A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  “Okay.” Marcey wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say.

  “Show me what you can do on short notice. Get in there. Take a gander at the painting.” The line went dead. Marcey pulled the phone from her ear and stared at the screen as it glowed a jumbled collection of apps that dimmed and then fell into blackness. It was only when she was in darkness, the glowing constellations of the night sky above her, that Marcey allowed herself to exhale.

  It was a challenge.

  One she would relish.

  CHAPTER 7

  A Heist, at Its Impetus

  Marcey awoke, drooling, to a knock at her door. Her head was fuzzy, and she sat up too fast. “Yeah?” she called. Wincing, she rubbed at the back of her head.

  Her mother stuck her head around the door. She was dressed casually but professionally. Tax season was upon them. She was going in to the office. “Hey Mar,” she said. “I wanted to catch you before I left for the day and give you this.” She stepped into the room and held out an envelope. “This was taped to the door this morning.”

  Marcey took the envelope and flipped it over. The penmanship was beautiful, her name like a work of priceless art in spindly black handwriting. “Huh. Any idea who left it?”

  “No.” Her mother frowned at the clock. “Shouldn’t you be up? Aren’t you going to work?”

  A swell of panic surged in Marcey before the calm of understanding came as she woke up. “No,” she answered. “Got stuff to do today.”

  “What’s gotten into you? You run off like you do every month to go see your criminal boyfriend only—”

  Marcey set the letter aside and looked up at her mother. She looked harassed, the lines on her face were drawn, and the black circles under her eyes could not be covered up with makeup.

  “I’m gay, Mom. No boyfriend.”

  “Whatever.”

  Marcey wasn’t awake enough to bristle at the dismissive way her mother spoke of her sexuality. It was a battle that wasn’t worth fighting.

  “You always come back on Mars,” her mother continued, “but this time it’s worse. You’re walking in a cloud, so far removed from reality that I’m starting to worry about you—staying out to all hours of the day and night, not telling me where you’re going or what you’re doing.”

  “I didn’t realize I had to tell you everything I do with my time.”

  “You do when your supervisor calls me and demands to know where the hell you are.”

  Marcey frowned. “I was in the office all week.”

  “Maybe in body, but definitely not in spirit. I got you that job because I wanted you to be respectable, not some low-life drug dealer’s girlfriend. You’ve spent entirely too much of your life invested in this boy, and he’s done nothing for you. He’s a black hole. Like his cousins and his fool of a mother. You need to make a decision.” Her mother turned to leave. “Whatever he’s got you mixed up in, it isn’t worth it. You saw your face on those posters. That’s what comes from associating with people like him.”

  “It’s libel,” Marcey answered shortly.

  “Then sue, but go to work and actually be there, Marcey. I won’t stick my neck out for you if you get fired. Both of us have a lot to lose if you screw this up.” Her mother rested her on the doorframe, seguing away from their tense conversation. “Will you be back tonight?”

  “I’ll be out.”

  “Well, don’t come back too late. The weather’s awful.” With that, her mother was gone, vanished off down the hallway. Marcey tossed the letter onto the floor and rolled over, pulling her blankets over her head. She was exhausted and had too much to think about. She needed a few more hours of sleep before she’d be able to function.

  Sleep was an elusive foe. Twenty minutes later, Marcey was sitting up in bed, blankets gathered around her waist, reading the letter. Her hand shook. How—

  M,

  You should take better care with your personal information. It was a scarce challenge to locate you. As the guardian of Charlie’s legacy, take heed: people want what you have come to possess.

  After our conversation last night, I felt the need to apologize. I do not wish to impose my agenda upon you. The job is open, should you choose to take it.

  Impress me,

  K

  The paper smelled of spice and flowers, a gentle scent. Marcey thought it was almost sweet, touched by the smudge of lipstick on the corner of the page, until the fear set in. Her hands were still shaking. How…how?

