Miami Heist

by Van Allen Plexico

  “Dammit!” Garro snapped, angry that the end of the game had been interrupted. But then he took in what he’d just heard. He blinked his eyes, frowning.

  “It’s coming this way again?” Lansdale took an involuntary step back. “A Category Four hurricane?”

  Garro thought for a minute, then looked over at Lansdale. “I think we probably ought to start sending people back to the mainland,” he said. “Unless you want a whole lot of house guests tonight.”

  Lansdale cursed violently. “A hurricane! Tonight, of all times.” He started back toward the balcony, still jabbering as much to himself as to Garro. “Biggest night we’ve ever had here, and a stupid storm is going to ruin it all…”

  “I’ll check in with Miami PD,” Garro called after him. He at least understood that the potential downside of all these people being stranded here, possibly injured or killed during the hurricane, would make for far worse publicity than if they simply expedited the people’s return to Miami. They might never get another customer for the casino again. “I’ll see how they’d want to handle a quick evacuation. They’ve got more and bigger boats than we do.”

  Lansdale didn’t look back. He motioned an acknowledgement vaguely with his right hand as he moved to the railing again.

  Garro lifted the phone receiver, put it to his ear as he prepared to dial, and frowned. There was no dial tone. He tapped the button on the phone cradle a couple of times; still nothing.

  The storm, he told himself. It has to be the storm. By now, the whole of Miami—the whole of South Florida—was probably out of phone service. At least they still had the lights on.

  Replacing the phone on the cradle, he started to follow Lansdale out, to press the need to evacuate their guests. At that moment an odd sound echoed up from the great hall below. It was a flat crack. Garro’s first thought was, someone is opening a bottle of champagne down there. A big one.

  Then came the screams; just a few at first, then more. The tone of the crowd changed noticeably over the space of a few seconds. They sounded upset. Afraid. And not of the storm.

  Someone was shouting now. Shouting angry words. Commanding words.

  Only a couple of seconds passed from the initial sound to when Garro was finished replaying the noise in his head, puzzling over it. The second time through, and removed from the context of a party of millionaires, he got it.

  It had been a gunshot.

  19

  A few minutes earlier:

  Resplendent in his white waiter’s outfit and hat, Big Bob Bigelow came through the kitchen door and emerged into the main hall, which was by now completely filled with guests. He caught sight of Mike Wilson almost immediately. Clad in the same outfit as Big Bob, Wilson was carrying a tray of glasses a dozen yards away. Bigelow waited for him to look up, then gestured. Wilson saw him out of the corner of his eye and gave him back a “what’s up” expression. Bigelow gestured toward the kitchen. Wilson nodded and began to make his way in that direction.

  That accomplished, Bigelow worked his way around the main hall until he caught sight of Goggans, and gestured again. Goggans apparently didn’t see him; he continued to hand out glasses of wine. Bigelow sighed and tried to move closer, pressing his way through the crowd. He was stopped twice by people asking him for food or drinks, and he put them off with a nod and a smile and a promise, but eventually he made it over to Goggans, who was facing in the opposite direction. He tapped the man on the shoulder. Goggans turned, a frown on his lips. “What?” he demanded, not having seen yet who it was.

  Bigelow suppressed a laugh. Clearly ol’ Danny was getting fed up with playing the role of waiter. He gave the redhead a second to realize who he was talking to, then nodded his head toward the kitchen. “It’s about time, I think.”

  The relief on Goggans’ face was priceless. “About damned time,” he said under his breath—though not quite far enough under that an elderly matron to his right didn’t hear him and offer him a shocked expression.

  Together they plunged through the crowd and across the broad room, eventually making it to the kitchen door. Bigelow pushed it open and strode in, Goggans just behind him.

  Mike Wilson was already in there, standing with hands on hips, looking at them askance. “So, what’s the word?” he asked.

  “The word is I’m just about done with this play acting,” Goggans snapped.

  Wilson looked from him to Bigelow. “I’m inclined to agree, Big Bob,” he said.

  “Well, that’s just fine,” Bigelow replied, “because I think we’ve given Harper and his people more than enough time by now.” He turned to the door they’d just come through and locked it. “I say we get this show on the road.”

  The other two men’s expressions simultaneously broke out into leering grins and they both nodded.

  “I like the sound of that a lot,” Goggans said. “Yes I do.” He pulled off his white waiter’s hat and turned it inside-out, then did the same with his white jacket. In both cases, the inside lining turned out to be black. He donned the jacket and pulled the now-black hat over his head and his face, revealing eye holes. “Let’s do it!”

  The other two followed suit. Within moments, they had transformed themselves from waiters into burglars.

  “Break out the hardware,” Bigelow ordered.

  His grin widening, Wilson went over to a large cart he’d parked out of the way earlier, stacked with big boxes that ostensibly contained pastries. He bent down to slide out the one at the bottom, then carried it over to the counter and set it down. He took off the lid, reached inside, and dug around in a sea of packing material. A moment later he pulled out of it a gun. Then another gun. Then another.

