CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I started off slowly, almost skittishly. I could see by her face that she could tell that this was a big deal; a huge secret.
I explained to Genie that the guy who was setting up my underground fights had lots of other questionable business dealings, and that the fight with Victor Velasquez had been a favor that he had gone out of his way to set up. I then told her about the quarter of a million dollars purse that Miguel had put up, and the people he’d had to pay off in order to set up everything.
Genie was amazed, no, impressed. As I told her these things, I could see that she was hanging onto every word. She was listening to a mystery unfold, and loving every word she was hearing.
I told her about how the fight promoter had called in his own favor. About how he knew that my business was selling and installing security and fire alarm systems and how he needed me to use that knowledge to disable a system in a strip mall in Boca Raton to help a friend of his.
Before I could say another word, Genie, with her eyes glistening, and like a child on Christmas morning, blurted out, “How much did you make?”
I was shocked. No, the word I was looking for is stunned, but not in a bad way. It took me a few seconds to gather my wits before I answered her. When I came around, I told the truth: five hundred thousand.
Her eyes grew even wider, and the smile on her face told me all that I needed to know. I could see that she was thrilled. She could barely contain her excitement. She was like a kid in a candy store.
She started asking me questions, wanting to know details; how was it done, how did I feel about it, how much the business owner had made. The only thing she didn’t ask about was for names, which I would not have told her anyway.
I lied about some of the details—the less she knew about certain things, the better off we would both be. I told her I didn’t know how much the owner had made, but I guessed it was around ten million or so. I told her that really didn’t matter to me as long as I was paid for my trouble.
That was good enough for Genie too, because she stopped the questions. I could see though, that the half million I’d been paid really psyched her. She couldn’t stop talking about it. All of a sudden, she was treating me like some kind of super hero, similar to what she’d done after I’d taken down Velasquez, but with a little more, let’s say vigor. She kept me up for a day and a half, until we both collapsed in exhaustion.
And I had been fearful of what she’d think. Go figure, huh? And that was only the beginning. When we woke up, Genie started asking other questions. Since things had gone so well, I decided to tell her about some of my past jobs. Not all, mind you, but some of the bigger ones here and there.
She absorbed it all, and when I was finished, she told me she wanted in.
Wow.
Now, I gotta tell you, that was the farthest thing from my mind, so I told her that I did these things only very rarely, and only when I felt the risk was worth the reward.
Again, Genie accepted what I said, and she told me she would be patient, but that she definitely wanted to participate. She got that determined look on her face that I loved, and I reluctantly agreed to let her come along on my next job. What I didn’t tell her was that I would be picking the job, making sure it was an easy one, with low risk for her.
Genie continued to teach martial arts and I continued to sell alarm systems and break into homes, watching, waiting.
In no time at all, the perfect job came along. It required some extensive planning and coordination. I figured Genie would get a kick out of it, and it would satisfy her urge to participate in a crime with me.
T.O. called with a specific car order. He needed two cars, to be exact. He had a buyer in South America who wanted two matching Lamborghini Diablo cars, one yellow, one red, and he would pay me seventy-thousand dollars for each one. Not bad, and because it was two cars, he wasn’t pressing me on time.
So, I told Genie about the job. Seeing what she thought.
She was all ears and all business. I thought she was much too serious than necessary, but that was alright. It was her first go at this kind of thing, and I could tell she was trying to impress me with her efforts.
I got on my computer and got a list of all the Lamborghini owners in the state of Florida, and all the car dealerships that sold them too. There was a dealership in Longwood, near Orlando, just off Interstate 4 that looked good. I wanted to keep to the central Florida area, otherwise I’d have to go all the way down to Miami to find some.
Thankfully, the dealership had a yellow model and a Pro ball player for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a red one, so my targets had been acquired. Of course, I found backups in case those cars were somehow unavailable, which was always a part of my planning. Genie liked that when I explained it to her.
She was also very surprised at how easy it had been for me find the two primary cars and the backup cars. I explained to her how every time anyone made a purchase, someone, somewhere, kept track of it. Put it on a database and how those databases could be very detailed and specific.
I told her how companies could alert you by way of email or text, advertising their feminine products around the exact time that you needed to purchase these types of items.
Genie found it hard to believe at first, but she knew that I was telling the truth. Technology, with all its’ great advancements and good it has done our society, has also made us exposed and vulnerable.
I talked with T.O. and arranged for him to get me a race car trailer. A special lift inside the enclosed trailer would allow me to carry the two cars at the same time. I had it painted a dark midnight blue and had a matching dually pickup truck with it. I’d used both before, to transport high end cars that were too noticeable to drive. In addition to the special paint job, I had plans to disguise the truck and trailer with decals and stickers from a few popular tool suppliers.
After I had all of the transport problems handled, I decided it was time to recon my targets.
The dealership was fairly easy. They had all of their keys
on a pegboard inside a locking cabinet that was inside of an office. All of the keys had labels on them with numbers and descriptions that told which car they belonged to. Whenever someone came in the dealership to look at a car, a salesman would go to the office, grab the keys, and come out to show it to that person. When he was done, he’d put the keys back in the cabinet and lock it.
There were cameras all over the place inside catching every angle and nook and cranny. I only saw one camera outside, focused on the area of the doorway.
Now, you might think that’s going to be hard for me to get, but you’d be wrong. You see, people are basically lazy, and creatures of habit. You can make the best security system in the world, but it is only as good as the person operating it.
Genie and I sat in the parking lot of a truck stop/gas station about a quarter of a mile up the road from the dealership, watching them, looking for patterns. I had a digital video camera with a telephoto zoom lens set up in the back of the rental SUV I was using and it was pointed straight at the room where the keys were sitting. I had placed some extra tinting on the SUV’s windows to keep the camera set-up from being seen, and I hooked it up to a laptop computer so that Genie and I could sit in the front seats and watch it without having to move. The picture was a little dark because of the tint, but I made some adjustments and we could see things pretty well. So well, in fact, I could even read the labels on the keys.
After about twelve hours of watching and as the dealership was closing for the day, I asked Genie if she’d figured out how we were going to do things. She looked at me and came up with some kind of crazy scheme about how we could disguise ourselves and break into the place in the middle of the night and break open the cabinet, then get out and get the car.
I let her go on for a few minutes, even asking her questions about how she would do this and get past that. When she finally ran out of steam, I looked at her and smiled.
She looked back and said, “What? You have a better way?”
I nodded my head then told her. Her mouth dropped open in astonishment.
“B-but, that’s so….”
“Easy?” I interrupted.
“Unexciting.” She replied in a kind of deflated way.
I chuckled and told her that sometimes it worked that way, I told her there was still a lot of work to do then and asked her if she still wanted to do it. The gleam was still in her eyes as she nodded.
“Good,” I said, and we got to work.