Smash & Grab (13 page)

My father's office building
looms over me. Every window feels like an eye, staring. I run a hand over my head. My wig feels heavy and unnatural, but I'm glad it's there. Like armor. I don't recognize the girl I see in the building's glass front doors, and so I hope that no one else will, either, that I will walk inside and go upstairs to the orientation without being caught. I was confident before—when this was all planning and conjecture—but now, standing here, I'm terrified.
What if I get caught? What if I make things worse instead of better?

“Going in?” A woman in a navy-blue suit with a coffee cup in one hand steps in front of my reflection and opens the door.

I turn the charm on, the schemer in me fully coming to life now that my audience has shown up. My nerves don't disappear so much as fade. I tuck them away at the back of my brain. “Yes, thank you,” I say, aiming for a tone that sounds mature and confident.

“You must be one of the new interns, right? Welcome to LL National.”

“I hate to bother you, but do you know which floor I need to go to? I forgot my orientation packet.” I wring the handles of my purse and feign embarrassment.

“Sure, I'm going that way myself. I can take you.” She holds out her hand. “Jackie Fuller. I work in the mortgage division here. You'll come visit my department at the tail end of your internship.”

We sign in at the front desk. I have to concentrate as I sign
Angela Dunbar.
My hand wants to make an
L,
not an
A,
every muscle in my fingers seeming to resist me. I didn't really think about that, about the nearly reflexive need I would have to be Lexi even now. I can feel myself starting to sweat. Am I already giving myself away? The security guy checks my UCLA student ID and then hands me a temporary visitor's badge. I clip it to the suit Elena picked out for me, and together Jackie and I ride the elevator up to the twentieth floor. I look at her out of the corner of my eye. I think I've met her once before at one of my father's parties. She looks familiar. I wish I'd paid better attention, cared a little more back then.
Does she recognize me?

“You said you work with mortgages?”

“That's right.”

“So then I guess you're dealing with a lot of fallout right now. They arrested your VP, right?” It's risky to bring this up, but I can't help myself. I want to watch her face. Harrison might not be the only person I need to keep an eye on here. Besides, I'm curious. What does she think of my dad? Does anyone think he's innocent?

Jackie blinks. “They did.”

“Did you work with that guy…what's his name? Warren something? Did you work with him directly?”

Jackie licks her lips. “Look, I'm sure that they'll mention the case during orientation, but I'd rather not address it right now.”

I nod, immediately regretting asking her about my father. I'm here to check Harrison out. Period. Whether my dad is really guilty doesn't have anything to do with that.
Focus on the goal, Lex,
I tell myself.

I rack my brain for something else to say, some small talk that might make this woman warm up to me. I'm not good at gaining people's confidences, probably because I'm horrible at confiding in people myself. What am I supposed to talk about with this woman who is probably at least twenty years older than me to put her at ease?

“I love the art deco feel of this place,” I say after a few awkward seconds. My default with adults is to talk architecture and design. I founded the architecture club at school, and we spent tons of time last summer helping to make student-created houses for Habitat for Humanity in Orange County. It's something I love that grown-ups seem to have at least a passing interest in, too.

“Oh, I know. Beautiful, isn't it? One of the few buildings in LA with some real historical character. To think that until LL National came along and bought the building, it was in danger of being converted into lofts! Can you imagine? The bank made sure to keep all the original architecture. Even this new renovation happening on the upper floors has to follow a strict set of preservation standards so that the new work won't compromise the charm this place has. You'll get to tour the building while you're here, and really, it's one of the best parts of orientation. If you're into design, you'll love it.”

I almost tell her that I want to be an architect someday when I catch myself. Angela is an econ major. She probably wouldn't dream of being an architect. Divulging even this much of my true self to this woman was a real risk. Even if the chances of her checking up on me are remote, if I don't want to get caught, I can't start offering up too much information.

When the elevator doors open, Jackie walks me to a conference room, where twelve other interns are seated. Two of them are also from UCLA but didn't have classes with Angela—Quinn checked to make sure. Still, there is a risk that someone will know her or of her and figure out right away that I'm a fraud. I slip into the seat nearest the door in case I need to run. My palms start to sweat, and I flatten them against my skirt, hoping the fabric will wick the dampness away.

“Hey. I'm Maddie,” the girl next to me says. She's got a coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other. She's rail thin and rabbit twitchy.

“Angela. Nice to meet you.”

“What school are you coming from?” she asks.

Automatically I think about Westwood Prep and my friends who are, at this very minute, riding out the final few days of school. “UCLA, you?”

“Same!” She scoots a bit closer, and I brace for questions I can only guess the answers to. “Are you on campus? Maybe we could carpool in the mornings? I mean, for the next week, until they send us to separate banks for our in-branch training, at least. It would save us gas money.”

“I live off campus—like, way, way off campus, so carpooling won't work, sorry.” I stop myself from adding that I live with my family or lying and saying that I live in an apartment, because everything I say I have to keep track of. Running any scheme is like spinning several spiderwebs at once, every thread connecting to another. Spin too many and it becomes impossible to remember them all. I've learned that the hard way more times than I care to count. And now so has my dad.