  Three weapons in all: two Sten guns—small machine guns with oversized clips projecting to the side, which Wilson quickly assembled—and a Colt Commander. He handed the Colt to Bigelow and one of the Sten guns to Goggans, keeping the other for himself. He hefted it and grinned. “Good for crowd control,” he observed.

  “When are we gonna take care of Harper and Salsa?” Goggans asked, his voice slightly muffled by his mask. He was inspecting his weapon, checking to be sure it was loaded and ready.

  “Not for a little while yet,” Bigelow answered.

  “Why not?”

  Bigelow frowned at him. “Do you want to have to carry all the gold to the boat yourself? Do you want to load it all on there yourself? Or on the truck?”

  Goggans appeared to be considering this.

  “Just one of those bricks is heavy,” Bigelow added. “We’re looking to carry over a hundred of them out of here.”

  Goggans thought some more, then shrugged. “Okay, fine. We’ll use those guys for whatcha call manual labor, then dust ‘em.”

  Bigelow smiled at this. “Exactly,” he said. “But—don’t worry. It won’t be long now. Not long at all.”

  A knocking sound interrupted them. Someone was at the locked door. Bigelow hurried over to it, and heard a man’s voice outside. It was one of the island’s staff. An over-officious busybody who’d been ordering them around all evening.

  “What are you doing in there?” the voice demanded. “Why is this locked? It’s time to serve the desserts!”

  Bigelow pulled his own mask down over his face, unlocked the door, opened it about a foot, and drew his pistol.

  The man on the other side froze in mid-remark. He’d seen the mask Bigelow was wearing first, which took him aback. Then he saw the gun. Still he dithered, unsure of what was happening, unable to process it in the present context. A man in a mask, with a gun? On Ruby Island? That simply didn’t make sense. It didn’t compute. It—

  “Keep calm, pal,” Bigelow growled. He pushed the door the rest of the way open and moved out into the grand hall. The other two followed him out, Sten guns at the ready.

  The man who had been at the door stumbled backwards, losing his footing and dropping to the floor.

  “Everyone down!” Big Bob shouted. “Now!”

  In the din of conve
rsation, no one heard him.

  He looked around, frowning beneath his mask.

  “Try again, Bob,” Goggans urged.

  Frustrated, Bigelow raised his Colt over his head and fired a shot into the ceiling. It rang out like thunder and echoed within the enclosed space.

  Within three seconds, the conversation that had previously filled the grand hall had dropped off to almost nothing.

  Now Bigelow yelled again, even louder: “Everyone down! Down on the floor! This is a robbery!”

  This time, they definitely heard him.

  20

  Don Garro’s first reaction was to reach under his jacket for his pistol. He paused, however, even as he continued moving out onto the balcony alongside Lansdale. He wanted to be absolutely certain of what was happening before he started waving a gun around in a place like this. And besides—how could it possibly be a robbery? They were on an island. Who would be stupid enough to try to rob an island?

  He leaned out over the railing and looked down, and within a couple of seconds he’d taken in the situation. And he couldn’t quite believe it.

  Three men—he could see three at the moment, all clad in black and wearing matching hoods—were brandishing firearms and moving out into the crowd, shouting for the people to get down on the floor and be quiet. The men moved like sharks among minnows, smooth and steady, taking wallets and purses and the occasional fur coat or jewelry. On the surface, they gave the impression of being professional criminals. But what were they doing here? Had they only come for wallets and purses? He supposed that could be it; the people here were pretty wealthy. But it seemed an awful risk to come all the way out to Ruby Island just for that, and then try to find a way back to the mainland without being caught. Or capsized by the hurricane, he added to himself as he remembered the storm that continued to blow in and build all around them. No, he decided, these guys couldn’t be true professionals, and it surely wouldn’t be long before they did something that brought their little escapade to a sudden end.

  That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous in the interim, of course. Garro knew it hurt just as bad to be shot by an amateur crook as by a pro. If they saw him...

  With a start, Garro realized the three robbers hadn’t seen him. They hadn’t yet looked up at the balcony at all. Did they not know it was there? Had they not thought this through?

  The reasons didn’t matter. The fact remained, he and Lansdale on the balcony hadn’t been seen yet. Quickly he reached out and grabbed his boss by the upper arm and pulled him back, away from the railing. Lansdale, already angry, turned and glared at him even as he allowed himself to be led into the office.

  “I don’t think they know we’re up here,” he explained to an obviously furious and bewildered Lansdale. “I’d like to keep it that way for as long as we can.”

  Lansdale nodded. “Call the police,” he snapped, gesturing toward the black phone sitting on his desk.

  “I can’t,” Garro replied, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “It’s out of order. Probably the storm,” he said—and then immediately began to question his assumptions. Maybe it hadn’t been the storm that had done it after all. Maybe these guys were more professional than he’d thought. And maybe there were more than three of them on the island that night.

  “Then go and take care of them yourself,” Lansdale commanded.

  Garro just stared back at him. “What?”

  “You heard me. It’s time you earned some of the ridiculous salary I pay you. Go and stop those men. They’re interrupting a very important evening for me.”

  Garro almost laughed. Almost. He started to bring forth a smart reply, then thought better of it. It was obvious Lansdale was still trying to get his head around what was happening, and was pretty much in shock.

