Smash & Grab

by Amy Christine Parker

  We take the stairwell the whole way up. Ten floors. The elevator’s too risky because we can’t be sure where the real cleaning crew is. My legs are burning by the time we reach the twenty-first floor. I make a mental note to up my cardio workouts. Every sound we make echoes down the stairwell. Quinn takes point, easing open the door leading out to the offices inch by inch.

  “Clear,” he whispers.

  We have two bright yellow cleaning carts waiting beside us on the landing. Oliver was impressively thorough in arranging it all. There are mops and brooms corralled in each, next to identical trash containers with cleaning products hooked onto the sides. We haul them out of the stairwell and start making our way through the maze of hallways and cubicles to Harrison’s office. I can feel the security cameras watching even if I can’t see all of them. We keep our heads down and our caps low over our faces.

  “Be fast,” Elena whispers when we reach the split in the hallway. Whitney and Oliver follow her into the first set of cubicles to their right and start emptying the trash cans.

  Quinn and Leo follow me to Harrison’s door. It’s locked. Keys. Crap. One detail Oliver couldn’t cover. I was hoping that since the offices get cleaned every night, they’d be unlocked. Custodial probably has a set—which doesn’t help us any. We can’t exactly call down and ask them to bring the keys up.

  “Would his assistant keep a key?” Quinn asks.

  Leo gets busy dusting the office doorframe, effectively blocking Quinn and me from the security camera’s view. There’s only one in the hallway outside, pointed at Harrison’s office and the office next to his.

  I hurry over to the assistant’s desk and start opening drawers. There’s just paperwork, gum, a couple of Post-its with random phone numbers scrawled on them, some makeup, and female supplies in the first two drawers, but in the third there is a set of shiny silver keys strung onto a Coach key chain. I hurry to Harrison’s door. The fifth key is the right one.

  Leo scoots the cart closer to the door, positioning it with the mops and brooms smack in the center, taller than him so they take up the top half of the door. Then he empties the assistant’s trash can and sets it on the cart so that it blocks the middle part of the open door. The cart covers the rest, and we are effectively out of sight.

  We rush into Harrison’s office. It’s different at night. Not creepy, exactly, but the picture of Harrison that is hanging on the wall puts me on edge. It’s like he’s watching us.

  Quinn pulls out the baby powder, makeup brush, and little condiment dish he brought. He pours some powder into the dish and then gathers the tiniest bit of powder onto the makeup brush and dabs it onto Harrison’s computer keyboard. We hold our breath and watch the powder settle onto the keys. The problem is that most of the keys have been heavily used. There are fingerprints everywhere. Quinn paces the room, thinking. He consults his phone, where he’s keeping a running list of all the things he knows about Harrison. He tries Harrison’s birth date first, then his wedding anniversary date. No good. The birth dates of his kids. The birth dates of each of his parents. “He’s too smart to use something easy,” Quinn murmurs. He stares at the computer for a long time, and I start to fidget. We need to hurry.

  “The elevator just went up to nineteen,” Leo calls from the outer-office doorway. “Elena thinks we might have ten minutes before we need to go.”

  “What is it?” Quinn chews on the inside of his cheek. “Hey, go look through his assistant’s desk again.”

  “Why?”

  “He might’ve given her the password. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not. But I don’t know what else to try.”

  I rush back over to the desk and look for anything that might resemble a password. I’m about to give up when I lift up her keyboard and discover a whole list of passwords taped to the underside. Some or all of them are probably hers, but…

  Quinn goes down the list, trying them. It’s there—the third one down. We’re in.

  I help Quinn sift through emails on conferences and meetings, entire files detailing bank procedurals, but there’s nothing that might help us.

  “We’re done here, Lex.” Quinn leans back in the chair and rubs his face with his hands. “He has some personal banking records here, sure, but with no unusual deposits, no email trails that I can see right off the bat that hint at anything. Even his work files are clean. Too clean. He’s got to be hiding something, simply because everything is too tidy, know what I mean?”

