Read The Ravine for Free Online Page A

clocks, paintings, tables, and stuff?” Bags asked smugly. He didn’t know it, but he had just asked a rhetorical question.
    “Yeah, what about it?” Danny said. “What would we do with that stuff even if we could get that junk out of there?”
    “Well, here’s the deal. I deliver to that place every day, and I got friendly with that old bald dude, Jack, who hauls the stuff around for the two old farts who own the place. He says they do a lot, I mean
a lot
, of business in cash, and that they take it home to their house in Chagrin Falls, and have it stashed there in a safe.”
    Tony started to get interested. “Okay, that sounds good, but how are we going to actually get it out of the safe, if we don’t know the combination?”
    Bags was ready with the answer he knew would impress the guys. “That’s the best part. This guy Jack says he knows the combination, and he’ll give it to us if we cut him in. He won’t help do the break-in, but he’ll give us the combination. Better yet, he says they’re going down to Florida for a few months in January, and if we give him a thousand bucks up-front, he’ll make a copy of the key and tell us the code to the alarm system!” Bags had really done his homework, covering all the bases.
    Tony and Danny couldn’t believe their good fortune. This was going to be like taking candy from a baby. It felt just like the good old days, when the Turner brothers would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and score a touchdown in the final seconds of the game, striding off the field like the gladiators they were meant to be.

    Danny, Tony, and Bags managed to scrape together the thousand bucks, and met with Jack the day after Christmas behind the bandstand with the cupola at the park in the center of town. Snow was falling, which was something the folks in Chesterland took for granted this time of year. “Lake effect,” they’d say knowingly to one another.
    Jack handed over the key as well as the combinations to the safe and the alarm system. He told them the safe was bolted to the floor in the upstairs bedroom. He also made it clear that he knew for a fact there was at least $50,000 in it, so he expected his take would be a minimum of $12,500 and not a penny less. Of course Tony and his buddies had intended to beat Jack out of his share.
    Tony stared right into Jack’s eyes, giving him his most sincere look. “You don’t think we’d cheat ya, do you?”
    Jack had a few years on Tony and wasn’t about to be taken. “Sure I do, which is why I will be far, far away, out of Ohio, with a rock-solid alibi when you guys do this, and if I don’t get my full cut, then I promise you the cops will be tipped off about you three and you’ll be toast.” If Jack had had an ace on him, he would have pulled it out of his sleeve at that instant. Even Bags could figure out that his cut just went way down.
    “A deal’s a deal,” Tony assured him, annoyed with himself for thinking he could trust a thief to trust a thief.
    Now that they had the address, the key, and the combinations, all they had to do was wait for the owners to pack up and go to Florida. With any luck, they wouldn’t even discover that the money was missing until they returned a few months later.

    The house was on Maple Street in Chagrin Falls, one of the most picturesque, quintessentially American towns in the country. Downtown Chagrin during the Christmas season could have been the set for
It
’
s a Wonderful Life
. With the enormous white face antique clock smiling down at the end of the square, you half expected to see James Stewart and Donna Reed arm in arm, viewing the spectacular falls where the Chagrin River had a natural drop of fifty feet, and the icy rush of the cascading water created an immediate hypnotic daze. At that time of year, snow usually coated the ground, and the square was ablaze in colorful lights. For families in surrounding towns, it was a tradition to make the annual pilgrimage to Chagrin