Tiffany laughed. “That we stuck on Poppy’s boots? Yes.”
“Seriously, you guys?”
Asprey offered an apologetic smile, though judging from Poppy’s frown, it didn’t stick. “It was when we first met, I swear.”
She threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m so tired of playing spy games with you guys. You win. Every time. But I will say this—if you dare to track me after all this is said and done, I will make you drink an entire gallon of this coffee. No more bugs, no more secrets. Promise me.”
Asprey made the signal of an x over his chest and leaned back in the booth, his arm draped just over Poppy’s back. It was a studied calm. He had no idea where Graff was, no idea if they could successfully pull this off and no idea what Poppy intended to do when all this was “said and done”. He’d have even been hard-pressed to pick which one of those worried him the most.
Tiffany began tapping at the keys of her computer. “So, as near as I can figure it, Winston has three guards posted at the apartment. One is working as a doorman and the other two rotate between watching the front entrance and the fire escape out back.” She looked up from her computer. “That’s in addition to the building’s regular security.”
“Why only three?” Poppy asked. “If he knows we’re coming and he knows when, shouldn’t he pull out all the stops? Or call the police or something?”
Asprey shook his head. This, at least, was something he could focus on. “He can’t risk it. He’s not supposed to know what’s being stolen next. That would be admitting there something unique about all the items, which would point a big finger in his direction. It’s why he hasn’t come right out and warned Cindy.”
“So it’s easy, then.” Poppy let out a huff of air. “We’re just going to have to let me do it. I can get an invitation from Cindy to get inside. I’ll have to—what? Tie her up or something? Then I can grab the painting and we go.”
“No way.” Asprey refused to even acknowledge that idea. “She can’t know you’re part of this. Not with your record. One police sketch or fingerprint and you’d be sunk.”
Poppy smacked the table. “So? I’m just a petty thief, a small-time con woman. You saw the trouble I had with Todd. Bigger jobs aren’t my thing.”
“You must have some ideas,” Asprey suggested.
“You’re the one who loves all this heist stuff,” Poppy countered. “Not me.”
Tiffany snorted. “All Asprey knows is the clichés. If it’s been done, overdone and turned into a sequel, he has the answers. Otherwise? Nothing. Face it, guys. We need Graff.”
They all slunk a little farther in their seats, feeling the truth of that statement. A gang of thieves without their leader was just that—a gang. They could smash things and run amok, but the intricacies of this kind of operation were just too much.
Poppy was the first to shake her head. “I refuse to believe that. Asprey—you and Graff have taken dozens of items, and even though I know Graff likes to bark orders, he can’t possibly have come up with all that on his own. He’s militant but not clever. Not like you.”
She thought he was clever? “That sounds an awful lot like a compliment,” he said.
Her eyes sparkled warmly. “As someone clever once told me, it’s not a compliment if it’s true.”
“She’s right, you know,” Tiffany added. “Graff once told me that he hated having to rely on you so much to get things done, but that there was no way he could come up with half the things you did. Of course, he didn’t mean it as a compliment—he said it was all thanks to the hundreds of heist movies you watched as a kid.”
“That’s it.” Asprey sat up straighter, even dared to take a sip of the coffee sludge. It tasted like dirt smoldering over an open fire, but he welcomed the burn of it. “We’re trying too hard to make this something Graff would do—polished and professional. This is our chance to do things my way, which means we need to rely on the clichés. All of them.”
Poppy’s brow knit. “Are you serious?”
He leaned over the table, pointing to Tiffany’s computer. “Bring up every heist movie ever made. I want to know what they did to get inside a building, what tricks they pulled to confuse the bad guy.”
“Do you have a plan?” Poppy asked. When their eyes met, Poppy’s sparkled with appreciation and something warmer, but the look turned off before he could do much more than register its presence, which he did on a fully visceral level, stored for future use.