“Good morning, LL National interns.” The conference room door opens, and Mitch Harrison strides in. I freeze. I wanted to run into him, but not quite this soon. “Good morning. I'm Mitch Harrison, president of Strategic Initiatives. On behalf of the bank, I'd like to welcome you to our internship program. We hope you'll take full advantage of all that the next few weeks offer and consider applying for future employment with us after graduation. I reviewed each of your internship files personally and am very impressed with what I read. A group as creative, intelligent, and innovative as you has a very bright future here. I look forward to getting to know each of you better over the course of your time with us. For now, enjoy your breakfast.”

There is a smattering of applause, and then he walks around the room, shaking hands with each intern. In a matter of a few seconds he'll get to me. I imagine chucking a tray of croissants at his head. He should be in jail, not smiling like he doesn't have a care in the world, like my father never even existed, like my family isn't suffering horribly right now. Nausea grips my stomach. I put my hand into my suit pocket and feel for the listening device Quinn and I bought online. I just need to figure out where his office is.

“Hello, Miss—?” he says, smiling down at me the way he did my mother the other day before she started yelling at him. He's good. Being a liar myself, it's almost impressive the amount of warmth and sincerity he manages to exude.

“Angela Dunbar.” I wait for some flash of recognition to cross his face the longer he keeps staring at me, for him to figure out who I am in spite of the wig, contacts, and makeup, but he doesn't. “Business economics major, huh? At UCLA. My alma mater.” I force myself to keep smiling.
Holy crap, I never thought to check on this.
“What do you think of Professor Hildebrand?”

He stares at me, waiting. I swallow. I have zero idea who he's talking about.
How do I even pretend that I do? Is it a man or a woman?
I could be done here before I even begin. I get this wrong and he'll probably pull my application again for closer review. “Um, well…what do
you
think about Professor Hildebrand?” I ask, smiling in a way I hope is conspiratorial.

He throws his head back and laughs. “Ha! Smart. It's never wise to burn bridges, is it? It just so happens that she's an old friend of mine.”

I smile wider, relief rushing through my whole body. “Well, then I think she's brilliant.”

He smiles widely. “Angela. Nice to meet you.”

We shake hands and then he's on to the next person, and it's all I can do not to pass out. For every detail I did think about, there are ten more I didn't, and any one of them might expose me.

“He's a Clooney. Bet his wife is probably our age,” Maddie says. “Lucky girl.” I shudder and she laughs. “Not into older men, are you?”

Not when it's him,
I think. Honestly, though, she's probably right. I don't get girls who are into guys their fathers' ages. It feels way too—I don't know—Oedipal to me.

We finish breakfast while one of the bank's managers goes over a PowerPoint presentation about the program and how the next few weeks will play out. We'll be at our assigned banks for the duration of our internship, starting next week. Quinn's working on hacking into the bank's computer system to make sure I get placed downstairs at the main branch so I can stay close to Harrison. With any luck I'll uncover something about him long before the internship is finished.

Our tour of the building comes next and turns out to be less a study in its architecture and more a snooze-worthy walk through floors of cubicles and conference rooms with more talk about investing and lending than is humanly possible to take unless you are Scrooge McDuck. The only remotely interesting thing that Trisha, our tour guide and the internship coordinator, brings up is that right before LL National bought the building from the bank that was here before, three major Hollywood movies used the basement vault as a film site.

“We won't be visiting the vault on this tour, but those of you who end up here at our main branch will get to see it during your training weeks. Fun fact: the film crews couldn't get their big equipment from the parking garage to the vault, so they built a dumbwaiter to lower the stuff down. Cool, right?” She leads us down one hallway and then another, past a series of cubicles, and then through a mini version of the main lobby near the elevators, with a security desk and a series of glass double doors that lead out to the parking garage.

“If you have a car, you can check in here with Reggie and he'll get you a parking pass and assign you a temporary spot. From now on please feel free to use this entrance into the building. But before you do, there's something really unique about the dumbwaiter that I have to show you guys.” Next to the bank of elevators is what looks like another elevator door, only shorter and less shiny, more brushed metal. It has a keypad and a regular key lock. Trisha unlocks it, then punches in a series of numbers on the keypad, too fast for me to make them out. She presses another button, and the dumbwaiter door opens. Inside, it is just like a cargo elevator, nothing but a square box, totally utilitarian except for the signatures covering the walls. “The actors and crews on each movie signed the inside of the dumbwaiter. Right there is Michael Keaton's signature, and next to his, Robert De Niro's.” Tricia beams at us. “Only bank employees and interns get to see this.” A smattering of
ooh
s and
aah
s rise up from the crowd.

The dumbwaiter
is
cool, but not any more impressive than, say, the handprints in front of Mann's Chinese Theatre. Sort of commonplace for those of us who grew up seeing these same people grab coffee at the local Starbucks, where their autographs are scrawled across the walls there, too. I wonder if the dumbwaiter goes to the floor that Harrison's office is on.