Holy Rollers (9 page)

Grant Lambert was a man defeated. “Okay, then. Find us a house in Nash Bog, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Lisa disconnected the line and looked up to see Mary Beth standing in the doorway to the home office, still in pink robe and slippers.

“What’s going on? What was that about?”

Lisa swiveled on the chair and smiled. It was the same, blissful, everything-is-peachy-keen smile she was always able to muster no matter how painfully her stomach was cramping. And her stomach was cramping not because she might lose twenty thousand dollars, and not because Grant Lambert might yet cause them all to end up in jail, but because Mary Beth
could
occasionally be game for a scam, but it wasn’t in her nature.

So Lisa plastered a benign, loving smile on her face. “We both need a vacation, don’t we?”

“Maybe.” There was wariness in Mary Beth’s voice.

“It’d be nice to get away for a few weeks.” That benign, loving smile flared just a bit. “And Virginia would be so peaceful…”

“Oh, no!” Mary Beth brought the palm of her hand to her forehead and Lisa knew she’d seen right through her…as she usually did. “You want to get in on the job, don’t you?
Bad idea
, Lisa.
Bad! Bad!
”

Which maybe would have stopped a cocker spaniel, but Lisa could be a pit bull—albeit a pleasant-sounding pit bull with a benign, loving smile—when she really wanted something.

“But…we’d have peace and quiet.
And
we could keep an eye on the twenty thousand.”

Mary Beth’s hands went to her hips, and the pink robe shook. “That’s what you
say
. But I
know
you. You want to be in on the scam. You love that stuff.”

Lisa would never acknowledge that to Mary Beth…or anyone else, for that matter. She barely acknowledged it to herself. “No, sweetie, I promise. I just want to make sure Lambert doesn’t screw up and cost me twenty thousand dollars.”

Hands glued to hips, Mary Beth closed her eyes. “I really don’t like anything about this idea.”

“It will be fine! Fresh air…dogwood blossoms…suburban living…”

“You’re not making me feel better about this.”

Lisa raised one finger. “How about this angle, then…”

“I’m waiting.”

Benign, loving, smiling Lisa turned into hard-nosed business-woman Lisa, determined to seal the deal.

“If we pull this off, our share will be over two million dollars. Something like two-point-three million and change, if there’s really seven million in the safe. Since we’re talking the Virginia Cathedral of Love, I’m willing to give Lambert and Chase the benefit of the doubt.” She stood and wrapped her arms around Mary Beth’s shoulders, nestling her lips near Mary Beth’s ear and finding the exact words she needed to close.

Her voice was almost a whisper. “That kind of money buys a lot of shoes.”

Mary Beth squared her shoulders, trying to pull away but backing off no more than an inch. “I…I’ll think about it.”

But Mary Beth—like Lisa—had already made her decision. More than two million dollars in spending money could do that to a girl.

In her head, she had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Christian Louboutin alone.

And if Grant Lambert fucked the job up, well…each one of those very expensive red heels would have to be medically extracted from his ass.

In the kitchen of their apartment in Jackson Heights—only a few miles away from Lisa’s place in Long Island City but light-years away in the level of luxury—Grant clicked off the phone and cast a mournful glance at Chase.

“Lisa’s decided that she’d rather be an active partner than a passive partner.”

Chase looked up from the counter where he was mixing a vodka-cranberry, shaking his head. “I
knew
it. I
knew
she wouldn’t be able to resist horning in on the job.”

“Yeah, well…” Grant pulled a battered wooden chair out from the table, scraping it over the scuffed linoleum, and sat. “She doesn’t think we can do this alone. But I think she really just wants to keep an eye on her money.”

“I think it’s more than that. I think she likes being in on the jobs.”

Grant cocked his head toward his partner. “You think she
likes
pulling jobs? Really?”

Chase stirred his drink for too long a time before answering. “I do. I mean, she complains a lot, but you can see it in her eyes.” He stopped stirring and, drink in hand, joined Grant at the table. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“How’s that?”

“No matter how we try to cover, it’s gonna look strange for a group of men to move into a suburban house in an upscale neighborhood on a short-term rental. You, me, Farraday…Leonard. If a few women are in the mix, we’ll have a better chance of not attracting unwanted attention.”

“Or attracting more,” Grant observed. “Lisa’s all right, but drama follows Mary Beth around.”

Chase took a sip of his vodka-cranberry. “You just don’t like Mary Beth.”

That much was true. Just
thinking
about Mary Beth brought a dull ache to Grant’s head.

“It’s mutual.”

“True. But you’ve worked well together in the past. And she’s smart—”

“She’s mean.”

“Smart but mean.” Chase took another sip. “Okay, whatever. The fact is that she could be an asset to our team.”

Grant was noncommittal. “Maybe.”

Chase decided to leave that track, since there was no way he’d be able to change Grant’s mind about Mary Beth. Certainly not that night; maybe not ever. So he tried another approach: grim acceptance of the reality of the situation.

“Beyond everything else, we can’t really stop them, can we? Not if we want Lisa to bankroll the job.”

“Okay.” Grant sighed and tried to shake his concern away. “We still have the same game plan, just with two more players.”

“Exactly.” Chase nodded, encouraging Grant down that path of acceptance. “Think of them as backup. Just in case.”

Lost in thought, Grant stared at the battered surface of the kitchen table. “Now what I need to do is figure out who to get on the inside of the church.”

“I just assumed
I’d
be going in,” said Chase.

“You, yeah,” Grant agreed. “But we’ll need someone else. Maybe even two more people. We’re looking at a long-term project, and we need to do it right.”

Chase sipped his drink. “Not you or Farraday.”

