Collar Robber Read Online Free Page A

If he turned north instead of south I’d need to do some fancy wheel-work, but I decided to go with the odds.
    By the time I had the parking brake on, Jakubek was already making her way on foot toward Sixth Avenue. I got a little gut-flutter because I couldn’t see Szulz for a second, but then I spotted him in shadows north of the entrance, handing his claim check to a valet. Less than five minutes later a garnet-red Mercury Sable that had to be twelve years old pulled up front. A guy in a gray-with-red-trim hotel uniform got out of the car. Szulz slipped him something and climbed in.
    He swung the Sable toward the southbound lane. Maybe thirty feet ahead of him I pulled into the outside driving lane, framed him in my rearview mirror, and got ready to turn onto Fifth ahead of him. Smooth as silk.
    Then the gray Corolla I’d spotted on my earlier excursion to the hotel pulled out behind Szulz and got on his tail. Smooth as sandpaper.
    Son of a bitch. Maybe Szulz really was being followed.
    Szulz turned onto Fifth behind me, as I’d expected. I guessed that he’d take Smithfield rather than Wood south from Fifth, but he crossed me up. After turning left on Smithfield I picked up a quick flash of him continuing west on Fifth instead of making the same turn I had.
    The only difference that made was that when I started following Szulz again it was from behind him instead of ahead. I’m not clairvoyant or anything, but if he was going home he had to be headed for the Fort/Pitt Bridge. A drive-time left turn at the major intersection of Liberty Avenue and Fifth figured to be a bitch, so the money play had to be to take a side-street south to Fort/Pitt Boulevard, head west, and then basically merge onto the bridge when he reached Liberty.
    That’s what Szulz did and that’s what I did—and that’s what the Corolla did. Driving west on Fort/Pitt Boulevard, I’d made it almost to Stanwick when Szulz tire-squealed onto Fort/Pitt from Wood, not quite a block behind me. I could have pulled out to stay in front of him but the Corolla must have spooked him because he was making tracks now. I decided to let him and the Corolla power past me and then slide elegantly and inconspicuously into their wake. I managed it. Before you knew it all three of us were making our way southwest over the gray, choppy Monongahela River.
    Strictly speaking, I already had what I wanted. I knew that someone really was following Szulz. I had the Corolla’s license number, I could tell that it was a Pennsylvania registration and wasn’t a rental, and I had a halfway decent description of the driver. Plus, it looked to me like the driver was either a rank amateur or he wanted to make damn good and sure Szulz knew he was being followed. I found both alternatives intriguing. No real reason I couldn’t just look for the first chance after the bridge to do a U-turn and retrace my steps.
    Except what if Willy Szulz ended up dead or with a concussion and someone had noticed a Ford Escape rented by Proxy and driven by me following him? Or what if Szulz and the Corolla driver were co-stars in a little community theater production ginned up to make us think there really was someone else interested in Szulz’s bill of sale, implying that our price should go up? I decided I might as well stay on the tail until Szulz got to his condo, and see what the Corolla did then.
    The Corolla mooted that question about thirty seconds after we reached the other side of the bridge. No sooner had we put the river behind us than the Corolla’s driver grabbed his mobile phone for a five-second conversation. The instant he put the phone down he swerved into the inside lane, looking to me like a guy very anxious to head back the way he had come. I stayed with him for the half-mile he needed to reach a gap in the parkway separating the southbound and northbound lanes, and followed the Corolla through it to head back toward the