Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was a short flight from Valgenico to Milan.
Bench, Rocky Mausud, and Tartoni were relaxed in their seats.
Teddy Searl’s hands were clenched on his armrests, and his butt muscles were so tight he could have cracked a walnut between his cheeks.
Teddy wasn’t a good flyer, and he especially hated the helicopter.
“Relax,” Bench said to him. “Enjoy the scenery.”
“We could have driven,” Teddy said.
“This is faster,” Bench said. “It takes three hours to get from Valgenico to Milan and then three hours back. I don’t want to spend that much time away from our houseguests.”
“I thought they were safe in the vault,” Teddy said. “And you’ve got Frankie and Mario babysitting.”
Nothing will be safe until I get my hands on the coffin, and Gabriela Rose and her buddies are buried alongside Scalucci, Bench thought. Not that he wanted to share that with Teddy. Teddy was already a basket case.
“We’re here,” Bench said. “You can stop holding your breath. We’ll be on the ground in two minutes.”
Teddy squeezed his eyes shut tight. This was the part he hated most.
The helicopter set down in a parking lot that was surrounded by a nine-foot chain-link fence on three sides and a high-security warehouse on the fourth side.
There were no windows or doors on the exterior of the concrete warehouse.
There were three loading docks and a single door on the side of the warehouse that opened to the parking lot that contained the helipad.
The four men disembarked and went to the loading dock.
“I have a nervous stomach,” Teddy said, watching the copter lift off. “This feels like a prison. If things don’t go right, we’re trapped here. I don’t like it.”
“Nothing is going to go wrong,” Bench said.
“We’ve dealt with Oleski before. This is part of the deal.
He has certain requirements when it comes to the handoff of goods for payment.
This in-person meeting in the warehouse is one of them.
When you put out the kind of money we demand, you’re allowed to be a little eccentric. ”
“He’s not eccentric,” Teddy said. “He’s insane.”
“I can handle him,” Bench said.
He had his speech prepared. It would be reassuring.
He would congratulate Oleski on his purchases and gloss over the missing piece.
He’d sold items to Oleski before, when a ransom wasn’t paid and they needed a buyer.
Those transactions were clean. No problems. If Oleski made a fuss over the missing coffin, Bench would remind him of their flawless history.
He’d been able to talk Oleski off a ledge over the Rosetta Stone, he could persuade him to wait a few more days for the golden coffin.
“It’s gotten out of hand,” Teddy said. “No one was hurt when we were ransoming stuff.”
No one that you knew about, Bench thought. For years, he was the one who did the messy cleanup while the rest of the Kings went about their cushy lifestyles. And he was good at it until Gabriela Rose got involved. He was still finding it hard to believe she was alive.
“If we ransomed what we stole on this heist the items would go back to the original owners and the bank wouldn’t go under,” Bench said.
“If Searl and Junkett doesn’t go under, your daddy doesn’t get to buy it out, and you don’t get to take over when your daddy succumbs to his very bad heart condition,” Bench said.
“I don’t know,” Teddy said. “His heart’s been looking pretty good lately.”
It’s going to take a fatal turn for the worse in the very near future, Bench thought.
He’d started planning this mega heist six years ago.
He wasn’t going to let it tank now. Not only would this go down in history as the heist to end all heists, but he’d be richly rewarded for his brilliance.
He’d get his split of the Kings’ heist money, and when the Searl and Junkett customers were folded into Beckett Searl Investment, he’d be on his way to being a billionaire.
He’d bought shares when Beckett Searl Investment was a startup and needed investors.
He’d cleaned out his bank account and gone in as HBSmart LLC.
Plus, he’d step in as chairman of the board and have all the perks and prestige.
He had a few loose ends to tidy up, and life would be golden.
Gabriela Rose and her crew needed to be eliminated.
And he would finally be able to get rid of Tartoni’s drunken cow of a wife.
She was a liability. Her only redeeming quality was that she was such a sloppy drunk no one believed anything she said.
Tartoni was never the smart King. He was the fun King and the good-looking King.
Fun enough and good-looking enough to marry into money.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t smart enough to get his name on some of his wife’s assets.
All of Tartoni’s niceties were in the cow’s name.
What was worse, when she went to the big stockyard in the sky her money was destined for charitable causes.
Since none of the Kings, including Antonio Tartoni, especially liked the cow, Bench had taken on the task of helping Tartoni improve on his financial future.
Bench helped Tartoni drain his wife’s bank accounts and move the money into untraceable LLCs.
This required patience and finesse, but the bulk of her fortune was finally safe and sound in Beckett Searl Investment’s portfolio. Kudos to me, Bench thought. Win-win.
The chain-link gate rattled open and two Mercedes sedans drove in. The gate closed behind them. The sedans came to a stop in front of the men and idled. The windows were tinted. The cars were angled so that it was impossible for any of the Kings to see inside.
“I hate this,” Teddy whispered to Bench.
Teddy’s hands were clammy, and his nuts had abandoned his nut sack and retreated to somewhere high in his intestines. His feet were sweating in his Guccis.
“This guy is psycho,” Teddy said.
“Shut up,” Bench said. “It’s his process.”
“He’s going to kill us,” Teddy said. “He’s got what he wants, and now he’s going to kill us, so he doesn’t have to pay. He’s got us trapped. This isn’t a warehouse. It’s a slaughterhouse.”
“He doesn’t have everything he wants,” Bench said. “He doesn’t have the golden coffin. He’s not going to kill us and jeopardize his only chance to get the coffin.”