Erica
Chapter playlist:
We Are Going to Rob It — Daniel Pemberton
Girls Just Want to Have Fun — Cyndi Lauper
The city is settling down for the night completely unaware that in a converted loft, seven women in pajama pants are about to plan the boldest job of their lives over a few bottles of Chardonnay and a Costco haul of junk food.
The loft isn’t really a loft so much as an old auto shop somebody hosed out and stuck a few folding tables in.
It’s all exposed brick and concrete floor and one very confused ceiling fan, but it’s got four walls nobody’s watching and enough square footage that seven women can spread out and pretend that this is just a normal girl’s night in.
I’ve got a week’s worth of nerves wound so tight in my chest that I’ve been circling the same twenty feet of concrete floor for twenty minutes. Everyone else is getting comfortable, like they’re moving in for the weekend, which, I guess some are.
Suri’s folded herself onto the windowsill ledge, tablet propped on her knee, scrolling through auction photographs like she’s a blogger curating a Pinterest board.
She has already made herself at home here, having changed the locks and covered the only sturdy wooden table with the supplies of her trade.
Faceting machines, loupes, refractometers, to name a few.
Ivy’s draped across a dumpy couch someone dragged in that someone left on the side of the street somewhere.
She’s wearing an under-eye patch on each cheekbone.
As the Face in this crew, I suppose the eye patches are doing their job.
I barely remember to take off my makeup before bed and then wake up with black smudges down my cheeks.
She arrived an hour ago, sweeping in with two pastry boxes balanced on one arm and a very confused delivery driver trailing behind her like she’d hired him for the evening, which, knowing Ivy, she basically had.
“Nick, you’re a lifesaver,” she said to him, and he practically glowed. “Erica, tip him well. He drove across the District for croissants.”
She dropped onto the couch and hasn’t moved since.
Zoe sits cross-legged on the floor with three laptops fanned out around her.
She’s been at it all day, finding the blind spots in the Four Seasons security cameras and creating more.
She has her fingers in the systems of the entire hotel, the museum, and all the surrounding areas.
If someone so much as scratches their chin within a five mile radius, she has it on video and can edit it to realistically look like they’re moonwalking at the same time. She’s scary good at her job.
The buzzer goes off like it’s about to give up the ghost, and it’s Ginger, dragging a rolling suitcase with one hand and a garment bag slung over the other shoulder, sunglasses on despite the hour.
“Do not,” she says, before I’ve even said hello, “get me started on that Uber.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“He took the bridge. In July. With traffic.” She drops the suitcase like it personally betrayed her, drapes the garment bag over a folding chair with infinitely more care than she showed the suitcase, and surveys the room. “This is the crew?”
“This is the crew.”
“Good.” She claims a spot against the exposed brick and pulls out her lip balm, mumbling about the crappy flight.
I clear my throat. “Shall we begin?”
Rue’s perched on the kitchenette counter with a family-size bag of Takis Fuego, feet swinging, crunching loudly. Her fingers are covered in red dust, which is kind of ironic for a pickpocket.
“Okay.” I clap once. “We’re doing this.”
Six sets of eyes land on me, and my nerves do a slow lap around my ribcage. Six women I hand-picked, one at a time, currently occupying every flat surface in a warehouse that will be cleared out by the end of the month.
“Before I show you anything,” I say, and my voice wobbles slightly on the word anything, “I want to say something. Each of you is here because you’re the best at what you do, and I am so unbelievably grateful all six of you said yes to me.
"Some of us go back a while, and I wouldn’t be here without you. Every single small job, every late night…” I look directly at Ginger. “Every weird con like that time we had to sort through trash bags on the carpet of that seedy hotel… has led us here. Now.”
Ginger raises up her hand. “I’m pretty sure those were old blood stains on that carpet.”
“That’s why we call it the Murder Hotel,” Tanya chimes in, a half-finished glass of Cabernet sweating a ring onto the plastic folding table in front of her.
“That’s a story for another day,” I say as we all chuckle about it.
My point is, I’ve worked with four of the six women in this room and I would trust them with my life.
Ivy and Suri, on the other hand, are new to me.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sal vetted them and I trust Sal implicitly.
He’s the one who pointed out Dennis Hobbs’ red flags, but Dad wouldn’t listen.
It wasn’t until the “incident” that Dad started suspecting Hobbs.
It was my fault for playing it down. I should have…
well, never mind that. I’ll make it all right with this last job.
