by Mike Cooper
“Sneak in and swap the bars. One to one. Do it right and no one will ever know.”
“This other company—they might be upset if they find the counterfeits.”
“Probably.” Another shrug. “I sure was.”
Undoubtedly true.
“The way you’ve described it.” Finn stopped. “I don’t know if it’s possible to get in and out undetected.”
“No, no, that’s the great thing about this idea.” Wes leaned sideways in his seat, hands chopping the air with enthusiasm. “If there’s a problem, you just finish the switch and leave quick. Hell, you could even trip an alarm on the way out if you wanted. The rent-a-cops will flood in—and discover that nothing was actually taken.”
“No harm, no foul.” Finn squinted. “Talk about it like that, it’s almost legal.”
“Exactly!”
“And a few weeks later, you sell everything off, right? Because not only are you the only trader who knows there might be counterfeits in the supply, but you’re also now certain that your stock, at least, is one hundred percent good.”
“Or maybe we hold out, like we originally planned.” Wes nodded. “Either way, we’re good.”
“If you don’t need anything stolen, why do you need me?”
“Because even if nothing leaves the vault, it still requires a degree of, ah, specialized talent that’s damned hard to find.” He twisted around and looked intently into Finn’s eyes. “And because I trust you. Anyone else might fuck it up.”
Finn didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no. “How much?”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.” He said it slowly, like a dramatic reveal.
“What?” Frowning.
“For a little planning and a few hours’ work, maybe?” Wes moved his hands apart, like, come on.
“And the chance of going back to jail for another decade.” Finn shook his head.
“Seventy-five’s already a substantial risk premium, but all right. A hundred.”
Suddenly, they were bargaining. Finn kept his exterior calm—prison had been good training—but possibilities unfolded in his mind.
It was awfully fast to be getting back in, already talking about another job. He was still readapting, finding his way in a world that—even after just seven years—was faster, harsher, and less forgiving. And to think about signing up with Wes again, that was just stupid. Still, one fact of his personal situation stood above the rest.
He needed money.
“Six hundred, and another fifty for expenses,” he said. “Up front.”
The negotiations went on a few minutes, though it felt pro forma. They’d worked together twice before, and Wes didn’t press hard.
The elephant in the room was that Finn and his partners had paid a much, much higher price for the last job. Maybe Wes felt an obligation, maybe he didn’t, but he seemed willing to pretend. It didn’t take long before they ended up at four fifty.
Seven times Finn’s retirement fund, which had been stolen away by the State of Georgia.
They didn’t shake hands. “I’ll think about it,” Finn said.
“Not long.” Wes pocketed the ingot and the awl. “The more time passes, the riskier it becomes for me. Emily will show you the setup, tell you the details. You figure out if it’s even possible. Might not be, I guess.”
A little obvious, that. Finn looked at Emily. “You know where the vault is?”
“Yup.”
“Going forward, Emily’s your contact,” Wes said. “Tell her what you need, but—you know—keep it brief, right? We all have different jobs. They don’t need to intersect any more than necessary.”
He got out, closed the Rover’s door carefully, and walked back toward the lower lot. Halfway down, he waved to someone, jacket blowing open in the winter breeze. He’d never removed his driving gloves.
Finn moved back to the front seat. He looked at Emily.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Seems a little complicated, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
She withdrew a plain folder from her bag and handed it over, then put the Rover in gear. “The vault. Take a look, but you can’t keep it.”
“First Federal Depository, Inc.” He read from the first page. “They’re in New Jersey.”
“It’s … eleven forty. I’m clear the rest of the day.” She backed out of their parking space and turned toward the exit. “What do you say? Want to go take a look?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
At first, the vault appeared easy.
They drove across the lower tip of Manhattan—not too bad, midday—into the Holland Tunnel and through Jersey City. Skirting the vast Newark port facilities, Finn began to wonder, and his skepticism verged on disbelief when Emily slowed down.
“Inside,” she said, pointing over a long fence topped with razor wire.
“That’s a railroad yard.” Stating the obvious. The side road was slightly elevated, looking down into an elongated bowl more than a mile across. Through the fence, they could see rail sidings filled with hundreds of freight cars. Sunlight reflected from the mirrored glass of a control tower. A pall of diesel drifted from innumerable, rumbling locomotives.
“That’s right.” Emily got the Rover moving again. “And the storage facility is … right there. See that concrete building?”
It wasn’t much—single story, windowless, nondescript. It sat fifty yards in, separated from them by the fence, a gravel access road, and two tracks running along the edge of the property. Compared to the warehouses lining the avenue across from the yard, it looked like a gardening shed.
“Maybe this is a dumb question,” Finn said, “but what the hell is a precious-metals vault doing in there?”
“Happenstance. When the financial crisis hit, everyone but everyone started buying gold. If you’re not a wacky bird, you don’t store it under your bed, and the commercial vaults started filling up.”
“‘Wacky bird’?”
