Thirty-seven
Edie’s heart was pounding so hard that she couldn’t hear a thing, and they hadn’t even made it to the vault.
Skinner had dropped them off in different places, of course, so no one would see them together.
Edie met Frances by the elevators, and they’d slipped down the stairs, two old women chatting away.
Now, they were holed up in a small supply closet on the basement floor, their old-lady clothes discarded, their security uniforms ill-fitting.
Edie had Joan’s hearing aid, a stethoscope, and a small notepad to write down the codes.
She had to keep chanting a silent mantra to herself: The hard part is getting into the vault.
The rest is easy. The hard part is getting into the vault.
The rest is easy. Talk about the lies they told themselves.
She and Frances didn’t speak, just listened. The first person they heard was Irene at the employee entrance. She was talking to Mel, the friendly security guard. “Girl, you haven’t got that badge replaced?” Mel asked.
“You know how long they take,” Irene said. “It’s like molasses up there.”
“You got that right,” Mel said with a chuckle.
“Are you going to be here?” Irene asked. “I’ve got to get my cart and go downstairs to clean the bathrooms.”
“Here all night.”
A few moments later, Irene asked, “Joan, are you in?”
“In,” came Joan’s muffled response.
Edie noticed Frances kept pressing two fingers to her temple, and she wondered if she was in pain or simply nervous.
The noise coming through their communications was chaotic and loud—it seemed the entire casino was in a party mood, giving the historic event happening tonight.
She could hear Irene over the din, chatting with someone. Then Marcy, ordering a glass of wine.
“There is a lot of press here,” Marcy said low.
Good. Rocco’s humiliation would be recorded far and wide.
“Oh my God,” Marcy said suddenly.
“What?” Edie asked, her heart pounding harder. “What’s wrong?”
“He is with someone. He’s got his arm around some chick’s waist!”
“His mom?” Joan asked from somewhere.
“No! She’s my age. That absolute shit,” Marcy said angrily.
“He’s a prick, we’ve already established it,” Irene said. “It’s almost go time, ladies. Everyone in their places?”
“Yes,” Frances and Joan said in unison.
“Hey, Rocco,” Marcy said.
“Marcy, no!” Edie tried, but it was too late. Through the earpieces, they could hear Marcy confront Rocco. “Who is this? Because I thought you’d been trying to get me in bed this week,” she said.
Rocco laughed. “I don’t think so. We’ve just been hanging out. You’re not really my type.”
Marcy gasped. “You think you get to have a type?” she said, her voice rising. “Hey! Hey, you!” Marcy yelled. “If he asks you to invest, run the other way.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Rocco said.
Edie gasped with outrage. “Marcy! You can’t leave! We need to know where he is.”
“Oh, I’m not leaving,” Marcy said with a dark laugh. “I’m going to watch his sorry ass go up in flames.”
“You guys! It’s time!” Irene said hotly.
Sure enough, Rocco asked for the attention of everyone in the room. Edie could only hear snippets of his self-congratulatory speech about the first all-crypto casino. His explanation of his vision. How everyone was calling him the next Elon Musk.
“I’m not sure which makes me sicker—the cancer or this guy,” Frances whispered.
“It’s almost midnight. We’re about to go,” Irene said.
“Five. Four. Three,” she counted as Rocco explained to everyone that the switch to crypto was about to happen.
He directed everyone’s attention to a disco ball.
“It’s going to drop at midnight. Make sure you’ve got champagne in your hand! ” he urged them.
Frances took Edie’s hand. They stood in the dark of the supply closet, holding their breath.
“Two, one.”
Like magic, the casino lost power. At first there was silence. Then raised voices of surprise and alarm upstairs. Someone screamed.
Edie was so stunned she couldn’t move.
“The motion detector is off,” Irene said.
Frances shoved the door open and tugged Edie into the dark hall.
Two narrow strips on the floor were all the light they had, and it was difficult to see.
But as they moved toward the hall where the vault was located, they could make out a figure just ahead.
Joan. The three of them wordlessly hurried down the hall.
At the door to the vault hallway, Joan dipped down, took two smoke bombs from her bag and a lighter.
But her lighter wouldn’t catch. “Damn it!”
“What’s wrong?” Irene asked frantically.
“I can’t get the lighter to work.”
“Hurry up,” Frances urged her, peering through the small window in the door. “One of the guards is almost to the door.”
Joan frantically tried to get the lighter to strike, but it wouldn’t catch. Just as the guard reached the door, the light caught, and she set off a smoke bomb. She threw it down, lit two more and tossed them down, then pushed Frances back away from the door.
The guard threw the door open. “What the fuck?”
“Fire!” Joan yelled. “We lost power and there’s a fire upstairs. Hurry!”
“We can’t leave—”
“Dude, let’s go,” Joan said. She coughed in the thick smoke.
The man needed no more convincing. He went. The second guard stepped out, too, coughing and waving the smoke from his face. “Who are you?”
“You want introductions right now? They sent me to get you. I’m not dying down here—there’s a fire upstairs, so stay or go, but I’m getting out.” She coughed again.
“A fire? No one said a fire.”
