Ghost Bandit: I Robbed Twelve of the Largest Nightclubs In the Country and They Say I've Been Dead for More Than 130 Years.

By James Pomerantz

Recently amid the generational obsession with fame based solely on notoriety, two men were forever linked in the most unlikely manner. One man died 130 years ago and the other was simply fulfilling the obligations of a father the purest form of character examination. What are we capable of doing if unspeakable evil us done to a family member? One man was a modern day thief, sophisticated and well trained. The other man was an outlaw of considerable fame and legendary lore. When the two finally met formally, their paths had been crossing daily for the previous year. One man robbed the most successful and visible nightclubs in the nation. The other man was Jesse James. This is Ghost Bandit.

Front cover photo is portrait of nationally renowned artist Dennis Downes. www.downestudio.net
Front cover photography by Dennis Manarchy. www.manarchy.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684703432

Book preview

States.

Prologue I

Cody’s Funeral

My daughter’s funeral was held at the Great Western Bible Chapel in Golden, Colorado a Denver suburb just west of the city littered with more churches per square mile than Rome. My ex-wife moved to Golden shortly before Cody died. The Great Western Bible Chapel is a non-denominational church for those who love Jesus Christ. I am not among the faithful. The hypocrisy on display at a child’s funeral is indisputable evidence that the existence of God is questionable at best and Jim Jones, Jonestown-Guyana cult worship sheep herding to me. The loss of a child is not an occasion to excuse God’s culpability for allowing or not preventing such tragedies. Spare me forever the infallibility of God, Jesus and Christianity. No one can definitively attest to the Bible’s authorship. Interpretation and scholarship have been the foundation for all theology. Certain interpretations of God’s word are more problematic than others. I fell off the religious peace train years before my daughter died. I attended a parochial grade school where the nuns were as warm and fuzzy as the Kevin Bacon character in Sleepers. I prayed to God as a kid for extra candy, soda, sex and a convertible. God’s batting average was zero.

I do not know why Cody had to die, but if I could understand where God was on the night that Cody died, perhaps my complete disdain for religion in general may have subsided, if only minimally. Why is it nearly impossible for anyone associated with a religious order of any kind to explain what God has to do with the loss of the innocent? It is God’s plan, is not an answer. I find it pointless to ask the blind to guide me forward while the rest of the world hides behind both sides of the donation plate.

By the time my daughter died, my youthful skepticism had grown into an adult’s full blown rebellion against organized religion when I discovered that my choices continually required justification. I needed the benefit of an explanation or at least a plausible quid pro quo to define the paths I would eventually choose. Christians, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and all the other passive-aggressive denominational zealots are lunatics. I was an outsider at my daughter’s funeral. The entire history of mankind is defined by war and the senseless slaughter of human beings in the name of religious freedom and sovereign territorial identity based on secular allegiance, yet we celebrate the endless glory and goodness of God. The blueprint for harmony on earth appears to be flawed. So you could say I was an outsider at my own daughter’s funeral.

Theological epiphanies had not sprung to mind as I watched them place my daughter’s body in a refrigerated drawer at the county morgue. The quid pro quo had eluded me again when I learned that my daughter, a precious gift far beyond my parental worthiness, had met up with a group of male college students in a Boulder nightclub. The college boys laced Cody’s drink with the expressed goal of slamming her senseless in the back of a frat house until she passed out. Prior to Cody’s homicide, I was not familiar with the practice of drugging under-aged females in order to boost the prowess of impotent, spoiled pricks vacationing for four years at the University of Colorado.

