Crashed (A Junior Bender Mystery Book 1)

From Booklist Hallinan, author of the Simeon Grist and Poke Rafferty series, introduces a new hero: Junior Bender, a career crook (burglar, to be precise) who, after the reasonably successful conclusion of an especially danger-fraught job, is blackmailed by a disreputable cop into helping one of Los Angeles’ most notorious crime bosses with a little problem. It seems she’s trying to take her family’s operations legit, and she needs a quick cash infusion, so she’s found a once-beloved child star, Thistle Downing, and enticed her into performing in a trilogy of hard-core pornographic movies. But someone’s trying to sabotage the films, and she wants Bender to find out who. If you read this book without a smile on your face, you’re not reading it right. Bender, who narrates the story in the first-person, is a charming and immensely likable guy, the master of the wisecrack. Sure, he’s a crook, but he never steals from people who can’t afford it, and he’s got a moral center that’s stronger than that of most of the people around him. The story is well designed and well told (Hallinan doesn’t over-rely on out-of-left-field plot twists), and the dialogue sparkles. In a genre perhaps slightly overstuffed with crook-heroes, the book is like a breath of fresh air. --David Pitt --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Timothy Hallinan is the Edgar- and Macavity-nominated author of thirteen widely praised books, including The Fear Artist , Crashed, Little Elvises , and The Fame Thief . After years of working in Hollywood, television, and the music industry, he now writes fulltime. He divides his time between California and Thailand. --This text refers to the paperback edition. Praise for Crashed "If you're looking for a mystery with a fresh new hero then you'll want to run right out and get this book. It's just fabulous. If you have a plane to take, then this is the book to grab." —NPR's Morning Edition "Loved loved loved Crashed , Tim Hallinan's first Junior Bender mystery. Great narrative voice, complex plot, 3-D characters. Hallinan’s deft comic tone and colorful characters xa0have earned him comparisons to Donald Westlake and Carl Hiassen. Check it out now." —Nancy Pearl "If Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake had a literary love child, he would be Timothy Hallinan. The Edgar nominee's laugh-out-loud new crime series featuring Hollywood burglar-turned-private eye Junior Bender has breakout written all over it... A must-read." —Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier "Junior Bender is today’s Los Angeles as Raymond Chandler might have written it. Tim [Hallinan] is a master at tossing out the kind of hard-boiled lines that I wish I thought of first." —Bruce DeSilva, Macavity & Edgar Award-winning author of Rogue Island "Timothy Hallinan’s affable antihero, an accomplished thief but inept sleuth named Junior Bender, makes a terrific first impression in Crashed .... Bender’s quick wit and smart mouth make him a boon companion on this oddball adventure. " — New York Times "A fresh turn on Raymond Chandler... In Crashed , Hallinan's fabulously convoluted, wise-guy detective potboiler featuring Bender, the California author's voice — intelligent, sarcastic, profane but never coarse, unfailingly honest — is like a fast ride over a potholed road in a vintage Cadillac." —San Antonio Express-News “This is Hallinan at the top of his game. It's laugh-out-loud funny without ever losing any of its mystery. It’s a whole new style and I love it. Junior Bender—a crook with a heart of gold—is one of Hallinan's most appealing heroes, rich with invention, and brimming with classic wit. I can’t recommend it highly enough.” —Shadoe Stevens, Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson "The story is well designed and well told, and the dialogue sparkles. In a genre perhaps slightly overstuffed with crook-heroes, the book is like a breath of fresh air." — Booklist "This is one of those books you long for, wait for, and find once or twice a year" —Beth Kanell, proprietor of Kingdom Books, Vermont "This fast-paced first in a series is great fun." —Stop You're Killing Me (blog) “Timothy Hallinan does everything a writer should do whose goal is to keep a reader entertained from the first sentence to the last.” —Tzer Island (blog) "Hallinan builds a believable plot, filled with both humor and pathos." —Reviewing the Evidence (blog) “The writing is