On the safe floor, inside, I counted four holes through the thick steel. No bolts. All the air left my body. I staggered back a couple of steps until my butt came up against the desk’s edge.
Barbara Wicks took hold of my arm. I’d forgotten she was there. “What’s the matter?”
Dan, too excited to notice with his longtime goal now in sight, yelled to his men, “A couple of you move that safe, slide it to the side.”
Two agents tried, but couldn’t budge it.
“Get two more agents,” Dan said. “Find a fulcrum.” An agent ran from the room.
Clay calmed. “There’s nothing under the safe. Deputy Johnson has been a bad boy. He’s been yankin’ you all’s dick.”
Two big SWAT guys came in with the ram they’d used on the door and a pry bar they must have retrieved from their assault vehicle.
Barbara whispered to me, “What’s the matter, Bruno?”
“I think I’m in deep shit.”
She socked me in the arm, just like Marie would have. The move brought Marie foremost in my thoughts and, with it, a terrible ache in the pit of my stomach.
The two SWAT guys put the ram down on the floor at the farthest end where the safe sat closest to the wall. They got on the pry bar intent on flipping the safe onto its side.
Clay laughed, not a nervous one but one with confidence. “The Feds are going to have to rename the Lincoln fucking Memorial, call it The Clay Warfield Memorial, after I get done suing your asses.”
The weight of the safe thwarted the agents’ best efforts. Not that it mattered; I already knew the outcome.
“You two,” said Dan, “get over there and put your backs into it.” Two agents with blue windbreakers moved over to help. One of the agents started to wiggle between the safe and the perpendicular wall on the side.
Clay jumped forward. “You assholes are in enough trouble. You damage or break something, and I’ll have your jobs. You hear me?”
The two SWAT guys and the two windbreakers got on the lever, as the guy in between the safe and the wall pushed at the top of the safe. The safe slowly started to rise. The agent in between the wall and the safe, his face turning red and bloated with exertion, pushed harder. The drywall behind him caved in with a loud crack. The safe’s top started to yield and lean. Dan yelled, “That’s it. That’s it. Push. You got it.”
The safe fell over. The agents jumped clear. The dead weight thudded to the concrete floor. The entire clubhouse gave a little shudder.
Underneath, where the safe had sat, revealed nothing but smooth concrete. No bolts rose out of the concrete floor. No gold doughnut painted gray and inset as a gasket. Drago had been so believable. How had I fallen for his lie? But why had he lied? There could only be one reason. Drago was batshit crazy to make up a juvenile tale of a pirate’s gold with safes and SS. His lack of sanity did not bode well for my family’s future.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Dan rushed over to me, his face right up in mine. “Is this how you return my trust?” He pointed to the overturned safe. “This was a big joke all along, wasn’t it?”
I couldn’t speak, and shook my head “no.”
Dan put a finger up by my eyes. “Now, you are going to rue the day you crossed me. I am going to file every possible charge. You’ll never get out of prison.”
Clay laughed loud and hard, most of it forced to help rub it in.
Dan pointed at me, “Get him out of here.”
The two agents wearing the blue windbreakers moved in. One came away from the corner, away from the damaged drywall, that was now visible. Right above the smooth concrete where the doughnut should have been.
My mind locked on to the obvious solution, I physically struggled. “Wait.”
The agents on each of my arms kept dragging me along.
“Chulack, wait. Wait.”
The two agents hesitated and looked to him for direction.
Dan pointed his finger to the door. “I said, get him out of here.”
The two agents resumed their tug-of-war in earnest. I violently swung my shoulders one way, then the other, and broke free. I ran to the overturned safe, the agents close behind, and picked up the ram on the floor. They were all over me.
Dan was almost to the door and turned toward the disturbance.
Clay’s eyes went wild. “Get that asshole away from there.”
“Wait, look,” I said. “Look at Warfield. He knows I’ve figured out his game.”
Clay yelled, “I’ll sue you assholes, I swear to God, I’ll sue you until you don’t have a penny left to your name.”
Dan took a couple of steps back from the doorway. “Bruno?”
“You asked me to trust you. Now you need to trust me on this.”
Dan nodded. The two agents let me go. I took a deep breath, pivoted my hips, and slammed the ram into the wall. Clay yelled and leaped at me.
“Restrain him,” said Dan.
The two agents jumped Clay with relish and took him to the ground harder than he needed. Dan came over and looked me in the eyes.
In a low tone, I said, “They moved the wall.”
Clay continued to yell.
“Shut him up.”
The two agents sat on him. Clay grunted. Now he could only focus on breathing.
Dan nodded, took hold of the ram with me, and we swung it, throwing our backs into it. We hit a two-by-four stringer supporting the drywall and caved it inward. We swung again and again until we were out of breath and we had a large enough hole. We dropped the ram. Drywall dust hung in the air and stuck to the sweat on our faces. Dan took a small, powerful flashlight from his belt. He carefully stuck in his arm with the flashlight. He looked back at me one last time and then stuck his head in the hole.
He moved his feet and tried to force more of himself inside. I held my breath. From inside came a muffled “Holy shit.”
In the short time I’d known Special Agent Dan Chulack, he’d never used unprofessional language.
He pulled out completely, with a huge smile. “Call for backup. I want every one of those swinging dicks in there booked on RICO, conspiracy to commit murder, robbery, and kidnap.” He pointed to the two SWAT guys. “You two. Take this ram, and I want you to take down this wall right here, but don’t go any farther than right here.” He indicated another place on the wall.
Before the SWAT guys moved, I stepped in close and held out my cuffed hands. Dan smiled and handed me his flashlight. I stuck my arms in the hole and then my head. I couldn’t get in nearly as far with my hands cuffed, but far enough.
Clay had needed a place to run his organization. He knew there would be search warrant after search warrant served on the clubhouse, and he had to have a way to keep evidence out of the hands of law enforcement. He built another wall in his office to partition off a four-foot-wide room. There had to be a secret lever that accessed a hidden door. We didn’t need the lever or the door; we had the ram.
An odor of gun oil and sweat came at me hard. The flashlight lit up the narrow space.
Inside, on one wall hung all the tools of the trade, sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, pistols-including the two H &K P9s with silencers-one of which Clay had used to shoot Drago in the foot. That’s what he’d done when he left us in the living room with Roy Boy, Slim Jim, Sandman, and the other cronies. He’d gone into his office, activated the lever, entered the room, and gotten to the H &Ks. I thought that I had heard the desk being moved when it had been the secret door.
I marveled at all the guns and weapons as the light panned down the length of the wall. At the end, on the floor sat a smaller safe, shorter, the one that would contain the books, the records tracking all the ill-gotten gain for the SS International. I moved the flashlight above the safe. My breath caught. I whispered to no one, “What a damn fool.” On the narrow four-foot-wide wall at the end and above the safe, Clay had thwarted so many search warrants in the past that he’d grown arrogant and invincible, enough to pin up old Polaroid photos and trophies from his past. Dead enemies of the SS. Witnesses, bikers from opposing gangs, and all those who failed to fall into line under their tyranny.