Chapter 10
A Vault…
After my greed-induced mini-orgasm, I put my brain on auto pilot and got down to business. I was soon in the grove. Unlock box, open box, briefly describe contents of box, empty contents of box into bag, replace box, move to next box. The only thing that wasted time was having to cycle through the majority of all ten keys sometimes to unlock the boxes.
When the bag between my boobs started getting heavy, I’d tie it closed and toss it down the hole onto the padded floor. I’d Velcro on a new bag and continue. When you think of diamonds you rarely think of weight. Most are small, that’s true. But they’re called stones for a reason. Pebbles are light but a bag of pebbles is heavy. I was pouring hundreds of sparkling ‘pebbles’ into bags.
The closer I got to the back of the vault the more the area behind the steel bars puzzled me. What could possibly need more security than offered by the vault itself? The more I thought, the more curious I got. At first glance, the back wall behind the bars was like the rest of the vault. More safe deposit boxes. The one striking difference was the five very large boxes at floor level. I really wanted a look inside those boxes.
That shouldn’t pose a problem. I considered the problem while continuing to pour diamonds between my breasts. I knew I could probably pick the door’s lock. Maybe… Taking a short break from opening boxes, I ran my fingers over every inch of bars and door. I could find no hidden alarm contacts… But trying to pick that lock would take time away from the sure thing on this side of the bars for possibly little or no return.
While tossing another bag down the hole, I asked, “Rambo, what time is it?”
“4:35, Sugar Tits.”
I wanted to have everything finished and drive away no later than 6:30. The earliest we’d ever seen an employee show up was at 7 am. I looked at the many boxes still to be opened. I’d planned on starting clean-up at 6 am. Thirty minutes wouldn’t make a huge difference if I couldn’t pick the lock. “Give me a call at 5:30. I’m getting antsy. I think calling this job early is the right thing to do.”
Rambo had learned to trust my instincts. He raised no objections.
At 5:30 I was on my knees in front of the lock. It was a tough little bitch and I almost quit twice but kept trying. At 5:44 the door swung open. I picked a line of boxes at chest level to open. Beautiful blue, yellow and pink diamonds. All uncut and arranged by size and tint. My decision had earned us more millions. Opening the last box, I just stared in astonishment. Resting on a felt cushion was the largest, uncut diamond I’d seen so far. Red, not pink. A deep red and ugly. The pink, yellow and blue diamonds had been pretty even uncut. This red stone was just ugly.
I picked it up and was about to toss it into the bag with the others when I changed my mind. You might be the last thing I ever steal, I talked to the diamond in my mind. You’re my good luck talisman from now on!
Early on in my life, I’d thought of myself as a cat. Quick and silent, fading into shadows to become invisible. Since I identified as a cat, I knew I’d already lost two of my nine lives. <Other stories for other times.> Maybe if I had a good luck talisman I wouldn’t lose any more lives. I slipped the red diamond between leotard and boob. Not wanting to waste more time I knelt and opened the first large box that was at floor level.
Holy FUCK!, was my first reaction. Cash! Lots of cash! Bricks of cash! Cash bundled in bank wrappers. Bundles of cash wrapped tightly together in plastic to form bricks. Each tight brick was five bundles wide and twenty bundles high. Banks wrapped 100 bills per wrapper. These were all hundred-dollar bills. Holy crap! The math was simple. Each brick was worth 1,000,000 dollars. At a glance, I couldn’t count the number of tightly wrapped million-dollar bricks in this one box. My hands shaking, I opened the other four large boxes. More cash… each box was stuffed with cash!
“Six o’clock, Sugar Tits. Time for clean up.”
A snap decision to keep the cash a secret and I acknowledged. Rambo was gonna shit his pants when he saw this! My second snap decision was to leave no cash behind. The dragging, gut-level exhaustion I’d been feeling was gone, replaced by adrenaline-fueled resolve. I began kicking, sliding, pushing, throwing bricks down the hole in the floor in a cascade of cash.
I worked to a litany in my head counting the seconds… Fuck… Fuck… Fuck… Fuck…
I knew I was going to go past my set timetable as the last bundle dropped to the floor below. Swinging my legs into the hole I wiggled out. The acetylene torch was still clipped to the scaffold. Setting the torch to a wide flame I sterilized the concrete sides of the hole. Any butt skin I’d left was crisped. No DNA for the cops to find.
