Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day Page 5

  Once Miles had the weapon he found a key in his pocket and swung the vehicle gate open before running down to the truck. He sat in the driver’s seat and took a quick glance through the window into the back.

  ‘You got them doors locked, Jeannot?’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Jeannot shouted.

  Miles let the handbrake off too early and they rolled down the ramp for a couple of metres before he got the clutch in and powered up the ramp in a plume of diesel fumes.

  ‘Brace yourselves, boys,’ Miles shouted. ‘We’re going in hard.’

  PT was alarmed to see the cop car blocking the gate and Officer Vernon sitting in the snow beside the open passenger door.

  ‘You’re gonna hit him,’ PT shouted.

  ‘Bastard shot my son,’ Miles yelled, angry beyond reason.

  The truck smashed into the police car, crushing Vernon and sending the vehicle spinning out into the road. PT felt the jolt in his neck, but he’d held on to the bag of money his father had tucked between his legs before his final ride through the tunnel and the crumpled notes saved him from a nasty blow against the dashboard.

  Miles hadn’t anticipated the forces involved when they hit the police car. His face hammered into the steering wheel, knocking him cold.

  ‘Dad!’ PT screamed, jerking up in his seat as the truck ploughed on.

  It rolled on across the street on to a median planted with flowerbeds and bushes. Hitting the cop car had taken most of their speed off and knocked the engine out of gear. The bags in the rear shifted about and Jeannot got thrown into the truck’s metal side as PT reached between the seats and grabbed the handbrake, bringing them to a complete stop with shrubbery lodged between the wheels.

  He turned back and looked through the hole into the cargo area. ‘Jeannot, you all right?’ he shouted.

  One of the back doors had flown open and there was enough light to see Jeannot slumped amidst the money bags. PT jumped out of the cab as he heard the police sirens closing from a couple of blocks south. He had to run, but wanted to take Jeannot if he could.

  ‘Jeannot?’ PT yelled, leaning in the back and scooping cash-stuffed bags out of the way.

  Jeannot had a bloody nose and a nasty split in his lip. He was breathing, but unconscious, and PT wasn’t strong enough to carry his brother much more than a few metres.

  The sight of Jeannot and the thought of his other brother lying dead by the gates across the street broke PT’s heart. But there were two dead cops on the scene and PT knew if he stuck around he’d be on the wrong end of a savage police beating.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ PT said, reaching out to give Jeannot a quick pat on the ankle as the sirens grew louder. Then he turned back towards the street and started to run, with a single white cotton bag in his right hand.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PT read the label on his cotton bag and saw that he had $3,800* in twenties, tens and fives. He tucked it into his waistband, ran north through the ice and took a cab up to Grand Central Station. After ditching his overalls in a toilet cubicle and a quick splash to wash clay off his face, he caught one of the first subway trains running out to Queens. Being a Sunday, the cars were empty and his heart thudded, imagining that the cops were gonna jump aboard and nab him at every stop.

  Miles was a known bank robber who would have been identified within minutes, so PT didn’t dare head home. His outdoor clothes were in the storeroom at the Unicorn and he got looks as he walked through temperatures below freezing in a short-sleeved shirt. He ordered breakfast at a near-empty diner but only pushed it around his plate and got a raised eyebrow when he paid with a torn-up twenty.

  ‘My dad hit the numbers,’ PT explained, as the waitress eyed him suspiciously. ‘Told me to spoil myself.’

  He’d only glanced at Leon as the truck came up the ramp, but the image was glued in his head: clay-spattered torso, blood pooled in the snow and the expression on Leon’s face like he got when you caught him cheating at cards.What, me?

  Leon didn’t have PT’s brains, but he was the kind of big brother you looked up to: he’d stick up for you in the neighbourhood and only had to look at a girl to get what he wanted. The horror of his death was too big to grasp, but PT had to get on top of it and deal with his situation.

  Cold was the most immediate problem. PT knew a Sunday flea market and bought new gloves, a second-hand overcoat and a clean shirt. But the cops around here knew his face so he took a bus south to Brooklyn.

