Coin Heist (11 page)

Fourteen

JASON

Operation EagleFly wouldn't
be cheap.

During Friday lunch, the team met backstage in the auditorium. We passed around Dakota's iPad to check out her budgeting spreadsheet detailing our expenses.

Alice had already paid for the Pwn device, and she wanted to be reimbursed a thousand bucks. There was the cost of gas and transport to and from the “venue,” as Dakota called it. There was some wiring and circuitry and whatnot. Benny said he needed three thousand for the wheels, and another eight hundred for the blank RFID cards.

“Eight hundred, really?” I asked him.

He nodded. “They're not easy to come by. I gotta call around to some people, and that means the price is whatever they feel like charging that day.”

I read down the column. “And what's this ‘miscellaneous?'”

“You know, incidental costs. Things we haven't accounted for,” Dakota said. “For instance, we still don't know what our cover will be going into the building. We'll probably need disguises.”

“For six hundred dollars? That's pricey for something that's
incidental
.”

“Come on now. You can afford it,” Benny said to me.

If only he knew
. “I can't, actually.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, with a smile.

“I'm serious,” I said. “There's nothing left. We're dead broke.”

Everyone was quiet in this tense kind of way, until Benny broke the silence. “I don't think you know what broke is.”

That bugged me. What, we were gonna compete about who had less money now?

And also, there was something else—his tone, maybe. The fact that Benny was absolutely unafraid to say who he was and where he came from. Alice was kind of like that, too. I wished I shared their confidence. Even if they were total misfits.

“Never mind. We'll just deduct these costs from the take,” Alice cut in, trying to break the tension, and I was super relieved.

The total cost, which she sussed out in her head even though Dakota had already calculated it electronically, came to $2,532 per person.

“I guess I can use my card—my parents never really check it,” Dakota said. “But that means I'm playing banker. I'll manage and distribute the funds once we have them. One coin is all we need for our overhead. We'll only use a portion, and we'll put the rest toward the school fund.”

“Of course you get to be the banker,” Alice muttered. I kind of agreed with her on that score.

“I'm taking a risk, you know, by charging this stuff. Plus I'm the most experienced at managing things,” Dakota said. “Who do you think made the presentation to United Way after last fall's pie sale?”

“So you know how to smile behind a gigantic check?” Alice said.

“There's more to it than that,” Dakota said.

“I trust her,” Benny said. “Come on. You guys know she'll be honest.”

He was right, of course. We all trusted Dakota.

“Shake on it?” she said, holding out her hand. All four of us took turns shaking.

Then a weird silence fell over us.

“Why does this feel so serious?” Alice said, which was exactly what I was thinking.

“Because we're locked in now,” Dakota said. “There's skin in the game.”

I was sitting in the passenger seat on the way home from school when a text message buzzed in my pocket.

No practice today. The guys say they're done.

I had to read it a couple of times to be sure I understood. Zack didn't even have the decency to tell me in person that the band—the band
I
cofounded—was breaking up?

At least then we could have had a real conversation. Instead I was muttering “You've gotta be kidding me” at the piece of plastic in my hand.

“What?” my mom said from the driver's side. She felt guilty for stealing my car, so she'd volunteered to pick me up from school on her way home from her new job, which was working the espresso counter at the Beany Baby in Ardmore. Never mind that she had a PhD—now she was taking orders from a 20-year-old manager named Mason who had Daffy Duck tattooed over her right boob.

I waved my hand for her to be quiet as I called him. At least Zack could tell me with his own voice.

As soon as he answered, I launched into it. “I said I was working on it. Can we at least get together to talk—”

“Naw, man, it's not just the practice space. Me and Chaddie are going to play with the Uh-Ums. And Max said he wanted to spend more time at the skate park.”

“But why? I can fix this. You barely gave me a chance.” I hated how my voice sounded.”

“I tried. I tried to tell them.”

I knew instantly that he hadn't. He hadn't done crap. “So that's it, then?” I asked, vaguely aware that I sounded like Alice had the other day when I was ready to give up our plan. “I thought we were in it to win it.”

“Dude, we have personnel issues. I just don't think we can work around them. Chaddie said . . . his voice trailed off.”

“What did he say?”

He coughed. “He said you were unreliable, like your old man.”

