Smash & Grab

by Amy Christine Parker

  “Oh, I know. Beautiful, isn’t it? One of the few buildings in LA with some real historical character. To think that until LL National came along and bought the building, it was in danger of being converted into lofts! Can you imagine? The bank made sure to keep all the original architecture. Even this new renovation happening on the upper floors has to follow a strict set of preservation standards so that the new work won’t compromise the charm this place has. You’ll get to tour the building while you’re here, and really, it’s one of the best parts of orientation. If you’re into design, you’ll love it.”

  I almost tell her that I want to be an architect someday when I catch myself. Angela is an econ major. She probably wouldn’t dream of being an architect. Divulging even this much of my true self to this woman was a real risk. Even if the chances of her checking up on me are remote, if I don’t want to get caught, I can’t start offering up too much information.

  When the elevator doors open, Jackie walks me to a conference room, where twelve other interns are seated. Two of them are also from UCLA but didn’t have classes with Angela—Quinn checked to make sure. Still, there is a risk that someone will know her or of her and figure out right away that I’m a fraud. I slip into the seat nearest the door in case I need to run. My palms start to sweat, and I flatten them against my skirt, hoping the fabric will wick the dampness away.

  “Hey. I’m Maddie,” the girl next to me says. She’s got a coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other. She’s rail thin and rabbit twitchy.

  “Angela. Nice to meet you.”

  “What school are you coming from?” she asks.

  Automatically I think about Westwood Prep and my friends who are, at this very minute, riding out the final few days of school. “UCLA, you?”

  “Same!” She scoots a bit closer, and I brace for questions I can only guess the answers to. “Are you on campus? Maybe we could carpool in the mornings? I mean, for the next week, until they send us to separate banks for our in-branch training, at least. It would save us gas money.”

  “I live off campus—like, way, way off campus, so carpooling won’t work, sorry.” I stop myself from adding that I live with my family or lying and saying that I live in an apartment, because everything I say I have to keep track of. Running any scheme is like spinning several spiderwebs at once, every thread connecting to another. Spin too many and it becomes impossible to remember them all. I’ve learned that the hard way more times than I care to count. And now so has my dad.

  “Good morning, LL National interns.” The conference room door opens, and Mitch Harrison strides in. I freeze. I wanted to run into him, but not quite this soon. “Good morning. I’m Mitch Harrison, president of Strategic Initiatives. On behalf of the bank, I’d like to welcome you to our internship program. We hope you’ll take full advantage of all that the next few weeks offer and consider applying for future employment with us after graduation. I reviewed each of your internship files personally and am very impressed with what I read. A group as creative, intelligent, and innovative as you has a very bright future here. I look forward to getting to know each of you better over the course of your time with us. For now, enjoy your breakfast.”

  There is a smattering of applause, and then he walks around the room, shaking hands with each intern. In a matter of a few seconds he’ll get to me. I imagine chucking a tray of croissants at his head. He should be in jail, not smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world, like my father never even existed, like my family isn’t suffering horribly right now. Nausea grips my stomach. I put my hand into my suit pocket and feel for the listening device Quinn and I bought online. I just need to figure out where his office is.

  “Hello, Miss—?” he says, smiling down at me the way he did my mother the other day before she started yelling at him. He’s good. Being a liar myself, it’s almost impressive the amount of warmth and sincerity he manages to exude.

  “Angela Dunbar.” I wait for some flash of recognition to cross his face the longer he keeps staring at me, for him to figure out who I am in spite of the wig, contacts, and makeup, but he doesn’t. “Business economics major, huh? At UCLA. My alma mater.” I force myself to keep smiling. Holy crap, I never thought to check on this. “What do you think of Professor Hildebrand?”

  He stares at me, waiting. I swallow. I have zero idea who he’s talking about. How do I even pretend that I do? Is it a man or a woman? I could be done here before I even begin. I get this wrong and he’ll probably pull my application again for closer review. “Um, well…what do you think about Professor Hildebrand?” I ask, smiling in a way I hope is conspiratorial.