  He hopped off in a spot he didn’t know. Apartment blocks ran up both sides of a hill, breaking only for a kid’s playground and a Laundromat standing on its own. An old man from the neighbourhood played good Samaritan, shovelling a path through the overnight snow.

  Vending machines on the next corner were filled with the final edition of the Sunday Post. Blood and guts sold newspapers and the main picture was a gory shot of Officer Vernon spattered over the side of a police car and the headline: TWO COPS, TWO ROBBERS DEAD IN $10-MILLION TUNNEL HEIST.

  Two robbers.

  PT scanned the article until he came to it. Notorious Chicago bank robber, Miles Bivott, died after a struggle with police officers trying to restrain …

  The cops would have arrived less than a minute after PT ran off and his dad was in no state to struggle, but the news was no great shock. PT had mixed with bad people his whole life and every crook knew the score: if you kill a cop they’ll either kill you or make you wish that they had.

  Next he scanned the columns for his little brother:

  Bivott’s youngest son was found in the back of the truck and is being questioned by police. A third child, believed to have been Bivott’s middle son, Philippe, escaped the scene and is being hunted …

  PT wanted to cry as he imagined little Jeannot in a cell, scared witless. With two dead officers on the scene they’d be pressuring him, most likely with some hard slaps and the threat of worse if they didn’t like what he said. But Jeannot’s age counted in his favour: at seven years he was too young to be locked away and hopefully they’d see him more as a victim than a perpetrator.

  Unlike Jeannot, PT was old enough to cop a murder charge. NYPD had his photo and fingerprints on file and if they caught him he had more than juvenile hall to worry about this time. There might be an outcry if both he and his father died at the hands of the police. So they’d be unlikely to kill him, but they’d beat him senseless. The judge wouldn’t do him any favours either and the prison guards would ensure that he did the hardest time possible when he got to juvenile hall.

  PT had to run, but where?

  *

  He waited until darkness on Wednesday evening. After four days on the street, PT was in a real state. Boots and trousers crusted with rock salt and dirty snow. Black face, black fingers and dried-out clay itching like mad beneath half a dozen layers of clothes. He dreamed of heading west to California, but he was scared of the cops picking him up at a train station and his picture had been in Monday’s paper, which made hitchhiking an invitation to get busted.

  After three freezing nights huddled in an unheated garage, PT couldn’t bear a fourth. He’d have to throw the dice and hope they didn’t land him in a police cell. PT’s aunt and uncle – the brother of his late mother – lived in an apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan, close to the docks.

  The cops had probably figured that they were PT’s only surviving relatives, so he approached cautiously and used what his father had taught him on surveying a joint before a robbery.

  He walked purposefully down both sides of the street, checking that nobody was sitting in any cars, then vaulted a wire fence and used the back fire stairs up to the third floor. A couple of kids stood on the landing, sharing a bag of monkey nuts and flicking shells over the side.

  Number eighteen was the fifth apartment down the hallway. PT checked the rim of the door and when he saw light shining through listened out for a few seconds before knocking. It was a rough neighbourhood, so his Aunt Mae put a chain on the door before o
pening up.

  Her jaw hung, but much to PT’s relief her expression quickly warmed and she ushered him into a living room that was even warmer.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, looking suspiciously up and down the hallway before slamming the door. ‘My god, the state of you!’

  Mae couldn’t have kids and her substitute was a cage stuffed with chirping canaries against the back wall. Their noise and the smell of seed cake brought back memories of his first ever visit: six years old with his mother and Jeannot just a baby. Mae had bought him a die-cast fire engine with ladders that came off along the sides.

  ‘You let someone in?’ Uncle Thierry said, leaning curiously out of the kitchen.

  Thierry had worked the docks his whole life and always wore a sweat-stained, white vest, showing off the dragons and sea serpents tattooed up his arms. His reaction to PT couldn’t have been more different.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Thierry said, giving a mean shake of the head that turned PT’s stomach. ‘Look what sprang out of the gutter.’

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’ Mae asked. ‘I’ve got stew.’

