But just as Lip reached the back of the van and was about to pull the doors open, his heart plummeted.
There was an extra cop!
A young patrol officer was standing by the wall opposite him, looking toward the mouth of the alley.
It seemed Lip's earlier stunt had prompted the city workers to call for backup.
Lip didn't miss a beat. He slapped a look of confused urgency on his face.
Without daring to glance at the cop or the van again, he walked straight past them deeper into the alley. He unzipped his pants and started taking another leak right where he had peed before.
He could feel eyes on his back, so he purposely made some noise, humming a tuneless song.
When he was done, he shook off, zipped up, and finally turned around.
As he walked past the cop, he even threw him a questioning look, as if to say, What's up with this alley? A guy can't even take a piss without an audience?
Back out on the street, he quickly shot a hand signal and a head shake toward Fiona, who was still aggressively arguing but clearly running out of things to say.
Plan changed. Abort.
Catching the signal, Fiona's fake outrage instantly morphed into a look of genuine disgust, like she was thinking, Just my rotten luck. She yelled two more lines at the middle-aged man, then angrily spun around, wiping at the coffee stains on her shirt as she stalked off.
The two regrouped at the next corner.
"What happened?" Fiona's face was grim.
She noticed Lip's empty hands.
"There was another fucking pig standing guard inside."
Lip ran his hands through his curly hair in frustration. "They're on high alert. We just have to wait. Wait for them to change shifts or drop their guard—"
But before he could even finish saying "wait," they saw a white tow truck belching black smoke back up to the mouth of the alley.
The tow truck driver hopped out, exchanged a few words with the city workers, and then...
The steel cable went taut, the winch groaned, and the van that carried their entire breakfast business was slowly dragged off the pavement and onto the flatbed.
"Fuck!" Watching it happen, Fiona felt lightheaded.
But there was nothing they could do except watch helplessly as the tow truck disappeared down the street.
"No, no, no..." Fiona pressed a hand to her forehead, her face pale.
The last shred of hope in her heart died. She turned to Lip, her eyes red.
"Lip Gallagher. Look at me. Is this your so-called 'last score'? Is this the 'manageable risk' your big, smart brain calculated?"
Lip tried to defend himself. "Fiona, at the time—"
"Shut up! Let me finish! You always do this, Lip! You think you're smarter than everyone else, you think your plans are flawless, and then what?!"
Fiona cut him off, jabbing a finger hard into his chest.
"Shit, Fiona, you agreed to it too! If you had just said 'no'—"
"Right, you're right! It's all my fucking fault!" Fiona backed away a few steps.
"I swore up and down to Shane that I'd handle this right. And look what happened! The van is towed, the laptop is gone, and we might be in even deeper shit!"
Fiona's voice cracked, on the verge of tears. "I'm a fucking loser, Lip! I can't even keep a breakfast stall running!"
She stumbled slightly, leaning a hand against the wall. With a trembling left hand, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, flipped it open, and started dialing.
"I'm fucking done, Lip. Game over. I'm telling Shane right now. Right fucking now!"
"No, no! Fiona, wait!"
Lip lunged forward, grabbing Fiona's hand tightly.
Smack. The phone hit the ground.
"Let me go, Lip! What else are we supposed to do?! Pray the towed van drives itself back?!"
"Listen to me, Fiona. Listen to me!" Lip's lips were pressed into a thin line, his jaw clenched tight.
"I have another plan. One last plan. The van is definitely getting hauled to an impound lot. There are only a few in the South Side!"
Lip kept talking, blocking Fiona from picking up her phone.
"As soon as I find out which lot our van is at... that laptop, Fiona. It has Shane's entire online business on it. All the records for that Bitcoin shit he's doing. Auto-login info tied directly to your bank account. I have to go steal it back!"
"As long as we have the laptop, we're fine. We can just leave the van, we can afford the fines. We'll just have Kevin deal with it when the time comes."
Fiona stared at him. "Steal? Steal from an impound lot?! Lip, you're insane! You'll get caught, and then we are truly, completely fucked! DCFS, juvenile court—have you even thought about that?!"
"Have you thought about the consequences of telling Shane right now?! He has midterms today! Huge exams! You call him up and say, 'Hey Shane, the business you invested in is dead, your laptop is gone, come clean up this mess.' Then what? What is he gonna do? Ditch his exams, run back here, and scream helplessly at the city workers and the impound lot? Or just stand around watching like we are?"
Lip stared intensely into Fiona's eyes. There was madness in his gaze, but more than anything, it was pleading.
"Fiona, look at us. What are we? We're South Side Gallaghers! Fucking things up is what we do! But Shane... he's trying to climb out. He's doing things differently!"
"He gave me the laptop, he planned out the business, he's looking at renting a shop... If you tell him now, you're personally dragging him right back into this mud with us. You're telling him: 'Look, it doesn't matter what you do. This family will always drag you down. Lip and I will always ruin everything.' Do you really want to see that look in his eyes... that utter disappointment, the look that says he might just give up on us forever?"
Lip's grip on her hand was painfully tight, but his last sentence completely crushed the final bit of resistance in Fiona's heart.
She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the ground. She stopped looking at Lip, staring numbly at the tips of her shoes.
Fiona flashed back to the hope in Shane's eyes when he handed the new laptop to Lip. She remembered how bright his face looked when he talked about his plans for a real storefront.
Then her mind pictured Shane learning the truth. The light dying in his eyes. Turning his back, never looking at this family again.
Just like Lip, Fiona was terrified of Shane finding out. Terrified of destroying his hope and the path he was on. Terrified that Shane would see them as a hopeless burden and just walk away.
She stayed silent for a long time. So long that Lip started to panic.
Finally, Fiona looked up, tear tracks on her face.
"So, the only thing we can do is keep lying to him, and let you pull off an even stupider, more dangerous stunt just to get a laptop back... so this lie doesn't look as pathetic?"
Lip crouched down to meet her eyes.
"To get his stuff back. It's the only way we can make this right. We get the laptop, then we face him. At least we saved the most important thing. As for the van and the money, we can slowly spin a story... or just take the hit. But we have to get the laptop. For him. And so we can at least hold our heads up... just a little bit... when we look at him."
Silence fell again.
Fiona looked away from Lip, staring down the street toward the alley where they used to park. The city workers were gone. It was completely empty.
She nodded slowly. "Find out where it is. Make a plan. Every single detail. And you don't do this alone."
She added one final condition. "We have to handle this before Shane realizes the laptop is missing. He cannot know."
Lip exhaled a massive breath of relief and nodded hard. "I got this."