Chapter 10: The Job
The seventh floor of 112 West 7th Street was bare bones — drop ceiling, industrial carpet, a folding table, four chairs, and a chalkboard that looked like it had been sourced from a closed-down elementary school. No windows facing the street. One exit.
Simon sat down, took in the room, and waited.
Doc stood at the head of the table with the unhurried authority of a man who had run this kind of meeting more times than he could count and found the ritual neither exciting nor stressful — just necessary.
"Everyone's here," Doc said. "Let's get into it."
He moved around the table, stopping briefly at each person.
"Adam." A broad-shouldered man with the build of someone who moved heavy things for a living and the stillness of someone who had stopped being nervous about it years ago. "Last month's jewelry exchange job. That was him."
Adam gave a short nod that acknowledged nothing and confirmed everything.
"Buster. Demolitions." A wiry guy in a canvas jacket who looked like he'd be completely unremarkable in any crowd, which Simon suspected was the whole point.
"Crabbie. Disguise and misdirection." Medium height, forgettable face, the kind of person you'd describe afterward as average in every category.
Doc stopped at Simon last. "And our driver. Simon Lewis."
Four people. Clean number. Nobody was there to make friends.
Doc picked up a piece of chalk and turned to the board.
"The target is an armored truck," he said, drawing a simple street map as he talked — North Hollywood, a bank on a commercial block, approach routes, exit corridors. "I have the route through an inside source. The truck makes its pickup at ten AM. You go in at nine fifty-five, you're out by ten oh five, and you're off the grid before LAPD finishes processing the call."
He tapped the board. "I have a separate crew running interference. They'll draw patrol attention to a location three miles east starting at nine forty-five. That buys you your window."
He set the chalk down and looked at Crabbie. "You're going in early. Get inside before the truck arrives. Skull half-mask — nothing custom, nothing distinctive. Buy the components from different stores, different neighborhoods. You're in position by nine thirty."
Crabbie nodded once.
Doc turned to Simon. "I need two vehicles. First — a clean family SUV. Something invisible. Soccer-mom spec. This is your switch car post-job — something nobody looks twice at." He paused. "Second — a heavy four-wheel drive. Truck or full-size SUV. In case you need to move a patrol car out of your path."
He checked his watch. "Both need to be in position before eight AM tomorrow."
Simon looked at his own watch. It was barely nine PM.
He thought about the parking garages near the airport — long-term lots where cars sat for days, sometimes weeks, accumulating dust and parking tickets while their owners were overseas or offshore. Nobody checked on them. Nobody noticed them. A car with a quarter-inch of dust on the hood was a car that had been stationary long enough that its absence wouldn't register until long after it mattered.
With Expert-level Mechanic skills, getting into a locked car without triggering the alarm and starting it without a key wasn't a problem. It was just a sequence of steps he'd internalized so thoroughly it required about as much active thought as tying his shoes.
"That works," Simon said.
Doc addressed the room. "Questions?"
Nobody had any. The plan was clear. The roles were assigned. The only thing left was execution.
"Then we're done here," Doc said. "Leave separately. Different floors, different exits."
They filed out in intervals — Adam first, then Buster, then Crabbie, Simon last. They rode down in separate elevator trips and left through different exits, dispersing into the city without acknowledging each other.
Simon walked two blocks to where he'd parked, drove home, and went straight to the garage.
He assembled what he needed: a slim jim, a bypass kit, a set of thin gloves, a change of clothes in a backpack, a baseball cap pulled low. He kept everything in a gym bag that looked like a gym bag.
He took a bus across town — paid cash, kept his head down — then walked six blocks to a commercial parking structure near the convention center. Changed clothes in a public restroom, put on the cap, and entered through the pedestrian stairwell.
The structure was poorly lit and had two cameras he could identify from the entrance. He mapped the dead zones in about forty seconds of casual walking and found what he was looking for on level three: a silver Honda Pilot, family stickers on the rear window, a thin skim of dust on the hood and roof that meant it had been sitting for at least four days.
Four days meant nobody was coming back for it tonight.
He checked for cameras, checked for foot traffic, pulled on his gloves, and crouched by the driver's door. Thirty seconds with the slim jim. The lock clicked. He was inside.
Quick sweep: glove box, back seat, cargo area. No weapons, no contraband, nothing that would complicate the evening. He pulled the access panel under the dash, located the ignition wiring, and had the engine running inside two minutes.