  Marcey reached for her phone and fumbled for Charlie’s book. Finding Shelly’s number was easy enough; Charlie kept a neat ledger. She dialed, screwed up the numbers and had to start again. The phone rang and rang. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

  Finally, Shelly picked up. Marcey swallowed, knowing that this was out of the blue.

  “You’re using Charlie’s book,” Shelly said in lieu of greeting. “You figured out how to read it.”

  “It’s written in plain English.” Shelly snorted. Marcey glared at the wall, feeling petulant. “How the hell did Kat Barber find out where I live?”

  “She’s smarter than she looks. Also, you probably told her by using your damn cell phone to call her.” Marcey looked down at her hands guiltily. Shelly hummed thoughtfully. “But a better question would be what the hell are you doing talking to a woman like Kat Barber when I specifically told you to stay away from her?” A lighter clicked. Shelly exhaled. “She’s dangerous, especially for a kid like you.”

  “I had to do something. You wouldn’t help me.”

  “There was nothing I could help you with.”

  “Well, I think you can now. Can you meet me at Charlie’s storage unit?”

  “Some of us have day jobs. Crime doesn’t pay.”

  “You pulled in God knows how much with that diamond a week ago,” Marcey pointed out. “Look, it won’t be for very long. Maybe just the lunch hour. I want to get a better understanding of what Charlie had in mind with this job and see if maybe what Kat’s proposing—”

  “And what is Kathryn proposing?”

  “A job. No details.” Marcey shrugged.

  “I told you, Marcey. I don’t work with others.” Shelly sighed. “There are too many variables. People get hurt. I don’t want you involved in something like this. You’re supposed to be the caretaker of Charlie’s legacy, you’re not supposed to go running headlong into the first job offered by some floozy.”

  Marcey frowned. “I thought my goal was just to keep the book safe and take care of Charlie’s last job. You didn’t read his letter. You don’t know what he asked of me.”

  “No, but I knew Charlie better than anyone. I know what he was about. This is exactly his game. This web of confusion and lies. You’re a fool if you think you can pull a fast one over on me, or on his memory. Kathryn is too.” Shelly’s tone was curt.

  “Then tell me, Shelly. Help me understand why Kat Barber is telling me people are after this book. Tell me why Charlie’s last job is set to be so dangerous.”

  A long-suffering sigh, resigned and definitely annoyed at the resignation, escaped Shelly’s lips. “When do you want to meet?”

  “Two o’clock. I’ll text you the address.”

  “You’re stupid if you think that’s a good idea.”

  “Fine, I’ll Snapchat you the damn address. That shit’s encrypted and disappears. What’s your username?”

  Marcey pulled a pen from her purse and wrote it on the back of Kat’s note. Shelly was right. She was being careless. The book had risk. Marcey wanted to know what the risk was.

  The Perôt was an upscale gallery off Broadway with a reputation for moving harder-to-find pieces from lesser masters and more obscure European artists. It was tucked into two floors of a 1920s relic of a building. Marcey stared up at it from under the awning of the Banana Republic across the street. The building was made of a gray stone, dirty with age. It clung to a carefully maintained shabbiness that did not fit with the high-end retailers buttressing it on either side
. The building was done up Deco style, with a flair for Greek revival, mock columns running up its narrow face with wide windows open at the front. Shorter than the other buildings around it by a good four or five stories, it appeared the upper floors were either studio space or apartments.

  Marcey put her hands in her pockets and tugged her baseball cap low across her forehead, picking her way around a puddle to go peer into the window of the gallery. Shoppers and tourists jostled behind her, but Marcey couldn’t see them. She stared into the empty gallery space. There was only one painting visible, on the far wall, but it was one Marcey recognized. Charlie had a picture of it hanging up in his storage unit. A face, contorted in a scream.

  A blonde woman stood with another woman with black hair, their backs to the window. The blonde gestured at the painting, leaning in to hear her companion speak at some length. Marcey stepped away from the window. This was not how she wanted to meet Kat Barber. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to meet Kat Barber at all. She retreated to the subway station and took a train uptown, lost in thought.

