Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

Honcho slowed and swallowed, his heart pounding, his breath suddenly on hold. There was something wrong.

CHAPTER 91

HONCHO HAD GOTTEN THE rhythms of the block down pat over the last year, had made sure to note most of the service firms that worked the block. Especially in the last few weeks. That was how fine-tuned his research had been. But he’d never seen this van before.

It took him another second to figure it out. The markings on its door said it was from a Queens glass company. But the rig on the van’s side held no panes of glass.

It was cops. Shit! No doubt about it, he thought. He had figured there would probably be more heat than usual after his last two jobs, but it had been an abstract thought. Actually seeing the cops right there twenty feet away was blood-chilling. He could practically feel the lens of the surveillance van’s camera tracking him as he passed it.

How many undercovers are around me right now? he thought, panicking suddenly. And what if they had gotten a decent look at him from a camera on one of the previous jobs?

He started sweating more then, under his arms, down his legs. Black spots started to dance in his peripheral vision. Everything was riding on this last job. Thousands and thousands of dollars and eighteen months of meticulous planning. But it didn’t matter, he finally decided. He couldn’t do it. It was useless. His nerve had imploded. The cops were onto them. It was over. It wasn’t going to work.

Besides, he already had a couple of million in stones. He needed to just keep rolling, roll right the hell down to the end of the block, drop the garbage bucket on the corner, and walk right down the stairs to the Rockefeller Center subway station. In a matter of hours, he’d be down to Miami, living out the rest of his life, day after day, fishing the blue water during the day and the bars at night, like Hemingway.

It was definitely plan B, but it was a damn sight better than going back to jail. It would be real jail this time, he knew. No thanks. Time to fold them and cut and run.

Screw his friends who were waiting on him and would probably get busted in about a minute and a half’s time, he thought. Sorry, fellas. Every man for himself. Just keep moving. Walk away.

Honcho was just about to do it, too. Get out, pull the plug, abort the whole heist.

That was when he suddenly noticed the traffic sawhorse on the street. A word was stenciled in black on the orange-and-white-striped board. One word.

TRIUMPH

The silent toll of a bell went off in Honcho’s head. He felt an almost holy chill down his spine as his nerve returned stronger than ever. He could see it clearly now. There was no more reason to panic.

“Triumph,” Honcho whispered to himself as his watch finally beeped once and the first clattering alarm began to blat.

CHAPTER 92

I WAS OUT OF MY chair, rolling my stiff neck and doing a standing calf stretch against one of the cold, depressing metal walls in the cramped cube of the surveillance truck, when Arturo, sitting in front of the monitor behind me, let out a whistle.

There was movement on the tiny screen of the laptop connected to the truck’s hidden camera. A black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows was slowing alongside Tiffany’s famous stainless-steel front doors. As it came to a stop, Arturo pointed the protein bar he was eating at the top of the screen, where a construction worker, a big thick-necked white guy in a kelly-green hard hat, was jogging across the avenue directly at the store.

Remembering the construction outfits the thieves had used in the first Manhattan heist, I immediately lifted the strap of the shotgun propped in the corner. But before I could even turn for the truck’s gate, the hulking hard hat passed by Tiffany’s harmlessly down Fifty-Seventh as a couple of white-haired octogenarian ladies-who-lunch types emerged from the Town Car.

False alarm, I thought, relieved, as I laid the long gun carefully back down.

But I thought wrong.

A split second later, a double chirp came from one of the radios on the upended milk crate we were using for a table. The shrill sound of it pinged almost painfully off the metal walls. It was radio #3, the one for Brooklyn’s team. It blooped again three more times rapidly as I lifted it. Something was up.

“Mike here. What is it?” I said.

“Mike, we have something here!” she said frantically. “We have alarms going off!”

“Alarms? For which store?”

“All of them, I think!” she said. “We’re looking at multiple alarms up and down the block. We’re breaking cover from our van. People are looking freaked out in the street. I think you should get over here, Mike. Now!”

My thumb shook slightly as I hovered it over the heavy police radio’s key. I stared at Tiffany’s on the monitor again, trying to think fast.

Was this a head fake? I wondered. Was this a ruse to get us over to the Diamond District so the thieves could then hit Tiffany’s?

There was no time to figure it out. I put down Brooklyn’s radio and lifted the one for Doyle and the two Midtown North Precinct detectives who were stationed inside Tiffany’s security room.

“Heads up, Doyle,” I said as I pointed for Arturo to get behind the truck’s wheel. “We need to get over to the Diamond District. You stay put, but look sharp. You’re on your own for the time being.”