  He throws his head back and laughs. “Ha! Smart. It’s never wise to burn bridges, is it? It just so happens that she’s an old friend of mine.”

  I smile wider, relief rushing through my whole body. “Well, then I think she’s brilliant.”

  He smiles widely. “Angela. Nice to meet you.”

  We shake hands and then he’s on to the next person, and it’s all I can do not to pass out. For every detail I did think about, there are ten more I didn’t, and any one of them might expose me.

  “He’s a Clooney. Bet his wife is probably our age,” Maddie says. “Lucky girl.” I shudder and she laughs. “Not into older men, are you?”

  Not when it’s him, I think. Honestly, though, she’s probably right. I don’t get girls who are into guys their fathers’ ages. It feels way too—I don’t know—Oedipal to me.

  We finish breakfast while one of the bank’s managers goes over a PowerPoint presentation about the program and how the next few weeks will play out. We’ll be at our assigned banks for the duration of our internship, starting next week. Quinn’s working on hacking into the bank’s computer system to make sure I get placed downstairs at the main branch so I can stay close to Harrison. With any luck I’ll uncover something about him long before the internship is finished.

  Our tour of the building comes next and turns out to be less a study in its architecture and more a snooze-worthy walk through floors of cubicles and conference rooms with more talk about investing and lending than is humanly possible to take unless you are Scrooge McDuck. The only remotely interesting thing that Trisha, our tour guide and the internship coordinator, brings up is that right before LL National bought the building from the bank that was here before, three major Hollywood movies used the basement vault as a film site.

  “We won’t be visiting the vault on this tour, but those of you who end up here at our main branch will get to see it during your training weeks. Fun fact: the film crews couldn’t get their big equipment from the parking garage to the vault, so they built a dumbwaiter to lower the stuff down. Cool, right?” She leads us down one hallway and then another, past a series of cubicles, and then through a mini version of the main lobby near the elevators, with a security desk and a series of glass double doors that lead out to the parking garage.

  “If you have a car, you can check in here with Reggie and he’ll get you a parking pass and assign you a temporary spot. From now on please feel free to use this entrance into the building. But before you do, there’s something really unique about the dumbwaiter that I have to show you guys.” Next to the bank of elevators is what looks like another elevator door, only shorter and less shiny, more brushed metal. It has a keypad and a regular key lock. Trisha unlocks it, then punches in a series of numbers on the keypad, too fast for me to make them out. She presses another button, and the dumbwaiter door opens. Inside, it is just like a cargo elevator, nothing but a square box, totally utilitarian except for the signatures covering the walls. “The actors and crews on each movie signed the inside of the dumbwaiter. Right there is Michael Keaton’s signature, and next to his, Robert De Niro’s.” Tricia beams at us. “Only bank employees and interns get to see this.” A smattering of oohs and aahs rise up from the crowd.

  The dumbwaiter is cool, but not any more impressive than, say, the handprints in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Sort of commonplace
for those of us who grew up seeing these same people grab coffee at the local Starbucks, where their autographs are scrawled across the walls there, too. I wonder if the dumbwaiter goes to the floor that Harrison’s office is on.

  “So this still leads down to the vault? Isn’t that a security risk?” Steve, one of the interns, asks. I snap a few pictures with my phone once I see some of the others do the same.

  “The dumbwaiter can be accessed only from the outside, with the security code and key. So even if someone were to manage to get in here and ride it down, they wouldn’t be able to get out without someone on the vault side letting them out. But for argument’s sake, even if they could, the dumbwaiter opens up into the space before the actual vault. They’d still be faced with getting into the safe-deposit box area and then the actual vault itself.” She smiles. “Breaking in there would require tools way too big to fit down this thing. But”—she glances down at her watch—“speaking of security and vaults, it’s about time for us to head back for your next session.”

