The first was a five-foot high stamp collection of every rare and unique piece of postage the mind can imagine. The second was a literal mountain of valuable coins, treasury notes and the like. The third was a smorgasbord of hundreds and hundreds of 100% authentic pieces of gold, silver and diamond jewelry; watches, rings, necklaces and the sort.
Last, but certainly not least, was the only cabinet with tightly locked drawers, a Pandora's Box of naughty, naughty secrets and other such unmentionable things.
Cabinet number four is the grand collection of all the cute nudie pictures of young females Mike may at times call "Private Ministry Staff." Of these, it seemed he personally enjoyed to display the juicy photos of his ex-mistress Gala the most.
In the locked drawers beneath all of his private photos and favorites was the mad flesh fest of pornography, especially lesbian and girl-on-girl hardcore, paraphernalia, and, dare I say, little bottles of stuff to make the most sensitive of soft spots tingle. There were things in those drawers that would make Marilyn Manson blush.
You may wonder how I know all this.
While I was in seminary school, Jason and I went in that closet every weekend for months. While Mike was away on his big jubilees to collect money from the Christian masses, we crawled all over that property like we owned it. We drove the cars. We invited girls. We drank hard. We played music loud. And we stole lots of little things we thought Mike wouldn't notice to finance our own playful lifestyles of whatever we thought up next. We were good at it, or at least we thought we were. Long story short, there wasn't a lock on that property I hadn't helped my best friend pick.
But, on this night, I hadn't come for bundles of porn; nor had I come to fill a half-dozen trash bags with sparkling trinkets. I had come for the big box in the back. I wanted the "X" that marked the spot. I wanted the contents of the square capsule that sat amidst all this dimly lit treasure. I wasn't here for the foreplay; I was here for the... well, you know what.
Sitting down just aside the safe, I rocked it from side to side just to feel its contents shift. Indeed, there were bundles of something moving in there, lots of bundles, perhaps time to retire in the tender years of my early twenties.
With every ounce of strength I possessed, I pushed that steel beast through Mike's bedroom to the first set of stairs.
I gripped that hunk of metal with both gloved hands, I knew full and well that this was where the really messy part would begin. But that was okay. I had already damaged a great many things on the way in, and I was far from finished.
With a smash like that of bursting concrete, it made impact with the beige tile flooring beneath. As I knocked plants and pricey looking lamp stands from my path, there was an ear-piercing grind of metal against rough marble.
Twisting, pulling and yanking, I maneuvered it out of the glass patio. Rolling it down a set of concrete steps from the pool, I popped the trunk. The hydraulic lift I had brought nearly gave way before the steel beast had a chance to test the strength of Jack's shocks.
Clunk! It slid in. The rear of the car lowered towards the pavement a significant and concerning number of inches. But the safe did fit perfectly, with even a little room to spare. I closed the trunk.
Wiping the sweat from my brow and brushing a colored bird from the door of the car, I smiled, bit my bottom lip, and took a seat behind the wheel.
"You're not out of this yet," I whispered to myself. "Surely it can't be that easy?"
As for the safe-stealing part of it, as hard to believe as it may be, it was that easy.
But Dr. Mike Murdock is not without his tricks, just as the devil is not without his wiles.
Going to the payphones in the back of a western style cowboy bar just outside Dallas, I made my call.
"Have you got it?" the voice asked.
"Yeah, I've got it. But with all that weight in the back, I don't know if the rear end of the car will survive."
"Who gives a damn about the car? This phone call is months in the making. Congratulations. Just get your ass back to Houston and your next stop can be Tahiti."
Walking past pool tables, lingering cigarette smoke and rednecks, I chugged down the last of a beer. Indeed, I was ready to drive home.
Two hundred cop-filled miles and it was now nearly sunrise.
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