intelligent, relaxed, and fun to read. Crashed is a pleasurable outing, without the personal risk, to the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles, where moral ambiguity fills the air.” —Read Me Deadly (blog) "This detective potboiler with its oddball characters will keep you chuckling." —The Martha's Vineyard Times “If you're in the mood for a mystery that's just plain fun, this is the one for you... Timothy Hallinan knows how to write a smart aleck main character who has his own set of morals and a heart of gold.” —Kittling Books (blog) Praise for Junior Bender "Timothy Hallinan's The Fame Thief has everything I've come to expect in a Hallinan novel: indelible, complexxa0characters, fantastic plot, and moments of hold-your-breath suspense." —Charlaine Harris, author of the New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series "Could not stop laughing. xa0Tim Hallinan is sharp as a blade, has a wicked eye for human nature and keeps the reader guessing and rooting for Junior Bender all the way." —Helen Simonson, New York Times bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand "Junior Bender is bound to be the topic of conversation amongst book lovers and crime fiction fans for a long, longxa0time." —Robert Carraher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Hugely,splendidly entertaining... Full of delightful characters, and dialogue that provides at least one good laugh on every page, the book is so hard to put down you’ll swear it’s been glued to your hands." — Booklist , STARRED Review ( Little Elvises ) --This text refers to the paperback edition. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. If I’d liked expressionism, I might have been okay. But the expressionists don’t do anything for me, don’t evenmake my palms itch. And Klee especially doesn’t do anythingfor me. My education, spotty as it was, pretty much set my ArtClock to the fifteenth century in the Low Countries. If it hadbeen Memling or Van der Weyden, one of the mystical Flemishmasters shedding God’s Dutch light on some lily-filled annunciation,I would have been looking at the picture when I took it offthe wall. As it was, I was looking at the wall.So I saw it, something I hadn’t been told would be there.Just a hairline crack in the drywall, perfectly circular, maybethe size of a dinner plate. Seen from the side, by someone peekingbehind the painting without moving it, which is what mostthieves would do in this sadly mistrustful age of art alarms, itwould have been invisible. But I’d taken the picture down, andthere it was.And I’m weak.I think for everyone in the world, there’s something youcould dangle in front of them, something they would run ontoa freeway at rush hour to get. When I meet somebody, I like totry to figure out what that is for that person. You for diamonds,darling, or first editions of Dickens? Jimmy Choo shoes or aJoseph Cornell box? And you, mister, a thick stack of green? Atroop of Balinese girl scouts? A Maserati with your monogramon it?For me, it’s a wall safe. From my somewhat specialized perspective,a wall safe is the perfect object. To you, it may be a holein the wall with a door on it. To me, it’s one hundred percentpotential. There’s absolutely no way to know what’s in there.You can only be sure of one thing: Whatever it is, it means a hellof a lot to somebody. Maybe it’s what they’d run into traffic for.A wall safe is just a question mark. With an answer inside.Janice hadn’t told me there would be a safe behind the picture.We’d discussed everything but that. And, of course, that— meaning the thing I hadn’t anticipated—was what screwed me.What Janice and I had mostly talked about was the front door.“Think baronial,” she’d said with a half-smile. Janice hadthe half-smile down cold. “The front windows are seven feetfrom the ground. You’d need a ladder just to say hi.”“How far from the front door to the curb?” The bar we werein was way south of the Boulevard, in Reseda, far enough souththat we were the only people in the place who were speakingEnglish, and Serena’s Greatest Hits was on permanent loop. Theair was ripe with cilantro and cumin, and the place was mercifullylacking in ferns and sports memorabilia. A single widescreentelevision, ignored by all, broadcast the soccer game. I ampersonally convinced that only one soccer game has ever actuallybeen played, and they show it over and over again fromdifferent camera angles.As always, Janice had chosen the bar. With Janice in chargeof the compass, it was possible to experience an entire planet’sworth of bars without ever leaving the San Fernando Valley. Thelast one we’d met in had been Lao, with snacks of crisp fish bitsand an extensive lineup of obscure tropical beers.