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lb_leeThe Shitty-Shitty Bang-Bang Heist
Series: Infinity Smashed
Word Count: 10,800
Summary: Against medical advice, Biff takes a job far above his pay grade and everything goes wrong.
Notes: Takes place between Time to Go and The Road to Georgia. Biff is still recovering from the events of Bodily Reconstruction at the time. This story won the November, December, and January writing polls, and it was sponsored by the Patreon crew! More notes at the bottom.
What I didn’t realize when Biff said he wanted to go to Georgia (though it should’ve been obvious) was that he wanted to go now.
This caused some major logistical problems. Namely: money. The past seven months of surgery prep had cleaned Biff out, and from what I’d gathered, his line of work generally required functioning arms and upper body strength. Biff seemed to think his condition could be cured with machismo. I disagreed.
I was still arguing with him about it when we reached his apartment door, which was covered in sticky notes from his prolonged absence. Since Biff couldn’t reach up to grab them, I swiped them myself, and as he told me to shut my face, we opened the door on Amanda “Med School” Rosenthal.
“You,” she said, “are impossible to get a hold of.”
I had only met Rosenthal a couple times before. Until recently, she’d been Biff’s most regular healthcare provider, responsible for de-bulleting and stitching any superfluous holes he acquired. But she wasn’t dressed for that work today. Today, she seemed to be here in her other capacity, as fine purveyor of luxury pharmaceuticals, in a crisp business suit. Judging by the cigarette butts in the ashtray, she’d been waiting a while.
I glanced at Biff, but he seemed as surprised to see her as I was. I also noticed that his image had shifted subtly, straightened up so it no longer was as apparent that he was favoring his… well, everything.
We both glanced at the sticky notes in my hands. Among the notices about rent and water rationing, at least two read, “Mandy—CALL HER!!!!” I tossed them onto the kitchen counter.
“What do you want?” Biff asked.
She put out her cigarette and folded her hands in her lap. “I have a job for you.”
“Does it require muscle?” I asked. “Because—”
Biff ground his heel into my instep and I shut up.
One of Rosenthal’s eyebrows rose. “Because?”
“I need the work,” Biff replied, then grabbed my wrist. I jumped, but it was just so he could initiate a telepathic link and tell me, “take a walk,” without looking unprofessional.
“Make me,” I replied.
We both knew he couldn’t, so he released my arm and went to sit in the other chair. I stayed standing, leaning against the kitchen counter.
Rosenthal was giving me a suspicious look.
“She with me,” Biff said.
I left her personal universe. “Fine. I'm being blackmailed by an ex.” She tossed a folder of paperwork onto the card table. “Here's your info. Take care of it.”
That seemed incredibly vague to me, but Biff didn't seem concerned. He started leafing through the papers, squinting at the text. “Anything specific?”
“He’s not worth my attention. Insure he never gets it again.”
“Deadline?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Pay?”
She named a number, and it took all my self-control not to react. Before I could get my wind back, Biff said, “Done.”
…
The moment I shut the door behind her, I said, “Biff, you can’t do it.”
He didn't look up from the papers. “You hear that money? I need that money.”
“I didn’t say ‘shouldn’t,’ Biff, I said ‘can’t.’ Ask Ribbonblack, ask my bosses—heck, strip down and ask Rosenthal herself. Any one of them will agree with me.”
“It been a month!”
I threw out my arms. “Welcome to major surgery. Now you know why Treehouse doesn’t like doing it. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I had never seen that look on Biff's face before. “But… money.”
I sighed and slouched over to take the chair Rosenthal had vacated. “I know. I’m sorry, even. But Biff, you can barely wash your own hair right now, never mind break someone’s arms.”
For a moment, I thought I’d gotten through to him. But then he straightened up and gave me an appraising look, and my sympathy evaporated.
“No,” I said.
He ignored me. “You done B&E before.”
“I’ve squatted, years ago. Big difference, and anyway, I’m not going to help you disregard my own medical advice.”
Biff walked his fingers across the table. “All you got to do is carry and climb fences. Easy. Won’t even break his arms; all we got to do is get what Med School asked for, and steal everything else worth it. Can you carry a flat-screen?”
“I wouldn’t know, and I have no intention of ever finding out, so the point’s moot.”
Then he said the words of doom: “You owe me.”
I froze. “No.”
A sadistic gleam was in his eye. “The bet. Help on the job. You lost, I’m collecting. We had a deal.”
“Biff, that was, like, four years ago—”
“You remember the maggots?” He chortled like a drain. “I remember the maggots.”
I was silent a moment. “You hold a grudge.”
“Fuck you, it was Christmas.”
“You hold a grudge, and you’re petty.” I sighed. “What’s my cut?”
“You don’t get no--” He saw my face. “Twenty percent.”
