Ghostman by Roger Hobbs Read Free Book Online

When I got out of the limo, I couldn’t tell if Angela was happy or angry to see me. She took me by the arm and smiled cleverly, like she always did, as she walked me through the lobby. There was no reading her. She was the kind of woman who could talk her way out of anything, even her own emotions. She was an actress and a con artist and at least ten years older than me. She liked to call me kid .
    We went right to her suite without saying a word. When the door closed, she ran her fingers through my new hair and told me that even with all the changes, she could still remember my face. We had made love once, when I was still fresh meat on the bank circuit and she was money-crazy from a strip-bond job worth five hundred grand. It had been her mistake, she said. We sat at opposite sides of the room now and talked for a while. It was difficult to get used to her new voice, but she smelled just the same. Cigarettes and passion fruit.
    The evening came, and Marcus sent word through the porter for all of us to gather around the fire pit outside. He introduced himself with one name only. Marcus . I stood next to Angela and listened to him do his cryptic spiel. Angela chain-smoked like it was nothing and whispered in my ear about all the different specialist bank robbers around us, pointing each out with the ember of her cigarette as she went around the circle.
    A well-dressed, handsome blond kid named Alton Hill was the wheelman, which means he’d drive the getaway car. If it had wheels and an engine, he could drive it. He sounded like he was from California somewhere. There was a sort of crispness to his voice that didn’t fit his pressed and professional appearance. The leather on his driving gloves was worn through, and he was only half-listening to Marcus speak.
    The guy next to him, Joe Landis, was a boxman. Boxmen don’t open safes, they literally crack them. The safes rarely survive. Joe was a short little guy with big eyes and a small mouth. He was from some part ofTexas, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell if Angela hadn’t told me. A boxman is half computer programmer, half demolition expert. There are still a few guys who can crack a combo with nothing but their ears and fingertips, but they are a dying breed. These days safecracking’s done with a computer, a fiber-optic cable, a high-powered drill and homemade nitroglycerine called “soup.” Amateur boxmen have a tendency to go deaf before they get it right. Joe stood off by himself and avoided eye contact.
    Nearby was a grifter from mainland China named Hsiu Mei. She had more master’s degrees than space on her wall to hang them, Angela told me, and she certainly had the rumpled appearance of an academic. She was beautiful, however. Her skin was the color of brown eggshells, and her black hair was so soft it looked like a strong wind might blow it away. She spoke half a dozen languages and was scribbling in a notebook. She was our controller and linguist.
    After that, there were a pair of buttonmen named Vincent and Mancini. Brothers, Angela said. They didn’t seem tough, but buttonmen rarely do. They hurt people for a living. These two were small Italian guys who cultivated that greasy Mediterranean look, wore the most hideous matching green ties I’d ever seen and radiated tough-guy body language. They stood next to each other in front of the fire with their legs wide open and their arms crossed across their chests. Vincent spoke, Mancini listened.
    And then there was us.
    There isn’t a proper name for what we do, but we used to call ourselves ghostmen . Angela and I were in the business of disappearing. I’ve helped maybe a hundred bank robbers escape over the years. Not all of it is disguises and fake passports and driver’s licenses and stolen birth certificates, either. Most of it is confidence. A ghostman has to be confident in the way he acts, talks and behaves. You could be on the FBI’s top-ten list with your picture up in every post office