  I lean against the wall and start knocking my head against the plaster. There’s nothing in his home office, nothing here. Where is he hiding everything?

  “You’re out of time and we’re at a dead end here. If we had months to monitor him, maybe, but days? It’s a lost cause.”

  This can’t be it. I can’t—we can’t—have gone through all this effort and in the end have nothing to show for it.

  I walk into the bank’s main branch for the second part of my orientation, my purse clutched tightly to my side. What am I even doing here? Last night proved that whatever slim trail of evidence that exists to link Harrison to my dad and the mortgage scam won’t be discovered here. I’m wasting my time. And yet I couldn’t stay away. I can’t give up, even if the whole thing’s hopeless. And then there’s the thing with Christian. I’m supposed to get him the security information he needs. I don’t have to, but the more I think about it, the more I want to. Stealing from the bank isn’t going to hurt Harrison, but it’s something to hold on to. Elena thinks I just want an excuse to see Christian again, but that’s not it…at least not entirely.

  “Angela?” Approaching me with her hand extended is a woman with hair the color of raven feathers and lipstick so red that it almost glows. I shake her hand and muster up a smile. “I’m Stella, the lead teller this morning. You’ll be with me today, okay?”

  She shows me to the break room, where I put my purse into a locker, before she leads me back out to the teller counter, and together we go behind it. Half a dozen people are lined up in front of computers, fingers flying over the keys or flipping through money, their lips moving a bit as they count. “Every teller is assigned a station,” Stella explains, her voice low, her mouth close to my ear. So the customers don’t hear? I wonder.

  “Each station has a cash drawer and its own small key and a combination safe with backup funds.” Being here, behind the counter, watching the tellers counting out money and handling transactions, is sort of exciting. Maybe I’m imagining it, but the air almost smells like the green stuff, like paper and ink and chemicals. The bills coming out of one girl’s drawer are crisp enough that they make this snapping noise as she counts, setting bill after bill onto the counter as the customer in front of her watches, both of them making sure that the amount is correct.

  “Okay, so basically our tellers take deposits, cash checks, help with money orders, that sort of thing. Margo?” She walks me up to a stubby red-haired woman with a blizzard of freckles on her arms and chest, a middle-aged, frumpy Lohan type with a set of lines in her forehead so deep that they make her look like she’s got the number eleven branded between her eyebrows. “This is Angela, our intern. She’s going to sit with you. Talk her through your transactions, and when you think she’s got it, feel free to let her handle a few herself.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Margo says, but those frown lines of hers make it hard to believe the sincerity or cheer in her voice. I’m mentally scheduling her a Botox session when our next customer walks up. “Good morning, sir.” Margo takes the man’s deposit slip and a stack of checks and begins to bring up his account on the computer. Margo processes the guy’s deposit and hands him a receipt, and then there’s another customer and another. After an hour, I learn something important: after the initial Oh my god, look at all the money changing hands, the teller’s job is totally boring. I mean, an utter snoozefest. Mainly it’s a lot of counting and computer inputting and “Hi, may I help you” and “Have a nice day.” Lather, rinse, repeat. There are a few interesting inside
r secrets, but they only come in little bursts. Stuff like how much is in the teller drawers (less than five thousand dollars at any given time); where the money with the dye packs is (in Margo’s drawer, it’s in the center slot) and what it feels like (it makes the stack stiff so it doesn’t bend); where the button that activates the silent alarm is (every counter has one, but the bank manager also has a remote one on his person); and the intel on the safes (the teller and the head teller or bank manager have two distinct codes that have to be input to open them). The whole time I can feel the overhead security cameras watching, their black lenses taking in every person’s every move in high-def. I see why Christian wanted me to get him as much security information as I could. I can’t imagine walking in here cold.