I laughed. “Fifty.”
“Thirty.”
“Forty.”
He sighed. “Third and half the fenced shit.”
I was the worst healer ever. “Deal. Scoot over, I read faster.” He made room. “So what exactly are we doing, anyway, if we're not breaking his arms?”
Biff flipped back to the first page, handed it to me. “Stealing back a sex tape.”
“Wait, what?”
What followed was Biff’s valiant attempt to explain Vaygo underworld politics to me. Boiled down: Med School Rosenthal wasn't just a drug-dealer and street medic; she was also the daughter of some local Jewish gangster who I'd never heard of but was big fish in Biff’s world. Said gangster was apparently totally fine with his daughter pushing prescription pills on soccer moms, but would blow his stack if he knew that she had banged a goy. No other gang would deal with Rosenthal without leaking it to her father, and she certainly couldn't go to him, so she needed an independent operator like Biff to do the job.
So we were stealing back homemade revenge porn.
“Wow,” I said, “not only is this job way too classy for you, it's also the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
Biff rolled his eyes. “I do a lot of stupid shit for money.”
“I've seen you do it for free. So this big-deal daughter of the boss… moonlights patching you up?”
Biff shrugged, a skill he'd only recently reacquired. “She know me.”
I looked at the paper Biff had handed me. There was a photo of a pretty ordinary looking white guy named Max Love. The name rang a vague bell, but I couldn't place where; I certainly didn’t know the face. The address, however... “Wait, hey, I know that street! I think Raige drives past it every time he takes me back to Jaunt Central.”
Biff scowled. “Yeah, fucking Oasis Valley. Rail takes forever to get out there…” He gave me a look. “Am I up for the house bike?”
At least he'd asked. “No way, Biff. You still have two weeks to go.”
He sucked his teeth, then blinked and sat up straight… well, as close as he could manage. “Close to your boyfriend, you said?”
“Same general vicinity. Why?”
He smiled at me and I realized that I’d been cheated. Third and half was far too low.
…
At least I knew better than to let Biff strong-arm me into asking to borrow Raige’s car; I knew that would never fly. We took the rail out to Oasis Valley and parted ways at Raige’s subdivision, Biff to check out our mark’s house, me to pump Raige for information. Biff was apparently laboring under the delusion that all the rich people of Vaygo knew each other.
“Max Love?” Raige asked. He frowned, absently drummed on the trap set in front of him. “No clue, but the name sounds familiar…”
“Yeah, same here! What’s up with that?”
Raige shrugged and got up from his drums. “Maybe Dad brought him up. Hold on, I'll go ask him.”
A few minutes later, he came back and took up his spot at his drums again, twirling his drumsticks through his fingers and looking deeply suspicious. “Okay, now I really want to know what this is about. Daddy just ranted my ear off about how this guy’s some sleazy two-bit crook from Ohio, whatever that means.”
“So he hates him?”
Raige looked prim. “He ‘professionally disrespects’ him.”
Being a competitor was the only thing I could think of that would earn Raige’s dad’s professional disrespect. “So… he’s another booze magnate?”
But Raige said, “plushies.”
“Plushies?”
“Plushies. You know Max Lovables?”
“Oh my god! Those horrible bug-eyed fad monstrosities?”
“I always thought they were kind of cute, but yes. He’s the founder, owner, and primary designer of the whole company, and apparently he’s kind of infamous even in that business, which according to my dad is awful. There’s a reason he never bought me a Lovable in my life; that’s how much he professionally disrespects this guy.”
I was impressed. Either Raige’s dad had more humanity and moral fiber than I’d ever considered, or Max Love and the stuffed animal business made Biff’s line of work look reputable.
Raige put the sticks down and crossed his arms. “You and Biff don’t really strike me as stuffed animal investors, so why are you asking me about him?”
I told him.
When I was done, Raige’s face was in his hands. “I don’t know what I find more unbelievable: that you’re doing something like this, or that you’ve spent the last four years owing a Vaygan gangster a favor without realizing that’s a terrible idea.”
“Raige, come on, Biff doesn’t merit the title of ‘gangster;’ at best, he’s a petty thug…”
“Don’t joke about this.” He was rubbing his eyes now. “You are lucky that this is what he chose to collect on, especially after that whole Christmas cannibal maggots thing; he must really like you. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about this, at all. This whole thing? Kind of illegal.”
“So’s me being in your country.”
“Not the same, and you know it. And speaking of which, do you really want to do something that might get the PIN’s attention again? Are you really that desperate for an adrenaline fix?”
Good thing I hadn’t told him about all the other things that we planned to steal. “Raige, come on, your dad said it himself, the guy’s a sleaze.” And when he opened his mouth, “look, you don’t have to agree with the morality of this or take part. All I want is to find out if there’s a rich-guy party with him in it soon, so I can meet him.”
