Cage's Crew Read online

  ******

  We immediately took off to fly non-stop to Colorado to play golf and talk for a couple of days. His plane, Norm announced as we lifted off, could make it all the way because of its long-range tanks. I immediately began worrying about what I’d do if I had to take a piss.

  It took almost the entire day before Norm landed at a private fly-in golf resort with its own landing strip and hotel. He had called ahead and made reservations. It was quite nice and hopelessly overpriced, probably because it was in a gorgeous setting surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Norm had found it, he said, by searching Google for golf courses that catered to pilots.

  I enjoyed myself. The food was okay and the golf was fun for someone like me who isn’t very good. The course itself, its grass, at least, was a bit rough compared to the well-maintained courses Pencie and I played in California. When I mentioned this to Norm after missing yet another short putt, he said it was probably because it was covered with snow part of the year and relied on rain water instead of sprinklers.

  Early on the morning of our third day we checked out and headed east to a small airfield outside Pittsburgh. We paid cash “because our accounting department would be furious if we use our corporate cards.”

  ******

  Norm and I had talked and examined the alternatives continuously during our two days of golf and relaxation. We knew we had to eliminate Martin’s uncle and his crew before they found us and killed us, but how? What I finally came up with for a plan was quite basic and, as I warned Norm several times, almost certainly wouldn’t survive our first contact with New York. He listened intently when I told it to him.

  “Basically, my plan is for all three of us to travel to the job from Pittsburgh in a burner van or SUV with New Jersey plates and enter the club about three on Tuesday morning when it would be deserted. I’ll open the rear door and Tommy and I will go in and place the explosives in the basement with a timer set to go off a little before ten that evening. That’s the time when Martin said his uncle was most likely to be in the club playing pinochle with his friends.

  “You,” I told Norm, “will be the van’s driver and drive out of the alley as soon as Tommy and I get the explosives unloaded and inside the building; you’ll park nearby and return in the van when we call for you to come back to drive us to one of the two escape cars we’ll have parked nearby.

  “Our first problem after that, one of many,” I told him, “is that driving the van with New Jersey plates into the alley and twice parking it at the rear door of the club is certain to be picked up on some or all of the security cameras I spotted in the alley when I’d walked it a few days back. Showing up on the cameras in the alley can’t be avoided because almost every business except the club has them.

  “Accordingly, we’ll all have to wear ski masks and other disguises when we’re in the alley, and we’ll have to quickly exchange the van for a nearby escape car and use it to drive us past the security cameras on the George Washington Bridge and out of the city. Moreover, as soon as we clear the city and get into New Jersey, we’ll have to pull off the interstate and exchange the first escape car with New Jersey plates for a second escape car with Pennsylvania plates.

  “Once we get the second escape car, we’ll drive it straight through to Pittsburgh without stopping until we find a place to park on the street or a parking lot near one of the big hotels in downtown Pittsburgh. When we get to downtown Pittsburgh, we’ll abandon the second escape car, walk around the block to a taxi stand in front of the hotel, and take a taxi to your plane which will carry the three of us even further away.

  “What it all means is that before Tommy arrives to join us, you and I are going to have to make various trips to buy cars and at least one trip to the Bronx to find long term parking spaces where we can stash our initial two escape cars, one of which will be switched with the van with the other as a backup to be used if the first became unexpectedly unavailable for some reason.

  “Each of our escape cars will have to be parked where there are no security cameras and twenty-four-hour access, preferably in some kind of inside parking garage where we can safely swap our van for the escape car without being seen making the switch. In an effort to further confuse anyone looking for us, we’ll leave the van and each of the cars we abandon unlocked with the key in the ignition in the hope that thieves will drive them away and leave their fingerprints all over them.

  “Hopefully, that will break the chain of evidence leading to us,” I told Norm and then asked, “what do you think?”