The smoke was so bad—Edie couldn’t imagine what Joan had put into it, but standing up against the wall with Frances, her arm over her mouth and nose, she thought she might die in here, too.
“I’m going,” Joan said.
The second guard came out through the door and began to follow her toward the exit. Once he’d passed, Edie and Frances slipped into the hall behind him. But something caused the guard to turn back. “Hey!”
Edie would swear later that Joan flew with one leg extended and throat punched the man with her foot. They both went down, but Joan was the only one to get up. The guard did not. “Holy shit, I did it,” Joan said breathlessly. “I can’t believe I did it!”
“Did you kill him?” Edie cried.
“God, no,” Joan said. “I don’t think. Maybe I should check.” She moved toward him.
“Clock is ticking!” Irene warned them. “Let’s go,” Frances said, and pulled Edie to the vault door.
Edie grabbed Rocco’s badge from her pocket, fumbling with it at the card reader. It took two or so swipes before the door clicked open. Frances pushed Edie through and closed the door behind them.
This room was also lit by strip lighting, but there was enough light to see it was filled with art and gold fixtures.
They had to move things to clear a path to the safe door on the back wall, including paintings and what looked like an étagère.
Edie would later think how amazing it was that Frances’s adrenaline kicked in like it did.
She looked strong, like the twenty-something Frances had been instead of the frailer, sicker one.
“Breathe,” Frances whispered to her.
“I’m trying,” Edie said. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her hands were shaking.
She took out her earpiece and put in Joan’s hearing aid.
She shoved the small notebook and pen at Frances, then put the stethoscope in her ears.
She held her breath and turned the locking wheel five times to the right.
“Five,” she said. Frances jotted it down.
Edie slowly turned the wheel back until she heard it park. “Seventy-two.” And on it went, her straining to hear over her own heart and Frances’s ragged breath. When she counted five clicks, she tried the wheel. It did not move. “Shit!”
“Take a breath and go again,” Frances urged her.
Edie pressed her forehead to the door. What made this safe unbeatable?
She’d practiced on a door from the same manufacturer.
In that one, between each lock of a wheel, the rotations decreased.
It occurred to her that maybe the opposite was true here, which would make it almost unbeatable, because who would expect that? “Three,” she said.
“Seventy-two,” Frances told her.
Edie rotated the wheel. “Four.”
“Twenty-six.”
And so they went, Edie turning the wheel, Frances telling her the next code, until she heard the last wheel lock into place. She turned the big handle, and to her amazement, it opened.
Frances gasped. “She’s in,” she said into her mic.
Edie looked up at Frances. Frances grabbed her, and they hugged each other, jumping up and down like schoolgirls for a moment. Edie pulled the door open all the way, and there waiting for them were canvas bags packed with cash and ready to be transferred.
Edie put her earpiece in again, just in time to hear Irene utter, “Oh no. My feed just shut down. They know something is up.”
“Move, move, move,” Frances said frantically. She grabbed two of the heavy canvas bags and dragged them to the vault door. She flung that door open and propped it there with one of the bags.
Edie followed suit. They were struggling—the bags were heavy—but they each managed two at a time.
Joan and Irene arrived moments later with the industrial cart and began to toss the bags into it.
“The lights just came on,” Marcy reported. “I’m getting out.”
“I lost access to the cameras,” Irene said, her gaze on her burner phone. “We have to go.”
The four of them looked at the cart. There was still room. “Wait,” Edie said, and darted back to the safe. Frances realized what she was doing and ran after her.
“Are they crazy? They are crazy,” Joan said, and bolted after them. The three of them grabbed six more bags.
“No more!” Irene cried. “Let’s go!”
Together, the four of them pushed the cart out of the vault hall and into the larger basement area, and to the service elevator.
The guard, Edie noticed, was gone. She waved Rocco’s badge at the card reader.
It flashed red. “They’ve disabled it!” she said, gasping.
“They know his card was used. We’re done. ”
But Irene pushed her aside. She took out another badge—Edie noticed it was the groundskeeper’s badge they’d found when they first arrived in Vegas. Could that have only been days ago?
Irene waved it in front of the elevator door and it opened. They struggled to get the cart in while Joan lit more smoke bombs and threw them behind them. But the cart took up so much space only three of them could squeeze in. Frances was standing outside the elevator doors, her eyes wide.
The door above opened and they could hear an army of officers coming down the stairs.
“Get in the cart, Franny!” Joan begged her.
Frances took one of the canvas bags, presumably to make room.
“Over here!” a male yelled.
Edie realized that the smoke was too thick—the officers couldn’t possibly see them all—but Frances didn’t know that.
She looked at the three of them. “Thank you,” she said.
“For everything.” She pressed one hand to her heart, kissed her fingers and blew them a kiss, then punched the button to close the elevator door. It suddenly lurched upward.
Edie, Joan, and Irene stared at each other in stunned silence. “What just happened?” Edie whispered. “Are we leaving her?”
“Do we have a choice?” Joan asked.
Edie knew the answer. Of course they didn’t.
“Put on your masks just in case,” Irene said softly. The Rat Pack rode up to the street.