The Getaway (Sam Archer 2) Read Online Free Page A

again,’ he said.
    She nodded.
    ‘Did you come from the bank?’
    He swallowed down his irritation. Katic never called him sir . It was petty, but chain of command was still chain of command. He felt like he had to earn that from her, which was the wrong way around.
    Ignoring the slight, he shook his head, staring at the charred taxi, the roof and bonnet smouldering like mist rising from t he ground in the early morning.
    ‘I was downtown. Fill me in.’
    ‘The bank was a Chase, Upper East Side ,’ Katic said, reading from the file in her hand. ‘ 2 nd Avenue , between 62 nd and 63 rd . Today was delivery day, so they got the vault when the time-lock was off. Cleaned house. Did a fake-hostage routine, and left. In-and-out in three minutes and got away clean.’
    ‘Anyone inside get an I.D?’
    She shook her head .
    ‘They were fully disguised,’ she said. ‘Full medical gear, surgical masks, aviator sunglasses and latex gloves. No DNA, no fingerprints, no traces, no luck. Everything was fresh out the packet. Doesn’t matter anyway. They left it all on the back seat to be burned. There’s hardly any of it left.’
    Gerrard nodded. ‘The hostage?’
    ‘Parker and Siletti are over at the bank interviewing witnesses,’ she said. ‘Most of them were looking down, too scared to look up. One lady, a teller, said the guy was wearing sunglasses and a cap, but that was about all she could tell us. Nothing that would hold up in a perp walk.’
    Gerrard nodded.
    ‘Clever. They put one of their own team in the bank. He’s disguised to the point that people would struggle to place him in a line-up, yet not enough to demonstrate that he’s a part of the job. They put an empty gun to his head and say if anyone leaves the bank or alerts the cops, they blow his brains out. The moment they walk outside, they take the gun off him and he gets in the car alongside them. They drive off, and everyone’s a winner.’
    ‘Buys them instant co-operation inside the bank and saves having to get rid o f a real hostage,’ Katic added.
    Gerrard nodded.
    ‘OK. What else?’
    ‘Security tapes were taken, so checking them isn’t an option. They’re on the back seat of the car beside the remains of the disguises, all melted up. The bank was on 62 nd and 2 nd so they were near the Bridge. They could have gotten over within sixty seconds if traffic was light.’ She turned from the folder and pointed at the car. ‘And the rest is clear. They parked here, unloaded the cash into a switch car, poured petrol into the cab, then tossed a match and left.’
    Gerrard glance d around the parking lot again.
    ‘Any witnesses? Homeless guys, or kids?’
    Katic shook her head, wiping her brow del icately from the stifling heat.
    ‘None. The vehicle wouldn’t have attracted attention. They weren’t being pursued or breaking the speed limit, and their disguises would be easy to remove. And a taxi-cab in Long Island City is just about as invisible as a vehicle can get.’
    Gerrard nodded, looking back over his shoulder towards the Bridge. Just a few blocks away on Vernon Boulevard was the central taxi depot for the entire area. Thousands of the yellow vehicles, all in a tight radius, hundreds of them moving around, coming to and from the depot. The thieves who pulled this job were intelligent. Even if they were being pursued, once they got over the Bridge and turned down the side streets, they’d soon have become invisible, especially if they moved anywhere near the depot i tself. He turned back to Katic.
    ‘How about tracers in the bank? Or should I even bother to ask?’ he said.
    She shook her head. ‘No luck. They left the registers. They knew where the dye packs and bait money were. They went straight for the vault. The bank manager is over at Lenox Hill getting his nose fixed. They busted him up pretty bad. He took a shotgun barrel to the bridge of his nose twice. Looks like he’s going to need surgery to realign his septum.’
    ‘What was