I didn’t want to get locked into a mortgage, but at the same time I didn’t want to live in a small cramped apartment either. So what I did was, I found the best of both worlds and ended up renting a huge apartment about ten miles or so from the Vegas strip. But the apartment complex had all of the amenities that I liked and felt that I needed. It had a gym where I could workout, a pool, and nice patio areas where I could barbecue and entertain company and simply lay out in the sun if I so chose.
It seemed like a lot of people in Vegas weren’t too big on barbecuing, maybe because it’s so damn hot all of the time, but barbecuing was something I loved to do when I was in New York and did often at my apartment in Vegas.
Today I found myself with a charcoal grill full of Italian sausages, hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs, and corn. I loved to have company and entertain people, and I liked to cook, so needless to say, my house was a revolving door with my friends and, on occasion, my single boo Stephon, and on very, very rare occasions with my married booty-call boo, Brian.
At my apartment were Mercedes, Party, and Natasha. We ate good food and drank liquor, while Mercedes and Party smoked their weed. I’d never had all three girls together at the same time, but we weren’t there just to hang out. We were there to finalize the heist.
“Remember this, if nothing else. Have it etched in your brains. No cell phones! They track by the cell towers, and if anyone gets knocked and rolls over, they’ll pull our cell records to tell our story. Our phones will corroborate a snitch’s claim. They’ll be able to connect the dots before, during, and after the robbery. Capiche?” I flipped a slab of ribs.
“We hear you, Honey,” Party said. “Everyone will check their purses, cars, jeans—the whole nine—to make sure we’re not ridin’ dirty.”
I nodded my approval.
“Honey, there is something that’s not sitting right with me.” Party sipped on her Hennessy, which she always drank straight.
“What’s up?”
“I just get this gut feeling that we need to fallback off the whole thing and wait maybe six months to a year.”
“Six months to a year? What are you talking about, Party? You know something that we don’t know?”
“It’s the whole cell phone thing. I mean, of course, we won’t use our phones to communicate, but it’s not like me and you just met. We been knowing each other for like a year or better now,” Party said.
“Yeah. And your point is?”
“My point is just what you said. If one of us gets knocked, then they are going to check records and they’ll know who we was talking to. But the fact that we called each other even once, that in itself could be the thing that does us in. And why wouldn’t they just go back and check those records and connect the dots that way?”
Party had a damn good point, and it was something that I sort of overlooked. At the same time, I wasn’t too worried, because I had long since gotten rid of my old cell phone, as did Party, and for the past few months, we had all been using prepaid cell phones.
“I just think if we waited it helps us avoid any chance that some smart-ass cop could connect us in any way.”
Party was on that “weed intellect.” Whenever she smoked, she’d get paranoid and start to overthink.
“Party, you just scared,” Mercedes said. “Honey, she ain’t built for this. She already having cold feet. So if she does get bagged, you know she’s going to run her mouth.”
“Mercedes, what are you talking about?” Party said with an attitude. “Ain’t no way I’d ever turn snitch. Honey, you know me, and I handle mines. And I know you’re the brains behind this complex operation, but even the president has a vice-president to catch what he might miss. You feel me? I just want us to do what no other has done, which is get away with successfully robbing the Bellagio Casino.”
“Mercedes, Party is right, and that’s how we all need to be thinking. We have to think past the obvious so that we don’t get tripped up by not being as thorough as we could be. Believe me, I’ve thought this plan through one thousand ways and it’s solid. As long as we stay on our A-game and foresee the unforeseen, the money is already ours. All we have to do is take it.”
Mercedes looked at me and nodded her head, but she didn’t say anything to Party.
I continued, “And please don’t make me keep repeating this―Stay out of the casinos, from today moving forward, at least until we’ve successfully pulled off this heist. I don’t want anyone remembering faces, body language, voices, nothing. The smallest detail can be remembered by a potential witness.” I stared directly at Natasha, who tossed her eyes toward the sky. “Natasha, I’m speaking to you too.”
“Why am I being singled out? Mercedes and Party like to gamble too. And you work there.”
“Mercedes and Party don’t have an addiction, so if I say stay away, they will. You, on the other hand, might be a problem.” I hardened my voice. “And as for me, as you said, I work there. So how the fuck can I stay away? I’m the inside connect, remember?”
“Honey, we feel you, and it’s not a problem to stay away. But in Vegas that’s what people do, and our avoiding the casinos could be a red flag and actually draw attention to us then reflect it,” Party added.
“If you’re invited by a third party, then by all means go. But the real point is, don’t make it your home away from home. Casino security and the dealers are taught to be observant. We’re taught to remember what brand of cigarettes a player was smoking.”
“OK, understood. We all agree that we’ll only go to the casinos under relevant circumstances.”
Everyone said in unison, “Agreed.”
“So let’s go over the plan one more time,” I stated.
