A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  CHAPTER 18

  Marcey, Assembling the Merry Band

  Marcey stood on a train platform three days later in the middle of Penn Station, waiting for the AMTRAK to arrive from DC, fidgeting. This was supposed to go well. Gwen Lane-Wright was an almost mythical figure within the community; Marcey’d heard of her even before coming into Charlie’s book, and she wasn’t surprised at all when Shelly had mentioned that they might want her expertise. Gwen was the best safecracker on the eastern seaboard, known for heists down at the Disney resorts in Orlando and for daring ski escapes in Colorado and Vermont after liberating the residents of exclusive ski resorts of their valuables. She was a legend, a DC native, and not someone Marcey had ever even dreamed she’d get a chance to meet.

  “The last time I heard tell of her was for that job she pulled in Atlanta. The jewelry store?” She practically vibrated with excitement.

  “Stop it,” Shelly hissed. Her hand closed heavy on Marcey’s shoulder. “She’ll see you and get spooked.”

  “I can’t help it, Shelly. The woman is a living legend.”

  “You tell her that, her ego will get huge and then we’ll never be able to use her because she’ll want fifty percent of the profit.” Shelly’s fingers tightened. “Now. Be. Still.”

  Scowling, Marcey tried to be still. She was fretting, anxious. The call to Gwen hadn’t gone exactly how Marcey had planned it. She’d wanted Gwen to just agree to come on board, no questions asked, as Kim had done. Best intentions, however, could be troubling. Marcey had had to explain to her the details of the heist, the fact that Kim was involved, all over an unsecured phone line. It wasn’t ideal. If Topeté or LePage was tapping her phone, they were already fucked, but Kim had checked it last night and had said that Marcey, despite her lack of solid encryption software, was blissfully wiretap free.

  Gwen hadn’t been keen to hear from Kim and was even less keen to be put on the phone with Marcey. They couldn’t really hold that against her—Marcey was an unknown. She had Charlie’s plan though, and explaining the situation to Gwen, the players involved, hadn’t gone well. There was still so much they didn’t know, still so much they were struggling to piece together.

  “I don’t know what more I can tell you right now,” Marcey had said, her voice feeling heavy as Kim watched her thoughtfully from the workbench. “Shelly Orietti spoke highly of you and thought you’d be best for this job.”

  Shelly had been the one who opened the door. Shelly had been the one who’d gotten Gwen to speak for the first time over Marcey’s babble about logistics. “There’s a train,” she’d said. “At Penn Station tomorrow at eight. Come meet me and I’ll make my decision.”

  Bringing Shelly was a security blanket. One that Marcey needed to ensure that this didn’t go horribly wrong. Marcey fidgeted.

  “Stop,” Shelly said again. “She’s here.”

  Gwen was a lot taller than Marcey, though not as tall as Shelly. Her hair was short, cut close to her head, and her eyes stood out like smears of white paint against the darkness of her skin. Alert and attentive, they flicked over Shelly appraisingly, a smile pulling at her lips, before settling on Marcey. Marcey stared right back. Gwen was dressed like this was a business trip: pressed slacks and a blazer over a flowing green top. Marcey was in jeans and a T-shirt, hunched over and just a little cold in her leather jacket that was more stylish than warm. They couldn’t be further apart from each other.

  She held out a hand. “I’m Marcey.”

  “Gwen Lane-Wright.” Gwen’s hand was dry, her fingers rough and callused, incongruous with her polished appearance. “You look like him. Especially in the nose.” She moved with the grace of a dancer, but her body was all muscle, stepping away from Marcey to shake Shelly’s hand. “Shelly. You look great.”

  “Gwen.” Shelly nodded. “You’ve gone natural.”

  Gwen patted her hair, short and tightly curled. “Well, it was too much work otherwise.”

  “Girl, I feel that.”

  Marcey rubbed at her nose, scowling.

  Gwen smiled thinly at her, hands in her pockets. “So you’re the one.” The once-over she gave Marcey made Marcey feel naked. “Charlie’s heir.” Gwen’s gaze slid over to Shelly. “You would’ve thought it’d be her.”

