by Jude Watson
Because he missed his dad everywhere — in the streets of Paris, in the home Alfie had made for him and never told him about, every time he ate a piece of licorice or checked the Yankees score. Every time he opened his eyes in the morning.
“Funny how the Top Cat heists started right about when you dropped off the radar. This past year was a busy one — jobs in Milan, Dubrovnik, Copenhagen … that was an interesting one. They ran a line from one building to another, seemed to have swung in a half-open window … skills your sister has. She was a street performer, right?”
“She’s retired.”
“Uh-huh.” Dukey stepped in front of March. March had to stop short so he wouldn’t slam into him. His gaze was like a concrete wall.
“If you think running with this gang is fun, you’re wrong. They are vicious, hardened criminals. If you can ID them, you’re dead. They’ll use you and they’ll throw you away, and they won’t particularly care if you’re dead when they do it.”
“I’m not a Top Cat!”
Dukey raised his eyebrows. “Then you’re in bigger trouble. You got in their way. Not to mention their getaway car. They’ll be looking for you.”
“I doubt it, since I wasn’t there.”
“When they find you — and they will — they won’t be nice about saying hello.”
“Look, I got the message, okay?”
Dukey let out a sigh and looked away for a minute, scanning the street. “Let me tell you something, son. You got a raw deal, no question. Your old man wasn’t bad, he was just good at the wrong things.”
March swallowed against the rush of emotion that closed his throat. He hated it when people were nice about his dad. It made it worse, somehow, having to hear it.
“No reason you have to follow in his footsteps, though.” He held up a hand. “I know, you’re not. Right. Group homes are lousy, but the system is a picnic compared to this gang. My advice? Go back home, take a trip to Child Protective Services. You’re what, fourteen now? You don’t belong on your own.”
“I’m not on my own,” March said. “And don’t call me son.”
“Yeah, you have a posse. Wake up. You’re kids. There are only two endings: jail or dead. Thieves always get caught. Because of guys like me.” He leaned closer and grabbed March’s wrist, closing his hand around it like a handcuff. “Snap,” he said. Now he looked hard and mean. His gray eyes glittered, chips of fractured ice.
March shook off the hand, hard. “Thanks for the advice.”
Dukey shrugged. “This meeting was payback. Now we’re square. The next time I see you, I’ll be bringing handcuffs.”
Busted.
It was all his fault. He’d made a stupid amateur mistake, a mistake out of sentiment, just wanting to be near what was left of his dad. It was all so stupid. Alfie was ash and bits of bone in some ground under a stone marker. March hadn’t found peace there. He hadn’t found closure.
Jules, Darius, and Izzy had gone with him without even asking. They didn’t want him to be alone. And because of that, they were busted, too. How could he tell them?
His fault.
When he walked back into the apartment, they all charged toward him.
“Food!” Darius said, grabbing the bag. “You took your time, Marcello. Hey, you ate my bread!”
They moved into the kitchen. Jules began to slice the rest of the bread. Izzy pulled fruit and cheese from the bag. Darius found plates. March watched as the three worked together, handing one another plates and glasses, moving around one another, tossing an apple, giving a taste of the cheese … a dance. They knew one another’s moves.
Routine. Habit. Trust. Knowing the person will be there to catch the apple before you toss it.
He’d blown it.
Darius offered his apple, and Izzy took a bite. Jules finished slicing the cheese and arranged the slices like the rays of a sun.
He couldn’t tell them.
Not yet.
* * *
At Charles de Gaulle Airport, they passed through security and walked toward the gate. The botched heist and the lack of sleep created a fog they couldn’t break through.
Jules leaned her head closer to March. “Up ahead, at three o’clock, I got a guy.”
The guy was sipping on a cup of coffee. His eyes were scanning the passengers in an idle way, his mouth twisted slightly as he tracked the rolling suitcases and bags full of last-minute purchases of French perfume and mustard. Watching. Too intently. While trying not to look like it.
Cop. Could be for them. Could be not. Didn’t matter. Evasive action.
March slowed his steps. “We’ve got to split up. Follow the plan.”
It was a drill they had gone over already, practiced just in case of trouble.
Izzy back.
Jules left.
March right.
Darius way back.
Without exchanging another word, they melted into the crowd, Izzy fading back, Jules heading for the restroom behind them, Darius making a 180 and heading back toward the duty-free shops.
March stopped at the water fountain near the restrooms. With his head bent, he scanned the hallway. It took only thirty seconds or so before an American family straggled by, led by an impatient dad rolling a stuffed carry-on, then a mom with a shopping bag and a young kid, while directly behind them trudged a bored teen in headphones …
March fell into almost-step with the teen girl.
“Heading home?”
She took out one earbud and gave him a look as though he were too young and nerdy to dare talk to her. “Well, duh.”
“I’m heading to Chicago.” He waved a finger at her screen. “I like your playlist.”
She snatched her phone closer. “Bug off, dweeb.”
“That’s le dweeb, actually,” March said.
But they were past the guy now, and his gaze was sweeping the corridor behind March. They’d looked like two squabbling siblings, he knew.
