Django Durango

“I don’t know, man. I feel a little iffy about this job,” Savoy said. “But I can’t tell if it’s a gut feeling or if it’s just because working in places decorated for Christmas feels like a bad omen.”

“Bad omens? We got fuckin’ Rudolph up here guiding the sleigh tonight. There isn’t a better omen than that,” Nero smartassed.

“Wow, that’s an original fuckin’ joke,” their driver, the aforementioned Rudolph grumped. “Why don’t you tell one I ain’t heard a million times before?”

“Damn, Scrooge, who pissed in your porridge?” Nero asked. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
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“How long do you think it’ll be before they start lookin’ for us?” Sable asked. Cairo was driving, so Sable had her feet up on the dashboard and was eating Sour Punch Straws.

“I don’t expect that they will,” Cairo said. “As long as they never find out we’re working outside of the app, they should have no reason to think we haven’t merely retired.”

They drove along for a while in relative silence, save for Sable’s gooey chewing, the radio, and a beep every so often from the police radar detector, until Cairo’s face shifted into a pensive frown.

“Frenchy could be a problem,” she said.

“How?” Sable asked. She didn’t look up from the candy straw she was peeling apart from the rest in their plastic tray.

“It depends on what she knows. We don’t know when she disappeared or where she fucked off to.” Cairo considered the angles. “If she knows we took the money, she could report that it should be incoming.”

“Wouldn’ be in her interests though,” Sable said. “That was her job. Means she’d be responsible for making sure the money came in.”
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They were in the Titanic Exhibit gift shop. There were necklaces for sale, with pendants made from supposedly genuine pieces of coal brought up from the Titanic’s wreckage.

“That seems rather tasteless,” Cairo commented.

“That shit’s probably haunted,” Sable said.

“Okay, you’re good. Go!”

Summer pulled the plastic cap off the bottom of her boot heel and let her pocket knife fall out of the hollow into her hand. Pulling out the Phillips screwdriver bit, she set to work unscrewing the battery panel of the Laser Lock on some hapless kid’s locker.

In this post Columbine world, being caught with a weapon on school property – even one as dull and useless as the blade in her pocket knife – had ridiculous consequences. So Desi, her best friend, was keeping guard at the door to the outdoor halls. They weren’t supposed to be in the hall this early either, but getting caught in the building before the first bell was an infraction they – especially Desi, as a straight A student – could talk their way out of.

Summer had a good thing going with these Laser Locks. The infomercial for them started airing earlier that year. In it, kids pointed their little color-coordinated remote controls at the Laser Locks on their lockers and the locks popped open instantly, no combinations or keys needed. Having a Laser Lock shaved valuable seconds off a mid-day locker trip that might otherwise make it impossible to get across campus in the five minutes given before the bell rang, earning one an inordinately high punishment for tardiness. Or it would, if Summer didn’t steal the batteries from these locks.
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Everything had been going fine, tripped alarm notwithstanding. The tripped alarm worked out in their favor as now they could use the emergency exit to move the bags to the van. Cleo and Dixie had a decent assembly line going. Cleo was bagging up sculptures and then tossing the bags out the fire door to Dixie, who in turn tossed them through the open doors of the back of their driver’s van.

“Loving this efficiency, Dixie,” Cleo said. “It’s truly some Henry Ford shit.”

“I know! I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many bags at once,” Dixie agreed. She swung another bag into the van. It landed on the pile of bagged sculptures and made both a crunching and a shattering glass sound. Dixie winced.

Cleo looked up at the sound and gave Dixie an admonishing glance.

Just then, Southern burst into the gallery. He and Nero, their crewmates on this job, were supposed to be in the lobby holding off the cops.

“Nero’s just been killed! We need to leave!” he said.
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