Coin Heist (14 page)

Twenty

BENNY

It was probably
a bad idea to begin with. We were supposed to go over the plan in full, with all the technical details, so I'd invited the group to my Uncle Hector's garage in Olney. That was before the party, where Dakota showed me that she was no better than her asshole boyfriend or the rest of them. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid.

But we were going through with EagleFly, so I had to act like nothing had happened. And here they were on a Sunday morning, the three of them standing on the doorstep, looking like they were being held at gunpoint. Even Dakota, who—I hated to admit—was so pretty and fresh-looking (had she just gotten out of the shower?) seemed to be gritting her teeth. Was it that ghetto here? Better here than where I actually lived, Jesus.

Or maybe she just felt as uncomfortable as I did. Well, let her.

I held open the glass door, where the sign said
closed
, and waved them in. It was open only for our business.

“You sure this is okay?” Alice asked me. “I mean, I parked on the street.”

“Yeah,” I said. I'd cleared it with Hector the night before—not that he knew what we were up to. “I'm here all the time working on my stuff. He never comes in on the Lord's day. And your car's safe.”

Shoot. Why did I have to go and bring up God? I tried not to feel too guilty about what I was doing, even though I knew it was wrong. God would forgive me for trying to take care of my family, wouldn't he?

I couldn't worry about it now. Already Jason was busy scoping the front office, checking out the air freshener selection and helping himself to Hector's Hydrox cookies. No one ate Hector's Hydrox cookies.

I'd been feeling bad for the kid, the way people were throwing stuff at him, messing with his locker, stealing his books—they pretty much stole everything he didn't leave chained down. He had it rough in school. But when he acted like this, he made it hard to pity him.

“Don't touch those,” I snapped.

He shrank back, lifting up his hands like he was blocking a pass. “Sorry. Just a cookie, Ben-Ben.”

“Well, we're not here for snacks.” I led them out through the office into the main shop, with its four bays. Two were still filled with cars, one up on a lift. “And my name's not Ben-Ben.” Why did everyone always want to give me a nickname? We were not on nickname terms. We were not on any terms. I was putting up with this guy because I liked his plan, but as time went on, I was increasingly sure he was just a stoner jackass.

We were here to work, to walk through the operation on the model I'd made. And we were in Hector's shop so I could teach them some basic skills, like how to dissemble a circuit board for an alarm system and how to pick a lock. As far as I could tell, I was doing a B&E with a bunch of fools who'd never even picked up a tension wrench.

“What's that?” Jason said, pointing to the barrels in the corner.

“Oil and coolant storage,” I said. “Don't get too close.”

“Believe me, I won't. It's filthy in here,” he said, smudging dirt between his thumb and index finger.

What did he expect a car shop to look like? His grandmother's kitchen? Clueless.

“And you wouldn't want to get dirty, would you?” I imitated his girly raised hands. That shut him up.

“So, what kind of cars do they fix?” Alice asked, gawking through her big glasses.

“Any kind,” I said. “But we're really good with Hondas and Toyotas.”

“You work here, too?” Dakota asked.

Her question just proved how little she knew about me. I didn't look at her as I answered. “I used to a lot more, but school and football have been taking up too much time.” Working on cars was always a good release for me. I could just let my mind go and focus on the process, all the things that needed to be done, and there was never any question about what would work and what wouldn't.

Alice and Dakota followed me as I took out the scale model I'd built of the facility based on Dakota's notes. It was kind of budget, just a bunch of cardboard I'd stuck together with a hot glue gun, but it would work for what we needed. I set it on the floor and we crouched down in a huddle around it.

I tried to ignore the familiar smell of Dakota as she leaned in close. So far she was acting like nothing had happened. So I would, too.

“Did you track down the schedule?” I asked Alice.

She nodded. “Yup. Hansen HVAC is there biweekly for scheduled routine maintenance. Two technicians, usually, by the name of Pete Mazzarini and Robert Hibble.”

