Swindle Read online

  This was crazy! Fear alone should be keeping him awake! Did Achilles get caught napping inside the Trojan horse?

  “Eight hundred and one! … eight hundred and two! …”

  He actually counted 803. But he was no longer awake to hear it.

  11

  “Here, Luthor. Where are you, boy?”

  Griffin squinted through the gate into the darkness of the yard. The Doberman was nowhere to be seen.

  Griffin frowned. Not that he had any great love for the dog. But it was always unnerving when real life didn’t match what you’d planned for. What if Luthor had been left overnight in the store? If Ben opened the crate to find that ravening beast staring at him, he’d have a heart attack.

  Anxiously, Griffin began to climb the fence. It was tougher than he expected because of the acetylene tank of his father’s blowtorch, which was strapped to his back. He clambered down the opposite side and shined a flashlight through the display window. No sign of Ben or the dog. Griffin’s eyes fell on the crate, which sat just inside the door. The wrapping paper was undisturbed.

  He checked his watch. It was 7:45. Why was Ben still in the box? He rapped on the glass. “Ben!” he stage-whispered into the crack of the door. He knocked harder. “What are you doing, man? It’s time!”

  He experienced a moment of irrational terror. Had they forgotten the air holes?

  And then the scissors broke through the brown paper. Griffin watched breathlessly as the blade sawed laboriously around the square frame and disappeared again. A moment later, the lid was pushed open, and Ben’s head popped into view.

  Griffin took in the bleary, blinking eyes. He fell asleep? Through his disbelief, Griffin couldn’t suppress a hint of admiration. It was hard to imagine anyone being able to relax at a time like this. Ben was one in a million.

  A beeping sound brought Griffin back to urgent focus. The alarm! The intruder had triggered the motion sensor.

  Ben scrambled to the keypad. He had thirty seconds, no more. Griffin tried to fight off his uncertainty as his friend punched in 1-7-0-1. If they were wrong about the code, the siren was going to bust every eardrum between here and New York City.

  There was a triple chime, and the beeping stopped. The alarm was off.

  Ben unlocked the door and let Griffin inside. “Sorry I’m late,” he said sheepishly. “Any problems with the dog?”

  Griffin shone his flashlight up and down the aisles. “The dog’s a no-show. Must be flea-bath night.”

  Ben looked around restively. “I hate this place. It’s like the wiring of those cases is going to come alive and strangle us.”

  Griffin patted the blowtorch. “Forget the cases. All we want is the safe.”

  They followed the beam to the original scene of the crime — Swindle’s sales desk. Griffin felt no guilt, only the exhilaration of a perfectly executed plan. They had done it. They were inside. No dog, fence, dead bolt, or burglar alarm could stop them now.

  He moved behind the counter. And froze.

  The lockbox was not there.

  “Where’s the safe?” he blurted.

  Ben appeared at his side. “Behind the cash regis —” His mouth fell open.

  “It was right here — attached to the floor!” Griffin got down on his knees and focused the flashlight on the weathered hardwood. Four bolt-holes marked the spot where the lockbox had once been.

  “Search the store!” Griffin rasped.

  They combed the aisles, the stock area, even the bathroom. The safe was nowhere to be found.

  Griffin looked stunned. “I considered every possible move and countermove. Except one.”

  Ben nodded miserably. “A safe that can be bolted can also be unbolted. And taken someplace else.”

  Swindle had turned out to be a step ahead of them.

  “A perfect plan, executed perfectly. And it’s all for nothing.”

  “Maybe not,” Ben said hopefully. “I mean, the card’s not here. But we’re standing in the middle of Swindle’s store. So instead, why don’t we just take a bunch of other stuff that adds up to the same money?”

  Griffin swelled like a blowfish. “I am not a thief! I came here to find what’s rightfully mine and take it back. I don’t want anything that doesn’t belong to me.”

  “But you’ll never track down that card now,” Ben reasoned. “Who knows where Swindle could have hidden it? It could be in a safe-deposit box in a bank vault.”