“I’m starting to,” he admitted, blowing out a long breath. He might be able to pull this off after all. Maybe he could be more than just a pretty toy. “Now…who do we know who can rent us some scaffolding?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They parked the van outside Cindy VanHuett’s apartment building at dawn on Thursday. Even though the vehicle was already ominous, what with the black paint and the darkened windows and all, they tricked it out even more. Asprey screwed mesh-type bars over the back window, and Poppy installed a giant antenna to the top that looked like it might be able to reach the moon, had it not been superglued on.
Poppy was responsible for putting the vehicle in place and plunking in enough quarters to keep it there all day. One of the guards posted by Winston, a flat-faced man with the widest shoulders she’d ever seen on a human being, noticed her and reached for his hip—for a Taser or a gun or a walkie-talkie, she’d never know, since Asprey pulled his motorcycle up just then. She hopped on, her helmet already in place to serve as a face mask to avoid recognition.
The deliveries started around eight. Asprey had asked Tiffany to make untraceable calls to virtually every delivery company in the greater Seattle area, placing orders almost at random. Cookie bouquets, flowers, pajamagrams, a singing clown, no fewer than ten sandwich-shop orders, over a dozen pizzas and even the stripper from Bouncing Booty had been bought and paid for. Together, they created a steady stream of various uniformed professionals moving through the building doors, and not even Poppy—who had the master list of their times on a spreadsheet in front of her—could keep track of who was coming and going.
The scaffolding was set to go up around ten. They’d opted to hire the job out to a professional window-washing company, using layers of Tiffany’s encryption to make the arrangements without being tracked. Because of Asprey’s continued insistence that she be seen as little as possible, Poppy was only able to catch a glimpse of the huge wood and metal structure going up along the backside of the apartment building as she and Tiffany drove by in her car. At least they also had the fortune of seeing the other guard, a smaller man with a pointy goatee, arguing with the workers putting it up.
The power started cutting out around noon. Tiffany had the power grid for the entire block set on a random and automatic rotation so that the guards couldn’t predict when or how the building would go dark. Five minutes here, thirty seconds there—but never on the elevator, which Poppy had insisted would continue running no matter what.
“I don’t want people getting trapped in there,” she’d said. “I’m not budging on that issue.”
Asprey had his own issues he refused to budge on.
“That is not a cliché. Name one heist movie that includes ninjas,” Poppy had protested when he pulled out the costumes, black harem pants and face masks that left a slit for the eyes.
“The iconic ninja,” he’d retorted, his eyes sparkling, “invokes fear like no other symbol. You of all people should know that.”
Fear was not the emotion she saw reflected in his eyes at that moment. “You’re just putting them in there to get a rise out of me.”
He’d stood up and straightened his vest. “Is it working?”
Yes. But she wasn’t about to say so. “I’ll let you know. So what are Tiffany and I supposed to do exactly—run around the park in ninja costumes? What if someone asks us what we’re doing?”
“If that someone is a little old lady with a cane, tell her you’re rehearsing for a play. If it’s one of Winston’s sec
urity guards, run like hell.”
Poppy grabbed the costumes from him forcefully. The whole plan was ridiculous and juvenile and so much like him she had a hard time keeping a straight face.
Asprey stopped her before she turned away. “We don’t have to do this,” he said. “If you want to stop right now, Tiffany and I can manage. This isn’t your problem, and you shouldn’t put yourself at risk for us.”
She smiled with a brightness she didn’t feel—not because she was afraid of what was to come but because she felt fantastic. A person shouldn’t be excited about breaking into a woman’s heavily guarded apartment to steal her most prized, albeit fake, possession—especially not when the consequences of getting caught were so high. Like Asprey, she delighted in the ninjas and the over-the-top ludicrousness of it all. But while his motivations were rooted in good, hers were simply part of her criminally bent mind. She was seriously disturbed.
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” she said. “After all, I’m an old hand at breaking and entering. The question is…are you ready?”
His eyes deepened in color. “I’m beginning to think I was born for this.”