Now he just had to hope the rest of the crew would make it through. If the guy was a cop. Or worse, FBI.
If you have a bad feeling about something, you’re usually right.
Not very reassuring, Pop.
You want reassurance or you want real?
The rest of the gang showed up as they called the flight, just as planned. They got to board early as unaccompanied minors. They were sprinkled around the plane. March immediately plugged in his headphones and grabbed a blanket.
He was desperate to sink into a deep, dreamless sleep, but his mind didn’t stop pinging crazily from Dukey saying there are only two endings and the Mercedes sliding into the cold river.
The worst part of a close call was after.
His knees were up to his chin, his seat didn’t recline, and he couldn’t get a flight attendant to get him a glass of water.
He’d been in tough situations with Alfie. Jobs had gone wrong; police had dragnets. Alfie had been double-crossed once or twice. March wasn’t completely busted — they didn’t know where he lived. But he was uncomfortably aware that he hadn’t set aside what Alfie called “walking-away money.” Something to access if home wasn’t safe and they needed to bolt. That would be item number one on his to-do list when he got back.
Finally he dropped into a deep sleep.
He didn’t wake up until the pilot announced that they were landing in thirty minutes. He saw Jules emerge from the bathroom. As she passed him, she tossed a piece of paper in his lap.
The guy is on the flight. Seat 35C.
March met Jules by the bathrooms.
“So who is it?” she asked. “French police? Do you think we’ll have cops at the gate?”
“It might not be for us,” March said.
“We can’t take that chance! What I don’t get is, how did they track us so fast?”
March shifted his feet. “It’s not the cops. It’s the FBI. I think.”
“What?”
A flight attendant looked over, and March smiled at her and pointed to th
e bathroom. “Look, I didn’t tell you something,” he confessed to Jules. He quickly explained about Agent Dukey and his warning.
Jules dug her hands in her pockets. “Are you kidding me? The feds are onto us? And when were you going to part with this information?”
“I thought I’d wait until we were back home. But first we have to shake the tail.”
“On a plane? What would you like to do, flush ourselves down the toilets?”
“Not helpful. Plus, gross.”
The flight attendant came by and leaned in. “Sorry, kids. The captain has put on the seat belt sign. We’ll be landing in a few minutes.”
“Of course!” Jules said, and then didn’t budge.
March looked at his phone. The airport would be crowded, but he couldn’t count on losing the tail when they’d all be herded through customs. It would have to be after that.
If you’re cornered, get invisible.
“New York City schools are back in session, right?” he asked Jules.
“Yeah. I can’t wait to see who I get for biology.”
“Forget the cab. We’re taking the subway home.”
Slowly, Jules grinned. “Perfect.”
* * *
The New York City subway system was old, cranky, and occasionally filthy, but it was fast. It brought commuters and tourists and New Yorkers to their destinations with a rattling, jolting efficiency. With the exception of rush hours, you could usually find a seat, and the cars were quiet.
Except when school let out.
Then students from every borough flooded the system, high school and middle school and elementary school kids with parents in tow. By the time March and the gang made it onto the E train, it was packed with students. Not only students, but students at the end of the long school day who still missed summer vacation. They jostled, they hooted with laughter, they kidded, they studied, they stamped, they joked, they teased.
Quickly the gang split up and melted into the crowd. Darius moved to the next car, and March just kept moving down the subway car. He could feel the agent behind him, having a hard time making it through the small clumps of jostling students.
At Forty-Second Street the gang jumped off. It was a big station with lots of platforms. They ran for the downtown train. At the last moment March saw the agent just make it onto the train. Again they were swept up in the weaving, bobbing, hooting students.
The platform at the next station was packed. March and the gang exited the train and dived into the middle of the students. When the train arrived, they moved in a huge mass toward the doors. March could sense the man behind him, pushing through the crowd, keeping them in sight. They squeezed onto the train, staying near the doors. March saw the man push his way through the doors farther down. March and the gang stepped off. The agent stepped off. Not good.
“Express,” March said.
The train across the track stopped, and people shuffled out. The platform was suddenly crowded again. The agent lost sight of them as students streamed up the stairs or waited for the local. At the last possible moment, March and the others jumped onto the express. The doors snapped shut.
As the train moved down the track, he saw the agent searching through the crowd, looking for them.
At Fourteenth Street they changed trains again. By the time they got to Franklin Street they were sure they hadn’t been followed.
It was their stop. March walked down the familiar street, past the bakery, past the diner, past the bar that smelled like old beer. He was glad to be home.
“What’s that?” Izzy asked as they came up to their building. On the front door was a large gray box, a lock that hooked through the door pull.
“It’s a lock box,” Jules said. “The kind a realtor puts on a door when a house is being sold.”
They examined the box. They tried their key. The door wouldn’t budge.
“What’s going on?” Izzy asked in a small voice. Her dark eyes were anxious.
“This is weird,” Jules said.
“This way,” March said.
The alley gate was locked, and the combination didn’t work. They exchanged worried glances and climbed over it. Another gray box secured the side door. March didn’t even give it a look. He jumped up on the garbage can, a large, double-wide variety that easily took his weight. Now he was facing a small barred window. He took a small key from his inner pocket and lifted a metal shaving, revealing a small lock. He opened it, and the bars slid up into the window frame.
