Until his brother Vinnie fell through the ceiling of the gift shop, Joey Ragazzo thought the museum heist was going pretty well.
Sneak into the gift shop stock room before closing. Check.
Wait until midnight, when the only guard moved to patrol the upper floors. Check.
Cut the motion-sensor cabling in the drop ceiling above the gift shop. Check.
All that remained was Vinnie following the cabling through the ceiling to the Spanish Empire wing and grabbing a handful of doubloons.
Joey knew it was a good, simple plan because Marco Moretti always said any plan the Ragazzo brothers touched had better be simple.
***
“What the fuck was that?” Marco’s voice whined in Joey’s earpiece.
“Small problem,” Joey whispered. “Vinnie fell through the ceiling.”
“What the fuck was Vinnie doing in the ceiling?”
“Don’t you remember? That was the plan.”
“That fat fuck is bigger than I am. You’re a buck-fifty, soaking wet. YOU were supposed to go up there.”
“I don’t like small spaces. It’s a serious problem.”
“Christ. Did Humpty Dumpty cut the sensors before he fell?”
Vinnie struggled to his hands and knees in the middle of a pile of debris. He spat out a piece of ceiling tile. “Yep. All good.”
“Then go get my doubloons! I’ll meet you outside the southside windows for the drop. It’s snowing like crazy out here. Get moving!”
Vinnie scowled, doing his best Marco impression. “Man, he’s high-strung.”
“He ain’t wrong, though,” Joey said. “Get your ass back up there.”
Vinnie found his flashlight. “It’s broken. Gimme yours.”
“Screw you. I ain’t sitting around in the dark. Grab one of those souvenir candles. Time to go old-school.”
***
Vinnie perched on the stepstool, head, and arm sticking through the ceiling hole. After a moment, he pulled back and brought the candle out. “Man, this thing doesn’t light anything.”
“Tough. Eat a salad once in a while, Tubby.”
Vinnie frowned. “Obesity is a serious problem.” The candle hovered just below the surface of the ceiling. Neither man noticed the spray nozzle hanging out of the nearest tile until the candle’s flame flickered over it.
An alarm sounded, and water exploded out of a dozen nozzles scattered around the gift shop.
“We are screwed,” they said in tandem.
Then, as if planned all along, the gift shop security doors parted like the waters of the Red Sea.
***
Marco found them at the south exit, soaking wet, snow collecting in their hair, but happy.
“What the hell happened?”
“Fire alarm. Opened the gift shop and exterior doors,” Joey said.
Vinnie swung a short piece of wood back and forth like a club. “Ran into the security guard on the way out. Gave him a pop.”
“And my doubloons?” Marco spat.
“Sorry, boss, we were lucky to get out at all,” Vinnie said.
Before Marco could lay into them, the streetlight illuminated Vinnie’s club.
“Where’d you get that?” Marco asked.
“Inside,” Vinnie said. “The summer exhibit.”
Marco plucked it away, examined the engravings along the surface. “The ‘Sumerian’ exhibit?”
Vinnie shrugged.
Marco herded them away as sirens sounded in the distance. The muscular man shook his bald head in disbelief. “This tablet will snatch $50K, easy. Let’s get to Paulie’s and collect.” He trudged through the deepening snow, cutting through an alley to a busier street as the brothers followed.
“How about food first. We gotta get warm,” Joey said.
“And dry,” Vinnie moaned.
Marco called over his shoulder. “The boss first. Then food,”
“Let’s hit the Parkmoor Diner,” Vinnie offered. “They got a boneless meatloaf sandwich that’ll blow your mind.”
Marco twisted around in the calf-high snow of the alley.
“I swear,” Vinnie said, hand to the sky. “Best thing you’ll ever eat.”
Marco pinched the bridge of his nose. “Meatloaf doesn’t have bones.”
“Duh. It’s boneless,” Joey said.
The big man’s nostrils flared. “Fuckstick, there ain’t any bones in meatloaf. Ever.”
“Not at the Parkmoor, that’s for sure,” Vinnie said. Joey nodded in scholarly agreement.
Marco bristled. “Makes no fuckin’ sense. That’s like me saying I had a gasoline-free omelet this morning.”
Vinnie and Joey stared.
“That’s crazy.”
“Who the hell would put gasoline on an omelet? Marco, no offense, but that’s kinda dumb.”
The growl started low, deep in Marco’s throat. The sound rumbled through gritted teeth, building in power and volume until even his prodigious jaw muscles couldn’t contain it. The growl blossomed into a roar, blasting hours of frustration into the snowy air.
“AAAAARGH!!! You stupid, inbred, lucky motherfuckers!” He yanked a Glock-17 from his overcoat.
Vinnie and Joey threw both hands up, eyes wide. Marco aimed the handgun at Vinnie, then Joey, and back again.
“That. Is. IT! I can’t take another second of your bullshit!” He waved the tablet with his other hand. “If you hadn’t just gifted me a huge payday, I’d have already put bullets in that gray sludge you call brains. Now get outta’ my sight before I reconsid—”
The din of an approaching engine made Marco stop and turn to the street.
A snowplow.
The big man sucked in a breath just as a seven-foot-high wall of snow cascaded off the plow’s blade. Two hundred pounds of ice and snow swept across the alley. Marco stumbled, overcorrected, then sprawled headfirst into the side of a steel dumpster. A hollow thunk of skull-against-metal rang out, and Marco slumped into the driven snow, unconscious. His Glock and the tablet landed at the Ragazzo brothers’ feet.
Vinnie pocketed the gun. “What a dick.”
Joey picked up the tablet. “Anger issues. Serious problem.”
Vinnie nodded. “What next?”
Joey blew out a deep breath, watched the white mist curl into the night air. “I’ll tell ya what we do…first, we get this thingy over to Uncle Paulie, get paid.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Then the Parkmoor. Then Las Vegas.”
“Vegas?”
Joey pointed at the gun, Marco’s body, then the tablet. He smiled.
“Bro, we are on a goddamn roll.”
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