As though magically summoned, Raige’s father stuck his head in the doorway with a terrifying piratical grin under his beard. He had never smiled at me before; I didn’t care for the experience.
“Party?” He said.
Raige gave me a dirty look.
Turned out there was some gala that very night, due to start in a few hours, and while Max Love himself wouldn’t be there, many people who knew him would. And while Raige had apparently spent years trying to avoid any and all business parties, his dad still had vain hopes of getting Raige invested in the family business. Now he had the perfect excuse to twist Raige’s arm.
No time to call out for work the next morning—or even call Biff, who was still out doing god-knew-what and had no cell phone. All I could do was grab my prom outfit out of Raige’s closet (the only Earthling formal wear I owned), shower, and hurry out the door with Raige and his father. I didn’t even have time to do anything nice with my hair, since Raige was the only human male I associated with who couldn’t braid.
Raige was too nice to hate me for roping him into this, so settled for looking extraordinarily uncomfortable. In his tweed suit, he looked like an aspiring English professor preparing for a thesis evaluation, and Raige’s father had never been happier.
“You owe me so much for this,” Raige muttered to me around his smile, then, “Hi, Miss Merryweather, yeah, I sure have grown…”
After an hour of rich people, I knew Biff had swindled me; I deserved at least half for this. I hadn’t achieved anything. Everyone at that party knew instantly that I wasn’t one of them; my clothes were wrong, my face was wrong, even my color was wrong—I’d had a drunk woman ask me if I was Chinese, which was usual for me, but not in venues where cursing them out was inappropriate.
Luckily for me, Raige was more successful.
“I really shouldn’t have asked around for you, but I did, and it turns out you’re in luck: the Chicago International Toy Fair is next weekend, and he’ll be gone all three days,” he informed me, handing me a petit four. “Are you hiding in here?”
I had long since lost all shame. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Good. Move over.”
I scooted, and he joined me in the supply closet, shutting the door behind us. The brooms and mops, I had discovered, were more my class of people.
“If I didn’t find somewhere to hide, I was going to do something drastic and ruin your social future forever,” I said, tearing into the confection. “How’d you know I’d be in here?”
“Because I’ve hidden in here a couple times myself. And honestly? I’d be okay with you ruining my future at all Merryweather parties. Dad would have to find a new way to bond with me.” He loosened his tie around his throat and leaned back against the wall. “Look, we need to talk. This is a bad idea.”
I winced.
“See, you know it too. So why are you doing this? Look, if it’s a money thing—”
“It’s not a money thing.” Hastily, “and I don’t want yours.”
“I’d rather you have mine than—”
“It’s not a money thing.”
Raige took a deep breath and let it out. After a moment, he said, in a restrained voice, “Okay. What kind of thing is it?”
I sighed, rubbed my forehead. “Biff has family in Georgia.”
“Okay…”
“And he’s suddenly gotten it into his head to see them. This job is to finance the trip.”
“This sounds like a money thing.”
“Fine. You persuade Biff to take a thousand bucks from you. Personally, I think he’s being incredibly stupid about this whole thing, but what do I know, I don’t have a family. I can’t stop him from doing this stupid job; all I can do is try to keep him from hurting himself doing it.”
After a moment, Raige sighed. “Wow, M.D., I love you, but that’s an impressive load of bullshit you just laid down.”
I bit my tongue. “A few years ago, you would’ve believed me.”
“Yeah well, that was then. Look, I’ll talk to Biff. I can solve this whole problem with a check…”
“Raige, no.”
“This is a money thing. I have money.”
“It’s not a money thing!”
“Then what is it? Why won’t—”
“Because I’d rather rob a sleaze than mooch off you!” I snapped.
Raige stared at me, and that’s when the maid opened the door on us, trying to find out what kind of lover’s spat the brooms could’ve gotten into.
…
“Fuck is that face for?”
I grumbled and crawled through the window and onto the couch. “Don’t you start with me, bucko, I am sleep-deprived out the wazoo because of you.” I extended a platter of cold hors-d’oeuvres, remembered Biff’s arms, and put it on the coffee table myself. “Raige is stupidly moral and taking this job way too seriously, that’s all.”
“So... that’s a no on the car?”
“I didn’t even bring up the stupid car, and the answer’s still no. Also, I hate rich people.” I sighed, flopped my head against a bedraggled cushion, and explained to him that we were now on a time crunch thanks to the toy fair. “So how’d your evening go?”
Better than mine, it turned out. He shoved my legs out of the way, plunked down on the couch, and conjured up a three-dimensional miniature image of the house from memory to give me a burglar’s external tour while we shared refrigerated leftovers and stolen party refreshments. He hadn’t quite managed to commit the lawn or gardens to memory, and the house was just a skeleton frame with windows and doors marked in blue, security in red, but even then, one thing was apparent.
