A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  Kim was quiet for a long time after that. “Charlie loved her, that’s the best I can figure. She was the only one of us who he ever allowed closer than Shelly. I think Shelly always resented that to some extent. Kat is damn good; you have to remember that. She is, in a lot of ways, the one Charlie trusted with his secrets. She knows more about what’s in that book of his than anyone other than you. So, it was just logic. She’d be the heir.” Kim shook her head ruefully. “So yeah, I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of working with her again. I don’t like her knowing my secrets.”

  “I’ll keep her in line.”

  “Marcey,” Kim said very seriously. “You’re the least likely person to be objective around a pretty blonde. I saw you in high school. I’ll keep my own counsel on what to do about Kathryn Barber, thanks.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Wei, Acting

  “The injunction’s flimsy at best.” Linda Johnson wrinkled her nose and tossed the paperwork onto her messy desk. “Austin Jackson must know we’ve got him. Or at least that we’re sniffing around.”

  “He does,” Wei pointed out. “He isn’t stupid. He was Charlie’s lawyer for years.”

  “Then why countersue?” Johnson demanded. Wei’s fingers twitched. Johnson knew the answer; she was trying to figure out if they had put it together yet. Wei hated that about her, the constant testing of her abilities. When she’d first started working with Johnson, she’d assumed William was the one being tested, but he was Johnson’s golden boy after Rio. Wei was the one who was on a short leash.

  “Plausible deniability,” William answered. He raked a hand over his two-day-old beard. “He wants to make sure that he saves face before he caves. Attorney–client privilege extends after death.”

  “But you have him, on that train job in Rio from five years ago.” Johnson leaned forward. “What are you waiting for, then? Arrest him and force him to confirm that the girl has the book.” She turned to LePage. “You had to cut her loose once already, William. What’s to stop you from doing it again?”

  LePage flipped back a few pages in his reporter’s notebook. “I spoke to her mother about her trip out of the country last weekend. She went to London, as Topeté confirmed.” He lowered the notebook, his gaze drifting from Johnson to Wei. “And met with Kathryn Barber, which Topeté failed to mention.”

  Wei shifted but did not allow her expression to drop. “I only confirmed this morning. Barber was…cagey about the visit when I saw her in London last weekend.”

  “’Fraid she got caught cheating, was she?” LePage wiggled his eyebrows.

  “T’es un gros porc,” Wei ground out. “Leave that out of this.”

  “Why, Agent Topeté, when it’s relevant? You’re obviously compromised.” Johnson’s smile was slow and smug. “And Barber is with you. You’re her handler, or at the very least I expect you to exert some form of control over her. I will not have a wild card. If you can’t handle her, LePage should run point on this. He can be objective.”

  “And when some ghost from his past shows up too?” She had to push, just enough to make it seem as though she wasn’t thrilled with the development, though it was the sort of thing that really, she had no control over in the first place. Johnson was harder than William, and she had to believe that Wei was annoyed. Wei crossed her arms and slouched, like a child instead of a woman past forty. Johnson was lazy, distracted. She only needed a few crumbs to jump to a conclusion. “Can he be trusted to be objective?”

  “He’s doing a better job than you are right now,” Johnson answered curtly.

  Good.

  “Fine.” Wei got to her feet. “You’ll have my report from Lyon and London this afternoon.” She stalked out of the office, counting in her head. Three, two, one.

  “Topeté!”

  She didn’t turn around.

  “Wei, wait.” LePage grabbed her arm and spun her around. Wei clenched her fist. He had no right to touch her, even if he looked immediately apologetic, his hand jerked away and open. “This is your collar, we both know that. You’re the one who caught Barber that first time in Barcelona. She had secrets she was willing to sell. Where are the fruits of that investigation?”

  “That should have gotten us Charlie Mock’s book,” Wei hissed. “But it didn’t. And now she’s pulled it away from me too. How am I supposed to string Barber along if she thinks I don’t have the authority to direct this case?”

