A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  Kim huffed. “Now you know why we don’t care for working with her.”

  “Topeté is in the book, Kim.” Marcey closed her eyes. “That was the other thing she told me. She’s in the book and she’s every bit as screwed as we are if the book gets into Johnson’s hands. Charlie documented every time she looked the other way for Kat. Every time she wasn’t where the action was happening despite being in the city is documented in here.” Marcey pulled the book from her bag. “This is twice now that I’ve been arrested with it in my bag. And twice now that they haven’t lifted a finger to take it from me.”

  Kim’s lips drew into a thin line. “Okay.” She nodded. “Okay. So Topeté’s not working for Johnson, but to her own ends. Does that help us or hurt us?”

  Shelly sighed. She unpinned the name tag from her shirt and set it in a dish by the door. “I think it helps, in a way. The riskiest move of this whole thing was having Topeté out there as a wild card, but if her end goal is the same as ours, then I think we’re okay. Her goal’s always been the book, after all.”

  “After all?” Kim’s eyes narrowed. “You make it sound like you’ve got some sort of an inside scoop there, Shelly.”

  Moving into the kitchen, Shelly ignored Kim. “You know how she was in Rio. Didn’t want to ruin Gwen and William’s relationship just to save the job.”

  “No, she left that to Kat.” Kim scowled.

  “You weren’t even there—” Marcey protested.

  They ignored her.

  “And Gwen had to pay the price.” Shelly shook her head. “Topeté has a vested interest in not getting caught up in whatever it is that we’re planning, but I also think she won’t deliberately try to hinder us.”

  “She’s been in touch,” Marcey said, the realization dawning on her. “You’ve talked to her, Shelly.”

  Shelly set the kettle on the stove, clicked the burner on, and crossed her arms over her chest. “She came to find me at the beginning, not long after the card game. At first, I thought she just wanted to throw her weight around. Threaten a bit and see what I knew.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing,” Shelly retorted. “What sort of a fool do you think I am?”

  “The sort who carries on with Topeté!” Kim spluttered. “You’re no better than Marcey, shit.”

  “Hey,” Marcey said. “I don’t think that’s fair.”

  “Tough,” Kim said. She leveled an accusatory stare at Shelly. “So, she came to see you. Where, the bar?”

  “Where else?” Shelly shrugged. “I guess I’ve gotten complacent with Charlie gone. Going to the same places, seeing the same people. She came to find me a few other times. I guessed at her game…but I wasn’t sure. Not until just now.” She gestured to the kettle. “Do you want some?”

  Marcey nodded. Kim sighed before jerking her head down once. “So Topeté’s been trying to make overtures for a while?” Marcey asked.

  Shelly got down three mugs. “Seems that way.” She set out two boxes of tea. “Take your pick. Sorry to not have a better selection.” She stepped back and Marcey leaned forward to inspect the tea. Kim grabbed a black breakfast tea bag and jammed it into the mug she’d claimed. “So, she’s spoken to me a few times, mostly threats. I’m sorry I never talked about it. It didn’t seem like it was worth it to make anyone worried when we were doing so well.” Shelly took the kettle from the burner just as it began to hiss. “I mean, we knew she was sniffing around. And she never told me anything we didn’t already know.”

  Kim frowned. “Still, it’s a bit underhanded, Shelly.”

  “I know,” Shelly said.

  Marcey took her tea and retreated to the couch. If Shelly was speaking out of turn, they needed to know why. “Why don’t you tell us about these encounters and we can see if they keep to the story she told me? If they do, I don’t see why we can’t use it as an olive branch.”

  They talked long into the night. Kim went home a little after 3:00 a.m. Shelly retreated into her bedroom only to come out with a blanket and a pillow for Marcey. She’d never asked to stay, but the implication hung heavy in the air.

  “The couch isn’t much,” she said, “but at least it’s a place to rest.” Marcey thanked her and curled up to sleep. She didn’t feel better about their proposed plan, so much of it relied on the idea of keeping secrets from everyone. She wasn’t sure she could keep them all straight. Or if she wanted to. What could be done about the book? Destroy it and many lives were saved; keep it around and there was always the risk of Johnson or Interpol getting a hold of it. Topeté couldn’t have that, and Kat was fucked either way.

