Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp Bomp Bomp?: A Rock and Roll Mystery Part 9
July 28th, 2007 by Rich @ 7:25 pmHow were we going to take down the scariest guy in town? A second rate private detective, a beautiful and sometimes deadly blond, a husband and wife team of exhibitionists/safecrackers and an internet whiz woman who knits? The pieces were almost there, but there was something missing. I knew if I could figure it out, I could blow this thing wide open.
And then it hit me. I needed an explosives man. Uncle BoomBoom was the missing piece.
I called him up.
“Say, Uncle, I could use your help. I’ve got a potentially explosive situation that I need to nudge over the edge, and you were the first guy I thought of.”
“What’s in it for me.”
That was Uncle. Always the capitalist, ready to do anything for a friend, as long as the friend had cash.
“How about a chance to take down Bart Wallace, and to help yourself to some of his bankroll at the same time.”
“Sounds good except you left out the part about how he’ll hunt us down and kill all of you afterward.
“Don’t you mean he’ll kill all of us?”
Have you ever heard someone stare through a telephone. It’s an ugly sound.
“Okay Uncle, forget I said that. But we do need your help, and I have an angle that will keep Wallace out of our hair forever.”
“Are you going to kill him?” Uncle asked.
“Nope. Even better. I’m going to make him want to retire from business. Permanently and without retribution.” I sounded much more confident than I actually was.
“Prove that, and I’m in, and I’ll waive my usual upfront fee.”
I talked to Uncle Boomboom for about twenty minutes. He thought the plan was risky, and thought of a couple of angles I hadn’t even considered yet, and in the end, agreed to come along for the ride.
I had my crew.
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It took some time to get all the pieces in place. Plans had to be made, certain piece of equipment had to be acquired,and each member of the team had to practice their parts constantly. A plan that relies on perfect coordination and split second timing is a plan that’s doomed to failure,and I don’t care what shows you’ve seen on TV. Action is chaos,and every plan goes out the window as soon as the action begins. Danny Ocean would have been caught and killed long before ever getting to the heist. This wasn’t a movie; this wasn’t some fictional novel with an improbably named hero. This was real and lives were at stake. Our lives.
Instead of some impossibly detailed plan, we went with only broad strokes of a plan. Learning the plan was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out what to do when the plan went to shit, as it inevitably would. The advantage to our approach was that we weren’t locked into a rigid plan that would hamstring us when it went wrong. We had a series of objectives that each one of us would have to meet. How to meet those objectives was left up to each specialist on the team. Once each member knew what was expected of them, my job was done.
leaving me lots of time with Honey.
Oh darn.