Uptown Thief

by Aya De León

  “Like you always tell us, Marisol,” Jody said. “Don’t build your whole life on being young and hot forever.”

  “You’ll stop making money for yourself and start making it for your plastic surgeon,” Marisol said.

  Jody nodded. “When my ex worked there, we used to joke that she was fucking the guys just to pay for Vixela’s cosmetic retrofitting.”

  “I don’t understand how she could be face-to-face with me and lie,” Marisol said.

  “Cause that’s not really her face,” Tyesha said.

  They laughed. The baby murmured and shifted in the carrier.

  “Marisol,” Tyesha whispered. “You should get that baby out of the cold. I can do the setup.”

  “He’s fine,” Marisol said, patting him. She checked the expiration date on a box of condoms.

  “But won’t the snow mess up your shoes?” asked Tyesha.

  “Not these,” Marisol said. She looked down at her invincibility shoes, classic black platform stiletto pumps, with springy material beneath the balls of her feet that made the five-inch heels tolerable. “They’re made outta some indestructible type of patent leather. Wind, rain, sleet, snow. Nothing fucks them up.”

  “I need a pair like that,” Jody said. “What are they, Jimmy Choos?”

  “No way,” said Tyesha. “Those are Vera Wangs, right, Marisol?”

  “I don’t know,” Marisol said.

  “How can you not know?” Tyesha asked. “Take off the damn shoe and check the label.”

  “That’s the thing,” Marisol said. “I got them from this lady who sells shoes outta her trunk. She cuts out the designer labels and charges twenty-nine ninety-nine.”

  “I love deals like that,” Tyesha said.

  Marisol smiled. “My mami always told me that finding a bargain is God telling you He wants you to have nice things.” Her mother had described it like a signpost on the way to the good life. And occasionally Marisol saw her mother create the bargain herself by switching the price tags. Or in a big store she would take advantage of a missing inventory tag. This was also God, her mother had explained, because God created the opportunity.

  Her mother was always cool and discreet. She never boosted any item unless it was a sure thing. Once she’d left her raggedy sneakers in the box at a department store and walked out wearing snakeskin stilettos under her custodian’s uniform. She left the store with her head held high, children in tow. After they got back to their one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side, her mother told them never to steal from people. Only stores.

  “So, where does your girl sell the kickstunners outta her trunk?” Tyesha asked.

  “Sometimes she’s at West Twenty-seventh and—”

  The van rumbled and tilted.

  “What the fuck?” said Jody.

  Marisol swung the back door open and sprinted out. The van was being lifted up onto a tow truck by a short, barrel-chested guy.

  Jody balled her fists and advanced, but Marisol grabbed Jody by the hood of her jacket and pulled her back. “I’ll handle this.”

  The baby started to cry.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Marisol asked the tow guy.

  “We’re repossessing the van for nonpayment,” he said. He pulled a lever, and the chains began to pull the van up onto the back of the truck.

  “Bullshit,” Marisol said, over the baby’s wailing. “Our account is up to date.” She bounced up and down, and the movement quieted the baby. Tyesha and Jody stood behind Marisol with their arms crossed. Several girls came out of the clinic and joined them.

  “I just tow who they say. Tell your boss we’re taking the van.”

  “I am the boss,” Marisol said. “And if you wrongfully remove this vehicle, I’ll sue your company in a heartbeat.”

  “You tell his stupid ass, Marisol,” said Nalissa, a young woman with hair dyed bright carrot red. “Defiende lo tuyo!”

  The guy shut everything off and the van stopped moving. By then it was halfway up onto the truck bed. He stalked around to the cab and pulled out a cell phone.

  “Crazy Spanish bitch,” he muttered.

  “That’s crazy Puerto Rican bitch,” Marisol yelled back. “Learn your geography.”

  “Crazy Spanish bitch?” Nalissa said. “I’m a show you a crazy Dominican bitch!” She lunged toward the driver, but Tyesha and Jody grabbed her arms.

  “Cálmate, Nalissa,” Marisol said. “I got this.”