He found the parking ticket in the cupholder, drove to the exit booth, paid the overnight rate in cash wearing his mask and glasses, and pulled into traffic.
Nobody looked at him twice.
Forty minutes later he was at LAX's long-term lot.
He parked the Pilot in a structure nearby, walked the long-term lot for ten minutes until he found a black Ford Expedition — full-size, four-wheel drive, tinted windows, a parking permit sticker that suggested it had been there since at least last week.
Same process. Same efficiency. Engine running in under ninety seconds.
He drove the Expedition to the staging location Doc had specified — a quiet industrial street in North Hollywood — left it with the keys tucked under the visor, and texted Doc a single word: Done.
Then he took a rideshare home, paid cash at drop-off instead of through the app, and was back in his kitchen by midnight.
He didn't sleep right away.
He sat at his desk with his laptop open and pulled up a detailed street map of the North Hollywood target area — satellite view, street view, the whole grid. He'd driven those streets enough times that the layout lived in muscle memory, but the first time doing something like this was different from the hundredth time, and Simon was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that.
His palms were slightly damp. His breathing was a touch shallower than usual.
The passive skill — Composure — didn't eliminate the adrenaline. It just kept it from turning into interference. His hands were steady. His thinking was clear. The nervousness was there, acknowledged, and set to the side.
He studied the map until he'd run every possible exit route three times in his head. Then he closed the laptop and went to bed.
His alarm went off at nine.
He was already on his third set of pull-ups when it did — couldn't sleep past seven, never could before a high-stakes day. He showered, ate, dressed in plain dark clothes that would read as completely unremarkable on a street, and drove to where the Expedition was staged.
He suited up in the front seat: balaclava rolled up to the forehead, mask around his neck, gloves in his jacket pocket. Ready to deploy in under five seconds.
He drove to the rendezvous point and found Adam, Buster, and Crabbie already there, waiting with the specific stillness of people who did this for a living and had burned through their pre-job nerves hours ago.
They got in without ceremony.
Simon checked the time. Nine forty.
At nine forty-five, he parked across from the bank — angled, nose out, a clean line of sight to the entrance and both approach directions.
He watched the street. Normal Tuesday morning traffic. A delivery truck. A woman walking a dog. Two guys from a construction crew on a coffee break leaning against a pickup.
At nine fifty-three, Crabbie slipped out of the Expedition with a hat, sunglasses, and a scarf around his neck, carrying a leather tote bag like he was running an errand. He crossed the street and walked into the bank without breaking stride.
At nine fifty-seven, the armored truck turned the corner.
Heavy-bodied, moving slowly, exactly on schedule. It rolled into the dedicated parking spot in front of the bank's side entrance. Two guards got out — one moving to the rear of the truck, one scanning the sidewalk with the practiced caution of someone who had done this route hundreds of times and had become, through repetition, slightly less sharp than he should have been.
Adam looked at Buster. Buster gave a short nod.
They pulled their masks down, grabbed their bags, and hit the sidewalk.
Simon pulled his mask and glasses on. Kept his hands on the wheel. Kept the engine running.
He watched both ends of the block. Watched the mirrors. Watched a cyclist pass on the far side of the street without slowing.
The Composure skill was earning its keep. His heart rate was elevated but his hands were loose on the wheel, ready to move, not gripping.
Five minutes.
It felt like more. It always did, the first time.
At the five-minute mark, three figures came through the bank's side entrance at a controlled walk — fast enough to cover ground, slow enough not to trigger the alarm of someone watching from a window.
They hit the curb and climbed in.
"Go," Adam said. Then: "Go."
Simon was already in gear.
He pulled out clean and smooth — no screech, no drama, just a large black SUV merging into traffic the way large black SUVs did every thirty seconds in this city.
He'd made it half a block when the sound came from behind: two sharp cracks, then a deeper boom — the guards had recovered faster than expected. Pistol shots, then what sounded like a shotgun, the rear window of the Expedition spiderwebbing but holding as Simon dropped his head below the seat line and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
"Down," he said, flat and even.
Everyone was already down.
The guards had no vehicle. Simon had a straight line to the on-ramp. By the time they were on the freeway the bank was six blocks behind them and the radio was silent.
Simon sat back up. Checked his mirrors. Checked his crew. Checked his speed — eighty-two, backing down to seventy.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Everyone intact?" he said.
Responses from the back. Yeah. Yes. All clear.
Simon nodded and kept driving.
That was the warm-up, he told himself.
The hard part was whatever came next.
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