“Seventy-three feet, nine inches.” She broke off the tip of atortilla chip and put it near her mouth. “There’s a black slatewalk that kind of curves up to it.”I was nursing a Negra Modelo, the king of Hispanic darkbeers, and watching the chip, calculating the odds against heractually eating it. “Is the door visible from the street?”“It’s so completely visible,” she’d said, “that if you were akid in one of those ’40s musicals and you decided to put on ashow, the front door of the Huston house is where you’d put iton.”“Makes the back sound good,” I’d said.“Aswarm with rottweilers.” She sat back, the jet necklace ather throat sparkling wickedly and the overhead lights flashingoff the rectangular, black-framed glasses she wore in order tolook like a businesswoman but which actually made her looklike a beautiful girl wearing glasses.Burglars, of which I am one, don’t like Rottweilers. “Butthey’re not in the house, right? Tell me they’re not in the house.”“They are not. One of them pooped on the Missus’s ninetythousand-dollar Kirghiz rug.” Janice powdered the bit of chipbetween her fingers and let it fall to her napkin. “Or I shouldsay, one of the Missus’s ninety thousand-dollar Kirghiz rugs.”“There are several women called Missus?” I asked. “Or severalrugs?”“Either way,” Janice said, reproachfully straightening herglasses at me. “The dogs are kept in back, and they get fed likeevery other Friday.”“Meaning no going in through the back,” I said.“Not unless you want to be kibble,” Janice said. “Or theside, either. The wall around the yard is flush with the front wallof the house.”“Speaking of kibble.”“Please do,” Janice said. “I so rarely get a chance to.”“Does anyone drop by to feed the beasts? Am I likely to runinto—”“No one in his right mind would go into that yard. The onlyway to feed them would be to throw a bison over the walls. TheHustons have a very fancy apparatus, looks like it was built forthe space shuttle. Delivers precise amounts of ravening beastfoodtwice a day. So they’re strong and healthy and the old killerinstinct doesn’t dim.”“So,” I said. “It’s the front door.”She used the tip of her index finger to slide her glasses downto the point of her perfect nose, and looked at me over them.“Afraid so.”I drained my beer and signaled for another. Janice took ademure sip of her tonic and lime. I said, “I hate front doors. I’mgoing to stand there for fifteen minutes, trying to pick a lock inplain sight.”“That’s why we came to you,” she said. “Mr. Ingenuity.”“You came to me,” I said, “because you know this is theweek I pay my child support.”Janice was a back-and-forth, working for three or four brokers,guys with clients who knew where things were and wantedthose things, but weren’t sufficiently hands-on to grab them forthemselves. She’d used me before, and it had worked out okay.She didn’t know I’d backtracked her to two of her employers.One of them, an international-grade fence called Stinky Tetweiler,weighed 300 hard-earned pounds and lived in a long, lowhouse south of the Boulevard with an ever-changing numberof very young Filipino men with very small waists. Like a lotof the bigger houses south of Ventura, Stinky’s place had oncebelonged to a movie star, back when the Valley was movie-starterritory. In the case of Stinky’s house, the star was Alan Ladd,although Stinky had rebuilt the house into a sort of collisionbetween tetrahedrons that would have had old Alan’s ghost, hadhe dropped by, looking for the front door.Janice’s other client, known to the trade only as Wattles,worked out of an actual office, with a desk and everything,in a smoked-glass high-rise on Ventura near the 405 Freeway.His company was listed on the building directory as WattlesInc. Wattles himself was a guy who had looked for years likehe would die in minutes. He was extremely short, with a bellythat suggested an open umbrella, a drinker’s face the color ofrare roast beef, and a game leg that he dragged around like ananchor. I’d hooked onto his back bumper one night and followedhim up into Benedict Canyon until he slowed the car toallow a massive pair of wrought-iron gates to swing open, thentook a steep driveway up into the pepper trees.But Janice wasn’t aware I knew any of this. And if she hadbeen, she wouldn’t have been amused at all.