“That is one butt-ugly house,” I said around the mouthful of cold stroganoff.
Biff shrugged, as though the aesthetic tastes of the nouveau riche were beyond him.
I eyed the diagram. It showed a three story McMansion with mismatched windows, superfluous turrets, and a fake balcony, as expensive as it was hideous. I couldn’t help but wonder why the guy had spent so much money on that; at least Raige’s father had chosen something that looked like it wouldn’t fall over. That fake balcony in the back had possibilities, though. There was no door, no actual place to stand, only a window and railing. Totally useless for the inhabitant, but for me...
“You said you had the security cameras covered?”
“Yeah. And...” he made a dubious face, “I think I got the alarm.”
Not promising. “Is it on all the doors and windows, or just the bottom floor? Because...” I pointed at the balcony.
Biff’s expression didn’t look promising. “I dunno that that opens.”
“For real? Then why—you know what, no, never mind, I’ll figure it out.” I eyed the spindly columns holding up a chunk of building that looked way too heavy for it. “I could maybe climb those… what’s this place made of, anyway? Stone, brick?”
He snorted and added texture to the diagram. Stucco. Fake stucco. “Can’t climb that shit; it’s just foam covered in cement.”
“Ew!” I paused. “How do you know that?”
He looked at me as though offended. “I watch House TV sometimes.”
Hidden depths. “Well, if you’re willing to vanish me and wait a while, I could probably find some way in, especially if I can break the window.”
Biff scowled and rubbed his chin. “Can’t vanish noise. I’ll take you down tomorrow, see what we can do.”
“Look, maybe we’re making this too hard; I’m rusty, but I could probably pick that lock, zap the alarm, we walk right in...”
Biff looked exasperated. “You can’t do that. The alarm’ll go.”
“And I'm telling you, I’ll zap it.”
What followed was a noble attempt from Biff to explain the intricacies of burglar alarms to me. Old heist movies to the contrary, apparently cutting the wires was no longer a thing in the real world, and hadn’t been for ages. These days, he explained, trying to do that would set the alarm off. I’d need to not just hit the alarm itself, but also the battery intended to take over in times of power outage, all fast enough to kill any signal. Biff didn’t think I could do it, and honestly, neither did I.
“Okay, so what’s this alarm system consist of, anyway?” I asked. “There has to be a way to turn it off. What is it, a password, a button?”
Worse: a keyring fob. And our mark apparently had enough common sense to have taken back Rosenthal’s. This left us with a few options, most of them bad. We could try to steal the fob, and hope the guy wouldn’t have time to get things fixed before he left. We could try to turn the whole thing into a smash and grab and hope to get our hands on the tape very quickly.
Or, we could go by Biff’s plan and use my powers to their best purpose: irritating people.
No matter how state-of-the-art and fancy a technology is, it will always malfunction, and burglar alarms are no exception. Apparently cops got called out on false alarms pretty regularly, and not surprisingly, they were not fond of their time being wasted. Biff’s preferred technique was to annoy cops into submission by setting off a burglar alarm on purpose like clockwork until the cops got sick of responding to what appeared to be a malfunctioning alarm and didn’t show up.
Normally, this trick took a little bit of work for Biff to pull off, but I could zap the alarm all day if I wanted, without it appearing as anything but an electrical problem. It’d be tricky, but if we pulled off just the right balance of annoying, but not so annoying as to warrant immediate repair, we could ignore the security system on the heist day—I’d just either pick the lock or climb through a window and let Biff in through the front door. It'd go off again when we had to leave, but no way to avoid that.
I wasn't so sure about this, but it was the option Biff most favored, and he was the B&E man, so I deferred to his professional expertise. Not exactly a glamorous life of crime, but it felt productive, and I couldn’t lie, it felt good to be working on something other than being a healer again. I’d been a respectable citizen for so long, it was getting stressful.
--CONTINUED IN PART TWO
Notes: Yes, Biff is finally collecting on his half of the deal from Six Weeks to Recovery. I have had this story in planning for a long time—I started writing it before Six Weeks to Recovery, so yeah it's been about five years from start to finish.
Max Love is loosely based off of Ty Warner of Beanie Babies fame. While Warner did stalk his exes and bug one’s apartment so as to record her with another man, he did not blackmail her for it, as far as I know. His house is a composite of the most godawful relegates of McMansion Hell. What Biff says about the foam concrete pillars is true, and so is what Raige's dad says about the stuffed animal business.
Due to the intricacies of the Vaygan underworld, Biff is relegated to bottom feeding, lest he run afoul of the local gangsters. It is very uncommon for someone to survive long as an independent operator in his part of town, and how Biff pulls it off and knows Rosenthal is a story all on its own.
