Three Hours Past Midnight (The Nameless Thief Book 1), page 1
THREE HOURS PAST MIDNIGHT
TONY KNIGHTON
Copyright © 2021 by Tony Knighton
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by
Brash Books
PO Box 8212
Calabasas, CA 91372
www.brash-books.com
“With a classic heist goes wrong set up, Tony Knighton takes us on a violent, danger-strewn tour through the night time streets of Philadelphia. Everyone has an angle, no one gives an inch. Fans of David Goodis and Richard Stark should love this one.”
— Scott Adlerberg, author of Graveyard Love
Three Hours Past Midnight is a night prowler’s blitz tour of Philadelphia, boiled hard and served straight up. Damn. Burnt my fingertips, blistered my eyeballs and I want to go again.”
– Jedidian Ayres, author of Peckerwood
“A pitch-perfect tale of crime and consequences. Just try and put it down before the last page. I dare you.”
— Charles Ardai Editor, Hard Case Crime
Other books by Tony Knighton published by Crime Wave Press: Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties
For Julie Odell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Author’s Note
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
When the girl got out of the car across the intersection, George said, “Won’t be long now.” He adjusted the rear view mirror to follow her progress. The back of his hand was bruised; the vestiges of IV line tape there described an X. Even with the windows down, his car smelled of cigarette smoke. A tune played quietly over the radio. George liked music.
I turned in the passenger seat and watched the girl walk away. She was young, probably just off the boat from some Asian shit hole. A breeze gently tossed her hair, and the leaves of the magnolia trees that lined the sidewalk. The cop came out of the unmarked car’s back seat while fixing his pants. He got back in behind the wheel.
George took off his glasses and cleaned the thick lenses with a handkerchief. He said, “It’s been the same the last couple nights. His sergeant comes by around six-thirty or seven to check on him. After that, he orders himself up a blowjob from Lucky Number and falls asleep. He must set his phone to wake him before his relief shows.” George replaced his glasses and stifled a cough. “Nobody any good wants to be stuck on something like this. That guy,” he nodded in the direction of the plainclothesman, “never was a ball of fire.” I watched the cop. He settled in, leaning back against the headrest.
I turned around. George coughed and spit into the handkerchief, and absently inspected the result. As he stuffed the cloth in his hip pocket he glanced at me and said, “Sorry.”
A few cars came up the street, slowly, the drivers searching for parking. The neighborhood was high-end, but also high-density residential, nestled between the Parkway and Fairmount Avenue, and there were restaurants and a club scene nearby, so parking was tight. One car, a Mercedes, slowed to a stop and its driver stared at us, annoyed. George said, “Guy probably thinks we’re queer.” His chuckle ended in a wheeze. The Mercedes continued around the corner.
The tune on the radio ended. The announcer said, “That was Lee Morgan playing McCoy Tyner’s Twilight Mist. It’s a breezy eighty-nine degrees here at WRTI studios on the Temple University campus in North Philadelphia, with the possibility of a late evening thunder storm. In local news, a house fire in the Olney section of the city has traffic on the Roosevelt Boulevard snarled. A second unidentified woman’s body was discovered on the banks of the Delaware River in Tinicum Township this afternoon. A spokesperson for SEPTA now says that earlier estimates for returning its rail fleet to full operation may have been overly optimistic – ”
George lowered the volume and punched the lighter on the dash. Pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the cop, he said, “He’s nodding already.” George unwound a power cord and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. When the lighter popped out, he lit up and produced a thin metal box from under his seat, and used the cord to connect it to the lighter receptacle. George had explained its operation to me earlier: “The security system connects to the alarm company through the same cell towers your phone uses. This,” he’d held up the box, “is like a rogue base station – essentially a mini cell tower. It doesn’t have enough power to work at any distance, but right across the street it’ll work fine. The security system will seek this instead of the cell tower and route all its signals to the inside of my car, and that’s where they’ll stay. You could start World War Three in that house and nobody would know.”
I flexed my fingers inside my gloves. George took another drag and went into a coughing fit. His face turned red and he dropped the cigarette to the floorboard between his feet. He struggled to catch his breath. I said, “Are you going to be able to do this?”
George put a hand on my forearm and was nodding yes before he got himself under control. His grip tightened, as though to keep me from leaving him, and when he was able, he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” He recovered the cigarette and threw it out the window. “I know. It’s horrible. I gotta quit these things.” I stared at him. George said, “I’m okay.” He looked up at the rear view again and said, “It’s cool. Go ahead.” He took his handkerchief again and wiped his eyes.
My last outing had been three months before, and hadn’t gone well. I needed this. I got out of the car. George had removed the bulb from the ceiling lamp. I appreciated his attention to detail. Sick or not, George was a pro.
