The Interloper Read online

  “I need all of you to set up overseas accounts for the money transfers,” Lowenstein announced, a bit of weariness showing in his smile and his voice sounding more gravelly. “Get these account numbers to me by tomorrow.” He handed out instructions for a bank in the Bahamas, and as Hack stared at it with a perplexed frown, Lowenstein offered to help him if needed. Hack nodded, relief glimmering briefly over his bland face.

  “Each of us needs to figure out by tomorrow how we’re going to intercept our guys,” Lowenstein added. “If you can’t do this, call me.”

  None of them indicated that it would be a problem. There was a brief discussion about logistics, where they were going to keep the kidnapped security guards on ice, as well as the painting, and a few other details. Once they were done, they separated with Hack leaving first, and the other three discreetly heading up to the bar so they could blend in among the other customers and then stagger the times for when they would leave.

  Chapter 5

  Willis slept better that night. He still had those whispers nagging at him, but having the details of the robbery to think over helped to quiet them, at least it helped him to ignore them. Still, while he had the alarm clock set for five fifteen, he was out of bed by five. After a quick three-minute shower and another minute and a half to change into jeans and a tee shirt, he was heading off to Livingston, New Jersey, bringing Bowser along with him.

  At that time of morning, traffic was light getting through the city and he was able to arrive in Livingston a little before six. A gray haziness in the air seemed to add to the overall dreariness of the area, which looked to Willis like a blue-collar town that tried hard to masquerade as something more than it was. The houses he passed had a shoddiness to them, as if there hadn’t been much done to them over the last fifty years, and the red brick apartment building Craig Gunder lived in looked even more neglected. Even in its heyday it would’ve been a depressing place to live. Willis found a place to park, and then took Bowser for a walk around the neighborhood. No one would think twice about a man walking a dog at that early hour, even if they’d never seen the man before, and if anything they’d only remember the dog and not pay much attention to the man walking him. In Bowser’s case, that was even more true. With his clownish attitude and thick bullet head, he was a dog that demanded attention.

  Willis made sure to circle back to the apartment building by twenty minutes past six. According to the information he had on Gunder, his target worked a part-time job at a local gas station and usually left his apartment between six thirty and quarter to seven when he didn’t have a conflicting security guard assignment. Willis walked around the area trying to get a look at the back parking lot, but couldn’t from any of the vantage points he tried. At six thirty, he had Bowser by the entrance of the apartment building’s driveway, which went down a small hill before circling behind the building. Willis took the leash off Bowser and then slapped the dog’s rear, sending Bowser scampering down the driveway. Willis then made a half-hearted attempt to call for the dog and jogged down the driveway after him.

  Willis had gotten lucky with his timing. Gunder had left the building only moments before and was now standing only a few feet from the back door with his hands on his hips as he glowered at Bowser, who seemed oblivious while he nosed around by the dumpster. Gunder heard Willis approach and turned his glower to him. He was large and fleshy as his photo had shown, but if he had ever played high school football, he had gone badly to pot since then. Gunder’s small eyes turned beady as his glower deepened. Indignant, he demanded to know whether the dog was Willis’s.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Willis said. “He got off the leash. But he’s friendly. Don’t worry about him.” Then to Bowser, “Come here, boy!”

  Bowser glanced over at him, but stayed where he was. Willis had trained him to only come when called by his name. Gunder’s expression turned surly as he looked back at the dog.

  “This is private property,” he complained.

  “I said I’m sorry,” Willis said.

  “That’s not good enough. We got a leash law in this town!”

  Willis shrugged.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t have my gun with me,” Gunder said, his fleshy overly pink lips twisting into something remarkably ugly. “If I did I would’ve put him down. Next time I see him here, I’ll do just that.”

  Willis didn’t say anything in response. He slipped the leash back on Bowser and in his mind he played out what would happen in two days when he’d be waiting again for Gunder, and how much rougher he was now going to be after that last comment. The back door opened just then interrupting his thoughts and a middle-aged woman who looked only half-awake stepped from the building. She glanced over at Willis and Bowser, then to Gunder, before continuing on to her car. Willis grimaced inwardly while outwardly displaying nothing. He was going to have to change his plan. No one had left the driveway during the last ten minutes, and he’d been hoping he’d have a fifteen-minute window where he’d be able to deal with Gunder without any witnesses, but he could no longer expect that. He watched as Gunder walked stiffly to a rusted out Honda Civic, almost as if he had rocks in his shoes, and then as Gunder squeezed his large-sized body into the driver’s seat. As Gunder pulled his car out of his spot, he shot Willis another angry glare, then drove off. Willis led Bowser out of the parking lot and up the driveway, then back to where he had left his car.

  “How about some scrambled eggs and bacon?” Willis said as the bull terrier jumped onto the front passenger seat. Bowser, on hearing the word bacon, let out an excited pig grunt in response and his tail thumped the seat in a rapid rhythm.