  Shelly, Kim, and Gwen all thought the book should be destroyed at the end of the job, to keep Topeté from getting her hands on it. Marcey wasn’t sure. She liked the leverage it gave her over Topeté, over Kat. She liked how powerful it made her feel.

  Sleep wouldn’t come. At close to four, Marcey pulled out her laptop and opened a spreadsheet.

  It took hours, but Marcey painstakingly copied each entry from Charlie’s book into a spreadsheet, saving it into an untraceable private document backed up into an anonymous e-mail account’s cloud storage drive. Hidden behind layers upon layers of the banalities of everyday life.

  You can’t trust the internet. Kim’s voice rattled around in Marcey’s head. Anyone can find anything on there.

  It wasn’t that Marcey didn’t believe Kim, but rather that this was part of the other plan, the plan she hadn’t mentioned to Shelly or Kim. The private deal between herself and Kat, and by extension, Topeté.

  Marcey ran her hand over the book. It was a work of art. Charlie’s handwriting was a complex web of years of work, put together, torn out and taped back into place. It was a lifetime of contacts, the perfect key to a world she could only dream of just a few months ago. This was a future and a past all at once. And Charlie had given it to Marcey—not to Kat, as everyone thought—but to Marcey. It was up to Marcey to figure out how to save everyone in this book from Johnson.

  He had given it to her because she would have never wanted it, had she known it existed. She’d talked a big game about wanting to know more, but it wasn’t until Shelly had drawn her into the game that Marcey wanted more. The book sat heavy in her hand, its leather cover worn smooth with age. It was beautiful.

  Marcey wanted nothing more than to keep it around forever, but the book, in this form, could never survive. The backup was the first step.

  The next…

  Marcey leaned over, pulled her phone from its charger, and dialed a number from memory. The burner phone was awkward and cumbersome in her hands. She waited once, twice, three times as the phone rang. “I need to destroy Charlie’s book,” she said when the voice on the other end of the line picked up. “That was what you wanted, right?”

  “Not quite.” Kat Barber’s voice was smooth as butter. “Are you back in the city?”

  “Are you?”

  “Tell me where you are, Marcey Daniels, and I’ll come to you.”

  This was the beginning of the end for Kat Barber.

  This was the promise Marcey had made to Topeté. The promise that this was done between Kat and herself.

  CHAPTER 31

  Kat, Creating

  Marcey sat on the edge of the bed in Kat’s hotel room. It was midday. The blinds were flung open and light poured in from outside. Kat was at the desk, supplies scattered around her. She hummed as she worked, exhaling, writing, exhaling again.

  “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?” Kat reached for her mug of tea.

  “Breathe like that when you’re writing.”

  “If you hesitate when you’re forging someone’s handwriting, even for a second, it starts to look fake. Half of what I do is confidence. The other is breath control. Here, I’ll show you.” Kat grabbed a notepad and tossed it to Marcey. “Sign that.”

  Marcey pulled a pen from her purse and scrawled her signature. Kat took it back and stared at the mess of letters for a momen
t before exhaling and duplicating Marcey’s signature perfectly below it. Marcey stared, awed by this display of skill. “Wow,” she said, adding quickly, “please don’t steal my identity.”

  Kat laughed. “Never, darling.”

  They weren’t supposed to meet. Both of them, in their own way, had promised Topeté that they’d avoid each other. This was part of Marcey’s plan, to some extent, but meeting like this, drawing each other into the same games as before, wasn’t meant to happen. This companionable silence, while Kat worked and Marcey observed, was comfortable.

  Did Kat feel guilty about this? Did she want to crawl into some dark place and hide from the revelation that Marcey’s presence in Kat’s life was destroying something beautiful? Marcey did. She wanted to curl into the darkness and hate herself for what she’d done, for what she’d allowed to happen. Cheating was a two-way street, and it wasn’t as though Marcey hadn’t known Kat was seeing someone. Maybe she’d thought the relationship was different, a picture of convenience, open, but she had been wrong. This was real, growing, changing. Kat wanted it; Topeté wanted it.