“Great. I can get a van and a decal,” I said. “Alice, you should call Hansen like you're a secretary from the Mint and tell them that it's closed for a private event on the day of the heist so they don't show up.”

“So only two of us can go in?” Dakota asked. “What will the other two do?”

“Someone should stand guard, watch from across the street,” Alice said. “And the other person can stay in the van in the garage.”

“So we enter here.” I walked my fingers into the “garage” door we'd seen.

“No offense to anyone, but I think we all agree I should be one of the ones to go in,” Alice said.

Figured she'd just assume that. She was a piece of work.

“I vote for that,” Jason said, smiling at her. “Al knows what's up.”

“Okay, but how do we get past the first security post inside?” Dakota asked. “It's not just the gate. They'll stop us on foot when we enter the building from the garage.”

“I've got that already,” Alice said. “I'll take the HVAC guys' IDs that are already in the system and scan them so we have copies. Benny can swap in fake names and our photos. We'll bring our fakes with us and say we're the subs that day . . . No big deal.”

“Once through security, we go up the elevator here, up from the garage.” I showed them the route. “There are two sets of elevators and stairs, one on Race Street and one on Arch. Both go up to the lobby level but only the Race side elevator goes to the basement level, where the boiler room is. We go in there and act like we're on the job, while Alice fixes the security camera feeds. Then up to the lobby and production floor, where the real job begins,” I said. Here I had a bunch of matchboxes and paper clips arranged like the assembly line.

“Nice machinery,” Jason said.

So what if I wasn't artistic like him—you could get the basic idea. He was such a dick sometimes. I ignored him, it just wasn't worth it.

“What's the exit route?” Dakota asked.

“Through the elevator,” Alice said.

“But what if the building loses power? We need an alternate way to get out with all the stuff.”

Dakota always said that a plan was only as good as its emergency backups. I agreed with her there. No point in taking any more risks than we had to.

“Then we use the fire stairs to get up to production,” I said, showing them on the model where it would be. “We leave the doors propped just in case. We'd have to disable the door alarm.”

“Why don't we climb through the vents and stuff to get upstairs?” Jason said. “That would be awesome!”

“That only works in the movies,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Have you seen those things in real life? They're filthy and small and you can catch diseases from the filters—all kinds of nasty stuff grows in there. No, man, the only way is to walk in like we're checking something in there. If we have a good cover, it should be fine. See, there's a double door here, and that puts us on the floor. Here, along this wall's where Garcia's office is. There are motion detectors here and here, which they use on weekends when no one's in the offices. Those motion detectors can only be turned off by security. So we have to be careful not to walk in these areas.” I swept my fingers around the edges where the sensors would catch us.

“Unless we hire some acrobat guy to do back flips!” Jason said. “Like in
Ocean's Twelve
.”

Alice laughed.

“Again, guys, movies.” I wanted to smack him, but I controlled myself. Why did he have to act like an idiot? If I'd had even half of his advantages . . . I took a deep breath to calm down.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just, this is kind of fun. I can't believe we've made it this far.”

“Well, we're not there yet. Meanwhile, the guards see what?” Dakota asked.

“Alice's security feeds,” I said.

“Which is nothing, pretty much,” she said. “Beautifully executed nothing. I'll capture the feeds when the real HVAC guys are there so we'll look like we're doing what they normally do.”

“What about the security rounds, though? Where are they going inside of the building?” Dakota pressed.

“Well that's another technical issue,” Alice said. “I think we can figure that out from their RFIDs, which doors they punch in and when. I need to do a little more surveillance hacking.”

“We need an exact schedule,” Dakota warned. “I want times.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alice said, and it was obvious she was getting annoyed with Dakota's prodding.

“But we're clear that they won't notice us messing around in there?” Jason asked.

I broke in. “We do know that on their control panel, there's a light that goes on when production runs. The only thing we'd have to worry about is if it stops suddenly, because an alarm goes off. That would alert them to a problem.”

