The Wheelman Read Free Page A

second thought: I don’t have a gun.
    They were all headed for the airport. He was headed for Puerto Rico. And Katie.
    Glass shattered around his head, beads grinding into his scalp. The engine whined and complained and finally settled into a low hum.
    Lennon had a limited view out of his side window. Grass—some burned, some green. Shoes. Walking toward the car.
    There was a dull roaring sound. Lennon could smell his own burning clothes. The last thing he heard was himself, trying to scream.

FRIDAY p.m .
     
     
     
    You should be able to strip a man naked and throw him out with noth- ing on him. By the end of the day, the man should be clothed and fed. By the end of the week, he should own a horse. And by the end of a year he should own a business and have money in the bank.
    —RICK RESCORLA
     
    Thousand Year Funeral
     
    A NDY STARED AT THE THREE BLACK CANVAS BAGS IN the back of the red Ford pickup truck. They looked like body bags. “That’s the garbage?”
    “Yeah,” Fury said. “And it’s all gotta go down that pipe over there.”
    Andy looked at the bags again, trying to discern human forms. The first two looked like bodies. He stopped himself. This was ridiculous. Just because his friend was named Fieuchevsky, and that he sometimes did favors for his mobster/gasoline-distributor father didn’t mean …
    “C’mon,” Fury said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We gotta be onstage in a couple of hours. Let’s get these bags down the pipe, have a beer, then get on 73.”
    Andy Whalen and Mikal “Fury” Fieuchevsky were the keyboard and bass players, respectively, for a cover band called Space Monkey Mafia. Fury had come up with the name after listening to Billy Joel’s Storm Front drunk. All through March—Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays—the band was playing a resort hotel in Wildwood, New Jersey. It was mostly dead, but some people took advantage of off-season package deals, and those people liked to have live bands in the bar; the other nights were filled with karaoke.
    Fury’s father was friends with the owner and that had helped them land the gig. Occasionally, Fury had to go off and run errands for his father. Take this here, pick up this there, and tonight, dump this down here. Fury had called Andy at his dorm room at La Salle University a few hours ago, and since he had nothing better to do before the drive to Wildwood, he agreed to lend a hand.
    “Which pipe?” Andy asked. There were three of them, sticking out of a long block of cement, under a blue tarp raised like a tent. They were on a construction site on the Delaware River, on the Camden, New Jersey waterfront side, right in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Cool March air picked up some extra chill from the water and blew hard and fast across the riverfront. Andy wanted to go back and put on his windbreaker.
    “The biggest one—the one on the left.”
    Andy saw it. It was roughly the diameter of a manhole cover. The other two pipes looked much smaller.
    “C’mon. Grab one end of this.”
    Andy walked over to the back of the Ford and grasped the end of one of the bags. Fury reached in and grabbed the other end, then nodded. Together, they lifted, and damned if it wasn’t heavy. The bag felt like it contained one big, thick piece of garbage, like a side of beef. Again, the words popped into Andy’s mind: dead body.
    The two of them took baby steps across the concrete until they reached the big pipe. Fury tipped his end down first, resting it on the lip of the pipe. “Ready?” he asked Andy. Andy nodded, and they heaved. The bag disappeared from view. Andy heard black vinyl rubbing against cold steel, then a muted thud, like a sandbag hitting a mound of soft dirt.
    “One down, two to go,” Fury said.
    “This looks like a construction site. Aren’t they going to find this stuff in the morning?”
    Fury smiled and paused to rub imaginary pieces of lint from his black Z. Cavaricci pants. Cavariccis had been out of