While I listened silently the self-ordained cleric pronounced that Cody was in a better place now. I imagined him rejoicing in the power and wisdom of the Lord. I wanted to heave. I wanted my daughter with me. I wasn’t particularly receptive to a cartoon character lecturing me on the redemptive qualities of the afterlife. It was by the grace of cheap tequila and Bon Jovi’s formulaic anthems, that I had fathered twins in 1987. Corey and Cody learned to ski Rocky Mountain style almost as soon as they learned to walk. With the sun drenched mountains west of Denver rising like sculpted centurions just beyond the city haze, I thought of weekend jaunts up to Copper Mountain, Vail and Beaver Creek. Tessa and I had taken the kids skiing as often as we could afford the trips. When Cody was six years old, we were lucky enough to stay at the home of a friend in Avon, Colorado for a long four day weekend in January. Avon is five miles west of Vail on Interstate 70, adjacent to the resort community of Beaver Creek. From the entrance to the Beaver Creek resort, the drive is two and a half miles up into the mountains to a picturesque new ski paradise.

We placed Cody and Corey in ski school one morning while Tessa and I went for long runs down the challenging slopes of Beaver Creek. When we returned to meet the kids at the end of their school session to get some lunch, we were met with the petrifying news that Cody had wandered off during the lessons and the entire Beaver Creek ski patrol was now in full search mode. Snowmobiles were combing the slopes on every conceivable run that Cody could have accessed during the time she was missing.

The entirety of life as I knew it became blurred. I was convinced someone had stolen our daughter.

After three hours of terror, the ski school notified Tessa that Cody was safe at the guard house leading up to the Beaver Creek resort. My six-year-old daughter had walked two and a half miles down a mountain road to end up at the entrance gate to the Beaver Creek resort. Cody just wanted to go home and rest. I cannot imagine how many Christian disciples must have driven past a six-year-old strolling down a mountain road in January and ignored her. She was trying to walk back to our home in Avon. Hell, I don’t think I could have found the place on foot down the mountain.

I had never come so close to losing something I loved so fiercely. I thought at that moment in my life, that something had intervened to look out for Cody. I knew that I had made it through the worst moment of my life. I knew nothing. There was no divinity watching over Cody. Cody made it down the mountain road solely because she was a pugnacious free spirit channeling Jon Krakauer at six years old. Apparently, Cody needed to be a little tougher twelve years later.

While I know Cody will be with me forever, the fact remains that she is gone. Taking Cody from me is the most excessive form of punishment imaginable. As such, I cannot bring myself to enter the church in a spiritual sense. My ex-wife will never understand. A priest will speak about Cody, a girl he never knew. Cody’s friends will vow to celebrate the brief life she led and they will promise to honor the way she lived. They will all vow to move on, to get on with their lives. Cody would have wanted them all to be happy. They will all agree that Cody would not have it any other way.

Cody would have wanted to remain alive.

Cody would have wanted to go to college and to take spring breaks with her friends in Telluride.

The priest will talk about the celebration surrounding Cody’s life and that Cody’s legacy should not be defined by sadness. I passed on another load of sanctimonious crap. I honored the way Cody died through my actions. There were no arrests made in connection with my daughter’s death. None of the male nightclub patrons who drugged Cody were identified and the venue where she died was not held responsible in any way. This would not do. The guilty parties had to answer for the death of my daughter. I promised Cody that I would not have it any other way. I answered to no one except her. My actions would speak for my daughter who had been so brutally silenced.

Prologue II

As I meandered through the nightclub amidst a throng of wasted young bodies, their inebriated eyes and drug induced clumsiness reflected the visceral insanity of the room. Patrons lined up outside for the privilege of paying a fifty dollar cover charge. Young men dressed in three hundred dollar blue jeans tried to remember why they were spending a week’s salary for a bottle of Vodka to share with women they would never touch or see again. I could feel the weight of my gun and the holster pressed against my back. With each step, I felt more invincible. Robbery is the purest form of examination. What are you made of? What are you afraid of? I rob nightclubs.