Series: Infinity Smashed
Word Count: 10,800
Summary: Against medical advice, Biff takes a job far above his pay grade and everything goes wrong.
Notes: Takes place between Time to Go and The Road to Georgia. Biff is still recovering from the events of Bodily Reconstruction at the time. This story won the November, December, and January writing polls, and it was sponsored by the Patreon crew! More notes at the bottom.
What I didn’t realize when Biff said he wanted to go to Georgia (though it should’ve been obvious) was that he wanted to go now.
This caused some major logistical problems. Namely: money. The past seven months of surgery prep had cleaned Biff out, and from what I’d gathered, his line of work generally required functioning arms and upper body strength. Biff seemed to think his condition could be cured with machismo. I disagreed.
I was still arguing with him about it when we reached his apartment door, which was covered in sticky notes from his prolonged absence. Since Biff couldn’t reach up to grab them, I swiped them myself, and as he told me to shut my face, we opened the door on Amanda “Med School” Rosenthal.
“You,” she said, “are impossible to get a hold of.”
I had only met Rosenthal a couple times before. Until recently, she’d been Biff’s most regular healthcare provider, responsible for de-bulleting and stitching any superfluous holes he acquired. But she wasn’t dressed for that work today. Today, she seemed to be here in her other capacity, as fine purveyor of luxury pharmaceuticals, in a crisp business suit. Judging by the cigarette butts in the ashtray, she’d been waiting a while.
I glanced at Biff, but he seemed as surprised to see her as I was. I also noticed that his image had shifted subtly, straightened up so it no longer was as apparent that he was favoring his… well, everything.
We both glanced at the sticky notes in my hands. Among the notices about rent and water rationing, at least two read, “Mandy—CALL HER!!!!” I tossed them onto the kitchen counter.
“What do you want?” Biff asked.
She put out her cigarette and folded her hands in her lap. “I have a job for you.”
“Does it require muscle?” I asked. “Because—”
Biff ground his heel into my instep and I shut up.
One of Rosenthal’s eyebrows rose. “Because?”
“I need the work,” Biff replied, then grabbed my wrist. I jumped, but it was just so he could initiate a telepathic link and tell me, “take a walk,” without looking unprofessional.
“Make me,” I replied.
We both knew he couldn’t, so he released my arm and went to sit in the other chair. I stayed standing, leaning against the kitchen counter.
Rosenthal was giving me a suspicious look.
“She with me,” Biff said.
I left her personal universe. “Fine. I'm being blackmailed by an ex.” She tossed a folder of paperwork onto the card table. “Here's your info. Take care of it.”
That seemed incredibly vague to me, but Biff didn't seem concerned. He started leafing through the papers, squinting at the text. “Anything specific?”
“He’s not worth my attention. Insure he never gets it again.”
“Deadline?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Pay?”
She named a number, and it took all my self-control not to react. Before I could get my wind back, Biff said, “Done.”
…
The moment I shut the door behind her, I said, “Biff, you can’t do it.”
He didn't look up from the papers. “You hear that money? I need that money.”
“I didn’t say ‘shouldn’t,’ Biff, I said ‘can’t.’ Ask Ribbonblack, ask my bosses—heck, strip down and ask Rosenthal herself. Any one of them will agree with me.”
“It been a month!”
I threw out my arms. “Welcome to major surgery. Now you know why Treehouse doesn’t like doing it. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I had never seen that look on Biff's face before. “But… money.”
I sighed and slouched over to take the chair Rosenthal had vacated. “I know. I’m sorry, even. But Biff, you can barely wash your own hair right now, never mind break someone’s arms.”
For a moment, I thought I’d gotten through to him. But then he straightened up and gave me an appraising look, and my sympathy evaporated.
“No,” I said.
He ignored me. “You done B&E before.”
“I’ve squatted, years ago. Big difference, and anyway, I’m not going to help you disregard my own medical advice.”
Biff walked his fingers across the table. “All you got to do is carry and climb fences. Easy. Won’t even break his arms; all we got to do is get what Med School asked for, and steal everything else worth it. Can you carry a flat-screen?”
“I wouldn’t know, and I have no intention of ever finding out, so the point’s moot.”
Then he said the words of doom: “You owe me.”
I froze. “No.”
A sadistic gleam was in his eye. “The bet. Help on the job. You lost, I’m collecting. We had a deal.”
“Biff, that was, like, four years ago—”
“You remember the maggots?” He chortled like a drain. “I remember the maggots.”
I was silent a moment. “You hold a grudge.”
“Fuck you, it was Christmas.”
“You hold a grudge, and you’re petty.” I sighed. “What’s my cut?”
“You don’t get no--” He saw my face. “Twenty percent.”
I laughed. “Fifty.”
