A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Marcey replied. It didn’t feel like much of a consolation. Both Kim and Gwen were as reluctant as Shelly to trust any involvement by Kat in Charlie’s game, but Charlie had wanted her, and Marcey was inclined to agree. Everyone’s fear of what Kat Barber could do was justified. Hadn’t Marcey seen it herself in what they’d done upstate? That was Topeté though, it wasn’t Kat. Kat didn’t have that kind of power.

  Would Kat ask Topeté to do something like that?

  Would Topeté do something like that if Kat asked?

  “I’ll work with her, provided she pulls her own weight and doesn’t try to freestyle.” Gwen set her bowl down in the sink and ran the tap to cover the smeary orange on it with water. “I don’t want her to take control of this job… You never know quite what she’s planning. Her and Topeté are like onions, layered. If they’re after the book, it’s probably not to hand it over to Johnson.”

  A small detail, half-forgotten in the sheer casualness of its mention, drifted like a mirage in Marcey’s mind. Something Kat mentioned, back in London…something about bookbinding supplies and taking that out of her cut. Marcey shook her head, trying to make the memory clearer. “I think the book has always been in play,” Marcey said. “It’s obvious she wants it, so why not see what she does? It isn’t a good idea for her to have it, Charlie must have known that. So he took it out of the game to what…let Kat fix whatever was holding her back before she got her hands on it?”

  Shelly said nothing. Marcey watched her robotically spoon curry and lentils into her mouth. “Maybe this isn’t what we think it is,” Shelly said at length.

  “How so?” Gwen asked, spoon caught in her mouth.

  “Kat wouldn’t…want the book to give it to Johnson, and Topeté, well, you’ve seen it yourself. She’s in the book too. Maybe this is a play by Topeté to get it out of our hands to destroy it, because it can destroy her.” Shelly hummed.

  “But she—” Marcey shook her head. “I know it’s stupid to dismiss it, but nothing about the entry on Topeté indicates she was anything other than a passing involvement when it suited her ends. So maybe…” Marcey shrugged. “It just seems a little outlandish that she’s…I don’t know…directly involved? Maybe passively, or through Kat…”

  Shelly nodded. “Probably.”

  “I think we should still treat this whole thing with some very serious caution,” Kim said. “Because even if Topeté isn’t involved directly, she and Kat are a package deal, and one’s bullshit comes with the other.”

  “That’s noted and accounted for.” It wasn’t. Marcey would have to have a think on that later, when she was away from people who were depending on her ability to make and stick to a plan. Marcey glanced around. “Then we’re agreed?”

  “I think so,” Shelly answered. “You’ll lay out terms for her?”

  “I will.” Marcey gathered her trash. The trash can was over by Shelly’s door. Marcey stood there, awkwardly, looking at the three women before her. “I should go.”

  “We were going to watch a movie,” Shelly said. “Team bonding or whatever. It’s been years since we’ve all worked together. Why don’t you stay?”

  Marcey’s gaze slid from Gwen who shrugged, to Kim, who held up some movie Marcey had never heard of. “All right,” she said. “I’ll stay.”

  The film was mostly drowned out by stories and reminiscence. The warm feeling of gratitude and companionship settled comfortably in the pit of Marcey’s stomach as she sat, tucked between Shelly and Kim, half paying attention to the old movie, half listening to the conversation. She felt like an intruder, but the cracking thaw came quickly when Shelly offered a story about Charlie and a man he’d met in Spain who’d tried to sell him an antique Persian rug. Soon Marcey was laughing along with the memories of Kim, Gwen, and Shelly of the man they’d all known far better than Marcey had ever had a chance to.

  It was a welcoming moment, a way of pulling Marcey into this world of women and crime in a way that Marcey hadn’t ever thought possible. Here she was accepted; her checkered past was not an elephant in the room, but rather a set of victories to be celebrated.

