Chapter 6

Sweeping the floor turned out to be a perfect disguise. Hiding in plain sight nearly always works wonders. I had unlimited access to everything and no one paid me the slightest bit of attention. Seeing nude whipped slaves at work was apparently a very ho-hum part of daily existence around this place. The main security office provided a gold mine of information and no one seemed to either notice or care that it was taking me a really long time to sweep the floor. I guess it helped that I was still bleeding onto it.

Their security chief was a loud obnoxious pipsqueak of a man whose nasal whiney Brooklyn voice I was certain that I could imitate virtually perfectly — or at least well enough over their radios to fool them. The next concern was a place where I could arrange to either secure them all or prepare some sort of lethal booby trap, or both, if convenient.

After a good bit of exploration, the perfect set-up came to mind. One of the corner rooms, part of the original smaller cellar of the house, before its expansion, was the original main furnace room. Next door to it was the guard's main barracks. This room had been selected for them because it was pretty much the warmest room in the underground part of the house. Next door to that was a smaller room with a very secure locked door that the guards apparently used for their daily meetings with their boss, the security chief.

A large pipe that came from a relatively new heating oil storage tank upstairs above ground fed the furnace. The new fuel line ran right through the barracks room, up near the top of the ceiling. To me this was a golden opportunity for some serious haydukery and lethal sabotage. Once again, almost no one paid me the slightest bit of attention when I stood up on a chair and began to dust off the top of the pipe with a dust cloth while communing with the pipe. One guard cracked open his eye from the nap he was taking and asked me why I was disturbing his rest?

"Mistress says ... mumble, mumble, mumble..." Good enough for the goon and he rolled right back over to sleep.

The pipe wasn't quite as easy to manipulate. It was relatively new and didn't have many awkward solder joints anywhere a weakness might be exploited. Then I came to near the end where a valve had been rather jury-rigged into the pipe right before it entered the wall to the furnace room. This I could exploit. It took a lot of time to force a pressure stream of oil into the right spot to weaken the joint, but no one disturbed me and eventually I was rewarded by a small stream of leaking fuel oil that began to drip slowly to the floor. I figured it would start off slow, but the heavy pressure of the oil in the large tanks above would soon force the leak wider. But I'd have some time before the leak was discovered; half an hour at the very least but maybe as much as a couple of hours. That was fine, as I had other things to do anyway.

I started with cold cocking the sleeping guard. I couldn't take the chance that either he was a light sleeper or had an excellent sense of smell and could detect the leaking fuel oil. A few extra blows to the head with his own security baton put paid to the gunsel, and I shoved his dead body into a storage closet before firmly shutting the door. All of the guns for the off duty guards were locked up in the armory section of the main security office. I could break into it in a thrice if I needed anything, but I was doing quite nicely for now and didn't think I'd need any firearms for my plan.

For my encore performance, I camped out in the men's restroom until the security chief came in to take a piss. I brained him good and shoved his bleeding unconscious head underwater in a toilet for ten minutes for good measure. His clothes would fit me quite closely and that suited me fine, as I was getting pretty tired of running around bare assed. I grabbed his stuff and stashed it in a supply room next to the main security office for later. Then I propped up the stiff as if he were taking a long unsatisfactory shit and shut the stall door on him.

Checking back into the barracks room there was indeed already nearly an inch thick layer of fuel oil covering the floor already. As I had estimated, the old cellar floor wasn't quite level and most of the oil had pooled against the side wall next to the security meeting room. I got down on my hands and knees and fiddled with the old brick. It was old but really good quality stuff, and since it had no moving mechanical parts or cracks I could exploit, I couldn't easily knack the brick to fall apart, but I had better success weakening the mortar around the bottom upon contact with my fingers, making it crumble apart more easily.

I scraped out most of the mortar but left a last bit in place all around to keep the oil contained in the barracks room. I didn't want any leakage into the meeting room just yet, but it was almost time to schedule the bonfire. Making sure that the coast was clear for now, I scooted back to the main security office and grabbed the radio mike.

"Attention all security personnel. Please attend a quick special briefing to be held in the security briefing room in fifteen minutes, that's 9:30 a.m. The last one to show up for the meeting gets double grounds patrol tonight. Leave one gate guard up front, everyone else comes. That is all."