“Where’s the streetlight?”She gave me her bad-news smile, brave and full of fraudulentcompassion. “Right in front. More or less directly over the endof the sidewalk.”“Illuminating the front door.”“Brilliantly,” she said. “Don’t think about the front door.Think about what’s on the other side.”“I am,” I said. “I’m thinking I have to carry it seventy-threefeet and nine inches to the van. Under a streetlight.”“You always focus on the negative,” she said. “You need todo something about that. You want your positive energy to flowstraight and true, and every time you go to the negative, you putup a little barrier. If it weren’t for your constant focus on negativeenergy, your marriage might have gone better.”God, the things women think they have the right to say. “Mymarriage went fine,” I said. “It was before the marriage wentthat was difficult.”“You have to be positive about that, too,” she said. “Withoutthe marriage, you wouldn’t have Rina.”Ahh, Rina, twelve years old and the light of my life. “To theextent I have her, anyway.”She gave me the slow nod women use to indicate that theyunderstand our pain, they admire the courage with which wehandle it, and they’re absolutely certain that it’s all our fault. “Iknow it’s tough, Kathy being so punitive with visitation. But she’syour daughter. You’ve got to be happy about that.” Janice putdown her glass and patted me comfortingly on the wrist with wet,cold fingers. I resisted the impulse to pull my wrist away. After all,her hand would dry eventually. She was working her way towardflirting, as she did every time we met, even though we both knewit wouldn’t lead anywhere. I was still attached to Kathy, my formerwife, and Janice demonstrated no awkwardness or any otherkind of perceptible difficulty turning down dates.“Of course, I’m happy about that,” I said. And then, becauseit was expected, I made the usual move. “Want to go to dinner?”She lowered her head slightly and regarded me from beneathher spiky bangs. “Tell me the truth. When you thought aboutasking me that question, you anticipated a negative response,didn’t you?”“Absolutely,” I said. “It’s the ninth time, and you’ve neversaid yes.”“See what I mean?” she said. “Your negativity has put kinksin your energy flow.”“Can you straighten it for me?”“If your invitation had been made in a purely affirmativespirit, I might have said yes.”“Might?” I took a pull off the beer. “You mean I could purifymy spirit, straighten out my energy flow, sterilize my anticipations,and you still might say no?”“Oh, Junior,” she said. “There are so many intangibles.”“Name one.”The slow head-shake again. “You’re a crook.”“So are you.”“I beg to differ,” she said. “I’m a facilitator. I bring togetherdifferent kinds of energies to effect the transfer of physicalobjects. It’s almost metaphysical.” She held her hands above thetable so her palms were about four inches apart, as though sheexpected electricity to flow between them. She turned them sothe left hand was on top. “On one side,” she said, “the energy ofdesire: dark, intense, magnetic.” She reversed her hands so theright was on top. “On the other side, the energy of action: direct,kinetic, daring.”“Whooo,” I said. “That’s me?”“Certainly.”“Sounds like somebody I’d go out with.”“And don’t think I don’t want to,” she said, and she narrowedher eyes mystically, which made her look nearsighted. I’ve alwaysloved nearsighted women. They’re so easy to help. “Some day theelements will be in alignment.” She pushed the glass away and gotup, and guys all over the place turned to look. In this bar, Janicewas as exotic as an orchid blooming in the snow.“A brightly lighted front door,” I said, mostly to slow herdown. I liked watching her leave almost as much as I likedwatching her arrive. “Seventy-three feet to the curb. Carryingthat damn thing.”“And nine inches.”“Seventy-three feet, nine inches. In both directions.”