  Marcey shared a few stories about the crew she’d run with in college. Darius’s cousins were good people. Kim actually knew a few of them from high school, and sharing the details of the work Marcey had done with them to do the books for their sports betting circle made Kim’s eyes go wide and Shelly grin. “So that’s how you learned to gamble. You were skimming.”

  “I was getting paid for what they expected me to do for free,” Marcey answered curtly. “No harm in that.”

  They all shook their heads. Marcey caught herself torn between feeling comfortable and wondering why they wanted her around after what she’d said.

  Gwen clarified that later, when they were leaving. She grabbed Marcey’s elbow and jerked her away from Shelly’s door. “I’m watching you.” Her voice was steely. “You might have Kim going along with you for the trip down memory lane, but you don’t fool me, Daniels. I know what you’re about. You’re a walking arrest warrant and I don’t trust you further than I can throw you.”

  “I thought we were past this,” Marcey shot back.

  “They might be. I’m not. You’re going to get caught, Marcey. I hope you have a plan on how to get out of that that doesn’t involve running to Kat Barber, because she’ll leave you high and fucking dry.”

  “Then why stay?”

  “You have something I want.”

  “The…book?”

  Gwen quirked an eyebrow. “I’ll stay on one condition. I want you to destroy the book. Shelly’s doing this because she’s still in love with Charlie and Kim’s in it because she’s bored out of her skull, trapped in the city. I want you to destroy the book, burn it in front of me. Do that at the end of this, and I’ll crack whatever safe you need.”

  It was something Marcey hadn’t considered, but she stared at Gwen hard for a long moment before she was forced to look away from Gwen’s intense eyes, so brown in the low light that they were almost black. Doing that wasn’t something she’d ever considered, but Gwen had a point. “It’s in everyone’s best interest that the book be destroyed, I think.” She held out her hand, knowing that she needed Gwen more than Gwen needed her at the moment. This act, she could go back on it if she had to, but she was inclined to agree with Gwen. If the book was gone, no one won.

  Gwen took her hand firmly. “Don’t fuck me,” she hissed.

  “I wouldn’t…” Marcey began, all wide eyes and perfectly put-on innocence.

  “You don’t belong in this world, Marcey Daniels,” Gwen said as she turned to go. Marcey felt a small surge of victory at Gwen buying her act. She kept her face still, watching Gwen’s retreating back.

  When she returned home, the apartment was quiet. Marcey settled at the kitchen counter, setting up her laptop to go through the files Kim had gathered on Johnson’s past trials. Marcey couldn’t let go of the feeling that there was something she was missing about Johnson’s motivations beyond the unspoken angle of still being pissed off about Rebecca’s continued drug use and the public humiliation of having to have a daughter graduate high school in absentia because of rehab.

  In every spreadsheet, the funding of Johnson’s campaign was carefully documented down to the final dollar spent on things like toilet paper for the campaign office. Marcey was surprised at how much money they spent on things like morale building. Perhaps the campaign wasn’t going as well as Johnson’s advertisements would lead people to believe. Still, the money was sound. There wasn’t anything that looked like dirty dealings, at least on the surface.

  The second set of documents was connected to the political action committee working in Johnson’s name. The Super PAC wasn’t connected to Johnson directly, as far as Marcey could tell, but it was the Super PAC that this whole job would rest upon. Marcey did the math in her head, calculating how much of the PAC’s funds she could funnel into a fraudulent purchase of a piece of art.
<
br />   Marcey chewed on a fingernail. What was it about Charlie Mock that had Johnson so invested in getting the book? Was that just Topeté’s influence and presence in the investigation? Johnson was petty, certainly, but she was pragmatic to a fault. Charlie was a white whale sort of criminal. To run an international investigation and to send her best investigator undercover to seduce a safe cracker like Gwen seemed…excessive. Marcey wondered if she’d missed something in the book, some clue. Marcey stood at the kitchen sink and filled a cup at the tap. Her papers spilled out over the counter, slipping out of her bag and over her laptop keyboard.

  “I didn’t realize you were back.”