Grant scoffed. “Of course not. People look at us and the first thing they think is ‘guilty.’ Even if we ain’t done anything.”

“Lisa?”

Grant thought about that, and then thought better of it. “Nah. She’s got a big mouth.” Another very good reason popped into his head. “Not to mention she’s our banker. If something goes wrong and she gets arrested, we’re screwed.”

“Yeah. The bank’s not much good when the bank’s in jail.”

“Exactly.”

Chase tried to think of a name from their loose association of confederates who might prove helpful. “What about Nick Donovan?”

“No. We bring him in, we get that mother of his, too.”

“Chrissy Alton?”

“No. She’s great at working the department store scam, but she’s not right for this kind of thing. If we ever hit Bloomingdale’s again, we’ll call her.”

“Michael May?”

“In jail.”

“Really?”

“Seven to ten.”

“Hadn’t heard that.” Chase shrugged. It was an occupational hazard. “Jamie Brock?”

“
Hell
no.” Grant shook his head forcefully to emphasize the point. “He’s the last person I ever want to work with again.”

Chase looked up at the flaking paint on the ceiling. “We’ve gone through the roster. Except…nah.”

“Except nah
who
?”

“Except Mary Beth.”

Grant planted his elbows on the table hard enough to make Chase’s vodka-cranberry jump and stiffened his jaw. “I take back what I said about Jamie Brock.
Mary Beth
is the last person I ever want to work with again.”

Chase was prepared for his reaction. “I know, I know. You don’t like her and she doesn’t like you. But think about it. She did a great job for us on that job we pulled in the Hamptons a few years ago.”

“The job that went down the toilet?”

“That’s the one,” Chase agreed. “But that wasn’t her fault. That was just…
circumstances
.
Bad
circumstances. And remember, if it hadn’t been for Mary Beth, we would have walked away with nothing.”

“Why do you keep pushing for her?”

“Because she’s already in, whether you like it or not. And she’s good…when she wants to be.”

Grant thought about it. “But she’s…she’s…she’s
Mary Beth
!”

It was hard for Chase to argue with that. She was indeed Mary Beth. “True, maybe she’s not the nicest person we’ve ever worked with. But when she commits, she commits. Quick on her feet, too. She’d be perfect on the inside.”

“I’ll think about it,” Grant said, even though he doubted that.

It was only hours later, when they were pressed against each other in bed, that a new thought occurred to him.

“I’ve got it!” Grant flipped the switch to the lamp on his nightstand.

Chase, who’d almost fallen asleep, rolled away from the light. “Got what?”

“Hand me your cell.”

Chase took the phone off the charger on his own nightstand and started to pass it across the bed before he faltered. He looked at Grant as if he’d just asked for a colonoscopy.

“You want my
phone
?”

“Yeah.”

Chase wondered if maybe he was dreaming. That would make more sense than this. “But you
never
use the phone.”

Grant took the unit from his wavering hand. “This is the exception that proves the rule.”

He punched a number into the keypad from memory.

The last time Grant Lambert had crossed paths with Constance Price, she was working a scam out of a down-market real estate office on the up-market Upper East Side of Manhattan. Besides picking up a regular paycheck, she also passed the keys to vacant units to her girlfriend, and occasionally, the girlfriend’s brothers, who’d then strip them of small—and sometimes not-so-small—appliances and fixtures. It wasn’t going to make anyone rich, but it was a nice supplement to an honest living. Not to mention it kept them in practice, and there was nothing worse in that occupation than getting rusty. In a way, it was sort of like baseball, except instead of getting sent to the minors if you were off your game, you got sent to Riker’s Island.

Eventually, though, the boss started to figure out that his apartments were being ransacked at an alarming rate, and she’d put an end to the scam before he traced it back to her. A few weeks after that, she realized that merely working for a living was boring without the extracurricular fringe benefits, so she gave her notice.

Some people were made for honest nine-to-five wages; Constance Price wasn’t.

In any event, the scam had dried up. There were only so many microwaves a person could fence or sell on eBay. It was time for something new.

Over the next year or so she’d pulled a few jobs—nothing elaborate, just enough to keep food on the table—but was starting to feel the need for a more substantial income. Those good old days of cheap Harlem rents were a thing of the past. She’d even considered going back into the real estate business. But then Grant Lambert had called around midnight, mumbling something cryptic about a job she might be interested in and saying he had to see her right away, and she put that consideration right out of her head.

After all, if Lambert was on a phone, it had to be big. Everyone in their business knew Grant Lambert hated the phone.

“So why me?” she asked a few hours later, after he outlined his plans as they sat in the living room of her small one-bedroom on West 133
^rd
Street in Harlem. “Sounds like you’ve already put together a big enough gang.”

“Maybe too big,” he acknowledged. “But I’m missing one key element. I need someone who’ll be a natural on the inside.”

“Again, why me? What about your boyfriend?”

“He’ll be going in. But this job is gonna take time, and the only way it goes down the right way is if we have the right people on the inside. Chase is good, but he won’t be able to do it alone.” He cleared his throat. He always had a tough time complimenting another crook’s work, which was what he was about to do. “And you’re the best inside-scam artist I know.”

She nodded, but said nothing. He was
right
, after all.

She’d worked jobs from Al Sharpton headliners to Rockefeller Foundation fund-raisers, and no one had looked twice. They probably didn’t even figure it out after their coats went missing from the coat-check, meaning they couldn’t give their car-checks to the valet because the car-checks were in their coats. Not that it mattered, because their cars had left the lot hours earlier, along with their keys and wallets, if they were among the usual minority who checked those with their coats.