Holiday Heist

Chapter 1: The Perfect Plan

Vinnie Delmonico had always believed that Christmas Eve was the perfect night for crime. Everyone was home with their families, cops were distracted by drunk drivers and domestic disputes, and the general spirit of goodwill made people sloppy. What Vinnie hadn't accounted for was that he was also sloppy—catastrophically, embarrassingly sloppy.

"You sure this is the right building?" asked Donnie, pressing his face against the frost-covered glass of the van's window. Donnie was Vinnie's cousin, a man whose primary qualification for this heist was that he owned a van and owed Vinnie three hundred dollars from a bet involving whether a raccoon could fit through a mailbox slot. The raccoon could not. The mailbox could not recover.

"Of course it's the right building," Vinnie snapped. "First National Savings and Loan. Corner of Madison and Fifth. I've been casing this place for six weeks."

From the back of the van came a wet, phlegmy cough. That was Sal, the third member of their crew. Sal was sixty-three years old, had a prostate the size of a grapefruit, and claimed to have "done jobs" back in the day. What jobs those were remained unclear, but he'd brought his own ski mask—a faded purple thing with a pom-pom on top—so Vinnie figured he was legitimate enough.

"Six weeks," Sal wheezed. "Back in my day, we'd case a joint for six months minimum. You kids today, always in a rush."

"Back in your day, you probably robbed stagecoaches," Donnie said.

"I'll stage your coach, you little—"

"Enough!" Vinnie held up his hands. "Focus. We've got a two-hour window. The security guard does his rounds every forty-five minutes, and there's only one of him. We get in, we get to the vault, we get out. Simple."

"What about the alarm system?" Donnie asked.

"Disabled. I paid a guy."

"You paid a guy? What guy?"

"A guy who knows about alarm systems. Don't worry about it."

Donnie worried about it. He worried about a lot of things—his credit score, his thinning hair, the weird mole on his back that his girlfriend said looked like Richard Nixon. But mostly, right now, he worried that his cousin was about to get them all sent to prison.

"And the vault?" Sal asked, leaning forward between the seats. His breath smelled like peppermint schnapps and regret. "How we getting into the vault?"

"Thermal lance." Vinnie patted the duffel bag at his feet. "Cuts through steel like butter."

"You know how to use a thermal lance?"

"I watched a YouTube video."

Sal and Donnie exchanged looks. It was the kind of look that said, "We are definitely going to prison."

"Relax," Vinnie said, checking his watch. "In three hours, we're going to be rich. This bank's got at least two million in the vault—cash deposits from all the holiday shopping. We grab the money, we disappear, we spend Christmas in Cabo drinking margaritas on the beach."

"I don't have a passport," Donnie said.

"Then you'll spend Christmas in Atlantic City. Whatever. The point is, this is our ticket out. No more working at the car wash. No more living in your mom's basement. No more—"

"I don't live in my mom's basement," Donnie interrupted. "I live in her converted garage. There's a difference."

"The difference is insulation," Sal offered. "Basements got better insulation."

"Can we please focus?" Vinnie grabbed his duffel bag and opened the van door. A gust of cold December air rushed in, carrying with it the distant sound of Christmas carols and the faint smell of cinnamon from a nearby bakery. "It's go time."

The three men climbed out of the van, their breath forming clouds in the frigid air. They were dressed entirely in black—black pants, black sweaters, black ski masks rolled up on their foreheads like the world's most suspicious beanies. Vinnie had insisted on the all-black ensemble, having seen it work in approximately four hundred heist movies. What he'd failed to consider was that all-black made them look exactly like what they were: criminals about to commit a crime.

A woman walking her dog on the opposite sidewalk stopped to stare at them.

"Merry Christmas!" Donnie called out, waving enthusiastically.

The woman hurried away, pulling her dog behind her.

"Smooth," Sal muttered.

"Shut up and move," Vinnie hissed. He led them around the back of the building, where a service entrance waited in shadow. According to his research—which consisted of Google Maps and one very informative conversation with a drunk bank teller at a bar—this door was their best point of entry.

Vinnie produced a set of lock picks from his pocket. He'd bought them off Amazon, along with an instructional DVD that he'd watched approximately half of before getting distracted by a documentary about penguins. Still, how hard could it be? You stuck the picks in, wiggled them around, and the lock opened. Simple.

Fifteen minutes later, Vinnie was still wiggling.

"Maybe try the other pick," Donnie suggested.

"I know what I'm doing."