  With all the noise, the baby began to squirm and fuss. Marisol pulled him out and held him to her chest. He reached up and played with the locket around her neck.

  “Yeah, papi,” she said, opening the locket to reveal a little girl with two puffy blond pigtails and a missing front tooth. “You see that girl? That’s Cristina, my baby sister.”

  Cristina was six years younger and had been more like a daughter in many ways. Now that Marisol was in her thirties, the difference wasn’t so pronounced, but when Cristina was a baby, Marisol had cared for her at night, while their mother worked. Holding babies always reminded her of Cristina. Their mother died of breast cancer when Marisol was in middle school, her sister in elementary. After that, Marisol had fallen solidly into the mother role.

  As the baby tickled against her neck, Marisol had a bitter ache in her chest. Cristina was her family, the one person who really mattered.

  The engine rumbled. Marisol cursed and handed the child to Jody. The baby wailed. Marisol kicked off her heels and handed them to Tyesha, then scrambled onto the back of the tow truck, slush dripping from her stockinged feet.

  She opened the van door and yelled down to Jody, “Gimme the baby.”

  “You want me to—?”

  “Now!” Marisol yelled, stretching both hands out.

  Jody handed back the screaming baby. Marisol slid into the van’s passenger seat and locked the door. The tow guy came around from the cab of the truck with an armful of brake lights.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled over the noise of the engine.

  Marisol rolled the window down a crack. “Watch your goddamn language in front of the baby.”

  “You need to get down from there,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s not safe,” Marisol said, jiggling the baby on her knee. “Women working on the street with no health care. The city pays us to drive this van around and provide services for girls who can’t come to the clinic.”

  “I’m calling the police,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m calling the leasing company.” The baby flailed in her arms and knocked some papers off a bulletin board.

  She dialed her phone, and asked for the manager on duty. As she waited on hold, she rummaged through the clinic supplies. “Are you teething, papi?” She found a tongue depressor and he began to chew on it.

  The manager came on the line, as she dried the dripping slush from her freezing feet.

  “This is Marisol Rivera, executive director of the Vega Clinic on the Lower East Side. There’s been a mistake. They’re trying to repossess our van.” Marisol only called it the Vega Clinic when she was particularly pissed off. The place was named after her mother, so she enjoyed saying the full name: María de la Vega.

  “No mistake,” the manager said. “You’ve been late with every payment since last June.”

  “I have an arrangement with your bookkeeper,” Marisol said. “She gives me until the tenth.”

  “We have no record of that,” he said.

  “Put her on the phone,” Marisol said.

  “She no longer works here.”

  “She was working there when we made the verbal contract,” Marisol said. “I have her cell number and I bet she’d testify in court.”

  “What’s the big deal?” he asked. “You’ll get it back once you pay up.”

  “The big deal is the thousands of dollars of medical equipment we have inside. Besides, your driver can’t take the van anyway, since I’m sitting in it.”
r />   “The van is already on the tow truck,” he said.

  “I’m in the passenger seat.”

  “You’re what?”

  “With a baby on my lap,” Marisol said. He was happily chewing the tongue depressor. “In fact, the van was occupied when the towing process started. Highly illegal.”

  “You’re wasting everyone’s time,” he said. “We’ll send someone to find the van later via GPS.”

  “Be my guest.” Marisol laughed. “Your repo guy can watch urban health care in action all over Manhattan. I told your girl I’d have the money for you tomorrow, and I will—in cash.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” the guy said. “Just this once. You need to start paying on time.”

  “Great,” Marisol said. “Now you and I have a verbal contract. Which I recorded on my phone. Is nine a.m. good for you?”

  * * *

  The tow guy lowered the van off the truck. Marisol put her shoes back on and handed the baby back to his mother.

  Nalissa, the young hothead with dyed-red hair, approached Marisol. “You remember how I been looking for business opportunities?” she asked.

  “I’m rushing right now,” Marisol said. “Talk to my assistant, Serena. Tell her I said you’re a priority appointment.”

  Marisol and Tyesha watched Nalissa switch back into the clinic on high-heeled sneakers. With her extreme curves and long red hair, she was popular with the escort clients.

