The Schuyler House

by Cade Haddock Strong

  “Think we can convince her to come over to the dark side?” Sarah asked.

  I replied that I felt pretty certain that we could. I knew Kat loved art. It would probably pain her to steal it, but after her experience in DC, I knew she was pretty jaded about the art world and might want to get a little revenge.

  Kat was fired from her dream job at Siddons Fine Art in DC. She strongly advised a wealthy collector not to purchase a piece he was considering. She warned him that the seller had a shady reputation and that the piece could be a fake. He, of course, blew her off and bought it anyway. It turns out it was a fake and the collector was irate. He told Kat’s boss that she’d encouraged him to buy it, probably because he’d been too embarrassed to admit he’d been duped. Of course, the owner of Siddons believed the collector and promptly fired Kat and told her she would never work in the art world again.

  We decided to invite Kat to go for a hike so we could lay out our plan.

  * * *

  A few days later, Sarah and I described our burgeoning plan to Kat as the three of us trudged along the Camel’s Hump Trail. I was nervous to see how she would react.

  “You guys are fucking crazy,” Kat said once we finished describing our plan. “But that’s why I love you!”

  “So, you want to join us?” Sarah asked. “It could be your chance to get a little revenge after what happened in DC.”

  Kat admitted that she was intrigued. She hadn’t been able to get a decent job since the incident in DC, and she was understandably still extremely angry about the whole thing. She agreed to help us do research but said she needed a little more time before she could decide whether she’d get more involved.

  Before long, Kat and Sarah started spending hours together to pore over obscure art blogs, art history journals, and various other scholarly publications. Kat’s addition to the group really helped us refine our process for deciding which pieces and places to target.

  * * *

  Ellen became our fourth and final member. Ellen is a few years older than me, and even though we both grew up in the same town, we didn’t actually meet until we both attended Sandy’s wedding in New York.

  When Ellen moved back to Vermont after her divorce, she happened to join a women’s cycling group Sarah was in. During one of Ellen’s first rides with the group, she and Sarah realized that they’d actually met before: they both knew Sandy and attended her wedding in New York. Anyway, Ellen and Sarah became fast friends.

  Ellen, Kat, Sarah, and I all started spending a lot of time together. Ellen is so carefree and funny, and it was hard for me to imagine her as a buttoned-up lawyer. I quickly discovered she’s even crazier than me. She has a motorcycle she drives like a bat out of hell, and she goes skydiving every chance she gets. It’s like she lived the early part of her life doing what everyone expected of her and now she’s living life on her terms. The first time she got wind of our plot to steal art, she thought it was a joke. When she realized we were completely serious, she wanted in on the action. Like me, she was addicted to the thrill from day one.

  Chapter Three

  Once we were a gang of four, we started to devise a plan for our first heist in earnest. It quickly became obvious to all of us that stealing the art would be the easy part; turning the stolen art into cash would be significantly more difficult. It’s not like we could walk into some gallery or auction house and try to sell a famous piece of stolen art.

  It was during these initial conversations that I remembered a boy named Olivier. Olivier is French, and I met him in high school while I was visiting my aunt and uncle on their small farm about two hours northwest of Paris. My aunt is French, and she and my uncle met when she was an exchange student in the US. They eventually married and decided to settle in France, and I spent nearly every summer with them until I went to college. Olivier and his family lived on the farm that bordered my aunt and uncle’s property, and he and I spent countless hours together exploring the countryside. As luck would have it, Olivier’s grandfather was a shady art dealer in the outskirts of Paris and Olivier went to work for him after high school.

  Olivier eventually became our fencer. I have no idea what he does with the pieces after we hand them over to him. I am not sure any of us ever wanted to know. Maybe they smuggle them into Russia or China or maybe they are involved with the mob or something.

  We consult Olivier when we’re in the early stages of planning a heist, just to make sure he’s interested in the pieces we’re considering and to discuss a ballpark figure he would be willing to pay for them. All our communication with Olivier takes place on a super secure channel he set up so that none of it can ever be traced, and we often exchange dozens of messages with him before and after a heist. Every aspect of the “drop”—the actual way in which we deliver the art to his associates—is very carefully scripted, and he always follows the same exact procedure to get us our payment.