  “Angela!” I look up, startled, straight at Harrison’s smug face. After last night, it’s disorienting seeing him like this. He’s on the other side of the counter, side by side with a girl who looks to be in her twenties. She has these little-girl doe eyes that she’s emphasized with eyeliner so that she looks like one of those retro Barbie dolls, and her brown hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, making the resemblance even stronger. The only thing that doesn’t jibe with her overall appearance is the bruised-looking spot along her collarbone that I’m pretty sure isn’t a bruise at all but a hickey. Ew.

  “Mr. Harrison,” I say, feigning enthusiasm when all I really want to do is spit in his face. “What brings you downstairs?”

  “This young woman and I got to talking in the lobby. She used to go to my daughter’s school, if you can believe it.”

  I look at her. No, she didn’t. I would know her if she did. Weird.

  “Small world. Anyway, she wants to open a safe-deposit box and, well, I thought I’d offer to accompany her so I could check up on my favorite intern.” He winks at me and I want to puke. The man is habitually pervy. Not so much that I can be sure it’s intentional, but enough that my skin crawls every time he looks at me.

  Stella walks over to us. “Mr. Harrison. Nice to see you down here, sir. You know Angela?”

  “She goes to my alma mater. Sharp, this one. We’ll be fortunate to nab her if she decides that banking is in her future. Stella, this is Stephanie Crawford. Stephanie, Stella. She’ll get your deposit box squared away for you.”

  “Hey.” Stephanie holds out a hand to Stella, then to me. It’s all limp and clammy. Ugh. I hate when people don’t commit and dead-fish shake.

  “Look, I’ve got to get back upstairs. You’re in good hands with these ladies,” Harrison says. He pats Stephanie’s arm. I stare at the Rolex around his wrist and the soft, manicured look of his fingers. Everything about him reeks of ease and wealth and untouchability. Stephanie gives him this confused little frown as he starts to walk away.

  “It was nice to see you again. I’ll have my daughter call you,” he says as he heads for the lobby, a little too loudly. Several tellers look up from their counting.

  Stella calls over a woman in an emerald silk shirt and heels so high I’m surprised she can walk. She’s probably five four without them, but right now we’re almost standing eye to eye. “Brynn, the young lady would like to open a safe-deposit box, and our intern, Angela, will be watching the process.”

  Brynn motions us over to her desk. She has Stephanie sit across from her, and me to her right, so I can see the computer as she pulls up the screen.

  It is a pretty straightforward process in the end. Stephanie fills out the paperwork and gives Brynn her license and account information. Then it’s just a matter of collecting the year’s rent for the box, which Stephanie hands her, all in cash, and then Brynn’s handing the girl her keys.

  “Clint, can you walk down with us to the vault?” Brynn leans back in her chair, her phone balanced in the crook of her neck. “Yes, now. Thank you.”

  Stephanie leans down to grab her purse, and a necklace slips out of her shirt. A necklace with a pendant on it. It’s unusual in an ugly kind of way. A heart with some diamonds layered on top of…wait. My breath hitches. It’s the one Harrison bought the other day. The one he said was for his wife.

  “Nice necklace,” I say, leaning in so I can get a closer look. Yep, it’s the one.

  Stephanie looks down, her cheeks reddening, and quickly drops it back under her blouse. “A gift from a friend,” she says.

  “A male friend, right? And not your garden-variety college boy, either. Are those diamonds real?”

  She nods and I whistle. “Wow. Lucky you.” Actually, unlucky her. She had to let Harrison suck on her neck—probably worse.

  Clint appears, and there’s no time to ask Stephanie any more questions. We follow Clint down the stairs to the vault where the safe-deposit boxes are kept.

  “This way,” Brynn says, motioning us down the hall, all of our shoes clicking on the marble floor. It’s an impressive space, a throwback to the art deco era. I run a hand along the wall admiringly. No wonder they shot films down here.