  “I like it, Norm said. “It should stop us from being linked to the job. But we’ll be up shit creek if our car swaps don’t confuse the cops long enough for us to get to the plane,” he said mournfully.

  “Well, one thing is certain,” I said. “We’re likely to have half the world looking for us so we’ve got to disappear afterwards without any chance of being traced. That means we’ll have to wear disguises and gloves from the get-go since we’re gonna be meeting people to buy cars and rent parking spaces and we’re gonna be picked up on numerous cameras along the highway and in the city.”

  Norm liked the plan and had the first of what I was sure would be a lot of questions.

  “Well, if we’re going to be heavily disguised all the time because we’re sure to be caught on cameras before and after the alley, why are we bothering to wear ski masks in the alley?” Norm asked.

  “So whoever looks at the camera footage after we leave the alley and take our ski masks off will think it’s the real us when they see us with our disguises,” I answered.

  “Hey, I like that; that’s real smart.”

  ******

  Our operation began with a long and boring trip. Norm spent several hours searching on his tablet for an airfield that met our needs, and then flew us from the Colorado resort to a small field just outside of Pittsburgh. It took us two very long days from sunup to sundown with an overnight stop at a small uncontrolled field near Cincinnati. Norm chose the field near Cincinnati because its website claimed there was a motel and restaurant within walking distance.

  It was an interesting two days for me because, to pass the time as we droned on and on, Norm began to act as a flight instructor—he spent hours explaining what we were hearing on the radio and showing me how the controls worked. It was actually quite exciting to me, a whole new world.

  When the weather was clear and I’d sort of gotten the hang of it, Norm let me handle the controls and try to keep the plane flying at the right altitude and heading in the general direction of where we wanted to go while he pissed in a bottle or napped. By the time we reached our final destination where the plane would be parked until the job was finished, an uncontrolled field outside Pittsburgh, he was letting me land and take off all by myself—albeit with him constantly giving me instructions and his hands and feet hovering near the controls and ready to grab them and take over if I fucked up.

  As was always his practice when he was on a job, Norm had temporarily installed a new tail number so the plane couldn’t be traced. Similarly, in the rare cases when he used the radio to do more than listen, he always identified his plane with yet another number and as a somewhat similar-appearing Piper with a less powerful engine and a significantly shorter range.

  “It confuses the shit out of the feds,” he told me once again just as he had on previous occasions. “And there are no traffic cops up here to pull us over and check my license and registration.”

  Norm was quite proud of the difficulty he would cause for people who would be trying to find us, and rightly so.

  ******

  Late on our second day out of Colorado, we landed at a small private strip on the outskirts of Pittsburgh and taxied to the hangar and office of its only business, a flight school with a Cessna dealership. After we both rushed to the toilets, Norm arranged for his plane to be topped off with gas and for a month of parking. Then we took a taxi to a hotel recommended by the girl working at the flight school desk.
/>   We were both bushed and went to our rooms to sleep right after we had something to eat in the motel’s restaurant off its lobby—hamburgers and fries for both of us, a beer for Norm, and continuous refills of a glass of Diet Coke for me. For some reason I was really thirsty.

  “I’ll probably have to get up and piss all night long,” I told Norm after about my third or fourth refill, “but I’m really thirsty.”

  ******

  The next morning, while we were still at breakfast, Norm began searching the Pittsburgh Craigslist for a local car to buy. We needed to get one as soon as possible in order to move to a motel further away from the airfield and begin buying the cars and van we’ll need for next week’s job in New York.

  There was a fifteen-hundred dollar Chrysler four-door that sounded just fine, at least over the phone. Thirty minutes later, Norm put on a disguise and took a taxi over to see it. I stayed behind.

  I waited at the restaurant and read a novel about a company of medieval archers on my iPad. I liked it. They were tough little bastards in those days. Had to be, I guess. They reminded me of some of the guys I knew when I was in the army.