  “Well.” LePage rubbed at the back of his neck. They had an audience in the bullpen. He jerked his head to an interview room. Wei followed, silently, full of affected anger. “You don’t have any authority here anyway. You’re a liaison, assigned to catch an art thief.”

  “I’ve caught her.”

  “Then what’s she doing sending some kid into the Perôt?”

  Wei shrugged. “I don’t know much about the kid beyond what we suspect. She’s the one who got the book from Mock’s lawyer. I’m curious what she’s doing with it, though.”

  “Don’t you have contacts in that world? Contacts who could get you that answer?”

  “William, are you asking me to compromise myself and this investigation to get confirmation?” She laughed. “Don’t you also have contacts? Why not ring your ex?”

  He shifted, uncomfortable with the mention of his time undercover. Wei knew what Kat had done when she’d exposed him for the liar he was. She knew what it had cost his ex-fiancée. “That’d be a bad idea.”

  “Quite.” Wei closed her eyes. She could try Shelly, who was never too keen to work with people anyway. But who was to say that Shelly knew anything about the girl? Shelly had thrown a bone last time. Maybe she’d play ball again. “Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  “But your report—”

  “The price you have to pay, William.” She left the interview room, a smile pulling at her lips.

  It was a brilliant spring morning outside. The sun was shining, so much so that Wei’s eyes hurt. She hailed a cab and told them the address of a library in Queens. “That’s a ways away,” the cabbie said. “Got a preference for how I go?”

  “No.” Wei closed her eyes. Johnson’s office would pick up the tab. “Just drive.”

  An hour later, Wei made her way up the steps of the central branch of the Queens Library. It had been a long time since Wei had been to a library, longer still since she’d been in one that didn’t carry the telltale smell of body odor that tended to permeate many of the libraries Wei had frequented in college.

  Her quarry sat behind a bank of computers at the library’s reference desk. Wei waited until Shelly Orietti’s gaze drifted up from her computer screen. She didn’t want to show up unannounced. If there was any reaction from Shelly, it did not show on her face. She tapped her candy-red nails idly against the back of her mouse, her chin resting on her free palm.

  “You’re the last person I expected to see today,” Shelly said dryly as Wei approached. “Looking for microfiche? It’s downstairs.”

  Wei scowled. “No. I was looking for you.”

  Shelly blinked up at her through fake eyelashes. “Why ever would you come traipsing all the way out here just to talk to little ole me?”

  “Cut the act, Shelly.” Wei’s hands were jammed in her pockets, and she clenched them into fists, out of sight of Shelly, though the tension clearly showed on her face. “You know why I’m here.”

  Sighing the long-suffering sigh of a woman oft put-upon, Shelly got to her feet. She moved quickly, long strides drawing Wei out of the library to a back alleyway where she pulled a cigarette pack and a lighter from her pocket. She offered the pack to Wei. Wei shook her head. Shelly shrugged and lit up, exhaling smoke before speaking. “I told you, I don’t have it.”

  “No, but you know who does. I want to know what they’re doing with it.” Wei leaned against the building. “There’s chatter of a job. The kind she can never turn down.”

  Shelly pulled the cigarette from her lips. “Barber?” She shook her head. �
�Honestly, Topeté, if you think Kat isn’t the one running this thing already, you’re stupider than I thought.”

  “But she’s not alone, is she?” Wei reached out, touching Shelly’s arm tentatively. “Once, there was a trust between us. We were able to work together when everything came apart in Rio.”

  “People ended up in jail because of that,” Shelly said shortly. “People I loved. People who had no business dying in prison, alone.”

  “Then you’ll understand.” Wei wanted that cigarette now but didn’t know how to ask for it. These conversations were crushing, terrible things. They tore into Wei’s soul mercilessly, shredding the dignity and integrity she never quite managed to cling to. “That the book has no business ending up in Linda Johnson’s hands.”

  Smoke curled around Shelly’s head, her expression arranged into a careful blankness that was more deliberate than it was telling. “You’re planning something.”