  Willis drove to Summit, New Jersey, which was fifteen minutes away and only a few minutes from Short Hills. He found a diner in Summit where they let him keep Bowser by his booth, and he ordered scrambled eggs and bacon for both of them. The waitress, a white-haired grandmotherly type, softened at the sight of the dog, and crouched in an awkward arthritic stance so that she could scratch behind one of Bowser’s ears. When she returned later with the food, it looked like the portions were double what they should’ve been on both plates. Bowser wolfed his down quickly, looking as happy as a pig in shit, at least until the food was gone. Then he looked miserable, but after a command from Willis, he lay down at Willis’s feet. Willis lingered quite a bit longer over his food, and then even more over two refills of coffee. After he left the diner, he drove back to Short Hills. It was a different world. It was a town of money, with nothing shabby or shoddy about the small mansions he drove past. All the properties were meticulously maintained, with tennis courts and swimming pools visible if you were able to peek through the dense plantings of shrubbery and trees that shielded the homes. Willis had to guess that if any of the mansion owners found themselves unemployed for three months or longer, they’d somehow be exempt from ever making their way onto any of The Factory’s hit lists.

  Willis drove to Landistone’s address, which was an impressive stone building with a large circular driveway in front, and all the extensive landscaping of the other properties he had passed. Willis didn’t stop at the address, instead he kept driving, using the route he had worked out the night before that would take him to the nearest highway. The path took him through a dozen different small streets, all heavily wooded, all of which could be blocked easily by the police. After he got to the highway, he checked how long it took him, then tried it again using an alternate route he had mapped out. He was able to shave two minutes off his time using the second route, and more importantly, he didn’t spot any locations where the police would be able to trap him easily. Still, when he reached the highway, he turned around and did it again using a third route he had mapped out. Both the second and third time he did it, he drove to streets that were parallel to Landistone’s so that he only passed Landistone’s address once. After he was done with his third trial run, he drove off in the direction of Livingston, stopping in the town of Northfield where he found a baseball park. It was only nine fift
een and he had some time to kill, so he spent the next forty-five minutes throwing Bowser a hard rubber ball. If he had used a baseball, the thing would’ve been chewed up after the first throw, but the ball he used lasted for the necessary forty-five minutes, although there wasn’t much left of it by that point.

  Before getting back in his car, Willis dug through his trunk and pulled out a clipboard, work gloves, jacket, and a cap. Both the jacket and cap had stitched on it National Pest Control Services. Willis put these on and then headed back to Gunder’s apartment building in Livingston. He had a similar jacket and cap when he worked for The Factory, and he often used them when he needed to break into apartment buildings during the day.

  Willis parked a block away from the apartment building and left Bowser in the car to chew on a thick rawhide bone. He had his burglar pick ready, slipped on his work gloves, and then carried the clipboard as he approached the back doorway for Gunder’s building. According to the information he was given, Gunder was single, but that didn’t mean much. He could’ve still had a girlfriend living with him, and while that would’ve been only a minor stumbling block for Willis, he didn’t like to be surprised on jobs. Each of his twenty-five hits for The Factory went smoothly because of his preparation and attention to detail.

  The back door lock was a cheap one, and Willis had it picked in less than five seconds. He used the back staircase to get to Gunder’s apartment, then stood outside of it listening for a shower running or any other noises from inside. After not hearing anything, he tried knocking and after no answer, he used the burglar pick to get inside Gunder’s small studio apartment.

  The place couldn’t have been more than four hundred square feet and the layout had a small galley kitchen on the end of the room closest to the door. The other end of the room had a double bed, a TV, and a stereo. Outside of a small table with two wooden chairs set up near the kitchen, there were only a few other odd pieces of furniture scattered around the room. Nothing much personal about the apartment. No photos on display or prints hung on the walls. Just a dirty and stuffy room with none of the furnishings matching and all of it looking shabby, as if every piece had been picked up from garage sales. The room also smelled badly—like a mix of onions and cheese.

  Willis checked the bathroom and then the two closets to make sure there were no signs of anyone else living there. He quickly searched through a night table next to the bed and found where Gunder kept the gun that he had made a reference to earlier. Where it was kept, it wouldn’t be a problem. Willis was able to leave without anyone seeing him. After returning to his car, he drove back to Queens.

  He left an hour earlier the next morning and got to the apartment building by five. Once again, he brought Bowser and took him for a walk. They stayed close to the building so he could watch the driveway. From five to six no cars left the building’s parking lot. After that, he headed back to Queens.

  Chapter 6

  At five o’clock in the morning on Friday, Willis was back inside Gunder’s studio apartment. From the wheezing noises Gunder made as he lay on his belly, Willis knew he’d been quiet enough with his burglar pick not to have woken him. At that hour there was enough of a murky grayness inside the apartment that Willis had little trouble making out the outline of Gunder’s bloated body as he lay on his bed. Willis walked over to him soundlessly, then shoved the business end of a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol with a silencer screwed to it into Gunder’s left ear. Gunder reacted to that, letting out a guttural noise and trying to push himself up as he sputtered awake, still too groggy from sleep to be aware of what was happening. Willis hit him hard with the heel of his hand sending Gunder back onto the bed. With that blow, it must have dawned on him that there was a stranger in the room who had stuck something cold and metal in his ear. His body tensed, but he remained still as he lay on his bed.