  Shelly hummed her agreement. “That was what I thought as well. But.” She sighed. “For better or for worse, it isn’t Kat who’s kin. Marcey’s his daughter, despite his never mentioning her existence to any of us. She’s green.”

  “I’m right here,” Marcey ground out.

  “I know, honey,” Shelly answered. “She’s got this bug up her butt about wantin’ to go, and well, she wants to finish up Charlie’s last job.”

  “Why?” Gwen frowned. “I thought it went south when the pieces didn’t fall right…and when Kat…” Glancing at Marcey, she shrugged. “Okay. Charlie’s last job.”

  This was the tricky part, the part where honesty could not hurt. Marcey plunged her hands into her pockets. “It’s an art job, and I know there’s some personal baggage with half the team involved, so I’m not going to ask you to betray any loyalties. This job is twofold. I want to finish Charlie’s job because there’s a lot of money in it for everyone.” She exhaled. “But the other part of this is personal. I’m sure you know what landed Charlie in prison? Johnson’s hurt me too. Me, people I care about. Kim has business with her as well, and we think we’ve worked out a way to combine these two jobs. I want her career ruined.”

  “Lofty goal,” Gwen answered. “Why not just kill her?”

  “Because I don’t do that. Isn’t that enough?”

  Gwen folded her arms over her chest, hip cocked out to one side. “No. It isn’t. Tell me why. You’re trying to enlist my services to work with someone I loathe and you haven’t given me a good enough reason to stick my neck out for you. You’re an amateur. You’re my arrest wrapped up in a tiny package.” Marcey glanced at Shelly. Her expression was stony; there was nothing for Marcey there. Gwen set her bag down. “Give me a good reason.”

  This question, this question. Rattling around in Marcey’s head. She hated it. “I remember sitting in Linda Johnson’s office, terrified, alone. I was only sixteen, my mom’d gone and hired this lawyer we could barely afford to get me off and all I could think was that whatever happened, I deserved it. This was my fuck up. My cross to die on.” She exhaled. “But it wasn’t my cross to die on, not with a lawyer like the one my mom got me. I sat there and listened to that woman steal away my best friend’s freedom like he was nothing.”

  “All criminals are nothing, until they’re something.” Gwen frowned. “That still isn’t a reason.”

  Marcey let out a frustrated little sigh. “I want it, okay? I want the glory. I want to feel the thrill of the game. I know I can do it. In that interview room, when I was sixteen, I was humiliated. Laid bare. They took everything I ever held dear about myself and stripped it from my flesh. They used who I was against me and I cannot ever let that happen again. I want her to pay for what she did to me. The humiliation, the muckraking, the fact that she’s brought it up again, years later, as if to salt the wound—I want her to suffer for it. She doesn’t deserve the position she covets, and besides, she’s dirty.”

  “Dirty?” Shelly looked up quickly. “Are you sure?”

  Marcey made an affirmative noise but did not say how she knew. That detail was for later, when they trusted each other more. “I found out some things, when I went to London and spoke to Kat Barber, details that I don’t even think she was meant to know. Linda Johnson told William LePage to fall in love with you, Gwen.” Gwen bristled at this. Marcey ignored her. “She orchestrated all of Rio, from Kat and Topeté getting caught in the act how they did to the fact that LePage turned just when everything looked like it was going to work out in the end. Kat Barber may have exposed his lie in making sure that your relationship took a hit, but she wasn’t the one who made it happen in the first place. LePage is involved in this. I know he hurt you. Why not
get some revenge on him and the woman who’s ultimately responsible for that? I want her ruined. I can give you the revenge you want.” She stepped forward to Gwen, her hand extended. “Isn’t that exactly why we do things like this?”

  Gwen didn’t take her hand. “I don’t like your methods. Personal baggage isn’t something to be wielded like a weapon.”

  “But will you do it?”

  Gwen’s chin dipped just once.

  There was little conversation in the cab they took back up to the storage unit. Marcey watched the fare tick up and up and winced when she pulled out her wallet and swiped the credit card Kat Barber had overnighted her for the purposes of this job. “Keep a spreadsheet,” she’d said in a note. “I’ll need to track expenses.”