  Griffin could offer only a helpless shrug. There was no quit in him, no surrender. But without the slightest clue where the Bambino might now be, no amount of planning, or creative thinking, or even genius was going to make a particle of difference.

  The Man With The Plan had run out of ideas.

  12

  Misery.

  There was no other word for it. Watching Mrs. Brompton march an endless parade of house hunters through the Bing home was more than Ben could bear. He regarded each potential buyer with suspicion and outright hostility. Could these nice people be The Enemy? The ones who would force Griffin’s family to move — who would split up the greatest pair of friends Cedarville had ever seen?

  As awful as it was for Ben, it had to be even worse for Griffin. It was his life that was being turned upside down. And not just by real estate agents. His entire personality had changed. The fire was gone, along with the razor-sharp sense of purpose that had always guided him.

  How many times had Ben prayed for a break from Griffin’s never-ending schemes? Now he would have given his right arm to hear his friend burst out with “All right, here’s the plan….” To do something, anything! Whatever it was, it had to be better than treading water, waiting for the inevitable — an offer on the house, a deal, packing, moving. The end of Griffin and Ben.

  At least it wasn’t boring. The Bings were looking for reasons to be out of their home while it was being shown, so they were dragging Griffin — and Ben with him — to every mall, park, carnival, street fair, and free concert. On the surface he was having fun. Yet deep down, it was like trying to enjoy great food while suffering from a gut-blaster stomachache. It was hard to be entertained today when tomorrow seemed very little like entertainment. And anyway, all he could think about was yesterday.

  The unsuccessful heist haunted the boys. The cleanup operation replayed itself in an endless loop in Ben’s head. Ditching the empty TV crate, locking and re-alarming the store. Even wiping the fingerprints from the keypad and doorknobs had been a halfhearted effort. Who would call the police to investigate the disappearance of absolutely nothing? At the most, Tom Dufferin might wonder about the delivery that had mysteriously disappeared. More likely, he would assume that his boss had dealt with it. In a way, the operation had been the perfect crime — in and out without a trace. How could such a glorious success have been such a dismal failure?

  They hashed and rehashed the details until their throats went dry. Only the roles were reversed. Ben was the one prodding what now, what next?

  “You can’t heist something if you don’t know where it is,” Griffin said sadly.

  And it made total sense — in every way but one. Griffin Bing did not admit defeat. It was simply not in his DNA. How had he suddenly become The Man Without The Plan?

  They were riding home from yet another concert in the Bings’ van when the barking sounded — not the playful yelp of a house pet, but a full-throated braying.

  “Goes to show how I’ve got Swindle on the brain,” Griffin mumbled unhappily. “For a minute there, I could have sworn I heard Luthor.”

  Ben peered out the rear window. A large black dog was chasing them. “I don’t think that’s even a Doberman….” As they left their pursuer yowling stubbornly in the road, a thoughtful expression appeared on Ben’s face. “Wait a minute! It wasn’t Luthor — but it could have been!”

  Griffin regarded him oddly. “It could have been my grandmother, too. It wasn’t. What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you get it? The real Luthor has to be so
mewhere! He wasn’t at the store on heist night. Where was he?”

  Griffin gave a listless shrug. “At home, I guess. Swindle probably gave him a few days off threatening people at Palomino’s Emporium. It’s no big deal. The card isn’t even there anymore.”

  “Think,” Ben ordered. “What if Luthor’s absence and the card’s absence are connected?”

  “Don’t talk in riddles, man!”

  “Luthor’s a guard dog,” Ben reasoned. “When the Bambino was at the store, so was Luthor. But if Swindle brought Luthor home —”

  Light dawned on Griffin. “The card is at Swindle’s house!”

  When they reached the Bings’, Griffin and Ben made a beeline for the phone book.

  “Please let the guy live in town!” Griffin threw the directory open to the Ps — more specifically, Palomino, S. W.

  There was the address: 531 Park Avenue Extension.

  “That’s not too far from the store!” Ben exclaimed breathlessly. “We did it, Griffin! We figured out where the card is!”