I took a gym bag from the trunk and walked across the street to the property. The house was a huge three-story single, an Italianate brownstone with lots of detail in the masonry. Even here, in a neighborhood of big twins and townhouses, it stood out.
Its front yard’s shoulder high wall was built of the same cut stone as the house. In the twilight, it looked almost purple. I climbed the terraced, flagstone walkway to the front door. The key the woman had given George turned stiffly in the lock but worked. I ignored the alarm keypad on the wall in the vestibule. The woman knew the code from a few months before, but we had no way to know if Pastore had changed it in the interim. That was why we were using George’s gizmo.
Even in the dim light, it was apparent that this was a rich man’s home. Fine oriental rugs covered the traveled areas in the hallway. It was trimmed in dark woodwork – wainscoting and crown molding. In the rooms flanking the hallway, the windows extended from the hardwood floors almost to the fourteen-foot ceilings. The furnishings sounded a wrong note – they were expensive but didn’t fit – a lot of chrome and brass and blonde wood. A golf bag full of Ping irons and Callaway woods sat in the hallway next to the mail table, as though Pastore would be coming home like nothing had happened.
Lining the hallway and stairs were awards, and dozens of framed photographs of important people, and Pastore was with them in every picture – smiling, shaking hands, cutting ribbons. One was of him and a bunch of suits at a groundbreaking, all wearing hard hats; Pastore smiled on as the mayor plunged the shovel. Another photo was of him receiving an award in front of a banner that read “Chinese-American Businessman’s Association.” Several more were photos of Pastore and others on a large, sport-fishing boat. In one, the legend, “Mover ‘n Shaker” decorated the stern. In a lot of the photos, a slight, rat-faced man stood next to Pastore, or at least nearby. In all of them, if there were more than one person other than himself, Pastore insinuated himself between them, most likely to prevent photo editors from cropping him out. I got the sense that these pictures were on display primarily to impress his visitors, much like the family portrait on a car salesman’s desk was turned toward and for the benefit of the customers.
At the landing was a flattering likeness of the man in oils. In it he wore a dark three-piece suit and seemed to be thinner than he was. His hair was thicker. He appeared contemplative.
I climbed the rest of the way to the second floor. The railing alone would cost tens of thousands to replace. A smoke alarm was mounted on the wall in the hallway. It would sound inside the house. There was going to be a lot of dust. I stood on a chair, wrapped a plastic shopping bag around the alarm and cinched it with a rubber band.
I went straight to the closet in the master bedroom and began grabbing up everything on hangers and throwing it all on the big, four-poster bed. Pastore had a lot of clothes – suits, mostly dark, mostly single-breasted, with vertical stripes. Lots of oxford-cloth shirts with French cuffs. It took me four armfuls to empty the closet, along with a DVR camera and tripod, and a trombone case, and I removed the clothes rod and shelf. I needed the room to work.
The safe was mounted on the far left-side wall of the closet, away from the light. It was about fifteen by twenty-four inches square, with a gray steel face. A combination dial was set in the front.
I took coveralls and a painter’s hat from the gym bag, and a dust mask and goggles and put them all on, and attacked the wall surrounding the safe with a hatchet and pry-bar, chopping at it until there was a ragged swath cut around the safe’s perimeter. I was ankle deep in debris – plaster and bits of lathe. Even with the mask, I was choking on the dust.
The safe was bolted to the partition studs – two by sixes. I cut them with a cordless Sawzall, below and above, and yanked the safe free of the opening. Lathe and plaster from the adjoining room came along with it. The safe was about four inches deep, and heavy, sixty or seventy pounds. I tapped it on its back – solid. Getting it open would be no joke.
I stripped off the coveralls, gathered up the tools and put them all in the gym bag. When I had everything together, I slid open a window on the 22nd Street side of the house. George saw me and got out of the car, and checked the intersection. He let a couple cars go by and nodded. I muscled the safe up onto the sill and pushed. It landed in the grass with a thunk. I tossed the gym bag next to it.
George was struggling with the safe as I slid shut the window. As I wiped the dust off my face with one of Pastore’s shirts, George dragged the safe to the car. I saw him hoist it over the bumper and drop it into the trunk. The car rocked on its springs. He leaned on the fender and caught his breath, and went back for the gym bag. Two cars went by. I didn’t like it; George was calling attention to himself. He finally got back into the car and took off.
I went downstairs and out the door. My shoulder hurt. Another car was already backing into the spot George had vacated. On my way out to Spring Garden Street, I looked over at the cop. He was still asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
A day earlier, I’d met George for coffee. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. He’d lost a lot of weight. He said, “I heard you got hurt.” I was quiet for a few seconds, and said, “Who told you that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You forget where you hear things.” George fiddled with a packet of sugar. “Around, somewhere, you know?”