  Pieces—a few of them, anyway—were slowly clicking into place. Kat had always been aware of Charlie’s plan. Shelly had implied it from the first time she mentioned Kat’s name. So why propose that Marcey steal it, if that was Charlie’s original intent? There had to be a reason. Marcey sat on the train, headphones jammed into her ears and listening to chill wave. The pulsing beat calmed the swirl of questions.

  Marcey transferred to a bus for the final ten blocks and got off to find herself on an abandoned street. She bent her head against the wind and hurried up to the storage facility.

  There was no one at the front desk, so she didn’t bother signing in. The place was busier during the day. Marcey saw a handful of people moving in and out of units, pushing carts up and down the hall. She moved quickly, her mind on the painting. She couldn’t get it out of her head. The screaming face, the horrifying, grotesque nature of the way it contorted, lips pulled away from teeth that appeared to be chipping, shouting in anguish.

  It wasn’t long until Shelly appeared in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. Today she was wearing a long tunic and leggings underneath her thick wool overcoat.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” Marcey said. “I was rude. I’m sorry.” She grabbed the lock and entered the combination. It clicked open, and Marcey pulled the door up just high enough for herself and Shelly to slip inside before she closed it once more. It was dark inside. The air was stale. Marcey flicked on the light.

  “You’re not sorry at all.” Shelly grinned. “But maybe you surprised me.”

  “Good to know.” Marcey gave a little mock salute. From her back pocket, she pulled Kat’s note and passed it to Shelly. “That’s what she left me. Taped it to the door.”

  “That is brazen, even for her.” Shelly skimmed the letter. “What’d she want you to steal?”

  Marcey pulled down the photocopied image from the book from where it was tacked to an exposed piece of wood. She turned and held it out to Shelly. “This.”

  “That?”

  “It’s at the Perôt, in SoHo. Kat said she was in town to appraise it and that it would be returned to its owner on Monday.” Marcey turned back to Charlie’s workbench. “Clearly it’s Charlie’s last big job—stealing this painting. So why…ask me to steal it when I could offer her a way to get it more easily?”

  Shelly set the paper down carefully, as though it was a precious thing and she was afraid it would break. She exhaled, looking around the storage unit. The single lightbulb overhead cast everything in long shadows. Shelly’s eyes were lost in the darkness. “Kat wants you to fail, Marcey. She wants you to get arrested doing this job, because she’s pretty sure she can use that moment to get Charlie’s book. The letter’s a threat.”

  “And a challenge,” Marcey interjected. “She wants me to impress her, prove that I’m cut out for this. Why not do it? Why not prove that I can?” She was pretty sure she could, at any rate. She’d need a day or two to have a look at the place and really understand what was happening there, but she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

  “Marcey, even with the best team available, you’d need more time. This is insane.” Shelly bent and blew dust from one of the notebooks that lined the table. It floated, hazy, in the air between them. Marcey’s nose itched. “Kat Barber is the first person anyone would look to for that job. She’s setting you up, leaving clues that will lead straight back to her, and then she’ll be able to flounce in and be all”—Shelly affected a terrible rendition of Kat’s posh accent—“Oh, no, officer, it couldn’t’ve been me, see? I was off fucking one of your officers in front of a crowd of fifteen people.”

  The thrill of the chase was a fleeting thing. It was already slipping through Marcey’s fingers. She couldn’t grab it for fear of losing everything. “You say this like it’s a thing that happened.”

  “Charlie was caught in Rio, by a man we thought was a friend. Kat was…otherwise occupied at the time with an agent by the name of Topeté.”

  “Otherwise occupied?”

  Shelly raised a single eyebrow. “Use your imagination.”

  “That’s cold,” Marcey replied.

  “Kat’s cold. She knew Charlie was going to get caught and she knew when it would happen and made sure there was no way she could be connected to it.” Shelly looked at the paper. “I don’t want to work with her. You shouldn’t want to work with her. She’ll do the same to you.”