“And you have to solve it by Monday,” she said. “But don’tworry. You’ll think of something. You always do. When thechild support’s due.”She gave me a little four-finger wiggle of farewell, turned,and headed for the door. Every eye in the place was on her backside.That may be dated, but it was true. And, of course, I had thought of something. In the abstract theplan had seemed plausible. Sort of. And it had continued toseem plausible right up to the moment I pulled up in front of thehouse in broad daylight. Then, as I climbed out, wincing intothe merciless July sun that dehydrates the San Fernando Valleyannually, it seemed very much less plausible. I felt a rush of whatJanice would undoubtedly call negative energy, and suddenly itseemed completely idiotic.But this was not the time to improvise. It was Monday afternoonin an upscale neighborhood, and I needed to justify mypresence. Sweating in my dark coveralls, I went around to theback of the van and opened the rear door. Out of it I pulled aheavy dolly, which I set down about two feet behind the rearbumper. I squared my shoulders, the picture of someone aboutto do something difficult, leaned in, and very slowly draggedout an enormous cardboard refrigerator carton, on one side ofwhich I had stenciled the words SUB ZERO. This was no neighborhoodfor Kelvinators or Maytags.Back behind the house, the dogs began to bark. They were allbassos, ready to sing the lead in “Boris Godunov,” and I thoughtI could distinguish four of them, sounding like they weighed acombined total of 750 pounds, mostly teeth. Christ, I was seventy-three feet, nine inches from the door, not even standing onthe damn lawn yet, and I was already too close for them.Kathy, my ex-wife, has taught Rina to love dogs. It doesn’tmatter how obscure the opportunity for revenge is; Kathy willgrab it like a trapeze.Grunting and straining, I tilted the box down and slid it ontothe dolly. I’d put a couple of sandbags in the bottom of the box,mostly to keep it from tipping or being blown over, but it tooksome work to make it look heavy enough. Once I had it on thedolly, I tilted it back and made a big production of hauling it upthe four-inch vertical of the curb. Then I walked away from itso I was visible from all directions, pulled out a cell phone, andcalled myself.I listened to my message for a second and then talked intothe phone. With it pressed to my ear, I turned to face the house,looked up at a second-story window, and gave a little wave. Thecell phone slipped easily into the top pocket of the coveralls, andI grabbed the dolly handles, put my back into tilting it up ontothe wheels, and towed the carton up the slate path.At the door, I positioned the box so the side with SUB ZEROon it faced the street. Then I got in between the box and the doorand pushed open the flap I’d cut in the closest side of the box—just three straight lines with a box cutter, leaving the fourth sideof the rectangle intact to serve as a hinge. The flap was about fivefeet high and three feet wide, and it swung open into the box. Iclimbed in. From the street, all anyone would see was the box.The door was fancy, not functional. Heavy dark wood, brasshardware, and a big panel of stained glass in the upper half—some sort of coat of arms, a characteristically confused collisionof symbolic elements that included an ax, a rose, and somethingthat looked suspiciously like a pair of pliers. A good graphic artistcould have made a fortune in the Middle Ages.My working valise was at the bottom of the box. I snappedon a pair of surgical gloves, pulled out my set of picks, and wentto work on the lock. The temperature in the box was about ahundred degrees, the gloves quickly became wet inside, and—appearances to the contrary—the lock had muscles. But I didn’tfeel cramped for time, since I doubted anyone would suspect aSub Zero refrigerator of trying to break into a house. After nineor ten warm, damp minutes, the lock did a tickled little shimmyand then began to give up its secrets. I dropped the final pin,tested the knob, and put on a bathing cap to cover my hair. ThenI climbed out of the box, opened the door, and stepped inside.I read continually about burglars who experience some sortof deep, even sexual pleasure at the moment of entry, as thoughthe house were a long-desired body to which they had finallygained access. For me, a house is an inconvenience. It’s a bunchof walls surrounding something I want. In order to get what Iwant, I have to put myself inside the walls, and then get out asfast as I can. I figure that the risk of being caught increases byabout five percent each minute once you get beyond four minutes.Anybody who stays inside longer than twenty to twentyfiveminutes deserves a free ride in the back of a black-and-white.The alarm was exactly where Janice said it would be, blinkingfrantically just around the corner from the front door, and thecode she gave me calmed it right down. The dogs were goingnuts in the back, but that was where they seemed to be staying.I gave it a count of ten with one foot figuratively