“Suri, Ivy, welcome to the madness. Even though we haven’t worked together, I can already tell you’ll fit right in.”
From what I understand, as an expert gemologist, Suri remade a hundred-year-old setting so convincingly that one of hers is still hanging in a very famous museum. She’s also really good at getting past any lock. Including safes and display cases.
Ivy’s the Face, and she doesn’t pick locks or crack systems, she pretty much just bats her eyes and people hand things over and thank her for the opportunity, which is terrifying in its own right.
“So,” I say, pointing to each of them. “In this room, are six reasons this thing is going to work.”
“Seven, including you, Armitage,” Zoe says, not unkindly, still typing. “And you really don't have to do the whole speech.”
“I like the speech,” Rue says around a mouthful of Takis. “Keep going.”
“There’s no more speech. Just, thank you. I need you all fully in tonight.”
I walk to the smart board mounted on the brick, the only piece of equipment in this entire warehouse that didn’t come secondhand, and I don’t touch it yet.
“Sixteen point five million dollars. Wired to each of you, quietly, individually, by the end of summer.” I let the sentence sit in the room like a dropped plate.
For one full second nobody breathes.
Then Rue chokes on a Taki, and has to be thumped on the back.
“Each?” Ivy says. “As in, per person?”
“Each,” I confirm.
“I need you to say that number again,” Suri says. “Slower, and maybe with your hands.”
“Sixteen. Point five. Million.” I do, in fact, use my hands.
Rue whistles low, long, the sound a person makes at a fireworks show. “Okay. Okay okay okay. I’m listening. Continue.”
Tanya’s eyes are bulging. “How real is that number?”
“Extremely,” Zoe says, not glancing up from her laptop. “Assuming nobody in this room does anything catastrophically stupid between now and August.”
“So, somewhat real,” Ginger says.
“Very real,” I say, and nod at Zoe.
I pull the drop cloth off the thing that’s been sitting on the folding table behind me all night. Underneath it is a scale model of a hotel ballroom, foam board and hot glue and, unless I’m wrong, part of a shoebox, tiny paper guests frozen mid-conversation around a miniature dance floor.
“This is the Corcoran Ballroom," I say. "At the Four Seasons Hotel. In three weeks, it hosts the Stars and Stripes Celebration Gala.”
“What’s that?” Rue asks, now recovered from her Taki incident.
“It’s the closing festivities for that hockey tournament going on at the National Arena,” Ivy supplies. "But it’s not just a sports thing. There will be politicians, VIPs, and important figures of note.”
Ginger’s wine glass stops halfway to her mouth. “So that’s the target? All those VIPs?”
“Not exactly.”
Ginger knows my convictions. I never go after private citizens or personal wealth.
Just greedy corporations with shady (probably illegal) dealings.
She also knows how every job leading up to this has been small-time.
Low profile enough to keep us out of anyone’s radar.
So this one is different. Very different.
But I’m not about to betray my principles, and that’s why this next part of my presentation is important.
Zoe rubs her hands together. “Story time, ladies.”
Suri comes closer. “I love stories.”
“This one has a queen, a dead president, and a necklace that’s about to ruin all our summer plans,” I say, and tap the smart board.
A sepia portrait blooms across the screen. A woman in black mourning silk, tired eyes, spine like a fence post.
“Mary Todd Lincoln,” I say. “In 1865, a month after her husband was shot beside her at Ford’s Theatre, she got a letter from Queen Victoria.
Victoria had lost Prince Albert a few years earlier and knew exactly what that grief felt like.
Mary wrote back, and it became a whole correspondence.
One widow to another. History calls it the Friendship Letters. ”
I swipe. “Along with one of those letters,” I say. “Victoria sent this.”
The necklace fills the screen, sapphires hanging like a widow’s teardrops surrounded by halos of tiny diamonds.
That heavy, generous pendant at the center with more sapphires and diamonds getting gradually smaller as they run along the chain.
I’ve studied this piece my whole life. I could describe it in my sleep.
Suri audibly gasps. “The Friendship Jewel.“
“You are correct,” I say, and I love her a little more for it. “Some of you might already know the next part. In 1875, Mary’s son had her committed in an insanity trial. She wasn’t even told about it until the day it happened and couldn’t even defend herself.”
“Wait.” Rue holds up a Taki. “Her own son had her committed?”
“For what?” Ginger asks, and there’s an edge in her voice now.