Smash & Grab

by Amy Christine Parker

  Instead of an address, I find news articles and videos, all of them about her dad. I read each one, then watch the videos. It’s basically the same footage over and over: Lexi’s father being yanked toward a police car in handcuffs, Lexi and her mom and brother trailing after as a reporter does a voice-over about the charges her dad is facing. And that’s when things start to make sense. Her dad worked for LL National. Our target bank. Supposedly, he committed some kind of fraud involving risky mortgages. I read the articles, making notes to myself. Is she trying to clear his name? Get revenge?

  I lean back in my chair, balance on the back two legs. Whatever it is, she’s in disguise because she doesn’t want employees at the bank to recognize her. Now the only questions I have are, how badly does she want to keep her secret, and can I put aside my feelings for her to exploit it?

  “Delivery for Angela Dunbar,” I tell the security guard. I shake the paper bag with the COCINA DE MI CORAZÓN logo on it in front of his face. He sizes me up. I open the bag so he can see that the only things inside are two foil-wrapped tacos. With a sigh, he picks up the phone.

  “You can leave it here. I’ll make sure she gets it,” he says, dismissing me while he waits for whoever’s on the other end of the phone to answer.

  “She still has to pay for it, though,” I say.

  “Have Angela Dunbar come to reception, please. Delivery from, uh, co-keen-a dee me core-aye-zonn.” His pronunciation makes me wince.

  I put some distance between me and the security desk and lean against the wall to wait. Elevator music is playing, some instrumental version of a Pitbull song, which is so messed up that I want to crack up. I stare at the floor, keeping my face down so it isn’t turned toward the security camera near the ceiling. I adjust my COCINA DE MI CORAZÓN baseball cap lower on my head. I should’ve waited to catch her outside somewhere, but showing up at the bank felt more effective. It’s a jerk move, but I don’t get to be a gentleman right now. Not after what happened with Maria. Still, I’m having trouble being chill. I just want this over with.

  Play the part, pendejo. She has to think I’ll really do it, I tell myself.

  “Christian?” She doesn’t look surprised to see me, even though she didn’t order lunch from the taco truck. Actually, she looks almost pleased. Huh? It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t have time to puzzle it out. I just need to get through this quickly.

  “Got your lunch delivery here…Angela,” I say with a smirk, really emphasizing her fake name, once again holding up the paper bag.

  She narrows her eyes at me and then walks over and takes the bag from my hands, her fingers deliberately brushing mine. She gives me this sexy little smile.

  “I forgot to bring cash. I’ll walk you out and get some from the ATM,” she says loudly enough for the security creep to overhear. She seems utterly chill, and it’s freaking me out.

  As soon as we’re outside, she leads me to a quiet little courtyard between LL National and another building and leans against the wall. Lexi considers me the same way she looked at her chess pieces that day we played. “So? Are you going to tell me why you’re here, or do I have to guess?” She folds her arms across her chest so that the side of her bra is visible through the silky fabric of her blouse, and of course I look, because how could I not? Now it’s her turn to raise an eyebrow, and I’m so taken off guard that I start to laugh. I pictured her getting all scared and upset. But this? I have no idea how to react.

  “I need your help with something,” I say once I’ve gotten hold of myself, cutting to the chase.

  “Yeah? With what exactly?”

  “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say.” I try to think about how to word this. “So…sorry.” What am I doing? Rule number one of blackmailing someone has got to be not apologizing for the blackmail. I shake my head and try again. “Here’s the thing: I need some information about the bank. Security information. And you’re going to get it for me.”

  “Why? Why do you need information about the bank?” she asks, but she doesn’t seem shocked or even all that curious. It’s unsettling how calm she is.

  I stare at her a second. Has she already put two and two together and realized I’m the one who ran into her at the Bank of America robbery? “I just need it.” There. That’s better. Tougher. Even if she has figured it out, what does it matter? I still have the upper hand either way.

  “You ‘just need it.’ ” She walks around me, arms folded, head down, thinking. Her heels click on the concrete, and I can’t help looking down at the curve of her bare calf. There’s something on it. I lean over and suck in a breath. She has a tattoo on her ankle. A goldfish. That night we stole the car. She’s the one who dropped onto the hood. She’s the BASE jumper. I blink, staring at it in disbelief.

  “What?” she asks, looking down at her leg. “I like goldfish.” She makes a face and walks a circle around me. “And what happens if I say no? What if I don’t want to help you?”

  “I think you know what happens,” I say, my voice coming out all wrong—not forceful enough, like a deflating balloon. I’m not dealing with some regular girl here. Pulling off a BASE jump from the top of one of LA’s most well-known buildings without getting caught means this girl is no run-of-the-mill high school kid. I can feel my advantage slipping away.

  “I want you to spell it out,” she says, calmly watching me puzzle out what’s happening, why she isn’t rattled. “Go on. Say it.” She closes her mouth, and I find myself staring at her lips, at the little dip at the center of the bottom one.

  I shake my head and take a breath. “Or I’ll have to tell them who you really are, Lexi. I know you’re Alexandra Scott, Warren Scott’s daughter. He’s the guy who’s been in the paper for mortgage fraud, right? You’re up to something at the bank, and obviously you don’t want to be exposed.”