outside thedoor just to make sure, but all they did was bark and howl andscrabble with their toenails at a glass door somewhere on the farside of the house. When I was certain none of them was totinghis fangs from room to room inside, I went back out onto theporch, used the dolly to tilt the carton, and wheeled it inside.Then I closed the door.Getting in is more than half of it; in fact, I figure that a safeentry is about sixty percent of the work. Finding what you wantwill burn up another twenty to thirty percent, and getting out ispretty much a snap. Usually.The house was a temple of gleam. Entire quarries in Italyhad been strip-mined to pave the floors, and many young Italiancraftspersons had probably died of dust inhalation to bringthe stone to this pitch of polish. I was in a circular grand entryhall, maybe thirty-five feet high, dominated by a massive chandelierin what might have been Swarovski crystal, dangling bya heavy golden chain. To the right was a circular stair curvingup the wall of the hall, with a teak banister that had beensanded, polished, stained, polished, varnished, polished, andvarnished again.Not for the first time, I asked myself what Mr. and/or Mrs.Huston did for a living.Despite the museum-like grandeur of the entry, there was ahomely smell that took me back years and years, to my grandmother’shouse. I needed a second to identify it as camphor, theactive ingredient in mothballs. We don’t use mothballs so muchany more, maybe because we have fewer natural fabrics, butthey were being used here. The odor suggested a certain strainedfussiness, not an attitude that would be comfortable with Rottweilersleaving piles on the rugs.The camphor seemed to come from my right, where a set ofsteps led up to the living room, so perhaps the mothballs wereintended to protect the carpets. Straight ahead, a set of five stepsled up to the rest of the first floor, accounting for the high frontwindows. The piece I had been sent for was all the way upstairs,in what Janice had described as the marital theme park.As I climbed the curving stairway, the dogs reached a newpitch of frenzy, and I began to think about accelerating the process.Some neighbor might get pissed off and call the cops, andthe cops, in turn, might wonder why the Fidos were so manic. Itook the stairs two at a time.The master bedroom was bigger than Versailles. Three thingsabout its occupants were immediately obvious. First, theywere sexually adventurous and willing to pay for it. The ceilingwas mirrored, the bedspread was some sort of black fur,a shelf recessed in the wall above the head of the bed held agarish assortment of toys, lubricants, and, for all I could tell,hors d’oeuvres. There were at least a dozen little bottles ofamyl nitrate under different brand names, and a crystal bowl ofwhite powder on a mirror, with a razor gleaming beside it. Overagainst one wall was an actual gynecologist’s table. The stirrupshad sequins on them.The second thing that was apparent was that they boththought Mrs. Huston was a knockout. There were at least adozen large color photos of her, blond, a little over-vibrant, andseriously under-dressed, along the wall to the right of the bed.She didn’t look like someone who puts mothballs on her carpets,if only because they’d aggravate carpet burn. Of course, it wasan assumption that the woman wearing, in some of the pictures,no more than a coat of baby oil, was Mrs. Huston, but if shewasn’t, the relationship was even stranger than the bedroomwould suggest. The odd energy she was projecting in some ofthe pictures might have owed something to the bowl of whitepowder on the shelf. Even without the energy, even without thebaby oil, she had a kind of raw, slightly crude appeal that probablyinterested men whose tastes were coarser than mine.The third obvious thing was that—while they might havebeen unanimous in their admiration of Mrs. Huston—they hadvery different tastes in art. On the far wall were five, countthem if you can bear to look at them long enough, five of thoseflesh-puckering big-eyed children painted in the 1950s by Mr.Keane or Mrs. Keane: waifs of the chilly dawn with dreadfuldays awaiting them, days they will meet with eyes as big asdoorknobs, but not as expressive. It had always amazed methat Mr. and Mrs. Keane went to court to establish which ofthem was responsible for these remorseless reiterations of elementary-school bathos. If I’d been the judge, I’d have yankedtheir artistic licenses in perpetuity and