A Heist Story

by Ellen Simpson

  None of the dates were correct.

  “A fake,” she breathed. “Merde.” Glancing over her shoulder at Johnson’s office door, Wei reached for the desk phone and punched in a number, messed up in forgetting to dial nine first, and tried again. After two rings LePage picked up, gruff and flustered.

  “What?”

  “We have a problem, William.” Wei spoke in a low voice. No one here was directly assigned to the case, but Johnson was an advocate of vigilance, and she was also an advocate of competition. She liked it when people pushed against each other and when the competition created synergy in the office. That was when everyone was cracking at the highest levels. That was when cases got solved.

  Wei did not want to be overheard. Not because she didn’t trust that the others wouldn’t respect her wish to keep this private and quiet, but because she didn’t want to jump the gun. The game was slowly swimming into focus, and the more Wei saw of the plot, the heavier the blanket of despair felt as it draped around her shoulders. This was the moment, this was the end.

  No one looked at Wei as she bent her head and cupped her hand around the phone mouthpiece. No one looked at her when she pitched her voice low and said, “Marcey Daniels has just walked into the bullpen and handed me Charlie Mock’s book.”

  “But…” LePage drew breath sharply. “There’s no way. Why would she do that?” He was babbling, speaking quickly now. “Look, we’ve got a bigger problem. Gwen Lane-Wright is probably here. I saw Shelly Orietti. If Shelly’s here, Gwen is here. They’re probably bidding on that damn painting.”

  “What?” Wei echoed. That didn’t make sense. Why would they be bidding on the painting that Marcey Daniels had failed to steal…unless…Kat.

  Son of a bitch.

  Wei’s blood ran cold.

  Kat… Kat had authenticated that painting. Kat had appraised that painting. Kat had confessed her fascination with the painting from the first moment Wei had been in its presence at that gallery in SoHo. Wei racked her brain, trying to remember. What had Kat said? Something about how it was a shame no one knew its value? Or how it was an inspirational work for some great piece that Wei could scarcely recall? There was a missing piece, unseen. It was vital.

  Kat wanted that painting.

  Kat wanted the painting because it was connected to this damn book and her scheme. All of this went back to Charlie Mock. That was what Marcey Daniels had said, and that was what Wei believed. The puzzle felt incomplete. There was still something missing, still something Wei didn’t see. She exhaled, inhaled, and got to her feet.

  “William, I need you to stop that auction.”

  “I can’t just do that,” LePage retorted. “I need to see them sell the piece in order to have any grounds to move against them. Wei, we need to catch them at something or else we’re fucked in court and we both know it. Whatever they’re planning with this painting, I need to see it trade hands before I can do anything at all.” He paused, humming at the back of his throat. “I suppose I could try and make an argument that we already know the painting is fake. We do know it’s fake if they’re trying to sell it, right?”

  Wei didn’t know. She thought back to Kat’s flat, to the paintings leaning against the wall on top of that drop canvas. She couldn’t remember seeing anything like the painting at the Perôt in Kat’s flat. She couldn’t remember seeing much of anything at all in Kat’s flat besides Kat herself.

  Kat, who had betrayed Wei’s trust. Kat, who was setting up some final coup, and with whom Marcey Daniels was clearly colluding.

  “I don’t know,” Wei said honestly. “And frankly, I don’t care. They’re up to something. Something big, I think. We need to stop the auction before that painting changes hands, because Marcey Daniels would not be here while they were trying to sell the painting if this wasn’t a double move.” Wei glanced at her watch. “Call me back in ten minutes; I need to speak to Marcey Daniels.”

  “I’m not gonna be able to stop the auction, Wei.”

  “I know, William, I’m just asking you to try.” She exhaled. “I’m sorry she’s there.” Her voice softened when she spoke. From before, when she had been only somewhat aware of what was happening within Charlie’s circle, she knew the undercover work William did for Linda Johnson during the Rio job. He’d gotten too close to Gwen Lane-Wright. He’d fallen in love with her and put the entire operation at risk because he was so blinded by his feelings. It was stupid, foolish for both of them. Wei had done the only thing she could think of: she’d told Kat who LePage was and let Kat break that news to Gwen.

