Geezer Paradise (6 page)

             
"Who painted the portrait of Einstein?" I asked her. 

             
"That was painted by a guy who comes in here, but that's not Einstein," Bertha said.  "That's the Judge."  She pointed to the end of the bar where an Einstein look-a-like sat by himself sipping a beer.  He had the same hair as Willey. 

             
"The Judge?" 

             
"He used to be a judge until he started spending more time in here than he did in the courtroom."  A judge, that meant he was a lawyer! 

             
"Does he still have his license?"  I asked. 

             
"I guess so," Bertha said.  "But he doesn't have any intention of ever working again."  I asked Bertha if she thought he would mind if we talked to him. 

             
"Buy him a beer and he'll talk your ear off," she said. Willey dropped a few dollars on the bar, and Bertha went off and put another draft in front of the Judge.  She said a few words to him and the Judge smiled and waved us over.  Willey and I sat down next to him. 

             
"Hello, Judge.  I'm Barney and this is Willey."  We shook hands. 

             
"Nice to meet you fellas," the Judge said.  "Bertha told me you wanted to talk to me."

             
"Yes," Willey said.  "We live in a mobile home park up in Citrus Bay, called the Blue Orchid, and we're about to lose our houses to a developer.  We can't afford to hire a lawyer.  We were hoping you might give us some advice."

             
"Is it Flaherty?" the Judge asked. 

             
"You know about him?" I asked. 

             
The judge shook his head.  "Everybody knows about him.  The only advice I can give you is to start looking for another place to live."

             
"He's that powerful, huh?"

             
"He's connected," the Judge answered.  "It would be like trying to fight City Hall."  That wasn't what we wanted to hear.

             
"Well thank you, Judge," I said.  "We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us." 

             
"You're welcome, fellas.  I wish I'd been able to give you better news, but there are some things you just can't fight.  I hope someday they'll be able bring that sleazebag to justice."  Willey gave me a sideways look. 

             
"Maybe someday they will," he said.  We were in the process of doing just that.  We said goodbye to the Judge and took our drinks to a back booth where we could talk.  We put our drinks on the table and slid into the booth.  Nobody would hear us there as we planned our strategy. 

             
"I told you I didn't think we could beat Flaherty in court," Willey said. 

             
"For once you were right.  We have to take things into our own hands."   

             
"Damn right," Willey said.  "Here's what we'll do.  There's an alley behind Flaherty's offices with a fire escape that leads up to their back windows."

             
"How do you know that?"

             
"Well, I've been thinking about breaking in there for a while now.  Somehow I knew it would come down to this.  The problem is finding records that can nail him."  Willey reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked to be a drugstore type cigarette lighter.  It was small and black.  "I picked up a flash drive," he said.  "You stick this into a port on your computer and it acts as a separate storage file.  If Flaherty's computer has one of these on it, we'll take it off and replace it with this one.  All of Flaherty's records will be on that flash drive."

             
"Won't they know that their files are missing?"

             
"No," Willey said.  "Their records are also stored in the hard drive of their computer. We'll put our flash drive in, and as soon as they make a change and store it, their entire file will be saved on the flash drive again, just as if we never touched it." 

             
I was amazed.  "How come you know so much about computers?" I asked.

             
"I don't know anything about computers, I just took the bus to one of those big computer stores and talked to a young kid.  He explained it to me.  Of course, I didn't tell him what I was going to do with it."

             
"I don't think we'll find anything on Flaherty's computer that will tie him to Freddy's murder," I said.

             
"No, he's too smart for that, but if we can copy his financial records maybe we can find a computer geek who will know how to trace them to bribes.  That's where we'll find the false expense records from when he bribed officials.  There has to be plenty of those, and if we can just prove one bribe we'll have him."

             
"How will we find a computer geek?" I asked. 

             
"I haven't figured that out yet." Before I knew it I had finished my shot and beer.  I looked over at Willey, his glasses were empty, too.  Willey made the trip to the bar. When he came back I asked, "What about alarms?  They must have alarms."

             
"That's just a chance we'll have to take."  That was not what I wanted to hear.  I poured my shot into my beer and gulped down half the glass. 

             
"Easy there, Barney, we have to be sober enough to pull this off." 

             
I didn't think I could get drunk if I tried all night.  "I just hope you know what the hell we're doing," I said.

             
"It'll work out just fine, Barney.  Just leave it to me." 

             
After we finished our drinks I suggested we leave.  Willey started to get up and then stopped. "I think I need one more round," he said, and he headed for the bar.  When he came back carrying the beer and shots, he said, "One more thing, Barney.  If we get separated we'll meet back here."  That made my stomach lurch again.  After more false starts and more rounds, we were off.  On the way out, Willey handed Bertha a few dollars.  "That's in case the Judge gets thirsty," he said.

             
"The Judge is always thirsty.  Thanks boys, come again."

              It was a hot night and we were overdressed.  Or maybe I was just sweating out of fear.  There was an orange half moon peeking over the roof tops, and a warm breeze was blowing.  I noticed that both Willey and I were a little unsteady on our feet.  Great, drunken burglars.  We walked down the block, stopped and looked around.  No one in sight.  We ducked into the dark alley behind Flaherty's offices.  The alley was stacked up with black plastic bags full of garbage.  The stench and the heat in the alley were overwhelming.  We had to climb onto the pile of garbage to get to the fire escape.  The bags broke open as we climbed onto them, forcing garbage into our shoes.  So far, Willey's plan stunk as much as the garbage. 