  Norm returned more than an hour later with the Chrysler. It wasn’t much to look at; but it ran and didn’t have any problems such as a missing brake light that would get us pulled over by the police. And if we were pulled over, it had the name on one of Norm’s legitimate driver’s licenses written on its title as the car’s new owner. It would do quite nicely. Only amateurs pulled jobs using stolen cars and stolen plates.

  We immediately checked out, put our bags in the Chrysler, and drove off to look for a cheap motel on the east side of Pittsburg, far away from the airfield where the plane was parked. I drove while Norm worked his tablet to find another car on Craigslist.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Our new motel was a real dump run by an Indian gentleman who was quite happy to accept cash in advance instead of a credit card and willing to give us a discount since we’d be there for two weeks and wouldn’t need maid service. Norm had put on his fake mustache and sunglasses, pushed some wadding in front of his teeth to make his face bulge out, and walked in the little motel office to rent the rooms we needed. He took a couple of connecting rooms on the back side of the motel where our cars could be parked and we could come and go without being seen from the street or from the office.

  It’s not likely such a motel would have security cameras and I saw no evidence of any as I sat in the Chrysler waiting for Norm to register. It was so old and rundown that I was worried, however, that the rooms might not have running water and would have bedbugs. In other words, it was perfect because we could come and go without anyone seeing us or having any reason to pay attention to us.

  We immediately went to our rooms, and I put on my disguise. It was similar to Norm’s—short-sleeve shirts so fake tattoos would show on our arms, baseball caps, sunglasses to wear during the day and regular distance glasses with dark frames for night, black tooth caps to give us missing teeth, and fake hair to show under our baseball caps. We had a similar outfit for Tommy to wear.

  The third call Norm made to find a Craigslist car being sold by someone who was immediately available to show it turned up something that sounded interesting. So off we went with me driving and Norm navigating. The car we were going to look at was a grey Datsun with Pennsylvania plates that its owner claimed was in good shape. As usual, I stayed in the car and out of sight while Norm went in to look at it. If he likes it and buys it, the Datsun will be the escape car we’d park right outside New York City and drive back to abandon in downtown Pittsburgh.

  I parked out in front of the Datsun seller’s apartment building and waited for what seemed like hours while Norm tried out the car and bought it. I was hungry and needed to pee by the time Norm waved a friendly hand at the seller and drove away. I followed him in the Chrysler and pulled in behind him when he stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch. After lunch, we drove both cars back to our Pittsburgh motel.

  “It’s not bad,” Norm said of the Datsun. “I got it real cheap because it smells like cigarette smoke and had cigarette burns on the seat and on the dash. Apparently, a couple of people had already looked at it and passed because of the smell ”

  It was Wednesday afternoon.

  ******

  Thursday morning came too soon as far as I was concerned. But I got up, took a shower, put on my disguise, and joined Norm for an early breakfast. Then I got in the Chrysler and followed Norm we as we drove both cars back to New Jersey to begin finding safe parking places for our escape cars and a van or SUV we could use to carry us and Tommy’s explosives to the club. As usual, we took everything with us even though we didn’t check out of the motel. It was a good thing we did.

  Traffic was heavy even though we’d started early, so heavy that it was hard to keep our two cars together with people constantly forcing their way in between us. As a result, it was late in the afternoon and we were once again more than a little hungry by the time we found what we were looking for—a safe parking lot in New Jersey near the George Washington Bridge, the bridge between New Jersey and New York City, that we intended to use to leave the city early Tuesday morning as soon as the job was finished.

  The parking space Norm rented was for our Datsun escape car. It was in a safe parking garage in the sense that there was twenty-four hour access and neither the garage nor the immediate neighborhood around it had any security cameras, at least none that we could see.

  I was absolutely starving by the time Norm got the Datsun gassed up and parked, and we found an old mom-and-pop corner restaurant with parking. It featured, so the signs in its windows claimed, great hamburgers and home-made pies.

