Miami Heist
Page 19
“I was,” Harper said. “But I had a package waiting at the hotel that I thought you might like to know about.”
He tossed what he had been carrying onto Salsa’s desk: two gray-colored bricks. They hit with a thud and skidded a short distance across the surface.
Salsa jumped, then stared down at them. “Are those—?”
“Your share, apparently,” Harper said.
Now Salsa looked very, very confused.
Lois had arrived while Harper was gone. She sat in a chair to one side of Salsa’s desk. When the bricks landed on the desk, she started a bit, too, then leaned forward to peer at them and raised an eyebrow.
“Are those what I think they are?” Salsa asked, wide-eyed.
“They are.”
“May I ask where you got them, and how many there are?”
“They were in a package waiting for me at the hotel,” Harper said. “And there were eight of them inside. So, yeah—two for each of us, I guess.”
Now both Lois and Salsa were standing, their expressions conveying utter shock.
“Somebody mailed some of the gold to you?” Salsa asked, incredulous.
“Dropped it off, but, yeah, pretty much,” Harper said.
“How much is that worth?” Lois asked.
Harper looked at Connie, who pulled out a piece of paper she’d been making calculations on, while Harper was driving them over. “I worked it out to be just under half a million for the eight bricks, total.”
Salsa’s eyes became dollar signs momentarily.
“Split four ways—” She glanced at Harper, who nodded. “—it would come to around $124,000 for each of us.”
Salsa sank slowly into his seat. “I’m solvent again,” he said. “I’m back in the black.”
“Do you know how this came to be?” Lois asked, still frowning, not quite believing it.
“There was a note inside the box,” Connie said. She took it from Harper and, with his consent, read it aloud. “It says, ‘Your share, for services rendered. All debts paid in full. —DG’.”
Salsa took this in and looked up at Harper. “You mean, he robbed the robbers, but then he cut us in on the back end?”
“He did,” Harper said.
Eyebrows arched, Salsa thought about this. “Huh. Pretty decent of him, I’d say.”
“Unexpectedly so,” Harper agreed. “I guess he wanted to try to make nice with us.”
Salsa’s expression was one of wonder. “Yeah, I guess… But…” He shook his head in wonder. “Huh. How about that.”
“It’s something, yeah,” Harper said.
The two looked at each other in silence for a long moment.
“You’re still going to rob him, though, aren’t you?” Lois asked.
Harper nodded. “Oh, of course.”
“Sure thing, hon,” Salsa said reassuringly.
Lois smiled. “Okay, good. That’s that, then.”
Salsa patted the area of his shirt above his bandage. “All’s well that ends well—or at least well enough. I’m not poor, and I’m not dead, so there’s that, too.” He rubbed his chin. “Let’s all meet at Lois’s place tonight for dinner, and we’ll sort out our new windfall,” Salsa said.
“It’s funny,” Lois said then.
“What’s that, my dear?” Salsa asked.
“There was another member of our string, all along.”
Salsa looked puzzled. “You mean this Garro guy?”
“Oh, no,” Lois said. “I mean Mother Nature. Or maybe Inez herself. Either way, she gave and she took, in equal measure. From what you’ve told me, I don’t think any of this would have worked without her—without the cover of the storm. But then, at the end, she nearly took it all back away from us.”
They all considered this.
“I’ll say this for her, then,” Salsa said after a moment. “She was a capricious bitch. And I don’t want her in on any of our future jobs.”
Lois and Connie smiled. Harper shook his head.
“Let’s go,” he said to Connie, and they started out.
“Oh!” Salsa exclaimed. “I almost forgot. I didn’t think it would be possible after everything that’s happened the last couple of days. But—now that we’ve got a stake again, maybe we can pull it off.”
Harper frowned. He turned and met Salsa’s eyes, and could see the dollar signs were back, this time doing a little dance in there. Inwardly he groaned. He’d been down this path too often before. But he knew he couldn’t resist. “What is it this time?”
“You had to ask,” Lois said with a sigh.
Salsa shushed her with one hand, then turned back to Harper with a sparkle in his eye. “Remember that movie we watched before the job?”
“The race car thing,” Harper said.
“Yeah.” Salsa picked up a glossy magazine from his desktop. “This is the best one yet, my friend,” he said, flipping rapidly through the pages, looking for something.
Harper stared at him. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Go ahead and tell me what could possibly top Vegas or Ruby Island.”
Salsa finally found the page he wanted. He held it up to Harper. It was a color photo taken on the streets of what appeared to be a very swanky city, possibly somewhere in Europe. Sleek race cars with numbers on the hoods, looking a lot like the ones in the movie, zoomed past in the foreground.
