Джанет Иванович - Fortune and Glory

We followed Gabriela to the staircase and descended single file to the underground room.

“A crypt,” Gabriela said.

There were twelve niches in the room. Six on each side. The walls, ceiling, and floor were concrete. Hammered copper doors sealed each of the niches. Names of the interred were on the doors. Sarah Rosolli, Salvatore Rosolli, Manfred Rosolli, Joseph Rosolli, Anthony Rosolli.

Gabriela stood in front of Anthony Rosolli. “Hello, Anthony,” she said.

Ranger looked at Gabriela’s camo backpack. “Do you have anything useful in there?” he asked her.

Gabriela removed a screwdriver and handed it to Ranger.

Ranger pried the copper door off the wall and exposed the casket. “Usually there’s a second shutter here,” he said. “The copper shutter I just removed is decorative. There should be a heavier metal shutter that actually seals the tomb.”

“Pull him out,” Gabriela said. “There’s a reason he wasn’t sealed in.”

Ranger slid a mahogany casket out of the niche and Gabriela and I helped lower it to the floor. Ranger slipped the brass latch on the lid and raised the lid.

“It’s not locked, and it’s not sealed,” he said. “And it’s empty.”

Gabriela and I looked inside. The satin lining wasn’t in great shape, but the casket had obviously never been used. Or maybe only used for a short time.

“Where’s Anthony?” I asked.

“Probably bunking with someone,” Ranger said. “Probably with Mrs. Rosolli.”

Ranger flicked the beam of his flashlight into the niche. “Looks like the niche opens to a tunnel.”

I did a mental head slap. “What’s with these guys and their tunnels? It’s like they had a tunnel obsession.”

“Escape routes,” Ranger said.

“Places to hide stolen treasures and bootleg whiskey,” Gabriela said, flashing the Maglite beam around the space, crawling into the niche. “I came across something similar in Nepal when I was hired to find a stolen carving of Birupakshya from the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu. I thought for sure it was in that tunnel. Turned out it was filled with vipers. Let’s hope this goes better. Truly, what are the chances of that happening twice?”

Considering my recent tunnel experiences, I thought the odds weren’t in my favor. I followed Gabriela into the niche and Ranger followed me. The tunnel was dirt and supported by chunky, crude timbers. It was a couple of feet wide and not quite six feet high. Ranger had to duck slightly when standing. After about fifty feet we came to a Y intersection.

“Go to the right,” I said.

“Intuition?” Gabriela asked.

“There’s a symbol burned onto the timber. I’ve seen it in the La-Z-Boys’ tunnels. Potts was the first to notice it. I have pictures.”

We turned toward the symbol and came to another fork. Again, a symbol told us to go right.

The right-hand tunnel curved, and we came to a heavy metal fire door. Ranger selected a second key on the key ring and opened the door to a small concrete room with a safe embedded in the concrete. A second metal fire door was on the far wall.

“Interesting,” Gabriela said. “This takes mob paranoia to a new level.”

Ranger opened the door with the third key on the ring. Beyond the door was a short dirt tunnel that ended with a ladder going to a manhole cover. This was almost identical to the escape hatch opening to Liberty Park.

Ranger climbed the ladder and put his hand to the heavy cover.

“If it’s like the Liberty Park cover it has two steel pins that need to be pulled out,” Gabriela said.

Ranger felt around, found the pins, pulled them out, and moved the cover to the side.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“A field,” Ranger said. “A road in the distance. The cemetery and church in the opposite direction.”

He dropped to the floor and walked to the safe. “This looks familiar,” he said.

“Looks identical,” Gabriela said. “The only difference is that this safe is set into the concrete wall.”

I was excited at the thought of opening the safe in the storage locker. I was filled with dread over the opening of this safe.

“I have a bad feeling,” I said. “I think we should get Ramone.”

“It’s your treasure,” Ranger said to Gabriela. “What’s your call?”

“I’m willing to roll the dice,” Gabriela said. “Give me Grandma’s keys and the wedding rings. I was watching Ramone. He started with the numbers on Grandma’s ring.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “He had both rings in his hand, and we were standing at a distance. And he was using some gizmo to help him hear the tumblers. If you start with the wrong number, you’ll blow us up.”

“I can feel the tumblers on this without a gizmo,” Gabriela said. “The only thing unusual about this safe is that it has two keys instead of one. The rest is basic. I opened a number of safes just like this in Portugal when I was looking for some stolen Patek Phillipe watches.”

“Did you find them?” I asked.

“Yes, but not in those safes. Those safes were filled with drugs, compromising pictures, and one had an entire Iberian ham leg.”

“Must have been a big safe,” I said.

“Average,” Gabriela said. “It was a relatively small pig.”

Ranger gave her the keys and the rings, and I backed away toward the ladder. “I might need some fresh air,” I said.

Gabriela inserted the keys. “They fit,” she said.

Ranger was behind her, focused.

“Grandma’s sequence starts with the number two,” Gabriela said.

She carefully turned the dial to the number two.

“Oops,” Gabriela said, when it didn’t tumble. “Shit.”

Ranger yanked her away from the safe and shoved her through the open doorway. He jumped into the tunnel after her and slammed the fire door shut. I was already halfway up the ladder. Gabriela and Ranger were close behind me.

Bang. The first explosion blew the fire door off just as we bolted out of the manhole. The ground shook, throwing me off balance, knocking me to my knees. Ranger jerked me to my feet, and we ran across the field until the second explosion sent us to the ground. The second explosion shot fire out of the manhole and blew a crater in the roof of the concrete bunker. Chunks of sod and concrete shot into the air and plummeted to the earth. Scraps of blue velvet floated down, and diamonds glinted in the sunlight like it was raining fairy dust. The ground rolled and rumbled, and a third explosion blasted the Rosolli chapel into nothing more than a memory.

“Hiroshima,” I said.

Gabriela nodded. “My bad. I shouldn’t have taken the risk.”

The first responders all went to the smoking rubble of the chapel. That left us to pick diamonds out of the scrub grass in the field.

“How many were there?” I asked Gabriela.

“One hundred and seventy-four, lovingly stored in four blue velvet cases.”

“Oh boy.”

After an hour, we had collected eighty-seven and we had attracted the attention of a couple of the men at the chapel site.

“Time to go,” Ranger said. “Gabriela can continue to search for the diamonds later today or tomorrow.”

We crossed the field, picking up a few more diamonds on the way. We reached our cars and Gabriela tossed her backpack onto the Mercedes’s passenger-side seat.

“Good luck with the diamonds,” I said to her. “It’s been interesting.”

“All in a day’s work,” she said.

Ranger drove into my apartment building’s lot and parked next to Grandma Mazur’s Buick.

“You didn’t destroy any cars today,” Ranger said, “but you blew up a chapel, so your day wasn’t a complete bust.”

“Technically Gabriela blew up the chapel.”