CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Finn picked Emily up down the street from the Heart Pine offices, stopping in front of a hydrant. It was after six, streetlights on, the block seeming darker because of plastic-wrapped scaffolding looming up a tower under renovation. She didn’t see him or recognize the vehicle, so he got out and waved.

She walked up laughing.

“What is this thing? It’s so cute!” The microtruck had a tiny two-person cab and an open bed. A blunt front and round headlights that gave it a toddler’s toy-car look. It rode on tires much smaller than normal. The entire vehicle was barely over five feet tall, less than that wide, and about twelve feet long.

“It’s a Kei truck,” Finn said. “And we need it for the job. Hop in.”

Inside, he sat hunched, his head brushing the roof, knees bent under the wheel. Emily got in the other side.

“Where did this come from? A carnival ride?”

“Bought it from a community college over in Jersey. Their maintenance guys were trading up.”

“I thought you didn’t have any money left.”

“That was the last of it.”

The cab was still littered with old papers, fast-food debris, and dirt. As Finn shoved the gearshift and moved back into traffic, something clattered around in the bed behind them.

“They didn’t bother cleaning it up for you.” Emily kept her bag in her lap.

“It was kind of an informal transaction.”

“I hope you’re not planning to drive on the interstate.” The engine whined as Finn pushed it up to thirty-five. “Or even the parkways.”

Finn looked over at her. “Would you rather walk home?”

“Oh, no. This is fun.”

Crosstown rush hour was slow, pedestrian crowds dense at the corners. Finn kept to the smaller streets. Emily had her window open a few inches, and they drove past evening restaurant smells: smoke, fryer oil, a tang of spice. Illuminated signs glowed in the falling dusk.

“I checked the records,” Emily said, getting down to business. “On his estate.”

“Have to say I’m still surprised Wes keeps his personal bookkeeping in the office.”

“None of us actually work on it for him—he has an accountant come in.”

“Hmm.” Finn changed lanes, irritating a livery car driver. Horns blew. “What did you find out?”

“He’s insured, barely. Burn down his mansion, he could build one maybe half as big.”

“No need for that.”

“And I didn’t know he had a yacht.”

“Oh?”

“Forty-seven feet long. Funny he never talks about it.”

Finn glanced at her. “These files are out in the open? Not locked up? Any of you could flip through them whenever you want?”

“There are keys.” She paused. “I need to know where they are, because I work with the auditors every year. Wes’s private cabinet happens to be there, too.”

“He didn’t notice?”

“Don’t worry about it. I went in early, before anyone else this morning.”

Finn didn’t want her getting caught. It would blow the plan, of course.

But he didn’t want her getting in trouble, either.

“So the cars …” he said.

“His insurance rates will go up.” Emily shrugged. “A lot, probably.”

They drove into the Midtown Tunnel, inching along in the homeward tide. In the tube, it was dim and claustrophobic, the walls stained and damp.

“I’m not sure how to put this,” Finn said, eyes on the endless taillights glowing ahead of them.

Emily waited. “Yes?”

“Have you switched sides?”

“Hmm.”

“Before you were, I don’t know, Wes’s right-hand woman. Or something. Now …”

“I haven’t switched sides.” She turned to face him. “But when you come out of the vault with all that metal? Wes starts to circle much, much closer to the drain.”

They’d been circling around the question themselves. Finn wanted it out in the open. “That insurance you mentioned isn’t going to help, I take it.”

She laughed. “Nope. And that’s also the point when I bail out.”

“Good.”

“Wes is going down that drain by himself.”

It eased Finn’s worries. In fact, the more he thought about it, the better he felt.

“Exactly,” he said.

They finally came out of the tunnel, into the scratchy night of Queens. Off the highway, the surface roads were no less crowded, taxis and commuters and the occasional bus jostling for lane space. Finn followed Emily’s directions, alongside train tracks and then down Forty-Seventh Street for blocks and blocks.