  Marcey bit her lip. Danger curled around the image she had of Kat Barber in her mind, but it was the sort of danger Marcey wanted. She wanted to walk into the Perôt and take that painting off the wall, just to see if she could do it without the disaster scenario Shelly was proposing. Marcey sat on the rickety stool she’d pulled out from under the work bench and watched as Shelly leafed through one of Charlie’s notebooks.

  “You saw my face on those advertisements, right?”

  Shelly hummed, noncommittal.

  “There’s a meeting on Monday at my job. My real job. I’m probably going to get fired and sort of want to quit to save them the trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the fucking pictures. Because everyone knows I fucked Linda Johnson’s kid in high school and now she’s exacting revenge fucking two-point-oh on me. Linda Johnson’s got her Super PAC going after me while she hides behind the protection of Citizens United. She’s letting them fight dirty because her daughter—as far as I can tell on Facebook—is about to marry another woman. I’m the one who made her gay.”

  “You can’t make people gay.”

  “I know!” Marcey threw up her hands. “I want to fight back. I think Kat Barber can help me do that.”

  “You don’t know her from Adam, Marcey. You were buggin’ out when she found your place.” Shelly swept across the room, drawing herself to her full height and staring down her nose at Marcey. Her lip curled. “That tells me you’re afraid. Afraid of what might happen if you step wrong. You’re not looking ahead, not thinking like this is a game. You’re not ready for this life. Too risky, ’specially when you’re as green as you are. You’re going to get caught. I won’t go to prison. I can’t.”

  Marcey shook her head. “I have to try. I have to fight back. Teach me, Shelly. Show me what I’m doing wrong if it’s that awful, but help me, or get out.” She pulled another notebook from the shelf and flipped through it. She sneezed in the dust and rubbed at her nose. She squinted, looking up through the cloud of dust with stinging eyes.

  Shelly was staring at her with a closed-off expression, her lips pursed into a thin line. Her arms folded over her chest and shoulders hunched, she looked smaller than Marcey had ever seen her. “If the gallery is the Perôt and Kat’s already been there, you have bigger problems.”

  “We, you mean.”

  “I never said I was getting involved, but the Perôt’s not the easiest place to just get into, Marcey. For Kat to be there…she had to have had an escort.”


  “Kat said she was appraising the piece. She was there with another woman. I saw her, right before I came here.”

  “What’d this other woman look like?”

  Marcey shrugged. “Didn’t get a good look at her. Dark hair, about the same height? Looked like she could’ve been Asian, but that also could’ve been the light…”

  “Topeté.”

  “The one from Rio?”

  “Yes. That Topeté. Oh, that does complicate things.” Shelly reached for Marcey’s bag and pulled out Charlie’s book without asking. Marcey let her, watching warily as Shelly flipped back a few pages from her own entry. Shelly settled on a page and handed the book back to Marcey. On the page she indicated there was a short entry, written in smudged ink—as though it were written quickly. Marcey took the book and read the entry with a frown.

  Topeté, Wei Lin—Belgian, Interpol

  Est. contact Algiers, 1999. Berlin, Moscow 2000-2004.

  Moved Lyon, 2005, London 2009. Assigned KB 09-1283YJ.

  “She’s with Interpol?” She didn’t know Charlie’s shorthand. The entry seemed to indicate that the woman either went legit or was still at least passively involved in petty crime, despite her Interpol credential. “That’s bad, right. Because this is an art job?”

  “Very.” Shelly’s tone brooked no argument. “Charlie’s worked with her in passing… The sort of mutual back-scratching thing that crooks and cops get into. I don’t know how amiable their relationship was after she got scooped up to work directly with Interpol. Before then she bounced around investigative agencies, mostly for insurance, I think. She worked with him then somewhat. Usually on the odd job where they shared a common enemy.” Shelly sat down on the stool and took the book back from Marcey. “There are at least five people in this book that I know of who are behind bars because of Wei Topeté. She did Charlie too, got him back to the States and put him away with the first thing that stuck. She succeeded where your girl Linda Johnson failed.”