“Thirty.”
“Forty.”
He sighed. “Third and half the fenced shit.”
I was the worst healer ever. “Deal. Scoot over, I read faster.” He made room. “So what exactly are we doing, anyway, if we're not breaking his arms?”
Biff flipped back to the first page, handed it to me. “Stealing back a sex tape.”
“Wait, what?”
What followed was Biff’s valiant attempt to explain Vaygo underworld politics to me. Boiled down: Med School Rosenthal wasn't just a drug-dealer and street medic; she was also the daughter of some local Jewish gangster who I'd never heard of but was big fish in Biff’s world. Said gangster was apparently totally fine with his daughter pushing prescription pills on soccer moms, but would blow his stack if he knew that she had banged a goy. No other gang would deal with Rosenthal without leaking it to her father, and she certainly couldn't go to him, so she needed an independent operator like Biff to do the job.
So we were stealing back homemade revenge porn.
“Wow,” I said, “not only is this job way too classy for you, it's also the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
Biff rolled his eyes. “I do a lot of stupid shit for money.”
“I've seen you do it for free. So this big-deal daughter of the boss… moonlights patching you up?”
Biff shrugged, a skill he'd only recently reacquired. “She know me.”
I looked at the paper Biff had handed me. There was a photo of a pretty ordinary looking white guy named Max Love. The name rang a vague bell, but I couldn't place where; I certainly didn’t know the face. The address, however... “Wait, hey, I know that street! I think Raige drives past it every time he takes me back to Jaunt Central.”
Biff scowled. “Yeah, fucking Oasis Valley. Rail takes forever to get out there…” He gave me a look. “Am I up for the house bike?”
At least he'd asked. “No way, Biff. You still have two weeks to go.”
He sucked his teeth, then blinked and sat up straight… well, as close as he could manage. “Close to your boyfriend, you said?”
“Same general vicinity. Why?”
He smiled at me and I realized that I’d been cheated. Third and half was far too low.
…
At least I knew better than to let Biff strong-arm me into asking to borrow Raige’s car; I knew that would never fly. We took the rail out to Oasis Valley and parted ways at Raige’s subdivision, Biff to check out our mark’s house, me to pump Raige for information. Biff was apparently laboring under the delusion that all the rich people of Vaygo knew each other.
“Max Love?” Raige asked. He frowned, absently drummed on the trap set in front of him. “No clue, but the name sounds familiar…”
“Yeah, same here! What’s up with that?”
Raige shrugged and got up from his drums. “Maybe Dad brought him up. Hold on, I'll go ask him.”
A few minutes later, he came back and took up his spot at his drums again, twirling his drumsticks through his fingers and looking deeply suspicious. “Okay, now I really want to know what this is about. Daddy just ranted my ear off about how this guy’s some sleazy two-bit crook from Ohio, whatever that means.”
“So he hates him?”
Raige looked prim. “He ‘professionally disrespects’ him.”
Being a competitor was the only thing I could think of that would earn Raige’s dad’s professional disrespect. “So… he’s another booze magnate?”
But Raige said, “plushies.”
“Plushies?”
“Plushies. You know Max Lovables?”
“Oh my god! Those horrible bug-eyed fad monstrosities?”
“I always thought they were kind of cute, but yes. He’s the founder, owner, and primary designer of the whole company, and apparently he’s kind of infamous even in that business, which according to my dad is awful. There’s a reason he never bought me a Lovable in my life; that’s how much he professionally disrespects this guy.”
I was impressed. Either Raige’s dad had more humanity and moral fiber than I’d ever considered, or Max Love and the stuffed animal business made Biff’s line of work look reputable.
Raige put the sticks down and crossed his arms. “You and Biff don’t really strike me as stuffed animal investors, so why are you asking me about him?”
I told him.
When I was done, Raige’s face was in his hands. “I don’t know what I find more unbelievable: that you’re doing something like this, or that you’ve spent the last four years owing a Vaygan gangster a favor without realizing that’s a terrible idea.”
“Raige, come on, Biff doesn’t merit the title of ‘gangster;’ at best, he’s a petty thug…”
“Don’t joke about this.” He was rubbing his eyes now. “You are lucky that this is what he chose to collect on, especially after that whole Christmas cannibal maggots thing; he must really like you. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about this, at all. This whole thing? Kind of illegal.”
“So’s me being in your country.”
“Not the same, and you know it. And speaking of which, do you really want to do something that might get the PIN’s attention again? Are you really that desperate for an adrenaline fix?”
Good thing I hadn’t told him about all the other things that we planned to steal. “Raige, come on, your dad said it himself, the guy’s a sleaze.” And when he opened his mouth, “look, you don’t have to agree with the morality of this or take part. All I want is to find out if there’s a rich-guy party with him in it soon, so I can meet him.”