  Marcey’d nearly cut up the card and mailed it back to her, but a quick look at her bank account and the slowly dwindling funds that resided there had made her wince and tuck the card away in her wallet.

  She paid the fare and they piled out to slip through the back door into the storage unit. Shelly picked the lock with expert speed and Marcey kept watch. They couldn’t all keep going through the front entrance. It was too risky.

  “What are we looking at?” Gwen asked. “And where.”

  “New Hampshire,” Shelly said. “In the mountains. It’s a painting. Come along and see.”

  “So, you’re not coming?” Gwen tilted her head to one side. “A black trans woman in rural New Hampshire? You’d be shot on sight.”

  Shelly chuckled. “Depends on the town, there are pockets of reasonable-minded folk, but you’ve got a point.”

  Gwen grinned right back at her.

  “Gwen’s black too, you know.” Marcey felt stupid, pointing it out. “I know you’re supposed to be the best, Gwen, but if Shelly can’t go, how can you?”

  “I went to Exeter.”

  Marcey’s eyes went wide. “Oh…oh, so you speak prep school.”

  Gwen flashed her an uncertain smile. “Something like that. It wasn’t fun, being the only person like me there, but whatever. That was years ago. Needless to say, I can walk in those circles well enough to get by. Besides, it’s the off season, no matter what this freak weather we’re having is doing. Gonna be mud season soon enough.”

  “True, true,” Marcey agreed.

  Kim was already waiting for them at the storage unit door, tapping her foot impatiently in time with whatever music was blasting at exceedingly high levels from her ear buds. She brightened when she saw Gwen and stepped away from the doorway to allow Marcey to unlock the door. When it rolled open and they all trooped inside, Marcey flipped on the lights and closed the door once more.

  “So,” she said, turning to the room. “This is us.”

  “So it would seem,” Gwen answered. “Why don’t you tell me what we’re looking at, Kim, so I can see if you actually need my help?”

  “Oh,” Kim said. “We really, really do.” From the poster tube she’d tucked up against her side, she produced a series of blueprints. After locating tacks and the wooden accent bar three quarters of the way up the storage unit wall, Kim hung the blueprints.

  They examined the plans. They were simple, just a house with standard alarm features. A few motion sensors by the doors, but nothing that Marcey would categorize, even in her limited experience, as a hardcore security system.

  Kim glanced at Marcey before her eyes slid over to Shelly. “There’s no security apparatus indicated, which means this guy is either mad cocky, or he thinks he’s got us figured out.”

  Gwen trailed her finger down one of the blueprints, tapping on a void. “He has a safe.”

  “You think.”

  “I know.” Gwen tapped the void again. “There.”

  “But shouldn’t there be something there? From what Kat told me, and my reading of Charlie’s notes in here…this place is supposed to be like Fort Knox levels of hard to get into.” Marcey didn’t understand.

  “Fort Knox isn’t hard to get into,” Gwen murmured distractedly, her eyes fixed on the blueprints. “This though, this could prove challenging.”

  Shelly leaned around her and trailed a French-tipped nail along a small corridor toward the back of the house. “There it is.”

  “There’s what?”

  Gwen and Shelly glanced at each other.

  “Christ, you are new at this, aren’t you?” Kim unrolled a second image. “Look here.” She tacked it above the first. “This is an air shaft to a panic room. And inside the panic room…” Her gaze slid to Gwen. “There’s a safe.”

  “A safe.” Gwen nodded. Kim hummed her agreement and passed Gwen her tablet.

  Marcey craned her neck to get a better look. Inside the panic room at the back of the house was a safe. A big one, by the looks of it, with a complicated door that was mostly pixelated and blurred in Kim’s laptop screen. “One that we won’t be able to get into on our own. Safe makers contract with security companies, but they never reveal their secrets. We’d have better luck trying to get a straight answer out of a politician.”

  “So that’s why you need me.” Gwen sighed. “That isn’t so bad. I’ll need time, of course, to plan. And time inside the vault with this beautiful foe.”

  Relief flooded Marcey. “Then you’re in.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re not worried about Topeté at all? Or LePage?” Marcey didn’t know why she felt the need to question this, or to even bring up their names, but she wanted to make things as clear as possible as they moved forward. She didn’t want there to be any surprises.