  “I might be.”

  “And you want me to do what? Supervise?” Shelly took another drag. “Christ, Wei, games like this will get someone killed.”

  “LePage knows about the girl, Shelly. He arrested her, but had to let her go.”

  “I know,” Shelly spat. “I was there when she was released, or did William fail to mention that detail?”

  “That girl is going to screw up again, and I won’t be able to protect her, or keep the book from Johnson.”

  “What do you want with it?”

  Wei didn’t answer. The truth was so hard to stomach that Wei never wanted to speak the words aloud.

  CHAPTER 20

  Marcey, Taking Baby Steps

  Shelly called as Marcey was on her way to Charlie’s storage unit two days later. “I’m in, no more doubting that,” was all she said before hanging up. Marcey stared down at her phone, puzzled at the shortness, before shrugging and putting it back in her purse.

  “Who was that?”

  She turned to Gwen, standing beside her on the train platform. “Shelly. She’s in.”

  “I figured she would be,” Gwen answered.

  “Took her long enough.” Kim grunted beside them. “Always dramatic, that woman.”

  Marcey shook her head, glancing from Gwen to Kim to the tunnel. The train was coming. She exhaled, trying to appear calm. The giddiness that settled into her stomach at the idea of having all these women around her was nothing like anything Marcey’d ever felt before.

  On the train, Gwen stood while Marcey and Kim sat; they were alone in the car, for now. Marcey grinned up at Gwen, unable to stop herself from smiling. “So, if Shelly’s in, what’s our next step?”

  “Probably figure out the schematics of the panic room and see if it’s got some sort of nasty vault door on it, which I’m sure it does.”

  “Might be a Monument, one of their round ones.” Kim sat back, staring up at the ads overhead. Marcey was surprised there weren’t any featuring her face in this car. Maybe it was a sign of good luck. “The opening looks to be something complicated.”

  “Why’s a white dude in New Hampshire going to build a panic room like that anyway?” Gwen frowned. “It’s not like he’s got anything to be afraid of, except maybe bears.”

  “These rich eccentrics,” Kim answered. “Never had any sense.”

  “Is it common for there to be this level of security out in the middle of nowhere?” Marcey asked. “It seems so excessive.”

  “People have their moments of paranoia for a reason, Marcey. This guy could’ve had something stolen before, or he’s just paranoid, you never really can tell, but the moment you start thinking about the why a mark does anything is the moment you’re going to get into trouble.” Kim’s expression was a twist of gleeful smile and admonishment.

  Marcey thought about this for a moment. She had her paranoia, this guy had to have it too, but something… She spoke after a few long moments of contemplation, not quite sure if she was right or wrong. “Shouldn’t that be everything, though? Like, if this guy has a panic room, and possibly a really complicated safe door on it, shouldn’t we ask why he has that? What is there in his past that’s making him behave that way? Will it feed into what more he’ll do to feel safe?”

  Gwen and Kim exchanged a glance, the sort that spoke volumes about what they were thinking without giving anything away. Marcey shrugged. “Like, maybe if he’s that paranoid, he’s got a guard rotation too, how do we get in if there’s humans, not just a locked door, guarding the painting?”

  “She sounds like Charlie.” Kim raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, it’s uncanny,” Gwen agreed.

  Sitting back, her legs kicked out, Marcey couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face. She was warm, but content. This was what she wanted: a chance to prove herself to these women. Her worth to this job would not just come from her need for petty revenge. No, she could provide a service. And she would.

  Thirty minutes later they were at the storage locker, going through Charlie’s books. The idea was to locate any of the preliminary research he’d done on the house in New Hampshire to figure out what sort of safe they were looking at. Kim had brought a pocket projector, which she set on an empty milk crate and a series of Charlie’s older journals—which Marcey very much wanted to read at some point. She projected the blueprint of the house in New Hampshire, thanks to relatively weak web security of the county planning office. As they searched, anything of relevance was affixed to the long piece of paper Gwen had brought in what Marcey thought, initially, was a yoga mat.