She ignored him. “The railroads already carry valuable stuff, now and then—high-end industrial ceramics, lab chemicals, platinum, whatever. Pennsylvania Southern was doing enough that they needed a secure building for transshipment.”
“Huh.”
“When the company figured out they could make real money renting out vault space, they expanded it, added high-tech security, and started advertising.” Emily slowed again, approaching the yard’s entrance. “Being inside an already-controlled perimeter made the service even more attractive.”
A slow lane had been added along the fence, ending at a gatehouse with a guard and a striped boom. One vehicle was in front of them, a battered white pickup with Penn Southern’s logo on the door. The guard waved it through, then lowered the boom again. Emily came to a stop and opened her window.
“Emily Hale, Heart Pine Capital,” she said. “We have—”
He interrupted. “ID?”
She handed over a driver’s license. He studied it and tapped at a keyboard. Finn sat quietly, watching.
“Your plate’s not in the system.” The guard gestured slightly toward the front of their car.
“It’s a company car.”
“Get it registered before next time, please.” He pushed a control and the boom raised. “Go straight in. You’re not authorized out of the vehicle except at the vault.”
“Thank you.” She eased the car forward. They passed the control tower and admin building and continued straight into the yard.
“You know,” said Finn, “ever since 9/11, security is totally out of control on things like, oh, for instance, rail yards. You got feds, you got the state, you probably got like a billion taxpayer dollars buying drones and guns and armor to protect the trains in here.”
Emily nodded. “And the vault itself has three-foot concrete walls, reinforced of cour
se, and an even thicker floor. It’s mostly underground.”
“You have the plans?”
“Due diligence.” She parked in a smaller lot in front of the bunker. “Before Wes started putting inventory there, he asked for an overview. Not blueprint level but thorough.”
A truck ramp descended to an underground entrance alongside the parking lot. Finn tried to get a look without being too obvious. Spike strips, heavy pylons, possibly an overhead portcullis … He shook his head.
Inside, another guard in a neat blue uniform took their IDs—Finn’s, too, this time—ran them through a scanner, and printed temporary badges.
“Make sure they’re visible at all times,” he said.
And now the vault began to seem impossible. Through an electronic turnstile to an elevator—wide as a freight elevator, but clean and shiny—from which they debarked into a second reception zone. Two guards, one behind bullet-resistant glass, examined their badges, cross-checked, and waved them into a mantrap.
“One at a time, door will close behind you, five seconds, door will open at the other side.” The guard had obviously repeated the refrain many, many times.
Emily went first. Finn followed—and they still weren’t in. Another anteroom, one more guard.
“Cubby nineteen,” he said, looking from his computer monitor. “I’ll escort you in.”
Cameras absolutely everywhere. Heat sensors. Motion detectors behind light mesh screens.
The final door was total Hollywood: an enormous slab of steel ten inches thick with locking pins thicker than Finn’s wrist that fit into matched holes around the frame. Two metal hatch wheels and an electronic display—LED digits, soft blue glow—completed the picture.
The door hung open, as it probably did throughout the working day. The guard led them through.
The vault’s interior was surprisingly open, maybe five thousand square feet, somewhere between a bodega and a small grocery. The cages—cubbies, Finn amended to himself—were separated by half-inch tempered steel rods, set vertically two inches apart and crossed every six inches by a flat containment bar.
The guard unlocked their door. Medeco keyways. Finn sighed to himself. Probably to impress the customers, but come on, couldn’t they have cheaped out anywhere?
He stood idly, pretending not to study every detail he could see, while Emily puttered at the racks. Wes was nuts—absolutely nothing about this would be easy, if it was possible at all.
Finn caught Emily’s eye. She smiled and crooked an eyebrow, like, What do you think? Nice, huh?
Half a mil wasn’t near enough to fix Wes’s fuckup for him.
He hadn’t thought it through.
Show up at Jake’s doorstep, or brace Asher in some bar, or haul Corman out of a gym—the guilty one wasn’t going to just up and confess. Fantasies of confrontation and truth were just that, fantasies. Prison time had toughened Finn, sure. Probably too much. But it hadn’t made him into some kind of human lie detector.
On the other hand, suppose they all got back together, back for one more job. Especially one as hard as Wes’s vault—they’d be living on top of one another for weeks, even months, setting it up. All that time together and something would slip. All Finn had to do was pay attention and be patient.
Which, as it happened, were two skills that prison had taught him.
Did Wes really think he’d do it for the measly payday on offer? Or did he think that Finn would break in and then rob the place anyway? Maybe that was the plan—get his problem fixed on the cheap. Look at it that way, Wes might figure he wouldn’t have to pay Finn at all.
Lots of balls were going into the air.
Not to mention one other consideration. One other reason Finn was maybe a shade too keen to step up. One other possibility that he’d found himself thinking about far too much over the last couple of days.
Perhaps the most important one of all—or so it felt.
Emily dropped him off at the Exchange Place PATH station.
“Sure I can’t drive you back into the city?”
“No thanks. Things to do.”
“You know, to me, it looked impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible.”