sentenced them to a lifetimetwelve-step program in which all twelve steps consisted ofspending fourteen hours a day watching real children througha foot-thick pane of glass.By contrast, on the wall directly opposite the door was thePaul Klee painting that was the object of Janice’s client’s lust.Even at this distance, I hated it, although not as much as Ihated the Keanes. Full of thin angular shapes and flat 1950scolors that looked like they were inspired by Formica, it lookedto me like something painted with a coat hanger. Klee despisedcolor in his early career, so I didn’t feel so bad about despisingthe ones he’d used here. I looked back at the Keanes, thinkingthat when I came back to the Klee I’d like it better throughsheer contrast, but it didn’t work. It still looked like a watchspring’sdaydream.Now that I was all the way inside the room, I saw a smallsurprise on the wall into which the door was set: another Klee,this one smaller and maybe, just marginally, not as ugly. I’d beentold only about the one for some reason, and I wasted a briefmoment wondering whether to bag both of them, then rejectedthe thought. I was in no position to fence a Klee. Fine art fencingwas a specialty, and a perilously risky specialty at that. I’d takethe one I’d been sent to take, and let my employer worry abouthanding it off to someone.The room was bright with the sun banging on the big windows,the light filtered white through semi-opaque curtains oforgandy or something diaphanous. The bed was to the left, andbeyond it was an open door. I slogged my way across a carpetabout five inches deep and checked out the door. It led to a sortof sitting room, all mirrored, with a makeup table big enoughfor the Rockettes on one wall. Beyond that yawned an enormousbathroom. The bathroom, in turn, had two doors leadingoff it, one into a chamber built just to hold the toilet, andthe other into a room that could have slept four but was filledentirely with women’s clothes. There was a door at the far endthat undoubtedly led back to the hallway.I went back into the bedroom. The other door, to the rightof the wall, was a closet, obviously his unless she liked to wearmen’s suits to spice things up from time to time. Content that Ihad the floor plan stored where I could find it if I needed it suddenly,I approached the painting.God, it was ugly. I checked behind it, found no evidence of analarm or any cute little locking mechanisms that would preventits being lifted from the wall. In fact, it seemed to be hangingon a regular old picture hanger like the ones you can buy in thesupermarket, although a little heavier. I centered myself in frontof the picture, grasped the frame by the sides, and lifted it. Itcame up easily, weighing only four or five pounds, and I pulledit away and lowered it to the floor.Without, as I said, looking at it.And there it was, that circle cut into the wall.Everything the Klee hadn’t done for me, that circle did. Myheart embarked on a little triple skip, my face was suddenlywarmer, and I found I was breathing shallowly. The kind of reactionI would imagine a prospector might experience when hediscovers that the rock he just tripped over is a five-pound goldnugget . . . but.But Janice hadn’t mentioned the safe. Presumably, therefore,she didn’t know about the safe, even though the informationshe’d handed me was detailed and accurate right down to thealarm code.So. What else hadn’t Janice known about?And at that precise moment I felt the telltale prickling on theback of my neck.A little late, I covered the bottom half of my face with myforearm as though wiping sweat away and turned to survey theroom, unfocused and trying to take it all in. There it was, at theedge of my vision, high up near the join of wall and ceiling: alittle hole the size of a dime.Well, shit. Wiping my face with both hands, I walked briskly across theroom, detouring around the bed and finding something on thecarpet to look down at, and straight into the bathroom. In themedicine cabinet I found a travel-size can of shaving gel, poppedthe cap, and gave it a pointless shake. Then, edging along thewall, presumably out of sight of the little lens that was certain tobe right behind that hole, I positioned myself until I was directlybelow it, flexed my knees, and jumped, my arm stretched aboveme. When the can’s nozzle was even with the hole, I pushed it.One more jump, and I had a nice little billow of foam filling thehole.I tossed the can onto the bed and charged across the