That evening, Kenny showed up at Stan's house at almost midnight. That was the plan, since the jewellers closed at 10:30pm, so it would long have been deserted by now. When he knocked on the door, it was immediately opened by Stan. Kyle was rushing down the stairs, securing his green hat on top of his mass of curly red hair.
"You ready?" Kenny asked the two of them.
Stan nodded. "We just need to wait for Cartman. Come inside."
So the three of them sat down in the living room, but nobody settled. The anticipation of what they were about to do made the atmosphere tense.
"So..." Kenny began, in an attempt to lighten the mood. "What have you two been doing this afternoon? Or do I not want to know?" He smirked.
"Shut up, dude," Stan laughed, punching Kenny lightly on the shoulder, but Kyle's face turned as red as his hair.
The redhead was saved from his embarrassment by a loud knock on the door.
They all went to greet Cartman, and the four of them looked solemnly at each other.
"This is it," said Kenny. "Let's go."
"You boys have fun at the movies!" Stan's mom called to them as they piled into Cartman's car.
As the only one in the group who could drive, Cartman was the designated getaway driver, and the other three would go into the shop.
Kenny looked across at Kyle, who was fidgeting. "You nervous?"
"Well, we're about to break into a shop and steal, which is illegal, and if we get caught we'll probably go to prison and definitely have it put on our criminal records." Kyle said. "So yeah, I'm a little nervous."
Kenny suddenly realised what he was asking of his friends. If they got caught, the consequences would be dire. Especially for Kyle, who hadn't even had a detention since elementary school, and was hoping to go to Harvard.
"I... I really appreciate you guys doing this," Kenny told the other three. "I know what you're risking for it. But it's ok if you want to back out now."
Stan shook his head adamantly. "No way. We're not backing out. If you're doing this, we're doing it with you. This is the way it had always been: the four of us against the world."
As Kyle and Cartman chorused their agreement, Cartman pulled to a stop around the corner from the jewellers. "Here we are. You'd better get my money."
Stan pulled out his laptop. "I'll disable the security system remotely." He tapped away on the keyboard for a minute, creasing has his brow. "Mm... uh-hu... and, I'm done." He said, sliding the laptop back into its bag. "They really are lax, that was child's play. We're good to go." Since Stan had done his job, he could have waited in the car with Cartman, but everyone knew that Stan wouldn't want to be away from Kyle even for a second at a time like this.
Kyle took a deep breath and left the car, followed by Stan. As Kenny was about to leave, Cartman said, hesitantly, "good luck."
Kenny was surprised, but he nodded to Cartman and followed Kyle and Stan.
The street was empty and dark, the perfect environment for a heist. Kenny smiled as they approached the jewellers, and took out his lock picking kit. It was nothing fancy, just a few hair pins and bits of metal he'd found on the floor outside his house, but he was very adept with them. Within seconds, the door was unlocked.
"Wait here one second," he told Kyle and Stan. When he'd told them there were no security cameras, that hadn't quite been true. There was only one inside the shop, and it would need dealing with.
Luckily, it didn't face the door, instead focusing on the counter, so Kenny was able to approach it from the side. His coat was pulled over his face as far as possible, and hopefully very little of him was shown on the camera anyway.
Covering the lens probably would have sufficed, but Kenny didn't want his friends to know he'd lied to them. Luckily, it wasn't attached very securely to the ceiling. It took Kenny a few attempts, but he managed to yank it loose, so that it was now only hanging from the ceiling from a few wires. He took a small pair of scissors from his pocket and snipped them. Was that safe? Probably not, but as he kicked the broken camera under one of the display tables, he knew that his friends wouldn't find out he'd lied.
"All clear," he said to them, as he exited the shop a few seconds later.
"Sweet," said Stan, seeming relaxed about the whole escapade now that it was actually happening. He followed Kenny into the shop, and Kyle followed them somewhat reluctantly.
Kenny headed to the cash register, and told the other two, "there's a safe in the back, most of the money will be in there."
They nodded and headed for the back room, and Kenny heard Kyle whisper to Stan, "let's just get the money and go. Quickly."
Kenny took a crowbar out of his pocket (Cartman often joked about how a poor person could have such deep pockets) and used it to wrench the cash register open. Inside, there was about two hundred dollars. He took them and joined his friends in the back room.
There was a reason he'd needed Kyle to help, apart from just having his friends with him. The redhead was great with circuits and hacking, and the lock on the safe was computerised.
"It's difficult," Kyle told Kenny as he entered the room, "but I can do it. Just give me a sec."