  Once we carry out a heist, the four of us are always eager to pass the stolen art on to Olivier as quickly as possible. We don’t want to get caught red-handed, and we don’t want to worry about transporting the art long distances. Generally, we notify Olivier as soon as we actually have the stolen pieces in our possession—usually within forty-eight hours of the heist—and he responds with the name of a city somewhere within a few hundred miles of the location where we carried out the heist. I honestly have no idea how or why he picks the city for the actual drop, but presumably he picks a place where he has a trusted associate somewhere nearby.

  After he gives us the name of the city, it’s up to the four of us to pick a physical location in or near the designated city to which we will deliver the art. We contact Olivier again after we’ve left the art somewhere for him and let him know where to find it. We do it this way so we never have to meet his associates in person and his associate (and any law enforcement or shady characters with whom the associate is involved) never knows where the art was dropped until after we’ve vacated the premises. Payment usually takes place a few weeks later once Olivier and/or his associates have the art in their possession and they’ve had time to examine the pieces. Our payment is always delivered to the same place: Colonial Storage, a giant self-storage facility in the suburbs of Boston.

  Olivier pays us in US dollars about seventy-five percent of the time and in euro about twenty-five percent of the time. I used to protest whenever he paid us in euros rather than dollars until I read an article in The Economist about an effort by some international law enforcement agencies to eliminate high-denomination notes from various currencies (i.e. the hundred-dollar bill in the US and the S$10,000 note in Singapore). Apparently, law enforcement is making this push because, they argue, high-denomination notes are rarely used for legitimate purposes and are instead primarily used by criminals. Criminals, of course, are most likely to operate in a cash-only world and high-denomination notes are convenient because they’re easier to transport. It’s much easier to stuff fifty $100 bills in your pocket than five hundred $10 bills, for example. What interested me most about the article was that it included a graphic depicting the weight of ten million dollars (or its equivalent) in cash if paid using various currencies. According to the graphic, ten million in cash weighs a lot more if it’s in dollars (about two hundred twenty pounds) than the equivalent amount does in euros (about forty-six pounds) because the highest denomination in the US is the one hundred dollar bill whereas Europe has a €500 note.

  Over the past five years, Olivier has paid us millions of dollars for the art we’ve stolen and sold to him. It amazes me how much money we’ve made even given the fact that we sell Olivier the art for a fraction of what it would fetch in the legit art world.

  From the very beginning, the four of us decided to set aside approximately ten percent of the cash we make and deposit it into what we refer to as our “operating account”—an actual checking account that we opened under the name of Hatshepsut Consulting, a limited liability company we set up. Hatshepsut was a female pharaoh d
uring the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, so we thought that would be a cool name for our shell company. We established the checking account primarily so that we’d have a joint account from which we could cover costs for stuff like reconnaissance expenses (hotels, travel, and supplies during our scouting missions) and all the supplies we have to buy to actually carry out the burglaries. However, we also opened the checking account to establish an emergency fund—a fund we can access if something goes terribly wrong with a burglary and we need to get our hands on a large amount of untraceable cash quickly.

  When we opened the bank accounts, we also rented a safe deposit box at a bank in New York City and registered it to Hatshepsut Consulting. So far, we’ve managed to set aside more than one million dollars—about half is in the Hatshepsut checking account and the other half we keep in cash in the safe deposit box in New York.

  After we set aside money for our expenses and emergency fund, we divide the remaining ninety percent of the proceeds evenly between the four of us. I give away a lot of my money to various charities—not that being all Robin Hood excuses what we do but it somehow makes me feel a heck of a lot better about it—and I pretty much squirrel away the rest. I guess I’m saving it for a rainy day.