“Just in case we ever got locked out,” he said to the others. “After you.”
Jules crawled through the window, followed by Izzy. Darius put one leg in but couldn’t fold himself inside. He tried going headfirst, but his shoulders got stuck.
“Not happening, bro,” he said.
“I’ll let you in the garage,” March told him. He squeezed through the window opening.
They were in the gray cement hallway that led to the parking garage. March went inside and put in the combination to open the door. It rolled open, and Darius strolled inside.
They opened the maroon fire door and climbed the stairs to the first level.
Alfie had left March and Jules the penthouse apartment, but after their big score, they knew too many questions might be asked by the other tenants or the doormen, like Where’s your parent or guardian? Or, eyeing two white kids, an African American, and a Puerto-Rican American, Are you kids related? So, with Hamish’s help, they’d bought the whole building. They had left the first floor intact, and it still looked like a lobby in a luxury condo building. March tried the light, and it snapped on. He didn’t know why he felt so relieved. He had a ticking sense of foreboding as he pushed the Up button on the elevator.
They’d done some basic renovations to the top floor, which became their hangout space — kitchen, media room, terrace, game room, and one room they used for storing all the stuff they’d bought and never used, like lacrosse sticks and polo mallets (a brief infatuation of Darius’s) and the virtual reality helmets that never worked right. The floor below was their bedrooms. On the other floors they’d put in a lap pool and a gaming room and a trapeze. The garden was on the roof.
They took the elevator to the top floor, and it opened directly into the hangout area.
Izzy gave a small cry and grabbed Darius’s arm. March and Jules stood stock-still, their mouths open.
It was empty.
The four double-wide sofas, the long table where they ate and played computer games, the computer console, the sixty-five-inch flat-screen TV with surround sound. Gone. Wires twisted out of walls like hungry snakes. A plant gasped for water. An empty juice bottle lay abandoned in the corner.
“Wh-what happened?” Izzy asked.
“We’ve been robbed!” March said, kicking the juice bottle. “Cleaned out.”
Izzy revolved in a slow circle. “It’s like we were never here. Like it was a dream we dreamed.”
Jules ran toward the spiral staircase that led to the floor below. A moment later they heard her shout. “My stuff is gone!” she yelled. “Everything! My books! My clothes! My paints! Everything’s gone!”
March couldn’t make sense of this. How could thieves come in and just take everything? He didn’t want to look at his room. Didn’t want to see the dust on the floorboards, the empty shelves.
Darius slid down the wall and put his head in his hands.
March felt for his phone. He’d forgotten to turn it on again after they exited the plane. He had seventeen texts from Hamish. They all said the same thing: CALL ME.
“Izzy! Get the tablet. We need to talk to Hamish!”
Hamish answered the call right away. Izzy set up her screen on the kitchen counter, and they all crowded around.
“There you are!” Hamish sat on the deck at his condo. It appeared that a palm tree was growing out of his head. “Or should I say, where are you?”
“We’re at the house!” Jules broke in breathlessly. “It’s been cleaned out!”
>
“Hmm. Yes. I have some, ah, lamentable news. Take a cleansing breath.”
“We don’t have time to breathe. We have a crisis here!” Jules sputtered. “We’ve been robbed! What are we supposed to do? Call the police?”
“Let’s not get crazy. You weren’t robbed,” Hamish said. “I found out when I changed your plane reservations. Your debit card was canceled. There’s nothing in your bank account. Checking or savings.”
“Impossible!” March exclaimed.
“Ridiculous!” Jules yelled.
“Sometimes the ridiculous becomes a very dark reality. Just look at the House of Representatives.”
“What about the house?” March asked. “How could we lose the house?”
“Apparently it’s been sold.”
“But how could that happen if we weren’t here to sign papers?”
Hamish wrung his hands. “Because apparently all your assets were in a non-revocable trust.”
Darius took a step back.
“What does that mean?” Izzy asked.
Darius reached for his phone. “You’re wrong. Something else is happening. I’ll ask Dougie.”
“Who’s Dougie?” Izzy asked.
“Our financial advisor,” Darius said.
“We have a financial advisor named Dougie?” Jules asked.
“Remember I said that our money had to make money?” Darius asked. “That’s the way the one percent keeps getting richer? And remember we took a vote, and you all voted to hire him?”
Hamish tilted his head. “His name wouldn’t be Douglas Parmenter, would it?”
“Yes!” Darius said. “Brilliant dude. He manages the money of a whole bunch of celebrities.”
“And he was the principal owner of the trust?”
“No, he managed it.”
“No,” Hamish said gently. “He was a principal trustee with the full authority to dissolve it. I’m sorry.”
Darius looked lost. “Wait a second. You have the wrong guy. Parmenter graduated from Harvard Business School.”
“Uh, not exactly,” Hamish said. “Douglas Parmenter is a high school dropout from Grover Cleveland High in Queens. He collected aliases instead of degrees. Aka Dougie Paternicus, aka Richard Worthington, aka Richie the Rich, aka Rick the Flick —”