The boxes I’d used to bring my equipment up would now be useful in taking the cash down. Cash packed into boxes. Bags of diamonds tossed into a gym bag with a shoulder strap. Listing to one side from the weight of the diamonds I made my first trip back to the janitor’s closet. Bag and boxes were pushed through the hole into the dumpster. I ran back to the elevator. I ran out of boxes and on my last trip; I had to load loose bricks onto the dolly. Everything was tossed into the dumpster…
“6:30, Sugar Tits. Where are you?” Rambo’s voice had an edge of anxiety. By my original schedule, I should be driving away by now.
“On my way, Rambo. Everything okay on your end?”
“All clean here. I’m ready to scoot as soon as you give the word.”
Lifting the acid bottle, I began spraying what remained over the sink and floor, working my way towards the hole to the dumpster. “Consider the word as given, Rambo. I’ll meet you later.”
I may have left skin, perhaps even blood, on the rough concrete going in and out of the hole. Sliding through the hole I sprayed the walls of the tunnel. Bye, bye DNA…
Closing the metal sliding door, I put my shoulder to the top of what had been my hidey-hole and pushed up while trying to stand. Trash on top of the hidden hatch shifted and then I was standing up inside the dumpster. Opening the side door, I tossed out the diamonds followed by the first box of money.
Dammit to hell I was cutting this close. I was going for broke. I’d let greed override my natural caution. I just knew it was gonna bite me on my ass! Gym bag, boxes and loose bricks of cash landed on the asphalt beside the dumpster. Pulling on the same padded overalls I’d used before, I grabbed the latex mask and jammed the cap on over my knit cap. I climbed out of the dumpster and took off down the alley still adjusting the latex mask so I could see. There were a lot more pedestrians on the sidewalk than earlier.
Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. I’m just a crazy, fat man running. Nothing to see here, I thought keeping my head down. The car Rambo had parked in front of the place we’d just robbed had the hidden camera he’d watched Frick and Frack from. A crappy junk car never looked so good as I ripped the key pinned to the inside of an overall pocket loose.
Shit… shit… Shit… The engine started and I pulled out into traffic almost being hit by a car I cut off. I’d only been out of sight of the alley for a couple of minutes but SHIT!, all it would take was one asshole using the alley for a shortcut to find millions of dollars just lying out in clear view. I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned into the alley. Empty. Stopping, I popped the trunk and started tossing the loose bricks of cash inside. Sweat stung my eyes but I didn’t take the time to wipe my face. Boxes went on top until the trunk was full. More boxes on the back seat. Gym bag was tossed onto the passenger seat.
The last thing I did before driving away was to hit a trigger just inside the dumpster. In five minutes a small explosive would shatter a carefully sealed, seventy-gallon fish tank filled with gasoline. A second later, a roadside flare would ignite and everything in the dumpster would be burned to a crisp.
I was soaked in sweat, my hands were shaking on the wheel and I was sick to my stomach with adrenaline as I drove to the end of the alley. I swear I saw the first employee drive in the other end of the alley as I made the turn and pulled out into traffic.
THE PAST… Rhode Island…
After leaving Wisconsin I settled in a small town in Rhode Island. I was close to, but not in, major cities that held many wealthy people. And the homes of said wealthy people that had safes installed.
I cased every home the same. Jogging in their neighborhoods and gated communities. Number of cars in driveways. How many lived in the house? Did both husband and wife work? In all of this, I was helped by a most unexpected source… Society Bloggers. Oh, yes, indeed! The people I was going to rob were the upper, upper crust of society in whichever community they occupied. It hardly makes sense to rob the poor after all. I surfed the on-line society pages.
Mr. and Mrs. So-N-So would be attending a party/wedding/Bar Mitzvah. Whatever. I knew when they would be gone from their house. I averaged one house a week. I averaged one safe a week. The Invisible Thief was back with a vengeance. Jewelry measured by the pound. Cash measured by the number of inches the bills stacked. People who used Summer as a verb kept amazing amounts of both in their home safes.
But all the time I was stealing, I was crafting my finest identity. Meticulous in detail. A county whose courthouse had burned down with irreplaceable records. A family killed in a traffic accident. A girl sent away to live with a distant relation. A run-a-way who a few years later died of an overdose. Un-mourned and body tentatively identified yet unclaimed. Buried as Unknown. By the time I was through no one could have proved I wasn’t that sad girl.
