- and the world momentarily went black as Chuck blinked in surprise at Casey’s rather explosive answer.
“You’re outta your goddamn minds!” Casey exclaimed vehemently, thrusting his hands outward. “Seriously! You two have gone directly around the bend, past Hoover Dam, and you’re floating down the Colorado River with no rudder!”
Chuck looked over at Sarah, who shrugged. “I told you that’s what he was gonna say,” she said.
“You know what, he’s right,” Chuck admitted. “Casey, you’re right. I’m sorry we wasted your time.”
Casey waved his hands in the air furiously. “Nobody said you were wasting my time! I just said you were out of your goddamn minds! I want to know exactly what the two of you were thinking when you came up with this half-cocked plan to rip off a casino!”
Chuck shrugged. “Well, it’s never been done before.”
“Hah!” Casey laughed. “You should know better than that, Captain Intersect!”
“What do you mean?” Chuck asked, confused.
“Let me give you some mental stimuli,” Casey snarked. “Bronze medal. The Horseshoe, 1954.”
Chuck’s eyes rolled back in his head as a series of images flashed before his eyes. A lockbox. A scrawny-looking man running with said lockbox. Said man being tackled. Chips and cash flying everywhere.
“Doug Ross grabbed a lockbox at the Horseshoe, attempted to escape. He was stopped and apprehended,” Chuck said.
“Exactly,” Casey said with a smile, nodding his head. “Number two. The Flamingo, 1971.”
Chuck’s mind was assaulted again. A man. Definitely a hippie. Duffel bag clutched to his chest. Daylight plays on his face before a security guard smashes him in the nose with a nightstick. “Spirit in the Sky” incongruously plays in Chuck’s head.
“Tyler Durden,” Chuck gasped. “Tried to rob the Flamingo. Actually tasted fresh oxygen. Of course, he was breathing out of a tube for the next six months.”
“God damn hippie,” Casey grumbled. “And the champion. Caesar’s Palace, 1987.”
The Intersect went crazy one final time. A man in a horrible leisure suit on the driveway out front of Caesar’s Palace, arms full of cash, an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth. Armed security guards yelling at him to freeze. Armed security guards firing their weapons. The man falls, a cloud of cash flying into the air.
“Will Hunting,” Chuck said. “Closest any man has ever come to robbing a Las Vegas casino. He came, he grabbed…”
“They conquered,” Casey finished the sentence for him.
The older man looked at Chuck and Sarah. “Do you understand the complications in robbing a Las Vegas casino? There’s cameras. There’s sensors. There’s enough armed personnel to occupy Paris.”
Chuck raised an eyebrow at that one. “Okay, bad example,” Casey allowed. “But still, even if you manage to get out the front door – you’re still in the middle of the fucking desert! Have you two geniuses even considered that?!”
Chuck looked at Casey, and then over at Sarah. “You’re right,” Sarah said. “Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. We’d just get ourselves in over our heads.”
“Thanks for lunch, Casey,” Chuck said, as he stood.
“No problem, guys,” Casey said. “Listen, we go way back, and I still owe you, for the thing, with the guy, in the place…”
“Yeah, I always wanted to be kidnapped and taken to Utah,” Chuck cracked.
Casey looked up at him strangely. “Utah? I thought it was Belize.”
Sarah looked at them both. “You know, it was Belize, but for some reason, I thought it was Utah for a moment too.”
“Strange,” Chuck said, but continued to walk away. He and Sarah had almost reached the back door of Casey’s house when Casey called, “Listen, just which casinos were you mindjobs planning on hitting?”
Sarah turned around. “Uh, the Mirage, the Bellagio…”
“The MGM Grand,” Chuck finished.
Casey’s fork clattered to his plate. “Those are Bryce Larkin’s casinos!” he called, standing up and quickly crossing the back patio. “Just what do you guys have against Bryce Larkin?”
Chuck smiled. “I think the more important question is what do you have against him, Casey?”
“He stabbed me in the back. He betrayed everything I stood for,” Casey growled.
Chuck looked at Sarah questioningly. She smiled and nodded her head slightly.
“But if you’re gonna rob Bryce Larkin, you better know,” Casey continued, “you think you’ve got him down, and he’ll bounce right back up again. I’ve seen it happen. Twice. He’ll come at you like none other. He’ll go after you, your family. You know, Vegas, it used to be civilized. You’d hit a guy, he’d wack you. Boom. Done.
“Not Bryce Larkin. He kills you, and then he goes to work on you.”
Chuck nodded. “Well, then we’ll be careful.”
Casey shook his head. “Seriously, this is lunacy. No joke, you’re gonna need a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros, a Leon Spinks, and the biggest Ella Fitzgerald of ALL TIME to pull this off. You’re looking at minimum ten men.”