  PT nodded eagerly, and found himself across the table from Thierry as his aunt ladled out a stew thick with potatoes and stringy lamb and bread sliced from a fat loaf.

  ‘Where you been?’ Thierry grunted.

  ‘Around,’ PT said. ‘Garage over in Brooklyn. Ducking and diving, you know?’

  ‘Can’t say as I do,’ Thierry said. ‘Never shot no cop myself. Never been on the run.’

  PT felt small. Twenty years labouring the docks had turned Uncle Thierry into a side of beef, and PT got the feeling that not only could his uncle rip him in half with his bare hands, but that he was actively considering the idea as they spoke.

  ‘Had the cops here giving me the third degree Sunday afternoon,’ Thierry said. ‘You seen the paper? That poor widow, with three kids under seven. Who did the shooting, your father?’

  PT’s hand trembled as he raised a spoon to his mouth. ‘Leon, I think.’

  ‘Federal Reserve too. I always said your father was a dumb bastard.’

  ‘There’s no call for that language, Thierry,’ Mae said sharply. ‘He’s your sister’s boy and he’s thirteen years old. His father brought him up to this life. You can’t blame PT for what Miles led those boys into.’

  ‘I did everything for that man when your mother died,’ Thierry said, eyeballing PT as he crammed a fat slice of bread between his teeth. ‘Called in a dozen favours to land him easy work loading the mail on the transatlantic ships. Do you know how many men shovel coal in the docks for twenty years and still don’t get a job like that? And then the asshole doesn’t even last two months and leaves me looking the fool.’

  PT couldn’t answer for his father’s sins and turned to his aunt. ‘Have you seen Jeannot?’

  ‘They let me visit this morning,’ Mae said, nodding. ‘He’s real sad, but the police are done with him and they’ve moved him to a children’s home. I’m going to try bringing him to live here, but there’s a procedure. I’ve got to petition the court and apparently it could take a month or more.’

  ‘We’re his next of kin,’ Thierry explained. ‘And he’s young enough not to have too many of his father’s bloody stupid ideas in his head.’

  ‘I’ve got some money,’ PT said. ‘Maybe I can help you out.’

  Thierry interrupted with a huge laugh. ‘You think I’m gonna lay a hand on that dead-cop money? If I start showing cash around the cops’ll have me locked up faster than a longshoreman drinks his wages.’

  ‘Do you still have influence in the docks, with the union and that?’ PT asked, although he already knew the answer. For all the complaints about his brother-in-law being a criminal, Thierry was a well-paid representative for the dockworkers’ union, which was a thinly-veiled front for the New York mafia.

  ‘I’m sure we could help with a lawyer and things, PT,’ Mae said. ‘But after what happened, you’re going to have to accept a severe punishment and there’s not much we can do about that.’

  Thierry smiled again, and much to PT’s relief it had a touch of sympathy to it. ‘That’s not why you’re here though, is it?’

  PT shook his head. ‘I thought, with your influence in the docks, you might be able to get me on a boat.’

  ‘You were always smarter than your brothers,’ Thierry said. ‘I thought you might turn up here sooner or later. I’ve already put out feelers, just in case.’

  PT smiled, but only until Thierry yanked his head across the table and nearly twisted his ear off.

  ‘Uncle,’ PT gasped. ‘Please.’

  ‘When cops get killed there’s a of heat,’ Thierry growled. ‘I dearly loved my sister. She wouldn’t have wanted you to rot in prison so I’m doing this for her – but once you’re gone you can’t lot ever come back to the United States. Not next month, not next year, not even when you’re a hundred years old.’

  ‘I understand,’ PT moaned weakly.

  ‘If the cops ever find out that I helped you, I’ll be in so much shit that even my union connections won’t help. So you keep your mouth and if you ever mention my name or even try to contact me or your little brother – god help you.’shut

  Thierry let go of PT’s ear.

  ‘Thanks, Uncle.’

  Thierry explained more as Mae refilled his bowl of stew. ‘A stolen French passport and identity documents will cost you a hundred and sixty dollars. I can get them sorted in a few hours. I assume you can cover that cost?’