  “You’re realizing now that you’ve got something you don’t want shoved into your ear,” Willis said in a voice that was barely a whisper. “Let me explain what it is so you fully understand your situation. The barrel of a .40-caliber pistol, although what you’re really feeling is the attached silencer. With a .40-caliber slug, if I pull the trigger I’ll be blowing most of your brains out your other ear. Nod very slowly if you understand what I’m telling you.”

  Gunder’s face screwed up into a tight clench as he fought to keep from crying. He nodded once.

  “Okay, good,” Willis kept his voice that same soft whisper. “This is going to go down one of two ways. If you cooperate fully with me, then you’ll be kept on ice for the day and get to continue your life tomorrow no worse for wear than a swollen ear. The other way it goes down is I blow your brains out and leave you to rot. It’s your choice which one, but you need to understand that I’m giving you zero chances. You say one word or do one thing that I don’t want you to do, and I’m sending your brains all the fuck over the place. Now, very slowly, move your hands together behind your back.”

  Gunder did as he was ordered, sweating badly with the effort. Willis wrapped Gunder’s wrists together using duct tape, then after forcing Gunder’s head up, he gagged him and wrapped the duct tape around his eyes to blindfold him. Once that was done, he dragged Gunder’s two hundred and fifty pounds off the bed, dumping him onto the floor. He then pulled him up to his feet and poked the gun barrel hard into the base of Gunder’s skull. Using the end of the gun barrel, he directed Gunder where to go with the same precision as if he were an expert puppeteer controlling a marionette by its strings. He led Gunder out of the apartment wearing only the same stained tee shirt and boxer shorts that the part-time security guard had worn to bed.

  The hallway light showed that Gunder’s skin had paled to a milky white, and he shook badly as he stumbled along, but he made it down the back staircase and to a waiting van without dropping dead of a heart attack. Lowenstein had arranged for each of the crew members to have vehicles to use for their abductions; in Willis’s case he’d been given a Chevy van, others had older model sedans with trunks large enough to stash a body. All the vehicles had been taken from a used car lot in the Bronx. Lowenstein had paid off the owner to wait until later that afternoon before reporting the vehicles stolen. After the robbery, the plan was to burn the stolen vehicles in the Bronx, and the owner would collect insurance, as well as keep his mouth shut.

  It was a cool September morning, and Gunder began shivering seconds after stepping outside. With his hands tied behind his back and with how weak and shaky he had gotten, he had trouble getting into the back of the van by himself. Willis had to shove him into it. Willis then followed him in so he could bind Gunder’s ankles together. Before Willis left the van, he covered Gunder with a blanket he had taken off of Gunder’s bed. After that, he went around to the front of the vehicle, got into the driver’s seat and drove fifteen minutes along a mostly deserted highway to an empty warehouse in East Orange, New Jersey that Lowenstein had located for them to use.

  Willis was the first one to show up. He used a crowbar to jimmy open a door by the loading dock. If the building had a silent alarm hooked up to the police, then things were going to get dicey, but Lowenstein promised that wouldn’t be the case—that the warehouse had been abandoned several months earlier after a fire and that there was no active alarm system. Still, Willis got back behind the wheel of the van and positioned it so he’d have a chance of escaping if police vehicles arrived. After ten minutes and no police, he got into the back of the van, cut the tape wrapped around Gunder’s ankles, and dragged out his captive. Willis took Gunder through the warehouse and to a back office, where he sat him down on the floor and secured his ankles together again. The evidence of a past fire could be seen plainly as the building was mostly gutted with one wall badly charred and part of the roof missing. Even after several months, the place still had a smoky smell to it. But the office where Willis had dragged Gunder was intact, and even had a space heater. There was also a card table and chairs in the room. Maybe Lowenstein had brought them, or maybe
they had been left by the previous tenant. Willis tried the space heater and found the electricity was still on for the building. After that, he left to move the van to a side of the warehouse where it wouldn’t be seen if someone drove up to it, and then sat outside by the loading dock and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Lowenstein showed up twenty minutes later driving an older model Buick. Willis helped him get his hostage out of the trunk, who was also blindfolded, gagged, and had his wrists secured together behind his back by a plastic cuff. They brought him to the same office in the back of the warehouse and sat him down beside Gunder. After moving his Buick to where Willis had left his van, Lowenstein came back to the office with a thermos of coffee and a box of donuts. He pulled a deck of cards from a jacket pocket, and he and Willis played gin until Hack showed up with his abducted security guard. After that man was also brought inside the back office and sat down beside the other two abducted guards, Willis, Lowenstein, and Hack switched their card game to hearts.

  It was an hour later that Pruitt arrived. He looked hyped up as if he were barely under control; his eyes had a wildness to them. Willis and Lowenstein left to help him get his abducted guard from the trunk of an older model Camry where he’d been stashed. The security guard was a man in his fifties who had been battered and lay unconscious. Lowenstein let out a disappointed sigh and chastised Pruitt about the condition of the man.

  “I thought I made it clear that they were to be brought here alive,” Lowenstein said.

  “He’s still breathing, ain’t he?”