  Marcey started. She hadn’t heard her mother come in. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

  “Don’t worry, I was awake anyway.” Her mother walked into the kitchen. There was a glass in her hand. Marcey turned and dumped out the rest of her water.

  The sound of the glass slipping from her mother’s fingers cut through the room like a gunshot. Marcey’s mother was staring at the laptop screen. The files had loaded on the screen, and the first document, filling the entire screen, was a write-up of the Mock trial, Charlie Mock’s face staring out at her mother, eyes sunken and accusatory. Marcey tore her gaze away from the screen, her eyes wide with horror. A piece of glass stuck out of her mother’s foot, bleeding and forgotten.

  “Shit.” Marcey grabbed a paper towel and fell to her knees amid the broken glass. She yanked the shard from her mother’s foot. “Are you okay?” Her mother nodded. Marcey pressed the towel to the wound and helped her mother over to the chair. “Put pressure on it.” Marcey went and got the broom, then swept up the remnants.

  “How did you find that man?” She looked haunted.

  “He died,” Marcey said in a low voice. There was no reason left to lie. She got to her feet and threw out the broken glass, returning to her mother’s side to inspect the wound. The bleeding seemed to have slowed. There was a Band-Aid in her bag. She reached for it, spilling more papers over the desk. She wiped the blood away with the towel and waited for her mother to look down at her once more. “A lawyer called me.” She passed her mother the Band-Aid.

  “He wasn’t supposed to know you existed.” Her mother looked down at the Band-Aid in her hand and then set it aside. “I arranged everything. H-he couldn’t’ve known…”

  “He found out,” Marcey answered shortly. “He found out and he waited until he was dead to drop this knowledge in my lap. Knowledge you could have told me about yourself, ages ago. You didn’t need to lie to me.”

  “I did.” Her mother shook her head. “When you fell in with that awful boy, I knew there maybe wasn’t any escaping it, but I’d hoped—with time and distance—that I’d prove it was not your nature to be like him.” She turned back to the picture. “I sacrificed so much, I gave that…that horrible woman everything I could.”

  A strange echoing filled Marcey’s ears. “You what?”

  Her mother set the bloody paper towel on the countertop, crumpled it, smoothed it flat. Her whole body was shaking. “I never told you about Charlie for the same reason. Johnson came by, you were at school. I offered her a chance to look around, through your bedroom. I never thought anything—”

  Marcey closed her laptop with a snap and started shoving it into her bag. That was how Johnson had known. That was how she’d known all Marcey’s secrets. How she’d been able to broadcast them while Marcey was sitting on the stand, reciting back all her failings, every dark thought she’d ever had. The humiliation of that moment played over and over in her mind. She shoved her papers in on top of her laptop. “You know what.” Anger blurred with tears and stars. “You gave that woman everything she needed to humiliate me. You made what she’s doing now, with her ad campaign, okay. She’s looking for any reason to fuck with me.”

  “I think she feels sorry for you, Marcey, because of those pictures. She’s seen what these past few weeks have been like for you. She sent around her investigator to check up on you. I thought it was sweet.”

  “Her investigator?” Marcey’s blood ran cold.

  “Yes. I think his name was William. He wanted to know about your trip to London and all those dusty papers you’ve been looking over recently.”

  “You told him—you told her? You implied to them that I was up to something?” She stared at her mother, baffled. “She knows, then? About everything?”

  “About Charlie? I don’t know if she knows about him… William did ask… I didn’t deny it. So I suppose she must.”

  “She knows then. About the connection between Charlie Mock and me?”

  Her mother shook her head. “No, she’s known about that for years. I told her about it during the trial because I was hoping that I knew something about Mock that would help her to attempt a second trial of him. I told her everything.”

  Marcey stopped herself. She slung her bag over her shoulder. “You met him, what, on a whim? Slept with him on a whim? Told Johnson about him on a whim because you thought it’d get me out of jail time? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “Marcey, be reasonable. You were facing ruin. I was facing my career ending because my daughter was all over the papers and it’d look bad for the firm.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the firm! That was my life you played with!” Marcey spluttered. “And you care about the firm? The firm?” Marcey took a step toward her mother. “What did you tell LePage?”

