Get the Clevelands

Pigeon shit flew everywhere as the last of the gunshots rang out and the startled birds circled in a panic overhead before perching in the rafters again.

“Shit,” I said, checking myself for globs of bird poop.

Jessica looked around and threw the gun away. It clattered across the cement floor. I was still uncertain where she had gotten the gun from.

Before us the last of the bad guys lay dead, shot down in a fierce battle. And so was Brian.

We locked eyes. She had a particular aura about her at that moment, something intense and extremely arousing. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

“You’re alright?,” I asked.

“Yes. You?”

“I’m good.”

“Poor Brian,” she said, looking to where Brian lay on his back, covered in blood.

“Yeah,” I said. I felt bad. Brain had been a good friend, but when Jessica and I started dating he turned into a third wheel. He would call, text, knock on the door, all the time when I felt we were about to go to the next level.

“Hey, being dead is really uncomfortable. Could I get a pillow?” Brian asked.

“Sure Brian,” Jessica said. She pulled her jacket off and folded it, carefully lifted Brian's head and slid it under.

“How’s that?”

“Thanks Jess, you're the best.”

“Sorry you died B.”

“Uh, accidents happen,” he said.

This had all happened as an accident. Two, no three days ago. We had gone to the Chelsea Flea on an outing, as we called them. Sipping coffee and wandering through the booths Jessica found a little black notebook and bought it for a dollar. That night, drinking beers at the apartment, we peeked into it. It was full of notes, gibberish, and strange math-like formulas, pages torn out. Jessica thought it was cool, so I thought it was cool, maybe a mathematician's recipes with the frequent references to food. But I recognized the gibberish from sometime back in college and after searching on my phone confirmed they were the last words of Dutch Schultz. Somewhere I encountered the urban legend and the information stayed tucked away in the back of my brain until then. It clearly wasn’t original, but a later transcription of the words. We decided that the math equaled cryptography and someone had spent a long time trying to figure out what the last words meant. On the last page, near the bottom, the person had written ‘Acme power plant. Hole next to main panel.’ which may or may not be the location of the treasure.

Hours of drunken debate.

We set out that morning, hungover, three pairs of sunglasses on a cloudy day, coffees in hand. Jessica had the day off, Brian was, as always, between gigs, and I wanted to do something with Jessica to take things to the next level. Subways, Jessica getting kidnapped, a daring rescue lead by yours truly, a car that we might have stolen, high speed chases, all of it. And we ended up here, on the edge of the known universe in Yonkers, in an abandoned power plant with tall broken windows, smashed beer bottles everywhere, layers of graphitti.

This had all been an accident, we hadn't planned this at all. We didn’t really believe that there would be treasure, we were just curious, but when the bad guys started tailing us and then chasing us we ran. Somehow the only logical place to run to was here.

Jessica and I looked at the brick wall next to the main circuit panel for the power plant. Antique looking machinery from a black and white Frankenstein movie. The bricks were old and soft and there was a spot where the cement between the bricks was a little different, a little lighter in color.

“This must be it,” I said, rubbing my hand over the spot.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

This was an accident. We hadn’t packed any tools with us, nothing to excavate treasure with.

We looked around. I found a piece of machinery, some big, heavy piece of metal that had been left lying on the ground.

“Here,” I said. I approached the spot on the wall and planted my feet and hefted the machine part over my head. Bash and bash and bash. The wall gave way slowly and then suddenly bricks, bits of bricks, cement, and dust fell to the floor.

Behind the wall there was a dark hole like the notebook said there would be. And spider webs.

Jessica and I looked at each other in excitement, disbelief, fear, amazement, or something like that. We approached the hole slowly. A vision of some monster jumping out of the hole and attacking us flashed through my head.

“Do you see anything?”

“No,” she said.

“Hang on.” I pulled my phone out and unlocked it, swiped and re-swiped to get to the flashlight feature. “I need a new phone,” I muttered. “Here.”

“Hold it higher. To your right.” she stood on her tiptoes and reached into the hole. “There’s something-”

She pulled something from the hole. A manilla envelope. Not the full-sized, 8 x 11 kind, but a smaller one, narrow and flat with no text or markings.

“That’s it? It looks empty.”

“I was expecting a chest or bullion,” she said.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She furrowed her brow and undid the flap in the envelope. She peered inside and shook the envelope. “What the hell.”

“What’s in it?”

“These,” she said. From the envelope into her hand slid about twenty one-thousand dollar bills.

“Holy shit,” I said, with a laugh.

“What are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“They look fake.”

“They look old, like retro Monopoly money. Who is that on the front? Holy Shit! They put Grover Cleveland on the thousand dollar bill.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I dunno. Maybe to be funny or ironic.”

“What do we do?” she asked. The question was larger than it seemed. There were dead bodies, we were operating on adrenaline like maxed out credit cards, and had some strange treasure in our hands.