Getting in was easy.
Even with the circus going on all around the building—one security guard bouncing between circling the window washing scaffolding and checking the exits every time the power went out, the other with his eyes trained on the van and the flashes of black that wove in and out of the park—Asprey still had to get past the guard stationed out front as well as the regular front desk clerk.
So he did the last thing anyone expected.
He walked right in.
Asprey waited for a lull in the mayhem, when the ninjas disappeared into a pair of portable toilets in the park and the power was all the way on. The van and window scaffolding sat untouched for hours. It was the first time all day that the guards felt sure nothing was going to happen.
“Afternoon, Greg,” he called cheerfully to the front desk clerk. Asprey had dressed in an understated suit and tie, a briefcase in one hand, and otherwise did nothing to hide his appearance. If the guard had been paying the least bit of attention, he would have recognized Asprey and immediately stopped him. It just so turned out that, today of all days, a man walking casually through the door was the last thing on the guard’s mind.
He sauntered to the elevator and pressed the Up button.
“I’d take the stairs if I were you,” the guard called out. “The power’s been cutting in and out and we don’t have time to bail you out if it gets stuck. Oh, shit—is that another flower delivery coming in?”
“Thanks,” Asprey called back, swallowing a laugh. “I will.”
The power cut just as he hit the twelfth floor. He couldn’t have timed it better if he’d tried.
Using a hand-crank awl, Asprey began boring a hole in the wainscoting outside Cindy’s apartment, moving through the layers of wood and drywall at a fairly quick rate. The sawdust and other debris collected in a small pan he laid out on the floor, filling up twice. He had to empty it into his briefcase, which was already crowded with various tools needed for the job.
The awl moved almost silently through to the interior of Cindy’s apartment, and when he finally felt the giving way as he punched through, Asprey leaned down and blew the rest of the dust away. He was left with a clean hole, into which he peered to catch a glimpse of miniature bared fangs and the guttural growl of a dog who suspected danger but wasn’t quite sure of it.
“Here, doggy, doggy,” he called. “That’s a good doggy. You’re a thirsty girl aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
The dog barked a negative reply.
“Not yet,” Asprey hissed, glancing up and down the hall. So far, it was all clear. Hopefully, it would stay that way long enough for him to finish. “You can bark in about two minutes. Three, depending on how fast I can move.”
Next, he pulled a long, clear plastic tube out of his briefcase and slipped it through the hole. The dog almost immediately began tugging on it, and Asprey was about an inch from losing the whole thing before he caught the stubby end.
“Next time, extra tubing,” he muttered. “Check.”
He affixed a bright red funnel to his end, securing it swiftly with duct tape—a beer bong of the finest craftsmanship known to mankind. After taking a long pull from the bottle of gin he grabbed from the briefcase, he began slugging the alcohol through to the other side.
“Vile stuff,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I don’t know what is wrong with you, dog. At your mommy’s income, at least have the decency to prefer a nicely aged scotch. Or even a stout ale.”
The tugging came a little fiercer now, which Asprey could only assume meant the dog was chugging the stuff fast enough to make his frat brothers proud. About half the bottle in, he stopped, not sure if the dog would continue lapping it off the floor until he fell into an alcoholic stupor—also much like his frat brothers—or if it preferred a nice ceramic bowl handcrafted from Spain or something.
A noise from the end of the hall startled Asprey into shooting to his feet, yanking the gin bong with him. He’d just tucked it behind his back when a door pulled open and shut again, a newspaper making a quick disappearance from the doorstep.
Crisis averted.
But that was only the first one. From inside the apartment, a series of sharp yips signaled that the plan was already working. Asprey grabbed the wooden plug Poppy had whittled down to size and stopped the hole, careful to cover it with another plug they’d cut out of wainscoting of a similar hue.
He kicked at the carpet to brush away the last of the debris and stood. It looked pretty good.