I had the blueprints of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, a map covering the north and south radius of the Las Vegas strip and each entrance and exit of each highway. A police scanner stayed on during each meeting, and we all had custom-molded Bluetooth earpieces, the surveillance device that the Secret Service uses to communicate. It would allow each of us to speak to one another before, during, and after the heist. Old-school and inexperienced criminals would use outdated, bulky, walkie-talkies with a four-second delay in response time. That four seconds could cost either one of us our life. The invisible Bluetooth earpiece would allow us to operate in real-time, leaving no room for error.
“We have to be on point with everything. Y’all gotta remember, a heist consists of three parts: the plan, the execution, and the getaway. Who’s gonna run down protocol?”
Mercedes spoke first. “At around eight fifteen a.m.—”
“Mercedes, no! How many times do I have to stress punctuality? It’s approximately eight thirteen a.m. Eight fuckin’ thirteen! It’s that exact. They run their operation down to the last second. You gotta feel me on that, babe. If not, we’re all going away for a long time, and I don’t mean Disneyland.”
We’d been over this plan for the past nine months day in and day out, and still Mercedes was speaking in hypotheticals.
“I’m sorry, Honey.”
“Don’t be sorry, be exact!”
“OK, you’re right. At approximately eight thirteen a.m., the Brinks truck will leave its central station carrying”—she paused before adding—“seventy million dollars in unmarked US currency. There will be exactly three guards: the driver, the principal guard riding shotgun, and the backup riding in the back bin with all the dough. The armored truck will be heading south on Interstate 15 and will take approximately ten minutes to reach South Las Vegas Boulevard, the exit to the Bellagio. From that exit it will take the armored car nine minutes on the busy Las Vegas strip to arrive at the back entrance of the casino, where two more armed guards will assist them with the exchanging of the monies.”
“Party, that’s where you come in,” I said as I looked at her.
Party was “my right
-hand man.” Though she was of average height and weight, underneath her clothes were all muscle. She’d been in and out of “juvie” since she was thirteen and had done a stint in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in upstate New York. She was pretty in an androgynous sort of way. She wore a sleek bob haircut and Chuck Taylor kicks and had the largest feet I’d ever seen on a female, sporting a size eleven in men’s sneakers. But she was good peoples. Her jeans were always pulled low, yet she coupled that with tight-fitting tank tops with her massive double Ds spilling over. Men didn’t hesitate to do a double take, and women looked too. Her voice was raspy, and her attitude gruff. A biracial mix of Black and Asian, she was as hardcore as they come.
“Dressed disguised as a male and as the hotel’s cleaning service, at approximately eight thirty-three a.m., exactly one minute after the truck arrives, I’ll begin inching my way toward the driver with my TEC-9 hidden discreetly under my oversized uniform shirt.”
“Now this is where Mercedes and I get busy. At approximately eight thirty-four a.m., we will both make our way toward the armored truck and the guards. It will only take the guard handling the money a few seconds to realize we’re not the normal exchange team. That team will have already been apprehended and permanently put out of commission with one shot to the dome at exactly eight twenty-five by us. He may engage us in small talk, he may not. He may automatically try to retreat or signal his backup.”
“At that point, I pull out my AK and put it in the driver’s face and say, ‘If you move, muthafucka, my gat gonna blow your fuckin’ back out!’” Party simulated her move as if she was really in the middle of the heist.
“Cool. Mercedes you and I will already have the drop on the two guards. We now have seven minutes before people begin getting antsy and stragglers begin rolling in for their shift change. The casino’s back entrance will be crowded with employees changing shifts. That’s a double-edged sword. More people will ensure more confusion, but it will also give more witnesses. So we want people to shield us from the guards, but we don’t want them to remember us. From when the guard gets out of the truck, it takes approximately eight minutes to go in the back and collect the receipts, drop off the money, and return back to the truck. We’re intervening at two and a half minutes. Mercedes, I’ll have your back, and, Party, you’ll have all of our backs. Mercedes, as soon as the guard is ten meters from the truck, you walk right up to him and blow his muthafuckin’ brains out. Put one in his head, and that’ll make everyone scatter. But remember, and this is for all of us, Do not put more than one bullet in any organ. You can take one kill-shot in the head, or one kill-shot in the heart—”
“You keep reminding us of that but you never tell us why?” Mercedes stated.
In my training we’re taught to double tap—two shots with rapid succession to the head or heart in close proximity. Then you reexamine your target and see if they are still a threat. I don’t want the cops being tipped off that the mastermind is someone who was formerly in law enforcement.
“I keep reminding everyone because it’s important. We all are either trained or been training to shoot with precision. The average criminal can’t pull off such accuracy and once the investigation gets underway regarding the heist, the last thing I want is for the police to narrow their list of suspects. We don’t want to be sloppy but we want to appear sloppy, almost amateurish if possible to throw them off our trail. Does that make sense to anyone?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good. Now back to Mercedes. You’ll hit the guard once in the dome and before he can even hit the floor, I’m all over the bags of dough. Party . . .”
“Yes, sir.”