“That door, like two feet of solid steel? All the guards?”
Finn laughed. “The door is pure theatre. The walls are what matter. As for the guards—their uniforms said ‘Stormwall.’ I’m sure that’s a private firm.”
“So?”
“So they were probably low bid. Those guys look good, but it’s just more showbiz.”
Emily watched him for a long moment.
“Where did you get the driver’s license?”
“What?”
“No fixed address that I know of. You were in jail less than a month ago. How’d you manage a legitimate license?”
“You pay attention, don’t you?” Have to be careful, Finn thought. He’d always been a sucker for a smart woman. “Watch the details, think about things.”
“Yeah. Just like you.”
“You notice the state it was from, too?”
“Georgia.”
“Yup.” He nodded. “Boardinghouse I was in. I kind of faked up a lease. That was good enough for residency. Had to take the driving test, though. Almost failed the parallel parking.”
“You were a little rusty?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
A car blew its horn behind them. Emily was in a drop-off zone, but people were always impatient.
“One other thing …” she said.
Finn had unclicked his seat belt. “Yes?”
“That license has your real name on it.” She continued to study him with a somewhat unnerving intensity. “And you weren’t careful inside the vault—opened handles, touched things, handled the racks.”
“Oh, that.” He looked back at her. “What do you figure?”
“You left fingerprints and DNA everywhere.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So maybe you don’t care, because you have no intention whatsoever of taking Wes up.”
“Maybe.”
The moment stretched.
“But maybe … say you do it after all, and CSI goes through with a microscope, and they find all kinds of physical evidence.” She nodded. “You have an alibi. You were already there.”
He smiled. “Even a bad lawyer couldn’t lose that one.”
“Easier than, I don’t know, a pair of gloves?”
“The technology they have today—it’s really, really hard to avoid leaving a trace for the detectives. And juries love that stuff.”
“Really?”
Finn paused. “Well, that’s what I heard, anyway. Sit in prison for a few years, it’s just one extended seminar in practical lawbreaking.”
“You’re saying you could do it.”
“Actually, I’m not sure,” Finn said. “But it sure looks fun.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOUR DAYS LATER
Finn drove a nine-year-old Ford F-150 down Milnor Street in northeast Philadelphia. He squinted through streaks and smears of rainwater on the windshield, checking signs and parking lots. A cold fog had turned slowly to drizzle as the day wore on, and the wipers were shot. Finn had bought the truck out of the ten grand Wes advanced him. He still had most of it left.
Now he slowed, figuring it had to be close. Coolidge Steel Fabricators. Baltic Plumbing. Blank cement or cinder-block buildings, barbed-wire fences around cracked asphalt.
The pickup bumped over a rough patch, and he saw his destination: Perricona Tooling & Precision. It sat small between a metals recycler on one side—a large yard of rusting junk—and a hot-dip galvanizing operation on the other. The galvanizing shop was a three-story building of corrugated metal siding, eye-watering vapor wisping from the cracks.
Two vehicles sat in front of the machine shop. One was another pickup, rust edging the wheel wells and perricona on the door. The other … the other was a beat-up little hatchback with an obama 2008 bumper sticker and what looked like a child’s car seat sticking up in the rear.
Finn kept going. A hundred feet on, he found a place to park on the far side of the recycler. He backed in, killed the engine, and sat, peering across a lot full of ancient, flaking radiators packed together like overcrowded tombstones.
It was a toddler seat.
Not what one might expect for a customer of Perricona Tooling. Finn had worked blue-collar trades his entire life, and he knew what was important. A guy would go without housing, without food, without beer, rather than show up in what looked like his girlfriend’s car.
He waited. The drizzle turned to rain.
Six minutes later, Perricona’s door opened, and a young man emerged holding a small cardboard box. Plain dark pants and a work jacket over an unmarked T-shirt—not so different from what Finn was wearing. Twenty years old, maybe. He frowned at the rain, then stepped quickly to the hatchback. The vehicle sagged noticeably from his weight when he got in, then coughed to life and drove off.
Finn waited another twenty minutes, but nothing happened. When the rain slackened, he got out and walked past the radiator graveyard. Grime spattered off gravel in Perricona’s lot.
The machine shop was dim inside. Tools filled the space, as familiar to Finn as an old pair of boots: lathes, shapers, planers, presses. Everything quiet and faintly covered in dust.
A man with safety glasses pushed up on his head stood at a screw machine, studying a pair of calipers. He glanced at Finn, did a double take.
“I’ll be fucked.” He dropped the calipers and swung forward, grinning.
“Hiya, Jake.”
“Jesus, Finn, no warning …”
What the hell, the handshake turned into a man-type hug, hands slapping backs. After a few seconds, they let go simultaneously.
A little less hair, a little more gut, but Jake appeared about the same as the last time Finn had seen him, sitting on the witness stand, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. They’d worked together for two decades, close as brothers or soldiers, but when the New Mexico prosecutors started offering deals, Jake had cracked straightaway.