  She gives me an amused smile. “So what kind of security information could you possibly need, exactly?” She’s not upset; if anything, she’s enjoying this. I have the checkmate right now—all the leverage—and yet she seems to be the one setting me up for something. It’s both terrifying and fascinating.

  “Building plans, standard positions of every security officer, and who works what shift. That would be a good start.”

  “Planning on robbing the place?”

  It makes sense that she’d come to this conclusion after hearing what I want, so I’m not surprised. “What I plan to do isn’t really your concern,” I say, grinning. I can’t help it. She is freaking impressive.

  “And what if I go upstairs and quit right now? Then what?” She bites her lip and gazes up at me with a look that makes me want to pull her into my arms and kiss her.

  I shrug and lean against the wall, throw her some badass attitude of my own. I don’t want her to see how much she’s messing me up. “I don’t think you’ll do that.”

  “No?” She stares at me, her eyes twinkling.

  I stare right back. “No.”

  “So how is it that you think I’m going to be able to get you this stuff? You know I’m only interning here, right? I’m not, like, head of security or something. The building plans aren’t exactly lying around, readily available to anyone who wants them. I can’t just walk up to security and say ‘Hey, by the way, you guys mind giving me the location and codes for all of your alarms?’ ”

  Lexi gets closer, invading my space, mocking me with her eyes. I don’t get it. If she knows I’m planning to rob the bank, why isn’t she freaked out? I would’ve expected her to be trembling in her heels and crying. I was feeling guilty about blackmailing her, scaring her, but here we are, and the only one trembling seems to be me.

  “Draw me the areas you do have access to. Create a map of the bank’s layout. Give me the basics—where the cameras are in the bank downstairs, when the money deliveries come in and how they get processed. How much is in them on average. Where the vault is located exactly. The safe combinations at the tellers’ desks for their individual safes. That’ll
be a good start. It’s not my problem how you get the information. I’m not the one being blackmailed here.” I lay on my best boy-from-the-hood, East LA accent, narrowing my eyes and folding my arms across my chest.

  “And when you rob the place and the police realize that you know too much and they start looking for insider accomplices, then what? Huh? You don’t think they’ll figure out that I had something to do with it? Eventually?” she says, pacing.

  “Like I said, not my problem. If you weren’t looking for trouble, you wouldn’t be wearing a wig and carrying a false ID around.”

  She stops pacing and looks at me, one eyebrow quirking up. “Touché.”

  “Just get me the info. By the end of the week.” I am Soldado in this moment, or at least doing a pretty good impersonation of him. It is both awful and somehow thrilling. “I’m gonna make this crystal clear. I can take this info up to that guy’s office—the one you were with when I saw you. Harrison? That’s his name, right?” For the first time she looks surprised and maybe even a little impressed by me, too. She probably assumed I wouldn’t be smart enough to check out the LL National website’s employee directory. A guy like me can’t be all that clever, right? I’m used to being underestimated, but it ticks me off anyway. I get right up close to her and hold up her student ID. “Won’t look good. Warren Scott’s daughter sneaking around the bank building. What do you think that’ll do to his case?” I pull out my phone and flip through the pictures I took of her leaving her house this morning. She’s in her Angela disguise already, but the house address is clear in the background as she gets on her motorcycle. There’s no denying she’s at the Scott residence.

  I felt like a total creeper taking the photos, but having insurance in this case is essential. It was fascinating to see where she lives. The house is huge—but based on what’s happened to her dad and the haunted air the house gives off, she probably won’t be living there much longer. Makes me feel sort of sorry for her. I’ve never had money, not like that, but it has to be pretty damn traumatizing to be used to having it and then lose it overnight.

  She stares at me, lips parted, stunned silent. She hesitates for half a minute and then she agrees. “Fine.”

  “Good,” I fire back, trying to keep my head. Being this close to her is a recipe for disaster, because some part of me is still maddeningly desperate to not have her hate me. “Bring me what you got Saturday. Five o’clock. Griffith Park. Meet me by the abandoned zoo. Do you know it?” It’s a dramatic choice for this meeting because the place can be downright eerie. But I want her unsettled and uncomfortable. It’ll be easier to get her to do what I need her to. It’s messed up, and I’m not pumped about having to play the jerk, but I need to pull this job off perfectly, and the only way to do that is to get her to cooperate. Besides, it’s far from the bank and Soldado’s prying eyes and anyone else who might be watching in the hood. I know I have to use Lexi to get what I need, but I don’t want the Eme to find out about her. I’m only pretending to be threatening—I wouldn’t actually hurt her to get what I need, but they would.

  Lexi nods. “I can figure out how to get there. Are we done here?” She glances at her phone, probably checking the time.

  I nod. “For now.”

  She turns to walk off, then stops and swings around. Her eyes glitter, and once again I get the distinct impression that I’m missing something. “You sure you want to go through with this?” It’s a surprising question, one that almost sounds like a dare or a threat. Truth is, I’m sure I don’t want to go through with it. I just don’t have any other choice, but I can’t admit that. She needs to think I don’t care about her, about anything but the job. Otherwise she won’t take me seriously.

