Part 1 of 11

Chapter 1
I blame it all on my Uncle Jimmy. It's his fault I ended up this way. It certainly wasn't my fault, I mean c'mon, I was just a kid, what did I know?

The year was 1977, a good year for some, a bad year for others, a strange year for me. If you don't remember 1977 let me refresh your memory. If you weren't born yet, then listen up - you gotta know this shit. The Commodore PET was released - that's the first personal computer. Just look where that got us. The Oakland Raiders won the Superbowl, Gary Gilmore demanded to be executed in Utah for the murders he had committed and got his wish. I never could understand that, you have to be a real schmuck to get caught, let alone want to be executed.

Roots was on TV, Jimmy Carter got sworn in, Fleetwood Mac released Rumors, Elvis & Led Zepplin gave their final concerts and Elvis left the planet. Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever came out, NY City had a blackout, Anita Bryant got a pie in her face for bein' an intolerant bitch and Harvey Milk got himself elected.

Elvis wasn't the only one to leave the planet, Voyager 2 and the Shuttle Enterprise followed suit. Not that I paid any attention to that crap, I was seventeen years old and my priorities was to get outa school, get rich and get laid. Not necessarily in that order.

Hang on to your panties, I'm gettin' there. Have a little patience, willya? I know yer wonderin' just when I'm gonna get to the dressin' up part of the story, but this here is a complicated tale. If ya's in a hurry to read somethin' that will get your rocks off yer outta luck, this here's a sensitive true-life story of how I got to be the dame I am today.

Ya believe that shit, my Cousin Carl has this bridge…

So anyways, there was snow in Miami on January 19 and a whole shitload of snow in Buffalo on the 28th. That's where this story starts. See? I toldya I'd get there. Ya see, to a kid like I was back then, Uncle Jimmy was a glamorous guy. Crap, that came out wrong, guys ain't supposed to be glamorous, theys handsome or manly or some horseballs like that. Anyways, Uncle Jimmy was the one with all the big ideas. He made his livin' - at least as far as the cops was concerned - by cleanin' things up. Ya know - removin' crap from the basement, washin' shit off buildings, whatever. Gave him somethin' to put on his tax form when April rolled around.

Now Uncle Jimmy was what you could call a entrepreneur, which is a fancy way of sayin' he kinda worked for himself, if ya know what I mean. He usually worked for himself late at night when everybody was sleeping, if ya catch my drift. While he may not have paid strict attention to property ownership laws, he damned well paid very close attention to the tax laws. Them IRS bastids weren't nothin' to fool around with.

So one day he was haulin a load of crap from the basement of this old buildin' when he sees this dude in a uniform go into this little room. He get himself curious and takes a look and the little room is filled with these big glass jars - maybe about a gallon or so, with these metal plates in them and wires all over the place. Looks like the mad doctor's lab out of some science fiction film, all covered with cobwebs and such.

So Uncle Jimmy, he asks what all the shit was and the dude tells him it's for the bank alarm. Now this gets Uncle Jimmy's ears to perk up. Bank alarms was a subject near and dear to the hearts of our whole family. Cousin Clyde has a particular aversion to bank alarms 'cause he did 5 to 10 for makin' a mistake in puttin' one out of commission.

So the alarm dude is talkative, he just plain hates this stupid alarm almost as much as Cousin Clyde hates 'em. Says the thing went in before the first world war, fer Christ sake, and the arsehole bankers were too cheap to put somethin' modern in. Back when they put it in they didn't even have plugs to plug an alarm inta so they needed big, honkin' batteries or the thing would just sit there when the burglar came calling.

Well, ya's can see that this would have a great deal of interest for Uncle Jimmy. So he watches while the alarm dude puts on big rubber gloves and takes the plates out of the first battery and tosses them in a bucket, then dumps the water down the drain. 'Cept it ain't water, it's lye. Not the kinda shit ya want to play around with.

The dude rinses the jar, fills it with water and ice from a cooler, then adds the lye and the ice starts to melt. Like real fast. Dude tells Jimmy that without the ice the water can sometimes start boilin' on a hot day. Right then Uncle Jimmy figures there's worse ways to make a livin' than cleanin' up junk and stayin' up nights.