The late chief, the unlamented terror of all of Brooklyn, would have loved my impersonation. I received a chorus of 10-4's from the radio and I resumed my faithful nude floor sweeping in the hallway near the barracks room. I was getting seriously annoyed. This floor was getting so clean it nearly shined and not one of the assholes had complimented me on it. It just burned my ass. Now I was going to burn theirs!

The first half dozen or so arrived to the meeting a few minutes early and walked right into the meeting room. I'd unlocked it earlier with the security chief's key and swiped the tray of fresh homemade donuts made by the estate chef upstairs from the chief's private office and placed it on one of the tables. If they bitched about the chief not being there, they didn't do it to me. The donuts soon ran out and one of the late comers stuck his head outside the door to complain at me. I shrugged and tried to look miserable and helpless and said, "Boss is plenty mad about some water leak. I think he's coming now."

That did the trick and he went back inside to bitch loudly at the other guards about who had left some water running or failing to report a leak. Asswipe. Just the sort of self-important prick that was always trying to butter up the boss and try to become the number two guy ... until he was ready to stick in the knife and promote himself to the numbero uno job.

I waited another couple of minutes until I figured the last guard had arrived and I knacked the meeting room door to lock up tight and then ran next door to start scraping away the last bits of brick mortar. I got my lower legs, knees and elbows covered in fuel oil but soon I had opened a nearly foot wide channel to allow the fuel oil to start pouring into the meeting room. I gave the weak pipe another quick jolt of my knack to bust open up the leaking oil some more and soon got a nice flow going.

Since I didn't want to set myself on fire too, I raced myself off to the guard's shower room to rinse all of the oil off of me before returning to the hallway to start the fun. There was just one slight problem ... there was one last very late guard just now showing up for the cook-out.

This late arrival was now coming down the hall, but I'd already locked the door tight and wasn't sure I could unfreeze it even if I wanted to. On the bright side, fuel oil was now pooling under the door and even outside the doorway into the hall, which gave me a possible two-fer solution to the problem.

I continued to play stupid and let slowpoke splash his way up to the locked door. While he was trying to get the door open, I lit and tossed a metal Zippo lighter down between his oily feet and presto, he became a good imitation of a human torch in just a few moments. I love old military Zippo lighters and you can always count on ex-military goons and other wannabes to carry one from their old unit around in their pocket.

The flames shot under the door and seconds later the meeting room was an inferno. I backed away fast in case the superheated pressure inside the room blew the door out, which it did a few minutes later. The screaming had mercifully stopped by then and I decided to shut off the supply of heating oil to this conflagration fast while I still could before it burned the building down, or worse started a flaming river of burning oil down the stairs to the slave quarters.

Touching the rapidly heating pipe in the barracks room, I managed to trigger shut the master shutoff valve upstairs on the main storage tank. This would close off the new flow of oil from the tank, but gravity would still feed the remaining oil in the pipes downwards for a few more minutes. This should keep the fire fairly small and reasonably under control. I really didn't want to burn the house down ... at least yet.

Getting my feet oily again I darned near caught myself on fire out in the flaming hallway and I ran for my life back to the shower room to get my feet washed off again ... thoroughly this time. I guess I didn't think that part of my clever plan all the way through. That's a fool for you!

The thugs with guns taken care of, I now decided it was time to deal with Carlos, the Master of the house, upstairs. For that, I got dressed into the chief's clothes, and more importantly I now had the chief's gun, which was a 9mm Glock. Suitably armed and attired for my long overdue appointment with the collector who had made our lives miserable for nearly the last six months, I took the butler's staircase upstairs to deal once and for all with the bastard, up close and personally.

Sounds like one of the great epic final confrontations doesn't it. Well it was extremely anti-climactic. Up way past his bedtime, the collector, my original mark, and the tormentor and rapist of my beloved, was snoring fast asleep in his favorite leather club chair inside his private black museum. I crept up to him and held the gun an inch from his head but it just didn't seem sporting to kill my penultimate arch rival that way. So instead, I took a last good look around to admire his collection of stolen art and quietly closed his vault door shut, locking it securely on him. Even if he jumped on the emergency release bar now it wouldn't budge. I didn't covet anything in his most private collection - early-mid 20th century abstract paintings have never done a thing for me.