  “What does Nalissa want?” Tyesha asked. “Better bookings?”

  “She can smell some more hustles going on besides the escort service,” Marisol said. “I think she wants in.”

  “You considering it?” Tyesha asked, handing Marisol a duffel bag.

  Marisol shook her head. “That first award heist was a fluke, but it taught me I could trust you, Kim, and Jody,” she murmured. “The last seven or eight jobs taught me to stick with a good thing. After we get these two final ‘donations,’ we’ll be home free.”

  She said good-bye to Tyesha, and ducked back into the van with the duffel.

  Jody took a drag off a cigarette and blew smoke out the driver’s side window. Marisol reposted the papers that the baby had pulled off the van’s bulletin board. On top were two press clippings. One, dated over a year before, was about the Mexican sex trafficking scandal. It carried the photo of the eleven CEOs on the board of the fraternity Ivy Alpha, who were allegedly involved. The other article, dated eleven months before, reported that one of the Ivy Alpha CEOs had been robbed at an award after-party—details were sketchy as to what had been stolen. However, it did mention that security was able to recover the award, which had been “damaged” in the chase.

  “I haven’t had time to check my phone,” Marisol said. She stripped out of her office clothes, exchanging them for a black turtleneck, yoga pants, and sneakers from the duffel bag. “Is Kim at the ‘donation’ job already?”

  “We just talked,” Jody said. “Since it’s snowing, she was going to move—”

  “Tell your girlfriend to stick to the plan and stay where I put her,” Marisol said, holding up a hand. “I’m already fourteen minutes behind schedule. Can you stay with the van until the outreach crew arrives?”

  “No problem,” Jody said. “I hope some dick does come for the van. I haven’t given out a good ass-kicking since I left the dominatrix biz.”

  Marisol said, “Tell Kim that Tyesha will be there to relieve her momentarily.”

  Jody pointed to a pudgy, graying man in the newspaper clipping. “Give the tech CEO my love,” she said and lit another cigarette.

  Chapter 3

  Marisol looked out of the sixth-floor window. Snow obscured the visibility across East Seventy-second. She could barely discern the outlines of the windows on the building across the street, and she had no way to see whether anyone was standing on the sidewalk below. She and Tyesha had arrived in separate cabs, while Jody stayed with the van at the clinic.

  U in place? Marisol texted to Tyesha.

  All clear, Tyesha texted back.

  Marisol picked up her worn tool bag and got to work.

  Out in front of the opposite building, Tyesha made eye contact with Kim. The young Korean woman wore a hooded parka and high-heeled boots. After their eyes met, Kim walked away, letting Tyesha take over as lookout. The doorman came to shovel the curb, so Tyesha paced back and forth between two piles of snow.

  Three tourists exited a nearby restaurant.

  “Oh my God, it’s snowing,” one shrieked.

  Tyesha watched the cab pull up in front of the building where Marisol was working. The snow muted the voices of an arguing couple that drifted out of the open cab door. They’d come back home to retrieve their forgotten theater tickets. The woman had her wallet out, platinum credit card in hand, and one rust-colored pump already planted in the snow. Her husband said they should hang on to the cab.

  Above, in the couple’s apartment, Marisol Rivera tapped twice on the door of their wall safe. She put her stethoscope to the door and slowly turned the dial. The pads of her fingers pressed against the serrated surface of the metal. She turned it carefully to the right, then left, then right again. She breathed to calm her jitters, and listened for the safe’s three-click reply. She relied on the ritual of the two-beat/three-beat call and response in clave rhythm to guide her conversation with the safe. When the door swung open with a slight hiss, she mouthed “gracias.”

  Marisol reached in, and pushed aside several disk drives, a stack of CDs, and a jewelry box that contained a diamond necklace set and an Ivy Alpha membership ring.

  Marisol’s anxiety escalated as she found several stacks of papers, some kind of patent materials, but no sign of cash. Had she really masterminded this job only to find a safe full of stuff they couldn’t use?