  The game now was in playing that she didn’t care, that Kat’s hands on her didn’t make her burn with shame. The game now was about making Topeté think Marcey was every bit as much of a horrible person as her actions indicated. Marcey had to shoulder the force of this, the force of the speeding train that was about to slam into the cold, cold wall of Marcey’s bad intentions.

  She sat back, leaning on her elbows, her feet kicked out in front of her. The bed smelled like Kat, like her hair and perfume, mixed together with the stiff, stale scent of starch and hotel cleaning products. It was a safe smell, a place where Marcey could relax enough to ask what came next.

  “Does she know what you plan to do with the book?”

  Kat frowned. “I don’t think so, not quite in the terms I have planned for it. You want to use the painting to eliminate Johnson from your life and draw out her humiliation of you and your friend. I want to use the book to illustrate the hypocrisy of this whole endeavor.” Kat reached for a ruler and drew a perfectly straight line before switching from blue to black ink. “The dates and places in this book are in a code. A code that anyone could figure out given the barest knowledge of Charlie, I might add. And all it takes is careful manipulation of the facts to remove the guilty parties.”

  “So you’re just going to what, tell Topeté you weren’t in the places where you so clearly were?” Marcey sighed. That made the whole effort seem pointless, shortsighted even, especially on Kat’s part. “It isn’t going to work.”

  “It doesn’t have to work, Marcey. It merely needs to be present and I’ll be free.” Kat clicked her tongue. “Wei wants more from the book than I can give. I promised Charlie’s book, his contacts.”

  Ah, Marcey thought, so that’s her game.

  “What happened? How did you get caught?”

  Kat sniffed. “That was a nasty business.” She tilted her head to one side. “I’d love to paint you. The small girl in over her head.” Her eyes were alight with the childish sort of glee that one saw when the impossible was realized. Her face transformed. She was beautiful, completely and utterly beautiful. Marcey swallowed, wanting. “You’d be like a nymph, all the great forces surrounding you, wanting you for a myriad of different reasons…conveying that in brush strokes would take a loving touch.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.” Marcey looked away. She couldn’t look at Kat; the gravity between them was just so strong. So intensely married to the charade, if she stayed there too long, she’d have to kiss Kat.

  And if she kissed her…well…

  “You got caught. What happened?”

  The look that drew across Kat’s face was pained. “People like me, we don’t get caught. We negotiate, charm, bargain our way out of things. Even if they’re not our things to give away.” Kat got to her feet, almost prowling toward Marcey on the bed. “I was in Brussels. Too close to home for Wei, I suppose. There was a series of bonds—hand-painted, exquisite. I wanted to have a look at them, see their craftsmanship. I may have let myself into the Spanish Consulate and caused an international incident. Next thing I know there’s a gun in my face and I’m sitting in a basement room face-to-face with my lover, trying to pretend I don’t know her to save both our skins.” Kat sat down next to Marcey. “I do love her, you know. You—you’re a pretty face, one I happen to rather enjoy kissing—but what Wei and I share isn’t like that.”

  Marcey stuck her chin out, her bangs falling into her eyes, a play at defiant and hurt. “There’s no need to rub it in, Kat. There’s no future here, I get it.”

  Kat bought it.

  “Oh, but darling, look at us. You’ve made quite the splash already, haven’t you? Allies and partners from all walks of life, places that don’t belong to you, people you should never have met.” Kat’s fingers tangled in Marcey’s hair, jerking her face around, forward. Marcey swallowed and forced herself to meet Kat’s expectant gaze. “I offered Wei Charlie’s book because it was all I had that she knew I would never willingly part with. Everything else I give to her freely, as I give to you.” She leaned forward, kissing Marcey with fierce desperation. She was a woman drowning, desperate to cling to anything that would keep her afloat.

  Worse was that Marcey let it happen. She made no move to stop Kat from kissing her, from pushing her back. She let it happen, let Kat have her because that was what Kat wanted. It was all a game, the careful manipulation of emotions and feelings, betrayal and hurt barely kept contained. What Kat wanted, Marcey still wasn’t sure. The biting guilt was tempered by Kat’s fingers, pushing Marcey’s shirt from her shoulders, her jeans from her legs. This was a promise and a rebuke all at once; this was everything Marcey did not want.

