Dead Money Run (24 page)

Chapter
70

Drivin
g
around St. Mary’s on a Saturday night with a boat trailer on the back of a car was like driving around some western town during a cattle drive. The night was filled with sailors from the Kings Bay sub base, tourists staying to in the area to enjoy the water and various island attractions and then there were the high school kids sporting around in the open air cars all of which made driving a little tight with a boat trailer on the back, but it also made things less conspicuous. With Crusher bringing up the rear in the truck, we didn’t even get a second look from anyone.

Getting to Crooked River State Park was easier than I thought.
We bought Crusher a pre-paid cellphone so he could keep in touch with us. As we entered the park, the ramp was a straight shot and there were no cars in sight other than our own.

Crusher parked the truck near a pavilion
and walked to our car to help put the boat in the water. The trailer was one of those float-on type trailers. All I had to do was unhook the boat and let it drift out beyond the trailer. After I did that, Hilary drove the car off the ramp and parked it next to the truck. Crusher unhooked the trailer from the car. When we came back after completing the job, we were planning on leaving the boat for the next lucky fisherman. The boatyard owner had insisted that we keep the Honda one fifty that was on the boat. He said, while it was an older motor, it was reliable and quiet. When I started it up, I was glad I took his advice.

Af
ter getting in the boat with all our gear, I moved the boat away from the dock. Hilary sat on the bench seat directly behind me. Crusher sat up in front of the center console. The boat was a Carolina Skiff with a very low draft, making it perfect for shallow water of which there was plenty in and around Cumberland Island.

Taking the St. Mar
y’s River out toward Cumberland, I followed that same route that the ferry took to the island during the day. The night was clear and there was no moon. Hilary was looking at the River using a pair of the night vision goggles. She was smiling. Here and there I could see some dock lights casting their shadows out on the water. Crusher had a ball cap on, wearing it in reverse fashion like a seventeen year old. He had an iPod and earphones on his head moving it to the beat of something on the little machine. If I had to guess, he was listening to the Stones. ‘Satisfaction’ was his favorite song made famous in the movie, ‘Apocalypse Now’. I could only imagine what he was thinking about. Probably Martin Sheen as he skied behind that PBR in that movie.

As we
headed toward Cumberland Island, I felt the sea air lift my soul. I felt better than I had in a long time. My hope was that somehow after this night I was going to get closure on my past and start something new. I liked being with Hilary. She seemed to care about me and I cared about her. Crusher needed a home. I could sense that he needed something stable. I had to laugh at that. Here I was, a convicted felon thinking that I was the stable one in the group, carrying weapons than someone, even with a permit, could legally carry, breaking into a place to prove a point.

As
the boat neared Cumberland, I could see the casino on the south end of the Island. It was an impressive sight. When all lit up at night, it looked like a large alien spaceship that had just landed.

Before I got to the point
in the River where the ferry turned left to go up to the dock at the ranger station, I took a right and looked for the red beacon at the mouth of Beach Creek that led to the back of the Casino. When the tide was up, as it was now, we could get almost within walking distance of the place. Reaching our drop off spot, I reviewed the timelines with Crusher.

“It’s eleven-thirty. We have
three hours before the tide starts to head out. If we are not back by three o’clock at the latest, you leave and we’ll meet you back at the Crooked Creek location.”

“Lou, what if you are just so close
finishing this thing up?”

“You leave. No matter what,” I said.

Looking at Crusher’s face, I could tell he was fifty-fifty on the idea of leaving us behind. “We’ll see,” said Crusher.

“What about the money?”
asked Crusher.

“What money? We’re not bringing out the money
now, Crusher. I already went over this with you and Hilary earlier.”

“Then what the hell are we doing here.”

“Trust me. We’re getting the money, just not now. Remember what I told you about that,” I said. “Remember, no money, no crime.”

I couldn’t waste any more time on the subject of the money. Hilary and I had to get going. We had about a five hundred
foot walk to the rear entrance to the Casino. My hope was that since we were coming in from the rear of the property there wouldn’t be a lot of security in place there, but that was just a hope. A lot of technology had changed in fifteen years since I had been here last. Hilary was handling things better than I thought. I was glad she was with me.

Once we got into the lower area we could put on the night vision
goggles making it easier for us to move at the base of the building. I had a general idea of where the rear entrance was. I was tempted to turn on the mag light I brought, but resisted the urge. It would have meant ditching the night goggles. Also, the chance of being seen was too great. Finally we reach the rear entrance of the casino.

“Now what
, Lou,” Hilary whispered.

“I think
the door is to the right around that next corner.”

When we got to th
e corner of the building, we were a good thousand feet from Beach Creek. Because of the distance, I wasn’t sure we would be able to go out the way we came in. Too far to go and they would be riding up our ass by then. I said nothing to Hilary because I didn’t want to scare her. I was sure she was already scared enough.

When I got to the corner, I
smelled cigarette smoke. Someone was on the other side of the building, smoking. Taking one of the darts out of the five-pack I was carrying, I loaded the pistol. Edging myself near the corner, I looked around and I saw someone standing near the rear entrance to the Casino. The end of his cigarette glowed as he puffed away. Switching the dart pistol to my right hand, I reached around the corner and shot him in the neck. When the dart hit, he toppled over and didn’t move. I put another dart in the cylinder in case he had a buddy, but it looked like he was alone.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve caught a break. The door is probably open.”