  He’s like you now, with Kathryn.

  Wei pushed the thought away, shaking her head violently to clear it from her mind. Now was not the time to get caught up in her own hypocrisy. She closed her eyes, exhaled, and then waited for William’s response. His heavy breathing came over the line. Seeing Gwen was hurtful for him, and he expected her to bear the brunt of it.

  Wei hated men. Hated how William clammed up his emotions and refused to see anything beyond humor in the knife to her gut each time Wei found evidence of Marcey Daniels in Kat’s hotel room. Kat plunged the knife into Wei, over and over again. Kat took, and took, and took. To him, it was all just a big joke, something to laugh about with Johnson’s investigative team over beers. But this was Wei’s life. Or more specifically, its destruction.

  Over and over, Kat did little things that cut into Wei, but in Marcey Daniels she’d handed Wei the answers, carefully written down and made right.

  “She’s here because your fucking girlfriend knows that it’s the only way to make sure that I’m off my game.” LePage growled into the phone. “I don’t want to see her, Wei. When it all ended in Brazil I swore I’d never see her again.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “Okay, you figure out what the hell’s going on. I’m going to stop this auction, if I can.”

  Wei hummed her agreement and hung up. She took the book and ran her fingers along the edges of it. “What are you up to, Kat?”

  There were so many options. Each stripped Wei bare, built her up again. This was a peace offering and an exoneration of all of Wei’s past sins. This girl, who had taken everything from Wei without thought and yet gave it all back to her without a thought. Wei didn’t understand it. That was not the game Kat played.

  Kat was cruel; she was selfish; she was Wei unmade in the quietest parts of the night. She pushed Wei past her comfort zone, and she held Wei closer with the selfish grip of a child. This girl was just a pawn.

  But was she?

  Wei turned the pages, glancing over the entries, trying to make sense of them. Things had been moved around in Charlie’s flawless script. Dates were changed, contradicting, providing alibis that could be checked and rechecked, places she knew she’d been, the dates crossed with other, less damning ones that still aligned with her passport. Wei frowned, turned another page, and found the most damning evidence of all. There, between two Kenyan antiquities traders, was Marcey Daniels. A picture was clipped to the page, from a few years ago, when she was still wearing a high school uniform. Wei tugged it loose, flipped it over.

  On the back was a circle and a date. A date that meant nothing to anyone other than Wei.

  “Kathryn,” Wei whispered. “Fuck.” This was Kat’s endgame. Wei doubted Marcey even knew it was in here. She couldn’t know. This date, the day they’d completed their circuit of that wide table mountain in Nepal, it meant nothing to anyone but Kat and Wei. For it to be here—to be written so clearly was a promise. This was the freedom Wei had bargained for with her bosses in Lyon, freedom for Kat, freedom for herself.

  Marcey Daniels was a patsy for Kat.

  And she’d walked right into it.

  Wei slammed the book shut and shoved it into her desk drawer. Her heart raced; she had to hurry. There was no time—no time to call Kat and confirm—no time to decide anything other than that Kat was wrong. This wasn’t what they’d agreed to at all. Wei swallowed down
her dignity and strode purposefully over to Johnson’s door just as it opened.

  Linda Johnson stood in the doorway, her reading glasses slipping down her nose and her piled-up hair wispy around her face. Wei’s stomach turned. The girl was sitting, her hands clearly visible on the desk, watching them with some interest.

  “Can I help you, Agent Topeté?” Johnson’s tone was curt, but there was an underlying exhaustion to it. The same exhaustion Wei felt in her bones, weary and creaking with the weight of all that was slowly descending upon her shoulders. She had to make this right, and there was only one way to do it, and the knot of emotions at her throat threatened to choke the breath from her lungs and the light from her eyes.

  “Could I speak to you for a moment?” Wei jerked her chin toward Marcey. “Alone.”

  Johnson glanced back at the girl and then stepped from the room. In the hallway, her voice dropped lower as her presence seemed to grow larger. Wei swallowed, took a step back. Johnson folded her arms over her chest. “Well?” she demanded.

