island. “So we should bust this open?”
“Well,” Sears said, stooping over and joining Cady, “we found out after the sledgehammer that there was a trick latch.”
Sears got under the countertop, ran his hands across the wood, felt a seam, and then checked up and down the side panel. An idea occurred to him and he backed up six inches. He began running his fingers underneath the countertop.
“Yup,” Detective Sears said. He pressed some latch under the lip and a section of siding popped open an inch. “Tree house cool.”
Cady looked at Sears. “I’m getting you a job application.”
Sears had a baritone laugh. “No thanks. I came here from Baltimore to lower my blood pressure.”
Cady swung back the partition. A Gardall wall safe with some kind of push button electronic lock faced him and Sears. “I’ll be damned.”
“What do you think is in there?” Sears asked.
“Remember, these are Zalentines, so my guess would be upper-end diamond jewelry—rings, watches—the type that costs more than we make in a year. Maybe some rec drugs. Maybe a wad of cash.”
“Your team come across any combo numbers?”
“No,” Cady said. “We’ll call the parents; see if they know anything about it. Otherwise we’ll get a driller.”
Cady’s guess at the wall safe’s contents proved incorrect. And the next morning—when the Gardall was drilled open—everything changed.
Chapter 6
“S hakespeare got it almost right: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ But he left out the most important part—how we should first hang ‘em upside down from trees and pour boiling olive oil down their assholes.”
Stouder nodded quick agreement to the Goliath-sized rummy sitting next to him at the bar and wished the bartender, who at first glance appeared to be the only other person in the Brass Rail at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, hadn’t immediately deserted him after pouring Stouder a glass of the House wine. Well, calling it the House wine might be a bit of hyperbole, as Stouder’s glass of Merlot tasted like something a skunk might utilize to defend itself. Of course the taste might have something to do with the predicament Stouder found himself in.
It hadn’t helped when Stouder turned about on the bar stool to unexpectedly discover this barfly on the seat to his left, invading Stouder’s personal proximity, the drunkard’s face all but ten inches from his. The stranger looked like Mr. Clean, white t-shirt, all bald with white eyebrows, but sans the earring. And what kept Stouder nodding like a bobble-head was not the man’s bread-loaf-sized biceps or the way his knuckles looked like tree roots, the kind you’d spend half a day chopping at in your garden, or the Canadian Club Mr. Clean kept pouring into a shot glass and from there straight down his gullet, one shot glass after another—but rather the manner in which Mr. Clean vocalized his passionate disdain for the legal profession.
“At least when a plumber gouges you, you get a working shitter out of the deal. But these fucking lawyers have no sense of
proportional
value. No sense whatsoever. You pay ‘em to review that boilerplate bullshit whenever you buy a house, right? You know that small print they pretend to read at their desk in front of you?”
Stouder nodded again, repeatedly.
“Then the fuckers turn around and bill as though they’d just litigated the Scopes-Monkey trial. Un-fucking-real.”
Stouder had gotten another correspondence from Richaard Gere the previous night. It had merely stated
The Brass Rail, 29th and Lex, 10:00 a.m. Tuesday
. Stouder had been up all night wondering if he should bring the authorities into the situation, especially since he
was
part of
the authorities
. These hooligans could find themselves on the receiving side of some serious time for attempting to blackmail a New York State Deputy Attorney General. But there was, after all, the matter regarding his
little secret
for him to
“Well,” Sears said, stooping over and joining Cady, “we found out after the sledgehammer that there was a trick latch.”
Sears got under the countertop, ran his hands across the wood, felt a seam, and then checked up and down the side panel. An idea occurred to him and he backed up six inches. He began running his fingers underneath the countertop.
“Yup,” Detective Sears said. He pressed some latch under the lip and a section of siding popped open an inch. “Tree house cool.”
Cady looked at Sears. “I’m getting you a job application.”
Sears had a baritone laugh. “No thanks. I came here from Baltimore to lower my blood pressure.”
Cady swung back the partition. A Gardall wall safe with some kind of push button electronic lock faced him and Sears. “I’ll be damned.”
“What do you think is in there?” Sears asked.
“Remember, these are Zalentines, so my guess would be upper-end diamond jewelry—rings, watches—the type that costs more than we make in a year. Maybe some rec drugs. Maybe a wad of cash.”
“Your team come across any combo numbers?”
“No,” Cady said. “We’ll call the parents; see if they know anything about it. Otherwise we’ll get a driller.”
Cady’s guess at the wall safe’s contents proved incorrect. And the next morning—when the Gardall was drilled open—everything changed.
Chapter 6
“S hakespeare got it almost right: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ But he left out the most important part—how we should first hang ‘em upside down from trees and pour boiling olive oil down their assholes.”
Stouder nodded quick agreement to the Goliath-sized rummy sitting next to him at the bar and wished the bartender, who at first glance appeared to be the only other person in the Brass Rail at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, hadn’t immediately deserted him after pouring Stouder a glass of the House wine. Well, calling it the House wine might be a bit of hyperbole, as Stouder’s glass of Merlot tasted like something a skunk might utilize to defend itself. Of course the taste might have something to do with the predicament Stouder found himself in.
It hadn’t helped when Stouder turned about on the bar stool to unexpectedly discover this barfly on the seat to his left, invading Stouder’s personal proximity, the drunkard’s face all but ten inches from his. The stranger looked like Mr. Clean, white t-shirt, all bald with white eyebrows, but sans the earring. And what kept Stouder nodding like a bobble-head was not the man’s bread-loaf-sized biceps or the way his knuckles looked like tree roots, the kind you’d spend half a day chopping at in your garden, or the Canadian Club Mr. Clean kept pouring into a shot glass and from there straight down his gullet, one shot glass after another—but rather the manner in which Mr. Clean vocalized his passionate disdain for the legal profession.
“At least when a plumber gouges you, you get a working shitter out of the deal. But these fucking lawyers have no sense of
proportional
value. No sense whatsoever. You pay ‘em to review that boilerplate bullshit whenever you buy a house, right? You know that small print they pretend to read at their desk in front of you?”
Stouder nodded again, repeatedly.
“Then the fuckers turn around and bill as though they’d just litigated the Scopes-Monkey trial. Un-fucking-real.”
Stouder had gotten another correspondence from Richaard Gere the previous night. It had merely stated
The Brass Rail, 29th and Lex, 10:00 a.m. Tuesday
. Stouder had been up all night wondering if he should bring the authorities into the situation, especially since he
was
part of
the authorities
. These hooligans could find themselves on the receiving side of some serious time for attempting to blackmail a New York State Deputy Attorney General. But there was, after all, the matter regarding his
little secret
for him to
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