As though magically summoned, Raige’s father stuck his head in the doorway with a terrifying piratical grin under his beard. He had never smiled at me before; I didn’t care for the experience.
“Party?” He said.
Raige gave me a dirty look.
Turned out there was some gala that very night, due to start in a few hours, and while Max Love himself wouldn’t be there, many people who knew him would. And while Raige had apparently spent years trying to avoid any and all business parties, his dad still had vain hopes of getting Raige invested in the family business. Now he had the perfect excuse to twist Raige’s arm.
No time to call out for work the next morning—or even call Biff, who was still out doing god-knew-what and had no cell phone. All I could do was grab my prom outfit out of Raige’s closet (the only Earthling formal wear I owned), shower, and hurry out the door with Raige and his father. I didn’t even have time to do anything nice with my hair, since Raige was the only human male I associated with who couldn’t braid.
Raige was too nice to hate me for roping him into this, so settled for looking extraordinarily uncomfortable. In his tweed suit, he looked like an aspiring English professor preparing for a thesis evaluation, and Raige’s father had never been happier.
“You owe me so much for this,” Raige muttered to me around his smile, then, “Hi, Miss Merryweather, yeah, I sure have grown…”
After an hour of rich people, I knew Biff had swindled me; I deserved at least half for this. I hadn’t achieved anything. Everyone at that party knew instantly that I wasn’t one of them; my clothes were wrong, my face was wrong, even my color was wrong—I’d had a drunk woman ask me if I was Chinese, which was usual for me, but not in venues where cursing them out was inappropriate.
Luckily for me, Raige was more successful.
“I really shouldn’t have asked around for you, but I did, and it turns out you’re in luck: the Chicago International Toy Fair is next weekend, and he’ll be gone all three days,” he informed me, handing me a petit four. “Are you hiding in here?”
I had long since lost all shame. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Good. Move over.”
I scooted, and he joined me in the supply closet, shutting the door behind us. The brooms and mops, I had discovered, were more my class of people.
“If I didn’t find somewhere to hide, I was going to do something drastic and ruin your social future forever,” I said, tearing into the confection. “How’d you know I’d be in here?”
“Because I’ve hidden in here a couple times myself. And honestly? I’d be okay with you ruining my future at all Merryweather parties. Dad would have to find a new way to bond with me.” He loosened his tie around his throat and leaned back against the wall. “Look, we need to talk. This is a bad idea.”
I winced.
“See, you know it too. So why are you doing this? Look, if it’s a money thing—”
“It’s not a money thing.” Hastily, “and I don’t want yours.”
“I’d rather you have mine than—”
“It’s not a money thing.”
Raige took a deep breath and let it out. After a moment, he said, in a restrained voice, “Okay. What kind of thing is it?”
I sighed, rubbed my forehead. “Biff has family in Georgia.”
“Okay…”
“And he’s suddenly gotten it into his head to see them. This job is to finance the trip.”
“This sounds like a money thing.”
“Fine. You persuade Biff to take a thousand bucks from you. Personally, I think he’s being incredibly stupid about this whole thing, but what do I know, I don’t have a family. I can’t stop him from doing this stupid job; all I can do is try to keep him from hurting himself doing it.”
After a moment, Raige sighed. “Wow, M.D., I love you, but that’s an impressive load of bullshit you just laid down.”
I bit my tongue. “A few years ago, you would’ve believed me.”
“Yeah well, that was then. Look, I’ll talk to Biff. I can solve this whole problem with a check…”
“Raige, no.”
“This is a money thing. I have money.”
“It’s not a money thing!”
“Then what is it? Why won’t—”
“Because I’d rather rob a sleaze than mooch off you!” I snapped.
Raige stared at me, and that’s when the maid opened the door on us, trying to find out what kind of lover’s spat the brooms could’ve gotten into.
…
“Fuck is that face for?”
I grumbled and crawled through the window and onto the couch. “Don’t you start with me, bucko, I am sleep-deprived out the wazoo because of you.” I extended a platter of cold hors-d’oeuvres, remembered Biff’s arms, and put it on the coffee table myself. “Raige is stupidly moral and taking this job way too seriously, that’s all.”
“So... that’s a no on the car?”
“I didn’t even bring up the stupid car, and the answer’s still no. Also, I hate rich people.” I sighed, flopped my head against a bedraggled cushion, and explained to him that we were now on a time crunch thanks to the toy fair. “So how’d your evening go?”
Better than mine, it turned out. He shoved my legs out of the way, plunked down on the couch, and conjured up a three-dimensional miniature image of the house from memory to give me a burglar’s external tour while we shared refrigerated leftovers and stolen party refreshments. He hadn’t quite managed to commit the lawn or gardens to memory, and the house was just a skeleton frame with windows and doors marked in blue, security in red, but even then, one thing was apparent.