“Some break,” said Hilary.

G
rabbing the guard by his jacket collar, I dragged him inside while Hilary held the door. The inside area was larger than I remembered, and I needed a place to hide the body. I spotted a tarp, pulled the body over to it and covered it up with the tarp. It wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

Hilary had her goggles on
. I never took mine off after darting the guard.

“Where to now,”
said Hilary.

“This way
,” I said.

The cash room wa
s just off to the left. They kept it down here for reasons I never understood. Before I rolled the guard under the tarp, I took his plastic swipe that opened the door to the cash room. There would be four counters and a supervisor. I told Hilary to load her dart pistol, and as she did, I walked down the hallway to the cash room. I could see the door now. It had a little red light over the top of it so that when you swiped your card and entered the room, the alarm would not sound as long as you put the code in the system on the other side of the door. A person had sixty seconds to input the code before the alarm went off. The key was to get the code in the door alarm, a code that I didn’t have. All I could do is open the door. The light was red now meaning that the alarm was engaged. Seemed like a dumb way to do things and wondered why they hadn’t changed that. Before swiping the card through the reader, I took off my goggles and had Hilary do the same so we would not be blinded by the light in the counting room. Swiping the card through the reader, the light turned green and I stepped through to the cash room and more trouble.

Chapter 71

Openin
g
the door, I saw the four counters looking at screens that were scrolling down the tape readers showing all the money flowing into the cash room from the various playing areas. This was how they tracked the winners and the losers at the various betting stations. The losses showed in red and the green represented the house wins. There were a lot of green numbers on the screens. The supervisor sat at a large table with a bag under a vacuum operated tube as the winning bets came in along with the money. As he collected the money, he zipped up the bag and set it next to a stack of other bags. They were in the process of collecting the money for shipment. The supervisor was the first to see us.

“What the hell are you two doing here?”

“Good question,” I said. “Give me the code. Make it quick. If that alarm goes off you are a dead man.”

He gave me the
code and I entered it.

“
How many sacks have you got tonight?”

“What is this
, a robbery? This isn’t supposed to happen until tomorrow. You two have got to be nuts,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said. “But you’re going to be dead
, so the answer isn’t going to matter one way or the other to you. Now I’m asking again.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the counters make a move toward a button on the wall next to where he was sitting. I darted him before he could raise his hand and he fell over onto the floor. I quickly put another dart into the pistol.

“Okay, your turn now,” I said pointing the pistol at the supervisor.

“You killed him.”

“No, not yet, but your future could be different if you don’t answer my question.”

“
Thirty bags,” he said.

“What’s the count
?” I asked.

I watched as his eyes clouded over. The room was prob
ably bugged to guard against an insider helping himself to an early retirement. When he still didn’t answer I took out the twenty-two and aimed it at his knee.

“Okay,
okay. There’s five hundred thousand in each bag, more or less. We won’t have an accurate count until we get it to the bank in Jacksonville.”

“I thought the money was heading offshore,” I said.

“I don’t have any knowledge where it ends up. I just know it goes to Jacksonville from here,” said the supervisor.

“That’s better,” I said.
I then darted him as Hilary darted two of the other counters and I got the last one. They were out cold where they sat. In a few minutes, when money wasn’t going back upstairs to pay off the winning bets, the security people would be down here in droves. I opened the deer bags and placed three bags of money in each. After zipping them up, Hilary and I dragged each bag out into the hall. When I shut the cash room door the red light came on.

“Now what
, Big Boy,” said Hilary.

“I thought you would never ask. Grab the handle of each deer bag and follow me.”

“Where?” Hilary asked. “The door is back there.”

“We’re not going out that way.”

“I thought there was supposed to be fifteen million here?”

“
Fifteen million is a target, never an absolute. We won’t know how much is here until it’s counted. There might be more than fifteen million. When we hit the place fifteen years ago, we were just lucky.”

“Some luck,” said Hilary.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re running out of time.”

Sa
m
Burns was head of security at the Golden Slipper. Before he took the job at the Slipper, he had been head of security at a casino in Atlantic City. He hated working in New Jersey. There were too many high rolling crooks and he had to be on his toes all the time. Working for the Indians was a like a working vacation. They never seemed to be that concerned about anything. The only problems he had, was dealing with the partners of the Indians, especially Sonny Cap. He was always around asking about security and the days when the counts were the highest and worried about the Slipper’s loses.

“Hey
, boss, someone just went into the money room.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “How do you know?”

“Well, the door always beeps when it is opened, no matter whether the alarm is set or not and it just beeped four times real quick like.”

“You buzz Charlie to check it out?”

“Yeah, I did. That was the first thing I did.”

“What happened?”

“He didn’t answer.”

“I bet he’s out smoking somewhere.”

“Yeah, but he never breaks without calling in and he hasn’t called in.”

“Shit,” said Burns. He hated whe
n he had to go to the damn cash room. The supervisor should have been on the phone calling in. Now he had to walk five hundred feet and take the freight elevator down to the basement to check it out before he called the powers that be and give them the bad news that they had been hit. Maybe everyone in the cash room was taking a break.

The basement area was a little spooky because it was so dark.
The elevator opened out onto the hallway to the cash room and Burns felt a little relieved when he saw the red light on over the door. That meant someone was inside and they were probably just too busy to respond. Still that didn’t explain the four beeps. Once he opened the door he would get the answer soon enough.