             
"That's from the Hungarian restaurant out front," Willey said.  "Delicious food, terrible garbage."  The stench was starting to gag me. 

             
"Let's get this over with," I said.  "I want to get out of here."  I reached for the fire escape ladder, but even standing on the garbage I couldn't reach it.               

             
"Willey, this fire escape is meant for people to come down, not to go up.  I thought you planned this out." 

             
Willey worked his way past me.  "I weigh less than you, just give me a boost and I'll grab the bottom of the ladder.  I locked my hands together for Willey to step into.  He put his foot into my hands and his right hand on top of my head to steady himself. 

             
"On the count of three lift me up," he said.  I tried to push him up, but my arthritis wouldn't let me. 

             
"Push," Willey stage whispered.  I got a better grip and tried again.  This time Willey was able to grab onto the bottom rung of the ladder.  The ladder swung down in a slow, creaking, descent.  Soon the bottom of the ladder was buried in garbage.  We climbed up to the grated platform above.  As soon as we got off the ladder, it slowly started to swing back up.  We stood there studying the single window in front of us. 

             
"I don't see any alarms," I said.  I put the heels of my hands under the top rail of the sash and gently pushed up.  The window slid up easily.

             
"It wasn't even locked," Willey said.  "These guys are just asking for a break-in."  I let Willey climb in first.  After all, he was the criminal genius, I was just the apprentice.  Besides, sometimes these places keep a dog on the premises overnight.  A big, hungry, downright nasty, dog.  No sense taking chances.

             
We stood in the dark office, not much light coming from the alley.  I took a few steps into the darkness and bumped into something that felt like a person.  Like an idiot I said, "Excuse me."  I stood there holding my breath. 

             
"Why should I excuse you?" Willey wanted to know.

             
"Not you, him!"

             
"What?"

             
"I think there's somebody here!" I squeaked.  Willey turned his penlight on.  I had bumped into a coat rack full of raincoats.  The arms of a large raincoat were wrapped around me.

             
"Dammit, Barney.  Will you stop joking around.  This is serious.

             
"Right," I said.  My heart was beating like a bongo drum.  There was a large mahogany desk in the office.  The name plate said, John Flaherty.  We were in the lion's den.  Willey started going through the drawers on one side of the desk.  I pulled out my penlight and started on the other side.  Most of what I was reading made no sense to me.  We found nothing of interest in the desk, so we headed to the computer.  We looked it all over, there was no flash drive attached to it. 

             
"He must take it home with him," Willey said.  Willey put his flash drive into a port on the back of the computer tower.  "We'll copy his files," Willey said. 

             
We turned the computer on and tried to get into the files, but we didn't know the password.  We took the flash drive out and shut off the computer. 

             
"Maybe we'll find something in one of the other offices," I said.  We went out into the dark hallway and, using our penlights, we started reading the room names on the door glass.  When we came to a door marked,
Accounting,
we tried the door.  It wasn't locked.  Willey was right, they had no security in this place.

             
We went straight to the computer.  There was no flash drive attached to it.  We couldn't get in to the files of that computer either.  Again, we didn't have the password.  We shut the computer off and did a quick search of the desk drawers.   We found nothing of interest.  We went out of that office and did a quick search of the other offices, and came up empty handed.

             
"I guess we're out of luck," I said.  "We might as well get out of here.  Willey grudgingly agreed.  We went back down the hall and into Flaherty's office.  As we were heading for the window a light came on out in the hallway outside.  We ran into a closet and pulled the door shut just as the office door opened and the room was flooded with light.  We stood in the darkness for a minute, sweating in the stuffy closet.  Then a woman started to sing in Spanish, and a vacuum cleaner roared to life.  I cracked the closet door open just enough to see.  A pudgy Spanish woman was cleaning the office. 

             
We were trapped in the broiling hot closet.  I closed the door and we waited, and sweated.  Fifteen minutes later the vacuum cleaner shut off, and a minute later we heard the office door close.  I peeked out.  The office was dark again, the cleaning lady had gone.  We stumbled out of the closet.  The vacuum cleaner started up again in another office.  We opened the window and climbed out onto the fire escape.  Willey closed the window. 

             
"What rotten luck," Willey said.  I started down the ladder, Willey was right behind me.  The ladder slowly swung down into the garbage, and I hopped off. 

             
"Help," Willey said.  "Get me down from here."  I turned around just as the ladder was going back up with Willey's foot attached.  Willey was hanging upside down by the time I wrested his foot free.  I went down into the garbage on my back, with Willey on top of me. 

             
"Get off," I said.  I pushed him off and rolled onto my stomach as I slid down the pile of garbage.  When I hit the bottom I laid there catching my breath.  Suddenly I was blinded by a bright light. 
Damn
!  I was trying to shield my eyes when I heard a voice behind the light say, "Portable seven to the station.  Send the wagon to the alley behind Hilda's Hungarian Restaurant.  Two drunks wrestling in the garbage and causing a ruckus."