Part 85

My phone rang, catching me by surprise.



"Hey Carl," said Millie, giggling, flirting,"Just called to say that last night was terrific."

"Likewise, baby, likewise," I smiled.

She'd figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't Benny. She'd never met him before, but apparently he was an experienced "Master", while I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Still, I knew how to read a lady in bed, figure out what she liked and what she didn't, and it didn't take long till I was in the swing of things and so was she.... literally at one point, in her fucked up leather harness while I... well, none of yo damn business what.

But afterwards she'd asked me to come clean, and I'd taken off my mask and shown her who I was. She recognized me straight away from when she had instructions to make sure I "won" $20,000 at the gaming tables by Salvatore. We talked a bit about the Casino and I learned some real interesting shit, like the fact that the Casino employed "high rollers" to come in and win big every so often and get everyone else real excited. Then they took the money they "won" back to the cash room and it went back out into the Casino, and all the marks lost a bunch of money trying to catch the "luck" of the High Roller. It was one of those little tricks Casino's pulled to make sure that the House always won and she'd thought I was just another one of those until I'd walked out the door with the money. But that had given me an idea.

"Listen," she said,"I thought about what you said last night."

I knew straight away what she meant; there was only one thing it could be. We'd spent a good couple of hours talking about all sorts of things, mostly about why she got off on the whole bondage thing. She's told me that it wasn't being dominated that got her off, it was submitting to dominance that did it. I didn't quite understand the difference, but she told me it made all the difference in the world and when it was done right, it got her hot. Real hot.

But that wasn't what she was talking about.

"I thought about that little scheme you told me about," she went on while I listened, then giggled,"Don't worry, I haven't told anybody, not even my mom."

While we'd talked I'd steered her way into talking about what she DIDN'T like about working at the Casino, which it turned out was pretty much everything. She didn't like being surrounded by losers blowing they paper all day every day; she didn't like seeing guys who went on winning streaks dragged out back to have they knuckles broke; she didn't like the Mob goons who ran the place getting all handsy; and she especially didn't like Salvatore. So once I'd gotten her fired up enough, I'd brought up the idea of maybe doing something about it, and before you knew it I'd told her all about my plan to rob the place. I'd asked her if she wanted in, and she'd told me she'd think about it.... but I could tell she was excited by the idea.

"I'm in," she told me,"I've left the key card and the door code in my bedroom... you know your way around."

She giggled and I laughed, feeling a huge weight off of my shoulders.

"Millie, girl you will NOT regret this!" I told her.

"I know," she giggled,"Because I'm getting a cut, right?"

"Sure thing, Millie, sure thing," I smiled,"I'll see you right."

"I know you will..... Master," she cooed at me, then hung up, leaving me standing there with a smile on my face and a raging hard-on that wouldn't go away for ten fucking minutes.




I stepped outside and called Woozie to tell him I had the key card and door code.

"You the man!" he laughed,"Get back to the Four Dragons and we can get on with this thing! A friend of yours just got into town from Fierro I think you'll be VERY happy to see."

"See you in a minute," I said, knowing that could only mean one person.

---



I wanted to be happy to see Zero here to help with the heist, but there was just one problem.



Everyone else was here too.



Luckily so far it was just a matter of some of Woozie's trusted guys hearing we was planning something big, and not WHAT. I stood in front of the blueprints so they wouldn't get an idea, shaking my head.

"I would have thought the size of the room would keep the numbers down," I muttered.



"I appreciate your input!" I shouted out loud so the Patrelli Brothers - a couple of honest to God non-mob connected Italians who worked for Venturas Casinos for years - could hear me,"But please... fuck off!"

"What did he say?" Tony "Big T" Patrelli asked his brother Paul.

"He said fuck off!" laughed Paul "Paulie" Patrelli, and both brothers laughed and walked away cracking jokes. I was glad to see the back of them, Woozie said they'd done great work getting him contacts with Service Technicians and Electricians and explaining how to cut through red tape (with money), but they was still outsiders. But as they left, a sad looking Latino in a red set of workclothes just stood there staring around the room.

"Hey, what are you still doing here?" I yelled at him.







The janitor sighed and I turned around to explain my new plan now that I had inside information from Millie, when Suzie decided to speak up.



Goddammit was ANYONE taking this thing seriously? Whenever people wanted me to do something for them I did it, but the moment I start planning things and giving people jobs to do everyone is cracking wise or demanding shit.