He slowed and double-parked where she indicated, in front of a narrow three-story tenement with a tiny yard enclosed in chain link. Finn looked up at it.

“Not what I expected,” he said.

“No?”

“A downtown loft? Tribeca penthouse? I don’t know, I thought all you one-percenters needed twenty thousand square feet and a helipad.”

“I’m an employee. If I had that kind of money … Fuck, I sure wouldn’t be working for Wes.”

Finn grimaced. “Me neither.”

“Thanks for the ride.” Emily’s hand was on the door release, but she didn’t open it.

“Sure.” He glanced over. “How about I take you out to dinner?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. But, um, the fact is …” He frowned.

“What?”

“I don’t have much money left. Buying this truck cleaned me out. So it’ll have to be cheap.”

Emily laughed. “I think I can cover it. This time.”

Jimena’s was small, bright, and cheerful. Yellow walls, dark wood. Finn eased his way into a narrow gap, jostling the table. That dislodged the candle in its center, a dim flame inside a sphere of red glass. The candle holder rolled off the table and Finn caught it just below the edge, one-handed.

“Nice,” said Emily. The candle hadn’t even gone out.

Finn settled it, and himself, back in place. “Lucky.”

They didn’t spend much time on the menu, which was scrawled on a chalkboard behind the counter. “I usually get hilachas,” said Emily. “The chuchitos are good, too.”

“Sounds fine to me.”

The waiter appeared and agreed, taking their orders on a plain notepad, filling water glasses out of a plastic pitcher, and pointing out a list of beers they had in bottles. He wandered away, checked in with the two other occupied tables—half the room’s seating—and disappeared into the kitchen. Latin pop drifted from a radio in the back, along with banging pans and the hum of a blower fan.

The waiter dropped off two SingleCut beers—no glasses, but at least they’d been opened—and Finn raised his to Emily. “Cheers.”

“By the way,” she said, “did you know your girl Nicola is a climber?”

“Really?”

“We got to talking a bit at the diner.”

“Not about the job, I hope.”

“Just climbing.”

“She as strong as you?”

“Stronger, maybe. Not as good a climber.” No false modesty for Emily. “Just spends time on the wall now and then.”

“You looked really good.” He let it hang a moment. “On the wall.”

A brilliant smile. “Thanks.”

The chuchitos were smaller than regular tamales, sprinkled with a hard, salty cheese. Finn took his time, appreciating the flavors. Emily worked on her shredded beef.

“If you’re so broke you can’t buy me dinner,” she said, “how are you funding the, ah, project?”

“The cars, of course. We also got the warehouse for nothing—well, eighteen hundred bucks.” He described his dealings with the broker. “Actually, that was a bit much, but I didn’t want to argue with him.”

“Another informal transaction.”

“He gets some pocket money and a signed lease. We won’t default until the next calendar year, which is forever in broker time. Seems like a win-win to me.”

They both went for the recado sauce at the same time, bumping hands. He caught her eye, and the moment extended.

Emily broke it, returning to her meal and looking away with an amused expression Finn couldn’t interpret. Another few customers came in. The server bustled about.

“How much does Wes know?” Finn asked.

A moment’s confusion. “About us?”

Which, in turn, caught Finn off guard. He covered by shaking his head. “The job.”

“Not much. He doesn’t want to know.”

“Did you tell him the date we’re planning?”

She thought. “Early January. No more specific than that.”

“Good. Let’s leave it that way.”

They finished the meal and ordered Atitlán coffee. The other tables were now full. Despite the restaurant’s small size, the larger crowd increased their privacy, because the noise and multiple conversations covered up their own.

“How did you get into this?” Emily asked.

“Working for Wes?”

“What you do.”