  Trisha corrals us onto the elevator. I text Quinn and Oliver the dumbwaiter photos and a summary of what she said. Even if it ends up that we can’t use it, it’s worth investigating further.

  My eyes are on fire. Rosie’s had me chopping an insane amount of onions and peppers all morning long. I wipe the back of my hand across them and slide open the window cut into the center of the truck, just above the long counter where we assemble the tacos, to get some fresh air. I look down the street to where a few people are walking into our next target, gripping paper bags with the words FRIED DOUGH printed in the shape of a doughnut on them. Lexi’s face flashes through my brain, and I half smile as I remember the way it felt to lean in close to her, our faces nearly touching. I thought about trying to find her school so I could figure out a way to accidentally run into her somehow, maybe ask her out for real. But that was before I ended up in Soldado’s car. Before Psycho put a gun to my baby sister’s head. I turn away and go to the sink to start soaping up my hands. No point in daydreaming about this. I can’t get mixed up with anybody right now, anyway. The job has to be my only focus.

  “It’ll be insane for about the next three hours,” Rosie says, her head popping into view as she sets the large chalkboard menu out on the curb next to the truck. “I’ll handle all the money and you take the orders. We have maybe five to ten minutes before people start showing up.”

  “Sure.” I look at the space above the order window, where Rosie’s hung these laminated food cards with a picture of each kind of taco she makes and what goes in it. The meats, sauces, veggies, and other stuff are basically prepped and ready to be assembled into Rosie’s homemade tortillas. She actually uses our abuela’s recipe and old iron tortilla press, even though the hinge that holds it together is almost broken off. It’s sitting in a place of honor on the counter where the customers can see it. All I have to do is follow the cards and put together the orders as she makes them, which is good because half the stuff she has on the menu is a hybrid of Mexican, Korean, and Argentinean cuisine, and I don’t have the first clue about the last two. For Rosie, the truck is more than a way to spy on future jobs; it’s a passion. She’s always wanted to own a restaurant, and while the taco truck isn’t exactly that, it’s a pretty good start. Soldado was way smooth giving it to her. Listening to Rosie talk, you’d think it’s basically a love letter on wheels.

  It’s not quite eleven-thirty, the time Rosie says marks the beginning of the lunch rush, but we’ve already got the music going and the fan on inside the truck, blasting out toward the street so it spreads the scents of roasted meats and Rosie’s signature freshly squeezed cilantro-lime-jalapeño lemonade to the people walking by. I’ve been steeped in it for the past two hours, so I can’t even smell it anymore, but it has a definite effect on everyone else. It isn’t long before we start to get customers. I size each one up, looking for teller name tags and employee badges to tell me who works at LL National. One or two customers seem promising. I make a note of their names in a little notebook.

  I fill orders and Rosie works the money bit, and a comfortable rhythm develops between us right off the bat. We’ve always been close. Back when she was still in braids and Benny, Gabriel, and I were playing army commandos in the stairwell of their apartment building, she used to pretend to be a hostage we had to rescue, always hiding somewhere clever. We would race to see who could find her first. She always made sure it was me, and then the two of us would sneak up behind Benny and Gabriel and scare them half to death. Plus, she likes to read as much as I do. Of course, most of the time she has her nose in a cookbook, not a novel.

  “Hey, wake up. What’re you thinking about?” Rosie snaps her fingers in front of my face. The line’s gone—for now—and she’s leaning on the counter, staring at me.

  “That it’s good to hang out with you a little bit, cuz,” I say. “It’s been a while.”

  She smiles and pulls her ponytail up into a bun. “Yeah, I guess it has. You have school and I have the truck, and then there’s Soldado….” She smiles softly when she says his name.

  “You think you guys’ll get married?” I ask. Rosie’s nearly twenty, and Soldado’s twenty-four. They could. Everyone thinks they will.

  “He’s gotta leave Florencia Heights for me to give it serious thought.” She smooths her apron out. “I’m not marrying a career gangbanger.”