“That is one butt-ugly house,” I said around the mouthful of cold stroganoff.
Biff shrugged, as though the aesthetic tastes of the nouveau riche were beyond him.
I eyed the diagram. It showed a three story McMansion with mismatched windows, superfluous turrets, and a fake balcony, as expensive as it was hideous. I couldn’t help but wonder why the guy had spent so much money on that; at least Raige’s father had chosen something that looked like it wouldn’t fall over. That fake balcony in the back had possibilities, though. There was no door, no actual place to stand, only a window and railing. Totally useless for the inhabitant, but for me...
“You said you had the security cameras covered?”
“Yeah. And...” he made a dubious face, “I think I got the alarm.”
Not promising. “Is it on all the doors and windows, or just the bottom floor? Because...” I pointed at the balcony.
Biff’s expression didn’t look promising. “I dunno that that opens.”
“For real? Then why—you know what, no, never mind, I’ll figure it out.” I eyed the spindly columns holding up a chunk of building that looked way too heavy for it. “I could maybe climb those… what’s this place made of, anyway? Stone, brick?”
He snorted and added texture to the diagram. Stucco. Fake stucco. “Can’t climb that shit; it’s just foam covered in cement.”
“Ew!” I paused. “How do you know that?”
He looked at me as though offended. “I watch House TV sometimes.”
Hidden depths. “Well, if you’re willing to vanish me and wait a while, I could probably find some way in, especially if I can break the window.”
Biff scowled and rubbed his chin. “Can’t vanish noise. I’ll take you down tomorrow, see what we can do.”
“Look, maybe we’re making this too hard; I’m rusty, but I could probably pick that lock, zap the alarm, we walk right in...”
Biff looked exasperated. “You can’t do that. The alarm’ll go.”
“And I'm telling you, I’ll zap it.”
What followed was a noble attempt from Biff to explain the intricacies of burglar alarms to me. Old heist movies to the contrary, apparently cutting the wires was no longer a thing in the real world, and hadn’t been for ages. These days, he explained, trying to do that would set the alarm off. I’d need to not just hit the alarm itself, but also the battery intended to take over in times of power outage, all fast enough to kill any signal. Biff didn’t think I could do it, and honestly, neither did I.
“Okay, so what’s this alarm system consist of, anyway?” I asked. “There has to be a way to turn it off. What is it, a password, a button?”
Worse: a keyring fob. And our mark apparently had enough common sense to have taken back Rosenthal’s. This left us with a few options, most of them bad. We could try to steal the fob, and hope the guy wouldn’t have time to get things fixed before he left. We could try to turn the whole thing into a smash and grab and hope to get our hands on the tape very quickly.
Or, we could go by Biff’s plan and use my powers to their best purpose: irritating people.
No matter how state-of-the-art and fancy a technology is, it will always malfunction, and burglar alarms are no exception. Apparently cops got called out on false alarms pretty regularly, and not surprisingly, they were not fond of their time being wasted. Biff’s preferred technique was to annoy cops into submission by setting off a burglar alarm on purpose like clockwork until the cops got sick of responding to what appeared to be a malfunctioning alarm and didn’t show up.
Normally, this trick took a little bit of work for Biff to pull off, but I could zap the alarm all day if I wanted, without it appearing as anything but an electrical problem. It’d be tricky, but if we pulled off just the right balance of annoying, but not so annoying as to warrant immediate repair, we could ignore the security system on the heist day—I’d just either pick the lock or climb through a window and let Biff in through the front door. It'd go off again when we had to leave, but no way to avoid that.
I wasn't so sure about this, but it was the option Biff most favored, and he was the B&E man, so I deferred to his professional expertise. Not exactly a glamorous life of crime, but it felt productive, and I couldn’t lie, it felt good to be working on something other than being a healer again. I’d been a respectable citizen for so long, it was getting stressful.
--CONTINUED IN PART TWO
Notes: Yes, Biff is finally collecting on his half of the deal from Six Weeks to Recovery. I have had this story in planning for a long time—I started writing it before Six Weeks to Recovery, so yeah it's been about five years from start to finish.
Max Love is loosely based off of Ty Warner of Beanie Babies fame. While Warner did stalk his exes and bug one’s apartment so as to record her with another man, he did not blackmail her for it, as far as I know. His house is a composite of the most godawful relegates of McMansion Hell. What Biff says about the foam concrete pillars is true, and so is what Raige's dad says about the stuffed animal business.
Due to the intricacies of the Vaygan underworld, Biff is relegated to bottom feeding, lest he run afoul of the local gangsters. It is very uncommon for someone to survive long as an independent operator in his part of town, and how Biff pulls it off and knows Rosenthal is a story all on its own.