  Garro hesitated for several long seconds before speaking to his boss in a calculated voice with a calming tone.

  “If they’ve cut the phone lines, then this likely wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment thing. They’re probably professionals who planned this out carefully.” He paused for a moment, thinking. Then, “This island has only one way on or off it—the ferry—and we control that. So let’s also assume they have their own way off the island.”

  “So we should just sit here and wait for their next move?” Lansdale looked apoplectic. “Likely it will be stealing everything I own,” he barked. “We have to stop them. You have to stop them, Don.”

  “Not yet, sir,” Garro replied. “For now, let’s just lay low.”

  “Lay low? But—but, my money! And my guests—!”

  “We can get the money and belongings back, sir,” Garro said, still trying to calm his boss down, “once the situation favors us rather than them. For now, we need to worry about the guests. Because they’re basically hostages.”

  “Hostages?” Lansdale blanched, clearly not liking that word.

  “Yes. It’s a very delicate situation, and we have to be careful. But you have to think they’ll be leaving soon. There’s no reason for them to hang around here very long at all. They’ll take what they can from the guests and maybe grab a couple of your nicer-looking antiques—I doubt they have any idea what’s truly valuable and what’s not—and then they’ll go, leaving the guests behind. And then we’ll restore the phones or I’ll take the boat over to the mainland and we’ll have the police descend on them.”

  Lansdale, feverish, focused his eyes on Garro, then nodded. “Yes—yes, you’re right, of course. We’ll stay in here, where it’s safe, and very soon they will go. And then we can bring down the full force of the law on them, and get my money back!” He grinned. “And the guests’ money, too, of course,” he added. “And you’ll keep us safe until then.”

  Garro thought about that. He definitely wanted Lansdale to stay there, quiet and out of the way. But he knew it was probably just a matter of time before the burglars thought to come up the stairs, assuming they were robbing the whole building and not just grabbing purses and running. And this office had only that one way in and out. It was a cul de sac, a box canyon. A dead end.

  Nonetheless, he stayed there and waited and kept an eye on the scene in the hall below. And the minutes dragged on, and eventually the robbers finished taking the purses and wallets from the guests and cash from the casino and were just standing around, and it started to seem as if they had no plans at all to leave. It made Garro antsy in a whole new way.

  “Why are they still here, Don?” asked Lansdale, after another long period of silence, the feverish look back in his eyes.

  “I honestly don't know, sir,” Garro replied. It was making him question his earlier assumptions about their motives.

  “Are they waiting on something?” Lansdale asked. “I don’t know—reinforcements?”

  That struck a nerve. Garro peeked over the railing again, more puzzled than ever. The same two men were still standing there, holding those ridiculous machine guns. There had been a third, earlier, but he wasn’t visible now. What was he doing? Were those three the only ones in on this? Was that possible?

  Garro knew he needed more information than he was getting now, stuck up in that office, above it all. He had to get out of there. He knew now that he needed to be mobile, moving around, keeping an eye on them. Maybe looking for opportunities, should the robbers separate. Taking action before things got any worse—maybe before anyone else showed up to help them.

  Maybe Lansdale’s original order to go get them hadn’t been as absurd as it had first sounded to him.

  “I’ll go,” he told his boss. He moved toward the door. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good,” Lansdale said. He took a cigarette out of a gold box on his desk and held it to his lips with shaking hands. “Good,” he repeated as he sank into his massive leather executive chair. “We can’t let them get away, Don. We can’t. It would be disastrous. If the people of this city think they’re not safe on my island, they’ll never come back.”

  “I underst
and, Mr. Lansdale,” Garro replied. It mildly annoyed him that the man hadn’t said a word about the welfare of his couple dozen employees who were also currently held captive below. “Don’t worry. One way or another, we’ll get them.”

  He passed through the doorway and headed quickly but quietly down the stairs. Halfway down, as he turned a ninety-degree corner in the stairwell, he reached in and drew his SIG P210 out of his shoulder holster. Reaching the bottom, he quietly opened the door onto the lower-level portion of Lansdale’s office and slipped through. He passed rows of bookcases and all types of antique furniture, at last reaching the doorway that led into a small hallway off the building’s main hall. When he opened that door, he could hear the burglars shouting again, as well as the sounds of fear and outrage among the guests.

  Holding the SIG under the front left flap of his suit jacket, he crept down the smaller hallway, stopping just before the end. He crouched down, concealed behind a large oaken registration desk that sat just around the corner, and from there he was able to see the three burglars in action again.

  He kept still, he watched, and he waited to see what they would do next.

  21

  Several minutes earlier:

  Harper and Salsa, along with Bigelow’s man, Oscar Diaz, were making their way through the downpour and up the increasingly muddy hillside leading to the mansion.

  Just as they got within sight of the brightly-lit, massive structure, a loud popping sound came from within.

  The three men all exchanged looks. They knew exactly what it had been.

  “Sounds like Big Bob’s started the party early,” Salsa said.

  Harper nodded. He found he wasn’t terribly surprised. Bigelow had presented himself as a pro, but Harper had always had his doubts. More red flags ignored.