Quicksilver(31)

“Who? Who concocts it?”

“This particular house, I don’t know. Maybe MS-13. Whatever Central America gang uses this place.”

“Those guys behead people for the fun of it!”

“No, not mainly for enjoyment. It’s to intimidate the public.”

She went to the largest stack of trash, which was against the back wall, and she began to move item after item aside.

“This is crazy,” I said.

“They pile the trash highest in front of the thing they need to conceal.”

“We gotta get out of here. I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“Now, Quinn, I prepared you. I told you about the reciprocating saw, how they’d urinate on you while you bled to death.”

“I thought you were exaggerating.”

“I don’t exaggerate. We can’t leave till we have what we came here for. The stink isn’t so bad if you breathe through your mouth.”

“If I breathe through my mouth, I’ll vomit.”

“Then don’t breathe through your mouth. Help me shift all this stuff out of the way.”

I was listening for the clicking claws of a running attack dog. I was listening for MS-13 thugs returning, like the three bears, to discover that Goldilocks had violated their home. Therefore, I moved the trash with less noise than Bridget did, as she seemed convinced that no one would return anytime soon.

We uncovered a manhole-like cover, the bolted-down lid of a sump-pump pit. I viewed this as a disappointment, but Bridget was pleased.

“It appears to be bolted in place, but it isn’t. They always want to get at a stash quickly if need be.”

From among the items we’d moved out of the way, she retrieved a crowbar that had seemed like just more junk but that had in fact been left among the trash for exactly the purpose to which she put it.

As she inserted the pry blade under the rim of the cast-iron cover, I said, “I can do that.”

“So can I,” she said cheerily, and quickly levered the heavy lid out of the hole and to one side.

In the pit was a thick mass of white fabric, which she pulled out and put to one side. “Fireproofing.”

The sump pump had been removed and the pit expanded. The walls were of mortared firebrick.

She directed the beam of the flashlight into the depository, revealing three duffel bags.

After getting on my knees, I reached into the hole and withdrew one of the large canvas sacks. It was very heavy.

Bridget zippered open the duffel and withdrew tight rolls of currency. “Hundreds and twenties. At least three hundred thousand.”

“Drug money,” I said. “Dirty money.”

“So we steal it and do good with it. Your nuns would approve.”

“I’m not so sure. Why is it here, so much money, three bags?”

“These gangs make hundreds of millions a year. Maybe they can use some banks in the third world, but they don’t really trust any institution that would deal with them. Anyway, it’s a cash business, and they need to stash a lot of it here, there, and everywhere.”

“You know this how?”

“Grandpa. One of the things he used to do was go after these creeps. That was back when men like him were allowed to enforce the law without interference from politicians on the dark side.”

“You called this place ‘a Nottingham.’ Why?”

“Robin Hood operated out of Sherwood Forest, which was in the county of Nottingham.”

“Stole from the rich to give to the poor.”

“That’s the modern version. He stole from corrupt government authorities in Nottingham. In the twelfth century, there weren’t banks as we know them. The county’s rulers kept their spoils in secret rooms, hidden potato cellars, and the like.”

“So a stash is a Nottingham. When you need money, psychic magnetism brings you to it.”

She grinned. “Cool, huh? Now we can buy a car.”

“Do you give some to the poor?”

“You’ll see.”

I thought of the coin I’d found in the kitchen of the long-abandoned restaurant. It was worth forty thousand. Chump change.

She returned the rolls of currency to the bag and closed it. “Carry this for me?”

“You’re leaving the other two?”

“The creeps will return soon. We’re running out of time.”

Alarmed, I said, “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I just did.”

She hurried up the stairs, and I followed close behind, out of the stench that lay like a heavy fog below. When we stepped into the ground-floor hallway, the German shepherd attack dog growled and bared teeth that a vampire would have envied.





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Muscles tensed, tail held low, head raised and thrust forward, ears laid back, eyes flaring yellow in the flashlight beam, the shepherd was not in the same business as Lassie. If Timmy fell down a well, this guy wouldn’t give a damn, and if rescuers showed up to retrieve the boy, they had better be wearing Kevlar butt protectors.

When the shepherd growled louder, Bridget said to him, “Who got up on the wrong side of the dog bed today, hmmm? We don’t have time for your silliness, Mr. Tough Guy.”

She reached out a hand, and the dog snapped at it, its teeth an inch from taking off a few fingertips, but she did not pull back.