roomto my bag. A second later I had a hammer and a chisel and Iwas dragging behind me a chair that had been sitting peacefullyall by itself to the right of the paintings. I shoved itagainst the wall with the camera behind it and jumped uponto it.Time was not on my side. I’d been in the house almost toolong already, but there was no choice. I had to do this, and italmost didn’t matter how long it was going to take. But I wassweating for real now, my hands slippery inside the gloves.The question with surveillance cameras, if you’re unluckyenough to be caught on one, is where the images are beingstored. If they’re on-site and you can find the storage device,you’re good to go—just take the whole thing with you. If theimages are being stored off-site, then you’re—I hammered the chisel for the third time and levered it right,and a chunk of chalky-edged drywall broke off and fell to thefloor and I realized I was— Screwed, because it was the worst possible scenario. Thelines leading away from the camera jacks were telephone cable.So, either (1) the storage was off-site and I could give uplooking for it or (2) the storage was off-site and I could give uplooking for it, and the live feed was being watched by severalnot-easily-amused men who were at that very moment dispatchingan armed response team.Well, the good news was that I didn’t have to waste any timelooking for the storage. The bad news was everything else.I checked the hole and found the foam starting to drip downthe wall, so I just yanked the cable from the camera jacks. ThenI jumped down from the chair and went back to the safe.Since I was already in the red zone for time, I gave myself acount of sixty to get the thing open.It took me all of nine seconds to get my bag unzipped andremove the five-inch suction cup, designed for glass but usefulon smooth walls. I had to rummage to locate the second item,a Windex spray bottle filled with tap water. Two shots withthe sprayer got the wall nice and wet and then I placed the cupevenly against the cut-out, centered it, and pushed it in to securethe seal. Took hold of the handle, and pulled.The cut-out popped free like a loose cork. It had been cut ona slight bias so it was larger on the outside than on the inside,making it a snap to remove and replace. I put the whole thingdown next to the painting, closed my eyes for a second in vague,generalized supplication, and opened them to look at the safe.Fourteen seconds.I saw nothing to diminish my enthusiasm. Expensive, yes,shiny and solid-looking, designed to inspire confidence, butnothing that a relatively talented duffer couldn’t pop, and I amnot a duffer. Thirty-seven seconds of gentle persuasion later, itswung gently open. Something glittered at me.Fifty-one seconds.The glitter put an end to my internal argument, if I’d beenhaving one. End of whatever wispy reluctance I might have feltabout going another twenty or thirty seconds. Diamonds have away of prevailing over logic.So I did it. I reached inside.And as my fingers closed over the cold fire and broke thebeam of light that flowed from one side of the safe to the other,I heard three things. First, the squeal of something that neededoiling as it slid open downstairs. Second, a sudden increase inthe volume of the dogs’ barking. Third, the sound of dogs’ toenails.On marble.Inside the house. --This text refers to the paperback edition. ''Tim Hallinan has done it again. He's created a must-read series that you will find hard to put down! Junior Bender is all you could ever want in a hero-thief: smart and funny, with a penchant for finding himself in situations he'd much rather avoid. Do not miss any of these books. A must read in my house.'' --Brett Battles, author of the award-winning 'Jonathan Quinn' series '' Crashed is funny, thrilling, and even sad - a great beginning for a great new series. Timothy Hallinan is one of my favorite writers, and this is Hallinan at the top of his game. It's laugh-out-loud funny without ever losing any of its mystery. It's a whole new style and I love it. Junior Bender--a crook with a heart of gold--is one of Hallinan's most appealing heroes, rich with invention and brimming with classic wit. I can't recommend it highly enough.'' --Shadoe Stevens, Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson ''Hallinan is one of the master storytellers of our generation. Crashed is pure rapture.'' --CJ West, author of The End of Marking Time --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more