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  My meeting with Christian went better than I’d hoped. Still, I’m strangely disappointed. I guess part of me was hoping he’d have a change of heart and let me off the hook, but hello, he’s a criminal, so of course he didn’t, and now here we are. He thinks he’s blackmailing me, and I’m biding my time until I decide how best to return the favor.

  I have pictures of my own, don’t I? I’m not entirely sure when the best time will be to leverage them, but I have faith that I’ll figure it out.

  What I need now is more information. I hung out at Leo’s until late last night, doing Internet searches on every bank robbery in the area over the last few years. I found his group pretty quickly. The Romero Robbers, named after the famous horror director George Romero, who made the classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead. Apparently, the detectives who work these cases give all their bank robbers nicknames that reference something about the case, like the zombie masks Christian’s group wears. I found a handful of articles about them, as well as some security footage, but you can’t tell who’s who. Only one guy stands out. He must be well over two hundred pounds, but the others all look like identical zombie clones, with their dark clothes, masks, glasses, and black hoodies.

  But other than the pictures I have of Christian in the stolen getaway car, I have very little else to go on. You can’t exactly Google Christian Ruiz and not expect a bazillion hits. I even looked up the food truck, but other than some reviews raving about the Korean bulgogi tacos, there wasn’t much. No website. No details. So I’ll play along for now, using each meeting with Christian to glean information about him and the Romero Robbers.

  I make my way back upstairs, barely paying attention to where I’m going. I’m too preoccupied with all that’s happened and whether I should let Quinn and the others in on my blackmail situation. I think I have to. Quinn is going to freak out, but the pictures of Christian should calm him back down. Besides, I can’t just go meet Christian at the abandoned zoo alone. I’m all for risks, but I’m not stupid. It’s too remote, the perfect place for the rest of the Romero Robbers to hide and ambush me.

  Quinn will tell me to just quit. But I want this too bad now, and if I can manage to somehow get my brother and the others to help me, this could be the biggest BAM yet—we could bring down not one criminal but six.

  Almost as if the universe itself is rooting for me, it turns out that our last orientation session is with the bank security team and two police officers. Maybe I can squeeze some information about Christian and his group from them. They have to know about the Bank of America heist.

  There are two people standing at the front of the conference room—a man and a woman in plainclothes who appear to be in a good mood, joking and talking with Trisha while they wait for us to file in and settle into our chairs. I’m excited to listen to them…that is, until I get a good look at the guy. He’s the one who questioned me outside the Bank of America the other day. Detective Martin. Even as shook up as I was, there is no way I could ever forget him. He’s got this military air about him and eyes so intense they’re practically giving off an electric current that makes my arm hairs stand on end. He’s got a bristly gray crew cut, and his shoes are so shiny I can make out the blurry image of the overhead fluorescent lighting in them. This is a man who prides himself on details. I almost walk back out the door, but then it’s too late. He glances over and sees me, and I can’t run out without looking obvious.

  I don’t recognize the woman. She is a lot younger than Martin is and most likely pregnant, because there’s a little swell below her belt. It’s small enough that I would be afraid to congratulate her, though. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair is too wild to do much with except pull it back.

  I feel conspicuous even though this guy saw me only once and my face was red and swollen from crying at the time. Has he seen through my disguise? He looked right past me like he’d never seen me before.

  I read somewhere that people have tells that make it obvious when they’re covering something up or lying. I wish I knew his. And then I have a horrible thought. What about me? Am I giving off some kind of liar alarm only the police officers can detect? I should leave; I can’t take this chance. I start to get up from my chair, but Trisha shut
s the door.

  “Okay, this is Detective Martin and Detective Hobbs. They’re part of a new program the theft department has initiated to help train LL National’s employees in the event that we are held up. This is a routine part of orientation. Every one of our employees takes this training. Even those of us who don’t work directly with customers. They have some very practical ways to help you identify a possible robber before he makes his move and to deter him from following through. Pay close attention. But I don’t want you to be nervous. In all the years we’ve had interns in our banks, we’ve never had a robbery occur while one of them was present. Detectives.” Tricia sits down in the last available chair at the conference room table, and we give our full attention to Martin and Hobbs.

  For a second all I can think of is Calvin and Hobbes—the cartoon characters from my father’s old desk calendar—something my grandfather got him every year at Christmas, before he died. My father still has the last one on his desk at home, even though it’s from almost ten years ago. It helps calm me down now to try to picture Detective Martin as a fifty-something version of Calvin. Detective Hobbs looks nothing like the tiger Hobbes, so I try to imagine her in a tiger suit, belly pooch and all. I can’t help smiling a little. When she catches me, she smiles back.

  “Thank you, Ms. Bryant.” Detective Martin paces as he talks, as if staying still isn’t something he can do. I keep my head down, pen in hand like I’m eager to take notes.

  “We’re here to talk to you about Effective Capture, the new program the LAPD has been implementing with the FBI throughout the Los Angeles area to great success. Bank robberies are down across the board since we began our training. We’re on track for less than half the robberies we had just last year.”

  There is a smattering of applause.