Uptown Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

woman moaned.
    When her hand touched the screw, she didn’t seem to notice. Then they changed positions, with the wife on top.
    Marisol felt jagged from the tension between the adrenaline rush and the need to stay still. Her leg twitched, and she breathed to calm her system. She willed herself toward soothing thoughts, recalling the last place she felt she could really relax. She imagined la playa , El Escambron Beach, in Puerto Rico, and being with her grandmother when she was eleven. She recalled humid nights sleeping under a mosquito net with Cristina, laughing and admonishing her younger sister not to scratch her bites, even as Marisol secretly scratched her own—not scratched, but pressed the tip of her nail on the bite, making an X across the surface of each one. Scratching broke the skin, made it bleed, invited infection. The nail press brought delicious relief, but left no trace.
    The sharp clack ing of the woman’s boot heels on the hardwood floor brought Marisol back. Back to the screwdriver digging into her hip, her cramping fingers as she held the grate, the pain in her jaw from biting down on the flashlight, and her stiffening muscles.
    â€œI just need to freshen my lipstick,” the wife said, slightly breathless. “You have the tickets?”
    â€œGot them,” the husband said.
    Marisol waited in the dark, at the edge of her endurance. The vent air was starting to taste stale, and her fingers and neck cramped. As she turned her head slightly she saw the little model building, and recognized the logo on it from the CEO’s tech factory in Mexico. Suddenly she didn’t feel discomfort, just a furious, cold resolve. Before the scandal broke, this CEO was hailed for providing “decent” jobs for formerly trafficked girls. Yet building a tech assembly factory beside a notorious red-light district simply meant rescue operations could send a never-ending supply of cheap labor. Marisol could have stood the hypocrisy of hiring sex workers for his conference. But she had read the court transcripts. According to the women involved, some corrupt members of the anti-trafficking organization had handpicked the girls they considered most attractive and then groomed them as dancers. They dangled promises of green cards to the United States. Then they just shipped them into the conference to provide sexual services to the CEOs.
    The bag of cash pressed against her ankle. As always, she would send some of the funds to a group in Mexico that worked directly with the women.
    She kept her eye on the edge of the logo until she heard the alarm code. She waited until all three locks were bolted into place before she unpacked herself from the vent, spilling her body out onto the floor and spitting out the flashlight.
    She heard the ding of the elevator. Pulling pliers from her bag, she snipped off the ends of the screws and used epoxy to glue the four screw heads onto the front of the grate.
    As she waited for it to dry, she swept her arm along the living room shelf, knocking everything onto the floor. The ceramic and glass framing a picture of the man and two teenage kids shattered on the hardwood floor, but the plastic cover on the little model building only cracked slightly. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as dropping the award seventy stories during her first theft.
    * * *
    It was just past midnight when Marisol’s taxi crossed into Alphabet City. She drove by a couple screaming outside one of the bars: “ You were flirting with her! You were totally fucking flirting! ” They drove through traffic backed up from an accident on the Williamsburg Bridge.
    With all the gentrification, the Lower East Side felt muted these days. When Marisol was a kid, Loisaida had a different soundscape: Mamas calling, “Oye, Yunior, get your ass inside!” Salsa blasting from apartment windows, and summertime outdoor conga jam sessions with the splash of hydrants.
    Over time, many of the