With a cheerful hop and a whistle, he made his way to the end of the hall. The plan was working.
He hid himself on the far end of the floor, in a small, offset bay window that looked out over the park. Anyone paying attention would see a man in a suit taking in the sights of the round of deliveries and security guards arguing down below. But he was counting on no one paying attention—at least not right away. He needed to use the flexibility garnered through his years of yoga to wedge himself up against the window when—plan willing—Mrs. Partridge came out to inspect the noise.
That happened exactly six minutes later. It was a wonder it took that long—he could hear the dog barking from all the way down the corridor. Poppy hadn’t been lying when she said that creature had a voice.
After stepping carefully onto the window frame, Asprey flattened his body against the cool glass, using his arms on either side to stabilize him. His face pressed against the window, increasing his range of vision enough so that he could see the window washer’s scaffolding set up outside, the frame of it set within reach of Cindy’s window. If he strained just so, he could also see a streak of black moving through the far end of the park. Poppy. There was no way in hell Tiffany had that kind of speed.
“Jasmine, precious!” Mrs. Partridge’s shrill cries were almost as bad as the dog’s. “Are you having a bad time, little dear? Did Mommy go out and leave you all day for her big office downtown?”
The jangling of keys and some low mumbling were like music to his ears. Thank the gods of robbery for good neighbors and single women. And for Poppy laying all the groundwork.
Asprey’s neck was getting a kink, so he adjusted it a little. The dog’s barks had lost some of their volubility, and he could no longer hear Mrs. Partridge cooing, so he carefully lowered himself to the floor, being careful to grab his briefcase. With a quick, furtive glance, he scanned the hallway. It was empty.
But not for long.
The original plan had been to walk by the hopefully open door to the apartment and slip a cover over the deadbolt frame so that it couldn’t fully lock when Mrs. Partridge exited with or without the dog. It was risky, and there were quite a few things that could go wrong with that plan, but the fates that ruled over heists must have been smiling down on them. Just as Asprey was about to get the deadbolt cover in his palm, Cindy’s
dog dashed out the door and made a beeline for the elevators on the other end of the corridor.
Mrs. Partridge followed at a clipped pace, her arms outstretched.
Asprey moved, unwilling to lose the moment. He ducked into the open door of the apartment and took a quick survey. All but a few drops of the gin remained, the dog having done a fairly good job of cleaning up. There was a fairly substantial pile of sawdust, and Asprey took a moment to scoop it up and kick his foot over what remained.
The bedroom seemed like the safest place to go, so he followed the mental map he’d created from Poppy’s blueprints. Dropping to his stomach, he slid underneath the bed, tucked his briefcase by his side, and prepared to wait.
“You naughty little puppy.” Mrs. Partridge’s voice returned to the apartment, and Asprey could hear the keys jangling again. “We’ll keep you cozy until Mommy gets home, how about that?”
The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked. It was almost too easy.
It was too easy.
Asprey knew the painting was in the kitchen, and he made his way there as soon as the coast was officially clear. As Poppy had described, the rest of the apartment was almost sterile in its cleanliness and lack of décor, but life actually touched down in the kitchen’s interior. Some kind of half-eaten, freshly baked pie sat on the counter next to an empty plate and a cozy mystery that bore the inevitable creases of use. The smell of morning coffee still filled the air, and a table with hand-woven placemats stood at a half-cocked angle under the enormous Pollock.
He stopped.
He’d seen a Pollock before, of course. And Caravaggios and da Vincis and Monets and Manets and any number of modern artists who had yet to reach the same kind of distinction. It came with the art appraisal territory and with the life of privilege Poppy liked to constantly rub in his face.
But this painting was something else—it was something more. Maybe it was because most of his experience of fine art was in museums and the sterile homes of the wealthy, not unlike the rest of Cindy’s apartment, but the warm kitchen, with one wall almost entirely taken up in the dizzying pattern of reds and browns, rendered him speechless.
Confidence Tricks Page 27