  “Hopefully, the kitchen is cleaner than the men’s room,” I said to Norm as I slid into the scratched and battered booth to join him, after heading straight to the men’s room as soon as we entered. He was simultaneously studying a battered menu and in the process of pouring himself a cup of coffee from a plastic pitcher a gum-chewing waitress had brought to the table. He poured one for me when he finished filling his cup.

  My plan changed as I thought things over during our very late lunch or, perhaps more accurately, our early dinner.

  “I blew it,” I told Norm as I dug into a piece of pie—apple with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it; my favorite. It was unexpectedly good. Maybe restaurant kitchens don’t have to be clean.

  Then I explained.

  “The traffic coming in from Pittsburgh was much heavier than I expected; we’re going to have to stay someplace around here tonight if we’re going to be able to get everything done in time to hit the club early Tuesday morning. Tomorrow’s Friday; we’ll probably have to spend all day in the Bronx looking for parking places for our initial escape car and its backup, and then come over here to Jersey to get a set of wheels with Jersey plates. We can buy the other two on Saturday. Tommy can meet us at our new motel Sunday morning.”

  It took a while but we found a place to stay. I called Robbie as soon as we checked in and asked him to have Tommy call me as soon as he could. Tommy’s call came hours later and woke me out of a sound sleep. Tommy didn’t say, of course, but I assumed he had to travel a good distance so his call couldn’t be used to find him or associate him with me and Norm.

  After I jerked awake and mumbled a few curses because it was the middle of the night, I gave Tommy the motel’s street address and told him to meet us in the parking lot behind it on Sunday morning around ten o’clock. I also told him that he should plan on spending the rest of the day taking the van or whatever he would be driving far away to be abandoned with the key in it after he unloaded his “cans and other supplies” into our new van.

  ******

  Friday morning Norm and I drove into the city and, after driving all over the Bronx, we came up with two good places where we could park on a long-term basis and come and go as we pleased.

  One of the two garages we found was particularly good. It was about ten block
s from the club and had two side-by-side, long-term spaces available on its fifth parking level. The garage was accessible twenty-four hours a day, didn’t have an attendant on duty at night, and it had no security cameras. It looked to be our safest exchange point—we could back the van right up to the wall in the empty spot to hide its license plate and drive off in the escape car parked next to it.

  Norm signed up for a year’s parking at each of the garages, bought a garage door opening “swipe card” for each of the three spaces, and paid the first and last month’s parking in advance. Then we drove into Jersey to buy the first of the three vehicles we’d need with New Jersey plates—two reliable escape cars and either a van or large SUV to carry the three of us and Tommy’s explosives into the alley behind the club. They all had to have New Jersey plates, both so they would mislead the police and the Mob as to who we were and where we came from, and so they wouldn’t attract attention as being out of place if they were parked or driven in New York City.

  According to Tommy, the van or SUV would have to be something large enough to hold sixteen plastic milk bottle crates plus “whoever else besides me would be working on the operation and whatever they would need to bring with them.”

  “Whoever else” turned out to be me and Norm and “whatever they would need” turned out to be two sets of solid disguises for all three of us because we would almost certainly get caught on a couple of security cameras in the alley, three clean pistols in case Tommy wanted one, and a battery-powered lock picker like the one we used to get through the back door of the jewelry store in Tucson. And, of course, we also needed the usual—a scanner capable of picking up police frequencies, untraceable prepaid cell phones and Bluetooths, and infrared vision equipment for when we were working in the club basement. We had them all.

  In addition to the van, we also needed to buy two bland and dependable escape cars with the name from one of Norm’s valid driver’s licenses on each car’s title as its new owner and New Jersey plates. It went without saying that all three of them had to be fully usable and totally legal. We didn’t want to be stopped for something stupid like a missing brake light or out-of-date tags, or be found sitting by the side of the road with our fingers up our asses because we had a flat tire and didn’t have a good spare and a jack.