“
I'm
unreliable? What about you, the guy who never shows up on time?”

“I'm only quoting what he said. I would've told you at lunch but I couldn't find you, man.” That was because I was working with the EagleFly team, which of course he didn't know. “You're never around anymore. What's up with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. I would have to be more careful or he was going to get suspicious. Then again, it wasn't like the band would be hanging out at lunch anymore. It occurred to me then that it wasn't just the band—I was losing my social life, too. Just when everyone else at the school hated my guts. Jesus. The only people who talked to me anymore were the EagleFly team, and they
had
to.

I was afraid I might say something I'd regret later, that I might break down. “Thanks for the update,” I snapped and hung up.

“Who was that?” my mom asked.

“Zack,” I said, staring out the window in disbelief. I was too stunned to make something up. Besides, my mom could usually see through me when I tried to lie. “He just broke up the band.”

“Oh no, honey. I'm sorry.” She glanced over at me with her concerned face. “Are you okay?”

“Me? Yeah. I mean, it wasn't working out. S'cool,” I said, trying to gather what was left of my pride.

“What are they going to do about prom? Isn't it only a couple of weeks away?”

“I don't know. Guess it's not my problem anymore,” I said, like it was a big relief. Even though it really wasn't.

Fifteen

DAKOTA

I parked my
Lexus on Race Street, then checked my reflection in the rearview. Hair still set in place by my headband. Eye makeup (soft brown liner with a hint of shimmer) perfect. Skin, pasty: could use a bit of Benetint. Overall, though, not too bad.

This was one of those days where looking good was more important than feeling it. (Well, according to my mom, that was every day.) I'd spent a lot of time getting ready, choosing the right white turtleneck sweater and the right brown tights and the right camel-colored wool pencil skirt and the right just-weathered-enough boots. I wanted to look nice and responsible but not especially memorable.

So here I was. On the outside, I appeared calm, collected, mature. Inside? I was thoroughly freaked.

This was my moment in Operation EagleFly. Since I was the project manager (clearly a vital job, no matter what anyone else in the group said), I was charged with the task of getting Garcia's ID card. Um, yeah. No big deal, except that the entire operation now depended on my success. The ID was access, and access was everything.

Of course it was Alice's idea.
Aren't you a good actress
?
she'd asked. I just hoped she was referring to my performance in
Carousel
(one of the only school plays my parents let me do, back in eighth grade, before our school record started to matter). At least I hoped that was what she meant.

I patted my purse, feeling the device that Benny and Alice had built. It looked like a bunch of circuits in a clear plastic case, about the size of a smartphone. To hear them talk about it was to hear two people speaking not just in a foreign language, but doing it backward while leaving out important vowels. ARM, FPGA, LED, JTAG, USB. That last one I'd heard of, at least.

Luckily, I understood the golden rule of overachievers everywhere: Act Like You Know. Which I'd had to do then, nodding and
um-hming
as they chattered away. And I had to do it again right now, as I stuck my parking pay stub on the windshield, locked up the car, and started down the street to the Mint, like I wasn't skipping Calculus or anything. I had a cover—I'd told my parents I had a toothache and needed to go to the dentist, and they'd called in to the school office to tell them I'd be late. I'd already called the dentist and cancelled the appointment. Still. I'd never cut anything before. Not even Peer Counseling, which was HF's most B.S. class.

As I approached the imposing building, I felt my nerves rattling. Garcia was probably right on the other side of the door, waiting for me in the lobby. In his email, he said he only had a short window of time, so I should arrive promptly at 9:15 a.m. According to my phone, it was 9:14 exactly.

The Mint policeman, whose torso was practically as broad and hulking as the Mint itself, patted me down and opened up my purse. The card reader was sewn into the lining, but that didn't matter because he wasn't doing a thorough check anyway. All he saw was a cute teenage girl. So when he asked me for my ID and I said I forgot it, he let me right in, through the metal detector and into the lobby. This way there would be no official record of me ever being in the building. (Sure, there was video footage, I had to assume we were always on camera, but Alice promised us she was going to go in and delete that. All that would be left was Garcia's word, which was why I had to be careful to seem super-innocent so he wouldn't even have a reason to think of me.) There were backup plans for the backup plans, because that was the project manager's job, thank you very much.