  It was Kim, not Gwen, who drew a sharp breath at the mention of Wei Topeté. Marcey thought back, trying to recall if she’d mentioned to Kim that Topeté was involved. There’d been so much of a waiting game that she hadn’t thought much of it beyond the assumption that Topeté and Kat, for better or for worse, were a matched set.

  “No,” Gwen said. “If William comes, then he comes. He knows that he’ll get his due.”

  Shelly’s eyes narrowed. She had the look on her face of a woman who’d just realized something important that she’d forgotten to do. She turned and gathered her purse. Her fingers flew over her coat buttons. “I’ve just remembered something. I need to…” She gestured to the door.

  “Do you need us to call you a cab?” Marcey asked.

  “It isn’t like that, hon,” Shelly answered.

  Gwen shouldered her bag. “Can I split the fare? I need to go back to Midtown anyway. Find a hotel.”

  “Of course.”

  They were both gone then, vanished in a swirl of Shelly’s gray wool jacket and a proposal of Shelly’s very comfortable couch as a viable place for sleeping.

  Kim watched her go for a moment before turning to pack up her tablet. “Topeté’s lurking?”

  “Yeah. And LePage arrested me when someone—not me, mind you—tried to break into the gallery where Kat appraised that painting. So yes. Topeté is lurking.” Marcey sighed. “I don’t know what for... She’s got her fingers into this too. Probably because of Kat. Or because of Johnson.”

  “It’s because of Charlie’s book.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone wants Charlie’s book. Johnson, and probably Topeté too, because it’s the key to everything Charlie did with his life. Interpol are waylaid by red tape and bureaucracy, but when they get going, they’re unstoppable. While they’re stuck in that waiting game, they liaise and work in counterterrorism. But there’s one thing they’re damn good at.”

  “Catching art thieves,” Marcey finished.

  “So, are you sure you want to go down this particular route to get your revenge on Linda Johnson?”

  Marcey through about it for a minute before nodding. “I am.”

  “Okay. Then I am too.” Kim slung her bag over her shoulder. “But if this goes south, don’t expect me to back you up.” She walked out of the unit and waited for Marcey to lock up and join her. They moved in silence after Shelly, heading out into the cool afternoon toward the train s
tation.

  For a while, Marcey couldn’t think of anything to say. When the words came to her, she had to shout them over the squeal of the arriving train. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Why wouldn’t you back me up?”

  “I almost ended up in jail the last time I worked with Kat Barber.”

  Marcey drew in a shocked breath. “Really?”

  Kim leaned against a support beam, grinding her palms against each other like someone squishing a bug. “I don’t mind working with her on art jobs, though, because she’s always distracted by the pretty things.” Kim’s expression grew darker. “It’s the other jobs you have to be worried about. She thinks she’s fantastic on the grift, but she’s really not. Any time she gets away from art jobs, it goes south. That’s why Rio went south in the end, you know?”

  “Is she why you didn’t work with Charlie for a while?” Kim frowned and opened her mouth to reply, but Marcey pressed on. “He documented each interaction he had with various, erm…subcontractors. I have his docs. Your entry goes blank for a period between 2008 and 2011. Did Kat have anything to do with that?”

  “Nah,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “That was that stupid eBay thing.”

  “Oh. Then what happened with Kat?”

  “The same thing that always happens on the job. Things get out of hand, security guards can’t be as easily manipulated as they should be, we have to scatter… Kat and Charlie get into a tight position with a security guard, do a few things, and then suddenly I’m locked in the back of a van, blindfolded and pissing myself I’m so scared. Charlie had to come get me. He was furious. But not with Kat. Never with Kat. That at least wasn’t her fault. Not like Rio when she figured out everyone else’s game and decided to go with the nuclear option rather than reevaluate with Charlie. I wonder if she saw the writing on the wall with Charlie, about his diagnosis…”

  “Why did everyone think that Kat was going to inherit Charlie’s legacy if she was forever fucking with people?” Marcey asked. “This is two times she’s gotten you into a bad position that you’ve told me about, and then Rio… You’d think it would’ve soured people to her entirely. Charlie, especially. I know there’s no loyalty amongst thieves.”