  The back of the safe seemed to move. The surface she had thought was the rear wall of the compartment turned out to be the back of some kind of metal box. The safe was deep, and she had to stand on her tiptoes to pull the box out. She set it on the hardwood floor and lifted the lid. She found stacks of twenty-dollar bills.

  * * *

  The woman paid the cab fare, and her husband climbed out behind her. All at once Tyesha recognized the graying man and his young wife as they hurried into the building. Tyesha had been watching to make sure the housekeeper didn’t return, but she hadn’t expected the owners. She snatched her phone to warn Marisol. As she dialed, one of the tipsy tourists swayed into her, knocking her phone into the snow.

  Tyesha leaped to retrieve it.

  “I’m so sorry,” the tourist wailed. “Let me help you.” She stumbled forward, spraying new powder onto the spot where the phone had fallen.

  “Back the fuck off me!” Tyesha elbowed her and dug into the snow.

  The tourist wobbled across the street to her friends, complaining about rude New Yorkers as they piled into the available cab.

  Tyesha tore off her leather gloves and dug barehanded, the cold biting into her fingers.

  * * *

  Marisol’s own gloved hands gripped the bricks of cash as she loaded them into the oversized handbag strapped across her chest. She eased the safe shut and replaced the painting that had concealed it, a headless reclining female nude in shades of yellow-green.

  One of Kim’s escort clients had brought her to a party here a few weeks before. Kim had bumped the painting and seen the edge of the safe.

  The apartment belonged to the CEO of a tech manufacturer. On the wall opposite was a photo of him with the mayor.

  The snow floated down past the window, hushing the noise of the city. Down the hallway, an elevator sounded a faint ding.

  Marisol set the bag down on the living room floor, and knelt in front of the open-air vent through which she’d crawled in. She had just turned to grab the screwdriver to refasten the grate, when she saw something in her peripheral vision. It was a little model building, about eight inches high. As she turned her body for a closer look, she heard a key in the door. She grabbed
the bag of cash and shoved it into the vent.

  The apartment was secured with three locks, which allowed her time to slide into the vent feet first. The space was narrowest just outside the apartment. Her hips and ass, the widest part of her frame, barely fit. The squeeze of her lower body had been a challenge crawling in, but it was even more difficult in reverse. She wriggled backward, pulling the grate into place. She held a flashlight in her teeth, a press-on/press-off type she could operate by biting down. She scanned the room.

  Three of the four screws from the vent lay brazenly exposed on the hardwood floor, just beyond the camouflaging reach of the Oriental rug. The beam of her light illuminated the flat head of one of the screws on the floor. It glinted up at her, taunting.

  The couple entered the apartment. Marisol bit down, extinguishing her light.

  “. . . And did you see her dress?” the woman said. “What was she thinking with all that pink shimmer?”

  The husband murmured something, and the woman said, “Honestly, I’m halfway glad we forgot the tickets. Not just because of the snow. I’d hate to walk in with her wearing some prom dress–gone–wrong.”

  They flipped on the living room lamp.

  Marisol’s eyes darted from the couple’s shadows on the carpet to the loose screws on the floor.

  “And her daughter?” The wife’s voice got louder as she walked into the living room. “Did you see what she had on? Some of these teenage girls look like roadkill.”

  Marisol’s phone vibrated. The vent lit up with Tyesha’s belated warning. It rattled slightly, rumbling against the metal of the vent through the fabric of her pants. She saw the rust-colored tip of the woman’s shoe through the metal slats. Marisol held her breath. The woman kicked off her wet high heels and walked out of view.

  What the hell had happened with Tyesha? Why was the warning text so late?

  “Honey, you forgot to set the alarm again,” the wife said.

  “I was sure I had,” he said. “Your husband is getting senile.”

  But he had set it. Kim had videotaped the husband entering the code while pretending to take selfies with her date.

  Marisol’s phone buzzed again. She itched to turn it off, but her bent arms were pinned to her chest like chicken wings, holding the grate in place in front of her. Marisol’s fingers gripped the latticed metal on either side of her head, the crown of which was practically pressed against the grate. Strands of her dark hair and her fingertips would surely be visible to anyone looking closely.