"Clearly," Sal said, lighting a cigarette. "At this rate, we'll be in by Easter."

"Would you—" Vinnie's retort was cut off by a soft click. The lock had finally surrendered. "See? Told you."

He pushed the door open, and the three men slipped inside. They found themselves in a back hallway, dimly lit by emergency exit signs that cast everything in an eerie red glow. The building was silent except for the hum of heating vents and the distant sound of... was that music?

"You hear that?" Donnie whispered.

"It's coming from upstairs," Sal said. "Probably just a radio someone left on."

Vinnie wasn't so sure. The music sounded like Christmas carols, but louder and more chaotic than a simple radio. There were voices too—laughing, shouting, the unmistakable sounds of a party in full swing.

"There's not supposed to be anyone here," Vinnie muttered.

"Maybe it's ghosts," Donnie offered. "Christmas ghosts. Like in that movie with the old guy and the chains."

"That's Dickens, you idiot."

"Dickens had a movie?"

Vinnie ignored him and consulted the crude map he'd drawn on a napkin. "Okay, the vault's in the basement. We go down, we do the job, we get out. Whatever's happening upstairs is not our problem."

They found the stairwell and descended into the basement, their footsteps echoing off concrete walls. The air grew colder as they went down, and Donnie began to shiver—partly from the temperature, mostly from fear.

"I got a bad feeling about this," he said.

"You've got a bad feeling about everything," Vinnie replied. "You had a bad feeling about that burrito last week."

"And I was right! I was on the toilet for three days!"

"Nobody needs to know that," Sal said.

They reached the basement level and found themselves facing a heavy steel door with a keypad beside it. The vault.

"Okay," Vinnie said, rubbing his hands together. "This is it. Donnie, keep watch. Sal, help me set up the thermal lance."

"What about the keypad?" Donnie asked.

"What about it?"

"Don't we need a code?"

Vinnie stared at the keypad. He hadn't actually considered the keypad. His plan had involved cutting through the vault door itself, bypassing any electronic security. But now that he looked at it, the door seemed significantly more reinforced than he'd anticipated.

"We'll cut through it," he said, with more confidence than he felt.

"Through the keypad?"

"Through the door, Donnie. The door."

He unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out the thermal lance—a metal tube about three feet long with a handle on one end and what looked like a welding torch on the other. He'd rented it from a guy named Sketchy Pete, who operated out of a storage unit in Jersey and asked no questions as long as you paid cash.

"You sure you know how to use that thing?" Sal asked.

"I told you, I watched a video."

"The whole video?"

"Most of it."

"Most of it," Sal repeated, taking a step back. "I'm gonna stand over here."

Vinnie connected the oxygen tank to the lance, double-checked the connections, and flicked the ignition switch. Nothing happened.

"Is it supposed to do that?" Donnie asked.

"Give it a second." Vinnie flicked the switch again. Still nothing. He shook the lance, which seemed like a bad idea even as he was doing it. "Come on, come on..."

The lance roared to life with a sound like an angry dragon, shooting a jet of flame three feet long. Vinnie yelped and nearly dropped it.

"Holy mother of—" Sal dove behind a filing cabinet.

"I got it! I got it!" Vinnie steadied his grip and aimed the flame at the vault door. The steel began to glow orange almost immediately, and he felt a surge of triumph. This was actually going to work.

Twenty minutes later, dripping with sweat and slightly singed, Vinnie had managed to cut a hole in the vault door approximately the size of a basketball. It wasn't elegant, but it was enough.

"Help me widen it," he said, setting down the lance.

Sal and Donnie grabbed the edges of the hole—carefully, using their sleeves as makeshift gloves—and pulled. The weakened metal groaned and bent, creating an opening just large enough for a man to squeeze through.

"I'll go first," Vinnie said. "Hand me the flashlight."

Donnie handed him a flashlight, and Vinnie climbed through the hole into the vault. He swept the beam around the interior, expecting to see stacks of cash, safety deposit boxes, maybe even some gold bars if he was lucky.

What he saw instead was absolutely nothing.

The vault was empty. Completely, utterly, devastatingly empty. The shelves that should have held cash were bare. The safety deposit boxes had been pulled from the walls, their contents gone. In the center of the room, sitting on a small table like some kind of cosmic joke, was a single yellow sticky note.

Vinnie picked it up and read it aloud: "IOU - Management."

"What does it say?" Donnie called from outside.

Vinnie climbed back through the hole, his face pale. "We've got a problem."