Zero meanwhile had gone back to playing with his electronic gear and Millie's keycard, which I had to get back to her before she finished her two days off, and I figured no one else was in a mood to listen just yet, so I'd just move on to the next stage of planning.

"Zero," I said, catching his attention from muttering to himself over the key card,"You got those timed charges I asked for?"

"Oh, yeah, why?" asked Zero, looking surprised.

"Because I'm going to go shut off the city's power source."

"Oh?" he said, surprised,"Already?"

"Not RIGHT now, man," I sighed,"That's why they're timed ch.... just give me those charges, Woozie, look after these fools for me."

Woozie seemed to wake up as I walked out the maintenance room, jumping up and turning around, slapping his hand onto the blueprint which he'd had "bumped" over so he could memorize the layout.

"OK," I heard him telling Suzie, Zero and the janitor as I left,"The important thing to remember with a plan like this, is that... NOTHING can go wrong...."

I stepped out of the Casino and loaded up the timed charges into the back of my car, then drove to a nearby hotel where I had a suite, left the car in parking and went upstairs to crash. I'd said I was going to set up charges for the city's power source, and I was, but I had to time things right, and early afternoon wasn't the time to do it. I had to hit the place in the morning when tired nightshift workers were just waiting to be replaced, and I needed to provide them with a distraction so they'd never know I was there.

I had a date with dawn and an airplane.

---




I lifted the plane's nose as high as I could, hearing the engine straining. It was an old piece of shit, held together mostly by good intentions, even if mine were anything but. I got it up as high over the Sherman Reservoir as I could, feeling the whole thing shaking and breaking apart, then shoved the hatch open and pushed myself out as the propellers coughed, shuddered and stopped.






The workers, security, foremen, everyone... they was all so excited looking out over where the plane had crashed and making noise about that, nobody saw me come down onto the quay at the edge of the dam leading up to the power turbines. I pulled loose the parachute, tied it off and tossed it down into the water, then crouched down and moved down the quay.




The foreman was yelling at the workers to stop staring out the window and get back to their stations as I slipped in and pressed up against the shadows. Big turbines stretched down the massive dam interior, feeding power generated from the reservoir down to Venturas. Shut down this place, and Venturas would.... keep on running, because every Casino needed power and had back-up generators in the event the power went down.

But I was taking this one step at a time.

I moved from shadow to shadow as technicians moved back down to their equipment, and heard one of the supervisors on the phone, talking to someone in charge, and what he said was a worry.



Growing up in Santos and spending years in Liberty City, I'd kind of gotten used to the idea of people gawking at accidents and then moving on. It never occurred to me that after crashing the plane, the dam workers would do anything but look, chat amongst themselves and then go back to work figuring that "someone else" would call the authorities. Now the police, ambulance and fire services were on they way, and cops would be coming in here to ask questions. So I had to move fast, plant my charges where they couldn't be seen and get the hell out of here.







I slipped through a door at the far end of the turbine room and moved up the steps, figuring I'd come out near the public end of the dam where tours were taken, slip in with a tour group who'd be more interested in getting photos of the crashed plane than the dam.

Instead, I found out I'd fucked up for the second time that day.





Police were driving across the dam, and it was only a matter of time before someone spotted me, up here where I had no right being. And it wouldn't take long to tie me together with the crashed plane, since there was no other way I could have gotten up here without sneaking through the dam. And if they figured out that I HAD snuck through the dam they'd want to know why. Shit, shit..... SHIT!

I looked around, no way out, I felt like a fugitive, cornered with no chance of escape... and then suddenly it hit me. Shit, what was I talking about, there was still one way out.

Straight down.



I surfaced with a huge gulp of air, feeling my chest burning. I'd hit that dive about as perfect as I could and I still felt like my body was on fire. Letting out a long, low groan, I pushed past the pain and kicked off towards a Skimmer sitting down by the end of the quay, hoping everyone would be too distracted by the emergency services tending to the plane and the cops driving up to the dam to bother looking out and spotting me swimming in the reservoir.




I tuned the radio on the Skimmer, picking up the police frequency, hearing them talking. They had no idea what the fuck was going on, were trying to find a body or bodies in the plane, trying to find out if the pilot had bailed, who the plane was registered too, if there had been a flight plan filed.

In other words.... they didn't know shit.

Despite the pain and aching of my entire body, as I flew away from Sherman Reservoir and the sun set, I threw back my head and laughed and laughed.

Everything was coming together, we was really going to pull this off, despite all the shit, the way no one else but me was taking the heist seriously... we were actually going to fucking do it!