  “Okay, here we are.” Brynn walks up to the thick steel door at the end of the hallway. There are two key-code pads, and she and Clint each stand in front of one, then punch in a set of numbers simultaneously. “Angela, all the vault access doors have two keypads. To get in, we need both of the employees with codes to enter them at the same time. In this branch it’s the head teller, the bank managers, and a few of the loan officers who have the codes. The codes themselves change often and are not shared between employees. For example, Clint would never know my code and I can’t know his. This ensures the security of the vault. Well, that and the security cameras.” I look up at the cameras hanging at various points along the hall, at the one right above us, trained on the door. I try to imagine who might be watching us through them right now.

  “Is someone inside the bank watching the camera feeds all the time?” I ask.

  “At this bank, yes. Our security division is upstairs, but at our other satellite branches, no. Their camera footage feeds directly here and is housed on our security systems upstairs and is only reviewed when there is a security breach.” Brynn opens the door and we walk into the safe-deposit-box room, a sort of antechamber to the actual vault, which is behind another huge steel door more imposing and impenetrable than the first. The walls are lined with boxes, all of them numbered and each with two locks. Brynn leads us to number 1539, down at the end of the left-hand wall, close to the main vault door.

  “Ms. Crawford, every time you come to view the contents of your box, you’ll need your key. I have the bank’s master to release the box from its location, but the box won’t actually open without your key. If you were to lose it, we would have to force open the box at your expense, so you’re going to want to keep it safe.” Double safety measures on everything. The vault is a fortress.

  Brynn slips her key into one lock and then waits while Stephanie does the same. The box slides out, a long narrow shoe box–looking thing. Brynn carries it back down the hall and then veers into another, smaller hallway, where there are a series of cubby-sized rooms. I can’t help thinking that they look like the person-sized version of the box Stephanie’s holding.

  “You can view your box inside this room. Once you’re done, flip the switch on the wall and the light outside the door will come on, alerting us that you’re ready to put the box back.”

  Being down here, with all the cameras, key codes, and steel doors—not to mention the millions housed mere feet from where we are—is enough to leave me speechless. Christian and the Romero Robbers have never hit a vault during one of their jobs. But he wants the layout and location from me. Are they going to attempt it here? It seems like a suicide mission.

  Brynn sets the box on the small desklike shelf inside the room, and we back up to allow Stephanie inside. What is she planning on keeping in the box? The necklace? Something else? Something of Harrison’s? He brought her in to get the box. And he’s not hiding anything anywhere else. I think about my own bank account, how the FBI seized my father’s accounts, but not mine and Quinn’s
because they were in our names. There was no way to put a freeze on accounts where there was no evidence of a direct tie to the crime. Like my dad, Harrison made money off those mortgages. Stephanie has to have the money or something that could lead us to it. It makes perfect sense.

  “Coming, Angela?” Brynn asks as Stephanie ducks into the room and shuts the door. I stare at it for a second or two, wish like mad for X-ray vision.

  “Coming.” I sigh and we walk back to the end of the hall to wait. The only way I’ll get into that box is if I break into it. But that’s impossible. “So are there cameras inside those rooms?” I ask when it occurs to me that there might be.

  “No. What people put in their boxes is considered private.”

  “But if you suspect someone of having something bad in them? Like…I don’t know…a murder weapon or something.”

  “A warrant to search it can be issued,” Brynn says. “But it’s not something that happens all that often. I’ve certainly never had to open one for the police. It’s fun to wonder what people put in them, though.” She laughs. “One of our managers said that this older lady came in once and asked if she could store her dead dog in hers. She’d had him stuffed and wanted to keep him safe. Weird, right?” I nod. Right now the only thing I wonder is what Stephanie’s storing for Harrison. It’s important, whatever it is—I can feel it. This is the thing we’ve been looking for. Just beyond that door. I’m so close. So close.

  The light outside Stephanie’s room goes on, and we let her out and reverse the process we used to get down here, relocking the vault door. “Tonight, remind me to have you come down to watch us set the timer. At the end of every night we set the vault door to stay locked until the morning. This means that even if someone with the codes tried to open the vault, they couldn’t until the appropriate hour. Same for weekends, so, basically, the vault is impregnable even by bank employees when the bank isn’t open,” Brynn says.