Chapter 4

I opened the chests and found an impressive amount of gold. Some of it was in bars and some of it was in coins. I gave each of the women 10 golden Krugerrands. I was not sure of the current value, but I was sure that each one was worth on the order of $1,500 each, at least. That was a drop in the bucket for how much gold was in the two chests.

Now my problem was how to deal with that much gold. There was at least 200 pounds of gold, plus the weight of the chests, so I literally had an embarrassment of riches. There was one damned thing for sure: I had to move it to my condo right away if I was going to keep it. If I just left it where it was, it would surely line a lot of police and politicians' pockets because it was not documented. Nobody would notice if it simply disappeared. Then I had a brainstorm.

I could dress in my regular clothes and look like an employee of the boss. That way, I should be able to put the gold into suitcases and take it out the front door without anyone paying attention. I looked in the various closets and found several suitcases that looked like they would serve my purpose. I dumped the stuff that I found in them and loaded the suitcases with an appropriate amount of gold. For an extra couple of Krugerrands, the two women helped me repack the gold. Fortunately, there were enough suitcases to do the job.

I was afraid to put more than 40 pounds of gold in a suitcase. It would be more than embarrassing if the suitcase split open as it was being carried through the lobby. I wound up with seven suitcases by the time we were finished. The weighing was not what anyone would call accurate since we used a bathroom scale to weigh each suitcase. That seemed good enough, and I had seven cases to haul out the front door by the time we were finished.

Actually, I had an extra edge going for me: I ran all of the suitcases down the elevator at one time and had bellhops haul the cases to my car after I brought it around. A slightly generous tip made the bellhops happy, and they promptly forgot me.

My next step was to deliver the two women where they wanted to go, and that was the airport. The both were going to get out of Boston as quickly as they could catch a plane. The boss' gun was left in my car since there was no way it was going through the security search.

Luckily, my condo had an underground garage with an elevator that stopped on my floor. I parked beside the elevator to unload the gold. There was an empty parking place a few feet away, so I never lost sight of the suitcases. I was able to get all of the suitcases into the elevator and ran it to my floor. A few minutes of additional work got all of the cases inside my condo and the door was locked. I stacked the suitcases in a closet that I had been using for miscellaneous storage and went to bed. This was enough for one night.

Oh, by the way, I did cut off the water in the hotel shower when the prostitute shot the boss.

I was not worried about reporting the massacre to the cops: they would get the word as soon as the maids showed up to clean the penthouse. I had been wearing latex gloves during the whole affair, so I was not worried about the cops identifying me. They certainly didn't know about my air gun, so I was not going to be identified by a ballistics check.

Now I had to consider what I was going to do. It seemed to me to be obvious that I could do the most good if I could destroy the arms caches before the terrorists could use them. Given my druthers (preferences), I would kill everyone associated with the whole plot, but I did not know if that was feasible. The first delivery had been to a warehouse in Weston, a Boston suburb. That suggested that the first attack would be against Boston, so it behooved me to put those weapons out of commission.

I had the address of the warehouse, so that made it easy to find. There was a possibility that the weapons might have been moved since April, so I had better check out the warehouse before I made too many plans. I was not familiar with the neighborhood, so the first thing I needed to do was to drive through and look for an easy entrance.

I drove to Weston and found the proper street. Shit, there was too much traffic for me to drive and to look the place over. Dammit, I needed a partner to drive while I did the observing. This might be an opportunity for Alice Horton to get some field experience. She wants to become a PI, and I had promised that she could help me when I found something appropriate.

This certainly seemed like the perfect situation for Alice. There was no way she could get hurt just driving the car, yet she would be of invaluable service. Hell, I could not see any negatives to the plan. I called Alice, and she jumped at the chance. She turned on the answering machine and met me at the front door of the office building. I motioned her to come around to drive, and her face lit up like the proverbial neon sign.

She drove us back to Weston, and, as luck would have it, she had a speaking acquaintance with the warehouse's neighborhood. Therefore, she drove me directly to the perfect jumping off place for investigating the warehouse. The place she had in mind was an alley half a block away from the warehouse. She pointed out the site, and I almost kissed her right there: it was the perfect place to stash the car while I invaded the warehouse.

She drove me around the warehouse and deftly navigated the streets to give me plenty of time to look the building over without being obvious about it. Where did she learn to drive like that!?! We thought that two passes around the warehouse were all we could risk without drawing attention to us, so she drove away. Alice found a good place to park and launched into me with a million questions. Well, maybe not that many, but it sure seemed like it.

I knew that Alice was trustworthy, so I gave her a condensed version of what I had been doing the past few weeks and what I knew of the terrorists' plot. That was when I found out that I had talked too much. Alice wanted in on the deal! She was a patriotic as me, and she was not about to let a lot of innocent people be killed if she could do anything about it.

Hell, I knew when I was outvoted. Besides, I needed a partner to watch my back when I went up against a bunch of fanatical terrorists. Alice kept on until I finally agreed to let her in on the investigation, but we had a real stopper: she did not have a permit for a gun. That takes a minimum of three days in Massachusetts, and usually takes a lot longer than that. Furthermore, she did not have a PI license. That was not such a big deal, but it did impress some people in authority.

We decided that she could use a Glock 19 (9x19mm) with a laser target identifier. She already knew how to use an automatic pistol, so that was not a problem. Alice even had a recent certificate from a gun school that said that she had passed all of the tests required by Massachusetts. Therefore, we scooted over to a precinct headquarters where I was owed some favors. The application to get Alice a concealed carry permit was filled out and backdated. I took that to some friends in government and expedited the gun permit for Alice. Okay, so it was leaning on the letter of the law. Alice had done all of the necessary training routine required by law, and we just hurried up the red tape.

Our next stop was at another office where I expedited a PI license for Alice. That did involve pushing the law a little bit, but I figured that this was a special case. As our last venture, we went to the largest gunshop in Boston and bought a Glock 19, a laser target designator, four extra magazines, and two boxes of hollow-point ammunition. It was supper time, so we stopped off for a ham and cheese on pumpernickel and a beer.

Alice had some appropriate clothing, so we went by her place where she could get dressed for out little excursion tonight. She must have set some kind of record because she was ready to go in less than 30 minutes. Alice wore her hair short, so she was able to get by with a simple ski mask. We stopped off at my place for me to change clothes, and it took me nearly as long to get ready as it did Alice. She gave me a hard time about that, and I took the teasing like a man: I got pissed off until she laughed and made me laugh.