In this country, nightclubs have become a harbor for the generation they seek to exploit. As parents, we rewarded participation without effort. We raised overprotected children and micro-managed every activity of their young lives. We read lap dog self-help books and swallowed up that seminal parental blather faster than we could feed it back to our children. We told our children that life was wonderful and they could have everything. All they had to do was to think positive thoughts and wish for true happiness. We never said no to our children. We never allowed them to step on a single crack along life’s self-esteem highway. We raised a naive generation and set them up for failure like little wooden ducks at a county fair shooting booth. The nightclub industry has operated under a universal business plan and their target market is our children. Nightclub longevity is generally maxed out at five years. Profit margins on products often exceed 600%. Capacity is artificially gauged by appearance and those deemed unattractive are turned away like spoiled fruit at a farmer’s market. Safety is an after-thought, drudged up every decade or so by a fatal fire and deadly stampede that land the grieving relatives on the network news as the lead story. Drug use is an integral facet of the nightclub industry. Ecstasy, cocaine, GHB and a host of chemical cocktails are not only tolerated, but subsidized by many clubs. Excessive alcoholic consumption is the life blood of a nightclub. Steve Rubell from Studio 54 said that only the Mafia brought in more money than his club. Peter Gatien, founder of Limelight and Rubell, the nation’s most infamous club owners skimmed millions of dollars from their clubs and both landed in jail for tax evasion. My daughter died on the bathroom floor of a nightclub in Boulder, Colorado. Cody was eighteen years old when she had a fatal reaction to a drug placed in her drink without her knowledge. The club did not close for the night. They called 911, scooped up Cody’s body and mopped the floor in the bathroom. The only acknowledgement of Cody’s death was a yellow wet floor sign posted in the woman’s bathroom. While the weakness of our children is on our heads, their exploitation is not. My presence is necessary not noble. I rob from those who deserve to be robbed.

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Chapter One

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I sat at ground zero, surveying Chicago’s premiere nightclub, Red Rocks. Billy the Kid would have gotten a kick out of this. I had been there a few days, watching. Target number one was on schedule.

My former occupation was classified as Aggravated Robbery in the state of Texas, where I resided at the time. It was a first degree felony and involved a deadly weapon. Nightclubs were always my target.

While examining each urban nightclub target prior to my target date, I liked to channel the immortal spirits of outlaws like Billy the Kid, Johnny Ringo, Belle Starr, Butch and Sundance hiking the majestic trails of the Rocky Mountains. I tasted the dust from those trails as I surveyed Red Rocks. I saw myself riding past the granite walls guarding the secluded entrance to Hole in the Wall, the outlaw legacy sanctuary. Once the bank was robbed or the train was robbed, Butch and Sundance, the Younger Brothers or the Dalton gang retreated to Hole in the Wall. That was a place of beauty and history, where America’s notorious heroes danced on the tarnished memories of frustrated lawmen. Outlaw folklore is seductive in nature. My trigger was not the uncovered gold buried in the Rocky Mountains. My trigger was my admiration for those who got away with it.

Red Rocks had none of that grandeur, but here I sat. The logistics of robbing a nightclub were remarkably simple. It was all about my insatiable desire to take wealth from those who simply did not deserve it. The plan materialized into twelve nightclub robberies over a twelve month time frame. My targets spanned the nation’s largest cities including New York City, Chicago, Miami, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Antonio and ended with the robbery of a very exclusive nightclub in Aspen, Colorado called The Turkey Creek Club. Red Rocks was target number one.

The Turkey Creek Club is owned by Nick Landis. Mr. Landis, also was the owner of Maze, the nightclub in Boulder, Colorado where my daughter died two years ago. Maze had been the standard for underage college students for the previous three years. The club was owned by three former students from the University of Colorado. Former alumni Nick Landis, Mark Codell and Greg Stenis were all trust fund babies from the east coast.

On that fateful night exactly two years ago, Cody was 18 and had been dining with three female friends after attending the Buffalo’s home opener football game. They were later invited to Maze by some male students under the assurance that any girls could get into the club free.

The girls were never asked for identification when they entered the club. To get in all they had to do was look good. Cody got separated from her friends sometime before midnight. Her friends found her on the bathroom floor in a pool of her own body fluids. She had unknowingly been given the drug MDMA, better known as Ecstasy or X. I had no idea that X is chemically similar to methamphetamine and mescaline and has both stimulant and psychedelic properties and effects. X produces an energizing effect and an initial feeling of euphoria. It will often produce a dangerous rise in the body temperature called hyperthermia. I know that Cody was a novice when it came to drugs. She was scared to death to take an aspirin tablet.