  ‘I’ve got money.’ PT nodded.

  ‘And you speak good French?’

  PT nodded again. ‘Dad always spoke it at home.’

  ‘There’s a cargo ship sailing for Bordeaux tomorrow evening. Captain’s a man I’ve known for many years. He’ll put you on crew as a cabin boy, but I expect he’s gonna want a few hundred dollars for his trouble.’

  ‘And there’s no bother getting me into the docks?’

  Thierry shook his head. ‘The crossing takes around eighteen days. Once you arrive in Bordeaux you’ll be on your own, but you’ve got money, and the captain may even be able to help you some. We’ll make your documents so that you’re fourteen. Plenty of boys that age work on the ships, so you should have no bother getting yourself a room in a hostel. When your money runs low there’s always gonna be work on a boat or around the docks.’

  ‘I appreciate this, Uncle,’ PT said, as tears started welling in his eyes.

  Thierry was a hard man, but he stood by you when it mattered.

  * * *

  *Equivalent to roughly $55,000 in 2009.

  Part Three

  3 July 1940 – 5 July 1940

  Bordeaux, France

  France signed a formal surrender agreement with Germany on 22 June 1940. The country was to be divided into two zones. The industrialised north and a broad strip stretching along the Atlantic coastline down to Spain would be occupied by Germany. The rural south and the Mediterranean coast were to be ruled by a puppet French government based in the small spa town of Vichy.

  Under the terms of surrender the French Navy was under Vichy Government control, but the British feared that its fleet would eventually fall into German hands. On 3 July the Royal Navy surrounded the main body of the French fleet at the North African port of Mers-El-Kebir and delivered an ultimatum. The French could either scuttle their ships, join the British in the fight against Nazi Germany, or be destroyed.

  Meanwhile in Berlin, the German High Command was jubilant at the rapid capitulation of France. Hitler had no desire for a long battle and expected to reach a diplomatic settlement with Britain that would end the war within months.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Once he’d met up with Paul and Rosie again, Henderson wanted to take the kids by ship from Bordeaux or across the border into a neutral country. But Paul was too sick to travel for a week after the sank and by that time German forces controlled the entire Atlantic coast, including all ports and the borders with Spain and Switz
erland.Cardiff Bay

  Henderson couldn’t risk getting arrested at a port or border crossing and decided to lie low. Hopefully the Germans would assume he’d left the country if a few weeks went by without any sightings.

  They needed somewhere to stay and consular official Maxine Clere provided it. The half-English daughter of a Bordeaux property developer, Maxine let Henderson and the four youngsters move into a house she’d inherited from a great-aunt. It was a grand affair, but its location on hilly ground several kilometres out of the city made it unlikely the Germans would pay much attention.

  The exterior was pink. A balcony ran the length of the first floor and the interior was richly decorated with antique furniture and a spooky array of animal skins and native artefacts that Maxine’s great-uncle had brought home from France’s African colonies. But while the house remained impressive, the substantial grounds were shabby, because the gardener had been conscripted into the army.

  On a sunny day you could sit out on the overgrown lawn, listen to nothing but birdsong and bake in the height of summer. At least you could until PT and Marc decided on a bout of tag wrestling and all hell broke loose.

  Barefoot and bare-chested, the pair squared off with one arm behind their backs and handkerchiefs tucked into their back pockets. The game’s object was to snatch your opponent’s hanky and, despite three years in age and a huge difference in height, the pair were a surprisingly even match.

  Marc was like a bull. With broad shoulders and solid limbs, he tended to stand his ground while his opponent danced about. PT loomed over him, circling on fast feet, swooping in all directions and hurling abuse. Sometimes PT managed to grab Marc’s tag, but mostly Marc would evade PT until he tired. He’d then use his strength to charge forwards and knock PT on his back.

  Today was no different. Paul and Rosie watched from garden loungers a few metres away as PT crashed backwards on to the shaggy lawn. Rosie enjoyed having the two testosterone-fuelled boys riling the place up, and they both flattered her with their attention.