Harry and the Bikini Bandits by Basil Heatter - Chapter 13

1971 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Casino Heist

A wildly erotic novel of intrigue, suspense, and adventure...

There's a lot to be said for my Uncle Harry. Mostly unprintable. All my life I'd heard about him, and from a distance he was a kind of legend. But the moment I signed on as one-man crew to his beat-up old bucket, Jezebel, I found my hero of the sea was really a pirate. Broads and booze kept him afloat between capers—and so far, his luck was holding...

But this new harebrained scheme—to heist the loot from an island gambling casino—was the daffiest—and most dangerous yet.

And there I was. Right in the middle. Up to my virginal ears in naked nymphs and Nitrous oxide—with nothing between me and the future but a leaky getaway and a pot of gold that was fast disappearing behind Harry's private rainbow.

CHAPTER 13

"We will gas the bastards," Grogan told us.

"Will we now?" said Miss Wong. "What kind of gas?"

"Harmless enough, beauty. Temporarily incapacitating." The professor paused to take a swallow of his gin and tonic. It made me uncomfortable to look at him. For one thing he was so tiny, and for another he had a facial tic that made his right eye screw up and wink. When he winked like that everything became a big joke. But he wasn't joking as he looked over the stuff contained in the briefcase.

"This is a duplicate diagram of the air-conditioning system for the Paradise Island Casino," said Grogan. "Note that it is powered by a ten-ton reverse cycle unit situated on the roof. Note too that the same system—which I might add is entirely enclosed within the casino—leads also to the men's room. You may well wonder what the men's room has to do with it, but I will get to that in due course.

"An air-conditioning unit, as you may know, is cooled by a cylinder of Freon gas. The gas is released into a system of coils and the air is cooled by passing over those coils. The cold air is then pumped down through the ducts.

"Since this is a new building and since the air conditioning is kept on twenty-four hours a day, there are no windows. No opening of any kind, as a matter of fact, besides the main doors and one at the rear of the building. To all intents and purposes, therefore, the building is a sealed unit, a sort of stoppered bottle. Don't you see the beauty of it?"

"No," said Miss Wong.

"Why it's so childishly simple and absolutely foolproof you can hardly believe it. First you have to understand how the casino operates. Gambling is, of course, a state of mind, a delusion. The psyche of the gambler, like that of any paranoid, has been liberally explored and has been found to be full of more worms than a tub of shit left standing in a flower garden. Logically he knows that the odds favor the house and that in all likelihood the machines may even be fixed. But he tells himself that every so often someone wins—as indeed they do; the house sees to that—and he tells himself that he may be the one. Which is rather on a par with some pimply faced bank clerk dreaming that when he goes out to lunch at a hot-dog stand he will meet Raquel Welch and she will take him home to bed. It is within the realm of possibility, but only just. In other words, a mug's game. La Grande Illusion, as the French say. Gambling therefore is a not a sport for winners but for born losers.

"Now the casinos understand all this very well, and they go out of their way to nurture the illusion. This is done by giving the operation an air of looseness and ease. For one thing there are no armed guards visible, because the presence of weapons would make the gambler uneasy and serve to destroy the illusion. And for another, the money is handled in the most casual way. Cash should not be visible any longer than necessary and should be replaced at once by chips, since chips have an air of unreality anyway and contribute to the illusion. So when the mug buys his chips at the table, his money is immediately raked down through a slot into a box kept beneath the table. Every so often these boxes are removed and carried into the cashier's cage where they are emptied. The money is totaled there and eventually carried into the manager's office where it is placed in a safe. But on a busy Saturday night a considerable amount of money remains in the cashier's office. I would estimate anywhere from one to two hundred thousand dollars. That, as they say in gangster parlance, will be our take."

I was impressed. Two hundred thousand! Most men go a lifetime and never see that much. One fast night's work. My heart thumped. Miss Wong never batted an eyelash.

"You still haven't told us how you mean to go about it," she said.