Cody may have urinated on herself, may have had a small seizure at the bar or may have become alarmingly lightheaded. Any or all of those symptoms would certainly have made her suitors focus their attentions elsewhere. Cody went to the bathroom because she did not know what was happening to her. The toxicology report confirmed the rest. With a rapid rise in her body temperature, my daughter lost consciousness and her organs shut down. Cody died from sudden cardiac death. My only daughter died on the filthy floor of a nightclub bathroom because some guys wanted to bang her eyes out while she was a whisper away from passing out and unable to resist.

Robbing a nightclub was not rocket science. I cannot go all the way and call it a cinch, but you would be surprised how easy it was for one guy to walk into a club and walk out with close to $100,000 in cash. All the nightclubs I have been staking out have glaring security flaws. The common denominators were the same. They all accumulated in excess of $50,000 per night in cash, which meant there was well over $100,000 in cash at each club on most Sunday nights. Most deposits were made during the week, so the weekend cash accumulated quickly. The most lucrative night to hit a club was Sunday night.

There was one thing that I never understood. The United States penal system population has been exploding for years. Many inmates are incarcerated for armed robberies that involved gas stations, convenience stores, liquor stores and small branch banks. They were high risk ventures that produced low cash. The real plums were nightclubs. The reasons a nightclub was such a plum target started with greedy owners. They liked cash and cash meant hiding boatloads of it from the tax man. So, where there was a hot club, there were equally hot stacks of cash.

While I was sitting at the bar in Red Rocks downing a cold Scotch Ale draft, I was wondering what it was like in 1889 to be casing the bank in Telluride, Colorado that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid took down for their first bank robbery. You see, Red Rocks was my first nightclub heist. The thought of it was invigorating. Red Rocks was named, apparently from the massive red boulders that lined the first floor outdoor foundation. I was in the Fulton River District of Chicago on the southeast corner of Kinzie and North Clinton Streets and the structure was a gargantuan gothic abortion. The total square footage exceeded 75,000 square feet.

Surprisingly, I was not nervous. As I watched the movements within the club, I couldn’t wait to rob the joint. The Fulton River District was transformed in the late eighties and early nineties into a loft/condo hub, the upscale new home to a growing number of affluent young men employed at the Chicago Board of Trade. Red Rocks sat in the commercial heart of the Fulton District. The Chicago city council and the mayor had never been unable to extricate the club from the upscale neighborhood. Most home buyers that shelled out more than a million bucks for a two thousand square foot condo did not appreciate the drunks stumbling past their newly purchased homes at four in the morning looking for a place to piss. Red Rocks was open most nights until 4 a.m. and Saturday nights until 5 a.m. The club had six levels and sixteen operational bars. To simply open the club with sixteen bar drawers, shot stations, grill room, billiards room, souvenirs/cigar counter and back-up change required nearly $30,000.

Now, for the best part: It was easy as hell to walk into the club with a gun. Few nightclubs used metal detectors at the doors. The corporate view was that the use of metal detectors detracted new customers by suggesting the club attracted an unsavory clientele. The bottom line regarding the non-use of metal detectors was that a shooting or two each year was good for business. The attention helped to keep the club current and to reinforce the edge sought so desperately within the business. Furthermore, most clubs did not employ armed security guards nor did they allow managers or bouncers to walk the club floor armed. I was able to enter most clubs armed and ready.

Camera systems at any nightclub were only as effective as the people assigned to view the monitors. These individuals were primarily taught to watch for trouble within the club such as potential fights and any gang activity. The club entrances had cameras to film every identification request just in case some drunk leaving the bar got in his car and killed somebody. Bars were able to claim they asked for identification and they knew what time the guy was there. It was usually the last bar on the evening’s agenda that was the target for the lawsuits. Many times, simply having a patron’s entrance to the club on film eliminated the club from a potential lawsuit based on the time of the entrance.