  The only one of us that has really blown through all of her proceeds is Sarah, and that’s mostly because of her ex-husband. Before they were divorced, Jake took most of the money she brought home and pumped it into “sure thing” investments and cockamamie business ideas. When he’d blow through the proceeds from one burglary, he’d start pushing Sarah to pull off another heist. By the time they got divorced, the two of them were actually in some pretty deep debt. Sarah’s only recently gotten herself in the black and just started to put away a little money in a college fund for her boys.

  Chapter Four

  We didn’t have to wait long for the weatherman’s cue. The forecasters started calling for another massive storm to hit the area around Schuyler House only a few weeks after Kat returned from the artists’ retreat. As luck would have it, a blizzard is supposed to hit on Christmas Eve.

  The four of us reconvene at Sarah’s house right after news of the storm appears so we can make all of our final preparations for the burglary.

  “We totally hit the jackpot!” Ellen declares as soon as the four of us are gathered together. “I mean a major snowstorm on a major holiday. That means security details will likely be sparse and local police resources are likely to be severely strained.”

  “Yeah, a serious jackpot,” Kat reiterates. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there was a reason thieves targeted the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day in the heavily Irish City of Boston—the cops were most certainly overwhelmed herding drunks.”

  “You still got cold feet, Sarah?” I ask.

  “They are warming up a little bit,” she replies and feigns a smile.

  “Come on Sar, the burglary gods are shining on us,” Ellen says encouragingly.

  “I know. Still, I think this one may be it for me,” Sarah replies.

  “But you are our fearless leader!” Kat says in protest.

  “Ha ha. Well, we’ll see. Check back with me and see how I feel after we pull this one off,” Sarah says.

  “The boys with Jake for Christmas Eve?” I ask in an effort to change the subject. Somehow, the conversation is making me a little uneasy.

  “Yeah, they’re with him tonight, but I’m supposed to pick them up around noon tomorrow once we’re back.”

  “Does Jake know we’re planning another hit?” Ellen asks.

  “No, I figured there was no reason to tell him. Things are generally cordial between us, but I still don’t trust him,” Sarah replies.

  “Seems wise,” I reply. I’ve never really liked Jake. He’s friendly enough, but there’s something shady about him.

  “Well, we should probably get to work, huh?” Sarah asks. “We’ve got less than seventy-two hours until showtime.”

  We start by confirming the pieces we plan to grab and reviewing their exact location in the house, and then we go over the basic plan of attack for like the thousandth time. After that, we inventory our supplies and make a list of the things we still need to buy.

  I’m encouraged that Sarah’s mood appears to improve dramatically as we work through the logistics. She’s always loved the planning component of the burglaries more than actually carrying them out. Ellen and I, on the other hand, thrive on the thrill of the burglaries themselves. I think Kat loves the planning as much as Sarah and the action as much as me and Ellen.

  Chapter Five

  Sarah’s house is a flurry of activity the morning of December 24th as we get ready to take off toward Schuyler House. My job is to keep an eye on the weather, and I monitor it obsessively while the others load up all the supplies we need for the heist. All of the weathermen and women are predicting a very, very white Christmas. In fact, upstate New York is expected to get its largest snowstorm since meteorologists started keeping track way back in the early 1900s. All the news channels are discussing the impending storm ad nauseam, plastering the TV with photos of scary-looking radar images and completely empty grocery store shelves. The snow hasn’t started yet, but if the weathermen are right, it should start coming down any minute.

  Eventually, I decide to take a break from watching the weather and head outside to see how the others are doing with the preparations.

  The snow crunches under my boots as I walk toward Ellen and Kat as they try to attach a snowmobile trailer to the back of Ellen’s black Chevy Tahoe. “Hey guys, you need a hand?” I ask.

  “Sure,” Ellen replies. “We are having a tough time getting the hitch pin in place.” She points vaguely to the back of the Tahoe.

  “A what pin?” I ask.

  Ellen rolls her eyes at my obvious lack of trailer-hitch knowledge. “The little pin that locks the trailer to the hitch on the back of the Tahoe,” she explains in a know-it-all voice.

  I give her a friendly punch to the arm. “Smart-ass!”