  Her mother stared at her, her eyes wide but narrowing in judgment quickly. She saw through Marcey’s lie, through to the truth, so easily. Marcey couldn’t swallow it. “Why was he here, Marcey?”

  “What did you tell him? What did you say to Linda Johnson to make her come here in the first place? You know she hates me. She hates me because of what happened with Becca senior year and because I got away. She hates me because I’m a failure to convict. Because I got away and she didn’t get to rest her laurels on me. So what. The hell. Did you tell him?”

  Her mother said nothing.

  She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t be around her mother. She’d told. The violation was too cutting, too miserable. Her mother wouldn’t answer her. She stared at Marcey like Marcey was some alien child, not her own flesh and blood.

  “You’re no better than him, Marcey. If you know about him you already know that’s true. You’re no better than his sorry excuse for romance. He stole my purse, you know, put his number in it and ran after me like I’d left it behind on a park bench.” Her mother stood in the doorway. “The bastard thought it was romantic. Maybe I did too, until he left me pregnant and alone, running off with some half-male floozy.”

  Marcey worked her jaw, biting back words. She’d go sleep at Shelly’s. Or maybe Kim knew a place where she could crash. Marcey threw clothing into her bag haphazardly. “I don’t care.” Marcey zipped her duffle and threw it over her shoulder. She pushed past her mother, grabbing her thick winter coat and tugging it on over her leather jacket.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “Don’t walk away from me.”

  Marcey jammed her hand into her pocket and pulled out her keys. She twisted the key to the apartment from the ring and threw it on the floor. “I won’t be back.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Kat, Being There

  Outside it was cold; her breath fogged in the chilly air. Marcey stood on the corner and considered calling a cab for a moment before she began to walk. Blocks fell away beneath her feet, taking her over the bridge and into Manhattan. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t anything. Numb, she wandered, her feet taking her down the avenue and north, through a small park where two kids shivered while their dog raced the length of a basketball court, back and forth, back and forth. Marcey laced her fingers through the chain link of the fence and watched the dog run. It ran how she felt: in a scattered pattern, not quite able to decide where it wanted to go.

  When the kids left, she turned and left with them, trudging through
the icy night with no destination in mind. Calling Shelly seemed like admitting failure, and Marcey didn’t want that. She exhaled, her mind racing. There was one other name, one other number she could think to try.

  It took her nearly an hour to come to a decision. Finally, freezing cold and shaking slightly, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed the number from memory. “I need to see you,” she said. “Are you in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  The confirmation came not as a surprise but as almost an absolution. Marcey shivered, her breath fogging before her. The immeasurable, dwarfed feeling that came with living in the city was overwhelming. She curled her hand around the subway railing.

  “Where?”

  Kat said an address twenty blocks south. A place she’d heard of in passing, a place people like Marcey weren’t always welcome. She didn’t make enough money. Didn’t have a place in that circle. “Are you coming?”

  “Give me twenty minutes,” Marcey answered. It was late, far too late to wait around for the infrequent train. A girl alone at night? That was a disaster waiting to happen. “I’m taking an Uber.” She hung up and called the car, waiting on the curb and trying to figure out what she was going to say to Kat.

  This was not what she’d intended, running to Kat Barber. The inherent danger in it was not lost on Marcey. She climbed into the Uber when it arrived and didn’t really talk to the driver. She had too much on her mind. Had she finally, finally, been dealt the last straw? Was that okay? The hollow, empty feeling that came with the realization of all she had left behind ached in her in like a hunger pang. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t just walk away. Could she?

  The clouds were cast low against the glow of the city and reflected luster back down upon Marcey. The Uber driver wished her a nice night and drove off. Marcey stared up at the hotel. It was small, boutique. Not the sort of place she’d expect for Kat. Her phone buzzed. A new text from a blocked phone number. Inside there was only three digits: a room number.