So anyway, the dude puts in some new metal plates - they's made of lead if ya's curious - and goes on ta the next battery until they's all replaced. By this time Uncle Jimmy is finished haulin' the junk and fixin to go up and get his moolah, so he goes up to the building owner and get paid. Uncle Jimmy kinda mentions the batteries in the basement and the guy groans and bitches about how often the bank alarm goes off when there's nothin' wrong. Even with a cop shop a few doors down the block nobody pays any attention to the thing any more because it's always a false alarm. The cops are on his case but he tells them the bank is the one with the alarm and he can't do nothin' 'bout it.

To put icin' on the cake, the owner tells Uncle Jimmy he might have another job for him, so's he takes him upstairs and shows him this big freakin' dance hall right above all the stores and the bank and everything. There's crap up there that probably was left over from the 1920s when people stopped comin' to dance halls and the place went bust. The owner has some idea of fixin' it up as offices or some such and wants the crap gone.

So Jimmy looks around a bit and gives the guy a price, which the guy is pretty happy with. Actually, Uncle Jimmy gave the guy a price that was so low he wouldn't make a dime haulin' off all the junk, even if he managed to sell some of the stuff to a scrap dealer. But right then and there Uncle Jimmy had him his Big Idea, the Big Idea that ended up with me gettin' a sex change.

Life is like that, sometimes.
 

Chapter 2
Hey! Nice ta see ya's come back again, I just hate people who ain't got no patience. Not havin' no patience is one of the fastest ways to end up with an all expense paid vacation in a nice secure facility. Hell, you could even end up with Cousin Clyde for a cellmate.

Since I'm sucha nice gal, I think I'll warn ya that the dressin' up stuff ain't gonna happen until the next chapter, so you're gonna still have to be patient. There's gonna be another cliffhanger endin', too. Don't bitch, it'll be worth it, I promise.

So's anyways, Uncle Jimmy gets home and starts thinkin'. Pick your time right - say a long weekend, get a few friends together with some simple tools and bust in to the ballroom. The old alarm ain't got no fancy shit like vibration detectors or motion sensors, so ya cut a hole in the ballroom floor, remove anythin' between you and the top of the vault and you're halfway there. When that's ready, bust inta the basement and turn off the city power. Once that's done, chop the wires to them batteries and you're home free.

Well, ya still gotta chop through the vault roof, but ya got lots of time to do it. So Uncle Jimmy makes a couple of calls and one of them's ta my Mom. She tells Jimmy I ain't got nothin' goin' and could use the cash, so I'm in. I'm a small guy, which would be an advantage as we wouldn't have to chop such a big hole inta the vault. The family that works together gets rich together, right?

So Jimmy gets all the shit we need together and we figure that President's day weekend would be a good time, the bank is closed so we have three days, right? So what happens? The Blizzard of '77, that's what happens.

If ya weren't livin' in Buffalo NY back in 1977, ya may not realize just how memorable that blizzard was. The entire freakin' city ground to a halt, not a damn thing was movin' except some guys who had snowmobiles. The cops was cryin' for volunteers to play taxi driver for the fuzz, it was that bad. That's when Uncle Jimmy realized we couldn't pick a better time to knock over the bank.

So he promotes him a couple of snowmobiles, calls the guys and we get ourselves behind the buildin' and bust our way inta the ballroom. With all the snow there ain't anybody watchin'. We hoist up all the crap we need, includin' a picnic lunch Ma made for us. We hide the snowmobiles in a shed so's nobody would get curious and got to work.

Things went along just fine, the electric worked and the saw made short work of the floor. We soon had a real nice hole just above the bank vault, but we had to work kinda hard to get all the joists and stuff out of the way so's we had room ta work. Uncle Jimmy went down and killed the power and took care of those batteries. I was kinda disappointed, I woulda liked to see what they looked like, but Jimmy put the kabosh on that. We got lucky and the power stayed on up there even after Jimmy shut it off in the bank.

That's where I got a workout. Bein' the smallest one, I fit inta the hole easiest, so I got the joy of swingin' the sledge hammer and bustin' up the concrete of the vault. They musta made that shit pretty good back in the day because it was hard work. Noisy, too - we hadn't figured on that. I swear I hit a piece of railroad tie about four inches down - looks like they dumped all kinds of steel scrap inta the mix to make it harder on poor little me choppin' through it.

