elderly gentleman out the rear door. The front door was open, the engine was running, and Ryan tossed his duffel in and dived into the front seat.

The cab’s momentum closed both doors, and the driver and his passenger were left standing in the gutter. Ryan, breathing hard, pulled off his mask and drove quickly, but not too quickly, down the street. He took a left and stayed in the flow of traffic. I-95 was ahead, and he got in the lane for the southbound exit.

He drove, staying with the traffic, two exits down, then got to U.S. 1 and started north. Two blocks from his motel, he pulled into an alley, got out of the jumpsuit, stuck the Glock in his belt, grabbed the duffel, and started walking, keeping his pace to a quick stroll. He made it to the motel and went into his room.

He sat down on the bed for a couple of minutes to get his breath, and he started to think. He wasn’t going to sit around waiting for the cops to come. He got his two suitcases out of the closet and started packing the neatly bundled bills into the larger one. That done, he crammed most of his clothes into the two bags and put the rest into a laundry bag from the closet.

He couldn’t get on an airplane with all that money; his luggage would be X-rayed, so he had to do something else. He thought about driving his rental car to New Jersey, but that presented too many opportunities to get arrested. Then he remembered something: there was a train. The Silver Bullet—no, something else . . . Meteor, the Silver Meteor. He found a website and checked the Amtrak schedule. The train left Miami at four o’clock; he checked his watch: one forty-six. There was a stop at Lauderdale, and he found a map to the station on the website; the train departed Lauderdale at four-forty. He found a reservation button, clicked it, and looked at the choices: there was a roomette, but it looked very small. He moved up a notch to a suite. Bigger, and available. He made the choice, typed in a credit card number, and after a long, long minute’s wait, got a “Reservation Confirmed” message.

He took a last look around the room, then took a hand towel and wiped down everything he could see. He was ready to leave the room at two o’clock.

He checked outside for flashing lights, found none, then walked out with his bags and the empty duffel and put them all in the trunk. He drove to the office and checked out, paying in cash, then he drove to Fort Lauderdale International Airport, turned in his rental car, tossed the empty duffel into a waste bin, and caught a cab to the train station. He had an hour-and-twenty-minute wait, and it was hard. He got a sandwich and a Coke from machines and made himself consume them slowly. He bought a
New York Times
, put on his glasses, and pretended to read the newspaper. Then two uniformed cops walked into the station and began a stroll around the waiting room, checking everybody out.

Ryan knew that, with his two suitcases and wearing glasses, he looked like any middle-aged guy, and if they braced him, he still had his badge to fall back on. They gave him a hard glance, then moved on.

At four-twenty, the train was called, and he picked up his bags and walked onto the platform. No train yet. He put down his bags and opened the paper again. A lifetime later—ten minutes—the train rolled into the station and a dozen people began to get on. A porter took his bags and led him to his suite, which turned out to be pretty nice, just big enough for a couple of easy chairs that turned into a berth and an upper berth that swung down for a second occupant. He stowed his bags, sat down with the paper, and turned to the crossword puzzle. The train began to move.

Suddenly, a rap on the door of the suite startled him. “Come in!” Ryan said loudly, and the conductor walked in. He checked Ryan in on his handheld computer. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Ryan,” he said. “The dining room starts serving at six, or you can have meal service in your suite.”

“Thank you,” Ryan said, and the man closed the door.

Ryan put down the paper and rested his head against the seat. Vinny was dead, Charlie was dead, and Al was dead. He was alone in the world.

Then the throwaway cell phone rang in his pocket. Everybody who had the number was dead. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Private Call” the display said. He stood up, pulled down the window, then he took the SIM card from the phone and threw it as far as he could. He dropped the phone out the window, then pulled out the Glock, wiped it with a handkerchief, and threw the gun out, too.

He closed the window, sat down, and looked at his watch. Twenty-seven and a half hours to go.

Frank Russo’s secretary buzzed him. “Yes?”

“There’s a call for Jimmy, but he’s out. The guy insists on talking to you.”

“Okay, I’ve got it.” Frank pressed the flashing button. “Frank Riggs.”

“This is the guy Jimmy spoke to about the job?”

“Yes, I know.”

“It went down like it was supposed to, except we’ve got one cop down and one of yours made it out.”

“How could that happen?”