I wish I could have had the freedom that the old Hole in the Wall gang must have enjoyed. No panic buttons or silent alarms got triggered before the Dalton Gang or the Younger Brothers stuck up a bank. No one could call a citywide alert back then and have every cop in the city on your tail within minutes after the hold-up. Silent alarms or panic alarms were the standard communication to alert the police in case of a nightclub robbery. I was confronted with silent alarms and panic buttons inside each nightclub office where the money was counted. Some more inventive clubs required each employee handling large sums of cash to wear a wrist device that was triggered at the first sign of trouble. Conventional silent alarm buttons were located under each desk.

I figured that employees were afraid of these devices. Who wanted to call the cops on a guy with a gun pointed at your nose? Even managers at these joints were paid a comparatively small salary while they were required to count cash each night equivalent to more than fifty times their weekly salaries. Would you risk pushing an alarm with a Glock G19 nine millimeter pistol pointed in your face just to protect some rich guy’s money, who doesn’t know your name? I didn’t have to win any marksmanship awards. With a fifteen round magazine and one in the chamber, I was able to deter any trembling heroes. The only thing that was going to be chasing me out the door was my guilt for not finishing college.

We rob banks because the money is there. Flat Nose or Kid Curry said in 1897, when asked why he wanted to rob banks. Curry then robbed the Butte County Bank in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Guess what? They couldn’t get the safe open. It didn’t matter if there was a million bucks at the site. If you couldn’t get to it, you should have held up a Hallmark card store. Drop safes were commonly used for morning pick-up deposits in most nightclubs. A drop safe is an unconditionally secure safe that no one can access except the individuals assigned to make the deposits. Club managers and general managers cannot get into drop safes. Once money is placed in a drop safe, the money is secure. Some clubs employed the local police departments to handle the daily or bi-weekly deposits. Red Rocks used Chicago Police Department officers to make the pick-ups three times per week. The CPD officers were the only people with access to the drop safe at Red Rocks. If the bar was holding two nights of cash collected, I was concerned with how much of that cash was inside a drop safe. Once the cash was counted, marked and placed inside the drop safe, that cash was gone, baby, gone.

The biggest vulnerability a nightclub had rested in the path the money had to take to the drop safe. Most clubs employed managers to periodically pull cash from the bar drawers and door stations. The cash was brought to an office to be counted, marked and placed inside a floor safe. The office was generally not locked until closing. From there, if a drop safe was present, the money was placed into the drop safe at the end of the evening.

The intention behind a drop safe was for counted and marked cash to be placed inside the drop safe as often as possible. The reality at most clubs was quite different. At 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. on a Saturday or Sunday morning, all focus was on monitoring volatile and intoxicated patrons and getting the club cleared.

In the case of Red Rocks, two individuals worked each night to comb the club from top to bottom at closing to make certain that no one was hiding or passed out inside the club. Police personnel stationed outside of Red Rocks at closing were more concerned with fights, gang related activities and drive-by shootings than potential robberies.

I was brought up by parents with pretty good intentions. They taught me right from wrong and that hard work and determination would eventually lead to success in life. I taught my own kids the same thing even though I knew it didn’t always work that way. Cody’s death woke me up from my follow-the-rule-book coma. Did Maze contribute to Cody’s death? Hell, yes but forget about that for now. These clubs deserved to be robbed. Do the math, here. They fork over $50-$75K to internationally known DJs per night. There is your egregious $75 cover charge. If a table is reserved and bottle service is employed the club will charge anywhere from $300 to $500 per bottle for marginally upscale liquor. You do not have to own a nightclub to figure out what a bottle of liquor will cost at Costco and what you are paying for the same bottle at a club. Order a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label for example and the cost quadruples. Ketel One Vodka, Level Vodka, Grey Goose Vodka, Johnny Walker Red Label or Black Label will all cost between $300 and $600 per bottle. The club’s cost per bottle is around $35.00-$50.00. That is a gross profit mark-up of 900% plus. I never took Calculus in school and I basically struggled by with C’s and D’s in math, but even I know there’s an obscene profit when you invest $40 and get back $575 every time. Reserve a Skybox, a private room or simply request reserved table service status inside any of these clubs and you are looking at a warped sum of money for the evening.