“Yeah. Broken collarbone.” I rotated my left shoulder. It hurt. “I’m all right now.”
“Good.” George nodded and said, “Shame about Redfern.”
“Who’s that?”
“Really?” His expression showed amusement.
I didn’t answer him.
He hesitated and said, “A guy like us. I heard he got shot on a job out near Harrisburg.”
I didn’t know if George was just showing me that he’d kept up with things or if this was something else. Either way I didn’t like it. He should know better. I got up and sat next to him on his side of the booth. George leaned away and said, “What?” Without saying anything, I put my hand on his chest and felt for anything that might be under his shirt. He was startled and said, “Whoa, what are you doing?” Then he got it and relaxed a little. “Oh. Hey, look, you don’t have to – I wouldn’t –” He coughed and covered his mouth.
I said, “Calm down.” George felt frail. I couldn’t feel anything like a wire or recording device. There was a pen in his shirt pocket. I took it out. It looked expensive. I dropped it on the floor and cracked it under my heel. “Everyone needs to be careful. Especially you.” I dumped the ramekin of sugar packets on the tabletop and went through them, put them all onto the next table, and continued, “Be very careful about how you explain why you wanted to talk to me.” I popped open the napkin dispenser and thumbed my way through the tissues. A woman working at her computer two tables over looked up and stared for a moment. When she saw that I was watching her, she looked away.
George glanced down at the ruined pen but said, “I get it. Careful.” I stared at him. He sensed my impatience and said, “Tom said that you were looking for work. If so, I got something. I know you don’t like to do things close to home but I think this is worth it.”
I waited. Up close, George looked waxy. His pale skin was stretched tight across his face. He continued, “Yeah, you never were one for small talk. You heard of Vic Pastore?”
“State legislator or something?”
George nodded. “State senator.”
“Did I hear he’s having some trouble?”
“Yeah, you could say that. Last August he got indicted on a bribery charge. The State’s Attorney General had been looking into his finances for a couple of years. They convened a grand jury. Pastore held a news conference and laughed it off. He said it was political – just a bunch of hicks from the middle of the state that don’t like people from Philadelphia. He said, ‘a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich.’”
George let me mull that over and continued, “It turns out the Feds were looking at him, too. They’ve gotten together with guys from the city and the state. They formed a joint-task force, dedicated to investigating Pastore and his dealings. It’s all supposed to be very hush-hush, but you know cops—”
“Yeah, they can’t keep their mouths shut.”
George winced, and said, “Look, that thing about Redfern, I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
“Can you move back to your side of the table now? So we can talk like normal people do, please?” He took a handful of napkins and coughed into them.
I did, and said. “Go on.”
George leaned forward, his arms on the tabletop. “They grabbed Pastore yesterday. Took him out of his office here in the city. In cuffs. He’s being held at the Federal Detention Center on Arch Street. His lawyers are arguing for bail, but the US Attorney is claiming that he’s a flight risk, and so far a Third District judge is listening to him.”
“Isn’t that extreme?”
“That’s what his lawyer’s arguing, but the judge is standing firm. I heard from a friend they’re going to charge him with violations of the RICO statute.”
“What for?”
“They say he’s defrauded everybody – charities, non-profits – anybody that went through him to get any kind of government or non-government grant. They’re going over all his real estate deals. The list just goes on and on. He took a bite out of everything. And he didn’t do it by himself. They want to charge him with being part of a continuing criminal enterprise. Conspiracy, the works. They want to roll up everybody in his organization and beyond.” George reached to his shirt pocket for a cigarette and remembered himself. “The beauty part of this move is that he didn’t know what they had planned.”
“What else?”
“They wanted to swoop in and grab his assets. Publicly – reporters, TV, everything. He wouldn’t have the chance to hide the stuff that he hadn’t already hidden.”
“What would that be?”
“Something in his house. Place was his dad’s. It’s still in his mother’s name even though she’s down in Florida. None of that matters. They already have the warrants. They were gonna go in yesterday when they locked him up, but that thing with the SEPTA rail cars happened, and they’re holding off for better media coverage. They want the front page.” George smiled.
I knew what George meant – a circus. Two seconds after forcing the door, they’d be setting up the folding tables out front to display seized items for the cameras, and a podium for police brass and prosecutors to make speeches congratulating themselves.
I didn’t need all of this background, but George liked to talk, so I listened. Eventually, he’d get to it. He went on, “They had all this – the bust, the seizure – re-scheduled for a couple days from now. It was all under wraps until they tried to subpoena Pastore’s chief of staff, this guy Ed Reilly. Little weaselly guy, been with Pastore for years. He’s disappeared. That’s why the Task-Force needed to move in quickly, before Pastore or anybody else tried to get out of Dodge.”
