Here’s a Suggestion - The Wheelman

LENNON STOPPED INSIDE A MCDONALD’S AND BOUGHT A nine-pack of Chicken McNuggets—easy protein—with change he’d found in the stolen car. He sat down and wrote his note, using a pen ripped from the “Give Us Your Suggestions!” box and the back of a McDonald’s job application. When he finished eating his chicken, Lennon borrowed the gold token that would unlock the bathroom, where he used water to pat down his hair and straighten his tie and lapels and try to look as respectable as possible. Which was tough, seeing that his face bore the bruises and scrapes of a rough beating.

What the hell. Maybe that added to his scary factor.

Before stopping at MDonald’s, Lennon had walked into a junk shop and pocketed a plastic beeper toy meant for a toddler. God knows why toddlers needed to play with beepers, but that was something for Katie to figure out later. With Michael. Whoever the fuck Michael was.

Next stop: a Mailboxes, Etc., where he nicked a package in a metal bin meant for Herman Wolf in Warminster, Pennsylvania. Sorry, Herman. It was the right size.

On to SuperFresh.

Lennon flashed back to his favorite chapter from How the FBI Gets Its Man—chapter 7, which was a short history of Al Nussbaum, genius bank robber. Nussbaum kept a farm in upstate New York full of high-powered weaponry and bomb-making materials. He was the man who, in the mid-1960s, pioneered the idea that a mad bomber epidemic could distract police from bank heists going down.

Nussbaum probably never had to worry about stealing toy beepers or packages from mail services.

SuperFresh was like every other American supermarket he’d visited—bright, cool, crisp, white, frigid, and overstuffed with food neatly packed into every conceivable shelf, corner, and aisle.

Lennon placed the bomb on top of a stack of Fruity Pebbles—on sale for $3.99 this week—then walked over to the bank teller. He waited his turn, then slid the note across the Formica countertop.