SUNDAY STORYTIME - 04.28.24
Breaking The Weak Link
Stick your tongue in your cheek and have some fun with me. I am going to admit to a crime that I promise I have not committed, but have always thought about. Only in passing, of course. I swear.
In any endeavor, good or bad, if you want to break the chain of events, you always look for the weakest link. The term comes from real-life logging chains. The weakest link in a chain is the one that will always break first. Find the weak link, and you can break the chain.
In the money handling chain, and I’m certainly not the first to consider this, the weakest link is the transfer of money from one highly secure place, such as a government vault, to another secure place, such as a bank vault. Both ends of the transfer are extremely secure locations and only a fool would attempt to breach them. In between these two locations, money is transferred by armored trucks. Typically staffed by three retired cops who are not prepared to give up their lives for someone else’s money, nor should they, these vehicles are the weak link. Yes, I believe that robbing armored trucks is the quickest way to securing vast amounts of ill-gotten gains. Again, though, I am not going to do it. You can be sure of that because the only thing dumber than committing a robbery would be to write about it beforehand.
However, it is done. Successfully so, dozens of times every year. One such occurrence happened in New York City in 2016, and the story was so amazing that it inspired me to write my second crime novel, Breaking The Weak Link. What follows is the prologue and first chapter of that book, which you can buy on Amazon in Kindle, paperback and hardcover.
Prologue
He is known in his hometown in Ecuador as “El Chico de Oro”, The Golden Boy. Julio Nivelo had moved from his home in Guayaquil to New York City more than 25 years before that fateful day. The man made a living by stealing things from the back of delivery trucks as they prowled around Manhattan. So, he was well practiced when the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself. The guard of an armored truck had just placed a bucket of gold jewelry destined for recycling in the back of an armored truck. The guard went back into the store, and the second guard charged with watching the truck…well, wasn’t.
Nivelo happened upon this unbelievable circumstance, and after a few seconds of contemplation, grabbed the bucket and walked away, nearly tripping under the unexpected weight. He managed to avoid police long enough to escape back to his native Ecuador, a nation that does not have an extradition treaty with The United States. He did eventually get arrested by authorities there and spent about a year in jail for the crime.
And what about the gold? Nivelo claims he sold it to a shop in New York City’s Diamond District. But, he says, he left nearly all of the money in the care of a girlfriend when he fled to Ecuador, and never got it back.
This true-life crime occurred on September 29, 2016. A quick search of the internet, which I encourage you to do, will turn up surveillance camera videos of the actual heist occurring, as well as a comprehensive story done two years later by WNBC, in which the television station traveled to Ecuador to interview El Chico de Oro.
What follows is a work of fiction that begins with a story inspired by this real event. Beyond that stimulus, everything about this story, including the characters and events, is a complete fabrication regurgitated by an unsettled mind.
Mine.
Chapter 1
It was just sitting there.
The only guy with any responsibility for it was looking the other way, occupied with chatting up a pretty girl who was apparently a sucker for a guy in uniform. The black metal five-gallon bucket with a sealed cover had been placed in the truck by one of the other uniformed guards just a few seconds earlier. He had turned around and headed back into the large jewelry store from which he had carried out the obviously heavy bucket. The third guard was sitting behind the wheel of the heavy-duty armored truck, fiddling with his phone. The hydraulic lift gate on the back of the vehicle was down on the ground, and the bucket was within arm’s reach.
“Nadie esta mirando. Solo agarralo,” the voice in his head told him. No one is looking. Just grab it.
He hesitated. He leaned against the car parked behind the armored vehicle. The guard continued his conversation with the girl. The truck was wide open. The bucket was just sitting there. If he waited a few more seconds, the guard could turn around. The other guard could come out from the jewelry store. The guard behind the wheel could put his phone down. The opportunity, and the bucket, whatever was in it, would be gone for good. There was one chance, and it was now.
“¡Solo agarralo!” his inner voice screamed. Just grab it! The time for thinking was over. He took one last look around, stepped to the back of the truck, and wrapped his arms around the bucket.
The weight of the vessel surprised him. Nearly tripped him up. Expecting the bucket to contain an even-weighted load, he was surprised again when the weight shifted oddly, like there were a couple of heavy objects inside rather than the consistently weighted buckets of corn flour he was accustomed to hefting in the kitchen at the restaurant. He had stepped onto the hydraulic lift gate of the truck to reach the bucket, and his shoestring caught the corner of the gate as he struggled to maintain his balance under the staggering heft of the container. He instinctively yanked his shoe upward, and the shoestring popped free. The lift gate issued a small groan of protest at the act. But the chatty guard, whose focus was on the cleavage in front of him, never noticed.
A man dressed in the white uniform of a line cook stumbling down the sidewalk, carrying a heavy five-gallon bucket, would draw attention in most places. But this is New York City. Nothing is shocking. He walked right through the guard’s line of sight, just a couple of feet behind the woman the guard was talking to, and melted into the mid-afternoon crowd of midtown Manhattan. The man, and the 87 pounds of gold that was being shipped from the jewelry store to a precious metals dealer, simply disappeared.
The story in my book, Breaking The Weak Link, spins wildly out of control from that point, including a massive terrorist attack in Washington, D.C. and a surprise ending that I absolutely guarantee you will not see coming until the very last page. If you like twisted crime stories that keep you on the edge of your seat page after page, you’re going to love Breaking The Weak Link.