“Hang on. I’m looking,” I searched on my phone. “Here we go. Fun fact: thousand dollar bills are real and were printed as late as 1934...went out of circulation in 1969...supposedly they're still legal tender...in good condition that can be worth around $1600 to collectors.”

“So we found someone's coin collection,” she said angrily.

“Well, twenty-thousand dollars was a lot of money back in the day. And we had a pretty cool adventure.”

“And that’s priceless?” she demanded sarcastically. “Brian is dead” she pointed to where Brian lay on the ground, covered in blood, looking at his phone. “It should be millions of dollars.”

“Well, I mean, this was all pretty crazy and the craziest part is that it turned out to be real. I just think that’s pretty cool,” I said defensively.

“Very cool,” a strange voice said.

We turned and before us stood a man in a suit with nice hair and a gun pointing at us.

“Shit,” I said.

“You forgot the boss,” Brian said, disappointed.

“We forgot the boss. Basic 101 shit. After you beat the goons the boss always shows up for the final showdown,” I explained to Jessica.

“Idiot,” Brian said.

“Where’s your gun?” I asked.

“I threw it away. I thought we were done,” she said.

“Shit.”

“Idiot,” Brian said.

“Just keep your hands where I can see them and don’t make any sudden moves. I’m likely to shoot you if I get excited,” the boss said.

“How’s this,” Jessica asked after we both raised our arms straight up.

“That’s fine. Now move over there, slowly,” he said, waving his pistol to the left (our right).

We waddled like penguins with our arms up to the right away from the hole in the wall.

“That’s good. I don’t want you to strain yourselves.”

The boss walked up the hole and looked inside quickly then back to us to make sure that we hadn’t moved.

“What’s going to happen?” Jessica asked me quietly.

“Just stay calm,” I said, my voice on the verge of panic.

“I can hear you, by the way,” the boss said. “Just relax, I just need to-” He was struggling to see into the hole and quickly put his gun away in his jacket and pulled out his phone, swiped and found the flashlight feature. He peered into the hole and felt around again. He swapped his phone for his gun and turned to us.

“Alright, where is it.”

“You mean this?” Jessica asked, waving her right hand where the envelope and the money was.

“Yeah,” the boss said, walking towards us. “Give it to me.”

Jessica handed everything to him and he took a couple of steps back before looking at the prize. First he looked at the envelope, flipping it over in his hands looking for any markings or text. Then he looked at the thousand dollar bills, flipping them over too.

“What the hell,” he said at last.

“Are you a coin collector?” Jessica asked.

“What? No. What the hell are these?” he asked.

“Thousand dollar bills,” I said.

“Are they even real?”

“Yeah, apparently. I googled it.”

“Are they worth anything?”

“Well, they’re collectable.”

“Like baseball cards?”

“Yeah, like that. But they’re not in the best shape.”

“So, they’re not worth that much?”

“Probably face value at best.”

“So-” he began counting the bills.

“Are you going to kill us?” Jessica asked.

“Give me a sec, I’m counting.”

“It’s going to be fine, Jessica. We’re going to be fine.”

“So, we have, like twenty-thousand dollars,” he said, somewhat disgusted.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We think when Dutch hid it it was worth a lot more. Like a lot more,” Jessica explained.

“Geez, this isn’t even going to cover expenses,” he said, gesturing to the dead bad guys strewn around. “Not even close.”

“Are your arms numb yet?” I asked Jessica.

“Be quiet,” she said.

“You’re sure that’s it? No chest or bullion?”

“No.”

` “Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the pile of bills. “Listen, here-” his gun disappeared into his jacket and he held out the stack of bills to Jessica.

She lowered her hands slowly and looked at me to check perhaps if it was safe. I lowered my arms slowly too, feeling the blood return to my hands and fingers.

“You’re giving it to us?” Jessica asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Actually, could I have one? I’ll frame it and put it on my kid’s wall.”

Jessica handed him back one of the bills.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Jessica.

“Uhh. Well. This is chump change, as they say. Had I known I wouldn't have bothered to get out of bed. And you guys worked harder for it. Really all I had to do was follow along. You know? And I kinda feel bad.”

“Ok, thanks,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said. “And sorry about your friend.”

“Brian,” Jessica.

“Yeah, Brian. Sorry we killed Brian.”

“Thanks,” Brian said with a thumbs up.

Who does a thumbs up gesture? Stupid.

“Well, we're sorry we killed all your thugs,” Jessica said, looking at me.

“Your employees,” I interjected quickly. “Sorry we killed all your employees.”

“It’s ok,” he said. “They were just temps.”

We stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure what to do next.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “Are you guys hungry?”

“Oh my god! I’m so hungry,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, I could eat.”

“How about we get a slice? I’ll buy,” he said.

“Not with that I hope,” Jessica said, pointing to the thousand dollar bill and laughing.

The boss laughed along with her.

“Alright, let’s go then,” he said. “There's a great place I know.”

Great, another third wheel, I thought.