  And in that moment, confronted with the truth of what Kat planned to do, Wei’s tongue turned to rubber. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even move. There were too many maybes running through her mind. Kat, sun-kissed in the sand, hiding beneath a wide, floppy hat. Kat kissing Wei at the airport like she was salvation. Kat…Kat…Kat.

  The lie, the realization of the endgame, slipped off her tongue like a benediction.

  “She left…” Wei pointed to her desk. To where the book was hidden. “Before she went in to see you.”

  Tilting her head to one side, Johnson glanced back toward her door. “She left you the book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Wei swallowed down the rebuke. “I’m not sure. Perhaps she wanted to make sure that she’d have a minute alone in your office when I realized what she’d handed me.”

  “She wouldn’t dare.” Johnson turned her attention back to her closed office door. “Get the book and get in my office.” She wrenched the door open only to find Marcey Daniels sitting exactly where she was before. Johnson raised an eyebrow at Wei before stepping back into the office. The door was still ajar. Wei swallowed.

  A long, shuddering breath escaped Wei’s lips. She closed her eyes and hurried back to her desk, collecting the fake book and hurrying back into Johnson’s office. Inside, Marcey Daniels was staring at Wei and Johnson as though they’d both sprouted extra limbs.

  “What’s this about?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and unblinking—the picture of affected innocence. Wei saw through her, Johnson probably did too, but she had to continue on and they all knew it. Whatever Marcey’s plan was, she was playing right into their hands. “If it’s about that book, it arrived weeks ago. I never did anything with it.”

  Wei wanted to shake her. How could she not see how clearly this was playing into Wei’s hands? It was so obvious: all she had to do was look though the book first before waltzing in here like she owned the place.

  “I heard from LePage,” Wei said to Johnson, holding out the book like a peace offering. “He’s down at the auction. So far nothing seems amiss.” The lie was slight, but it was the sort that would tell two tales, depending on what the listener wanted to hear. Wei liked lies like that, the sort of lies where she could challenge the people around her to think more critically. Judging by the way Marcey’s brow furrowed, she sensed that same connection.

  “Good, good,” Johnson muttered. “Ms. Daniels, I believe you wanted to speak to me regarding this book. Tell me, why did you leave it on Agent Topeté’s desk?”

  The girl shrugged. “I met Agent Topeté in New Hampshire. I thought she seemed like a good person to trust with something like this. Plus, from what my mother told me about Charles Mock, he was quite the art thief. Agent Topeté works for Interpol, right? Isn’t catching people like him a big part of her job?” Marcey bit her lip, her cheeks coloring slightly. “Or do I have that all wrong?”

  “No, no, no, you’re right.” Wei sat down, following the line of logic and realizing how this was meant to play out. She tried not to think of this girl willingly sleeping with Kat, or Kat wanting this girl. That had never been the goal, she realized. It was always about Johnson. Instead, she focused on the game Marcey Daniels was playing, and how best to beat her at it. “Tell me more about the book.”

  “Well, as I was saying. It arrived by courier a couple months ago.” She sat forward, her fingers curling around the edge of Johnson’s cluttered desk. Wei was struck by how small she looked. “I didn’t think much of it at first, but the letter in there, it’s a little damning. I spent a lot of time digging through my mom’s old pictures, trying to figure out if it was true. Eventually I had to go see his lawyer, that’s why he came to New Hampshire, I think, because he knew me from—”

  “He was hired by Charles Mock to defend your best friend and Charles Mock has been footing the bill for that boy’s defense ever since.” The malice in Johnson’s tone surprised Wei.

  Marcey flinched and her expression went steely. “He isn’t a boy.”