“But I have our run timed to go inside of the normal run,” Alice said. “So it won't be a problem. It'll do our coins, then switch back to the normal standard quarter.”

“And then?” Jason asked.

“We leave the way we came in. Down the stairs to the first floor, and down the elevator to the garage. Like respectable repairmen,” Alice said. “If there's a problem with the elevator, we can ask security to let us back into the garage when it's time to leave, because they'll obviously know we need to leave in our van.”

“Hopefully we won't have to do that. And Alice will have the coins in a lead bag in her toolbox, which should pass through the metal detectors on the way out,” Dakota said. “But what about the alarm? In the fire stairs? And the van locks?”

“Right.” I nodded. I grabbed a wedge and a straight piece of metal wire, then I led them over to a Pontiac that needed a new transmission.

Dakota wanted to make sure, since we were going to have keep the van securely locked at all times, that we all knew how to break into it in case we got split up at any time. It was good thinking, I had to admit that.

I showed them how you'd wedge into the rubber stripping of the car door, making enough space to slip the wire in and use that to hit the unlock button inside.

Jason stepped up to try, and within a minute, I swear, the wire broke inside the car. “Oops,” he said, and he did look kind of embarrassed. “My bad.”

I squared off in front of him. “What the hell, man?”

He gave a guilty smile. “You have a key, right? You can just open the door and get the wire out of there.”

I didn't have the key. The keys for all the cars being serviced were locked in Hector's desk—a security measure Dakota would have approved of. I was going to have to figure out a way to get it out, but I would just deal with that later. What a loser.

“Sorry,” he said again.

“Now the rest of us won't even get a turn,” Dakota said.

“Whatever, let's just do the fire stairs alarm.” I tried to snap us back on task. I pulled a screwdriver off the wall, a tension wrench from my box, my soldering iron, and a power drill, setting them down on a workbench. “I'll have to figure out what specific model they have, but basically it's the same in most cases. You remove the plastic cover and take out a circuit—”

“You use this, right?” Jason grabbed the soldering iron.

“So cool!” Alice said over his shoulder. “I've always wanted to try that.”

“You could make a kick-ass bong with this thing!” Jason said, looking at Alice. Was he trying to impress her or something? I was pretty sure the girl didn't smoke up. Yet she giggled anyway.

“Careful with that,” I said.

“I am.”

“You're holding it wrong.” I reached out to adjust his arm. “If you did it like that, you'd melt your sleeve.”

“It's just like metalworking,” Dakota said, taking the soldering iron from Jason and inspecting it.

“This isn't just some sculpture,” I said. “It's precision work.”

“You go to a tech school to be a mechanic,” she said. “It can't be that hard.”

“Right,” I snapped. “Just like anyone can be an honors student.”

She held the tool against her chest, clasping her hands over it. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. But you're pretty much following a manual, aren't you?”

Was she for real? “No, there's a lot more to it.”

Computer systems, analysis, problem solving, being able to explain the issue to people who knew nothing about anything—cars were not that simple. Sure, anyone could tell you your
check
engine
light was for a “loose gas cap”—the oldest trick in the book. Hector always said it took ten thousand bolts to put a car together and one nut to break it down.

But I wasn't gonna explain it to her. Screw her and her fratboy
novio
and her snotty rich girl opinions. Screw all of these people. They didn't know a damn thing. My fists curled up.

“Aw, Ben-Ben is pissed,” Jason said.

“I'm not Ben-Ben, and I'm not Benito!” I yelled.

“Okay! Calm down!” Jason said. “Relax, man. You're doing a good job.”

“Guess what. I don't need you to tell me I'm doing a good job. I need you to pay attention. I'm trying to explain an important part of the plan, and you punks are just fooling around. I can't be the only one who knows how to do this!” I backed away from the workbench. “Give me back the soldering iron.”