This was an ID I only used for one thing. In North Carolina, I made a real estate agent cry by paying cash for a farm. A house, a barn, an outbuilding and a hundred acres of land. This farm was to be my bolt hole between jobs and a place to hide if things went to shit. I met my neighbor and by nightfall, my cover story was spread across the county.
I was orphaned at an early age.
My money was from an insurance payout.
I wanted to be an artist. A sculptor, but I wanted to work in metal and I’d use my barn for that.
I was strange but not too strange. I was an artist! I was a soft touch for Girl Scout cookies. I was mobbed in the small town every time there was a school drive to sell band candy. For my neighbor’s husband fixing my fences, I gave permission to use my acreage for their cattle. The use of an extra hundred acres to raise cows on made a huge difference in their income. They had two teens to put through college. The extra money was much needed. I became known as generous without rubbing my wealth in people’s faces.
I never wore jeans. I was always in slacks and a blouse whether in my house or in town. I was never seen to bake but I always had a cake ready if my neighbor or other company dropped by. I was often gone on long trips to check out art houses and museums. Nervous wives were soon assured I wasn’t out to steal husbands after I very publicly told one such would-be-cheater where he could stick his dick. Soon, my alias was established. I was:
“She’s a good neighbor but kinda strange.”
“What do ya expect? She’s one’a them artist types.”
Meanwhile, on my trips away from my farm I was stealing, stealing, stealing. I hopscotched across the country, never hitting more than four houses in any one city at a time. But one trip wasn’t to steal. I’d had questions for some time and I’d found the place where nerds answered questions. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My way to get answers was simple. I went to the library in tight jeans and a tight sweater that showed cleavage. In the section of the library that contained books on the subject I was interested in, I’d strike up conversations with any guys there. Pretty soon I’d have my own think tank trying to answer the problem my professor had challenged me with. My current problem: Build a laser that can go through three inches of tempered steel in five to ten minutes.
All I had to do was pose the question, get the discussion going and keep things on track when the brain trust started to wander off-topic. I had finished my third think tank and was ready to leave with my notes when a fat guy who looked older than most students said, “It won’t work,” when I passed his table.
“What won’t work,” I asked.
“That laser. Oh, it’ll go through three inches of steel, but it will also go through the Earth’s crust. Those idiots built you the Death Star. You’d need a nuclear plant just to power it.” The guy shifted a chair with his foot. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me what your scam is. I might be able to help.”
“What makes you think I’m running a scam.” I flashed him my brightest smile as I leaned far over the table while sitting down.
“Christ! Put your tits away. I’m queer as a three dollar bill. How do I know you got a scam going? My whole family has scams going on all the time. I’m the only one to make it out of the Mississippi swamps. I got everything from doctor shopping drug dealers to card sharks in my family tree.”
“If you think I have a scam going, why would you want to help me?”
“Cause your scam is successful. Shit! If you’re twenty-one, I’ll go on a diet. You’re young but you’ve got money. That ring, bracelet and necklace would pay off half my student loans. My aunt runs a pawn shop. I know quality. So whatever scam you got going pays well. And I need money!
“In a year I’ll graduate with three Master Degrees and a Doctorate. Know what that’ll get me? A job where people call me doctor and a salary I’ll starve on for ten years while paying off my student loans. So, go ahead. Tell me your problem. If I can help you, I get a cut.”
I had to admit the guy interested me. I told him what I wanted.
He was shaking his head before I was finished. “Not gonna happen, Sugar. You’ll never get that much output from just plugging into a wall socket.”
Damn!
“But, what I can build you is a portable, battery-powered laser that can blind visual, motion and infra-red sensors from a hundred yards away. Could you use something like that?”
Hell yes, I could!
“You any good at hacking computers?” He just smiled. From a bra cup I retrieved a slip of paper with the name and phone number of a guy who’d hit on me. “Give him all A’s on his transcripts before dawn and we’re in business.”
With the dawn, I had a partner.
This guy was as good as he claimed. He had skills and knowledge that I never knew I needed until I met him. With his gadgets I was able to re-visit houses I’d cased but hadn’t been able to get past their security systems. Now I could and the takes were great! For a year we gathered in the loot. My partner found a fence on the Dark Web and I was able to unload all the jewels I’d stolen over the years. With the sudden influx of cash, I decided we needed a change of scenery. North America had been picked over. It was time to pick Europe clean…