Most of my prep work was done. In the past couple days, I made notations about camera locations and the number and location of the security people stationed on each level. I counted staff on premise from security, management, bartenders, servers, bar backs and doormen. I knew exactly how many employees were employed during each shift at the clubs I targeted to rob. I measured the noise level on each floor. I took decibel meter readings throughout the club. Most of the time, it fell within the 90-109 db reading. A city street has a 70 db rating. An aircraft taking off at 100 meters has a 130 db rating. 140 db is the pain threshold. A rock concert is most often at 120 db or above. A 9mm automatic will measure at 160 db or above. Inside any nightclub, I wanted to know exactly where firing a weapon will cause the most attention and where that weapon will not be heard.

Foot traffic inside the club was an important variable and I was prepared for that as well. Most clubs had a skeleton crew on-hand during the day. There was a steady stream of deliveries from liquor and beer vendors, and ongoing visits from a myriad of salesmen trying to make a buck. Otherwise, the club was closed and locked during the day. The only way to enter the club was to ring the buzzer at the main entrance.

Yesterday I was buzzed in and greeted by a young lady from the front office. I explained that I was a visiting officer with the Miami Bureau of Convention and Tourism.

We heard so many good things about Red Rocks that I wanted to see for myself. I told the young lady. We are in town to discuss plans with the McCormick Place people for an upcoming convention. Since I had a free afternoon, I took the chance to grab a cab out to Red Rocks in hopes of taking a small tour of the club. I know this was short notice, but was there any chance that someone could give me the nickel tour?

My lovely hostess was the club’s assistant general manager. After examining my business card, I might as well have been the Mayor of Chicago. She fell all over herself showing me every inch of Red Rocks. I even took notes.

We recently played host to a Midwest State Police Convention for fifteen hundred visiting officers covering seven states. She beamed.

That is impressive, a police convention. I commented and made a mental note commending my timing.

I counted the number of stairs leading to the office and the number of alternative routes adjacent to the staircase. I noted the three doorways allowing customers inside and the nine fire exits.

My cell phone must have died. Would it be possible to make a call from your office? I need to call my assistant at the hotel. I asked hoping she would not offer me her cell phone on the spot.

Inside the offices, I saw everything I needed to see. There were two smaller offices inside the main office. One held the drop chute to the drop safe. I pictured the stacks of cash each evening on the desk, waiting to be counted and tagged. Every door inside the office was wired. The alarm triggers were off during business hours so the management staff could enter and exit the office. I noticed floor wires coming from under each desk that signified an out of date silent alarm system under each desk. I stared at every shelf and access point near each desk. If the office was armed, the weapons had to be placed within arm’s length from the desks or any weapon out of reach would ultimately prove to be useless. While most club owners never allowed security staff to walk the floor of the club armed, that did not stop some cowboy owners from stashing a gun or two in their offices. I noted the possible locations and would address the issue at a later date.

I was drinking my third Scotch Ale at the bar. Red Rocks was filling up. The place got crowded after midnight. I had finished taking notes about security issues and my stakeout was complete when a small group of guys pushed their way to the bar right next to me. There were four guys and they ordered some drinks and then turned around to lean against the bar and survey the incoming crowd. The guy next to me had spiked hair, soft fleshy cheeks and a sad clump of eight to ten hairs on his chin that could never be classified as a beard. I thought about Cody and the animals that spiked her drink. I continued to stare straight ahead but I just wanted to break my pint glass across no-beard’s face. No self-respecting outlaw would have given the guy a second thought. I wanted to hit someone hard. Someone was standing too close to me and I hated the way he smelled. I wondered how the guys scoped out Cody when she walked into Maze two years ago. The following night was Saturday. I was going to rob Red Rocks on Saturday.

