CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We got back home around 7:30AM after driving straight through, only stopping briefly for gas and restroom breaks. We also stopped at a boat dock near Vero Beach and threw all of the tools in the ocean.
When we got back, we took a quiet shower and went to sleep. We got up about six hours later and went out to eat. Afterwards, we took a walk on the beach. It was then that I told Genie how much money we’d just made.
As soon as she heard the amount, she looked at me for a moment as if I were joking. When she realized I wasn’t, her legs kind of collapsed and she sat down onto a sand dune and started hyperventilating. I sat down next to her and told her to calm down. She cupped her hands in front of her mouth and in a few moments, her breathing slowed.
When Genie finally collected herself, she jumped up and tackled me. She started screaming and laughing and carrying on like we’d just won the lottery.
I guess in a way, we had. Twenty-four million dollars was a really big chunk of money.
After she settled down, we went back home and went back to sleep. We were pretty much worn out. We had both been pretty tense leading up to the job and during the actual work, and that kind of stress can be pretty hard on your body and mind.
The next morning, we went back to work as usual. That is to say, I went back to selling security systems and Genie to teaching her martial arts classes. I knew it was important to maintain my cover to confuse anyone who might think I had anything to do with the theft.
Nothing had been mentioned on the media about the burglary yet, which I thought was strange. I was sure that there were good reasons for the police to delay, and sure enough, while Genie and I were at lunch, she checked her phone for news and saw a breaking news alert on CNN.com that mentioned the theft, saying that the total of the merchandise was a little over three billion dollars.
Genie’s eyes got huge and she spit out her juice when she heard the amount. Some of the people around us glanced at her and she covered by laughing out loud for a few moments then wiping up the juice from the table. She then whispered to me that she couldn’t believe that the duffle bag I’d filled had held that much stones. She then stated that the thought of being responsible for that much money scared her. I looked at her and could see her hands visibly trembling. She quickly placed them on her lap so no one around would notice. I told her everything was alright. That we’d already been paid and had nothing to worry about.
She eventually calmed down and we left. She went back to work and I decided to take the afternoon off. I was going to spend some time with my dogs and think about the future a little bit.
When I got back to the trailer and was pulling up the driveway, I saw Mrs. Luftkin sitting out on her patio, sipping from a cup. I got out of the car, waved at her and moved toward the front door. I really didn’t feel like getting into a long conversation with the woman, because once she started, she would usually go on for hours.
Before I reached the door, she yelled over to me, and ran to the fence. “Hey Manny (that was the name I was using: Manuel Malick) “Hey, you just missed them,” she said.
I stopped and turned to her as a cold shiver ran down my spine and gripped my stomach. “Missed who, Mrs. L?” I asked politely.
“The service men who were here to fix the water leak,” she replied. “Bob let them in.” She also said that it was strange, that they must have gone into town for materials or something and taken Bob with them, to get away from the house for a little while or something. She smiled and shook her head, saying something about how he liked to putter with stuff.
I looked at Mrs. Luftkin and smiled. I thanked her and told her I had to hurry and get back to work. I went to the car and reached into the glove box where I kept my Glock 26 .45 caliber pistol. I concealed it in my coat pocket and made my way back to the front door. I looked over and saw Mrs. Luftkin had gone back inside.
I paused at my front door, my left hand on the knob. Something was definitely wrong. No one was in there, but I could definitely tell something was not right.
I decided to go around the back. I ducked below a raised portion of the deck and made a gruesome discovery. Goldie and Kong were laying there, dead. I looked at them carefully and saw that there were several bullet holes in both of them. I took a moment to say goodbye to both of them and crawled under the trailer’s back wall until I came to the space under my laundry room, where I’d cut out a square in the floor in order to bury my safe in the ground. When I got there, I breathed a small sigh of relief when I saw there was no disturbance of the ground or the piece I placed in the opening to conceal it.
Leaving the safe alone, I pushed up on the wood piece and crawled up into the trailer. I slowly moved into the living room, looking, listening, smelling, feeling for anything odd or wrong.
I immediately saw Bob Luftkin’s body laying on the floor in front of the couch. He had a bullet hole in his chest and another in his skull over his left eye. I didn’t have to check for a pulse. He was dead.
My small living room smelled of his urine and feces, and it almost covered the other smell: ammonia. I looked through the living room and saw a sixty-gallon metal oil drum sitting to the right side of the door, with some wires coming from it and connecting, one of the metal plate at the bottom of the door and the other to a metal rod sticking in the floor. It only took me a moment to figure out what was going on. The barrel was full of high explosive ammonium nitrate. When the plate touched the rod, it would close an electrical circuit and trigger a small primary explosion in the barrel that would then cause a larger explosion.
The whole trailer would be demolished, incinerated. Maybe even the Luftkin’s place would be destroyed.
I took a few deep shaky breaths. I could have opened the door and never known that would have happened.
I turned to leave the room and I paused for a few moments to say a prayer for Bob. I said another for Jill. They had been together since high school. I couldn’t imagine what she would feel once she realized her friend, lover and companion of over fifty years was gone forever.
I shook my head and breathed out a sad sigh, then turned away from Bob’s body. I went through the trailer quickly, picking up a few necessities for myself and things I knew Genie would need or want, then I dropped down through the hole, dug up the safe, and got all of the money and gold I’d left there; about seventy or seventy-five thousand in cash and about one pound of gold.
I walked around to the front door of the trailer. When I got to the car, I pulled out my phone, another burner, and texted Genie. Whoever had rigged up my trailer to blow up may have been on the way to hurt her.
Genie and I had set up a code, a signal to alert one another of possible danger. She understood why it might be necessary, that harm and danger were sometimes an unfortunate consequence of my line of work. The signal was a single word: Refugio.
Pronounced re-foo-he-oh, it was Castilian for refuge, it was taken from the Latin word refugere, which meant to escape, or to flee safely.
After I sent the text, I drove to a large shopping center in the next town over, parked my car near a large tire store there, then went to the outskirts of the parking lot and stole a car, a Toyota. I was counting on the car being a store employee’s vehicle and not finding out it was missing for several hours. By that time, I would have gotten rid of it and be in another, totally different vehicle.
I changed the license plate, popped open the door, then put in a ‘master-key’ for the Toyota that I’d gotten from T.O. a year back. I took off and drove to Jacksonville, where I would be meeting Genie.