“As soon as the guard inside the truck hears the shot he’s going to come out trying to blaze, if he has any heart. If he doesn’t, he’ll take cover inside the truck and try to knock me off and Mercedes through the gun port or air vents in the truck. You need to be fast like lightning and take care of him either way. If he opens that door, you aim for either his knees or preferably above the neck. He’ll be wearing a bulletproof vest, so your aim from a distance needs to be accurate. If he tries to run out the passenger side of the truck, he’ll have a blindside. Remember what I said—Drop to the ground and shoot out his ankles. You’ll only have seconds to run around to the other side of the armored truck and finish him off.
“Meanwhile, we have to secure three guards, grab the money, and make a clean getaway all within thirteen minutes. Natasha, that’s where you come in. You’ll pull the throwaway car about a hundred and fifty feet behind the truck—”
“What type of ride will be the throwaway?”
“Why does that matter? It’ll be whatever we lift two days before the heist.”
“It matters because I need to envision this step by step, and if I know what type of ride we gonna boost—”
“Natasha, please. Seriously, each meeting you find a way to work someone’s nerves. Not today, please. Let’s just stay focused. You can envision a Ford Taurus, OK.”
“OK, Honey. Ford Taurus . . . that works.”
“Cool. Now you will have to get us to the highway in six minutes, no matter what. You feel me? Whoever isn’t in that getaway car gets left out there on that strip. And that includes me.”
“I gotchu, bossy. I know these Vegas streets like the back of my hands. Nobody can fuck with me when I’m behind the wheel.”
Natasha claimed she was Russian, but she didn’t have a hint of an accent. No one believed her. She was tall with bleach-blonde hair and plain features. She wasn’t a beauty, nor was she the bottom of someone’s shoe. She was a’ight. But I didn’t commission these women for their looks nor their brains. They all got hired for their hearts. It was going to take a lot of heart to pull off what we were attempting to pull off. When I did a background check on each girl, I found out that each one had done something so outlandish, it piqued my interest. Since they were caught they were labeled fools, but had they gotten away with it, they would have been considered masterminds.
“Good to hear.”
“But, Honey?”
“What’s up, Party?”
“I know we’ve been over this hundreds of times—”
“Thousands.”
“Yeah, thousands. But I can’t shake that I feel we need a fifth girl. Extra muscle out there while we’re holding down the guards and also packing up the money. I got this eerie feeling that one or all of the guards will try us. We need an extra set of eyes and hands out there.”
“Nah, four mouths to feed is enough,” Mercedes spat.“We already gotta split the money equally with Natasha, and she ain’t even doing shit.”
Mercedes was the only one who had children. She had two little girls, and that bothered me. She was Mexican with a large, poor family that immigrated to the United States. Her first baby daddy split before the child was born, and the second was murdered during a drug deal gone wrong.
Mercedes and Jesus had tried to setup and rob a local drug dealer. Only, he opened fire first, and she was shot in her knee. The bullet went in and out, and she never sought medical attention. Her grandmother sewed up the wound, and she handled her pain by tossing back Tylenol extra strength. Jesus wasn’t so lucky. His brains were scattered on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. She immediately had to leave and moved out West to start over. While out in Vegas she honed her skills as a computer hacker and did small white collar crimes; stealing credit card numbers, emptying small bank accounts, and identity theft to pay her bills.
“I beg your pardon?” Natasha stated, a quizzical look on her face.
“Oh, fuck you with that proper shit,” Party said. “Bitch, you grew up in the hood just like the rest of us. You’re the only one who ain’t gettin’ dirty. You sittin’ in a nice secure car, while we’re all out here risking our lives, but yet you gonna get the same reward as me, Honey, and Mercedes?”
; The room imploded in anarchy. I didn’t immediately interrupt because I knew the pent-up emotions needed to be let out. We had less than two weeks before we made our attempt to get that dirty money, so I was sure everyone’s nerves were frayed.
Finally, I yelled, “Quiet!” and the room hushed to a whisper.
“Party, I know you and Mercedes might think that Natasha’s role is inconsequential, but it’s not. Taking the money will be like taking candy from a baby. We’ll have home-court advantage, and they will be taken by surprise. Why do you think we’re doing the heist on a Wednesday and not a Friday when the till would be double? It’s because Monday through Wednesday the guards on duty are soft like marshmallow. I’ve pulled their backgrounds and profiled them. Neither one of those guards are prone to violence. They won’t try to play hero. Trust me.
“The most difficult part of the heist is the getaway. What if—and this is only pure speculation to help bring this situation to closure—the cops get the chase on us? Who would you rather behind the wheel, huh? Me? You? Mercedes?” I waited for a response, but Party just grunted.
“Exactly. You’d want Natasha. Now I gets busy on a motorcycle, but four wheels has never been my thing. And the only way to have full cooperation and a willing participant is if you even the playing field. Now that Natasha will have equal vested interest in the heist, she will equally want to get away with it. Understood?”
Party reluctantly nodded.
“Good. Now that was criminology 101. I hope you enjoyed your free lesson.”
Chapter 2
I was cuddled up next to my boo Stephon. We were laying in my bed after a half-hour of good sex. The central air was on, and it was helping to cool off the heat that we had generated while fucking.
“I love fuckin’ you, baby.” I kissed him on the cheek, and then I gave him a peck on his chest.
Dirty Money Honey Page 3