  It takes some work, but we finally get the pin the way Ellen says it should be and set up the electric connection so the trailer will have taillights. Once the trailer is properly attached to the SUV, we turn our energy to loading our two recently purchased snowmobiles up on to the trailer.

  Even though we all live in Vermont, none of us are big into snowmobiling, and as a result, none of us actually owned a snowmobile when we came up with the idea to rob Schuyler House during a snowstorm. Snowmobiles are not cheap, and we considered renting them but ultimately concluded that renting would be too risky. The stores that rent them require all sorts of credit card deposits and most want to see ID. So, we decided to purchase two snowmobiles of our own. We combed Craigslist for a decent set of used snowmobiles and settled on a pair some guy was selling in New Hampshire. The snowmobiles are only a few years old, and the fact that the seller is in New Hampshire was an added bonus because New Hampshire is significantly more lax about registering the snow machines than the State of Vermont.

  In addition to the snowmobiles, we also bought two steel utility sleds we found on eBay. These metal utility sleds look like mini sleighs and are designed to attach to the back of a snowmobile so you can drag stuff along behind you while you ride. We plan to use them to drag the art from the Schuyler House back to the SUV.

  At any rate, after we get the snowmobiles loaded up on the trailer, I head into Sarah’s garage to find the steel utility sleds, and we strap those onto the trailer alongside the snowmobiles.

  Next, we load our supplies into the back of the SUV. We have bottled water, four snowmobile helmets, flashlights, a canvas pouch with a hammer, screwdriver, and a small crowbar, bungee cords, some rope, two heavy-duty black plastic sleds, and a handful of vinyl covers. I picked up the black plastic sleds at Home Depot; they were advertising them as sleds for hauling heavy objects like firewood in the snow, and we plan to use them to drag the art the short distance f
rom the house back to the snowmobiles. We have rough dimensions for all the pieces that we plan to steal so I ordered custom vinyl covers from a place called The Cover Store that I found online. The covers aren’t the best quality, but they’ll do the trick. I ordered them in early December and luckily, they arrived on time—we weren’t expecting another big snowstorm this early in the season.

  Each of us has also packed a small duffel with winter attire such as hats, gloves, goggles, fleece pants, ski coats, and snow pants. The duffels get loaded in the SUV too, and the four of us finally climb into the Tahoe and hit the road just after four o’clock in the afternoon. The plan is to drive the SUV to within about ten miles of Schuyler House and leave the SUV at the trailhead for a snowmobile trail that runs right through the property.

  The days are really short this time of year so the sun is about to set and the snow has been coming down pretty heavily for the last few hours. In good weather, the drive would take us almost four hours, but given the weather and road conditions, it could take us more like five or six to reach the trailhead where we plan to leave the SUV. As we get close to Schuyler House, every other vehicle on the road seems to be pulling snowmobiles. In this neck of the woods a SUV trailering two snowmobiles blends in like a cow at the state fair.

  It is almost ten o’clock at night by the time we finally pull off Route 29A and onto Chicken Foot Road, the road on which the trailhead is located. Chicken Foot Road hasn’t been plowed in a few hours, and even in four-wheel drive, the Tahoe struggles somewhat to get through the deep snow. Luckily, the trailhead is only about a quarter mile up Chicken Foot Road, and Ellen expertly navigates the SUV into the small parking lot next to the trailhead. Given that it is Christmas Eve, there are no other cars parked.

  Ellen leaves the car running, and we all change into our winter clothes and double-check our supplies before we head out into the snow to unload the snowmobiles. Once we get the snowmobiles down, Ellen and I attach one utility sled to the back of each snowmobile while Kat and Sarah secure our supplies with bungee cords and rope. Finally, it’s showtime and I feel my nerves acting up—I love the thrill of pulling off the heists, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a wee bit nervous. I try to pull my helmet over my ponytail but it’s too snug, so I reluctantly pull out my ponytail and let my long blond hair fall over my shoulders. Once we’ve donned our helmets, we do a quick round of fist bumps and turn toward the snowmobiles.