  Griffin nodded, his cheeks flushed with purpose. “Now all we need —”

  Ben finished his sentence. “Is a plan.”

  “Not just any plan. This time we need the ultimate plan.”

  13

  SWINDLE’S HOUSE - 531 PARK AVENUE EXTENSION

  (i) Two-story HOME, steep-pitched ROOF

  (ii) Chain-link fence — even higher than at store (why me?)

  (iii) No neighbor in BACK, town WATER TOWER

  (iv) PRIVATE PROPERTY signs (2)

  (v) NO TRESPASSING signs (3)

  (vi) KEEP OUT signs (4)

  (vii) BEWARE OF DOG signs (6)

  “Swindle sure loves signs,” Ben observed nervously.

  “He loves chasing people away,” Griffin amended. He frowned at a sticker on one of the door sidelights:

  THESE PREMISES PROTECTED BY AN

  ULTRATECH SENTRY-MAX™

  SECURITY SYSTEM WITH WIRELESS

  RADIO TRANSMITTER

  FOR INSTANT POLICE ALERTS

  “Great,” he muttered. “Another alarm.”

  “And this one looks like something out of a James Bond movie,” Ben added. His eyes fell on a dog dish on the stoop and a leash handle wrapped around the wrought-iron railing. Heart sinking, he tracked the leather leash through the bushes and around the side of the house. The taut line went suddenly slack. “Uh-oh.”

  Ben was already in motion before they heard the first bark. He grabbed a bewildered Griffin and began dragging him across the lawn.

  Luthor exploded from behind the house in a pose that had become all too familiar — a ravenous predator in pursuit of prey.

  “The road!” Griffin rasped.

  The two flung themselves over the curb a split second before Luthor ran out of leash and was yanked back by his collar. A motorcycle swerved to avoid the boys as they pounded across the street. The Doberman twisted and writhed, howling its outrage.

  “I guess we’d better tell Savannah that her dog whispering is only temporary,” Ben panted.

  A slow chuckle mingled with Luthor’s angry braying. Griffin turned to notice an elderly neighbor in a rocking chair on the porch of number 530. The man was peering at them over his reading glasses with great interest.

  “Haven’t seen you two around before. New in town?”

  Griffin hesitated. It would be risky to say yes. Just because he didn’t recognize the old guy didn’t mean he might not be a friend of a friend of Griffin’s family. Cedarville was, after all, a fairly small community.

  “We’re experimenting with some new ways home from school,” he replied. “Bully problems.”

  The man’s face darkened. “Kids today. You wouldn’t believe the things I see just sitting in this very chair!”

  Griffin swallowed hard. The chair was perfectly positioned to watch the neighborhood in both directions. The Palomino front door was dead ahead, across the street.

  “Spend a lot of time out here?” he asked faintly.

  “Every waking minute,” the man said cheerfully. “I worked forty-three years down in the coal mines. In my book, a second out of the fresh air is a second wasted.”

  “Even in bad weather?” Ben ventured.

  “I dress for it. Rain or shine, hot or cold, Eli Mulroney is right here.”

  “Except at mealtimes,” Griffin prompted.

  “That’s what a microwave is for,” Mr. Mulroney said agreeably. “So I don’t have to waste time cooking. Got no TV and no computer. Plenty of top-notch entertainment right out here. Like watching you two hotfooting it across the road with Luthor on your tail.” He treated himself to a good laugh. “Think you were better off with the bullies. At least they don’t bite.”

  Griffin and Ben tried to laugh with him.

  “What kind of people have a dog like that?” Griffin complained. “Doesn’t it, you know, attack the mailman, or bite their kids?”

  “Hah! If there’s anyone nastier than that dog, it’s the fine fellow who owns it. He lives solo — who’d bunk with a creep like that? But Luthor’s not around much. ‘Pal-o-mine’ usually has the critter on guard duty at his store. Wonder why the monster’s here all of a sudden. Probably ate a few customers in the shop.”