Garcia wasn't in yet, so I sat down on a bench outside of the gift shop to wait for him. I stared at the falling coins projected on the wall, thinking of our first visit here, how the four of us barely talked to each other back then, how a field trip was just a field trip. I'd had no idea that the stuff Garcia was showing us would lead to . . . Well, whatever I was doing now.

And here Garcia was now, walking in rushed strides toward me, his open sportcoat flapping. “I'm so sorry, Dakota. I was just on a conference call that went way too long. You know how these things are.”

“Of course. No worries at all. I'm just so glad you could make time in your busy schedule to meet with me.”

He clapped. “Happy to help. Would you like to come to my office?”

I nodded like it was no big deal, but getting into his office right now was
everything.
“Sure.”

We walked through the gift shop and past the elevator to the
employees only
door. Next to the elevator was a place marked
refuge
. Interesting.

I followed him down a long corridor, watching closely as he brandished his ID card to open a door.
There's a chip in there that communicates with a reader through a radio frequency
, Alice had explained to us in our little tutorial session the day before.
The reader checks to make sure the ID number its getting is authorized, then allows the door to open
.

All of that happened, I guess, because we were through. Garcia slipped the card into his back pocket.

Right where I wanted it.

I was, of course, also doing some simultaneous reconnaissance for the crew. My memorizing skills, honed after years of studying AP textbooks I didn't really understand, were going to come in handy today. I had to memorize the floor plan and draw up a map so we could figure out how to get in on June 14th. That was the part that really worried me. How were we going to beat the police security? I'd already seen them walking by twice now, noting the time on my watch. Maybe the guards didn't care about the ID, but inside, this place was worse than a prison.

Hallway, hallway. Door 1, Door 2. Big emergency exit sign here, to my right, a bunch of cubicles. Hallway, hallway, hallway.
I tried to mentally talk it through as we went because I had a better memory for words than pictures.

“What's down on the lower level?” I asked.

“That's where all the utilities are, plus storage and stuff. Spooky down there. Did you have trouble finding the place?” Garcia asked.

“No, not at all. It wasn't that long ago that we visited.”

“That's right. I forgot you were here. I just remember that one kid, the troublemaker who kept interrupting.”

So he remembered Jason. That was probably a bad thing.

“Every village needs an idiot, I guess,” he said.

Then again, maybe not—not if Garcia thought he was stupid. Poor Jason, but hey, that might prove useful. Because a village idiot couldn't be the mastermind of a plan like this, could he?

I guess we were all about to find out.

Finally we reached Garcia's office, which had a full wall of glass windows overlooking the plant floor where the machines were moving along, pumping out coins. “Wow,” I said. “What a view.”

He grinned. “I know. I get to stare out at it every day.”

He hung up his jacket on a hook on the back of the door and pointed for me to have a seat in a chair across from his desk, my back to the windows. I looked around for ceiling-mounted cameras as Benny had instructed me. There were none that I could see, but I did see motion detectors in all of the corners.

Garcia tented his fingers together. “Now, how can I help you?”

I gave him my winningest smile. “Well, I was so inspired by the Mint visit and the project we did for Mr. Rankin's class that I decided to do some more research about coin development. Actually?” and here I leaned in, like I was telling him a secret. “There's an American History essay contest, sponsored by the National Association of Liberal Arts Scholars? It's a sure ticket to college acceptance, and they give you two thousand dollars toward tuition.”

There was no such thing as NALAS. There was no contest, of course. But I doubted Garcia would be doing any fact-checking, because who would lie about something like that?

He tapped his desk with two official fingers. “That sounds great. It's so good you Haverford Friends kids are exposed to opportunities like that. My sons' teachers barely know their names.”

“We
are
lucky,” I agreed. The truth was, I loved HF. I loved the old breezeways connecting the lower and middle schools, the little tags identifying every tree on the property, the fact that we had a school song we sang at every event. I couldn't stand the thought of our beautiful campus being shut down, the lawns allowed to grow weedy. We had to pull this off so we could save the school and so I didn't have to go to Bertrand Academy. Also, this heist stuff was kind of fun.

“So what do you need from me?”

“What I'm looking for is some background about the very first mint,” I said. “You know, the one the Founding Fathers built. I think it would be interesting to write about how the idea of manufacturing money has evolved over time.” I started to lose myself in the rehearsed speech—it was almost like listening to someone else talk.