  Marcey flipped through pages of one of Charlie’s notebooks, looking for anything that might be considered useful. He wrote his notes with no order; one page could be from two decades ago, the next from two years ago. It was hard-to-follow mess. Still, a page at the back of the book seemed recent. Written in blue ballpoint pen was an address in the city. Marcey pulled up her phone to check where it was, only to find it in an office building on the outskirts of the Financial District. Next to the address was a file number and the word Monument.

  “Guys, I think I have something.”

  Gwen and Kim crowded close to Marcey, reading over her shoulder.

  “Guess that proves it’s a Monument,” Kim said at length. “What’s that business?”

  “Not sure.” Gwen pursed her lips. “Never heard of KMT Imports.”

  Kim typed a few commands into her laptop, her eyes narrowing as she did so. She clicked a link, and then another, and then another. It seemed to go on and on forever. “That’s a neat trick,” she answered.

  “What is?” Marcey asked.

  “Look.” Kim flipped the tablet around. On the screen was a complicated algorithm that seemed to be kicking back a property address in California. “That’s the company that makes the Monument, among others. They’ve hidden this company under a series of dummy corporations and behind two fake tax loopholes. Yet it’s them.”

  “You were able to figure all that out in just a few minutes?”

  Kim gave Marcey a look that said, What, like it’s hard?

  “Think it’s their archive?” Gwen sounded eager.

  “Archive?” That didn’t make any sense.

  “Yeah,” Gwen said. “The place where they keep all of their old data, schematics and the like. They’re usually housed like this, hidden behind dummy corporations and in tax havens. I’m surprised they’re not in Switzerland or something, to be honest.”

  “Those banks can be broken into,” Kim pointed out. “This place? It looks to be operating under the guise of an insurance agency. Just hidden in plain sight.”

  “That’s a nifty tactic,” Marcey said. “So what? Down in their basement is just a bunch of files?”

  “Dunno, but…if you were to go down there and find that—”

  “PN-45-A-76 file?” Marcey read the name out of the notebook.

  “Yeah, if you were to go and get that file, we could figure out what we’re up against and develop a plan.” Gwen leaned against the wall. “Shelly would be great at t
hat.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, walking right into places and robbing them blind is something of a specialty of hers,” Gwen said.

  Shelly agreed to the job, developing a plan with Marcey’s help. She was going along, to learn, and to play the part of an innocent lost insurance worker, if pressed.

  The plan was simple, the sort of game Marcey read about in books and saw in the movies. Like a kid in a candy shop, she planned. They picked Monday, with the weekend for prep. Marcey dug through Charlie’s notebooks, finding all the little details he’d provided while casing the joint at the time he’d been arrested. A quick check late on Thursday afternoon and again on Friday morning before work proved that his guard rotation observation held. They could slip in, unnoticed, using a camera blind spot near the men’s bathroom. There was a door there with no keycard, just a simple lock.

  “You’ll need these.” Shelly held out a worn leather pouch on Friday afternoon after catching a glimpse of the lock. “I trust you know how to use them.”

  Marcey did not, but that was what the weekend was for. On Friday, she went to Home Depot and paid cash for a selection of locks, each more daunting and complicated than the next one. That evening, on the tablet Kim had loaned her, she got onto a TOR relay at the local branch of the library and googled instructions on how to pick locks. There were more videos than she could possibly watch, and her eyes soon glazed. She unrolled Shelly’s picks and stared at each of them in turn. In places, the polished metal was worn smooth. They had seen a lot, those picks. Marcey stared at the rake pick’s wavy end and sighed. Practice, it seemed, was in her future.

  By Monday Marcey was at least proficient at getting into all the doors in her apartment. She hadn’t dared go out into the corridor to try her neighbor’s or the front door, however, she didn’t want to give Johnson any excuses, and having lock picks? Definitely could be considered a criminal’s tool. Totally cause for arrest in the city.