  Griffin felt some small measure of satisfaction. Eli Mulroney may have been the unofficial CIA of Park Avenue Extension, but the old man still didn’t know the real reason Swindle had moved Luthor from store to home. Griffin was sure of it: The safe was there, with the card inside it.

  He grimaced. Bad enough Swindle was a security freak with an attack dog and an alarm system that had everything short of laser cannons. How were they supposed to pull off a heist under the nose of a full-time neighborhood spy?

  * * *

  WWW.ULTRATECH.USA

  MILITARY-CALIBER SECURITY

  FOR YOUR HOME

  Griffin leaned back from the computer screen, whistling nervously through his teeth.

  “How bad?” asked Ben.

  They were in the school library, researching S. Wendell Palomino’s security system, hoping to find a way to beat it.

  “You know what the UltraTech company is?” Griffin groaned. “They take the alarms the navy used to put in dry-docked submarines and install them in people’s houses. Leave it to Swindle.”

  Ben peered over his shoulder at the screen. “It says their sirens are one hundred and seventy-five decibels louder than revving jet engines. That means if we set it off, half the town will come running. Including the police — and my mother.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Griffin told him. “We’re not going to set it off. I wonder if his code is the same as the one at the store.”

  “That wouldn’t help us,” Ben pointed out. “Read this part — the e-alert feature. Every time the alarm is deactivated, the system automatically sends a message to your cell phone. So if we turn off his alarm, Swindle will be the first to know.”

  “And on top of it all, we’ve got Eli Mulroney, who came up out of the coal mine just to make our lives complicated,” said Griffin. “He spends twenty-five hours a day staring at the very house we have to break into!”

  “He doesn’t seem to like Swindle any more than we do,” Ben mused. “Maybe we should just explain what we’re doing.”

  Griffin was horrified. “Are you crazy? I want your promise right now that you won’t tell anybody — and I mean nobody!”

  “We told Savannah,” Ben reminded him. “And we’ll still need her to get us past Luthor. Don’t ask how that’s going to happen. She hates our guts.”

  Griffin nodded slowly. “We could do with some help, and not just for the dog. But we can’t know exactly who to recruit until we have a plan. And even having a plan seems pretty far away at this point.”

  “It better not be too far away. The auction is in eight days.”

  “We’ll make it work,” Griffin promised grimly. “It’s more complicated than the store, but you tackle every problem one at a time. The neighbor, the d
og, the alarm, the break-in, the safe —”

  “The what?” Mr. Martinez appeared from behind a shelving cart. “The alarm, the break-in, the safe? Griffin! Ben! If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’re planning a burglary!”

  Griffin was appalled. On top of everything else they were facing, how could they be so careless as to spill the beans in front of their teacher? He looked at Ben and instantly knew there was going to be no assistance from that quarter. His best friend was paralyzed.

  “You’re right, Mr. Martinez,” Griffin managed finally. “We are planning a burglary. At least Ben is.”

  Ben cast him a look of pure torment.

  Griffin forged on. “For creative writing, Ben got this great idea to write about a big robbery. And in order to write it, you have to plan it like it’s real.”

  Mr. Martinez broke into a delighted smile. “I think that’s fantastic! What’s being stolen, Ben?”

  “Uh — a diamond necklace?” Ben croaked.

  “That explains the safe,” said the teacher. “How about the house you have to break into?”

  “I haven’t really figured it out yet,” Ben offered faintly.

  “That’s part of the writer’s craft,” the teacher enthused. “You design the house to fit what you want to happen in the story. I have an idea. Go to the town hall. The building department has architectural drawings for every house in Cedarville. That should help your imagination take off.”

  It might not have helped Ben, but it did wonders for Griffin. If the building department had a floor plan for every house in town, that meant there would be one on file for 531 Park Avenue Extension. And seeing that layout might show them the way in.

  14

  Mrs. Annabelle Abernathy, the building department clerk at the Cedarville Town Hall, loved her files and treated them as if they were her children. So when two eleven-year-olds asked to see the original blueprints to 531 Park Avenue Extension, she was reluctant to hand them over.