Chuck smiled. “We were thinking eleven, but you’re right on the same line of thought as us.”
Casey grimaced. “Exactly what lunatics you two have in mind for this job?”
“Well, our inside man is Big Mike,” Chuck began. “He recently developed a bad case of… uh, whatever. He’s put in for a transfer from New Jersey to a warmer climate. But, since Big Mike can no longer get past the gaming commission, he’ll be known as Mr. Mark Christopher Lawrence.”
“Catchy name,” Casey said. “Too catchy. Tell him to drop the Christopher.”
“He’s not gonna like that,” Sarah warned.
“Tough. Tell him he’s Mark Lawrence or I name him.”
Chuck suppressed a smile at the thought of Casey thinking up a new name for the six-foot-four, three hundred fifty pound black man. “So that’s our inside man,” he repeated. “Electronics, we were thinking Jill Tanner.”
“She’s dead,” Sarah interrupted.
Chuck looked over at her, shocked. “No shit! On a job?”
“Skin cancer,” Sarah replied. “Hit the tanning booths a bit too much.”
“You send flowers?”
“Dated her ex for a while…”
Chuck literally laughed out loud at that one. “Okay, how about Morgan Grimes then?”
“He’s working for the feds, last I heard,” Casey said. “I mean, you could give him a call…”
“I’m sure I can pull a few strings,” Chuck replied. “He owes me. Everything, really.”
“Drivers are Jeff and Lester,” Sarah continued.
“What, the Mormon twins?” Casey snorted derisively.
Chuck frowned. “Number one, they’re barely Mormon, and number two, I’d hardly call them twins. Jeff’s a six-foot-two alcoholic white man, and Lester’s a five-foot-six Indian guy. They just happen to have the same birth date, and just happened to be adopted by the same parents.”
“From what we hear, though, they’re having a little trouble filling the time,” Sarah interjected. “Seems they got arrested a couple weeks back for staging a drag race in the middle of Provo.”
Casey squinted his eyes. “Provo? What the hell?”
“Apparently, it was a remote control truck against a lifted four-by-four,” Chuck finished. “I guess the Provo police weren’t too pleased about the distraction it caused.”
Casey sighed. “Okay, so you’ve got your inside man, your electronics, and your drivers. What about a lifter? And your Boesky?”
“Two for the price of one,” Chuck replied. “I figure, I get my sister and her husband – Devin and Ellie Woodcomb – out here. She could lift Nathan Fillion’s wallet out of his tightest pair of leather pants, and Devin can pass himself off as just about anybody you want – as long as that individual is ‘awesome’,” he added, rolling his eyes.
“Our greaseman is Anna Wu,” Sarah continued. “She’s actually Morgan Grimes girlfriend. I have it on good authority that she is… well, Morgan’s exact terminology was ‘surprisingly flexible’.”
Chuck groaned in horror. “Dear sweet Lord, I really did NOT need to know that,” he grumbled.
Sarah smiled. “You know I say those things intentionally, right?”
“I bet you do…”
“Alright, alright,” Casey said irritably. “Moving on. Demolitions?”
“No question,” Chuck replied. “We get Lou. She’s still apparently friendly with her ex, Stavros Demetrios –“
“The international financier?”
“Yeah, and heavy grade arms dealer,” Sarah finished. “We figure she greases his palm with three or four hundred, we get the explosives and arms we need, nobody’s the wiser.”
“Now, you figure the total take on this…”
“Well,” Chuck replied, “as I’m sure you’re aware, the policy in Bryce Larkin’s casinos is to have enough cash in the cage to cover every chip on the floor at any given moment. On a weeknight, that’s fifteen million dollars. On a Saturday night, you’re looking at closer to eighty million.”
He grinned, a gleam appearing in his eyes. “But on a fight night, like the night of the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight, three weeks from tonight, you’re looking at over one hundred fifty million, without breaking a sweat.”
Casey’s eyebrows climbed, and he whistled. “And you think you’re gonna walk out of there with that?”
Chuck nodded.
“So, I guess the final question is, who’s your financier?”
Chuck and Sarah looked at each other. “Well… that’s why we came to talk to you.”
Casey looked at them for a moment, shocked. Finally, he said, “I need something to drink. Can we take this discussion inside?”
Chuck and Sarah nodded, and got up to follow him into the house. He opened the door, and they headed inside. After the bright sunlight, the dim light of the house seemed almost pitch black –
To be continued…
Author’s note: You may have noticed a slight discrepancy between this chapter and Ocean’s 11. You may remember that in the movie, Danny Ocean states that Nevada state law requires all chips in play on a casino floor to be covered by cash on hand. This is actually not a law at all. Therefore, I decided to change that plot point just a wee bit.
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