“Oh.” He added the smallest amount of cream to his coffee. “The same way most people end up where they are—by accident. I grew up outside Pittsburgh, and when I got out of high school, the mill was still hiring. Then, a couple years later, they shut it down. After the layoffs, they hired me back to dismantle equipment—everything was being sold to Bangladesh or Vietnam or somewhere. I was nineteen and I had to cross a union line to do it.” He fell silent, remembering the yelling, rocks in the air, guys swearing they’d stomp him later. All for fifty cents over minimum wage. “Didn’t take long to realize I could do the exact same job in the middle of the night and sell the machinery myself. After that—” He lifted one shoulder briefly, like, You know.

“So you’ve been an outlaw your whole working life.”

“‘Outlaw.’” That was funny. “I guess so. How about you?”

“Bad choices, about the same age as you.”

Finn waited. “‘Bad choices’?”

“Harvard Business School.”

“No. Really?” He peered at her. “And you ended up with Wes?”

“The ethics seminar didn’t stick.” Emily grinned. “The real problem was graduating into the teeth of the global financial meltdown. Not a lot of jobs on offer then. And after a few years, no one’s hiring you to start over—not when they have a fresh crop of new MBAs to choose from, none of them burned out and cynical.”

“Is that you? Burned out and cynical?”

“As hard-edged as they come, Finn.” She raised her small porcelain cup in salute. “You have no idea.”

Setting up the deal was surprisingly easy.

“You have a shopping list?” The man Corman introduced as Gil scratched his beard and squinted at the paper. It flapped in the cold breeze outside his garage.

“More or less.” The evening before, Nicola had found a local newspaper clipping online, from two years earlier when Wes had displayed many of his cars at a Memorial Day vintage-car rally in Greenwich. Along with the insurance declaration provided by Emily, Finn had been able to compile an inventory, which Nicola rapidly retyped and printed.

Nothing to identify the owner or location, of course.

“Huh.”

They stood by the side of Gil’s body shop in a light industrial zone south of Elizabeth. When Corman had hinted at their purpose, Gil had led them away from the shop mechanics, around the side of the building. The usual noises drifted from inside—air wrench, a compressor, late ’70s classic rock on the boom box.

“You pick what you want,” said Finn. “Lots more there than we can fit on a single car carrier.”

“You’re not gonna drive them away one by one?” Gil looked up, then back at the sheet.

“Don’t have enough people for that.”

“I guess the Lamborghini might be good. And the Bugatti. A Shelby Cobra! … Nice.” He spent a few minutes marking the paper with pencil ticks and greasy fingerprints.

Corman stood in the background, arms crossed, looking around rather than focusing on their quiet discussion. Thin sunlight filtered through low gray clouds, not providing any noticeable warmth.

“Might be we can do business.” Gil handed the sheets back.

“Up to a dozen cars will fit the autorack. ’Course we won’t know exactly which ones we can get until we’re inside.” Finn looked up from the paper. “How about this? We ballpark some figures, get a range for the different cars. Then I’ll call you when we’re done, tell you what’s loaded up.”

Gil frowned. “I dunno—”

“We can use some dumb code if you want. Or we can buy a couple burner phones. The point is you need to know how much to have in the duffel bag when we meet up.”

They worked it out. Gil lowballed them some, but not too bad. Finn didn’t think they needed to worry about a hijack, because Gil wouldn’t know where they were until they showed up at the rendezvous.

“When we get there with the merchandise,” he said, “I don’t expect any surprises. Right?”

“Of course not.” Gil managed to look offended. “You don’t cross family.”

“What?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

Finn looked over at Corman. “Tell me what?”

“We’re cousins,” said Gil. “Birthdays are just a week apart.”

“Really?”

Corman made a dismissive sound. “Mother’s side.”

“You don’t look it.” Gil had to be two feet shorter and a hundred pounds weaker than his relative.

“Don’t worry,” Gil said. “Anyway, only a moron would fuck with Corman.”

“Good point.” Finn folded the paper and tucked into his jacket. “Oh, one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“We haven’t lined up the car carrier yet.” He grinned. “Maybe you could lend us one?”