Grogan's tic speeded up, right eye going like a strobe light. "Gas, luv. Man on roof is dressed like air-conditioning repairman. Carries cylinders presumably containing Freon Actually not Freon at all. Mixture of cyclopropane and nitrous oxide. Injects into system. Renders all within hors de combat."

"For how long?"

"Fifteen to twenty minutes. Ample. No harm done. Everybody happy. Nitrous oxide, as you may know, is sometimes referred to as laughing gas. Gives you a charming high and then a nice little nap. Everybody in the place will feel absolutely marvelous just before they cork off. The cyclopropane will simply reinforce the effects of the nitrous oxide. No long term effects or gastrointestinal disorders. Nice?"

"But if we're robbing the place what's to keep us from going to sleep too?" I said.

"A good question, young man, and the answer is obvious. Gas masks."

"You mean we just stroll around wearing gas masks and waiting for everybody else to keel over?"

"Certainly not. All a question of timing. Strictly observed schedule. Robbers in men's room occupying crappers. Put on masks. Sit there waiting. Gas injected 0130. Masked men emerge 0145. Fifteen minutes to remove cash. Depart building 0200. Board Jezebel 0210. Underway without lights for parts unknown 0215."

"There have got to be guards outside the building?" said Miss Wong. "How do you propose to take care of them?"

"Two indolent native youths. One near the parking lot and one at the main door. Parking lot man will not see anything unusual in our emerging from building, getting into rented car, and driving away. Possibly he can later furnish authorities with a rough description but nothing more. Doorman to be distracted."

"How?"

Grogan stared with intense interest and obvious admiration at the opening of her shirt. His cheek muscle nearly jumped out of its skin. "I had thought of you for that purpose, my dear. You will be wearing one of your more fetching costumes and you will stroll by to have a few words with him. Presuming that he has the proper masculine instincts, I can assure you he will be thoroughly distracted."

"Who will be on the roof?" I said.

"You will."

"And where do I meet you?"

"We will arrange a rendezvous for both yourself and Miss Wong."

Something fishy about that. No use making an issue of it now. Crooks have to trust each other. Basic principle of crookery. All the same . . .

"Where do we get the gas?" I said.

He gave me a nod of approval. "A sharp lad, Harry. The gas is easily obtained through Amalgamated Hospital Supply in Miami. I will purchase it there and store it in scuba tanks. Such tanks are customarily carried into the Bahamas by skin divers and there is no reason for anyone to question their validity. At the proper time I will turn the tanks over to you, and 'you will carry them to the roof. Luv-er-ly?"

"Beautiful," said Harry before I could answer. "And what makes it doubly beautiful is that this is not anybody's hard-earned bread we will be lifting. I mean this is dough that has already been played and lost. When we take it who will we be taking it from? A bunch of lousy crooks."

It was a good point and it made me feel a little better about the whole thing, although, to tell you the truth, at that point I could hardly believe they were serious.

"You've neglected to inform us on the most important point of all," said Miss Wong.

Harry grinned. "I know. How the dough is to be split." She nodded.

"Thirty-five percent to me for furnishing the boat, the people, the organization, and the original idea. Fifteen percent to Grogan for technical assistance and various other refinements. The other fifty percent to be split on equal shares among the rest of you.'

"How many is that likely to be?"

"Don't know yet. Might be five, might be ten. Well what do you say? In?"

She gave that tinkling laugh like temple bells. "Why not?"

"What about you, Number Three?"

"If you'll just call me by my right name," I said. "Didn't know you were so sensitive, Clayton."

"Clay will do."

"Done."

Just like that. I mean Harry made everything so simple. Rob a casino. Fly to the moon. Why not? It was so simple I still didn't believe it was for real. Some kind of elaborate put-on. But I couldn't be sure. After all he did do things. I mean he had gotten that crazy boat all the way down from New York. And Miss Wong was certainly real enough. And I had seen the way he pulled it off with Mrs. Burger. Well, I would go along for the ride. I could always pull out later.

Harry brought out the rum. "To crime," said Grogan. We drank to that.