  “Well, you certainly let him take the fall like one.” Johnson’s voice was cruel and biting. “Isn’t that just what you do, you, the little white girl in over her head lead the young black boy astray and then feel so guilty about it you do everything you can to make sure that he’s taken care of. That he’s cared for. You keep paying his attorney bills—”

  “I never—”

  From her desk, Johnson produced a folder and flipped it open. “We’ve had a subpoena for your bank records for some time. Once we started to dig into your finances, it was amazing how many little accounts you had open. A few hundred dollars here, a few there. And then this one.” She plucked a piece of paper from the stack and turned it around with a flourish that Wei thought overly theatrical for an office meeting. It made her jaw clench and her eyes flutter shut, annoyance threatening to bring on a headache. “This one is special. It came into your possession about five years ago.”

  Marcey took the paper. “I don’t know what this is—”

  “Your lawyer certainly did. He’s been drawing a salary from it for some time. As has someone else. Someone I think Agent Topeté here might be more equipped to explain than I. All of these funds for art supplies, to rent an industrial-grade oven for two weeks, to buy paper at estate auctions—this is damning stuff, Ms. Daniels.”

  “Devon isn’t like that. He’s not going to just take money. Not without asking.”

  “He certainly would.” Johnson’s tone was curt, cutting Marcey off. Her gaze slid to Wei, and her lip curled. “Perhaps you should have pressed him harder on why he was so keen to help your friend out. Surely you know no one does anything without having some stake in the process.”

  Wei scowled, looked away. This conversation was as much directed at her as it was at Marcey. This was a condemnation of Kat’s forging the book, forging the painting, without actually saying it. This was the proof and the manipulation that Kat had taken Marcey’s trust and had used her to get exactly what she wanted. The money from the painting and, Wei could only assume, Charlie’s real book.

  “And you, Agent Topeté. When you went to interview Mr. Austin Jackson, why didn’t you press him harder about where his funding was coming from?”

  She had to keep her face perfectly still. She couldn’t rise to Johnson’s bait. Johnson wanted an admission of guilt from someone and at this point it didn’t matter who. And Wei was walking a fine line, knowing what Marcey Daniels stood to lose.

  “I didn’t press him because your country has laws that shroud him in privilege and privacy.” Wei turned up her nose. “Does it matter, really, in the end? Ms. Daniels can tell us what we want to know. You have her finances. We can only hope that Ms. Daniels is aware of the fortune that’s been left to her, even if it appears that she’s misusing the funds.” Wei sank into the chair beside Marcey, catching her eye and shaking her head, just a little, imperceptible. The girl’s eyes grew wide, and Wei fe
lt a little surge of triumph. This was not what she’d planned. Excellent. Now was the time to press. “Can you tell us a little bit more about how you fell into associating with certain people in the book and why you’re buying some of these things?”

  “Certain people?” Marcey was smart then, avoiding discussing the financial element of it, because that would get her caught.

  Johnson passed Wei the file, speaking over Wei’s prepared remark, derailing the direction Wei was attempting to steer the conversation in. “We have record of you spending time in the presence of known criminal associates of Charles Mock. Shelly Orietti and Kathryn Barber. I want to know why you were interacting with them.”

  “I know this is going to sound strange to you both…” Marcey bent and from the bag at her feet she produced a file of her own. Inside were photographs and handwritten notes in what Wei had come to recognize as Charlie Mock’s handwriting, as well as pages and pages of another’s hand, probably Marcey’s. “My mom never married Charlie. I think she was already pregnant when Charlie disappeared from her life. That letter dropped a big bomb in the middle of my life. I took some time to try and piece together who Charlie was. I wanted to know who the man my mother fell in love with was. I spoke to Kat and Shelly because they were in the photograph Devon Austin Jackson gave me with the book. It was taken five years ago in Rio.”

  Johnson’s brow furrowed. “And you being in New Hampshire?”

  Wei closed her eyes. There was no lie that could cover this, and they all knew it.

  “You’ve got me there. I came here to turn myself in, because I’m clearly the cause of all this confusion. With my giving you the book and with me removed from the board, I figured that this would be easier to sort out.” Marcey Daniels looked up and met Wei’s gaze, her eyes shining, begging for the understanding that Wei did not possess. She was baffled.

  “Turn…yourself in?” Johnson’s nostrils flared. “Have you committed a crime, Marcey Daniels?”