After fiddling with the interface for a minute, he gave up and turned to Stan. Stan nodded to his best friend, understanding what he needed before Kyle even spoke. He got a small screwdriver from his pocket and carefully opened the lid to reveal a load of wires. Kyle looked at them and began to methodically select which ones needed cutting. Kenny handed him the scissors, and after a few snips and one being plugged into a different socket, Kyle was able to pull the door open easily.
There were several wads of cash inside, and Kenny counted it up. "Three thousand, six hundred dollars. So that's eight hundred each," he told the others, seeming pleased with this. But a panicked voice in his mind reminded him, it's not even close to enough.
"How much was in the cash register?" Kyle asked.
Kenny hesitated. "Eighty dollars," he lied, and Kyle seemed to believe him.
"What have they been spending all their money on?" Stan wondered. They had all been expecting more than this, but nobody seemed disappointed.
Kenny shrugged. "When Kevin worked here, they didn't pay him much."
"Let's get out of here," Kyle said, anxiety creeping into his voice.
They headed through the front room again, and Kenny stopped. "Hey, guys, we're in a jewellers. Why don't we take some jewellery?"
"Look, Princess Kenny," Stan said. "If you want some so bad, we can buy you some cheap stuff from the supermarket. But we need to go."
Kenny rolled his eyes. "Not for me, I mean to sell. Then we can get more money."
Stan and Kyle exchanged a glace, seeming to have a mental argument in that second. Stan won. "Alright. But be quick about it." Kyle glanced around nervously.
Kenny approached the most expensive item in the shop, a beautiful necklace which was a pattern of silver plates and crystals, interwoven with a shimmering strand of silver, so thin it looked like lace. In the center of the necklace sat a gleaming red gem about the size of the lid of a beer bottle. If Kenny hadn't needed the money, he would have considered picking this out for himself anyway, but right now it was the price that drew him in. Six thousand dollars. If he took this, he wouldn't even need the rest of the money.
Excited, he picked the lock of its glass case with little difficulty. But as he reached his hand in to remove the necklace, a piercing alarm sounded. A deafening shrill bell mixed with a sound like a blaring siren filled the shop, and must have been heard by half the population of South Park.
Kenny stuffed the necklace in his pocket and dashed out of the door just behind Stan and Kyle, covering his ears. Kenny hated loud noises, and all he wanted to do right now was curl up on the floor and cry, but he had to get away before the police arrived.
As they reached the car, Kyle flung open the back door, yelling. "Drive, fatass!"
Before Cartman could respond, before Kyle had even got into the car, an authoritative voice stopped all four boys in their tracks. "Not so fast."
Kenny recognised the police car immediately, but not the police officer. This wasn't Officer Barbrady. South Park had recently got some new police officers who were a lot more competent than the old lot. Barbrady and the others were still working, but it was just Kenny's luck that they were caught by one of the new officers. This man wasn't the kind of police officer that Kenny was used to. His voice was commanding, his expression serious. Everything about him was intimidating.
"Step away from the car with your hands up." He ordered in a monotone bark.
Kyle, who had been standing with one leg in the car and the other on the sidewalk, slowly stepped away from the vehicle. Stan, who was standing behind him, didn't seem to realise that he'd placed his hands on Kyle's waist in search of reassurance. He quickly raised them in the air as he stepped back, blushing. Even Cartman got out of the car without insulting the police.
"How did they get here so fast?" Stan asked out of the corner of his mouth.
"They must have been patrolling the area," Kenny told him quietly as he raised his hands.
"So, you boys think it's ok to steal from a jewellery store, hm?" The officer raised his eyebrows, which gave him the expression of a predator about to pounce.
"We didn't do it!" Kyle protested. "You can't prove anything!"
The officer smirked. "Maybe not yet," then he said to his men, "search them."
Kyle, Stan and Cartman were searched. They found two thousand dollars on Stan, and one thousand six hundred on Kyle.
Facing the glares of the police officers, Stan said, "we've been saving for a holiday. The cabin we booked doesn't take advanced payments, so we need to take all the cash with us, plus money for fuel and food for the four of us. We left all our stuff at my friends' house," he gestured to Cartman, "so we're just going to fetch it, then we'll drive at night because the roads are less busy."
He was a smooth liar, keeping a straight face and even tone. Kenny would have believed him if they hadn't just robbed a jewellers together. The police officers seemed almost convinced, but everything fell apart when one went through the pockets of Kenny's coat.
"Ah-ha!" He remarked triumphantly as he pulled the necklace out, and everyone stopped for a second to gaze at it. The beautiful, incriminating web of silver. The only hard evidence of their crime. The thing that would damn them all.
The police officer in charge smirked, and inclined his head towards the two police cars. Each of the officers handcuffed one of the boys, and threw them in the back of the cars.