His fire suppression system didn't use Halon or even CO2. Instead, he had something rather expensive, and more than a little dangerous that used a vacuum pump to force all of the air out of the vault. In less than a minute there would not be enough oxygen left for a fire to burn, in less than three there would be no air whatsoever to breathe. It would be messy, but so was what he had left me to find at his little hide-away apartment where he and his demonic spouse enjoyed watched a young lady nearly die slowly by inches. It sounded like a fair trade to me.

The insulation was so thick inside his secret vault that if he ever awoke and pounded on the door pleading for escape I never heard so much as a hint of it.

I poured myself a glass of the brandy that he had been enjoying before his terminal nap, and debated sitting down in one of the parlour Louis XVI chairs. They were real and the fabric was original so I decided that it would be a shame to smear dried blood from my shirt all over them. There was nothing particularly special about them, no interesting provenance, but still it would be ill-using a quality antique, so I stood. I considered offering a toast to my lovely Angel and to justice, but I didn't really think she'd appreciate everything I'd had to do to obtain it.

Checking on my bonfire downstairs, it was still going but very much reduced and slowly coming under control. The fire would be out completely in no time. My captive downstairs was awake now and screaming her head off like a Billingsgate fishmongers wife, as if anyone cared. I shot her a middle finger and collected her ring and the cell door key from where I had stashed them.

I went up to the kitchen to get some decent grub for the old-timers locked in the main slave pen when I realized that I hadn't done anything about the cook and his helper. Waving my gun around menacingly worked just fine and I locked the pair of them up the walk-in refrigerator. The slaves were pathetically grateful to get the extra food and didn't even fuss when I told them it wasn't quite safe enough yet to let them out of their cages but that help would be along soon.

The fat lady had finished singing, the curtain had come down, and now it was time for the stage crew to start moving the props and scenery off stage. This was my favorite part of the show and I made a quick plan about what loot was worth grabbing.

Obviously, the very first thing to go was the Bugatti. I found the keys for it on a hook in the main security office. Likewise, the keys for the Roller. The Rolls was a decent post-WW2 model, a Phantom IV with reasonable interest to auto collectors, but I decided not to become greedy and I left it.

The other great prize in the house was a large Monet hanging over the fireplace. It was a superb landscape in bright and cheerful colors. The Angel would adore it. Best of all it had a respectable provenance; it had been bought by the Countess about twenty years ago at Sotheby's. Undoubtedly, I could whip up a suitable (and mostly legal) change of ownership certificate. The painting went right into the back of the Bugatti.

Everything else that stuck to my pockets was fairly small and fit nicely in with the Monet in the back, and was all of a proper provenance. I didn't take a single item of previously stolen art. Yes, I wanted to 'reform' to be worthy of my Angel, but I also didn't want a single bit of the stench of these evil collectors to follow me.

Whistling a merry tune, I bound up the former Countess di Giovanna, whose new slave name I now informed her was "Twinkles". Tossing her into the front seat of the Bugatti with me, we make our escape together in style, the sole remaining guard at the front gate just waving us through without a single glance at the sight of my security uniform.

After reaching minimal safety, I phoned in an alarm to the three nearest fire departments and the police stations as well. Even the dimmest constables would be able to tell that something was wrong. The Countess missing, her husband dead and a whole lot of ex-military security goons were apparently all roasted to death. This would be certain to get law enforcement's full attention. Not to mention a cellar full of slaves, and graves of discarded corpses somewhere on the grounds ... this was going to be gravy.

The story was a little slow to break but once it did the light came shining on quite a few dirty dark little corners. Their Club and secret society friends closed ranks and Carlos and Pia became very expendable. The discovery of Carlo's body in his private black museum full of stolen art was a network news headline for most of a week as the paintings and sculptures were identified and returned to the rightful owners, sometimes decades after the original theft. Pia was assumed to have skipped the country and was undoubtedly in hiding somewhere. Their estate was quickly seized by the Feds and all of their assets frozen. The litigation would run for decades and make a new generation of lawyers rich settling the slavery claims and the numerous amounts of civil and criminal offenses against the late couple.