Heists

Same route every Friday, same two guys, same bad habits. They stop for coffee at the corner of Fifth. You have got about ninety seconds while the driver is inside.

Built in 1908 and barely touched since. The vault door is a museum piece — which is the problem, because museum pieces do not have electronic overrides you can spoof.

Two houses settling up after a big weekend. No armoured car, no escort, just a man with a case who does not want to attract attention. Neither do you.

Down past the floor, past the count room, through a door that needs two keys turned at once. The house always wins. Tonight you would like to test that.

Four importers, one building, and a standing agreement that nobody looks in anybody else's crates. That agreement is about to be very useful to you.

Everything they seize sits in bonded storage until the auction. Paperwork moves slowly down here. By the time anyone notices a gap, it will be somebody else's problem.

Three vehicles, dawn run, no deviation from the route in six years. Predictable is another word for vulnerable, and they have not worked that out yet.

The reserve wall was poured in a hurry during a strike year. It has been cracking ever since and nobody has authorised the money to fix it.

Night shift is four men and a dog. The shipping manifest says the crates leave at six. It does not say where they are between now and then.

Federal building, federal budget, federal patience. Everything past the lobby is on camera and everyone past the lobby is armed. Still want in?

Cash only, no banking until Monday. Every purse from every fight sits in a back office with one door and a man who has been awake for nineteen hours.

The tunnels predate the city above them. Somebody has been keeping something down there a long time, and they have never once had to explain what.

Uncut going in, cut coming out, and for about forty minutes in between they are in a case on a table with two men watching. You only need one of those men to blink.

You have read about this place since you were a kid. Everybody has. Which means everybody who works here has read about people like you.

The owner is in Monaco until the tenth. The insurance company knows that. So does the concierge, and the concierge has debts.

The job is not the money. The job is that afterwards, nobody can prove there was a job. Leave a single trace and you have failed even if you walk out rich.

Old money does not like banks asking questions. So it sits in a room behind the members' bar, and the only thing between it and you is a doorman who has never been tested.

The boat has no registration, no manifest and no name painted on the hull. That cuts both ways — nobody is coming to help them either.

Their money, their building, their city. Take this and there is no version of tomorrow where you are still welcome anywhere.

You know what this is. Everyone who has stood where you are standing knew what it was too, and none of them are around to tell you how it went.