  And yet she drowned.

  Kissing Kat was easier than trying to understand her. Fucking her was easier still. She smelled of summer and best-laid plans gone awry time and time again. Marcey’s fingers scrambled across Kat’s back, through the soft fabric of her worn sweater, across the places she kept hidden, the long scars on her back and neck.

  “Where did these come from?” Marcey asked. Her lips smeared kisses on Kat’s skin.

  Pausing, Kat pulled Marcey upward, her lips seeking, yearning. Marcey kissed her, let herself be rolled onto her back. Kat’s fingers splayed across the thin raised white line at her neck. “My mother, before they locked her up. She was mad, you see. My father didn’t get there in time. She nearly killed me before he pulled her off.”

  “I’m sorry.” Marcey didn’t know what else to say.

  “Don’t be, darling, just let me forget for a while.” Kat’s hair fell into her eyes, which shone in the mid-morning light. Marcey was halfway in love with her.

  And that couldn’t last.

  Kat slept lightly, tossing and turning, caught up in the throes of nightmares. Marcey watched her, cracked open and raw, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her entire body ached from what Kat did to her, what she’d done to herself to fall so low. She hated herself, hated that she’d allowed herself to get this far down.

  Stupid, stupid. This is all so stupid, but remember that this is for a reason, Mar.

  Yet this was insurance. Protection against the inevitability of where this was going to end. Somewhere, in the in-between space of this encounter, Marcey had figured out the final steps to this plan. The only way she was going to keep everyone safe was to play a game all her own. To sink as low as Kat, as low as Topeté, as low as Johnson… Marcey wasn’t sure she could do it.

  Beside her, Kat grunted. She slept like she was trying to protect herself from the world around her. The dark, twisted world of dreams haunted her, even in the serene bliss of sleep. Seeing Kat so open was an odd benediction; the woman laid bare without the piles of caked-on bullshit. She was small in sleep.

  She was beautiful.

  I could get lost in her. It was the last conscious thought Marcey had before she curled into a ball, her back to Kat.
She couldn’t touch Kat. Never. Not like that, not in the peace of sleep. Was that the only solution to the problem of Topeté and Kat? To end the relationship? It was the right thing to do, to throw herself to her knees before Topeté and beg a forgiveness she didn’t deserve.

  Marcey dreamt of Darius.

  They were seventeen again, laughing, smoking weed at the top of the fire escape of his building. He taught her how to hold a blunt and she taught him how to inhale. Becca had just left and they were alone. She’d gone home because her mother had called her away from this perfect world. She’d left high, her lips catching Marcey’s in the hallway outside Darius’s mother’s apartment.

  They made tacos later, flipping bits of hamburger and onion together. Marcey leaned against him, lost in a haze of how amazing everything tasted when she was high. They drank hard cider that tasted like blueberries. It was like an explosion in her mouth.

  Later, when he kissed her, she told him she was gay.

  He held her then, letting her cry when she told him how she was worried he wasn’t going to love her any more.

  “How could I not love you?” he asked.

  He was her best friend in the entire world. She didn’t know where these things started and ended. All she knew was that she couldn’t imagine life without him. He had the start of beard; his hair rubbed against her face. It would soon be cut off by the New York Department of Corrections, but it was the memory of how it felt rubbing against her face that Marcey could never shake.

  “I’ll love you to the end of the earth.”

  She just never thought the end of the earth would come so quickly. It crumbled around Marcey with Johnson’s smiling face staring up at her from the courtroom floor. It stared out at Marcey from the posters. It was a promise Marcey made to herself to make the world whole again.

  The buzzing of her phone drew Marcey up from sleep. Kat was curled around her. The light slanting through the window was lazy with late-afternoon warmth. Marcey fumbled for her phone, pushing back the guilt and reminding herself that this was all for the plan. She had to do this to make sure that this ended up how she wanted it to end. And, if she was perfectly honest with herself, it wasn’t just that Kat couldn’t control herself around Marcey—but rather that Marcey was unable to say no to her.