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Chapter Two

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On the day of a robbery, I always found the time to reflect on what might be my last day of freedom. If I thought about it, robbery was an ideal occupation. I worked for myself. I had no employees. I was able to choose where I worked, when I worked and I was able to be creative in my work. On a work day, the hours were long. If I was robbing a club, the robbery took place somewhere between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. I did not take naps, so when I woke up in the morning it was nearly twenty-four hours before I saw the back of my eyelids again. The outline to rob Red Rocks was a complete game plan.

As I spread the papers on the desk in front of me, I was constantly reminded of the fatal mistakes most people made in my profession. The lack of common sense was the main reason criminals got caught. A lucky cop will trump a criminal’s mistake every day and twice on Sundays. My plans eliminated the lucky cops. My robberies were not reported. No cops. No cop digging and no cop case file. Unreported robberies were not the norm. My outline began with a map of the streets surrounding Red Rocks. I entered and exited the area on foot. Eighty percent of all captured bank robbers were caught inside of a vehicle while attempting to flee. I carefully chose one route of entry to the club location and one route to exit the area after I had completed my task. Since I was staying at the Embassy Suites Hotel in River North on Ohio, I walked the escape route three times. I chose two alternate routes to return to River North in the case of the unexpected. If the club’s silent alarms were triggered, my exit plans changed quickly. Chicago Police vehicles would converge on Red Rocks in minutes if an alarm was activated. Walking out the front door unmolested would become much more difficult. I had alternative exit plans through the basement at Red Rocks. There were sheets detailing the inside layout of Red Rocks. The stairway to the office was the center of the sheet. The exit routes were carefully mapped. Of the nine exits at Red Rocks, there were four that could be accessed quickly from the office or the stairway leading away from the office. At 3 a.m., the club was packed. I was insignificant. I drew three more sheets, the first detailing the inner office where the money was counted and the two outer offices that were empty at 3 a.m. The drop safe was inside the inner office and the silent alarms were all inside the inner office. The outer office desks were also equipped with silent alarm triggers but those desks were empty at 3 a.m. The second sheet was a map of security personnel inside the club. Since I had only been to the club on a few occasions, I assumed that the security locations varied somewhat and also those locations were dictated by the trouble at any given moment within the club.

The last sheet I compiled was a checklist. I dressed well, but not flashy. I wore a black cashmere sport coat and black dress slacks. If it rained then I would have postponed until another night. Rain decreased the number of people on the street and therefore I would have stood out more. I wore a small back pack. The pack contained a change of clothes, a shirt, a waist jacket and a baseball cap. Club security searched the back pack upon entering. The contents were explained to the doormen as simply a clean method to thwart the heat and sweat of a pulsing dance floor. The ladies liked clean. I ditched the clothes and filled the pack with cash once inside the office. I was required to wear the pack after it was full, but it could not be so big that I drew attention to myself or that I struggled with it. I carried a Glock G19 9mm automatic in a holster on my belt under my sport coat. There were no metal detectors at Red Rocks so the gun went unnoticed. The Glock G19 is the smaller version of the G17. The handle and barrel are shorter and they fit my hand well. I carried one full magazine in the gun and two full magazines in my pocket. If I had to use more than forty-five shots to pull off any job, then my ass was dead. I was not out to kill anyone, but this was my profession and I was prepared to do anything necessary to walk away clean. The automatic is a personal choice over a double action revolver because the gun can spray sixteen shots in seconds. The 357’s are intimidating weapons, but they are uncomfortable in my hand and I wanted the added firepower of a fully loaded magazine as opposed to a five-shot Ruger 357. The G19 did not stick out noticeably under a normal sports jacket. The gun was loud and on the outside chance that I had to use the weapon, it would have scared anyone within the office who contemplated taking the hero road.

Saturday morning was a work day. The Chicago skyline rose up on the west side of Lake Shore Drive like a concrete Norman Rockwell mural. I awoke just after nine