  This will never happen. He can’t leave. She knows this.

  “So why’d you start dating him in the first place, then?” I ask. Rosie’s always had plenty of choices when it comes to guys. She didn’t have to settle on Soldado.

  “Because he’s the only guy who ever gave me the butterflies. And he’s good to Mama and Benny.” She hesitates, her eyes far away for a second. “And I have hope he’ll get out. If I make a success of this truck, who knows? We could open a few more. Maybe rent out a space somewhere.”

  Soldado isn’t leaving Florencia Heights. No way. I can’t picture it. He loves the notoriety and the power. He’s always wanted it. How can she not see that? But then I think about my own mom and dad. He’s screwed up like crazy, and she’s still taking him back. Sometimes people see what they want to and not what’s true. Or they think being in love can change someone. But I don’t think it can. I think a person’s who they are all along. All love does is blind a person to that truth. Better to always have your eyes wide open.

  More customers interrupt us and we stop talking. Just before noon an armored truck pulls up to LL National, and I watch as the guy in back gets out and makes the week’s delivery. I mark the date and time in my notepad. A bank this large probably has two deliveries. It’s Monday, so my guess is the next one might be on Friday, which would be perfect for this job. The take come Fourth of July weekend will be fatter for it.

  Rosie watches me write while she takes a clean rag to the order counter to mop up some spilled salsa. “What about you? I know you didn’t want to start doing the jobs. Benny didn’t, either. But do you ever get off on the rush part? Running in and out, beating the clock? Benny’s always so wound up after.” Of all our family members, Rosie is the only one who knows we do the jobs. She doesn’t like it, but she gets why we have to because she’s involved, too.

  I finish my notes and pause, thinking. “A little.” I feel sort of ashamed admitting it, but the thing is, leaving a bank with a bag full of cash? It’s like conquering the hardest level in Call of Duty or getting a home run or something. You against the bank. A series of obstacles and a ticking clock. Getting out alive? It’s a high. I can’t even try to pretend that it isn’t. Leaving a bank with my blood pumping, my heart roaring in my chest, my brain and every nerve ending on alert. It’s the most awake I’ll ever be. Aware of everything. It’s hard not to like that feeling—feeling bad for the tellers and witnesses doesn’t make it go away. And the most screwed-up thing of all is even though I want out and to be as far away from the Eme as I can, a part of me will miss the jobs. Just one more example of how the
Eme messed me up, messed us all up.

  “Can I help you?” Harrison’s assistant peers at me from over the top of her computer screen, the light from it making her glasses reflect the Michael Kors handbag page she’s obviously drooling over instead of doing whatever it is she does for Harrison.

  “I wanted to stop in and see if Mr. Harrison was available to answer a question? I’m one of the new interns. He talked to us at breakfast, and I was so impressed by something he said. I mean, I know he’s busy. I just figured I’d try.” I smile innocently at her and lean over a bit so I can see her screen. “Isn’t that one hot?” I say, pointing to the bag. If I weren’t currently reduced to selling half my purse collection on eBay right now, I’d be all over it, too.

  She minimizes the page and gives me a guilty smile. “Very.”

  “So can I pop my head in? I promise I’ll be quick.” I’m already walking toward his door, praying she won’t head me off, when Harrison opens the door himself, cell phone to his ear, and nearly runs right into me.

  “Angela—right?” He finishes up his call as I nod. “Orientation going okay?”

  “Yes. Actually, we’re breaking for lunch, but I wanted to see if you had a minute so I could get your advice about something.”

  “Well, I’m headed out right now. Tell you what. Walk with me and I’ll try to help if I can, okay?” He taps his assistant’s desk. “I’ll be back in time for my one o’clock.”

  I look past him at his office, where I’d been hoping to go so I could slip the bug under his desk or a chair or something. But how am I going to get inside before he closes and locks the door? The bug’s just a slim rectangular piece of plastic, barely wider than a penny. I can hide it easily. I just need an opportunity.