Salsa grinned. “So—have you ever been to Monaco?”
Author’s Note
As with the previous volume in this series, Vegas Heist, much of the background for this story is true. Also, as with that book, a little research into the area’s history filled in so many details I never could have made up on my own—and a lot I didn’t have room for!
Ruby Island does not exist, but it is vaguely modeled on Fisher Island, which itself has a long and fascinating history. Named after the man who invented car headlights, created the Indianapolis 500 and first developed Miami Beach, it is located roughly where I placed Ruby Island. It is a former home to the Vanderbilts, other millionaires and former presidents, and currently boasts the highest per capita income of any location in the United States. As such, it seemed the perfect setting for a heist. Dodge Island does exist, created by dredging in Biscayne Bay a century ago, and in the years after 1966 it was combined with Lummus Island to create the present home of the Port of Miami and its cruise ships and cargo vessels.
The Miami Dolphins did begin play in the old AFL in 1966. The Bermuda Bowl world championship of Bridge was in fact held in Miami Beach the following year—just not on Fisher Island, as far as I know, nor on Ruby Island, since it doesn’t actually exist. A Nazi submarine did run aground in the area during World War II, though whether it was actually carrying gold bars is another matter. The first Chevy Camaro, for the 1967 model year, went on sale that fall, though I can’t say for sure that Harper bought the first one off the GM assembly line. Steve Spurrier did kick the winning field goal against Auburn that year, a play that was seen as sealing the deal on his Heisman Trophy. Hurricane Inez did indeed brush the tip of south Florida the week of October 4, after wreaking havoc in the Caribbean—and it really did suddenly reverse course just before that; I did not alter its trajectory in any way, I simply took advantage of it. Mother Nature clearly was in league with Harper and Salsa. And, believe it or not, the final hurricane of the 1966 season—the one after Inez—was named Hurricane Lois, much to Salsa’s chagrin. I thought of using that one in the story instead, but sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and nobody would have believed it.
The 120 gold bricks taken from Ruby Island were worth just under $7.5 million in 1966, at $62,000 per brick. Adjusted for inflation, in 2020 they would be worth $490,000 each, for a total of almost $59 million. Of that, the shares each of our four beloved heisters ended up with was worth just under $125,000 in 1966, or almost a million bucks today. Not the all-time score they were hoping for but, all things considered, Harper and company made out well enough in South Florida in October of 1966. Meanwhi
le, one wonders what became of Don Garro. Perhaps one day we will find out.
It’s also worth noting that the twenty bucks Salsa paid the kid in the planning office for the maps, adjusted for inflation, would today be right at $150.00. No wonder the guy was so cooperative.
Many, many thanks to all who have read and praised Vegas Heist, to my fellow writers and other pulp professionals who put it on the short list of nominees for Novel of the Year in the 2019 Pulp Factory Awards in Chicago, and to the voters who helped it to win that honor. I can only hope this new offering even partially lives up to your expectations.
As for the future, well, as always...
…Harper and Salsa may return.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Van Allen Plexico writes and edits New Pulp, Crime, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and nonfiction commentary for a variety of print and online publishers. In the past seven years has won three Novel of the Year awards and an Anthology of the Year award from the Pulp Factory and a New Character of the Year award from the New Pulp Awards.
He is author of the Shattering space opera series, Lucian, Baranak, Karilyne, and the groundbreaking and #1 New Pulp Best-Selling Sentinels series, as well as the award-winning crime novel Vegas Heist. In his spare time he serves as a professor of political science and history. He has lived in Atlanta, Singapore, Alabama, and Washington, DC, and now resides in the St. Louis area along with his wife, two daughters and assorted river otters.
White Rocket Books by Van Allen Plexico
Harper and Salsa:
Vegas Heist
Miami Heist
Sentinels:
The Grand Design
1: When Strikes the Warlord
2: A Distant Star
3: Apocalypse Rising
The Rivals
4: The Shiva Advent
5: Worldmind
6: Stellarax
The Earth – Kur-Bai War
7: Metalgod
8: The Dark Crusade
9: Vendetta
Alternate Visions (Anthology) *
The Shattering:
Lucian: Dark God’s Homecoming
Baranak: Storming the Gates
Hawk: Hand of the Machine
Karilyne: Heart Cold as Ice
Legion I: Lords of Fire
Legion II: Sons of Terra
Legion III: Kings of Oblivion
Cold Lightning
Other Fiction:
MultiPlex (Collection)
Gideon Cain: Demon Hunter*
Blackthorn: Thunder on Mars*
Comics Commentary:
Assembled! Five Decades of Earth’s Mightiest *
Assembled! 2 *
Super-Comics Trivia *
*Editor
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