“Oh, I've got plenty of that stuff from the bicentennial celebration. I just need to dig it out because that was awhile back now. What would you need?”

“Any documentation of the engineering, really. Copies of letters, plans . . . that kind of thing.”

“Hang on.” He bent down from his seat to a file cabinet.

As Garcia dug around, I came around to his side of the desk, pretending to admire the family photos on the shelf behind him.

“You have two sons?” This was so easy, to assume this other personality. Maybe because it wasn't really all that different from the person I pretended to be at school. This Dakota, too, was confident and smart, put together like a well-fitting pair of jeans.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled. “Nate's twelve and Sam's fifteen, and there's a third on the way in May. Hmm . . . I think it's here . . . the last time I looked . . .”

My heart was pounding wildly. But there it was, no mistaking it—the plastic corner of the card peeking out of his back pocket. With a shaky hand I reached down and made a grab for it.

As I did, he suddenly straightened up and turned around. And my guilty hand shot behind my back, the card slipping onto the floor with a
fffffttttt
sound, soft but distinct.

OhmyGODohmyGOD. He felt it. He's so on to me!

When he turned in my direction, Garcia's face was furrowed. My mind raced. Thirty seconds and a call to security, and I'd be escorted right out of here. My parents would get a call, and then the school. Or maybe the other way around. I'd be in lockdown by 5 p.m., wearing a hideous orange jumpsuit and clunky black boots.

You know how I had time for all of these thoughts? Because those few seconds seemed to stretch on for an eternity, bending and shifting and moving away from time itself like the molten chunks of metal on the assembly line.

Until Garcia's face relaxed again.

“Actually, I think it might be in my other files,” he announced.

Huh?

I could barely believe it as he walked across the room to another set of file cabinets under the windows.

So he hadn't felt me nabbing that card after all?

Slowly, gingerly, feeling all of the blood in my body rushing to my head, I knelt down, pretending to wipe a scuff off my boot, and slipped the card into my pocket.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “But is there a bathroom in here I can use while you do that?” Even if I hadn't needed a place to upload the card info, I definitely needed a moment to collect myself.

“Sure. Right down the hall, third door to your left.” He pointed the way, and I followed his finger out the door.

Shut inside the bathroom stall, I yanked the device out of my purse, ripping the stitching in one fell swoop. Usually I was locked in a stall for one reason only. But it occurred to me, as I laid out three layers of toilet paper so I could sit on the seat, that I hadn't thrown up in the past couple of days. Not like I was trying not to or anything—we'd just been so busy planning for this thing that I hadn't really
needed
to.

And now I had bigger fish to fry. All I had to do, Benny said, was hold the card up to the antenna and look for the green light. When the green light flashed, the info would be transferred onto the device. For all their explanations, I had no idea how this thing really worked. It was magic as far as I was concerned. But that didn't matter.

With the reader in one hand and Garcia's card in the other, I sat waiting for the green light.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Where was the light? Maybe I was doing it wrong. I tried again, and waited. Maybe the light was broken? My breath was getting raspy, echoing in the empty tile-covered chamber.
Come on, thingie!

Talk about opportunity: If I missed this chance, there wouldn't be another one.

“Right, Darryl,” I heard a woman's voice say.

Then the restroom door opened and a pair of heels clicked across the floor.

That was it. Time was up. I couldn't waste another minute in here, or Garcia would get suspicious. When I heard the other stall door close, I looked down just in time to catch the green light finally blinking.

Sheesh.

I hurried out of the restroom and back to Garcia's office.

“I've got what you need,” he said. “But I'm going to have make copies, of course. I can't go handing you our original documents, can I?”

“No,” I said, my voice trembling ever so slightly, as I thought of what was in my pocket. “Of course not.”

When he was gone I looked around the room.

Quickly,
quickly.

I needed a good place to put his card. I couldn't just leave it on the floor, because that would be too suspicious, but where else would he have put it? On his desk? Too obvious.

Then I remembered his sports jacket behind the door. It wasn't great, but it was going to have to do. I pulled it off the hook and tucked the card in the right pocket. Hopefully he wouldn't notice that it wasn't where he'd left it; hopefully he'd chalk it up to forgetfulness.