We traded turns as I got tired and we was maybe eight inches in when it was my turn again. I hit a goddam cannonball - I ain't lyin' - and was down in the hole tryin' to pick it out when things went to hell.

Next thing I know I hear jackboots hittin' the floor and someone shouts "Freeze! Police!"

Yeah, like we’re just gonna sit there and let 'em haul us off to jail. You gotta a be shittin' me! So Slim hauls out his gun and starts shootin'. Slim was always a little slow on the uptake, shootin' cops is always a bad idea, the suckers like to shoot back, and they got a whole lot more firepower than one crazy bank robber.

If I thought that choppin' inta that vault was loud, it ain't nothin' to what happened next. Bang! Bang! Bang! All over the place. Shoutin' and screamin' and cussin'. I did the only thing that made sense, I started crawlin' through the space between the floor and the ceiling below. I was right glad I was so small 'cause I don't think Uncle Jimmy would have fit even if thought of it. I was real glad that those old buildings was built like a brick shithouse so I wasn't goin' to be fallin' through the ceiling.

I kept goin' until the noise faded, then slowed down and began lookin' for a way out. Eventually I came to a grid kind of thing and I worked it loose with my knife and dropped through the hole. I was in a hurry, so I said the hell with puttin' the grid back. I could see a light comin' from under a door, so I headed that way but tripped on somethin' I couldn't see. I went flying, hit the door and it popped open and I landed flat on my face.

I groaned and somehow managed to roll over to see three chicks in nightgowns standin' at the window where they had been watchin' the cop show. They were dressed - and I use that term with a lot of leeway - in the sexiest transparent nightgowns I had ever seen. Actually, they were the only nightgowns I had ever seen - on a girl, anyway. Manikins in the stores don't count.

The nightgowns were the only things they had on. No bras, no panties, no nothing! One of the chicks had bazoobas big enough to give Uncle Frank wet dreams, and Frank kinda goes for beach-ball size bazoobas. My brain had started functionin' enough to realize that none of the chicks dyed their hair. Their bushes were showin' right through whatever the nightgowns were made of and the hair up top matched the hair between their legs. I was startin' to wonder if I had died and gone to Heaven.

One of them had a glass in her hand and took a swig as she looked at me. She was pissed, and I don't mean angry pissed but drunk off her ass pissed. Actually, none of them looked too sober with all the dead soldiers scattered around the place. Speakin' of dead soldiers, that was kinda what I felt like after my adventures, more dead than a soldier.

The chick with the glass took another swallow and said "Who the hell are you?" like strangers dropped out of the ceilin' every day.

I was not lookin' my best, since I had been sweatin' like a pig (not the cop kind of pig!) and was covered in hundred year old crud and rat shit and dust from bustin' concrete and crawlin' through the floor. The one with the big bazoobas walks over to me and looks down kinda amused, then gets this real funny look. Before I could wonder what was goin' on she up and pukes all over me.

I've had friendlier greetings from sexy babes, I tell you. Well, maybe gettin' ignored could be considered friendlier in a case like this one. But then her eyes just roll up somewhere inta her head and turn all white and her legs go all wobbly and she looks like a puppet what had her strings cut. Next thing I know she falls on top of me with her big bazoobas kinda cushionin' her fall. Jeez! First time a girl falls for me and what does she do? She spreads puke in all directions and completely grosses me out.

I really don't wanta ask how much else could go wrong for fear I might get an answer, so I did the next best thing - I passed out right along with her.
 

 
Author's Note:
The heist described is based on one that actually occurred in Buffalo NY while I was working for a bank alarm company. While the details of the robbers are a product of my imagination, the alarm system and the MO is real up until the point the police show up. In real life, the robbers continued on to enter the vault and clean it out.

When the bankers opened the vault the next business day it looked much like the picture at the top of the page, except the robbers left a whole lot more crap lying around. No one knows how much they got away with since the contents of the safe deposit boxes was known only to the owners. It also convinced a lot of small banks their ancient alarm systems really ought to be replaced.