Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0G9WY6XQXRKW0JEW4X24XB

The back booth at Denny's had seen better plans, but none more desperate. Molly spread a crayon-drawn map across the sticky table, weighing down the corners with ketchup bottles and a half-eaten stack of pancakes. "Okay, so the target is a seventh birthday party," she said, tapping the paper. "Theme: dinosaurs. Guest of honor: Timothy Blumenthal." Bill squinted at the map. "Molly. We are grown adults." "Your point?" "My point is that last month we were casing a jewelry store in Antwerp. Now we're robbing a second-grader named Timothy." "Timothy's father is a hedge fund manager," Molly said. "Do you know what kids get from hedge fund managers? iPads. Drones. That LEGO Millennium Falcon. We're talking eight grand in swag, minimum, and the only security is a clown named Bongo." Bill rubbed his temples. "There's a clown?" "Bongo the Magnificent. Semi-retired. Bad knee." "And the parents?" "Distracted. They always are. There's cake, there's screaming, there's a piñata at two fifteen sharp." She circled the piñata on the map with a red crayon. "That's our window. Everyone rushes the candy, we hit the gift table." "What's my role in this genius plan?" Molly grinned and slid a garment bag across the table. Bill unzipped it slowly. Inside was a costume — green, scaly, enormous. "No." "Bill." "Absolutely not." "You are going to be Chompy the Party Dinosaur. The entertainment. You distract, I extract." "I have a master's degree." "Chompy has a master's degree too. In *fun*." Bill stared at the costume like it had personally insulted his mother. "The tail has a zipper." "That's for ventilation." "There are sweat stains on the inside of the head." "Previous Chompy was committed to the craft." He let the costume fall back into the bag. "What are you going to be?" "A caterer." Molly produced a black apron from her purse with a flourish. "Nobody looks at the caterer. I slip the gifts into the cooler, wheel the cooler out the side door, load it in the van. We're at the border before little Timmy opens his first card." "And if someone notices Chompy stuffing a drone down his pants?" "Then you do the dance." "The dance." "The Chompy Chomp. There's a tutorial on YouTube. I've watched it nine times. Bill, it is *mesmerizing*. A toddler threw up from joy." Bill was quiet for a long moment. He took a sip of his coffee, which had gone cold forty minutes ago, and stared out at the parking lot where their getaway van — a used ice cream truck — sat idling in the drizzle. "The Millennium Falcon, you said." "Seven thousand five hundred pieces." "And we split everything?" "Sixty-forty. I'm the brains." "Fifty-fifty. I'm the one in the suit." Molly considered this. Then she extended a hand across the syrupy table. "Fifty-fifty." They shook. Outside, the ice cream truck played *Pop Goes the Weasel*, slow and ominous, like a death march for childhood joy.