Chapter 41

The last crate was a different color than the two prior crates. Those, when cleaned of the accumulation of heavy and dense dust were blue grey ... German Navy shipping case color. The third crate was green; Matt Bronze Green, the same exact green of the original Japanese Naval Zero. I caught a clue by the painted Rising Sun and oriental glyphs all over the case. This case was more like a coffin ... big box ... great big box.

"What is it?" Arthur asked.

"I don't read Japanese, but it's really heavy. I think that's weight," as I pointed to some numbers. "If it is I, for sure, don't want it on my boat, 136.5k, that's 300 pounds, I think." My 59 year old Special Forces Colonel was well versed in metrics. In 1955 the only people dealing with Napoleons Measurement were esoteric scientists ... esoteric? I mean eccentric.

"Well," he said, "We're not going to find out what it is just standing here." He reached for an old fashioned wrecking bar.

"Hold your horses, slick. Let's clean this up before we destroy something important," I suggested.

He really didn't want to do that but it's my place and he was there officially. To just tear into things he'd need a warrant and I told him so. That got a look and I, in return told him he was dealing with the son of an officer of the court.

He calmed down. I didn't understand all the ins and outs of the law but I knew enough to know he couldn't do what he wanted.

Law is a funny thing. Nothing is illegal until the law says it is. In America, innocent until proven guilty is a major tenet of the bill of rights and so is the statement that no law passed can include retroactivity. They have to catch you under the law not before it.

Cleaning the crate was done by washing it with water from the lake ... it took several buckets but eventually it looked clean enough to eat off. Not that I would ... Pentwater Lake water ... eww!

With all the dust and accumulated grime off it became evident that tearing into it would not have been the way to go ... this puppy was built. Screws and bolts instead of nails and hidden steel reinforcement plates let me know we were dealing with MONEY!

The bolt heads were five sided and metric. Five sided bolts meant that standard wrenches weren't going to work because they had no surfaces to grip. That didn't mean Kenny didn't have a set of metric five sided wrenches and sockets because he did ... one set and they'd been there since 1939.

Funny thing ... I had the only box that needed those wrenches and sockets. The price was right on the box ... buck and a half and they were Snap-On. Snap-On is the be-all and end-all of aviation tools ... they fit.

Somewhere out there in the mysterious world of aviation mechanics, there's an airplane engine that uses five sided metric nuts. It's probably French and weird. Rotary? Three cylinder radial? Something.

I called first and walked up ... MM met me at the door, handed me the red box with the dusty Snap-On logo, extracted two bucks from my dusty and streaked hands, said, "Tax," shut the door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, set the BE BACK CLOCK for an hour and flashed me her boobs. Kenny is getting lucky.

Rather than being in a hurry I walked down to the Antler ... all of one block ... and threw my hat over the batwing doors. Nobody shot it so I walked on in and picked up the now very sawdusty and peanut shuck covered Greek Fisherman's hat; it'll be a while before I wear that again.

Grace was there with Isabelle, or maybe it was Isabelle was there with Grace. Isabelle was sitting on a chair and Grace was hand feeding her Antler burger. Isabelle had to be the trainer and Grace sure looked like a pet. The kits had mostly opened their eyes and were discovering.